Maurice, Charlie was a nice guy. Although him and I had frequent disagreements
about everything from the weather to politics we always got along. He will be
missed.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Maurice Peret
Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2020 12:41 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: welcome Maurice.
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
