By Faith and Not by Sight: A Blind Minister’s Vision Realized

By Carl Stagner

A complication of premature birth, blindness has been an ever-present struggle for Sarah Blake LaRose. Though she’s had to endure the great challenges of blindness, and a variety of other physical hardships, she’s also seen clearly the beautiful nuances of life that many with fully functioning eyes may never see. Moreover, her contributions to society, particularly for the blind community, have been astounding. So astounding, in fact, that she was named one of this year’s Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award winners by the National Federation of the Blind. Sarah, who envisioned equal accessibility to scholarly study of the Bible for the blind, has, in many ways, contributed herself to the realization of that dream. 

At the award ceremony earlier this year, Sarah explained that she used to receive e-mails from prospective students asking her if is possible to pursue studies of biblical languages and yet be blind. Reflecting back on the experience that led to this moment of accomplishment, she explains, “What we are doing didn’t become real to me until I stood on the stage and I realized that this project has the power to make the difference in whether a student gets exempted from biblical languages or whether a dean suggests they change their major. These are the things that have actually happened to blind people who have gone to Christian colleges and seminaries.” Concluding her speech that day, she remarked, “There should be no more exemptions for anybody who wants to study these languages!” Thanks to a group she’s partnered with, dubbed the Semitic Scholars, there doesn’t have to be.

Well-suited for the task, Sarah has been using Duxbury-brand translator products since 1993. The Duxbury Translator, software that can turn a standard file, such as a Microsoft Word document, into a format readable by a braille embosser, has been steadily expanding its language base since it was first developed. When Sarah needed the tool for her Greek course at Anderson University, she found it coming up short. Corresponding with a Duxbury employee about the 

issue, she ended up working with them to update the product, using her own knowledge of the JAWS screen-reader for the blind. Ultimately she began serving as a beta tester for a feature that made multilingual documents accessible to the blind, and helped the team of Semitic Scholars develop a product designed specifically for biblical languages. Much has been done, but there is much left to do.

Sarah’s ability to read biblical languages also came in handy for her contribution to these award-winning efforts. Today she not only manages a blog and website replete with tools for those special needs and helpful resources for the general public, she also serves as an adjunct professor of Hebrew for Anderson University School of Theology and Christian Ministry. Together with her blind husband Kevin, they share an inspirational blog on the ups and downs of married life amid the unique challenges associated with blindness and compounded by other health issues.

When asked about what she wishes more people understood about the blind community, she cites the frequency of people assuming she would want to pastor a church of blind people. “We like to participate in the community, make friends with our neighbors, and do many of the same things you do,” Sarah explains. “Please ask questions about our interests, our jobs, our families, etc. We think about a lot of things and would enjoy talking about them. Also, I would like people to feel less anxious about how to help. Start by just saying hello and giving us a chance to get to know you. Trust us to ask for help if we need it. We aren’t afraid to ask. The most important part of helping is being available, and the best way to do that is just to be a friend and have an open and teachable spirit.”

Were you blessed by reading this story? Support the ongoing work of Church of God Ministries with your gift to the World Ministry Fund at http://www.jesusisthesubject.org/world-ministry-fund/.

How I Found Out I'm Going Blind By Erin Going

In this video I share my story of how I found out that I'm losing my vision and other things that changed my life forever. Feel free to leave a comment below...

Marla Runyan

Marla Runyan

Olympic runner Marla Runyan never let her disability slow her down. Born in 1969 in Santa Maria, California, Runyan has Stargardt’s disease, a degenerative eye condition that caused her to become legally blind. A three-time national champion in the women’s 5000 meter, Runyan competed in the 1500-meter finals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

An avid marathon runner with a master’s degree in special education, Runyan is a professional motivational speaker, encouraging people to look past barriers and reach their full potential. She said she was inspired to succeed as a young child, after a doctor told her that her blindness would prevent her from achieving success in life.

Runyan also reaches out to children and families dealing with vision loss. “The future is not written and you have control about how you respond to the vision loss,” she has said. “Your child will show you what he or she wants to do.”

