Dear Carl et al,
Thank you for the warm welcome. I rarely have time for listserv
discussions and there are so many out there that it can really get
crazy and unnecessarily distract from the workload. I subscribed to
this list at Roger’s suggestion, which I value for good coin. All
those years and great effort scanning books and helping to make them
available to those of us who are blind or have low vision cannot be
overstated. I am proud to be part of a broader effort to build on waht
Roger has been able to accomplish, hopefully with his help and
guidance.
I find it most intriguing that Penny was a founding member of this
list, I have known Penny for more years than I care to admit, mostly
on Facebook, though my initial memory was sitting next to her at some
advocacy meeting of some sort or another way back in the day. I was
quite saddened recently to hear about the passing of Charlie
Crawford. I did not know him personally but his stature and
reputation, especially in Maryland where I live, was notable and
unavoidable.
I am currently on staff with the NFB here in Baltimore, although it’s
been remote homebound work for the past ten months with no end in
sight. If you will indulge me a bit, I have included links to a couple
of articles that were published under my name in the Braille Monitor.
They should provide a bit of background as in introduction. The first
is a rather whimsical reflection upon my professional observations in
the blindness field. I have been a National Orientation & Mobility
Certified Trainer since 2002, with tons of other sorts of
responsibilities throughout my career. I had the distinction of being
the first blind O&M instructor hired in the Commonwealth of Virginia,
not uncontroversial at the time. The second and most recent article
describes my political history and development.
My singular focus on this list is political. For the past few years I
have wandered back into activism, searching for some sort of
independent political movement but alas, mostly all so called
progressive groups of any kind funnel back into the Democratic party.
I agree with Malcolm X who was uncompromising in many ways, but
certainly he was clearly opposed to the dual bourgeois party setup in
this country.
I would summarize my intention on this list as encompassing anything I
engage in politically. Namely, I seek out others who want to change
society for all oppressed peoples, those of us with disabilities as
well as the majority of us who produce all the wealth that supports a
relative handful of parasitic capitalist families who produce nothing.
I favor revolution over reform so I have no truck with the Bernie Bros
nor with Democratic Socialists who have a traceable history in the
workers movement and, particularly in Europe, it ain’t always pretty.
From Helplessness to Independence:
A Philosophical and Practical Overview
https://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/audio/braille_monitor/2017/june/08_from_helplessness_to_independence.mp3
Anger or Righteous Indignation (HTML)
https://nfb.org/images/nfb/audio/braille_monitor/2020/january/11_anger_or_righteous_indignation.mp3
I am pleased to become better acquainted with you on this list on
topics of particular interest and passion outside of blindness. My
gratitude is extended to Roger for suggesting that I join.
Regards,
Maurice
On 12/3/20, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for adding to the history, Roger. If we could hear from
Penny, I believe she was a founding Mother, along with Charlie
Crawford. And the other person who was active when I joined the list,
was Sylvie. I sent her an email, but doubt I'll hear back, since
she's been inactive for several years.
My favorite list to rant on, was the ACB chat. It was a free for all
sort of a list, an opinion list for the brave at heart. Bob Hachey
moderated it, and he had also been on this list. But Bob succumbed to
cancer, and after a few weeks, Deb Lewis posted a note saying she was
cancelling the chat list, immediately. And it was. That pissed me
off royally. Not because the ACB leadership couldn't decide what lists
to lend their name to, but Deb and I worked together for years, and I
knew the controversy on the chat list was not making her happy. There
were some good discussions on that list, since it had about as many
from the far Right as from the Left.
Probably the loss of the ACB chat list was a good thing, for me. I
was spending far too much time on it.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/2/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually, Carl, I thought you had been on the list from the very
beginning. But as long as you are telling something about the history of
the list let me let Maurice know how I came to be moderator if you can
call it that. I first found out about Blind Democracy when Miriam
invited me to subscribe. I think she did that based on one of my email
signatures that she saw on another list. I eventually left the group
because I was getting too much email and this list seemed to be the most
expendable. But then on another email list one of the two list owners
got rather upset about another of my email signatures. By the way, I
change that signature about once a month. Lately I have been using
quotes promoting the materialist philosophy, but I have used overtly
political signatures in the past. Anyway, that list co-owner started
sending me some rather nasty private emails and I got the impression
that he was about to expel me from his list because he didn't like my
politics. So I resubscribed to Blind Democracy again with the idea to
recruit support for my freedom of speech if it came to that. The man in
question did eventually calm down a bit and later he died, so that
particular crisis was resolved, but I remained on the Blind Democracy
list. At that time the list was hosted by a web site called Octothorp
and as time went on the owner of that web site died too. Without anyone
to maintain it the site just fell apart and this email list stopped
working. We list members stayed in touch and tried to carry on for a
while by replying to all in our emails and adding numerous addresses to
each original post, but that was very awkward and was not sustainable.
