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Post by inuvik on Oct 14, 2007 12:52:34 GMT -5
I don't have speakers, so admittedly I may have missed something here. But, isn't this really just paint by numbers by touch? I wouldn't praise a sighted person for that. To me, the artistry comes in the creating. In this, he's just coloring essentially.
Hoping she won't be smited,
Inuvik
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Post by Duchess of Lashes on Oct 14, 2007 13:50:36 GMT -5
No smite for you! Not having speakers definitely leaves much out of his story. But the creativity and the artistry is all him. What he does is not at all paint by numbers. He takes a blank canvas, draws his designs first, and, using a raised paint outlines his vision for that particular piece so that once dry he will know where to paint. I find it fascinating that he mixes his own paint, which for a sighted person would be difficult enough. Then by fingertip touch of his canvas, he figures out where and what to paint.
I think he's absolutely remarkable.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2007 20:19:52 GMT -5
Paint by numbers?  ??!!!!!!!!!! Since you don't have speakers, a visit to his website might give you better insight into what it is he does - he is an absolute inspiration. |
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Post by inuvik on Oct 15, 2007 15:06:57 GMT -5
Something I had not considered.
Hybrids a unique problem for blind
Some say vehicles too quiet to be heard at city's intersections
By Vanessa Miller
Sunday, October 14, 2007
David Dawson, executive director of the Audio Information Network of Colorado, stands along Central Avenue in east Boulder. Dawson and other blind people say they're concerned about not being able to hear increasingly popular hybrid vehicles on the roads.
When David Dawson crosses the street, he said, he's generally just as safe — maybe safer — than a typical, sighted pedestrian.
Dawson, 65, of Boulder, said that as a blind man he's gotten used to enlisting his keen sense of hearing to pick up on traffic near an intersection.
But even his well-trained ears aren't much help when it comes to gas-electric hybrid vehicles, which are becoming more prominent on the streets of "green" Boulder.
"They don't make any noise," said Dawson, executive director of the Boulder-based Audio Information Network of Colorado. "It's going to become more and more of a problem for blind people."
Especially, he said, for blind people in communities like Boulder.
"Hybrid cars are coming into use sooner in Boulder than they are in lots of other places," Dawson said.
Deborah Kent Stein, chairwoman of the National Federation of the Blind's Committee on Automotive and Pedestrian Safety, has raised concerns nationally about hybrids, which make virtually no noise at slower speeds when they're running on electric power. She said they pose a real risk for blind people, such as herself, who listen for traffic noise to determine if it's safe to cross the street.
The National Federation of the Blind, an advocacy group for 1.3 million legally blind Americans, has asked the automotive industry and state and federal agencies to impose minimum sound standards for hybrids. As more visually impaired communities jump behind the issue — and more reports of accidents and close calls surface — some officials are starting to listen.
Some auto manufacturers, including Toyota, said they're studying the issue, along with the Association of International Auto Manufacturers Inc. and a committee under the Society of Automotive Engineers.
But the U.S. Department of Transportation hasn't yet looked into the matter, and none of the automakers has made any promises of change.
The rise in gas prices has made hybrid cars more popular, automotive experts say. New hybrid-vehicle registrations rose more than 49 percent nationwide in the first seven months of 2007 over the same period last year, according to R.L. Polk & Co., an automotive research firm.
Stein said she's done some unscientific tests to show the dangers of hybrid vehicles. Blind people, standing in parking lots or on sidewalks, were asked to signal when they heard hybrid models drive by.
"People were making comments like, 'When are they going to start the test?' And it would turn out that the vehicle had already done two or three laps around the parking lot," Stein said.
She said some amateur inventors are even creating a noise-making device that drivers could buy and install on their vehicles.
Kerry Kuck, 50, of Littleton, said he's not bothered by silent vehicles — in fact, the man, who's blind, said he's more annoyed by vehicles with loud engines.
"It's loud cars that drown out other cars at major intersections that's the major problem," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Vanessa Miller at 303-473-1329 or millerv@dailycamera.com.
