[nfbwatlk] David Patterson to Become First Legally Blind Governor

[Jedi]

I've read Kuusisto's book Planet of the blind, and it was like a literary
acid trip. From what I gathered from reading his book, his attitudes about
blindness aren't exactly progressive.

Respectfully Submitted

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 11:41 AM
To: nfbw
Subject: [nfbwatlk] David Patterson to Become First Legally Blind Governor


March 14, 2008
David Patterson to Become First Legally Blind Governor on Monday

>From The New York Times:
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block quote
(op-ed contributor)

The Vision Thing
By STEPHEN KUUSISTO
Iowa City

WHEN David Paterson takes the oath of office in Albany on Monday, he will 
not only become the third African-American governor since Reconstruction, he

will

also be the first legally blind chief state executive. I think it's a safe 
bet that Governor Paterson's visual impairment will be harder for the public

to understand than his race.

Blindness is often thought of as an either-or condition: a person can see or

he can't. Terms like "low vision" or "legal blindness" are mysterious. 
Spotting

me with my guide dog in Grand Central Terminal when I was in New York 
recently, a stranger asked: "How blind are you? I mean, you don't look 
blind." I

told him I can see colors and fog. "Oh," he said with obvious puzzlement, 
"colors and fog."

Tens of thousands of people with severely limited vision or who are legally 
blind have delicate and even intricate forms of sight. I think of it as like

living inside a painting by Jackson Pollock - our sight is real but hard to 
explain. The images are sometimes indecipherable.

David Paterson's blindness isn't identical to mine. He lost his vision 
because of a childhood illness. I was born prematurely and my retinas were 
damaged

by incubation. He can see some images with his right eye and nothing with 
his left. I see the world from inside an abstract painting. Still, we're 
almost

the same age and both of us were sent to public schools in the early '60s, 
an era when visually impaired children didn't usually receive a mainstream 
education.

We both learned early on how to make serious use of our ears. I imagine the 
future governor's information-gathering skills are supple and inexhaustible.



David_patterson_picture_from_the__2
 Blind people are invariably creative and resourceful. Obviously we're good 
listeners. But what people may not know is that learning to have a keen 
sense

for what others are talking about requires developing an equally sharp 
curiosity about human beings. When people talk to me, I can't just listen; I

am

also compelled to take stock of the person behind the words. This means 
asking questions that might not occur to people who can see. One of my 
students

recently observed that I ask people in my classes to explain the things that

they customarily overlook. "You ask things like 'What was the first thing

you said to yourself this morning?'" she pointed out. "You challenge us to 
recall the forgotten things."

I can't afford forgotten things. Blind folks must constantly keep track of 
what we learn and memorize our surroundings. For us, an unfamiliar setting 
that

a sighted person could map out in a glance is a puzzle that requires agile 
problem-solving. On occasion we even need to ask strangers for advice.

New Yorkers will no doubt discover that Mr. Paterson will take great 
interest in the details of governance and that this will require him to take

sincere

interest in people. He'll ask more questions than your average politician. 
And those who work in his administration will find that they are important 
not

simply for knowing things but because they can describe how they learned 
those things in the first place. That's perhaps the most important thing for

the

public to understand about professionals who are blind - we are by nature 
tireless in acquiring information, and we remember virtually every detail of

what we read or hear.

Sometimes I ask my students to notice the words they're saying, and then I 
ask them to listen once more to the things they may have missed. In the 
world

of blindness this skill is part of "orientation and mobility." Blind people 
can navigate independently because they can interpret what they hear. They

can differentiate between the sound of traffic moving forward and cars in 
the turning lane. And yes, if you have a visual impairment you are likely 
practiced

at being patient.

I'm guessing there are some who wonder whether a blind man is up to the job 
of governing the Empire State. Even though there are 10 million blind or 
visually

impaired Americans, many people have never seen one of them in a job of such

responsibility - or in any professional role at all. Even though it has been

close to 20 years since the adoption of the Americans With Disabilities Act,

the unemployment rate for the blind is estimated to be 70 percent. In this

era of superb computer screen-reading software and talking P.D.A. devices, 
when many blind Americans are college graduates, this statistic implies that

the public still doesn't fully understand how talented visually impaired 
professionals are.

That's fine. New Yorkers once underestimated Franklin Roosevelt. Now David 
Paterson can show how a legally blind person can lead.

Stephen Kuusisto, who teaches creative nonfiction writing at the University 
of Iowa, is the author, most recently, of "Eavesdropping: A Memoir of 
Blindness

and Listening."