                       THE BRAILLE MONITOR

                           June, 1990

                    Kenneth Jernigan, Editor


     Published in inkprint, Braille, on talking-book disc, 
                        and cassette by 


              THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND 
                     MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT 
 


                         National Office
                       1800 Johnson Street
                   Baltimore, Maryland 21230 

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                National Federation of the Blind
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                      THE BRAILLE MONITOR

       PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

                            CONTENTS

                           JUNE, 1990


CALIFORNIA STATE OFFICIALS BEGIN OVERDUE HOUSE CLEANING 
IN THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE PROGRAM 
  by Barbara Pierce

THE BLIND DON'T NEED PAMPERING AT YALE  
  by Brian McCall

FROM THE MAIL BASKET: 
PERSPECTIVE ON ALABAMA INSTITUTE FOR DEAF AND BLIND 
"HOSTAGE TO TAX POLITICS": 

ADVOCATE FOR BLIND SEES PRESSURE FROM ADMINISTRATION 
by Dominic Slowey

COMMENTS ON RECORDING FOR THE BLIND

LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, SIMPLE SIMON, AND THE THREE BLIND MICE: 
MEMBERS OF A VANISHING BREED
  by Barbara Pierce

REACTION TO A CARTOON

I MAY NOT BE A MOUNTAIN CLIMBER, BUT...
  by Nancy Scott

THE VALUE OF DEBATE
  by Stephen Benson

SOME THOUGHTS ON TECHNICAL SUPPORT
  by Curtis Chong

WHAT WENT WRONG WITH DOING GOOD?
  by C. Edwin Vaughan

I WAS A YOUNG MOTHER BEING STIFLED BY BLINDNESS
by Barbara Pierce

BLIND RAPE VICTIM BELIEVED    

RECIPES

MONITOR MINIATURES

Copyright, National Federation of the Blind, Inc., 1990
                   CALIFORNIA STATE OFFICIALS 
BEGIN OVERDUE HOUSE CLEANING 
IN THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE PROGRAM
                        by Barbara Pierce
In the January, 1990, issue of the  Braille Monitor  we published
a story ( Sweeping Up the Krums ), which documented the rot
pervading California's Business Enterprise Program (BEP). We
reported that on September 1, 1989, the state police actually
escorted four BEP officials, including Roger Herman Krum, chief
of the Business Enterprise Program, off state property. All four
men were subsequently placed on administrative leave (with pay)
until the police investigation was completed. It is still going
on, and one police official suggests that we may only have seen
the tip of the iceberg.
Enough is now known, however, to force the California Department
of Rehabilitation to act. On March 23, 1990, therefore, Hao Lam,
Deputy Director of the Department of Rehabilitation in charge of
the Business Enterprise Program, was transferred to the Health
and Welfare Agency, and Notices of Adverse Action (four
dismissals and one suspension
for thirty days) were issued against BEP officials. The Tuesday,
March 27 edition of  The Sacramento Bee  printed the following
story on page 1 of Section B, summarizing the action:

                 State Lists Reasons in Firings:
               Dishonesty Alleged in Rehab Program
                  by Steve Gibson, Staff Writer

Five officials who administered the state Department of
Rehabilitation's Business Enterprise Program were accused of
dishonesty, negligence, inefficiency, and incompetency in
documents made public Monday by the State Personnel Board.
Four of the officials have been fired, and the fifth suspended
for
30 days for alleged irregularities in operations of the Business
Enterprise Program, which oversees and supplies the newsstands
and snack bars operated by disabled people in state buildings.
In addition, $1.5 million in state equipment is missing, the
documents said.
The most serious charges were leveled against Roger Herman Krum,
chief of the Business Enterprise Program. Krum also serves as
paid director of the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee.
 As a direct result of your failure to provide adequate
supervision over the property survey process, $1.5 million worth
of (state) equipment is unaccounted for and currently missing, 
said Krum's dismissal notice.
Reached at home Monday night, Krum declined comment.
Each official's notice was signed by department Director P. Cecie
Fontanoza.
Krum and his four subordinates in the Business Enterprise Program
were placed on administrative leave September 1, 1989, in the
wake of an audit that disclosed irregularities in an equipment
inventory.
They were served with state notices of  adverse action  dismissal
and suspension notices last Friday.
A California State Police official said Monday night that a
criminal investigation into misappropriation of Business
Enterprise Program equipment began last year,  and it isn't over
yet.  Evidence in the case has been turned over to the Sacramento
County
district attorney's office for possible prosecution, and one law
enforcement official said:  This may be just the tip of the
iceberg.  Krum, who joined the Department of Rehabilitation in
1966, was also accused in his dismissal notice of, among other
things, gross mismanagement and  repeated and consistent
manipulation of records to hide loss of property. 
Krum also was accused of conflict of interest because he hired as
his secretary in the department Linda Layne, a member of the
board
of directors of the jazz society, which employed him full time
starting in November, 1988.
After Krum became a  full-time paid employee of the Sacramento
Traditional Jazz Society  in 1988, he  received numerous phone
calls relating to (his) Jazz Society employment at the Department
of Rehabilitation,  according to his dismissal notice.
 Your secretary...also received numerous Jazz Society phone calls
at the department,  the dismissal notice said.  By working full
time for the Jazz Festival from November, 1988, until you were
placed on administrative leave on September 1, 1989, you failed
to devote your full time, attention, and efforts to your state
job during your hours of duty as a state employee. 
Krum also was accused of failing to properly supervise Layne, who
in turn, his dismissal notice says, failed to properly supervise
and train nine Business Enterprise Program clerical workers in
field offices.   By failing to supervise the clericals adequately
so as to insure that (program) invoices were processed promptly,
the department frequently lost discounts allowed by vendors for
prompt payment,  Krum's dismissal notice said.  In some cases
invoices were not paid for several months. 
Also dismissed was Joseph Edward Parilo, a business enterprise
consultant who joined the Department of Rehabilitation 17-1/2
years ago. He declined comment Monday night.
Others dismissed were Anthony Budmark, a management services
technician who joined the department 15-1/2 years ago, and James
C. Flint, Krum's assistant administrator, who joined the
department 16-1/2 years ago.  Neither could be reached for
comment Monday night.
Howard Edward Mackey, a business enterprise consultant who joined
the department 25 years ago, was suspended for 30 days.
According to Parilo's dismissal notice, in April auditors found
more than $300,000 worth of equipment in his records missing. 
When
the Business Enterprise Program was audited in July, 1989, your
inventory records of Sacramento warehouse were completely
incredible,  Parilo's dismissal notice said.
The notice also said that when Parilo was placed on
administrative leave in September,  the Sacramento warehouse was
in a shambles.  Everything was extremely disorganized and dirty.
There were piles of trash. There were cobwebs on the equipment. 
According to Budmark's dismissal notice, the state lost $1.5
million worth of equipment  as a direct consequence of your
actions.  Furthermore, the notice said,  you were dishonest in
that you used (state) charge cards to pay your father's taxi
company...for pickup and delivery of materials on a recurring
basis, in order to avoid (state) contract requirements. 
Flint's dismissal notice accused him of, among other things,
supervising warehouse inventories which turned out to be  grossly
deficient,  with more than $1 million worth of equipment
unaccounted for.
In addition, the notice accused Flint of being  dishonest,
incompetent, inefficient, and inexcusably neglectful...in that
you violated department requirements by failing to report
property which appeared to have been stolen. 
For example, Flint's dismissal notice said he failed to notify
the proper state officials of the  probable theft of a missing
utility refrigerator that was discovered in the possession of a
Ventura restaurant equipment dealer in December, 1988. 
Mackey's suspension notice said he failed to properly supervise
warehouse and vending stand inventories. The notice said his
inventory records  were completely incredible  and listed 240
items in one warehouse when, in fact, there were only 60 items,
with about $250,000 worth of equipment missing.
Flint and Parilo declined comment. Mackey and Budmark couldn't be
reached.
____________________
That is what  The Sacramento Bee  had to say, and if anything, it
was an understatement of the facts. The documents from which the
reporter drew his story were damning beyond the capacity of the
general public either to wade through or to comprehend. But the
vendors of California live their professional lives at the beck
and call of the Business Enterprise Program's officials, and they
are the ones who have suffered financial losses and constant
frustration because of the mismanagement that has now been
exposed in terrifying detail.

On April 2, 1990, Sharon Gold, President of the National
Federation of the Blind of California, wrote a letter to the
vendors across the state, telling them what was happening and
providing them with copies of all five Notices of Adverse Action.
Here is the text of her letter:

TO: Vendors in the California Business Enterprise Program
FROM: Sharon Gold, President, National Federation of the Blind of 
California
DATE: April 2, 1990

On March 26, 1990, the State Personnel Board released to the
public
5 Notices of Adverse Action. Each notice was signed by P. Cecie
Fontanoza, Director of the Department of Rehabilitation and was
filed with the State Personnel Board and the Office of the
California Attorney General.  A Notice of Adverse Action was
issued to each of the following: Roger Herman Krum, Chief of the
Business Enterprise Program; James Carleton Flint, Assistant
Administrator of BEP; Joseph Edward Parilo, Business Enterprise
Consultant II; Anthony Budmark, Management Services Technician
for the Business Enterprise Program; and Howard Edward Mackey,
Business Enterprise Consultant II. References to each of the five
Notices of Adverse Action were made in  The Sacramento Bee 
articles which I distributed on cassette tape Tuesday, March 27.
Messrs. Krum, Flint, Parilo, and Budmark each received notices of
dismissal from their positions within the Business Enterprise
Program, effective at the close of business on March 30, 1990.
Mr. Mackey received a notice of a 30-day suspension from the
Department of Rehabilitation, effective at the close of business
on March 30, 1990.
In an effort to strengthen the laws of the state of California,
Senator Mello is carrying Senate Bill 2759 under the sponsorship
of the California Vendors' Policy Committee. The intent of this
legislation is to place in the California statutes such checks
and balances as may prevent the kind of abuse to the Business
Enterprise Program that has taken
place during the past year. More information on SB 2759 will be
forthcoming.  ____________________
That was the cover letter that accompanied printed and cassette
versions of the five notices of Adverse Action. The recording
required the better part of two tapes to complete, and the
printed material was 107 pages in length. Each document began in
the same way and included the professional history of the
individual concerned, together with
a list of the charges against him. Then, in outline form, the
evidence supporting each charge was laid out in exhaustive
detail. Because Roger Krum was BEP chief and, therefore,
ultimately responsible for the actions of his four subordinates,
we have undertaken to reprint a much-abbreviated summary of his
notice of dismissal. Here it is:

State of California
Health and Welfare Agency
George Deukmejian, Governor
Department of Rehabilitation
Sacramento, California

                    NOTICE OF ADVERSE ACTION

Roger Herman Krum, Chief
Business Enterprise Program

                               I.

YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that you are dismissed from your position
as Chief, Business Enterprise Program, Sacramento, with the
Department of Rehabilitation, effective at the close of business
March 30, 1990.

                               II.

This action is being taken against you for causes specified in
the following subsections of Government Code Section 19572:

(b) Incompetency
(c) Inefficiency
(d) Inexcusable neglect of duty
(e) Insubordination
(f) Dishonesty
(o) Willful disobedience
(q) Violation of this part or board rule 172
(r) Violations of the prohibitions set forth in Section 19990.

                               III.
                      PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

A. The Business Enterprise Program (BEP) subsidizes blind persons
in their operation of vending stands and food service facilities
in government and private office buildings throughout the State.
Blind persons are selected and trained to operate cafeterias and
vending stands. The BEP uses federal and state funds, as well as
significant amounts from fees paid by blind vendors into trust
fund accounts,
to secure and set up cafeterias and vending stand locations, to
provide cafeteria and vending stand equipment, to assist in the
selection of trained operators to run the facilities, and to
provide ongoing support.
The State has a fiduciary responsibility to the Blind Vendors'
Trust Fund, which pays for a portion of the equipment. Improper
disposal and maintenance of equipment and records place the
Department in a vulnerable position for failure to adequately
administer the Trust Fund and expose the Department unnecessarily
to criticism.
B. You started working for the Department of Rehabilitation on
May 2, 1966, as a Vocational Rehabilitation Trainee. On June 8,
1976, you were promoted to Program Administrator II, Business
Enterprise Program (BEP). On July 1, 1979, your position was
reclassified as Chief, BEP.
According to the State Personnel Board specifications, the Chief,
BEP plans, organizes, develops, and administers the statewide
program of establishment and supervision of the operation of
facilities and vending stands by the blind and visually impaired
and participates in the formulation, development, implementation,
and evaluation of Departmental policies as they relate to BEP.
As Chief, you supervised the Assistant Administrator, Jim Flint,
who was responsible for the inventory function. Jim Flint
supervised Tony Budmark, who oversaw the statewide inventory
process. As Chief, you directly supervised the Supervising
Business Enterprise Consultants (SBECs), who were responsible for
the vending stand equipment in their respective geographic areas.

