Two subjects:
First, try going to the ACB and/or NFB web sites and look for their
techy links. There are some very bright blind techies out and about,
willing to assist those of us who are reluctant to enter the modern
world. For many years, due to my work, I would wind up at the Ferry
terminal in Seattle. There was a public coin phone and I would call
Cathy and give her the time the Ferry docked at Bainbridge Island, and
she would time it so when I stepped off the Ferry, she was pulling
into the parking lot. One fine day the public pay phone was missing.
I bought a basic cell phone, learned to use it, and have had it for
years. I am now at home most of the time, so a desk top computer is
the best tool for communicating with the world. And Gmail is
providing me with more communication than I can comfortably handle,
although I'm thinking of signing up with Face Book.
Second Issue: Just because my emotions are tied to music from the
30's, 40's, 50's and 60's, does not mean that I think of them as the
best music in all of Creation. They are, simply put, my personal
memory bank. Some great music is being created today. But it will be
my grandchildren's memory bank. I was fortunate to have parents who
believed in exposing us children to a wide variety of experiences,
including what music we listened to. Our school also had field trips
to the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, where we were taught to appreciate
classical music. My mother listened to Country Western music in the
mornings, along with Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, a radio variety
program, as well as the current pop music. My dad had a side business
as a radio repairman, taking over half of my bedroom as his workshop.
Late into the night he would be working on radios, while tuning into
the popular music and programs. From 1939 until 1949 I absorbed a
wide range of leisure time listening, with my ear pushed up to the
thin partition walling off my bed.
My 48 year old son, our middle child, listens to noises and scratches
that cause me to grab the tuner and try to get the station back on its
frequency. But that's the stuff he grew up on, listening to his
little radio each night. I think of this when I begin to attempt to
explain how the world was back when I was a boy. The words can never
connect the real emotions that I felt.
But nonetheless, he tries to do the same with his own children,
bringing a smile to my face.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/11/21, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have a question. Maybe I should say questions plural. On a list where
people think that fifty-two-year-old music recordings are something new
this might not be the best place to ask, but I am not subscribed to any
lists right now where this would be on topic. So since nothing is off
topic here I thought I would at least start here. My land line phone is
acting up. Right now I am lucky if I get a dial tone instead of some
kind of mysterious beeping and incoming calls are being cut off before I
can answer. I have called the phone company to fix it now twice and both
times it started acting up soon afterwards. So I am thinking that the
problem might be in the physical phone rather than the line. That would
call for buying a new phone. If I buy a new phone I am thinking that it
might be about time for me to get myself into the twenty-first century
like everyone else and give up my land line for a cell phone as my only
phone. But if I do that I am going into it blind in more ways than just
that my eyes don't work. I have been wanting a smart phone for a long
time because I am fascinated by the many and varied cool things that one
can do with them, but they are expensive and I don't trust myself to be
able to learn using a touch screen very well. I always have been a lot
better at learning things that you know than I have been at learning
things you do. That is why I used to be able to take a lab and lecture
course and ace the lecture and nearly flunk the lab. I know that
there are a lot of choices that are not smart phones too and some that
actually have buttons. I think I could get along much better with
buttons. But I don't know a lot about all the choices that are available
and which work better for a blind person. Most of the people I know are
so sight oriented that they can't imagine a blind person working any
device. So does anyone on this list have any advice? Do any of you use a
cell phone yourselves? If so, can you say something about why it was a
good choice for you and how much it costs and anything else you might
have to say about it?
___
--
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept