[nfbwatlk] A Blind Leader Adjusts, and So Does New York

[Prows, Bennett (HHS/OCR)]

Interesting.  Wonder how many less body guards and aides he could have
if he was able to use alternative techniques and skills of blindness.
Special treatment all the way.  But then again, governors probably all
get special treatment, so why shouldn't he.

Now, I wonder how many of those things he does that are considered
stereotypical blindness things are really done for the reasons listed in
the article, or something else.  For example, he sprinkles the salt in
his hand.  Some folks know which shaker is which just by picking them
up.  A salt shaker is always heavier, even if there isn't as much salt
in it.  (My grandmother gets credit for teaching me that.)  But,
sometimes I sprinkle the salt to see how fast it flows from the shaker.
That's the real reason.  

The way reporters are recognized in a press briefing could be modified
so he could have more independence, but who cares.  He gets the job
done.  I had a blind law professor who used another person to recognize
students when they raised their hands.  I always thought that was a bit
awkward, as he could have asked the students to just call out their
names as we do in Federation meetings.  It works fine.  Nevertheless,
this professor got along fine the way he did it.

Anyway, I just wonder, how many less special or different things this
governor would need if he was versed in alternative techniques, etc.

Take nothing away from him though.  He's governor of one of the largest
states.


Bennett Prows
-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces+bjprows=comcast.net at nfbnet.org
[mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces+bjprows=comcast.net at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 8:42 PM
To: nfbw
Subject: [nfbwatlk] A Blind Leader Adjusts, and So Does New York

April 21, 2008
A Blind Leader Adjusts, and So Does New York 
By JEREMY W. PETERS
ALBANY - It is a phone number that just a handful of the governor's
senior aides know.

At the end of each day they call in and record briefings, laying out
what he needs to know about the following day. 

They recite his schedule, read talking points and explain the
intricacies of issues likely to come up. They read memos from staff
members and relate biographical details about the people he is likely to
meet.

Lots of governors rely on thick briefing books and helpful e-mail notes
from their staffs. New York's governor, David A. Paterson, who is
legally blind, has his ears and what his aides call his Batphone.

Usually at night, in the Executive Mansion or at his family's home in
Harlem, the governor listens to the recordings on the designated phone
line. They run up to five minutes each and can pile up quickly, taking
hours to absorb.

"Last night I had 43 messages, all of them five minutes in length," Mr.
Paterson said in an interview. "That would be 215 minutes worth of
material - over three hours." 

He stayed up that night from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. listening to the
recordings, which covered everything from his prepared remarks for a
press conference on energy to articles on economic growth in The
Economist. But that was only enough time to get through half of them. 

To the general public, the transition to a governor who is legally blind
has been almost imperceptible because Mr. Paterson, 53, acts in many
ways like a person with 20-20 vision.

He does not walk with a cane or read Braille. He threw out the first
pitch at a Mets game at Shea Stadium last week. And when he is in the
Capitol's familiar stone and marble corridors, where he has worked for
two decades, he walks at a brisk pace, slowing down only when an aide
alerts him to someone approaching. 

But behind the scenes, Albany is a different place since Mr. Paterson
was sworn in last month. With a blind man in charge - the governor can
see nothing out of his left eye and only color and large objects out of
his right - everything from speech preparation to the instructions for
the staff at the governor's mansion has been custom-fitted to Mr.
Paterson's needs.

"Now that he's governor, it's a whole new ball game," said Assemblyman
Keith L. T. Wright of Harlem, who has known Mr. Paterson since they were
boys.

Since he cannot read from a prompter, the governor tries to commit his
speeches to memory, by listening several times to an aide's recording of
the speech. Delivering an address just from memory can be nerve-racking.

"It's like a high wire," he said. "You trip, there's no net."

He travels with a phalanx of assistants, typically a half-dozen,
including aides and bodyguards, who act as a buffer zone around him in
large public settings, from hotel ballrooms to school classrooms. The
bodyguards gently steer him, often with a hand on his back or arm,
toward an exit or into a waiting vehicle.

At news conferences in the Capitol's ceremonial Red Room, it is not the
governor but his press secretary, standing just to the side of the
lectern, who calls on reporters, reminding them to state their names and
affiliations before asking a question.

Glad-handing a crowd poses a challenge for Mr. Paterson because he
cannot fully make out people as they approach him. So when his aides
spot someone they recognize coming toward him, they tell him who it is.
He instructs the aides not to whisper, but to speak in their normal tone
of voice, because he wants the exchanges to appear as ordinary as
possible.

Mr. Paterson, a Harlem Democrat who has been blind since infancy, has
been making adjustments to his surroundings throughout his life. But,
with the added demands of the job of governor and the relentlessness of
his new schedule, staying on top of his work now takes a lot more time.
He said much of his day can feel like a big game of catch-up. "I'm
always trying to get back that time that I'm losing," he said.

Given the volume of material he must take in, he tries to find ways to
do things faster. He listens to very long articles or books on a special
tape recorder for the blind that plays at speeds so fast, it is
difficult for others to comprehend. "You get used to listening to that
Alvin and the Chipmunks voice," he said.

At the Executive Mansion, staff members have been trying to keep up with
the needs of their new boss. They were instructed shortly after he moved
in last month to watch the level of his drink during receptions and
offer him a refill if it looked too low. He was still learning the
layout of the house and could not find the bar easily.

Mr. Paterson has told the staff not to move any of the furniture in the
40-plus-room home on his account, and has said that he will learn where
everything is. 

He is used to adapting, in big and small ways. When he wants more salt
on his food, he takes the shaker and sprinkles its contents into his
hand first so he can feel whether he actually has the salt, and not the
pepper, which is less chunky to the touch. When he jogs through his
former neighborhood in Guilderland, near Albany, he runs the same route
each time. He purposely avoids Route 146 because of the gullies that run
along the side of the road.

"The secret is how to adjust," he said. "I ask myself how am I going to
fit into this world, and how am I going to do it without killing
myself." 

As a baby, he suffered from a condition known as optic atrophy, which
damages the optic nerve. His parents decided not to send him to school
in New York City, where teachers could not promise that he would be able
to interact with students who were not blind. So they sent him to school
on Long Island, where he received special attention but also learned
with students who were not disabled.

The minimal sight in his right eye - in which his vision is 20/400 -
affords him a limited ability to read. If he holds a book very close to
his eye, he can make out the words. And he said he will occasionally
write himself reminder notes. But reading is so straining that it tires
him after only a few minutes.

His reliance on his hearing has helped him sharpen a talent useful in
politics: an ability to focus on people in a way that makes them feel
that they were truly heard. His attentiveness to people's voices has
other political benefits, too.

"He can pick up a phony faster than somebody who has sight," said
Assemblyman Wright.

He also uses humor to poke fun at his disability, offering anecdotes
about how he once showed up at a press conference wearing two
different-colored shoes, or how as a young man he would occasionally
miscount the number of subway stops on his way home and get off at 145th
Street instead of 135th Street. "Back in the '80s, you didn't want to go
there at night," he said, laughing. 

Although Mr. Paterson often says he does not want people to go out of
their way for him, he says society should recognize that he and other
blind people cannot do everything on their own.

As one of his first acts as governor, he added instructions to his
official state Web site on how to enlarge the type on the screen.

"It's just being more sensitive to people who feel that government and
institutions ignore them," he said.


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