Gayle’s Blog

Everyone knows how much I love daylight savings time and how I celebrate the day it arrives. Well, this year it came ridiculously early. I can’t even pretend it is spring, not in my wildest dreams. However, this year’s arrival gave me a new surprise.

Recently I bought a lovely, actually stylish, talking clock. It is an atomic clock and boasts the mysterious ability to change time from place to place and in and out of daylight savings time, all by itself.

Sunday morning I woke up at 4:00 am, 2 hours after the spring forward. I pressed the button on the top of my lovely clock and the correct, new time was announced.

At first I thought this was pretty cool. As I relaxed all snuggled in my warm bed, in my dark house, safe from the world, I suddenly realized my clock was having conversations with satellites. What else were they talking about? How could they have this conversation? Were they talking through the tightly closed, curtained window or through the mounds of junk in the attic, over my head.

Even my smart, reasonably new computer was fooled by this too early time change.

I am not sure how I feel about direct communication between my bedroom and satellites.

Over a week has passed since the big announcement that is going to change my life. I think today is the first time I have had some quiet time to really think about what is happening.

About 21 years ago I began volunteering at the Perkins Infant Toddler program. I looked forward to my Monday mornings with the Perkins staff, and of course, the babies. I volunteered for 7 years and then I moved too far away to make it in for the weekly visits.

Of course I have used the talking book library for 30 years and the library staff has always made me feel like a member of their family.

In 1989, Perkins helped me form a group of professionals who donated time to work with people in developing countries explore the wonders of adaptive technology.

Now I am going to work for Perkins. I have not worked for anyone for a very long time. Even when I worked for TeleSensory in the late 80s and early 90s, I did not really have anyone to answer to. Maybe I should be a little worried about this, but I am actually looking forward to working with Steven Rothstein and David Morgan. Notice I did not say, “working for”. Maybe I am struggling just a bit.

I am feeling challenged and enthusiastic. I feel like I just got a brand new box of crayons, that big, giant box with 64 glorious colors including sky blue pink. I can color anything I want, but I have to hurry. Those crayons could melt. My mind is racing. I will spend the next part of my career giving back some of the wonderful gifts that Perkins has given me. As part of Perkins, we can serve more people and solve more problems. I will share my crayons with the rest of the staff and we will get coloring.

Dear Friends,

I am thrilled with the plan for Adaptive Technology Consulting to join forces with Perkins School for the Blind.

Steven Rothstein, president of Perkins School for the Blind and I have spent many long hours over the last 6 months working on a plan to increase technology services for people who are blind and low vision. This includes everyone from young children in preschool to students to those who are older citizens. Perkins has been working hard to increase its visibility and services that are offered in New England, across the country and to the entire world. Both high and low tech devices, evaluation and training are part of the Perkins Strategic plan. Adaptive Technology Consulting fits perfectly into that technology plan.

As president of ATC I have been honored to work with our wonderful staff to provide superior products and services to our customers. We have seen the need grow even faster than our company has grown. Our customers have taught us how to best fill their needs. We need to find ways to increase what we do and make sure we can provide these services for many years to come.

The story of ATC is familiar to most of you. In 1994, I started Adaptive Technology Consulting. ATC was a dream that had been taking shape in my imagination for several years. I wanted to be able to offer total systems consisting of the most appropriate devices to meet the exact needs of the customer. We grew and expanded more into low vision and into working with people who have learning disabilities. Our staff consists of the finest professionals in the field. Perkins School for the Blind is giving me and ATC the chance to take the next step. The services that the excellent Perkins staff is offering on campus, nationally, and internationally, this new combined team has the ability to change the future opportunities for people who are blind and low vision.

Together we will offer our unmatched customer support, training and evaluations to a wider audience. We will be able to serve people in New England and beyond. Together with the long standing manufacturers that we all depend on, our talented staff and valued customers we will improve more lives and help more people with disabilities compete and succeed today and in the future.

Along with Perkins we will advocate to promote literacy through the use of Braille. Working with Perkins is going to help all of us at ATC meet our personal and professional goals.

Personally, this plan gives me still another wonderful chance to make a difference and make the world a better place. Please join all of us in celebrating this wonderful news.

Sincerely,

Gayle Yarnall

It seems as if I do a lot of writing about travel or reading. The great thing is that the two things can be so easily combined. I have a wonderful new reading tool that just happens to travel very easily. This wonderful device has also cleared a few shelves of my book case.

