Mark Riccobono: Greetings, fellow Federationists. Today is Tuesday, October 29th, 2024, and this is Presidential Release 543. And we are celebrating the 84th anniversary of the National Federation of the Blind here in November 2024.
And as we go into our 85th year, I want to encourage chapter members to discuss what events in the history of our movement have been most important to you. I think it's an interesting question that we could explore in our chapters, and most importantly, I think it leads into the more important question, which is, what are we most excited about for the movement in the future? The reason to understand the past and what we've done, where we've been, is to have inspiration for where we still need to go and what we still need to do.
So I'd be really interested in hearing from our chapters, what are you most passionate about the future of the organized blind movement. And I would encourage you to go even a step farther, make that an opportunity for the chapter to post something in social media and send it to our communications group here at the national office, [email protected]. Post an audio, a video, talking about what we're excited about for the future of the Federation.
And when I think about this, you might consider a short video that says something like, "Happy Anniversary, National Federation of the Blind from the," well, in my case, "the recording studio chapter of the Maryland affiliate." And then go on to say, "We have made great progress, but there is much more to do. We here are really looking forward to," and then whatever it is that the chapter is excited, passionate about. I think that would be a great anniversary, social media and video generation activity for our chapters here in the month of November.
The biggest and most persistent problem that we have been facing since 1940, and will continue to face into the future, is correcting the public understanding about blindness and breaking down those misconceptions, and helping the average person in society know the stories of blind people in an authentic way, from the everyday to the extraordinary. And there is a real need to continue to gather more of our stories, and we should do that in writing, in audio form, in video, so that we can continue to move the needle on the public understanding of blindness. Our stories are one of the most powerful tools we have to talk about the work of the National Federation of the Blind, our philosophy, and the difference it makes in our lives.
One source for getting inspiration for stories that I wanted to remind our chapters about is our Kernel Books. Our Kernel Books are a goldmine of short stories about the lives that blind people lead and the difference that the National Federation of the Blind has made in those stories. These short stories can also be perfect for those among us that are still learning braille. They're great bite-size ways to do some braille reading.
And so I encourage our chapters to dive back into the Kernel Books as a way to create a platform for us to talk about our stories within chapter meetings.
And we think about reading Kernel Book stories, that's a great way to practice braille, but also to get ready for our Braille Readers Are Leaders contest that'll be coming up in the next month or so. So I want to remind you that the Kernel Books are all available on our website in text and audio form. You can go to nfb.org to find them, or you can search the show notes for this release and find the direct URL.
And there are many great stories there really for any occasion that the chapter might be considering. And I do hope that you use the Kernel Book stories to encourage members of the chapter to write new stories for the Monitor, to submit things for our podcast, for our blog. Our stories are really one of the most powerful tools that we have. And this is a great opportunity also for our chapters to work with members on telling our stories in a short and powerful way as a way to talk about the work of the National Federation of the Blind.
Consider it kind of like a little bit of NFB Toastmasters almost there. The better that we get at telling our stories and sharing the power of our movement, the more we can continue to move the needle on public misunderstanding.
Now, to get you started, and because we will be celebrating Thanksgiving later in November, I thought I would offer the audio recording of one of our classic Kernel Book stories, and this also gives me an opportunity to send a very special message here on this release. The article that I'm suggesting to you, there are certainly many other good ones, but the one I'm suggesting to you is the title article from the Kernel Book entitled Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving, which was released in 1997.
And the article, Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving, is a great article and it gives me the opportunity to note that the author of that article, Barbara Pierce, will be celebrating her 80th birthday in the month of November 2024. And as long as we're on the topic of 80th birthdays, just a little over a week ago Mary Ellen Jernigan of Maryland also celebrated her 80th birthday. So I'm really happy to share big birthday greetings from the entire Federation to Barbara Pierce and Mary Ellen Jernigan, and to use that as an opportunity to share our gratitude for the tremendous work that these leaders have done within our movement. So we will include the audio as the second chapter of this release, if you want to use it in the chapter meeting or at some other point.
The last item I wanted to bring up on this release is related to gratitude, and it is a piece of sad news, but it also is an opportunity to share a bunch of gratitude. A couple of days ago, we learned that John Cheadle of Maryland passed away. I cannot in any way do justice to the tremendous contributions that John Cheadle has positively made on blind people, and for that matter, non-blind people across this country, parents of blind children and others. His work as an employee, as a member of the Federation, is deep and wide and really touches every corner of our nation.
I know for me personally, I was deeply saddened to learn of John's passing, but I do feel a deep amount of gratitude for having been in his circle, have been influenced by him, and to have had the opportunity to learn from him and his experience as a non-blind person who was deeply committed to the organized blind movement. Time after time, John Cheadle did not flinch from anything that the Federation called on him to do, and he put a lot of his own heart and imagination into that work.