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Post by inuvik on Oct 15, 2007 15:10:35 GMT -5
No smite for you! Not having speakers definitely leaves much out of his story. But the creativity and the artistry is all him. What he does is not at all paint by numbers. He takes a blank canvas, draws his designs first, and, using a raised paint outlines his vision for that particular piece so that once dry he will know where to paint. I find it fascinating that he mixes his own paint, which for a sighted person would be difficult enough. Then by fingertip touch of his canvas, he figures out where and what to paint. Thanks D of L. That is remarkable then! |
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Post by krissie on Nov 1, 2007 14:34:58 GMT -5
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Post by hoosier on Nov 1, 2007 18:05:19 GMT -5
I found it interesting that while he couldn't carry a gun he still had to be proficient with one! And the problems they encountered were the ones Jim faced on the show. Far-fetched? I don't think so.  |
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Post by inuvik on Nov 11, 2007 14:59:40 GMT -5
That is so unbelievable! It's also strange that many of the comments are way off topic--this is not a column about Mickey D's food!  |
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Post by bjobsessed on Nov 11, 2007 15:09:11 GMT -5
That is unbelievable all right, but good for him for not backing down. I'm sure his occupation helped with that. Hard to believe that many ignorant people work in one place especially when the sign says 'assistance dogs welcome.' I guess no one ever explained what that meant to anyone.
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Post by matilda on Nov 12, 2007 3:08:31 GMT -5
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I'm currently working with a colleague, a Paralympian no less but that's irrelevant except to say that she has some public recognition, on her new speech for her speaking engagements, called "I Was Sexually Harassed by a staff member from a major international carrier on the Basis of My Disability".
Yup that's right, a staff member leant down in her ear and told her that she didn't look like a person "in a wheelchair" was supposed to look and got more explicit. It's a cracker.
Same carrier that refused entry to a plane for the guide dog of Australia's Human Rights Commissioner. I kid you not.
Matilda
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Post by doobrah on Nov 15, 2007 8:13:22 GMT -5
Another way "war" is taking its toll.
War Can Be Anything But Easy On The Eyes
Ocular Wounds Outnumbering Amputations 2 To 1
(USA TODAY 14 NOV 07) ... Gregg Zoroya
ARLINGTON, Va. — Two days before a 10-mile race here, Army 1st Lt. Ivan Castro is explaining how he will run tethered to another soldier — one who can see.
As he speaks, his wife lovingly extends her right hand to Castro’s face, fingers outstretched. But Evelyn Galvis pauses inches away.
“I used to be able to reach out and touch him, caress him, without telling him first, ‘I’m going to touch your face,’” she said. Now, “if I just reach out and touch him, he’ll startle.”
Castro, 40, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, is one of more than 1,100 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan — 13 percent of all seriously wounded casualties — to undergo surgery for damaged eyes. That is the highest percentage for eye wounds in any major conflict dating to World War I, according to research published in the Survey of Ophthalmology.
It’s a reflection of how eye injuries have become one of the most devastating consequences of a war in which roadside bombs, mortars and grenades are the most commonly used weapons against U.S. troops. Brain injuries and amputations have long been the focus of the damage such weapons are inflicting, but in recent weeks the Army has acknowledged that serious eye wounds have accumulated at almost twice the rate as wounds requiring amputations.
Body armor that protects vital organs and the skull is saving lives. But troops’ eyes and limbs remain particularly vulnerable to the blizzard of shrapnel from such explosions.
Each explosion unleashes large metal shards and thousands of fragments, said Army Col. Robert Mazzoli, an ophthalmological consultant to the Army surgeon general. “Those small missiles are generally innocuous if they hit the [protected] forehead, face [or] chest, but are devastating when they hit the eye,” he said.
Surgical facilities are kept close to the fighting, so troops can be treated in minutes. Partial or total vision has been restored in most cases involving eye injuries, military statistics show. But hundreds of troops have been left with impaired vision, and dozens have been blinded.