I am returning all the taped books that I have been hoping to read. I don’t know how they pile up the way they do. I am putting away my almost completely broken 4 track cassette player. I hope I will never have to buy another one. They seem to break far too quickly. I am going to let National Library Service(NLS) and the Overdrive project store my books for me.

My new best friend is the Victor Stream from HumanWare. This product can be purchased off our web site at www.adaptivetech.net or from another HumanWare dealer. The cost is $329. In a few weeks we will have a tutorial on our web site for downloading books from NLS.

NLS has started a pilot program with several thousand books and 19 magazines that can be downloaded to the Victor Stream. You can also download text files, Book Share books and books from Audible.com.

The Victor Stream is about the size of a Dove Bar, the ice-cream not the soap. You can easily hold it in one hand and use the thumb on that hand to operate the controls. There are buttons in the standard phone pad configuration plus a few extra buttons. The unit is totally logical and easy to learn. There is a built in speaker that lets you listen without headphones and of course a headphone jack. You can adjust the speed, volume and tone. The books are stored on a standard SD card and the card is easy to insert and remove. You will never break a fingernail on this product. You can move easily through a book and find text that you have marked. You can insert book marks including recorded notes. You can keep information that you record to keep track of your life, in a separate directory. You can move through magazines by article and even hear how long it will take to read that article. You have ten minutes until your ride gets there? Find an article that takes less than ten minutes. So far I have read Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and People. I am giving up on People. I don’t know any of those people; don’t they have a magazine called Old People? Now I am reading U.S. News and World Report. I will be so up to date.

The built in sleep switch is great. You have four time choices. I even use it to keep track of time. You can always ask the unit how much time of the book has past and how much you have to go and what is the total reading time. You can switch between your magazine and your book and never lose your place. You can read for 15 hours between charges and it only takes a few hours to charge.

Can you tell I love my Victor Stream?

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about this device.

I seem to do a lot of talking about weather and seasons. I guess I am one of those people who really need light and sun.

Last night, my husband and I left the house at about 6:00 pm to go to a dinner meeting. It was the first cold night and it was totally dark. Next week, when daylight savings time goes away, it will be dark by 5:00pm. It will be months before it is light at dinner time and I really don’t like all that dark.

November may not be all that cold but it is so far away from April. In two more days I will be entering my least favorite month. The sun will become a casual visitor and I won’t see sunsets other than the weekends. I know we will gain another hour of light in the morning but I get up so early it really won’t matter. I can do just fine without the sun in the morning. All I really need is coffee to get me going. When it is dark at 5:00 pm, I just want to cuddle up by the fire and go to sleep. This puts a big dent in my productivity. It also means I don’t want to go out. It is too cold and too dark.

You would wonder why I don’t live in the south. I would gain a little more light and it would be warmer. The trouble is I really like having four seasons.

I guess I will continue missing the sun and counting the days until spring. If I have enough good books and the dog is willing to share the recliner with me, I WILL SURVIVE.

I have been blessed with the chance to do more than my share of traveling to some very wonderful places. I never stop being amazed at the wonderful people and places that have touched my life. Two weeks ago I made what might have seemed like a simple trip to Chicago that ended up meaning more to me than I ever expected.

I don’t know if I have ever mentioned that my sister is married to my husband’s brother. We all met at the same time about 16 years ago. This makes my sister my sister-in-law. She still only gets one Christmas gift. This arrangement is actually a lot of fun and has brought us all much closer together.

Several months ago, I think it was in January, my sister got in touch with her old friend from elementary school. I should mention here that our parents moved us to Florida the summer I was about to enter my senior year and just after my sister graduated from 8th grade. Anyway, it turned out that my sister Peggy’s friend’s mom and dad still lived in the old neighborhood house. We decided that we needed to take advantage of the fact that we still had connections where we grew up, and visit as soon as we could.

We planned a trip for the middle of October. It was actually the first opportunity we were all available for travel, and we always loved fall in Chicago.

I will try to explain how wonderful our childhood neighborhood actually was. We grew up in a neighborhood of about 50 houses surrounded by forest on three sides and a sort of wild golf course on the other. It is called Old Edge Brook and has been listed recently as an historic district. Most of the homes were built at the end of the 19th century. There are no through streets to the outside world. From the bigger roads you would have no idea this neighborhood existed. We actually walked a paved path through the woods to go to school every day. This little piece of paradise is actually within the city limits of Chicago.

