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Planting Seed
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Planting Seed |
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Jaime Fradera Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843Where no tyranny is tolerable |
This is still a draft document and is written for a blind audience. Since most pipsters won't know about the National Federation of the Blind, you may need some familiarization with a few concepts and terms. Those of us who are members of the NFB refer to ourselves as "Federationists," in the same way that StarTrek fans call themselves "trochees," etc. The philosophy that we espouse is sometimes called "Federationism." Federationism holds that blind people are in every way normal human beings except that we do not have eyesight. The agencies charged to help us through school and find work, in this case, was the Texas Commission for the Blind. Like many public agencies they are often heavily padded with lazy bureaucrats who often know even less about the blind than the average member of the public. Anyway, rather than propagandize you about the National Federation, you are encouraged to visit: www.nfb.org Perhaps this may even plant a seed, and pass on some of the precious gifts I have been freely given. in 1981 I was in utter despair. In 3 years I had gone from a naive and optimistic college student to a drop out and a nervous wreck, and after losing most of my hearing I went home to do precisely nothing. I was surprised to learn that the crazy doctor, the one who ran a therapy group for blind people, was still operating; and the now-defunct insight for the blind social club was still meeting at the same bar downtown where a blind performer was still playing for handouts. Nothing seemed to have changed. There I was again, the same blind people, the same guys from the Cris Cole training center, the piano-tuning school and, of course, the kids from the school for the blind. I thought I had a choice not to play dominos and beep baseball, not to get mixed up with the blind club at the blind bar, not to get involved with the crazy doctor. I was even beginning to immagine there was nothing wrong with me. But there were others who did not agree. Actually, I knew a little bit about the NFB, those radical types who were in bed with the Teamsters and organized crime, from what I heard. Four years earlier, at the training center, Morgan would sometimes tell us about the NFB. It was 1977, and he said he was going to a convention in New Orleans. I said something like: after I go to college and get a degree, after I get a job and get married and have kids and grandkids and retire at 70, after there was nothing else today, then maybe I would see about this NFB thing. until then, I wasn't ready. And, although I didn't know it at the time, in telling me about the National Federation of the blind, Morgan was planting in me a seed. But back in San Antonio, in 1981, the entreaties resumed. The pressure was awful. Did I know about insight for the blind? Wouldn't it be better going to the bar with blind people? Did I know about the doctor who ran the therapy group free for the blind? Didn't I think beep baseball would be fun? Why didn't I join the insight club and read talking books? Sometimes the sightless insight club played ball games against the sighted San Antonio Brewers. Unlike the blind man in the bleachers, I never went to those ball games; but I'm pretty sure who won them, and I am pretty sure you know who won them too. How could I tell them how angry and miserable I felt? How could I ever describe the stifling, soul-destroying desperation I felt? What was wrong with me that I didn't want to have fun? Bob, my rehab counselor, set me up for sessions with, who else, the crazy doctor, and what do you suppose the crazy doctor found? I heard not a word about Jernigan or tenBroek, though a few muttered something about Helen Keller and Stevie Wonder. A relative, who didn't know any better, said that I should take reading, which was a class for blind people at the community college, and where all blind students got an A. But why take reading again after already having taken reading twice before? Curiously, in 1982, I telephoned the National Center for the Blind to ask about NFB literature, but I could not hear them and they hung up. I did resist the pressure to live in the apartment complex for blind people. It was rock bottom. From here, there was nowhere else to go but up. And unknown to me, the seed of Federationism planted in my soul would soon take root. As luck would have it, at a party that summer I was given a cassette program narrated by a motivational speaker. I had to hold the headphones flush against the one ear I had left. This was my introduction to what we call the human potential genre. The speaker extolled the virtues of courage, patience, and persistence against impossible odds in the pursuit of cherished dreams. He said, as I understood it, that deeply held convictions and an abiding faith had the raw power to blast tunnels and move mountains. He called this philosophy "possibility thinking." He said that anything worth achieving necessarily involves an element of risk. He said our limitations are mostly self-imposed but there were no limitations to what we could imagine. He said if you let your existing knowledge and resources determine your goals you are aiming too low. And though I did not know it then, this man, through his cassettes, was planting in me another seed. I pondered this. I had always had a life-long fascination with