The last slave: ‘Blind Tom’ Wiggins’ remarkable tale

Black History Month, as the late president Gerald Ford eloquently said in 1976, encourages Americans every February to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

Prominent black Americans like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver often figure prominently in this discussion, whereas pathbreaking but lesser-known figures mostly get overlooked.

Like Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins.

Blind Tom may well have been one of America’s greatest musical prodigies, yet remains far too obscure in American culture and history.

Born a slave in Harris County, Ga., in May 1849, Blind Tom was unable to work the plantation owned by Gen. James Neil Bethune. He was therefore allowed to wander around freely and discover the world in a way that other black Americans of the time couldn’t have even dreamed of.

As the story goes, he was intrigued by the piano after listening to Bethune’s daughters play it. He was able to memorize pieces in a flash and, by the age of 5, wrote his first composition, “The Rain Storm.”

Bethune immediately recognized the young boy’s talent. He was moved into the family home in an adjoining room with a piano, and reportedly played for many hours each day. 

As Blind Tom got older, he was loaned out to concert promoter Perry Oliver and toured the country. He was an immediate sensation, earning more than $100,000 per year and was often compared to great composers like Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 

He astonished audiences, and could apparently play several songs at once. He had memorized somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 pieces of music. His magnificent 1861 composition, “The Battle of Manassas,” beautifully fits in with other great music from the Civil War era. 

His admirers included then-president James Buchanan (he was the first black American to perform at the White House) and Mark Twain.

On the surface, it sounds rather idyllic. Alas, Blind Tom’s life was anything but. 

Blind Tom had several strikes against him: his race, blindness and the fact that he was, most likely, an autistic savant. For all of his natural ability in music, the author Willa Cather once described him as little more than a “human phonograph, a sort of animated memory, with sound producing power.” 

He was unable to take care of himself, couldn’t communicate his own wants and needs and often spoke in the third person. Some have even suggested he wasn’t aware of the fact that he was an African American.

Moreover, Blind Tom has been called the last legal slave in America, and there may be some truth to this. He went through a series of custody battles within the Bethune family, and bounced from city to city. He served as little more than a sideshow attraction to an adoring audience, and died a pauper in June 1908.

Hence, he was never really a free man.

There’s another sad part to this tale. No original recordings of Blind Tom appear to exist. His sheet music is available, but only a small number of musicians have ever recorded his original songs. The most well-known album, “John Davis Plays Blind Tom,” was brought out in 2000. The irony? Davis, a talented musician and historian, is white. 

Blind Tom’s life was a living hell — there’s no denying this. At the same time, the musical legacy that this incredible (albeit troubled) pianist born into slavery left behind is worthy of greater discussion and, in turn, national recognition.

Indeed, Blind Tom is precisely the figure we should be celebrating during Black History Month (or anytime, of course). Blind Tom Wiggins’ difficult journey and neglected accomplishments mask a classic American tale of genius, talent, determination and inspiration.

Andrea Bocelli He is a famous Italian tenor who had become blind at the age of 12.

Andrea Bocelli - (born 22 September 1958) He is a famous Italian tenor who throughout the course of his career has recorded more than 20 classical and pop albums, and seven complete operas, selling a total of more than 65 million albums throughout the world.

Andrea Bocelli had become blind at the age of 12 years old following a football accident in which he was hit in the head. At 6 years old Bocelli was taking piano lessons before also learning the saxophone and the flute. His family would always ask him to sing, bocelli once said "I don't think a singer decides to sing, it is the others who choose that you sing by their reactions". Bocelli has also sung with other great singers such as Pavarotti. He’s one of the world’s most famous opera singers, and he’s totally blind. Andrea Bocelli is a man that overcame many odds to become a household name worldwide. Born in 1958 in Lajatico, Italy, Bocelli went blind at age 12, when a blow to his head during a soccer game further complicated his congenital glaucoma.Though he is known for his angelic and soaring opera tenor, Bocelli did not find a career in music until later in life. He worked for years as a lawyer and practiced his “hobby” of singing in piano bars and parties on weekends. A talent scout happened to hear him sing at a party he attended and signed him to a recording deal.Andrea has worked with the famous Luciano Pavarotti and Sarah Brightman, and has sung for the Pope. He is best known for his sweet songs, such as “Con Te Partirò”, a duet with Sarah Brightman and has released several multi-platinum albums throughout Europe and the United States.Bocelli’s velvety voice and inspiring personality have won him fans worldwide. “All that counts in life is intention,” he is quoted as saying. “You have to persevere, you have to insist.”