                               IV.
                        ACTS AND OMISSIONS

The causes of action listed in paragraph III above are based upon
the following omissions:
A. During fiscal year 1988/89 you grossly mismanaged the
inventory and equipment accountability function in BEP. You
failed to adhere
to Management, State and Departmental directives and policies on
equipment accountability, and corrective memos from your
supervisor, Hao Lam, Deputy Director, Program Management and
Support Division.
B. During Fiscal Year 1988/89 you were incompetent, inefficient,
and inexcusably neglected your duties in that you permitted the
repeated and consistent manipulation of records to hide loss of
property.
C. During Fiscal Year 1988/89 you were incompetent, inefficient,
and inexcusably neglected your duty in that you failed to ensure
that warehouse inventories were properly taken.
D. During Fiscal Year 1988/89 you were inefficient, incompetent,
and inexcusably neglected your duties in that you allowed your
staff to engage in such deficient tagging of equipment that
significant amounts of equipment were never designated as
equipment belonging to BEP.
E. During fiscal year 1988/89 you were inefficient, incompetent,
and neglectful of duty in that you failed to ensure that the BEP
Property Manager performed the inventory aspects of his job
competently.
F. During fiscal year 1988/89 you were incompetent, inefficient,
and neglectful of your duties in failing to insure that Tony
Budmark, the Property Manager, was properly supervised in his
non-inventory and non-survey duties, as well.
G. During fiscal year 1988/89 you were incompetent, inefficient,
and inexcusably neglected your duty in that you failed to
supervise Flint and Budmark properly so as to insure that
controls over BEP's Central Office Imprest Cash Fund were
adequate to safeguard the cash.
H. During fiscal year 1988/89 you were dishonest, incompetent,
inefficient, and inexcusably neglectful of your duties in that
you failed to report suspected theft of blind vendor property,
specifically, an unsurveyed utility refrigerator that was
discovered at a Ventura restaurant equipment dealer in December,
1988. As a result, action could not be taken by the proper
control agencies.
I. On or about March 13, 1989, you were dishonest in that you
permitted your Assistant Administrator to initiate Property
Survey Reports for over $63,000 worth of equipment as  stolen. 
He certified that he supervised the disposal of the equipment and
had two clericals
sign for the Property Survey Boards in violation of departmental
requirements.  You failed to notify the Accounting Section, the
Audit Section, General Services, and the Department of Finance of
the purported theft; nor did you file a proper police report.
J.  During August, 1989, you were incompetent, inefficient, and
inexcusably neglectful of your duties in that you failed to
supervise the re-taking of an inventory to insure that it was
accurate and properly carried out.
1. Prior to the issuance of the August, 1989, Audit Report, you
were notified of its findings that BEP property was being grossly
mismanaged.  You were instructed that a special statewide
re-inventory would be taken, that all BEP staff were expected to
give it top priority, and that BEP would be held accountable for
its accuracy.
2. In spite of your having been instructed on numerous occasions
about the critical necessity of conducting an accurate inventory
of BEP equipment and final reconciliation, the Department's
October 30, 1989, Audit Report disclosed that the re-inventory
taken by BEP staff under your leadership was not credible and was
grossly inaccurate.
3. Although you were instructed that your re-inventory be
reconciled
with the property record and that all adjustments be made or all
supporting documents be attached for pending adjustments, your
re-   inventory was so incompetent that a large number of serious
inaccuracies and discrepancies remained. As of October 30, 1989,
after you were placed on administrative leave, the number of
known missing equipment items was discovered to have increased
from 1,282 to 1,420, and the value of the missing equipment
increased from $1.2 million to $1.5 million.
K. During Fiscal Year 1988/1989 you were incompetent,
inefficient, and inexcusably neglected your duties in that you
failed to provide adequate supervision over the statewide
equipment survey process.

1. As early as 1987, you were aware of the importance of insuring
that proper records are maintained regarding property that is
disposed of. You knew that General Services approval was required
before equipment could be released. You were aware that a signed
receipt should be obtained from the non-profit recipient of
surplus equipment, and that the record should contain a notation
of how the scrapped equipment
was disposed of. Throughout 1987 and 1988, you were repeatedly
instructed that equipment would not be disposed of without prior
clearance. You constantly assured management that you were
complying. As Chief, BEP, you were responsible for insuring that
the Property Survey requirements of the Inventory Procedures
Manual were being complied with.
L. During Fiscal Year 1988/89 you were inefficient, incompetent,
and inexcusably neglected your duty in that you failed to
supervise the Property Manager adequately in order to maintain
document accountability and to obtain the proper approvals for
transfers of vending stand equipment to other State agencies, as
required by the BEP Inventory Procedures Manual and Department
and State policies and guidelines.
1. In the first ten months of Fiscal Year 1988/89 $300,000 worth
of equipment, out of a total surveyed amount of $700,000, was
transferred
to other State agencies. You failed to ensure that all
transfer-of-location documents, Std. Form 158s, were numbered,
accounted for, and logged.  As a result it was impossible to link
all the transfer-of-location documents with the equipment, or to
insure that the transferred property was in fact transferred to
another state agency.
M. During the period from December, 1988, to August, 1989, you
were dishonest, insubordinate, wilfully disobedient, incompetent,
inefficient, and inexcusably neglected your duty in that you
failed to properly supervise Jim Flint, your Assistant
Administrator, and attempted to deceive your superiors regarding
Flint's actions. You allowed Flint to assign management
responsibilities in the Los Angeles area to a volunteer, Max
Rincover. Mr. Rincover was a former BEP employee who had been
found to be 100% permanently disabled from performing the same
job to which he was assigned by your Assistant Administrator. 
Mr. Rincover had also been found to require lifetime medical care
for his disability.
N. On or about May, 1989, you allowed your staff to circumvent
State and Departmental Contract requirements by entering into an
agreement with Captron Assembly Services, without the review and
approval of
the Department's Contract Officer or anyone in the Contracts and
Regulations Section, in violation of RAM Sections 7101 and 7102.
Your Assistant Administrator employed an improper procedure to
use the Imprest Cash Fund for payment.
O.  During the period from March, 1987, to September 1, 1989, you
violated the provisions of Government Code Section 19990(g) by
failing to devote your full time, attention, and efforts to your
state employment during your hours of duty as an employee.
1. On or about November, 1988, you became a full-time paid
employee of the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society. You received
numerous phone calls relating to your Jazz Society employment at
the Department of Rehabilitation. Your secretary, Linda Layne,
also received numerous Jazz Society phone calls at the Department
of Rehabilitation. By working full time for the Jazz Festival
during November, 1988, until you were placed on administrative
leave on September 1, 1989, you failed to devote your full time,
attention, and efforts to your state job during your hours of
duty as a state employee. This is especially significant because
as Chief, BEP, you had a fiduciary responsibility to the Blind
Vendors to safeguard the vendors' trust fund account.
2. Your secretary, Ms. Layne, was on the Board of Directors of
the
Jazz Festival which employed you. Your hiring of Ms. Layne as a
secretary also constitutes a conflict of interest.
P. From February 1, 1988, until September 1, 1989, you were
inefficient, incompetent, and inexcusably neglectful of duty in
that you failed to supervise your secretary, Linda Layne,
properly.
Q. During 1988 and 1989 you were incompetent, inefficient, and
inexcusably neglected your duty in that you failed to establish
an adequate statewide system for keeping track of vending machine
income to insure that vending machine income accruing by law to
blind vendors was collected and properly distributed.
1. You failed to maintain a central listing of all vending
machines for which income should be collected and failed to take
appropriate steps to monitor and enforce its responsibilities to
collect such income.
2. Subsequent to your being placed on administrative leave on
September 1, the Department received a check for $90,000 from
vending machine income from Mare Island which had not been
collected for over a year.
Of this $90,000, approximately $70,000 belonged to the vendors'
retirement fund and the balance to the previous and existing
vendors who operated a facility on the property.
3. On or about March, 1988, the Audit Section directed BEP to
maintain vending machine accountability information by number,
type, and location.  Although Jim Flint represented to the Audit
Section Chief that such information would be forthcoming, with
your knowledge, it was never provided.
R. In May, 1988, you were dishonest in that you manipulated
paperwork to hide the loss of property.
1. You permitted the transfer (on paper only) of 23 items of
equipment, totaling $26,474, to a vending stand location which
had been closed in December, 1987, without having any idea where
the equipment was located.
2. You violated BEP Policies and Procedures Manual by failing to
insure that two approval signatures required for bulk purchases
for the warehouse were obtained.
S. On or about March 2, 1989, you were dishonest in that you
reported to the Deputy Director, Administrative Services that
from July, 1987, through March 2, 1989, BEP did not have much
activity in the area of surveying, whereas in fact, 221 surveys
had been completed during that time period.
1. On or about October, 1987, after you discovered that the
Deputy Director, Administrative Services, was having auditors
check the Property Survey Reports and equipment before
authorizing disposal of BEP equipment by his signature, you
stopped submitting the Property Survey Reports to him.
2. Thus, you circumvented proper survey procedures and prevented
auditors and anyone from outside the BEP from reviewing the
Property Survey Reports before the equipment was disposed of.

                               V.
                            CONCLUSION

As the Chief of the Business Enterprise Program, you failed to
act in a responsible manner commensurate with your duties, to
protect BEP property purchased in part with blind vendors' trust
funds, and to exercise reasonable and prudent care to prevent
such equipment under your control from vanishing. You were
blatantly and willfully derelict in your duty. Your misconduct is
significant because as Chief, BEP, you had a fiduciary
responsibility to the Blind Vendors to safeguard the vendors'
trust fund account.

                               VI.

According to State Personnel Board Rule 61, you have the right to
review the materials upon which this action is based and to
respond to this Notice of Adverse Action either in writing or
orally prior to the close of business on March 30, 1990, the
effective date of
the notice. If you wish to respond orally by phone or set up a
meeting to respond, please call Barbara Hooker, Chief Deputy
Director, 322-6606.  You have the right to representation at this
meeting. If you wish to respond in writing, please direct your
response to Department of Rehabilitation, 830 K Street Mall, Room
322, Sacramento, CA  95814.  Regardless of whether you choose to
respond to this Notice, you may appeal this adverse action to the
State Personnel Board. Such an appeal must be filed in writing
within 20 calendar days of receipt of this Notice of Adverse
Action. The appeal should be sent to:

State Personnel Board
Attn:  Administrative Law Judge
801 Capitol Mall
Sacramento, CA  95814

                                                   Date:  3/23/90
                                     P. CECIE FONTANOZA, Director

cc: Elizabeth Solstad, Chief Counsel
     Marjory Winston Parker, Deputy Attorney General
     Chief Hearing Officer, State Personnel Board Personnel (3)
____________________

There you have the skeleton of Krum's Notice of Adverse Action.
In a statement issued through his attorney, Krum announced that 
I categorically deny committing any acts to justify my being
dismissed.  Further, I am mad as hell that they have accused me
of being dishonest.  It is difficult, however, for a person
reading the public documents
to escape the impression that such safeguards as did exist were
willfully ignored or flagrantly violated. The kindest
construction that can
be put on the situation is that management was not managing.
People a good number of people had to have been looking the other
way for $1.5 million worth of equipment to dissolve into thin
air.
The other four Notices of Adverse Action are only less dismaying
than Krum's because the officials' duties were less wide-ranging.
The casual reader of such material might be forgiven for thinking
that the Business Enterprise Program in California and the entire
Department of Rehabilitation are now, at last, in a position to
get on with the job of assisting blind people. But as is clear
from even the most cursory study of the history of California's
Business Enterprise Program, the problems uncovered in the
current investigation began long before Roger Krum and company
arrived on the scene, and so far there is little objective
evidence that they will depart with him.
The fact that Hao Lam has been transferred from his position as
Department of Rehabilitation deputy director for Program
Management and Support to the Health and Welfare Agency is a
hopeful sign, and sources close to the Sacramento County District
Attorney's office suggest that plans are being made for several
criminal prosecutions. If these do occur,
they may strengthen such bureaucratic impulse as there may be to
establish sensible, effective policies and procedures in the
Business Enterprise Program and remove those officials who are
unwilling or unable to comply with them.
According to a source close to the BEP, it was clear from the
beginning of this latest crisis in the Program that Hao Lam's
first concern has always been to protect himself by finding a
scapegoat to take all the blame. Shortly before the California
State Police swooped
down on September 1, 1989, to escort Krum and company off state
property and change the locks on the BEP warehouses, Lam placed a
confidential letter in the files which purports to blow the
whistle on Krum and
his subordinates. The California vendors committee subsequently
circulated a copy of this letter to vendors across the state,
many of whom reject the idea that Lam only learned of the
malfeasance in August of 1989.  Lam had frequently told vendors
that Krum never signed any document or made any decision without
his knowledge and approval. Furthermore, the alleged
whistle-blower was described to the  Braille Monitor  as Krum's
hatchet man as guilty of wrong-doing as any of the others.

After Krum's removal in September, Lam assumed direct
responsibility for the Business Enterprise Program and called in
two experienced officials: Bill Lamb, to replace Roger Krum, and
Don Edmons, to replace
Jim Flint. Lamb took a sixty-day leave from his job to assist in
revitalizing the BEP and has now returned to his former post. Don
Edmons has lost the possibility of returning to his old job,
though rumor has it that he would like to do so. Both officials
have been very cautious in their statements for attribution, but
one source close to the situation reports administrative dismay
at Lam's habit of scolding staff in the presence of their
subordinates and his dictatorial ways ( It is Lam's way or no way
).
Observers report that Edmons is a good man but that his efforts
to develop and consistently implement a master plan before
determining
whom to fire did not meet with Lam's approval, so he began
countermanding Edmons' orders.
Hao Lam's transfer has taken some by surprise. Many in the
Business Enterprise Program believed that his political
connections were too strong to permit his removal. They are
relieved and cautiously optimistic that this move may mean state
officials are really serious this time about straightening out
the mess in the Business Enterprise Program.  The fact that the
U.S. Rehabilitation Services Administration has also begun
expressing more than a little curiosity about what happened
to $1.5 million worth of equipment may also encourage California
officials to deal decisively with this scandal. On April 3, 1990, 
The Sacramento Bee  reported this aspect of the BEP mess. Here is
the portion of the article that deals directly with the federal
inquiry:

  U.S. Probes Rehab Agency on Inventory by Steve Gibson, Staff
Writer

Despite repeated requests, the California Department of
Rehabilitation has failed to provide the federal government with
an itemized inventory of equipment purchased with millions of
dollars in U.S. funds, an official said Monday.
 We've asked for (an inventory) many times,  the official,
Way Hew, director of management for Region 9 of the U.S.
Rehabilitation Services Administration, said in a telephone
interview from his San Francisco office.
 What we're trying to get a handle on,  Hew said,  is how much
they've been buying under (federal grant) programs.  Hundreds of
small non-profit agencies that provide independent living
services to the disabled in California receive U.S. money
administered by the state Department of Rehabilitation.
Correspondence obtained by  The Bee  shows that U.S. officials
found  major weaknesses in property management  and poor
record-keeping at agencies that are supposed to be overseen by
the state Department of Rehabilitation.
____________________
That is what  The Sacramento Bee  had to say on April 3, and
it is clear that this story is far from over. As this article is
being written in early April, first-page stories are appearing
every day
in the Sacramento newspapers. The District Attorney has not yet
announced his plans, and the management problems in the Business
Enterprise Program are far from resolved. But the State
Legislature is now looking hard at the situation, and the vendors
in the BEP are gradually becoming more unified in their efforts
to see that their rights and their livelihood are protected.
The National Federation of the Blind continues to advise and
assist the vendors wherever and whenever we can. The California
affiliate is working with legislators and members of Congress to
impose the safeguards that have never before been placed on the
Business Enterprise Program. The state NFB office continues to
help vendors communicate with one another so that they can all
understand what is happening.  The blind across the state and the
nation have joined together to insist that arrogant and
self-serving officials no longer feather their own nests at our
expense. The blind are a minority, and like every other minority,
we have frequently found that people presume it is acceptable to
take advantage of us. But we are not stupid, and
we know what is going on. We are no longer willing to accept the
consequences of such behavior as our due.
The California Department of Rehabilitation has begun some
overdue spring housecleaning. Many other state agencies would do
well to consider engaging in the same housewifely activity. A
taste for fresh air and sunshine is contagious, and corruption is
all the more visible in
the strong light of day. The blind everywhere are watching the
California Department of Rehabilitation and learning from its
example.
     THE BLIND DON'T NEED PAMPERING AT YALE by Brian McCall
From the Associate Editor: Federationists will remember that
Brian McCall was a 1989 National Federation of the Blind
scholarship winner.  He has just completed his junior year at
Yale University. Our philosophy of independence and our
insistence on the importance of good alternative techniques for
blind people struck a responsive chord in Brian when he first met
competent blind people at the 1989 national convention.