I could share a number of stories, but one that comes to mind is that John Cheadle had the assignment to teach some of us how to drive during the period of time when we were testing the technology for the Blind Driver Challenge. Some blind individuals like myself had never been drivers, and so we needed to learn how to do that. And so we went out to a parking lot and John Cheadle was our instructor, but also our navigation system.
I will share an inside story that one time driving with John Cheadle in this parking lot, I did take off the driver's side mirror of the car we were driving. Got a little too close to a semi-truck that was parked in the parking lot we were in. I'd say it was a fun moment. It was fun later in looking back on it. It's one of the many experiences that I personally got to have with John Cheadle and one of the many gratitudes that I am feeling as we go into the Thanksgiving season.
This is what I wanted to share with you on this presidential release. I hope all of our chapters get out there, tell stories, review our Kernel Books, and use that as a source of inspiration. Happy Veterans Day to all of our members out there who are veterans or have veterans in your family. Happy Federation anniversary to each and every one of you, and a very big happy Thanksgiving from the Federation family to the rest of your family. With gratitude, let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.
MUSIC: The preceding message was brought to you by Marc Riccobono, President, National Federation of the Blind, 410-659-9314. Office of the President at nfb.org. Follow President Riccobono on Mastodon. Just search for @[email protected]. Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.
Speaker 4: The Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving, by Barbara Pierce.
Barbara Pierce is no stranger to Kernel Book readers, having appeared in these pages frequently. The remarkable thing about her current story is that it records truly unremarkable events, the sort that occur regularly in any typical household. Read her heartwarming account of her young family's efforts to celebrate traditional American holidays while living in London, and see if you don't come to believe that we who are blind are people just like you in more ways than not. Here is what she has to say.
"Almost 20 years ago, my English- professor husband, Bob, our three children, Steven, nine, Anne, six, and Margaret, just four, and I packed up and moved to London for the school year. Bob was to teach our college's London semester program during the fall semester. This would give our American students the experience of studying and living in England. Bob would then spend the spring doing his own scholarship during his sabbatical leave. The children, including little Margy, would all attend school, and I planned to keep house, try my hand at writing a book, and spend time getting to know the members of the National Federation of the Blind of the United Kingdom."
"We were lucky to find a small house to rent in one of the outlying suburbs. The elementary school was nearby, as were the shops where I would spend a good deal of time, and the tube station from which Bob would leave for central London every morning. Best of all, our next-door neighbor had a niece around the corner who was willing to babysit for us during the evenings when Bob and I went to the theater with his students."
"We settled in easily and the shopkeepers became accustomed to my long white cane, American accent, two-wheeled shopping trolley, and occasional gaggle of children. Expeditions to the butcher, greengrocer, chemist, and grocery shop were easier and faster without the youngsters, but so were cleaning the house and writing. Besides, the girls especially loved to go to the shops with me, so we quickly became an institution in the neighborhood."
"By late October, the whole family had become acclimatized to life in London. The children had made friends and were developing English accents. I was resigned to washing school uniforms in the bathtub on the days when I didn't go to the laundromat, and Bob had established a warm relationship with his students. We decided that on the Saturday before Halloween, we should invite the whole class to supper. They had tickets to a Saturday matinee performance of a Shakespeare play, so it would be easy for all of them to come back to the house together at the close of the performance. I didn't even consider attending the play that day. After all, somebody had to prepare supper for that crowd, and I didn't think that the babysitter and the children would get very far picking up the living room, much less setting up the food I had prepared."
"Steven had been somewhat disappointed at missing Halloween at home in Ohio with its costumes and trick-or-treating, so we decided to do what we could to celebrate this important annual rite of American childhood with our party. I made a big chocolate cake and let the children tint the butter frosting a shocking shade of orange. We managed to find candy corn, and witches with which to decorate our masterpiece."
"But the real triumph of the meal was to be the loaf of homemade bread. I had decided that considering the small rooms of our house, I would have to settle for feeding the students sandwiches and potato chips, crisps in London. I arranged a large tray of sliced meat and cheeses and another of fresh vegetables and dip. I bought several sorts of rolls and small interesting loaves, but in the center of the table was a large loaf of potato bread in the shape of a jack-o'-lantern, complete with eyes, eyebrows, ears, nose, and mouth full of snaggly teeth. Anne was regretful that I would not agree to make the bread orange or allow her to frost the finished loaf with the leftover icing from the cake."
"But despite its shortcomings in the eyes of the children, our pumpkin was the hit of the evening. Bob and the students were late getting home from the play, and in the interim, a glass of liquid got spilled by one of the children, but it hardly dampened the upholstery or the spirits of the party. The students were delighted to be in a home with children to play with, and you would've thought I had prepared a banquet for them instead of a simple supper."