Tony Max - Canadian visual artist, 1957 - He was born legally blind, with ten percent vision, because of congenital cataracts. His vision was improved by cataract surgery as a teenager

Tony Max - Canadian visual artist, 1957 - He was born legally blind, with ten percent vision, because of congenital cataracts. His vision was improved by cataract surgery as a teenager, but the surgery eventually led to glaucoma and three retinal detachments. He went on to become one of Canada's most famous fine artists.

Blind Willie McTell

Blind Willie McTell was a Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voice types employed by Del...

more on Wikipedia

• Blind Willie McTell Albums, Discography

  List of all Blind Willie McTell albums including EPs and some singles - a discography of Blind Willie McTell CDs and Blind Willie McTell records. List includes Blind Willie McTell ... read more
  

  
  

Mother of three still manages to care for her family even though she has gone completely blind Read more at http://rare.us/story/mother-of-three-still-manages-to-care-for-her-family-even-though-she-has-gone-completely-blind/#ka2loJiI3qwy25Mu.99

David Alexander Paterson is legally blind. Also was Governor of New York.

David Alexander Paterson (born May 20, 1954) is an American politician. He was the 55th Governor of New York, in office from 2008 to 2010. He was the first African American governor of New York and also the second legally blind governor of any U.S. state after Bob C. Riley, who was Acting Governor of Arkansas for 11 days in January 1975. Since leaving office, Paterson has been a radio talk show host on station WOR in New York City, and was in 2014 appointed Chairman of the New York Democratic Party by his successor as governor, Andrew Cuomo.

After graduating from Hofstra Law School, Paterson worked in the District Attorney's office of Queens County, New York, and on the staff of Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins. In 1985, he was elected to the New York State Senate to a seat that was once held by his father, former New York Secretary of State Basil Paterson. In 2003, he rose to the position of Senate Minority Leader. Paterson was selected as running mate by then-New York Attorney General and Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Eliot Spitzer in the 2006 New York gubernatorial election. Spitzer and Paterson were elected in November 2006 with 69 percent of the vote, and Paterson took office as Lieutenant Governor on January 1, 2007.

When Spitzer resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Paterson was sworn in as governor of New York on March 17, 2008. Paterson launched a brief campaign for a full term as governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election, but announced on February 26, 2010, that he would not be a candidate in the Democratic primary.  David Paterson was born in Brooklyn to Portia Paterson, a homemaker, and labor law attorney Basil Paterson. Basil Paterson was later a New York state senator and secretary of state, and served as deputy mayor of New York City. According to a New York Now interview, Paterson traces his roots on his mother's side of the family to pre-Civil War African American slaves in the states of North Carolina and South Carolina. His father is half Afro-Jamaican. His paternal grandmother, Evangeline Rondon Paterson was secretary to Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. His paternal grandfather was Leonard James Paterson, a native of Carriacou who arrived in the United States aboard the S.S. Vestris on May 16, 1917. Part of his father's ancestry consists of immigrants from England, Ireland, and Scotland, while his mother's side includes European ancestry, as well as ancestors from the Guinea-Bissau region of West Africa.

At the age of three months, Paterson contracted an ear infection which spread to his optic nerve, leaving him with no sight in his left eye and severely limited vision in his right. Since New York City public schools would not guarantee him an education without placing him in special education classes, his family bought a home in the Long Island suburb of South Hempstead so that he could attend mainstream classes there. Paterson was the first disabled student in the Hempstead public schools, graduating from Hempstead High School in 1971.