When he returned to Yale in the fall, he discovered that one
member of the freshman class was blind and did not have effective
alternative skills, good cane technique in particular. His method
of accomplishing his access goals was to make accusations of
insufficient services
in university publications and to petition rather publicly for
special permission to do things his own way.
My son, who was a Yale senior at the time, mentioned to me with
some annoyance early in the academic year that a blind freshman
was doing a good bit of damage to the image of blind people by
making silly statements to the press, but he didn't see that
there was much he could do to help.
Brian McCall, however, was in a somewhat different position. He
knew of at least three blind students at the university whose
lives were at risk of substantial inconvenience if people began
to believe that this freshman was an accurate representative of
the capacities of all blind people. There was also some danger
that pressure would be placed on the Resource Office to become
more intrusive in the lives of blind students if this one man's
inappropriate complaints were taken seriously. So Brian McCall
wrote an article for the student newspaper, presenting his
position on what was at the time the latest flap caused by the
freshman. The text of this column was reprinted
in the Winter/Spring edition of  The Student Slate,  the
newsletter of the National Federation of the Blind Student
Division. Here it is:

A recent article appearing in the October, 1989, issue of   New
Journal  focused attention on several issues regarding the
Resource Office for Disabled Students, and it highlighted some
more general concerns about attitudes toward handicapped people.
The  New Journal  article, entitled  No Easy Access,  focused
more specifically on the beliefs of Mathew Weed, one of four
blind students at Yale.  I would like to overview here the
feelings of the three other blind students, including me, that
the article failed to mention.
I will address specifically the relationship between the Resource
Office and the blind community at Yale. I do not speak for
students with disabilities who claim the need for modification of
the physical environment (such as wheelchair users), for the
blind require no modifications of the sort. These other students
may have legitimate claims against the University, but blind
people share very little in common with them and their access
problems.
We merely need the freedom to use alternative techniques such as
tape recorded texts, live readers, oral exams, and Braille
materials. Thus, when Equal Access for Students at Yale (EASY)
confronts the University, they should not claim to represent the
interests of the blind.
I would like to comment on the controversy over Weed's inability
to cross the corner at College and Grove Streets. (Weed claimed
he had difficulty crossing at the corner crosswalk because he
wandered into traffic. He asked for permission to cross at
Hillhouse but was denied.) First, blind people do not have to ask
permission to travel anywhere.
With the proper training, a blind person can cross any street
independently at any location as safely as other people.
As to Weed's difficulty in crossing at the corner crosswalk, if
he had received proper mobility training, he could cross at the
corner crosswalk as I have been doing for a year and a half and
as the two blind graduate students have been doing since
September.
In light of Weed's insufficient training, I can understand the
administration's ruling that he would have to cross at the
intersection with a guide and would not be permitted to cross at
Hillhouse. However, I hope the administration realizes that Weed
does not represent all blind individuals. For too long untrained
blind people have, through their inability to master travel
skills, led people to believe that the blind need assistance in
crossing streets or riding buses.  Although like every
institution the Resource Office is in need of minor modification,
it is currently satisfying the legitimate needs of the blind:
housing some useful equipment and providing the funds for live
readers. This is really all the blind need from a university.  It
is the responsibility of the blind to learn the alternative
techniques that make it possible to function at Yale, just as it
will be our responsibility to work side by side with sighted
colleagues after graduation.
The blind, when using alternate methods, can perform the same
tasks under the same constraints as their sighted peers, and they
can do so efficiently. Therefore the blind at Yale are not in
need of an
office that provides services which the blind can take care of
themselves.  If the blind are taught to be dependent on this
pampering, they will be unable to function efficiently in their
careers.
The Resource Office should provide the appropriated funds for
readers and be a source of equipment. Any expansion beyond these
functions does not help but rather hinders us in our mission to
reduce blindness to a mere characteristic and to compete
effectively in the sighted world.

                     FROM THE MAIL BASKET: 
PERSPECTIVE ON 
ALABAMA INSTITUTE FOR DEAF AND BLIND

From the Associate Editor: Hundreds of letters pour into the
National Center for the Blind each week. Many of these have to do
in one way or another with the  Braille Monitor . Most of the
correspondence deals with the mailing list address or format
changes or additions to the list itself. But many, many letters
are written about the content of the magazine. The topics and
ideas discussed in the  Monitor  are so wide-ranging that they
are bound to evoke a variety of responses.

Recently we received a letter that served as a powerful reminder
of what we are all about as an organization and as a publication.
We  are  the blind speaking for ourselves, and we  are  changing
what it means to be blind.
Barbara Corner, a blind attorney and mother of three, now lives
in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her psychiatrist husband and their
sons, aged twelve, nine, and seven.
While the family was living in Alabama, Mrs. Corner lost all of
her remaining sight in a period of about six weeks and was left
to cope with the problem of trying to learn how to take care of
herself, her three young children, and her home with only the
support of her husband, who was a medical student at the time.
Because of her family's efforts to exert pressure wherever they
could, she eventually received more hours of travel training
(according to her mobility instructor) than any student had ever
before received in the state. He also told her that Presidential
aides from the White House called him repeatedly to make certain
that she was getting what she needed.
Mrs. Corner knows firsthand how dreary the services for the blind
are in Alabama. She was able to circumvent the worst of those
shortcomings, but she worries about the people who are trapped in
the state with no possibility of pulling strings to get what is
their due. We worry about them too, and we remember that there
are thousands of blind people in every state who need good
training and sensible help. That is why the   Braille Monitor 
published  Of Chandeliers and Shoddy Practice in Alabama.  Here
is Mrs. Corner's letter:

                                                 Cincinnati, Ohio
                                                February 21, 1990

Dear Mr. Jernigan:
Congratulations to you and Ms. Pierce on your recent article
[February, 1990] about the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and
Blind and its former President Mr. Hawkins. It is about time that
the truth about Alabama came out. I have decided to join the NFB
because of your bold approaches to the Alabama and Florida
schools for the blind and deaf and their problems. My check for
membership has been sent to the NFB in a separate envelope.
I was particularly impressed with your article about Alabama
because at the time I became totally blind and needed
rehabilitation services, I lived there. I was one of the lucky
ones. As a child growing up with partial sight in Brooklyn, New
York, I met and became friends
with several people who were totally blind. They all traveled
independently, read Braille, and lived normal and fulfilling
lives. At the time I found out that my sight was totally and
permanently gone, although I felt devastated, I knew that I could
adjust once I had acquired the necessary skills.
Getting those skills in Alabama was a struggle. I was able to get
the needed mobility skills because my sister wrote a series of
letters to everyone she could think of who might help, and I was
eventually taught by a dedicated mobility instructor, who
tailored his lessons to my particular needs like going to the
grocery store and taking my preschoolers to school. However, I
was unable to receive adequate instruction in other skills I
needed to resume my duties as the wife of a busy medical student
and the mother of three active boys aged two, four, and seven. (I
didn't worry about the skills I might need
to practice law again, since I needed to be able to take care of
myself and my family first.) My situation reached a crisis in
which I became extremely depressed and my family was suffering
from not having a functioning wife and mother. Something had to
be done. I felt I needed to go to a residential rehabilitation
center, where I would not need to worry about my family but could
concentrate on learning the skills that would enable me to be a
whole person again. I was told not to go to the facility in
Talladega, Alabama, because as an attractive young woman I
wouldn't be safe there.
As I said, I was lucky. My sister and my husband's family had
enough money to pay for me to go away to a rehab center in
Pittsburgh. There, although it was hard, I spent eleven weeks
learning as much as I could and returned to my family a changed
person. I now had the confidence and will to take on any
challenge I faced. Although we have since moved to Cincinnati,
Ohio, where my husband is doing his residency, I still have deep
concerns about the blind who remain in Alabama and aren't as
lucky as I was. This is why I applaud your bold approach to
exposing the inadequacy of the schools in Alabama and Florida.  I
want you to know that I believe that Braille should be taught to
all visually impaired children. I had partial vision when I
attended school in Brooklyn. My vision varied most times I could
read normal print, but there were extended periods when I could
only read large print and almost a year when I couldn't read
print at all. No one suggested that I be taught Braille. It never
even occurred to me because I felt that my vision would improve
and that I wasn't really blind.  Had I learned Braille then, it
would have spared me much agony when I lost my sight. Moreover it
would have enabled me to do lots more reading without struggling
while I was partially sighted. I would have been able to read at
night, and the lighting of the room would not have affected my
ability to read. It would have made it much easier to argue in
court, since Braille notes would have been easier to read than
large print notes written in a Flair pen that I could only read
at a certain distance, etc. At present, although I use Braille
for lists, addresses, and labels, my reading speed is not good
enough to read books for pleasure or read aloud to my children. I
do not have the time to improve my reading speed because of my
time-consuming responsibilities as a mother and wife.
Again, let me thank you for your article about the Alabama
Institute for the Deaf and Blind.

                                                       Sincerely,
                                                   Barbara Corner
 HOSTAGE TO TAX POLITICS :  ADVOCATE FOR BLIND SEES PRESSURE FROM
ADMINISTRATION          by Dominic Slowey
 This article appeared in the March 7, 1990,  Middlesex 
[Massachusetts]  News.

BOSTON The head of the local chapter of the blind feels the
Dukakis administration is trying to pressure him into supporting
new taxes by threatening to cut programs for the blind.
Dennis Polselli, president of the MetroWest Chapter of the
National Federation of the Blind, joined a Statehouse rally
Tuesday against proposed cutbacks in programs for the blind, but
did not join in the call for new taxes.
 They try to box me into a tax corner, but I don't go for that, 
Polselli, a Framingham resident, said.  These are areas that
ought not to be held hostage to any tax politics at all. Those
are the basic needs, necessities, period. It ought not even to be
a question of whether there ought to be revenues or not. You
ought to decide if that's a priority. 
Polselli is a rarity at the Statehouse these days: someone in
need
of state services threatened by cuts who is not pushing for new
taxes.  The governor zero-funded money for library services,
threatening the closing of the only talking book library in the
state. Dukakis also proposed eliminating the state supplement to
Social Security benefits, cutting benefits to $184 a month.
Speakers at the rally, including several legislators and House
Speaker George Keverian, D-Everett, urged the crowd to lobby
local legislators and insist on new taxes to salvage the
programs.
But Polselli said realigning budget priorities within the
Commission for the Blind would free money for essential services.
 The ideal thing is that if people are opposed to taxes or if
they're in favor of taxes, that's irrelevant,  Polselli said.  
The thing is there are basic services that blind people need that
really ought not to be held hostage to any revenue raising. 
Polselli added he's  getting lobbied from everywhere, as a blind
consumer, and as an employee of (the state's) higher education 
system. He works as a staff assistant at Framingham State
College.   If you have to prioritize, you have to come down on
the side of human services,  Polselli said.  If I'm absolutely
boxed into a corner, I have to come down on the side of cuts,
make some choices. 
But Charles Crawford, the head of the commission, said that over
the last three years the agency has consolidated functions and
cut personnel and administrative costs, reducing administration
to bare essentials.  He said the agency has sent back $4 million
to the state treasury in the last three years in the form of
reversions.
 I would challenge anybody to make a more scrutinous set of
decisions with respect to spending priorities than has the
commission in this past year,  Crawford said.  At some point you
reach the level where the infrastructure of the agency is
threatened by further cuts.  Crawford said changing priorities
would not do the trick.   You've got to believe somebody
sometime,  Crawford said.   We can demonstrate with the documents
that we have and printouts of the computer screen showing where
the money was reverted, showing the reductions in personnel. But
the reality is that anybody can refuse to believe anything for as
long as they want to. 
Polselli said the commission should not act as the distribution
center for Social Security and Medicaid benefits for blind
people.                          
 