science. So why not go to school in Austin and study atmospheric science? It was true that, at the moment, I was broke, ill and couldn't hear, but anything was better than languishing at home. I decided to apply this possibility thinking in my life, then see what happened So one day I took a Greyhound bus to Austin and then taxis around the university area looking for a place to live. I rented a room in a cooperative house without having any idea how I was going to pay for it. But leaving home, instead of resolving my problems, only made them worse. Where was the money, they wanted to know, and soon I was up for eviction. I felt stressed past the breaking point. I was haunted by the specter of having to live on the street, blind, deaf and broke. The bouts of deafness were getting worse and lasting longer. Then, in September my father, whom I wished I'd had more time to know, passed away. And finally, there was this problem with the Texas Commission for the Blind. The house from which I was about to be evicted required that all residents be enrolled in school. My new counselor disapproved of my absurd academic plans. My GPA was too low. I was deaf, and fragently ignoring the Commission's own regulations, she arbitrarily decided not to authorize support services. This I just wasn't going to take any more. Someone else was trying to run my life by telling me what I could and couldn't do, and I did something I had never done before. I just ignored my counselor. I refused to see the Commission's audiologist and chose another from the school of nursing. She responded by saying didn't I remember what she had told me and by sending me to a psychologist for testing. Instead, I ran over to the college, gave them $200 I could ill afford, and got them to register me anyway as a probation student so my counselor couldn't say I didn't qualify for services. Between bouts of dizziness and deafness, I requested a supervisory review without having any idea what I was going to do or say when I got there. I was walking over thin ice that with every step was growing thinner. I was shaking with fear and a visceral anger. For the first time in my life I was talking back to "god" but couldn't articulate my rage. I had taken too many wild gambles, and now I was losing. Mere hours away from eviction, I called Rachel at the library for guidance on how to write Governor White. and then, if a single person could change the course of history, she suggested I telephone this organization; and when a delegation of Federationists came to reason with me, this time, I was ready. But I was still upset. The last thing I wanted was to get mixed up with more blind people. This was embarrassing. They wanted me to join the NFB. Ahah!, I thought, this must be some pressure tactic--you have to join the NFB before they will help you. Well, I joined. But, I thought, once this case was over then I wouldn't have to pay attention to NFB any more.. To my surprise Mark Noble was there, and Tommy Craig from high school, and a bunch of others who didn't even know me. The Federation philosophy I was beginning to absorb would at last free me from the peculiar institutions of my past, and my expectations of what was possible began to rise. I did not come alone to the supervisory review. I did not stand alone at the fair hearing procedure that felled and which was then postponed because I suddenly went deaf. With the guidance of my new friends I was learning to gather testimony. My former physics and geology teachers said they would write letters. A blind meteorologist wrote from Maryland that automation was the wave of the future and there would certainly be opportunities. I requested from the Commission all my case records. They said no, but once again, I ignored them, and guess what happened? They sent the records anyway. I held them in my hands. The folder was bigger than two telephone books. I felt like bashing them over the head with it. In the summer of 1984 I went to the convention in Phoenix. I would learn of blind scientists in related fields. Nobody made fun of me, and I swept the tables for all the NFB literature I could carry to take home. The convention was by turns both fun and scary. It was hot. I felt badly and I sometimes went completely deaf. And at the time, I couldn't appreciate that even more seeds had been planted in me. Then, in August, something extraordinary happened. The Fair Hearing conference would never be held. Stead, the Commission literally reversed itself and dropped its opposition to my going to school. By mail and phone my counselor was leaving rather frantic messages that the fall term would soon start and what was I going to take and what devices or services would I need to make it a successful semester? We got them all, and in the spring of 1985 I took a full class load and ended the term on the honor roll. So much had happened in just two years, and these pivotal experiences had truly been a turning point in my life. The illness that was knocking out my hearing was finally brought under control, and the damage stopped. To be concluded |
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Larry C
since 2001-09-10
Posts 10286United States |
Jaime, Well now, the admiration I have always held in my heart for you has found reason to swell. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I look forward to the remainder of this piece. I love your determination and your refusal to stay in the box. Awesome. Yup, I think you rock.  If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, |
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