We were staying in a downtown hotel paid for by hotel points earned over years of conference stays. Although the downtown of Chicago is certainly beautiful it was not a big part of our childhood. Other than our annual visit to the eye doctor, lunch with my dad, and a walk past the beautiful department store Christmas windows, we did not frequent that part of town.

We took the train from Union station to Edge Brook. It was a beautiful unseasonably warm day. We got off the train at the little neighborhood station and the world spun back 43 years. Peggy and I began walking through our past while Steve and Neal took pictures and reminisced about their own childhood. Our first stop was at the former Lockwood Castle, a local ice cream place that we were never allowed to go as kids. Our parents had some silly idea that the wrong kind of kids hung out there. This, by the way, was totally not true. Now it is a Starbucks. I had a fattening frozen drink just to spite my folks. Then we walked to our elementary school. We tried to remember what every store used to be when we were young. We could not believe how short the walk was. It seemed so much longer in the stories we had told our children. Next we visited our church and we were able to go inside and explore. Again things seemed smaller but amazingly unchanged. My body seemed to remember where every step and every turn awaited us. We picked up a church directory to explore later in the day.

Next we headed to our old neighborhood. We passed a coffee shop that we did not remember but it had been at least an hour since our frozen drinks and since the other priority of this trip was eating, we stopped for a snack. The food was great and helped the brother’s enthusiasm.

We took the old path through the woods. I loved watching Peggy kick the autumn leaves. She lives in Florida now and might not have seen autumn since we left Chicago. We explored every street of Old Edge Brook. Not that there are many. I had more vision then and I saw every house and every tree as clear as day in my mind. Peggy told me about changes but I don’t think they registered. It was all I could do to keep myself from ringing door bells and calling out to my friends. What a gift it was to grow up in this piece of heaven.

Next we had lunch with Peggy’s friend’s parents. Yes another meal and we all did pretty well to clean our plates. They were so very sweet and it was such a pleasure to eat in their dining room again. Although we probably only ate in their kitchen in the old days. They had the key to our old house. The people who live in their now were gone on vacation but it had been arranged for us to have access to the house.

I know I am rambling on, please put up with me for a bit longer.

Going into my old house was unbelievable. All the remodeling just melted away and I kept explaining how things used to be. Again my body knew where every step was. Old houses have a lot of funny steps and this is a big old house. I think I might have had the advantage being blind because I saw everything the way it used to be. My mom and dad worked very hard, one room at a time, to make this big old house a show place. My old room, the original maid’s room, complete with back staircase, was now a bathroom. My wonderful closet was just as I left it 43 years ago. Maybe it was neater.

We ended the day with a walk down to the brook that gave the area its name and never even gave the trolls that used to live there a thought.

Then it was back to the train. It was a quiet ride back to down town while Peggy and I replayed the day in our hearts and minds. I think the boys were dreaming of their next meal.

Thanks Peggy, for describing everything to me and sharing the day. Thanks to Neal and Steve for putting up with the two of us.

There are three voting experiences that have stood out in my many decades of voting. The first was the first time I voted. I was 21 years old and had one child in a stroller and I was pregnant with another. I was hardly more than a child myself, but voting made me feel like I might be able to change the world my children would grow up in. The second was when I was about 45. I went to the place I voted and when I gave them my address they had four registered voters living at that address. All three of my children were also voting. Maybe they would change the world.

I just had another cool voting experience. I was able to use one of the new, totally accessible voting machines. Frankly, I was not excited about accessible voting. I have never minded having a close friend or my husband help me vote. I knew, as one of the three blind people in my town, I was going to have to use this machine. I make my living in the technology field so I am supposed to look forward to trying new things. There is not enough coffee in the world to make me look forward to using a new piece of technology before 8:30 in the morning. Yet, there I was, stuck having to look enthused.

After what seemed a bit like a Saturday Night Live routine I had headphones on and I was voting. The machine was simple to use and even I was able to do it alone, with my normal caffeine intake. At the next election I will walk in with my Braille list of selected candidates, I no longer trust my memory, and vote all by myself.

Here is hoping they don’t change the machines.

Maybe if we all keep on voting we can still change the world.

I totally understand that no one at Google is likely to ever read this letter but it does my heart good to write it.