"When I saw them at the theater during the early weeks of November, they continued to talk wistfully about the fun they had had with our family. As Thanksgiving approached, I began to realize that I was going to have to do something about the holiday. It isn't celebrated in England, of course, and our American students were beginning to feel homesick at the prospect of being so far away from family for the holiday. But having 16 students in for sandwiches and finger food on paper plates and doing a complete Thanksgiving dinner for them were two very different things."
"For one, we had six plates and about as many sets of silverware. There was almost no counter space in the kitchen, and though the stove had four burners, the oven was half the size of my oven at home. But it was clear that problems or no, Thanksgiving was going to be celebrated in memorable style in the Pierce home that year. I asked each student to bring a plate and silverware for each person that he or she was bringing to dinner, and I invited them all to bring along some contribution of food."
"Meanwhile, I had managed to find one of those large foil-disposable roasting pans in a local department store. Much to my relief, when I got it home it actually fit into my oven. I took it off to the butcher and asked him to get me the largest turkey that would fit into the pan. He did so and he even agreed to keep it in his freezer for me until I was ready to cope with it."
"The day before the Feast, as the children began calling that Thanksgiving, I stopped to make sure that the butcher had moved the turkey from the freezer into his cooler for me. He assured me that he had and that it would be thawed for me in the morning. Relieved of that nagging worry, I went home to get on with my preparations. When I went into the kitchen to begin dinner, I discovered to my horror that the oven would not light. Here was a nightmare indeed. Luckily, the Gas Board was not about to shut down for a long holiday weekend, so they promised that someone would be around first thing in the morning to see about the cooker."
"My dreams were filled that night with catastrophes in which I was trying to roast turkeys over matches. But in the morning, we experienced a whole series of miracles. First, the Gas Board man turned up early. Second, he discovered that there was nothing seriously wrong with the stove, and he could and did fix it immediately. The third event took a little longer to resolve itself into a miracle. It began by looking remarkably like a catastrophe."
"While I stayed home to deal with the stove and the other preparations, Bob took the children with him to do the last-minute shopping, including picking up the turkey. I was busy finishing the stuffing when I realized that in the distance I was hearing Margy crying as the Pierce parade drew near our house. I raced to the door to see what the trouble was. I could hardly believe the news, the butcher had not in fact transferred the turkey to the cooler as he had alleged. When Bob handed it to me it was 18 pounds of rock-hard meat, giblets and neck firmly tucked inside the body cavity. Though Margy was the only one actually in tears, all three children were certain that Thanksgiving had just crash-landed in the butcher's freezer."
"There are moments when a parent has no choice but to set aside anger, frustration, and anxiety, and simply rally all available reserves in the emergency. I dried Margy's tears and assured everybody that the day could be saved. Then the turkey and I retired to the kitchen sink for some close communion with warm water. It was not the correct way to defrost poultry, but I told myself that if I could just pry the giblets out and pack the stuffing in quickly, I could get the bird on to roast before anything nasty began growing in the meat."
"It worked. By late afternoon, we were ready for the Feast and the students began to arrive, bearing an unusual collection of dishes. Including several strays picked up by various people along the way, 23 happy Americans eventually sat down to Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, we sat down all over the house. The living and dining room floors were covered with bodies, and six of us sat on the steps to the second story. We had a marvelous time. The food was delicious and the fellowship was unforgettable. I don't even remember the clean-up."
"Everyone had so much fun that we decided to do it again the following year when we were all back in the United States. By then, many of the students had graduated, but they returned to Oberlin for Thanksgiving and a reunion of the London semester group. In some ways, the two celebrations were very different. There were no crises the second time around. I managed to come up with enough dishes and silver to serve everyone without asking people to bring their own, and the cleanup was a snap with an electric dishwasher on the job."
"But the underlying spirit from the year before was still there. The young people were delighted to be in our home and grateful to us for inviting them. My recollections of these happy and deeply satisfying events are filled with remembered warmth and gratitude. They are for me as they would be for anyone else, the very stuff of pleasant family history."
"But there is one element of these celebrations which is uniquely precious to me, my blindness, which to me has become nothing more than one more of my characteristics, went virtually unregarded by the students. I don't mean that they pretended that it wasn't there. They made an effort to move out of my path when I came through carrying food or drink. But the fact of my blindness was as unimportant to them as it had become to my husband and children."
"I remember times like these and renew my hope that the time will come when all blind people will know the freedom for which I am so deeply grateful. This incidentally is why I believe so strongly and participate so actively in the work of the National Federation of the Blind."