COMMENTS ON RECORDING FOR THE BLIND
From the Editor: I first met Cherie Heppe when she lived in
Northern Nevada. Later she moved to Connecticut, where she became
one of the leaders of the NFB in that state. She is now studying
at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic.
She has had a considerable amount of trouble in getting the
Connecticut state agency for the blind to give her financial help
in pursuing her career goal. As will be seen from the following
letter, she is also experiencing problems with Recording for the
Blind.
In last month's issue of the  Braille Monitor  we carried an
article about Recording for the Blind which presents a different
view from the one expressed by Cherie Heppe. Here is her letter,
along with the one she received from Recording for the Blind:

                                             Whittier, California
                                                    March 9, 1990

Governor George Deukmejian
Sacramento, California

Dear Governor Deukmejian:
In the past I, as well as many other blind people, have utilized
the services of Recording for the Blind. As I understood it,
Recording
for the Blind's original mandate was to provide texts and other
otherwise unavailable materials for blind college students,
graduate students, and professionals. Acquisition of the inkprint
books is expensive; and this notwithstanding, Recording for the
Blind now requires blind persons to purchase two copies of each
text to be recorded. They say it enhances and insures the
accuracy of their reading for copyright purposes. Have copyright
laws changed? This was not previously a requirement, but it
represents a financial hardship for blind would-be users of
Recording for the Blind's services. Even with this extra copy, we
blind recipients often do not receive our texts until well into
the term or at the end of the term of study.
I am currently attending the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic.
I am funding myself with government loans because the agency for
the
blind will not assist me, although I qualify both for the agency
assistance and the schooling. I purchased the required texts for
second term ahead of time. I sent them to Recording for the
Blind, expecting to receive confirmation of receipt of these
texts and production of these books. I have been a long-time
borrower at Recording for the Blind, yet I received no advanced
notice of RFB's change of policy. I also received no assistance
from the Los Angeles unit of Recording for the Blind when I made
my initial inquiry about having these books recorded. Recording
for the Blind has refused to record my texts, saying they do not
fall into the purview of their educational program.  Recording
for the Blind tends to eclipse or absorb smaller, independent
recording organizations, thereby limiting blind people's access
to recording options for texts and other materials.
Recording for the Blind raises money and puts itself out to the
public as providing comprehensive services to blind borrowers.
Now, I need access to text transcription, either in recorded form
or in Braille.  I am not familiar with organizations who do this
work who have the necessary readers or equipment to handle these
medically and scientifically oriented materials. I need my texts
read and have had limited success finding readers from among the
students on campus. I have very limited financial resources and
have very little to spend on reader fees.  This refusal of
service by Recording for the Blind jeopardizes my options for
acquisition of texts and my success in the upcoming term.  I need
to find financial assistance to either hire readers, funds to
send books to places to be Brailled or recorded, or hire people
to read the books to me. It is difficult to know where I am
expected to find these resources when the very agencies claiming
to serve the blind refuse to provide assistance.
There are other blind people planning to attend the Los Angeles
College of Chiropractic who will also need these materials. In a
broader view there are other blind people who have attended and
no doubt will attend other chiropractic and professional schools
which require the use of specialized texts. Currently I wonder
where such texts will be reproduced. I cannot help but think that
such agencies as Recording for the Blind delude both the blind
and the public, from whom they solicit financial support.
Please contact me if you have suggestions for tangible help or
resources.  I may be reached through Student Services at the Los
Angeles College of Chiropractic or at (213) 947-6555. I would
very much appreciate your attention to this matter.

                                                       Sincerely,
                                                     Cherie Heppe
____________________
Princeton, New Jersey
February 27, 1990

Dear Borrower:

     Clinical and Functional Correlations in Embryology,  Tran
@OUTDENT =  A Guide to Microbiology Laboratory,  Skanavis (L.
A. College)
     Introduction to Human Histology,  Goubran @OUTDENT = 
Neurology Outlined: A Guide to the Lectures,  Tran @OUTDENT = 
Lecture Outline for General Anatomy II  Carr (L.
A. College)
 Neurology Study Guide,  Tran
     Clinical Neurology Outlined,  Tran, Tuan A. (L. A.
College of Chiropractic).

We have received your request for recording of the above titled
books.

Recording for the Blind is currently re-evaluating the types of
books it will accept for the permanent library. We have reviewed
your book(s) and after careful consideration we have determined
that your material does not fall within the educational scope of
our program.
We are therefore returning both copies and hope that we can be of
service to you with other requests in the future. RFB does not
record material produced for an individual class or school.

                                                       Sincerely,
                                      Book Assignment Coordinator
                                     Borrower Services Department

                                 
LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, SIMPLE SIMON, 
AND THE THREE BLIND MICE: 
MEMBERS OF A VANISHING BREED
                        by Barbara Pierce

When I was a child, one of my favorite stories was  Little Black
Sambo.  Tigers were among the monsters that inhabited the dark
corners of my world, so any story in which they were turned into
a river of melted butter to pour over a stack of piping hot
pancakes
was bound to be a favorite. Moreover, Sambo's brightly colored
clothing was something that I could actually picture. Totally
absent from my child's consciousness was any sense that the
depiction of rich fabrics and primary colors in a black child's
clothing was a demeaning caricature of the taste and maturity of
an entire race. I liked those colors, and I liked the way in
which Black Sambo vanquished the tigers and got a pancake
breakfast for his trouble, and that was all there was to it.
When I recited the nursery rhyme  Simple Simon,  I had no idea
that the word  simple  meant mentally retarded. I knew only that
Simple Simon was pretty stupid, and for that reason I didn't like
the rhyme. I had been taught that you didn't call attention to
the mental shortcomings of children who weren't very bright, and
I can remember being appalled when I first learned that Simon
wasn't just dumb. He and the morons who populated jokes (Why did
the moron tiptoe past the medicine chest? He didn't want to wake
up the sleeping pills.) were people who had something wrong with
the way their minds worked. Their heads and my eyes set us all
apart, and I wanted nothing to do with humor at their expense or
at my own.
Strangely enough, I had no such intuition about the  Three Blind
Mice.  Now they were dumb so dumb that they ran toward the
farmer's wife instead of away, which anybody knew you could do
whether or not you could see where you were going. I knew that
from playing tag at twilight when I had to steer clear of the
person who was it on sound alone. My conclusion was that
blindness meant both that you couldn't see at all and that you
were stupid. I couldn't help noticing that the penalty for being
blind was (if you were a mouse) getting
your tail cut off, so the song provided me with all sorts of
reinforcement for stressing to myself and everyone else that I
was not blind.
Did the creators of these childhood classics set out to damage
whole classes of people? Of course not. At the time all three
were written I feel sure that the creators didn't even recognize
what they were doing. The stereotypes of the three groups in
question (Blacks, the mentally retarded, and the blind) were so
deeply entrenched in the public consciousness that they weren't
even questioned. But that fact does not alter the response of
those who have come to recognize the
harm being done by the impression made on young minds. An entire
restaurant chain (Sambo's) was forced to confront the outcry. It
actually changed its name but eventually went out of business
anyway.
I got to thinking about the impact of childhood images on adult
misconceptions because of a set of letters passed on to me by
Barbara Cheadle, President of the National Federation of the
Blind's Parents of Blind Children Division and Editor of our
quarterly magazine,  Future Reflections .  A couple, members of
the Division and parents of a blind seven-year-old, wrote to the
editor of  OURS Magazine , published by Adoptive Families of
America. They found a cartoon in the January/February, 1990,
issue to be offensive. It depicted the three blind mice, all
holding white canes and hanging on to each other's shoulders for
guidance.

The editor wrote back a thoughtful letter pointing out that the
canes were intended to indicate to people that these were the
mice of song and legend, and they were hanging on to each other
to indicate the problems that everyone gets into when the blind
lead the blind in this case adoption agencies and parents.
The editor is clearly a thoughtful and compassionate person, who
had
no intention of hurting anyone, except perhaps the agencies who
mishandle and obfuscate adoption procedures.
She points out that the word  blind  has a wide range of colorful
and graphic uses. It would be a shame to deny these to speakers
and writers just because some of them offend the sensibilities of
a relative few. In fact, she might have pointed out that some
images are positive.  Since ancient times, Justice has been
portrayed as blind, not because the image evokes a picture of
decisions being made in the absence
of information, but because we believe that justice should be
absolutely impartial, unswayed by superficial visual detail. The
goddess Fortune and her modern, rather washed-out counterpart,
Lady Luck, also are blindfolded, in order, one supposes, to
illustrate impartiality.  There are, of course, neutral
expressions in the language which use the word  blind  and the
implied analogy to not seeing or there being nothing to see. 
Flying blind  and  blind alley  come to mind. Such expressions
strike me as accurate and lively. There is nothing demeaning
about their employment of the word  blind.  To be blind is in
fact not to see, and when everyday life confronts one with
situations in which vision cannot be used, it is appropriate to
use the word  blind  to describe them.

This leaves those expressions which may be pungent and pithy, but
which are also destructive, demeaning, and frequently untrue. The
Biblical admonition that when the blind lead the blind, they both
fall into the ditch is an obvious example. The truth of this
adage unfortunately still seems obvious to most sighted people,
and at the time of its writing, it may well have been an accurate
assessment of the travel skills of many blind people. But it is
certainly no longer true, and the damage its repetition does to
public attitudes and the self-confidence of many uninformed blind
people would be hard to overstate.
Take another proverbial comment: even a blind hog finds a few
acorns.  I know nothing about pigs, blind or otherwise, but I
assume perhaps incorrectly that a blind hog would be at some
disadvantage in a contest for acorn-locating. I do know that when
my children were small, they always found more acorns than I,
partly because they tried harder, but partly, no doubt, because
vision is an advantage in such a search. It's the application of
this proverb that is so damaging.
It is used to demonstrate that even the least competent and most
pitiable can expect to gather a few crumbs fallen from society's
table. There the blind are again grubbing around in the dirt,
busy about their almost profitless occupations, and coming up now
and again with a morsel or two in compensation.
The nursery song,  Three Blind Mice,  falls into this category of
shared cultural experience that today has little or nothing to
recommend it. Can the blind survive and, in fact, progress in our
struggle to obtain first-class citizenship with all the rights
and responsibilities associated with it despite such musical
attacks?
Of course we can; we have done so for the past fifty years. We
cannot be stopped by proverbs, aphorisms, and degrading songs.
But the English language is a constantly changing tapestry of
expression. Every minority group has endured pejoratives and
verbal slurs as it has begun to
be a force to reckon with. And as the general public has come to
recognize the justice of each new demand for equality and
respect, the language has slowly undergone a change. In polite
(today one would say politically correct) circles such references
have quietly disappeared. The terms survive as a collection of
disgusting phrases with some shock value, but everyone comes to
recognize that they constitute an insult.
Is the language poorer for the loss of imaginative verbal
shorthand or lively similes? Strictly speaking, it is, but human-
kind has never been found wanting in its capacity to create new
analogies and expressions.  It is not too much to ask that
thoughtful people consider the impact of their use of our
language. Heaven knows they are quick enough to avoid perfectly
appropriate terms like  look  and  see  when addressing a blind
person, for fear of insulting him or her.  If such misplaced
sensitivity could be applied instead to steering clear of
detrimental and degrading uses of the word  blind, 
we would all be healthier and a good bit nearer to an accurate
understanding of the abilities of blind people.
Here is the exchange of letters between Carol Barker-Keir and the
editor of  OURS  Magazine:

                                            San Diego, California
                                                 February 7, 1990

Anne Welsbacher
Editor,  OURS  Magazine
Adoptive Families of America, Inc.
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Dear Editor:
Overall, we have found your magazine to be well balanced in
presenting articles on the adoption process and issues of the
adoption triangle (adoptive parents, adoptees, and birth parents)
as well as issues of helping to build self-esteem and pride in
the children.
Being adoptive parents of two children (one domestic, one
international) who are both transracial and special needs, we
have tried to instill in our children positive feelings about
themselves. We are in the process of adopting our third child,
who will also be transracial and special needs.
With interest and agreement, we read in the January/February,
1990, issue of  OURS , President Elliott's article on transracial
adoption and the letters section containing  Disney Responds to
Parents.  Turning to pages 10-11, we read the article,  Murphy's
Law Lives,  enjoying the anecdotes. However, we were perplexed
and chagrined by the caricature of the three blind mice by Rany
Buckingham on both that page and the following one, as well as in
the Table of Contents.  Our just-turned-seven-year-old son's
special need is blindness. Since his adoption at age two, we have
searched to find positive statements, education, and role models
for ourselves and him. We have found a group, the National
Federation of the Blind, which seeks to help blind individuals
feel good about themselves and their capabilities. They also
battle to break down the public's stereotyped image of the blind
like that expressed in the children's song,  Three Blind Mice. 

The white cane, pictured in the cartoon so that people would know
that these mice were blind, represents and permits freedom of
movement for a blind individual. With proper mobility training, a
blind person does very well with a white cane without having to
grab onto the shoulder of either a sighted or another blind
person. The white cane symbolizes independence; it is not a sign
of helplessness.
Usually we overlook ignorant blunders, as we did when we saw the
movie  Cheetah  with our children (yes, blind children go to the
movies). But when a group like yours seems to be stressing
sensitivity towards those that are different, and also lists a 
Some Kids Wait  column which includes blind children needing
permanent homes, we strongly feel the need to call this example
of insensitivity to your attention.
As you are aware, it is difficult at times not to succumb to the
biases, prejudices, and stereotypes of society. Seeing that
Adoptive Families
of America strives to educate its readers and correct their
misconceptions about adoption issues, we felt we needed to call
to your attention this stereotype of the blind as helpless and
incompetent. It is not, we believe, really what you want to
convey to the public, prospective parents, and blind children.
May we share with your organization an article from the December,
1989, issue of the National Federation of the Blind's magazine,
the  Braille Monitor . We hope it will help educate and sensitize
you to these issues in the future. It is called,  Educate the
Educated  by Bill Isaacs, a special needs adoptive parent of four
transracial children.

                                                 Sincerely yours,
                                                Mr. and Mrs. Keir

cc: Mrs. B. Cheadle
____________________
                                           Minneapolis, Minnesota
                                                February 14, 1990

Mr. and Mrs. Keir:
Thank you for your letter...to which I have given much thought
and which I would like to respond to personally, although we also
will include it in a future  Letters to the Editor  department of 
OURS  magazine.
I apologize for any offense that our illustration may have caused
you. It certainly was not our intention, and we do apologize if
you were offended.
I am a little puzzled at the charge. Your primary concern seems
to be that we mixed metaphors by portraying the mice with canes
but also holding each other's shoulders. We were going for
recognition of both  3 Blind Mice  and  the blind leading the
blind,  both well-known fables in the American vernacular. The
canes were used to identify them as blind, and the shoulder
grasping was an image of the agencies-leading-the- parents,
issues that the stories dealt with. We believed both were
necessary symbols for this illustration.

