[Critique Group 1] Leonard's comments on DeAnna's sub

[leonard tuchyner]

You leave a double space after each period.

That causes my reader to  join the sentences together,

so that your thought parcels are continued as in one line or sentence.

That is only true of  when I read line by line.

When I use my continuous reader, it goes smootly.

Also, your piece was repeated twice.

I enjoyed particularly the descriptions of reading when the lights went out

or using it to befuddle intercepting teachers.

The piece is well written with a variety of  sentence patterns that
helped me to stay focused.

Really good writing,.

I also enjoyed the Samoan brail  devices you made for lack of paper

and more conventional braille makers.



DedAnna sub July 23



Braille





Why braille is so important to me.  I was three years old, when my
great grandfather taught me to read.  He was a steelworker, who was
self-educated.  In his nineties, he had the time to spend with a
lively curious great grand child.  He took me for walks and enjoyed
teaching me the names of wild flowers and to use big words to amaze my
young mother.  His gnarled old finger moved along a line of print in
one of my children’s books or in his huge old family Bible.  I read
the words out loud or spell them if I didn’t recognize them.  In which
case, he said them for me.  By age six, I had lost this loving man and
print had become too blurred for me to see it clearly. The world
around me was a darker smaller place.

Although she had never finished high school, my mother taught all of
her five children to love reading.  In fact, if she seemed inattentive
at the table, we could be sure that she was lost in the print on the
back of the cereal box or the label of the catsup bottle!  I became
totally blind shortly after my eighth birthday.

It was then that braille came in to my life. Books were once more,
open doors to the world. My fingers literally did my walking through
time; space and anywhere the human mind could travel.  I never felt
alone when other children played games my blindness kept me from
participating in if I had a book to read.  Friends and wonderful
adventures were there for me between the pages of a Braille book.  I
didn’t even miss the colorful illustrations because the lines of
braille permitted me to imagine the characters and scenes as I wished.
I could familiarize myself with objects I would never be able to
explore with my own curious little hands.  I could meet people and go
places I would never know personally.  I taught sighted friends
Braille so that we could pass notes that the teachers couldn’t
decipher, even if they intercepted them.  Best of all, unlike my
sighted siblings, I could read in bed under the covers after the
lights were out.

Braille has allowed me to learn foreign languages; mathematics and
even enjoy leisure activities such as macramé, computers and knitting.
These things would have been much harder to access if I had been
limited to using audio books.  It is so difficult to locate specific
information on a long recording.  Being a Braille user has made me
capable of a greater independence.  I can keep notes, mark clothing,
canned goods and spices.  I can locate places such as rest rooms and
use elevators independently when Braille signage is available.  When
they were small, I shared my love of books with my own children using
print braille combination books we could read together.

As they grew older, I read some of my childhood favorites to them as
they dressed for school and ate breakfast.  Since I was a working
mother, this reading time was special replacing the bedtime reading my
schedule no longer permitted.  Braille notes helped me through high
school.   I was the first member of my large family to attain a
college education. Although my textbooks and lectures were recorded, I
made voluminous braille notes for study purposes.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Braille aided me in improving the lives of
Western Samoan children far from the availability of talking
computers, watches and calculators.  I used blocks of wood drilled
with six holes in to which wooden dowels were fitted to form braille
letters.  Later, the class moved on to forming words and sentences
with rounded nail heads placed in rows of smaller holes drilled in the
pattern of a braille cell.  Eventually, we did acquire Braille paper
and Braillewriters.  I was able to train transcribers and to develop a
Braille code for the Samoan language.  Before I left Western Samoa,
work transcribing the Samoan Bible had begun and the first blind child
to be mainstreamed was attending high school.

Because I can read Braille I am not a functional illiterate, without
access to the written word.  .  Braille books and magazines have
filled otherwise empty hours sitting in waiting rooms or riding on
buses trains and planes.  A slate and stylus (no batteries required)
have permitted me to write down appointments, shopping lists, phone
numbers, addresses etc.  When technology has failed, old Braille files
and notes have saved the day.  Braille maps and diagrams have helped
me grasp concepts that I would have had trouble learning if limited to
verbal descriptions.  Braille notations on important printed papers
have made it possible to locate them in files.  Braille games such as
scrabble, cards, and monopoly have permitted me to participate in
family fun.  Making braille dots with French knots on hair bands and
other small accessories helped me to dress attractively enabling me to
coordinate colors.  I could teach my sighted daughters their colors
too by commenting on them as I matched their clothing that was also
marked with braille.  Exchanging braille letters with friends granted
me a privacy in correspondence I could not have had otherwise. Since
early childhood, I have loved putting my thoughts down on paper.  Even
with the advent of talking computers, I still find editing easier when
I review an article or story on a braille display.   Although I often
listen to a novel on audio tape while performing routine tasks, it is
braille that I turn to for relaxed pleasure reading.  When I wish to
master a new skill, such as using an unfamiliar computer program, I
understand and learn more quickly if Braille documentation is
available.  When I became owner/manager of a pizza franchise, I kept
inventory and order lists in Braille.  My husband claims that I
inherited my mother’s failing and would read catsup labels too if they
were Brailed!  It is almost impossible to count the ways in which
Braille has impacted my life, enhancing my daily  existence.
Independence, leisure activities, educational assistance, competency
as a business woman and mother, are only the obvious areas where
Braille has improved the quality of my life.

All this richness was mine because of six dots