It was obvious that the list needed to be reestablished on another host
site that was dedicated to email lists, but no one wanted to do it.
Everyone seemed to think it took a technical wizard to set up an email
list, but all that was really necessary was to follow the prompts. I had
been on the verge of unsubscribing just before Octothorp fell apart, but
I decided that if no one else was going to reestablish the list the job
fell to me. I started to set it up on Yahoo groups even though I had
heard that lately Yahoo had made their groups pretty close to
inaccessible and when I tried to set up a new group there I found out
that was true. I got only so far and couldn't continue. So I tried
another web site. The next one that popped into my mind was Freelists. I
was able to set it up and the subscriber list was still accessible from
Octo thorp, so we were able to invite everyone to subscribe to the new
group. Some people never made the transition, but they were people who
never posted anyway and I suspect that their email addresses were
moribund. So I became the new de facto list owner and moderator. Like I
said, I was on the verge of unsubscribing anyway and I didn't
particularly want the job of moderator, but I had gone and committed
myself to it. So I decided to moderate by not moderating. That is, this
is a free speech zone. You can say anything you want here and its okay
with me. If a spammer comes along I do block that, but other than that
no one gets blocked or expelled with one exception. There was one person
who decided to use the list for long vicious insult messages at me. I
was the target and it was fine with me if he kept on insulting me, but
it was rather upsetting other list members. I finally got pressured into
doing something about him. I didn't want to block him, so I took the
least drastic action. There was a choice in the settings of just
blocking his posts and letting him read everyone else's posts. I think
he decided that if he couldn't insult me that he didn't want to be a
part of the group at all, so he hasn't bothered us for a while except by
private message and that even is getting to be more rare.
___
Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist
enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her
ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute;
this
is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please
leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas
don’t
work, you must throw them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/2/2020 4:45 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
A word of welcome, Maurice. Blind Democracy is a well kept secret.
The original list began long before I was aware of it, but my
understanding is that the list was begun by Charles Crawford and Penny
Reader, as a place for ACB members who were under fire by the then
"leadership"
Someone will correct me, if I'm too far off course. Anyway, the list
began to slide to the political Left, and those who worshiped Mothers
and Apple Pie and 200% Made in America, all of them few, swore a
mighty oath and left for Mitchville, Kentucky. For me, as an old
rehab teacher doing my entries and searches on-line, it was a way to
relax and unload, and practice expressing personal opinions instead of
my too many years of writing in boring bureaucratese.
As for me, I'm Carl Jarvis, self proclaimed Progressive. I'm still
recovering from years laboring in the political field as a democrat.
And further back in my wanderings, I became a born again Christian.
After about ten years I became an unborn Heathen and embraced
Agnosticism...if indeed Agnosticism can be embraced. Some, even on
this list, insist that I am an Atheist. But I say nay, I know what I
don't believe...or is it, what I do believe?
I was born in Spokane, Washington back in 1935, the middle child. At
least I was different than my two sisters. I grew up in Seattle, did
free lance photography, worked in a drapery factory, and transitioned
from a person of low vision to one of total blindness in 1965. After
hunting down the office of services for the blind, and self teaching
myself Braille, I returned to college. My first wife and I had a
small daughter, and we'd been married for five years prior to my
becoming blind. After another five years, we went our separate ways.
Eventually I became employed by the Services for the Blind, first
teaching food service management, then becoming an instructor,
teaching Braille and "adjustment skills" to adult students in the
Orientation and Training Center. Later I directed the OTC before
taking early retirement and moving to the Olympic Peninsula. Cathy
and I set up Peninsula Rehabilitation Services in 1995, and we closed
our services this past June 30, due in in part to the COVID-19
pandemic.
Over the years I became more Progressive, but I moved my focus from
the Democratic Party, suffering from the Party's leadership deciding
to abandon the Working Class in favor of the Corporate dollars, and I
spent the next 56 years working in the field of work with the blind.
That's enough of myself. What can you tell us about who you are, and
what drives you?
Carl Jarvis