I certainly am aware that blind people don't hold each others'
shoulders to move about, nor do I imagine anybody else believes
this, either.  For that matter, there is nothing strictly
accurate about an earlier illustration in our magazine, in which
prospective adoptive parents are literally swimming in a huge
pile of papers surrounding an agency worker's desk, and I would
hope people realize that agencies don't require their clients to
swim in paper to reach their desks. Both illustrations are
examples of exaggeration and irony to make a point.  I think this
is a fine point in a debate that is more aesthetic than civic.
But to the underlying, and more pervasive, point of your letter:
using the word  blind  in a negative connotation, as in  blind
leading the blind  or as a synonym for  clumsy  or  careless. 
This is the aspect of the issue that I have thought about quite a
lot, and will continue to ponder.  Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary  defines blind (adv.) as: 1) blindly; specifically, so
as to be blind, insensible, etc. 2) recklessly. 3) in
aeronautics, by the use of instruments alone; as, to fly blind.
4) sight unseen, as, to buy a thing blind.  Under  blindness, 
Webster's says  the state of being without sight; also, a lack of
discernment.  Quite a wide variety of definitions, there, and not
all favorable.
I hesitate to endorse removing references to blindness from all
literature or manners of speech the Biblical passage you quoted
in the article enclosed with your letter, lines from Shakespeare,
and many simple colloquialisms are lovely uses of the English
language and I am loathe to say they should be stricken from the
record.
Just strike the negative ones from the record, but keep the
positive ones, you say? That strikes me as a fairly major
disparity without much justification to support it.
Still, your letter has made me think hard about something I never
considered before, and I certainly have looked at Rany's
illustration in a different way since reading it....
I am still not entirely in agreement with you on some of your
points, but I do recognize the potential for offense where I had
not before
seen any. And I agree with you that a magazine such as OURS must
maintain a very careful scrutiny over any possible innuendoes
that may be inferred from its pages.
Thank you for sending along your letter and the article. I
appreciate being informed about this particular issue. And again,
my apologies for any offense taken from Rany's illustration.

                                                       Sincerely,
                                                  Anne Welsbacher
                                          Editor,  OURS  Magazine

cc: Rany Buckingham
                      REACTION TO A CARTOON
 From the Editor:  As we have often said in the  Braille Monitor 
and elsewhere, the final victory in the struggle of the blind for
equality will not be achieved by the acts of a few leaders alone,
regardless of how capable or dedicated those leaders may be. It
will be achieved by the daily vigilance and behavior of thousands
of blind men and women and sighted friends throughout the
country. The widespread misunderstandings and misconceptions can
only be countered by a widespread response. 
 As Federationists know, Hazel Staley is the capable and
energetic President of the National Federation of the Blind of
North Carolina.  On Friday, March 2, 1990, an objectionable
cartoon appeared in her local newspaper, the  Charlotte Observer. 
That same day she called the cartoonist and, getting no
satisfaction from him, transferred her attention to his boss, the
editor of the paper's editorial pages.  The result was an
editorial, which appeared without delay, being printed on Monday,
March 5. Here it is: 

Editorial Notebook

Why Do We Publish Cartoons?

Why do we publish editorial cartoons? Some days I wonder.  
Editorial cartoons are unlike anything else on the editorial
pages.  In our editorials and columns, we state our opinions
strongly but also try to explain our reasoning. We know that on
many issues, people we disagree with may be just as
knowledgeable, well-motivated, and honest as we are. When you
call to complain about an editorial or a column, I can explain
it. If you like, we can argue about it.  And then there are
cartoons.
Cartoons are two-dimensional views of the world. They are black
and white. They often deal with extremes, not norms. And what you
see is what  you  see, regardless of what the cartoonist meant. 
Cartoons are not illustrations. They are not  true.  They are
metaphors. They provoke. They oversimplify. They exaggerate. They
issue a challenge:  Hey! Look at it  this  way!  Cartoons are, I
suppose, an intellectual medium's nod to the emotions.  No doubt
that's why when readers disagree with an editorial, they tend to
formulate rebuttals. When they disagree with a cartoon, they tend
to get mad.
So when Kevin Siers, our cartoonist, portrays a USAir plane
skimming over the landscape with a caption suggesting confusion
in the cockpit, dozens of furious USAir employees call me. Not
funny, they say. Not accurate.
Not funny? I agree. Cartoons often make serious points. Not
accurate?  The essential elements of the cartoon had been
reported in our news columns. But it was the cartoon that
provoked outrage. That's not surprising: A cartoon, in its stark
simplicity, packs more punch.  Kevin touched off another deluge
of phone calls with his cartoon Friday about N.C. State
basketball coach Jim Valvano. The cartoon showed
a pair of dark glasses, a white cane, and a dead seeing eye dog.
The caption read,  The three things you need to manage a
basketball program as successfully as Jim Valvano. 
Guess who complained?
Not N.C. State fans (at least not yet). The complaints came from
blind
people.
One caller was Ruth Hazel Staley of Charlotte, president of the
N.C.  chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. Mrs.
Staley, blind since age 2, considered the cartoon  very
demeaning,  though she doubted that Siers meant it that way.
 The general public has a tendency to view us as not being quite
with it anyway,  she said.  Anything like this adds fuel to the
fire. 
Blind people, says Mrs. Staley,  are just normal people who
happen not to be able to see. 
No one proves Mrs. Staley's point better than Mrs. Staley
herself.  She has a master's degree in psychology from UNC-Chapel
Hill. Before her marriage she was a social worker in 10 counties
in northwestern North Carolina. As state president, she heads an
organization with 14 chapters and some 500 members.
You made your point, Mrs. Staley. I don't know how you'd do as a
basketball strategist. But I'll bet if you'd been in charge at
N.C. State, players would have gone to class, wouldn't have
peddled tickets and shoes, and wouldn't have dreamed they could
get away with taking a dime from anybody for anything.
 Ed Williams, Editor of the Editorial Pages
             I MAY NOT BE A MOUNTAIN CLIMBER, BUT...
                         by Nancy Scott
 Nancy Scott is an active member of the Lehigh Valley Chapter of
the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania and is the
Secretary of the Writers' Division of the National Federation of
the Blind.  This article first appeared in the February, 1990,
edition of  The Blind Activist,  the Newsletter of the NFB of
Pennsylvania. 


Too many people in our culture focus on negatives the things you
can't do, the house you don't own, the designer suit you aren't
wearing, etc. Living a full life, whether blind or sighted,
should mean that you focus on living and not on any one
characteristic.
No matter who you are, you will need to use alternative
techniques to help you in daily life. Everyone needs them. If you
are a short person, you may need a step-stool, and the things you
want close at hand won't be stored on the highest shelves of your
house. If you can't do car repairs, you will have to find a
trustworthy mechanic.  If you can't afford new designer suits,
you will have to watch for clearance sales or seek out
second-hand shops and yard sales in the better part of town. As I
said, everyone uses alternative techniques.

The trick is knowing what you can and cannot do yourself. You are
strong enough to lift the salad bowl, but you aren't tall enough
to reach it. You have to look good for that job interview, but
you only have $20 to spend on a new outfit. Knowing what you
want, what you can do, and what is possible is the first step in
living.
People's perceptions of blindness, and sometimes your own
perceptions, can get in the way of your knowing what is possible
for you. It happens to all of us. Here is one example. Last
summer I went on a church
hike in a rural setting. It was supposed to be a brief, two-mile
stroll over flat, unimposing terrain, but it turned out to be
much more difficult than any of us had planned.
I took the arm of another walker and we set off. I used my cane
to judge clearances and find the occasional rock. These were
alternative techniques, and they worked quite well. Everything
went fine until the sighted people in front of us took a wrong
turn and landed us
on a trail marked  Danger Ahead.  Suddenly, there were rocks,
logs, and tree stumps everywhere.
The slope became very steep and just wide enough for one person
at
a time to walk safely. There were little streams to step across,
lots
of mud, poor footing, and startling drops to the river below. My
alternative techniques (getting verbal directions and using my
cane and common sense) worked just fine. I did switch companions
for this part of the hike, however, since the woman I had been
walking with was having some difficulty herself. (I wonder if
this qualifies as an alternative technique for meeting
good-looking young guys.)
All of us eventually made it back to the picnic area, and none
had more to contend with than muddy sneakers and big appetites.
The point of the story is that, if I had known what the hike was
actually going to involve, I wouldn't have gone, figuring that my
blindness would have been a problem. It wasn't. We all discovered
that we were better hikers than we knew. We were challenged in
different ways, but we
all came back exhilarated from the experience. I may not be a
mountain climber, but who knows? If I focus on living and not on
blindness, life may give me the opportunity to find out just how
much I can do.         THE VALUE OF DEBATE
                        by Stephen Benson
 As  Monitor  readers know, Steve Benson is a member of the Board
of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind and the
energetic President of the NFB of Illinois. This article is
reprinted from the Spring edition of the  Student Slate,  the
newsletter of the Student Division of the National Federation of
the Blind. 


Blind residents of Illinois have long been aware that being a
client of the Department of Rehabilitation Services is at least
an adventure.  The perception abroad in the Land of Lincoln is
that the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services (DORS),
erects at least as many barriers to full participation in society
as it removes. It may well erect more.
Doug Lee won an $1,800 NFB Merit Scholarship in 1986. Lee, a
computer engineering student at the University of Illinois, was
notified by DORS that the scholarship was regarded as a similar
benefit and that, therefore, he must repay DORS $1,800 of the
funds the agency had previously advanced for his education.
Further, Lee's counselor at the University accused him of trying
to build a financial empire while a student, despite the fact
that Lee's gross income that year was $2,900. As one might
expect, Lee appealed.
The appeal process dragged on for almost a year. The DORS
director upheld the counselor's position and ordered Lee to pay
the $1,800.  The cost to DORS of the entire procedure was more
than the $1,800 the agency tried to squeeze out of Lee.
In the summer of 1987, Federation representatives met with the
director of services to the blind within DORS and urged that the
decision be reversed. After all the scholarship could not be a
similar benefit
since it was awarded on the basis of academic merit as part of a
competition with several hundred other students while financial
assistance provided
by DORS was based only on the condition of blindness. The NFB
representatives argued further that DORS' position was
unreasonable, shameful, intolerable, and punitive. Beyond that,
DORS was the only agency in the nation that was taking this
position, and it seemed to us that the media
would like to know about it. The director of DORS reversed her
decision, but only because of the intervention of the NFB and the
likelihood that negative and damaging publicity would result. In
light of this scenario, what happened to Ali Nizamuddin was no
surprise.
In 1987 Ali Nizamuddin entered Northern Illinois University (NIU)
as a political science major and communications minor after
completing high school in three years. A native of India,
Nizamuddin arrived in this country at the age of nine, unable to
speak English. Be that as it may, at the end of his sophomore
year at NIU he had earned a 3.48 GPA on a 4-point scale. As of
this writing, early January, 1990, Nizamuddin has completed his
first semester at Northwestern University, having raised his GPA
to 3.75 on a 4-point scale.
At the beginning of the 1988-89 academic year, Nizamuddin joined
the NIU debate team. He regarded debate as essential to his
vocational objective university teaching or politics. He saw it
as an excellent experience that would sharpen both his thinking
and his research techniques.  On his resume it might also make a
significant difference when competing for a job.
During the Christmas holiday of 1988-89, Nizamuddin used reader
services to prepare for a debate. He submitted a reimbursement
request to DORS.  His counselor denied the request on the grounds
that debate is not
a credit course leading to a degree. Nizamuddin appealed the
decision.  Members of the Federation represented Nizamuddin at
the fair hearing.  (It should be noted that all members of the
hearing panel were DORS employees.)  During the hearing I made
the following remarks:  ...the steady grind of academia is made
richer by campus activities that have direct impact on what the
student does or is able to become after graduation.
 For a student with aspirations to enter journalism, it is
critical for him or her to work on a university or college
newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine, or other publication....
For a law student, having a perfect academic record is a ticket
to a solid career, no question about it. A law student with less
than a perfect record, but who has edited the law review or
contributed substantially to it, or a student who has won
recognition in moot court competition, will have opportunities
that a good student with no activities can never hope to have.
For
a student majoring in political science and minoring in
communications with ambitions for teaching at the university
level or entering politics, participation in debate is as
critical as the law review and moot court are for a law student,
or as critical as newspaper or year book
is for a journalism major.... The alleged policy regarding
extra-curricular activities is blatantly discriminatory against
blind students and works as a disincentive to campus involvement.
Further, it denies Nizamuddin an opportunity to hone skills he
will use in teaching.  At one point I commented to Nizamuddin's
counselor that debate is
not something frivolous like bowling. I asked whether he saw the
difference between bowling and debate. After some waffling, he
acknowledged that debate might have some value, but he rigidly
adhered to the Department's policy of not covering the cost of
extra-curricular activities.
When the DORS Director, Philip Bradley, upheld the denial of
Nizamuddin's reimbursement request, I once again urged the
Director of Services for the Blind to take all steps necessary
toward the reversal of the decision. The message I conveyed to
him was the same as that conveyed at the hearing and the same as
that conveyed regarding Doug Lee: the Department's position was
shameful, intolerable, unreasonable, and punitive. In addition I
pointed out that the entire dispute could have been avoided if
Nizamuddin could have continued working with
a counselor from the Bureau for the Blind rather than with a
general counselor at the University, who clearly had no knowledge
of the needs of the blind students. Under date of December 14,
1989, Director Bradley wrote the following to Ali Nizamuddin:

Dear Mr. Nizamuddin:
At the request of Stephen Benson, President of the NFB of
Illinois,
I have reversed my decision regarding payment of reader services
during December of 1988.
This review disclosed some factors which were not addressed
during the fair hearing. Reference was made in your case file
record to the fact that English was not your original language
and that experiences
to familiarize you with relating with individuals of a different
cultural background than your own would be an important part of
your vocational training. Although extracurricular activities are
not normally covered in an Individualized Written Rehabilitation
Plan [IWRP], participating in a debating team would, in this
context, seem to be important in furthering your experience and
confidence and should contribute to your success in reaching your
vocational objective.