As we age, we start to forget things that we never thought we would forget. Recently I forgot who sang “HANG DOWN YOUR HEAD TOM DOOLEY”. I could remember everything this group sang, I could remember most of the words, but for the life of me, I could not remember the name of the group. No one around me could remember it either but that really did not help. Most of the people were far too young or were never folk song junkies. I went home and asked my husband, who is a folk song junky. He also could not remember. He is younger than I am. We both felt like total losers. Senility was truly kicking in.

Then we remembered our friend Mr. Google. We typed in “hit song Tom Dooley” and there was our answer.

I personally think services like Google are going to help us all hide our age better than surgery and make up.

A few years ago, Debbie Gross asked my husband and me to be on the board of her summer camp, Inter-Actions. This is a summer camp for children who are blind or low vision. It is a true summer camp. There are no computers or lessons in Braille or anything else that is not just plain fun. There are real cabins and hiking trails and water activities.

My husband is one of those people who spent the summers of his youth at camp. His best, long term friends are camp buddies. I went to camp a couple of times as a child but the more important attraction for me was the fact that blind children had the chance to go to a real camp.

A couple of years ago the camp relocated. During this process the kids were asked about what features of camp were most important to them. Unanimously they agreed that they needed a time when there were no sighted kids around. They wanted a chance to just be kids and not the “blind child” among the sighted kids.

Somehow we never actually made it up to the camp until this year. On July 5th, Michelle, her son and I went to camp for dinner and the talent show that was part of the first ever music camp at Inter-Actions. Michelle has two kids who are counselors at camp and she also was glad for a chance to visit with them.

Dinner was great and we had a chance to walk around the camp. I was ready to be a kid again and get my turn at camp. I think I am just a bit too old. However, I did get to experience the talent show.

Duy Bui, of the Manhattan School of Music, helped Debbie run the music camp. He is a truly magnificent pianist who happens to be low vision. During the week the students had received drumming lessons by an African drummer and Choral singing lessons. I knew we were in for a real treat. I also knew I would not get through this without crying. I cry in every music performance by any group of children. I used to embarrass my kids when they were in school.

I think every child at camp took part in the show. Some kids did solo pieces and they all took part in group singing. A couple of those kids could have been on American Idol. The best part was how happy they all were. They wrote and performed a song about camp. They sang a special song they wrote for Duy Bui, However my absolute favorite was a song written to the melody of “IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN”. I will close this entry by sharing the words to this song. These words were written by some of the campers.

If I Only Had An Eye

If I only had an eye,
I could see the bugs that bite and the fireflies at night,
if I only had an eye.

I could see the dogs a poopin,
and the ice-cream man a scoopin,
if I only had an eye.

I could see the constellations and the maps of all the nations,
if I only had an eye.

I could see the fire glowing and the shower overflowing,
if I only had an eye.

I could see the gimp a knotting and the bananas over rotting,
if I only had an eye.

Even though our sight is bad, camp can always make us glad,
so forget about the eye.

I did not know that I would end up crying because I was laughing so hard.

Three cheers to Debbie and all the kids at Inter-Actions.

If you want to learn more about this camp, visit www.inter-actions.org.

Today is one of those days that make you glad you live in New England. The windows in my house are wide open and the sun is pouring in. We have about a dozen different kinds of birds chattering away. Our precious new lawn is thriving.

My husband is away at a conference and I am dog-sitting for my daughter’s two dogs. Add them to my dog, and that makes three dogs, so I am never alone. I mean never. A friend of mine is coming over for lunch and she is going to help me do the final edit on a short biography of my dad that is going to go into a book I am working on. I can’t think of a better way to spend Father’s Day. My dad has contributed both mentally and physically to who I am. I am proud to take after him in so many ways. Sometimes I am not sure if I actually inherited certain traits or if he drummed them into me.

I certainly owe my stubbornness and lack of fear to him. He also taught me to love travel, gardening, surrounding myself with color and so much more.

I should explain what this book is about. When my dad was in the army during WWII, he sent home a series of cartoons that documented his experiences. My mom put them in an album and they are one of our family’s most prized possessions. I have never been able to see these drawings but I have taken much pleasure in watching people react to them. I began to realize that this book should never be divided and the only solution was to have it printed. As long as I was going to go the through the process of printing it, why not have it published?

Now I have entered the world of book designers and printers and ISBN numbers. It is great fun. I will enjoy thinking about my father’s life and trying to explain him as best I can to the world.

My father died 16 years ago and I think of him every day. I doubt he spends his time watching over me. He gave me 44 years of his life. I figure he found other things to do with eternity.

If your father is still alive, take time to have special moments they might have to last you a very long time.