Paterson received a B.A. in History from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1977 and a law degree from Hofstra Law School in 1983. After law school, he went to work for the Queens District Attorney's Office, but did not pass the New York bar examination, thus not becoming an Attorney at law. He claimed that his failing the New York bar was partially the result of insufficient accommodation for his visual impairment, and has since advocated for changes in bar exam procedures.While he was governor, Paterson's staff read documents to him over voice mail. Paterson was the first governor of New York to be partly blind. Paterson and his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, separated after 19 years of marriage in September 2012.

Early political career of David Paterson and Electoral history of David Paterson

In 1985, Paterson resigned from the Queens District Attorney's office so he could join the campaign of then city clerk David Dinkins to win the Democratic nomination for Manhattan Borough President. That summer, on August 6, state senator Leon Bogues died, and Paterson sought and obtained the Democratic party nomination for the seat. In mid-September, a meeting of 648 Democratic committee members on the first ballot gave Paterson 58% of the vote, giving him the party nomination. That October, Paterson won the virtually uncontested special State Senate election. At the time, the 29th Senate district covered the Manhattan neighborhoods of Harlem, Manhattan Valley and the Upper West Side, the same district that Paterson's father had represented. Upon his election, Paterson became the youngest State Senator in Albany. He won the seat again in 1986 for a full term representing the 29th District in the New York State Senate, and served as senator until assuming the office of Lieutenant Governor on January 1, 2007. Paterson briefly ran in the Democratic primary for the office of New York City Public Advocate in 1993, but was defeated by Mark J. Green.

Blind Devotion | Jubilee Project Short Film

I found this video Blind Devotion | Jubilee Project Short Film and had to share it. I found this video on http://livingblindblog.com

How do you tell the person you love you’re going blind? How do you cook? Clean? Go to work? Dress yourself? Care for your spouse? Run your home? A recently released short video, produced by theJubilee Project, poses all of these questions about living with a disability, whether you’re the person who has the disability, or you’re a friend, family member, or colleague of someone with a disability. Several friends in the blind community drew my attention to this video recently. It tells of a married couple’s struggle with the realization that the wife (Cecilia) is going blind, and what that means for her identity as a woman, as a professional, and as a wife, as well as her husband’s(Louie) endeavors to support her despite her denial.Curious about the backlash the short provoked amongst many of my friends, I watched (several times) and still find myself sifting through mixed emotions. Intended as a short film about unconditional love and the challenges of marriage, Blind Devotion instead seems to misappropriate disability for a religious agenda and presents a troubling picture of the ways that fear and denial can damage healthy lives and relationships. However, it also offers us some startling realities about the challenges that people with disabilities face—realities that many of us live with day in and day out, but that we wish would go away.

Firstly, it bears pointing out that this video’s target audience isn’t the disabled, or people who are close to someone with a disability, but that’s all the more reason, in my opinion, that appropriating blindness symbolically to tell a story about marital and life challenges is all the more problematic, because if handled insensitively, such appropriation perpetuates the myths and stereotypes that people with disabilities spend every day of their lives trying to dispel. As for the portrayal of blindness itself, while I disagree with Cecilia’s attempts to hide her disability, I think her story should evoke compassion and concern from the blind community rather than the ridicule I’ve heard from some. To put it bluntly, going blind is scary. Anyone who has gone blind and doesn’t remember the fear has selective amnesia. While those of us who’ve dealt with it know in hindsight (pun intended) that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, we often forget that we asked many of the questions and wrestled with many of the same fears that Cecilia has expressed. This is a woman who, having lived her entire life with fully functional sight, is now facing the prospect of adjusting to life without it. When she tells us that a disease she can barely pronounce is taking away her vision, many of us can relate to the figurative as well as the literal truth in that statement. The future she’s carefully mapped out for herself is being obliterated. We know, sadly, that despite the ADA, employers still discriminate against people with disabilities, and her career is likely in jeopardy.

As she admits, her domestic devotion to her husband might seem like a throwback to prefeminist domesticity, but let’s not devalue the work of running the household and caring for one’s family—tasks in which she obviously takes pride and which partially define her identity as woman and wife. Because of her denial, and her fear, she can’t recognize that blind people can, and do, live perfectly productive lives as professionals, parents, spouses, and even as single people. While her denial will ultimately make the road she has to travel much rougher and longer than it might be if she would face the truth, the process of acceptance, in a lot of ways, mirrors the five stages of grief. According to GoodTherapy.org,

Louis Braille, a French 12-year-old, who was also blind. And his work changed the world of reading and writing, forever.