                                                       Sincerely,
                                                   Philip Bradley
____________________
The DORS Director reversed his decision; however, attitudes and
policies reflecting a narrow view of extracurricular activities
and the use of readers for those activities remain rigidly in
place. The Illinois DORS, like most agencies for the blind in
this country, lacks the creativity, commitment, and will to do
those things that will make a substantial difference to the lives
of blind people. They claim they must be accountable to and
responsive to the bottom line. In Nizamuddin's case, the
Department would rather have spent $1,000 or more in defense of
its position than under $200 on reader fees for
a college student with tremendous potential for competitive
employment someone who could serve as a role model for other
blind people and for DORS
staff. In view of the current 70% unemployment rate among working
age blind people, wouldn't anybody with good sense want to
encourage and support student involvement in those activities
that would give blind people a competitive edge? If the NFB had
not intervened in the Nizamuddin and Lee cases, their resolutions
would have been much different. Other similar cases exist in
Illinois and every other state.  They will continue to occur
until and unless the rehabilitation system makes wide-ranging,
dramatic changes. Until that happens, the NFB will continue to
advocate for all blind people and, thereby, provide the answer to
the question: Why the National Federation of the Blind?SOME THOUGHTS ON TECHNICAL SUPPORT
                         by Curtis Chong
  From the Associate Editor:  As  Monitor  readers know, Curtis
Chong is President of the National Federation of the Blind
in Computer Science. To those who firmly believe that  com  puter 
is a four-letter word and steer clear of the electronic monsters
as
a matter of principle, this fact may have little more than
theoretical interest. To those who are so sophisticated in their
approach to computers that they read documentation for the fun of
the thing, Curtis's expertise means only that he is an
interesting companion in elevators or at parties full of shop
talk. But for those of us who with trepidation have inched our
way into something approaching computer literacy, Curtis and the
other members of our Computer Science Division have probably
stood between us and raving insanity. If you conclude from the
forgoing comments that Curtis Chong has rescued me from more than
one misadventure with computer software, you are absolutely
correct. 
     The following article is reprinted from the Spring, 1990, 
Computer Science Update,  the newsletter of the National
Federation of the Blind in Computer Science. As I read it, I had
the niggling feeling that he was speaking directly to me. Since I
am convinced that his point is very well taken, I thought that
other semi-literate computer cowards might well think about it as
well. Here is what Curtis Chong has to say: 

As more and more computers find their way into the workplace and
as these computers are being used by blind people employed in a
growing variety of jobs, it occurred to me to wonder,  Who
provides the technical support for these systems? 
A lot of people who use computers in today's work environment
have absolutely no concept of how or why they work. These users
follow a written set of procedures in order to get what they want
out of the computer, and when it doesn't behave as expected, they
call in the technical support specialist.
In the case of the blind computer user, there is an additional
dimension namely, the technical support for the screen reading
hardware and software
that make independent access to the company's computing system
possible.  This dimension becomes even more significant if an
extensive amount of customization needs to be done to the screen
reading system to make the blind person more productive.
Consider the IBM Screen Reader, for example. Along with this
screen reading program for the PS/2 (and now for the traditional
IBM PC), IBM has developed something called Profile Access
Language or PAL.  Using PAL, a user can theoretically create
profiles for a variety of computer applications. However, most
users aren't programmers, and PAL very much resembles a
programming language. Therefore, the development of unique Screen
Reader profiles for such applications as WordPerfect and Dbase is
often left to the friendly folks at IBM or to someone else
charged with providing technical support to the blind user,
whoever that person may be.
Other screen reading programs such as JAWS, Flipper, and the
Verbal Operating System (VOS) can be used with key macros. These
enable a single keystroke to trigger a series of screen reading
functions.  Using a key macro program, the user can read selected
parts of the screen with one key stroke. Properly used, key macro
programs enable the blind computer user to have spoken only the
information on the
screen absolutely necessary to perform the tasks for each unique
application.  However, like PAL, defining key macros is a lot
like programming; and the typical computer user has neither the
inclination nor the
expertise to set up the macros uniquely required for his or her
application.

With the increased use of internal speech synthesizers, the blind
computer user also needs to be concerned with the insertion and
removal of circuit cards into one or more of the computer's
expansion slots.  Ordinarily, a first-time user will not know how
to open up the computer, not to mention putting in a new speech
card. Whose responsibility is it, then, to ensure that the blind
computer user is provided with adequate technical assistance to
deal with screen reading hardware and software?
In this day and age computers are still not user friendly. That
is, the computer does not, out of the goodness of its metallic
heart, tell you how to run your word processor or communications
program.  You are still required to do a whole lot of reading and
studying just to figure out how to get the computer up and
running. This is as true for the blind as it is for the sighted.
And, like the sighted, our capacity to cope with this unfriendly
piece of technology ranges from total inability to 100%
sophistication and understanding. Blind folks who fall into this
latter category probably don't need much technical help at all.
On the other hand, those people who find the computer difficult,
recalcitrant, and incomprehensible require more than a little in
the way of technical help.
In many states the blind person who needs a computer system on
the job will turn to the rehabilitation agency to acquire the
necessary hardware and software. If the agency is devoting any
resources to technology, it will have a technology specialist on
its staff who
goes out to each work site, installs the adaptive hardware and
software, and performs any required analysis and customization.
At first glance this would appear to be a workable arrangement.
After all, a technology specialist working for an agency for the
blind is supposedly experienced with so-called adaptive
technology, having already installed systems for many clients.
Moreover, the blind computer user may not want to invest a whole
lot of time to learn about the Disk Operating System, screen
reading program configuration, software installation, etc.
But is relying upon a technology specialist provided by the
rehabilitation system really the most beneficial option in the
long run? Do we want to spend the rest of our technical lives, so
to speak, dependent upon a technology specialist from a
rehabilitation agency to bail us out of any problems we may be
experiencing with our adaptive equipment?

I submit that, unlike sighted users, we blind computer users
cannot afford the luxury of depending upon a technology
specialist (in our case employed by the rehabilitation agency) to
provide technical support for the adaptive technology that we
must use in order to access our computers independently on the
job. Although using a rehabilitation technology specialist can
get you up and running in a hurry, the penalty you pay in the
long run may be far worse than any initial delay you may
experience trying to learn about all of this stuff yourself. 
What happens if, a few years down the road, your employer decides
to change the layout of all the computer screens screens whose
formats may have been tightly coupled to whatever customization
was performed by the rehabilitation technology specialist? What
happens if your employer decides to acquire a brand new and
totally different computer system? Must the blind computer user
go back to the rehabilitation agency, with all of its
bureaucratic red tape, just so that the technology specialist can
come into the work site, perform technical research, and
re-customize the system?
Make no mistake about what I am saying. With respect to technical
support for any regular computing equipment we may be using on
the job, I fully expect that the employer would provide it, just
as he or she does for sighted computer users. If your job
requires you to use an IBM Personal Computer (PC), for example,
the odds are that your coworkers are already using PC's.
Therefore, your employer can provide technical support for you as
readily as for your sighted coworkers.  The problem has to do
with the so-called adaptive technology: the screen reading
software or hardware, the Braille embosser, or the paperless
Braille equipment.
I don't believe that we have to go begging to the rehabilitation
agency for technical support for our talking or Braille
equipment. For one
thing, the vendors of speech or Braille hardware do provide some
over-the-phone technical assistance that we can all use. For
another, the experience of a lot of blind computer users
demonstrates that you can learn a good bit about your equipment
if you believe you can. Certainly there is nothing inherent in
blindness itself which would prevent you from doing so.
Simply think of your adaptive technology as another challenge to
be mastered, just like all other challenges in life. Contrary to
popular opinion, computers are not so complicated that you need a
math degree or a Ph.D. to use them. The average person can learn
enough about adaptive technology to make it work and keep it
running. At the very
least the average computer user can learn whom to call if an
insurmountable problem arises with the equipment.
As active members of the National Federation of the Blind, we
have always placed a high premium on the ability of the blind to
take control of our own destinies; to deal with problems
independently; and to
lead normal, productive lives. We can learn about our adaptive
software and hardware. We can learn to understand the vagaries of
our computer.  Above all we can certainly help each other. Those
of us who possess knowledge and expertise about computers can
surely provide some help to those people who don't. Certainly, if
you want to be in control of your own destiny, and if your
particular situation requires that
you use a computer, you must take responsibility for your own
situation.  But never forget the thousands of blind men and women
in the National Federation of the Blind, marching alongside you
toward first-class citizenship, promoting opportunity, equality,
and security for all blind people. In the end we will help each
other.
                WHAT WENT WRONG WITH DOING GOOD?
                       by C. Edwin Vaughan
 C. Edwin Vaughan, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Missouri in Columbia. As a
sociologist and member of the National Federation of the Blind,
he has thought much about the role of consumer organizations in
the field of social service and welfare programs. Something
clearly has gone wrong between the high-minded intentions of
those who sought to do good and the establishment of the programs
and services they created. Here is Ed Vaughan's brief analysis: 

Many of us have observed defensive, caustic, and even angry
behavior displayed by some professionals and some agency
personnel when confronted with consumer criticism or demands for
increased consumer participation.  Critics are frequently
dismissed as misguided and certainly ungrateful for the
contributions rehabilitation efforts have made in the lives of
blind people. With so many professional organizations of workers
for the blind, special programs informed by scientific research,
and continual support from government and the public, how could
anyone question the beneficence of these efforts? Isn't doing
good always desirable? How can beneficence be mischievous or even
harmful?  David Rothman, a social historian at Columbia
University, analyzes social programs that developed in the
Progressive era in this country.  Beginning around 1900, public
energy and public money were organized to deal with a wide array
of social problems.  In the history of American attitudes and
practices toward the dependent, no group
more energetically or consistently attempted to translate the
biological model of the caring parent into a program for social
action than the Progressives  (Rothman, 1978, p. 69). We will
utilize his idea of benevolence as disguised power and draw
examples from his analysis of several welfare programs to clarify
the reason why many consumers resist efforts by those who would
do them good.
In the first two decades of this century, the needs of the poor
and dependent were widely noted. As Rothman observes, the state
as parent had much to accomplish. Everyone would benefit. There
was a presumed unity of interests between the state and the
several different types of needy citizens.
Agents of the welfare state were so committed to a paternalistic
model that they never concerned themselves with the potential of
their programs to be as coercive as they were liberating.  In
their eagerness to play parent to the child, they did not pause
to ask whether the dependent had to be protected against their
own well-meaning interventions.  It was as if the benevolence of
their motives, together with their clear recognition of the
wretchedness of lower-class social conditions, guaranteed that
ameliorative efforts would unambiguously benefit the poor 
(ibid., p. 72).
As Rothman notes, there was consensus around the values of
scholars and reformers alike. Schools, settlement houses, and a
wide array
of social programs would bring the poor and immigrants into the
mainstream of middle-class American life. Between 1900 and 1920
many of our contemporary social welfare programs had their
origins, including child support, juvenile courts, and of course
new and expanded programs to benefit blind people. The American
Association of Workers for the Blind (AAWB) was organized in 1905
with a broad agenda which included employment, the welfare of
elderly blind persons, boarding homes and other housing
arrangements for blind adults, nurseries for blind babies, home
teaching services for adults, and industrial education. The AAWB
and the American Association of Instructors of the Blind (AAIB)
grew, both in size
and mutual concerns, and by 1921 jointly created the American
Foundation for the Blind (AFB) as a new national resource for
advancing their programs.
What went wrong with the well-intentioned efforts of reformers to
improve the lot of the poor, the widowed, the delinquent, the
untutored immigrant, and the disabled? Since the aim of the state
was to help the disadvantaged, there seemed no need to limit the
power utilized for doing good.
In each instance, therefore, enabling legislation and agency
practice enhanced the prerogatives of state officials and reduced 
and almost eliminated legal protections and rights for those
coming under their authority. To call the acts  widow pensions 
was really a misnomer. The widows did not receive their allowance
as a matter of right, the way a pensioner received his. Rather,
the widow had to apply for her stipend, demonstrate her
qualifications, her economic need, and her moral worth, and then
trust to the decision of the welfare board. At their pleasure,
and by their reckoning, she then obtained or did not obtain help.
By the same token the juvenile court proceedings gave no standing
to the whole panoply of rights
that offenders typically enjoyed from a trial by jury, to
assistance from counsel, to protections against
self-incrimination. There was nothing atypical about the juvenile
court judge who openly admitted that in his Minnesota courtroom 
the laws of evidence are sometimes forgotten or overlooked.  So,
too, probation officers were not bound by any of the restrictions
that might fetter the work of police officers. They did not need
a search warrant to enter a probationer's home, for as another
juvenile court judge explained:  With the great right arm and
force of the law, the probation officer can go into the home and
demand to know the cause of the dependency or the delinquency of
a child. He becomes practically a member of the family and
teaches them lessons of cleanliness and decency, of truth and
integrity.  So caught up were reformers with this image of
officer as family member that they gave no heed to the coercive
character
of their programs. To the contrary, they frankly declared that 
threats may be necessary in some instances to enforce the
learning of the lessons that he teaches, but whether by threats
or cajolery, by appealing to their fear of the law or by rousing
the ambition that lies latent in each human soul, he teaches the
lesson and transforms the entire family into individuals which
the state need never again hesitate to own as citizens.  With the
state eager and able to accomplish so beneficent a goal, there
appeared no reason to restrict its actions.

The prevalence of such judgments among Progressives practically
blinded them to the realities that followed on the enactment of
their proposals.  Not only did they fail to see the many
inadequacies that quickly emerged in day-to-day operations; worse
yet, they could not begin to understand that the programs might
be administered in the best interests of officials, not clients
(ibid., pp. 78-79).
One might say about many administrators of these programs that
whatever else they did, they looked after the interests of their
agencies and careers. Commenting on the history of original
missionary families in Hawaii, wags have observed that they came
to do good and stayed to do well. We now observe widespread
cynicism about the claims of self-appointed caregivers. Do-
gooders are suspect. To quote Rothman again,  Whereas once
historians and policy analysts were prone to label some movements
reforms, thereby assuming their humanitarian aspects, they [the
scholars] are presently far more comfortable with
a designation of social control, thereby assuming their coercive
quality. 

