[Mt-blind] Mining the past in the treasure state - an archive of Observers, and the charter date

[RJ / KJ]

November 15, 2007 
To the Montana Blind-L discussion:

Boy, has there been a wellspring of well-written pieces in the list this
week!

I just wanted to thank you - Jim Marks, Joy Breslauer, Cody Grieser, Jim and
Dar Aldrich, Flo Nelson, and whoever I might be forgetting.  who has written
this week which could easily be described as first person oral history on
the subject at hand, the blind organization in Montana and its historical
relationship to the national organized blind.

I started to write something up on Sunday, November 11, but then got way
laid and distracted, and actually, in truth, sort of started to weigh the
value of going back and spending the time to write, when it seemed like it
might not be more than just airing out old laundry and not accomplishing the
needed understandings between peoples that seem to always be at odds.

But reading these posts this week, I have benefited so very much. Thank you
again.  I may yet choose to chime in, if it would be of any help.

As to the charter of affiliation with the NFB, I have  a copy of it.  It is
dated July 5, 1982.  Signed by Kenneth Jernigan, NFB President, and Laurence
Marcelino, NFB Secretary, and by Montana Association for the Blind
representative, John D. Ford.  Witnessed by Mary Ellen Anderson and by Elsie
R. Grove.

As Jim Aldrich, and Jim Marks speculated earlier, it was indeed not a
document until this time.  There may have been another document, but this is
the one I was told by the national office that counted.

Here are other things that I have.  And I would wonder if some of you could
beat the bushes for more to add to our endeavor of collecting our history.  

What I have is print copies of The Observer.  I started getting them in the
mail in the fall of 1982.  But to my regret, I did not start saving them
until the November / December 1988 issue.  I have I think all the print
copies up until September 1992.  This was the last one published with Lelia
Proctor as Secretary-Treasurer and editor of the newsletter.  

I just wish I had earlier editions, too.  I would just bet my lunch money
that the rest of the copies are somewhere in our treasure state,  Do any of
you have any?  Know of members with print copies? I would offer to use my
K-1000 scanning program and make e-text copies of these if they are not
already stored digitally somewhere.  

I hope that someone else has the electronic copies of the newsletter which
were produced on computer after that time.  John and Bernice DeHaas were
editors, then I was for about 5 years, then Dan Burke, then Joy Breslauer
and I think then back to the DeHaas's.  But I am not sure about those latter
copies after I was editor.  I have not been as much of an archivist in
recent years.

Contact me off list if you can or want to send me the earlier print
newsletters.  Some of you may have them in Braille.  I reckon they could be
transcribed to an electronic form, with those find fingered talents some of
you all have in better shape than my guitar calloused and factory worker
stiff hands.

The collection of news, of thoughts, of actions, deeds, intentions, and even
the disappointments of dreams not realized.  All valuable, all worth saving,
I believe.  

Thank you again for the good week of discourse.  
Stay connected?  Please do keep your focus.  
Seeing ain't all with the eyes, is it now?  Ha! Not hardly!

Rik James
Bozeman
d28rik at msn.com