Louis Braille (1809-1852) Six dots. Six bumps. Six bumps in different patterns, like constellations, spreading out over the page. What are they? Numbers, letters, words. Who made this code? None other than Louis Braille, a French 12-year-old, who was also blind. And his work changed the world of reading and writing, forever.

Louis was from a small town called Coupvray, near Paris—he was born on January 4 in 1809. Louis became blind by accident, when he was 3 years old. Deep in his Dad's harness workshop, Louis tried to be like his Dad, but it went very wrong; he grabbed an awl, a sharp tool for making holes, and the tool slid and hurt his eye. The wound got infected, and the infection spread, and soon, Louis was blind in both eyes.  All of a sudden, Louis needed a new way to learn. He stayed at his old school for two more years, but he couldn't learn everything just by listening. Things were looking up when Louis got a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, when he was 10. But even there, most of the teachers just talked at the students. The library had 14 huge books with raised letters that were very hard to read. Louis was impatient. hen in 1821, a former soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school. Barbier shared his invention called "night writing," a code of 12 raised dots that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without even having to speak. Unfortunately, the code was too hard for the soldiers, but not for 12-year-old Louis! Louis trimmed Barbier's 12 dots into 6, ironed out the system by the time he was 15, then published the first-ever braille book in 1829. But did he stop there? No way! In 1837, he added symbols for math and music. But since the public was skeptical, blind students had to study braille on their own. Even at the Royal Institution, where Louis taught after he graduated, braille wasn't taught until after his death. Braille began to spread worldwide in 1868, when a group of British men, now known as the Royal National Institute for the Blind, took up the cause. Now practically every country in the world uses braille. Braille books have double-sided pages, which saves a lot of space. Braille signs help blind people get around in public spaces. And, most important, blind people can communicate independently, without needing print.  Louis proved that if you have the motivation, you can do incredible things. Braille characters are small rectangular blocks called cells that contain tiny palpable bumps called raised dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another. Since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes of printed writing systems, the mappings (sets of character designations) vary from language to language. Furthermore, in English Braille there are three levels of encoding: Grade 1, a letter-by-letter transcription used for basic literacy; Grade 2, an addition of abbreviations and contractions; and Grade 3, various non-standardized personal shorthands. Braille cells are not the only thing to appear in embossed text. There may be embossed illustrations and graphs, with the lines either solid or made of series of dots, arrows, bullets that are larger than braille dots, etc. In the face of screen-reader software, braille usage has declined. However, braille education remains important for developing reading skills among blind and visually impaired children, and braille literacy correlates with higher employment rates. People often think that braille is a language. Actually there is a braille code for every foreign language you can imagine including French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew. There are also braille codes for mathematics, music, and computers. Where Can I Find a Picture of Louis Braille? Learn more in the Louis Braille Online Museum—200 Years: The Life and Legacy of Louis Braille I would  like to thank AFB For the information for this posting.

Joseph Pulitze was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes (along with William Randolph Hearst) and for originating yellow journalism.

Joseph Pulitzer - (April 10, 1847 - October 29, 1911) Joseph was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes (along with William Randolph Hearst) and for originating yellow journalism. In 1882 Pulitzer purchased the New York World, a newspaper that had been losing $40,000 a year, for $346,000 from Jay Gould. Pulitzer shifted its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. At the age of 42 Joseph became blind due to retinal detachment leaving him no choice but to retire.Joseph Pulitzer is the namesake for one of the most desired honors, the Pulitzer Prize for literature, music and journalism, and was legally blind. Pulitzer was also a politician with a Missouri state legislature seat. Throughout his career, he had a hard stance against illegal gain as well as corruption. While he acquired multiple newspapers, Pulitzer’s eyes began to fail him leading to him becoming completely blind in 1889. Despite this, he remained a strong watch-dog for injustice and social crimes.