Power and social control operate, in part, through organizational
procedures and administrative discretion. We live in an age of
regulations.  Countless agency conferences are held to  interpret
the regs.  Administrators and their subordinates control
resources and apply rules. Clients, patients, or students have
few alternatives. Power relationships are one-sided. Even our
government has recognized this condition by funding protection
and advocacy programs to give independent legal assistance and
other support to individuals challenging their treatment at the
hands of the rehabilitation system. Fair hearing officers are now
used to hear client appeals in several states. We have an acute
distrust of discretionary authority.
With the civil rights movement of the 1960s Rothman describes a
trend evidenced in several different branches of the welfare
rights movement.   The perspective is not the perspective of
common welfare but the needs of the particular group. The
intellectual premises are not unity but conflict. It is `us'
versus `them'  (p. 90). Control
and benevolent oversight have been self-consciously rejected and
replaced with concerns about autonomy and civil rights. Do not
deprive us of competitive employment; equal pay for equal work;
opportunities for economic mobility because we are women, black,
needing some medical intervention, poor, or blind. From the
perspective of this liberty and human rights concern,
rehabilitation or other programs that block freedom of choice
must be removed and are, indeed, not solutions but parts of the
problem.
Expanding the liberty perspective, as Rothman notes, will not
solve all of the problems of various minority interest groups.
Legitimate needs remain. Appropriate education and opportunities
for competitive employment are still essential elements of equal
opportunity for blind people. Our concern, obviously, is not to
promote neglect or to legitimate cruelty and suffering in the
name of rights. How can we access opportunities and utilize the
resources of publicly funded programs and yet avoid domineering,
demeaning, dependency-creating relationships with agents of
rehabilitation? How can the power imbalance be redressed? How can
we avoid throwing away the baby with the bath water? How can we
limit discretionary and arbitrary authority associated with
publicly supported programs?
 To this end, advocates of the liberty model are far more
comfortable with an adversarial approach, an open admission of
conflict of interest, than with an equality model with its
presumption of harmony of interests  (p. 92). Would this human
rights, liberty model be compatible with service and educational
arrangements provided by experts, professionals, and public
officials?
Whenever publicly supported programs are needed, the recipients
of benevolence must have a determinative voice in policy making
and evaluation.  If you will do good to me, it will have to be on
my terms or we must at least achieve agreement and mutual
respect. Equitable service delivery requires full consumer
participation. Such participation
will not come from agency-selected individuals or self-appointed
guardians
of blind people, but from broadly-based, democratically elected
representatives of organizations of blind people. By now you know
the last sentence:  That is why we have formed the National
Federation of the Blind.

References:
Rothman, David
     The State as Parent,   Doing Good , by Willard Gaylin, et
al. Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1978.

                      I WAS A YOUNG MOTHER 
BEING STIFLED BY BLINDNESS
                        by Barbara Pierce

 From the Editor:  Readers of  Good Housekeeping  magazine will
remember the feature  My Problem.  Women across the country are
invited to submit manuscripts about personal problems which they
have solved. Barbara Pierce (Associate Editor of the  Braille
Monitor,  as well as President of the National Federation of the
Blind of Ohio and Chair of the Federation's Public Relations
Committee) tried her hand at this task, thinking that it would be
great publicity for the Federation if she could get a story
published.   Unfortunately,  Good Housekeeping  editors seem to
have seen through her plan and rejected the piece. We thought
that it was interesting and that  Monitor  readers would agree
with us. The article is reprinted from the Spring, 1990,  Buckeye
Bulletin,  the publication of the National Federation of the
Blind of Ohio. Here it is: 

In 1973 I was twenty-eight years old and a faculty wife living in
a small mid-west town with my loving husband and three small
children.  Said like that, it sounds idyllic, and that was the
portrait I clung to, avoiding any thought of the future and
refusing to deal with the growing dissatisfactions of the
present.
The main complication in my life was my blindness. My vision had
deteriorated since childhood, and even though I had been
introduced to Braille and the white cane as a teenager, I could
still use my vision for some things, so I told myself I was not
really blind. Since college, though, I had had to admit that my
eyes now provided me with almost no useful information except
which lights were on.
Despite the profound handicap of vision loss, I grew up in a
happy family with a younger brother who was understanding of the
extra time my parents spent working with me. They were truly
amazing people.  Dad was easy-going and positive. Lots of
homework? No problem; we'd dig our way through it no regret at
sacrificing his quiet evening.  As an engineer he had no
difficulty with the science and math, but German and diagramming
sentences presented challenges to us both.

In the fifties there was little academic support for families
whose blind children attended public schools. We were on our own
to devise alternative methods of doing my work. So I diagrammed
sentences in the air for Dad to transcribe onto paper and learned
to do complex algebra in my head.
My mother was far more distressed about my blindness. Being a
mother, she worried. Having an active conscience, she wondered if
she were somehow responsible for my condition. I was dimly aware
of her pain, but she never let it stand in the way of my growing
up. I went camping with the Girl Scouts, learned to cook and
iron, and did my share of household chores. She never
communicated her anxiety about my safety.  She taught me about
colors, make-up, and doing my hair. She saw to it that I learned
to dress appropriately even though I couldn't tell what other
people were wearing, and she suffered with me when the boys I
liked ignored me or treated me like a sister. My senior year she
first rejoiced with me and then began worrying again when I fell
in love.
Thanks to my parents' support, I graduated second in my suburban
high school class. I entered Oberlin College the following
September and for the first time in my life had to face the
prospect of getting my work done without a full-time
reader/secretary at my disposal.
I learned quickly about hiring and supervising readers, and I
worked hard. But I played hard too, taking part in college
organizations and dating, though my heart was still entangled
with my high school flame, attending a college far away.
 The college campus was small and easy to memorize. I used a
folding
cane that I could make vanish whenever someone presented her (or
preferably) himself to walk with me to my destination. I wouldn't
allow friends to go out of their way for me, so I often didn't do
social things or run errands I would have wanted to because I
couldn't find anyone who was going that direction.
 All that changed my senior year when I began to date my Milton
professor.  It was one of those whirlwind romances that are the
talk of small, close-knit communities. I graduated from Oberlin
with high honors
in June and became a faculty wife that September. I felt like a
fairy-tale princess.
By 1973 Bob and I had bought a thirteen-room house that had
originally been a dormitory. It was close enough to campus for
him to walk to his office and for me to walk downtown and to the
pediatrician, where I was going frequently by this time because
we had three children:  Steven, five; Anne, two; and Margaret,
born two months prematurely that August. I taught Lamaze
pre-natal classes one evening a week and pretended that my life
was satisfying.
The things I was doing I could do well. My children were happy,
my home was as orderly as any with three small children, my
husband's classes met often in our living room and ate home-baked
cookies, and
my students thought I was a good childbirth teacher. But I was
beginning to experience the nagging worries and dissatisfactions
of many young
mothers in the seventies. Conversing with young children was not
intellectually challenging. Collecting new recipes from the
recorded edition of  Good Housekeeping  was fun, but how many
chicken casseroles does one woman need? I wanted an identity of
my own not as someone's wife or mother, but as myself.
None of this was unusual, but my options seemed much more
restricted than those facing most women. I could not drive. I
could not read print. I couldn't even read Braille very well
because no one had ever encouraged me to work on building my
reading speed when I was young.  I hated my cane and used it as
little as possible. It seemed to shriek to people of my
blindness, and everyone knew that blind people couldn't do much.
They made brooms in sheltered workshops or tuned pianos.
They stood on street corners and sold pencils or, if they were
musical, played the accordion. I was not like that. But what was
I like?  What could I do with myself?  It was a question that I
could put off a little longer because the children were still
small enough for me to pretend that I didn't yet want to go back
to work.
Never during my struggles did I consider that other blind people
might be able to help me. Everyone had always told me that I was
not like other blind people. Since I had never known a blind
person,  I assumed that my friends and family were right. I told
myself that I was really a sighted person who couldn't see. I was
normal, and nothing that blind people could say would have much
relevance to me because, even
though my world was limited to the distance I could walk and the
information I could glean from my recorded books and what my dear
husband had time to read to me, I was not a shuffling, passive,
doggedly cheerful blind puppet to be dragged around and handed
whatever other people no longer wanted.
Then, in January of 1974, someone brought me a stack of
recordings produced by the National Federation of the Blind. He
said I might be interested in listening to them. I smiled
politely and put them aside with no intention of wasting my time
on such twaddle. But very soon thereafter my husband had to be
away for a weekend, and the baby came down with her first cold.
To complete my misery, I had read and returned every one of the
recorded books lent to me by the National Library Service for the
Blind and Physically Handicapped. I faced the prospect of two
days of walking a fussy baby and talking to two toddlers while
having nothing to read. I remembered the stack of records and
decided that they were better than nothing.
When Bob came home Sunday afternoon, expecting to find a frantic,
ill-tempered wife, he found instead a woman who had been
transformed.  Poor man, he had to listen to the pent-up flood of
discoveries that I had made. He is patient, and he paid close
attention as I explained that I had discovered fifty thousand
people who believed that blindness didn't have to consign one to
poverty and helplessness. I had learned that as a member of the
general public, I had been brainwashed like everyone else about
blindness. I realized that my dislike of my cane was really
rejection and denial of blindness. I had been working hard at
doing things as well as sighted people not because blindness need
not be more than a nuisance in my life, but because I didn't want
anyone to think of me as blind. Dimly I had begun to understand
that if I were ever to step beyond the confines of my current
narrow life, it would be because I had come to terms with myself
as I was a blind woman with energy and dreams and the capacity to
fulfill them.

No profound insight can remake a person overnight, but it is
accurate to say that from then on I was a different person. I
organized a local chapter of the Federation in my county. As I
did so, I discovered that I could help other blind people who
hadn't yet learned even the little I knew about coming to accept
themselves and being proud of
who they were. I also discovered just how many blind people had
suffered real discrimination at society's hands.
I learned that I have been incredibly lucky. No one had tried to
take my children away from me because I was a blind parent. This
still happens to blind parents today despite the overwhelming
evidence that blindness does not prevent a person from being a
good parent. Each time I have looked for a job, I have found one.
I learned that blind people face a 70% unemployment rate not
because only 30% of us are capable of holding down good jobs, but
because employers don't believe that we can.
As I became active in the National Federation of the Blind, I met
blind people who simply did not recognize the boundaries I had
always lived with. They traveled all over the country and the
world independently, getting to their departure, retrieving their
luggage, and coping with ground transportation without thinking
twice about the task. I discovered that I could do these things
as well, and I cannot express the sensation of freedom I had
packing for a plane trip and feeling no anxiety about the
logistics of getting where I needed to go.
I discovered blind people who read Braille at 400 words a minute. 
Though I had been cheated as a child by not being forced to
master the Braille code thoroughly, I could begin as an adult to
rectify the situation.
The Federation also gave me personal fulfillment and a circle of
wonderful friends who knew and loved me for who I was. They were
interested
in my husband and children, but they did not define me by those
relationships.
I had work to do and battles for equality to win. I learned new
skills writing, giving interviews to the press, teaching other
Federationists how
to do the public education that is so important if the blind are
ever to take our rightful place in society. As a result of these
new skills and the self-confidence I have learned from the NFB, I
applied for a job as a college administrator at Oberlin and got
it. There I had a chance to educate many people about the
abilities of the blind.
I also had plenty of opportunities to learn to juggle husband,
children, home, full-time job, and volunteer work.
I have moved on now to magazine editing. My children are almost
grown, and my new job requires that I travel frequently. I can
hardly remember the days when airports made my stomach turn
inside out. Blindness is one of the characteristics that define
me. It means that I can't drive a car or read print. It also
means that I am organized and have a well-trained mind two
characteristics that most of my friends would give a great deal
to possess. I still have room to grow. None of us has ever become
all that we can. I frequently discover little pockets of
cowardice and insecurity in myself, but by and large, I am free
thanks to the National Federation of the Blind. 
BLIND RAPE VICTIM BELIEVED
 Historically, blind crime victims have found it almost
impossible to identify their assailants to the satisfaction of
the police. A
local chapter president in Ohio, for example,  has repeatedly
identified the thieves who stole property from her, only to have
the police refuse to bring the suspects in for questioning. Their
excuse is that she is legally blind, and therefore her
identification cannot be relied upon. The January 22 edition of
the  Indianapolis Star  printed a United Press International
story that should hearten all of us.  It is clear from the
article that the Chicago police were skeptical about the victim's
identification, but she was consistent and absolutely certain,
and eventually she was believed. Here is what happened:Blind Rape Victim Identifies 
Attacker Through Cologne

