Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/03/13

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R..blind
From: "lea" <lea@whinydogpress.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 18:09:48 -0600
References: <00e101c2e9ab$7552b830$0316fea9@ccasony01>

BD,

I will share a little story...

Twelve years ago I was in a car wreck. I was a passenger in a little MG
convertible with the top down...a perfect mix of warmish-cool on a June 6
evening. My 6-year-old daughter, Lauren, was on my lap when a car ran a
light and we broad-sided it.

No seatbelts (it was before the days of them being law but, with the
exception of this ONE time, I always wore one anyway). My head hit the metal
encasement of the top of the windshield in a crash I can still hear in my
head to this day. I jumped out of the car, put Lauren down, scared to death
she's suffered a major head injury. She walked away with nary a scar.

I was not so lucky. As I stood up a flow of blood covered my white tank top
and continued down my legs. Within seconds I was surrounded by people
insisting I lay down in the street. Raising my hands to my head, they were
covered in blood but I had no idea where the blood was coming from and no
one would tell me. A man leaned over me...an off duty paramedic from the car
behind ours...I looked in his mirrored sunglasses to see bloody goo where my
right eye was supposed to be.

In the brief seconds it took for me to realize what I was looking at, I
realized I could be blind in one eye. I asked the man standing over me if my
eye was gone. And he simply said, "I don't know."

My eyeglasses had been cut in half by the impact and the top part of my
right lens shoved up in my eyelid, cutting skin, blood vessels and a nerve
(to this day I have no feeling in a portion of my forehead). When the
paramedics arrived and began prepping me for my ambulance ride to the
hospital, they cleaned me enough for me to know my eye was intact. And I
could see out of it.

Eighty some odd stitches later, both inside and outside my eye lid, I was
able to leave the hospital and go home. My vision, though blurry from the
impact for several days, is now fine as can be.

And while this experience doesn't make me a blind person, I can say honestly
that I came as close to being blind that day as I hope to ever get again.

This exchange about blind, deaf (mute, paralyzed, diseased, etc............)
has served only to make me grateful for the senses God gave me. And for the
senses I was fortunate enough not to lose.

Lea


- ----- Original Message -----
From: "bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 3:56 PM
Subject: RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R


> Lea, I wouldn’t tell anyone that they can’t do whatever they want to do -
as long as it's legal!;-) But the fact that a blind person can live alone,
go to college, work for Camp Fire Girls and organize events, has absolutely
nothing to do with whether that same person can be a photographer. Create
something using a camera? Sure. Create pictographs? Sure! Why not, that
could easily be done by touch and feel, arranging objects within borders in
a way that the persons brain finds pleasing. But photograph in the
traditional sense? No. No way. And to Kit - No, I don't think that if
Beethoven had been deaf from birth he would have been Beethoven.
>
> What I find most interesting about this discussion is the fact that we are
having it at all. In suppose I should be encouraged by it, and take from it
the thought that we have come far enough in our battles to eliminate
discrimination against those with what are now called "differences," that
some people don't believe there are any. That some people have come to
fervently believe, and insist that when all is said and done, there are no
differences between us; that there are absolutely no disabilities that
cannot be overcome; that we are all the same and are all able to do the same
things if only we try hard enough.
>
> Would that it were so.
>
> B. D.
>
> B. D.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of lea
> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 4:19 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R
>
>
> <<Do folks who can't see live in what we perceive as "darkness"?>>
>
> << Yes, Kit, they do. It's not what "we perceive" as darkness. It IS, by
definition, darkness.>>
>
> Not according to my blind friend...completely blind since birth, she sees
colors. The reason she knows is because not everything she sees is the same
tone, shade, color.
>
> My mother spent many years volunteering here in Kansas City at
CCVI...Children's Center for the Visually Impared...a special school
catering to the needs of blind children. I had occasion to visit there often
and it was there that I learned very few people are truly blind. Most blind
people see color or tone or shade. Some see shape and shadow depending on
the light. And yes, these people are considered 100% blind.
>
> You can think what you like about deaf people not writing, playing or
hearing music and blind people not shooting, drawing or painting pictures
but I can tell you I've not met a single blind person who hasn't been able
to do anything they put their mind to. That includes the young blind woman
who lived with my parents for a year as a house guest...the same person I
speak of above...she went to college, lived alone for many years (moved in
to my parents' home while getting her masters degree) works for Camp Fire
Girls and organized many events...including nature walks for young children.
She is an amazing woman. I'd be the last person (well, Kit and I might tie
> here) to tell her she couldn't photograph if she thought she could.
>
> Lea
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
> To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 1:34 PM
> Subject: RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R
>
>
> > ROFLOL!!!
> >
> > Yes, Kit, they do. It's not what "we perceive" as darkness. It IS, by
> definition, darkness.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Kit
McChesney
> | acmefoto
> > Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 12:03 PM
> > To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> > Subject: RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R
> >
> >
> > George--
> >
> > What difference does age make? Or if the person was blind from birth?
> Since images are themselves "created" in the mind anyway, is the ability
to visualize predicated on having had conventional sight, that is, using
one's eyes to see, or is it an ability that is innate? Do folks who can't
see live in what we perceive as "darkness"?
> >
> > Kit ;-)
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> > [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of George
> Lottermoser
> > Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 9:22 AM
> > To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> > Subject: RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R
> >
> >
> > kitmc@acmefoto.com (Kit McChesney | acmefoto)3/12/03
> >
> > >I beg to differ that a blind person cannot see, or visualize. Just
> > >ask a blind person.
> >
> > Which sort of Blind Person?
> > Blind from birth?
> > Blinded at age 18?
> > Blinded at age 65?
> >
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> >
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In reply to: Message from "bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net> (RE: [Leica] Autofocus Leica R)