CHICAGO A legally blind woman was able to identify a 14-year-old
as the youth who raped her by smelling his cologne and feeling
his hands, authorities said Sunday.
The 24-year-old woman whose eyesight is so poor she can
distinguish only between light and dark was raped in the laundry
room of her North Side apartment building Saturday night, police
Lt. Lee Hamilton said.
Hamilton said the victim told him she noticed that a door was
open in the hallway as she walked to the laundry room.
A person emerged from that apartment and followed her to the
laundry room, where he approached her from behind and raped her,
Hamilton said.
Hamilton said the woman identified the youth three different
times, once at his apartment and twice in police lineups.
Police accompanied the woman to the apartment where she had
noticed the open door, and the 14-year-old came to the door,
Hamilton said.
The woman immediately identified the youth as her assailant,
recognizing his cologne, he said. She identified him two other
times when he was in a police lineup with four other men.
 I didn't think she could do it. But she went over to each man
carefully, taking her time, and she picked him out. She said
there was no mistake about it,  Hamilton said.
The woman told police she could positively identify the person
who attacked her because during the attack she had grabbed his
hand.   It's unique. This is the first time this has ever
happened from what I know,  Hamilton said.
The alleged rapist ran away after the attack, leaving behind a
used condom, police said. Police intend to run genetic tests on
its contents, Hamilton said.
                             RECIPES 
From the Associate Editor: My friends have resigned themselves to
the fact that I am a hopeless Anglophile. I was an English major
in college, and my husband is a professor of Shakespeare. In
addition, we have lived for a total of more than two years in
London, and our older daughter was born there. So when June
comes, I remember with mingled nostalgia and amusement how things
come to a halt in England for the tennis matches at Wimbledon.
Early summer is also the time for those interminable cricket
matches, which can and do often go on for days.
The one thing that both these institutions of English sporting
and social life stop for is afternoon tea. In England this is
more than a light meal; it is in itself an institution. For those
who don't dine at 8 (or later), it is the evening meal, often
referred to as high tea. In this form it includes an egg or meat
dish as well as bread and cake. But at Ascot, Wimbledon, or Lords
and certainly at the Dorchester and Savoy Hotels or Buckingham
Palace, the repast is more elegant if not lighter.
In June strawberries and very heavy cream are a mainstay of
afternoon tea, but usually fruit (except as jam or preserves)
does not figure prominently in the meal. Thinly sliced bread and
butter with all traces of the crusts removed, of course, is very
popular. Crumpets (the English muffin is the closest we Americans
get to this rather thin, round variety of yeast bread) are split,
buttered, and toasted. Scones, a slightly sweet version of
American biscuits, are served straight from the oven if possible
with butter, jam, and (for the very thin or very daring) clotted
cream.
Assorted tea sandwiches are frequently provided as a sop to those
who believe that every meal should have some nutritional value.
These danty morsels are cut very thin and spread lightly with
filling. Cucumber, watercress, pat, tongue, and smoked salmon
are the most characteristically English of the ones that come to
mind. The first and last of this group are my favorites. It would
almost be worth coming to an untimely end because of
over-indulgence at the tea table to encounter smoked salmon every
afternoon at 4.
Having disposed of the nourishing portion of the meal, one can
move on to the sweet with a clear conscience. Here the choices
are almost endless: Scottish shortbread, chocolate biscuits, iced
cakes, pound cake, filled cakes and pastries of every
description, and tarts. These last can be individual, filled with
cream, custard, fruit, or jam;
or the hostess may serve one large tart, which is cut like an
American pie and eaten with a fork.
This entire feast is eaten while drinking what the English refer
to as  lashings of tea.  There are many varieties, most of which
are now available in the U.S. One must be sure, however, to make
it correctly. This means scalding the pot first by pouring
boiling water into it for a moment before making the tea. When
the pot is quite hot, it is emptied quickly and the tea made with
fresh boiling water and loose tea none of these American tea bags
will do for the pure in principle. Most English drink their tea
either white (with
lots of hot milk added) or black (which means no milk and is a
commentary on the preferred strength of the beverage). Sugar,
often lots of it, is acceptable, and some people do use lemon.
But don't make the mistake of trying both milk and lemon
simultaneously. The lemon juice curdles the milk, and the
resulting mess is undrinkable.
If you feel moved by the season to observe the tea time tradition
this month, here are some recipes that will give you a head
start.


                ENGLISH SCONES AND CLOTTED CREAM
          by Barbara Pierce and her Neighbor in London
 Ingredients: 
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup milk
2 beaten eggs
1-1/4 cup rinsed, drained currants
3/4 cup strawberry jam

 Method:  Sift together dry ingredients and cut in shortening
using pastry blender or two knives held scissor-fashion. Toss
currants thoroughly with this mixture. Combine beaten eggs and
milk and pour over currant mixture, stirring with a fork just
until all flour is moistened. You can roll the scones out on a
floured board and cut into circles or triangles to bake on a
greased cookie sheet at 425 degrees until browned (about 15
minutes). You can also pat half the mixture across the bottom of
a generously greased 8-inch round cake pan and up the sides.
Spread the center with strawberry jam and put the rest of the
scone dough across the top of the pan to seal the jam in. Bake
this pan at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes. Cut scones in
wedges.
To make the clotted cream that turns these scones into a dish fit
for the gods, shake 2 cups of heavy cream with 5 teaspoons
buttermilk for 1 minute in a screw top jar. Set this in a warm
place (80 degrees) for 24 hours. Skim off the froth and
refrigerate it until it is very cold. This will keep for up to a
month. An electric yogurt maker is ideal for maintaining the 80
degree temperature an entire day.  

                       SCOTTISH SHORTBREAD
                          by Peg Benson

 Peg Benson is an attorney, practicing in Chicago. She is also an
active Federationist. Her husband Steve is a member of the Board
of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind and
President of the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois. 

 Ingredients: 
1 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup white, brown, or confectionery sugar
2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

 Method:  Cream the butter and sugar until light. Then beat in
the flour and salt. Spread this stiff dough in an ungreased
9x9-inch pan and press edges down. Prick dough every half inch
with a fork.  Bake in a preheated 325-degree oven 25 to 30
minutes. Cut in squares while still warm.

                SHRIMP AND PARSLEY TEA SANDWICHES
                          by Peg Benson
 Ingredients: 
1/2 pound cleaned, deveined shrimp
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon dry sherry
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/8 teaspoon peeled, grated ginger root
     8 very thin buttered slices, whole wheat bread with crusts
removed

 Method:  Bring shrimp to boil in 2 cups water and 1 tablespoon
dry sherry. Reduce heat to medium and cook about 1 minute, until
shrimp are tender; Drain and chop. Then mix with mayonnaise,
parsley, and ginger. Spread six of the slices of bread with the
shrimp mixture and stack three of these together, shrimp
salad-side up. Top with one of the buttered slices, butter-side
down. Repeat with remaining four slices of bread. Press each
stack firmly together, then place both in an 8x8 inch pan, lined
with damp paper towels. Cover with more damp paper towels and
plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least
1 hour. To serve, cut each stack into 6-1/2-inch slices and then
cut each of these in half crosswise. Makes about 24 tea
sandwiches.  
                       BLUEBERRY TEA CAKE
                          by Peg Benson
 Ingredients: 
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup sugar
1-1/2 cups sifted cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
2 tablespoons sugar

 Method:  Beat the egg with a wooden spoon in a large bowl. Add
the sugar and beat well. Sift the dry ingredients together and
add alternately with the milk, beating after each addition. Beat
in the melted butter or margarine and vanilla. Fold in the
blueberries and
pour into a greased and floured 1-1/2 quart shallow baking dish.
Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for
about 25 minutes, until center springs back when pressed lightly
with a finger. Serve warm with butter. This will feed 8
generously more at tea time when there are other goodies.

                       SPECIAL POUND CAKE
                          by Tami Jones
 Tami Jones is the President of the Lansing Chapter of the
National Federation of the Blind of Michigan. Her pound cakes
bring astronomical prices at NFB auctions. They are worth every
penny. 

 Ingredients: 
1 cup (2 sticks) very soft real butter
1-2/3 cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs
2 cups cake flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

 Method:  Place slightly melted butter in a large mixing bowl. 
Add sugar and beat until mixture is soft and light. Add eggs one
at a time, stirring until mixture is uniformly moist and creamy.
Sift together flour and salt. Add dry ingredients to the other
mixture and stir by hand until batter is stiff and evenly mixed.
Scrape the sides of the bowl at intervals, making sure that all
flour is folded into the batter. Pour mixture into a greased and
lightly floured tube pan or five-by-nine-inch bread pan. Bake at
300 degrees for one and half hours. Cake is done when toothpick
inserted in center comes out clean. Cool cake slightly before
removing from pan.
      * * * MONITOR MINIATURES * * *  **Fallen on Evil Days:
Time was when the Minneapolis Society for the Blind loomed large
and rode high but no more. After losing its battle with the NFB
of Minnesota, and then losing most of its programs, the
Minneapolis Society for the Blind (known of late simply as MSB)
has now had to merge with another organization, having no
executive director of its own but sharing the one which the other
organization had and continues to have. Here is the report from
the February 10, 1990,  St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch :

                Blind Societies Name One Director

The St. Paul and Minneapolis Societies for the Blind have formed
a joint administration of the two organizations.
Stephen Fisher, 44, has been named executive director of both
agencies, effective February 1. Fisher had held that position
with the St. Paul organization for the past 17 years.
Both societies will maintain separate identities and facilities,
with one person directing the two. According to the boards of
directors, this should assure better use of common resources,
including leadership, staff, technical expertise, and volunteers.

**Elected:
At its first anniversary celebration on Saturday, April 7, 1990,
the Kankakee Heartland Chapter of the National Federation of the
Blind of Illinois elected the following officers: Bill Isaacs,
President; Mary Malone, Vice President; Beverly Coan, Secretary;
Ruth Isaacs, Treasurer; and board members Robert Sowell, Nora
Bell, and Audrey Larocque.
**Buy and Sell:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement: Wanted
VersaBraille II or II+ for reasonable price. For sale Bank Street
Braille Writer in excellent condition, $150 or best offer; AM and
FM BIT Talkman, reads Library of Congress books on 4 tracks,
instruction manual on tape, $110 or best offer. Contact: Isaac
Obie, 55 Waverley Avenue, Apartment 210, Watertown, Massachusetts
02172; (617) 923-3050.

**Without Our Sighted Members:
The following item appeared in the February 7, 1990, St. Louis 
Post-Dispatch :

                    Blind of Central Missouri

The Blind of Central Missouri, Inc., is an affiliate of the
Missouri Council of the Blind, St. Louis, and the American
Council for the Blind.
It is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations and fund
raisers for its income.
 Our purpose is to help the blind and partially sighted to remain
mobile, independent, and productive,  a report from the group
says.
Among activities members participate in are Bingo, carry-in
dinners, parties, and making Easter baskets for nursing homes. 
We try to help people in many ways and if we can't, we try to put
them in touch with someone who can. This year we are helping a
local Lions club with glasses for people in need.... We help
teach Braille and make Braille labels for clothing and canned
goods. We read mail and order talking book machines and cassettes
for reading enjoyment. Without our sighted members, this would
not be possible,  the report says.  **Mask:
Cherie Heppe, who is studying at the Los Angeles College of
Chiropractic, writes:
I have discovered a place called Talk, Inc., where people can
obtain steno or dictation masks for use in note-taking during
lectures. A blind chiropractor, Jackie Booker, told me about
them, and they will give a ten percent discount to blind
students. The mask allows spoken note-taking, so just the
critical material and not the entire lecture need be retained. It
costs about $190, and the company needs to know the type of
recorder being used in order to adapt the mask to it.  Contact
Talk, Inc., 455 Union Avenue, Westbury, New York 11590; (516)
333-1451.

**Pen Pal Wanted:
Noel Newby writes: Please send me the names and addresses of some
blind people who would like pen pals in Grade 2 Braille. I am a
sighted person who has learned Grade 2 Braille and am interested
in using this knowledge. My address is: Northwest Nazarene
College, Box 2381, Nampa, Idaho 83686.

**Voice Dialer:
A number of years ago (the Editor is either too busy or too lazy
to look up the exact time you decide which) we carried an article
on the Voice Dialer Telephone. It is our understanding that the
corporation which developed and at that time was marketing the
Voice Dialer went out of business. The Voice Dialer is apparently
being marketed again, and by a new corporation. We do not know
whether any of the principals of the original group are involved
with the present group, nor do we know (since we have not seen
one) whether any changes have been made to the instrument. Be
that as it may, we have been asked to carry the following
announcement:
 Speaking Devices Corporation currently offers the Voice Dialer,
which is a speech recognition telephone with the following
features:  Voice Dialing Simply speak a preprogrammed name into
the handset to speed-dial a number. Voice Directory The telephone
enunciates
the name and telephone number for a prestored name. Security
Modes Choose between the following three modes: free use of the
telephone, preventing programming/erasing of the telephone
memory, and blocking all out-going calls except for emergency
numbers. Speaking Devices currently offers four versions of the
Voice Dialer: 100 name capacity, $199; 75 name capacity, $174; 50
name capacity, $149; and 25 name capacity, $124.  VISA and
MasterCard accepted; there is an additional charge of $7 for
shipping and handling and $3 charge for COD shipments. California
residents add 7.25 percent sales tax. Speaking Devices
Corporation, 2086-C Walsh Avenue, Santa Clara, California 95050;
phone: (408) 727-5571; FAX: (408) 727-9351. 

**Elected:
Gail Bryant, Secretary of the Columbia Chapter of the National
Federation of the Blind of Missouri, writes to say that on
December 10, 1989, the chapter conducted elections. New officers
are: Eugene Coulter, President; Tom Stevens, Vice President; Gail
Bryant, Secretary; Sue Wunder, Treasurer; and Helen Stevens,
Historian.

**Print Version Now Available:
In the February, 1990, issue we ran a Miniature announcing the
publication (on tape only) of  Parent Tips: The Challenge Years 
by Janiece Betker. A full description of the material covered in
this second volume of  Parent Tips  appears in that notice. The
text is now available in print as well as on cassette. The cost
is $12.95, and orders for the print edition should be accompanied
by an additional $2.00 to cover handling. The first volume of 
Parent Tips  is still available in print and cassette and also
costs $12.95 in either format. The $2.00 handling fee will cover
the postage cost for both print volumes. Checks should be made
payable to Janiece Betker and sent to 1886 29th Avenue N.W., New
Brighton, Minnesota 55112, phone:  (612) 639-1435.

**Correspondence Committee Meeting:
Pat Munson, Co-Chair of the National Federation of the Blind
Correspondence Committee, writes as follows: Committee members
and all other interested persons are invited to attend the NFB
Correspondence Committee Meeting Monday, July 2, at 8 p.m., at
the 1990 NFB convention in Dallas, Texas.  All aspects of
newsletter production will be discussed. Learn what you can do
for a chapter newsletter, a state publication, etc.

**Organized:
Sharon Gold, President of the National Federation of the Blind of
California, notifies us that on Saturday, February 10, 1990, a
new chapter was organized in Tracy, California. Matthew
Millspaugh, a past NFB scholarship winner, has worked hard to
prepare the groundwork for this chapter since he moved to Tracy
in December of 1989. The newly elected officers are: Matthew
Millspaugh, President; Shirley Rodriguez, Vice President; Marie
Frazier, Secretary; and Robert Weinberg, Treasurer.

**Hospitalized:
On Tuesday, April 24, 1990, Harold Snider (President of the D.C.
affiliate of the National Federation of the Blind) was taken to
the hospital because of severe chest pains. He spent the next two
days in the intensive care unit for tests and observation.
Apparently there was no heart attack but a problem with
medication for blood pressure. He was released from the hospital
Friday, April 27, and is now back at work, seemingly none the
worse for the experience.

**Sell:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement: For sale,
a slightly used JAWS computer program in excellent condition.
$450.  Contact Charlene Groves, 1899 Washington Valley Road,
Martinsville, New Jersey 08836.