Troops in Iraq routinely wear protective eyewear, but it doesn’t always work. When a roadside bomb in Baghdad blew a hole through the heavily armored vehicle carrying Army Sgt. Luis Martinez last April, the force from the blast stripped off his helmet, headset and goggles. After the dust settled, Martinez, 38, could see nothing out of his left eye and only streaks of blood in his right. He waited for help, terrified about the damage to his eyes.
“That was the first thing I asked” hospital personnel, the National Guard soldier recalled. “Am I going to be blind?”
Surgeons later restored vision to his right eye, although bits of glass are embedded there. He remains blind in his left.
“At least God was kind enough to protect me, to keep my right eye and see my family,” said Martinez, of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, who is married and the father of three.
Formidable challenges await troops who return home blind or with serious eye injuries. In the most severe cases, they will struggle to cope emotionally and financially.
About 70 percent of all sensory perception is through vision, said Army Maj. R. Cameron VanRoekel, a staff optometrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. As a result, the families of visually impaired soldiers wrestle with a contradiction: The wounded often have hard-driving personalities that have helped them succeed in the military. Now dependent on others, they find it difficult to accept help.
Because the Pentagon has no rehabilitation services for the blind, the path to recovery often leads directly to the Department of Veterans Affairs. VA operates 10 centers across the country for blind rehabilitation that teach visually impaired veterans how to function in society. The centers have 241 beds, and it takes an average of nearly three months to get in. Iraq and Afghanistan casualties go to the front of the line, said Stan Poel, VA director of rehabilitation services for the blind. So far, 53 have enrolled in the blind rehabilitation programs, VA says.
The department plans to open three more centers beginning in 2010, Poel said.
‘He has no light in his life’
Even now, more than a year after her husband’s return from Iraq, Connie Acosta is taken aback to find her home dark after sunset, the lights off as though no one is there.
Then she finds him — sitting in a recliner in their Santa Fe Springs, Calif., house, listening to classic rock. Sgt. Maj. Jesse Acosta was blinded in a mortar attack 22 months ago. He doesn’t need the lights.
That realization often makes Connie cry.
“You kind of never get used to the fact that he really can’t see,” she said. “He has no light in his life at all.”
The tiny piece of shrapnel that blinded Acosta, 50, an Army reservist, father of four and grandfather of three, was precise in its destruction.
On the morning of Jan. 16 last year, Acosta led soldiers on a 3-mile fitness run across Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq. Suddenly, insurgents attacked the camp with mortars.
Acosta remembers that he stopped, turned to yell at his soldiers and then dived for cover.
“Bam! That was it,” he recalled. “Lights out.”
An explosion about 60 feet away sent a piece of shrapnel — perhaps three-quarters of an inch long — through his left eye. It struck his brain and came out his right eye.
“It was a perfect hit,” Acosta said.
Rushed to the Air Force Hospital at Anaconda, he spent seven hours in surgery. Army Maj. Raymond Cho, an ophthalmologist, removed Acosta’s right eye and carefully reassembled his left one.
“I didn’t want him waking up missing both eyes and wondering for the rest of his life, ‘Gosh, could they have saved at least one?’” Cho said. “So he knows that we did everything we could.”
Acosta regained consciousness as he was being returned to the U.S. In Germany, a doctor told him that his right eye was gone and his left eye, although stitched together, likely would never see light.
“He said, ‘You’re going to have to start a whole new life from here on,’” Acosta recalled.
“I go, ‘So I won’t be able to see my kids? My grandkids? Nobody? I won’t be able to see blue skies?’
“He said, ‘Nope.’
“I just sat there. What could I do? A lot of things went through my mind,” Acosta recalled. “Am I going to be accepted this way? Am I going to be rejected? I was pretty independent all my life, and I did everything. So it was pretty tough.”
VA plans more clinics
Pentagon doctors can rebuild eyes, reconstruct eye sockets and nurse casualties back to health, but troops with serious vision problems who want to learn how to adapt into civilian life must rely on VA centers that also serve the elderly and other veterans.
VA plans to invest $40 million this fiscal year to create 55 outpatient clinics across the nation, providing rehabilitation for veterans learning to cope with partial vision, says James Orcutt, VA’s director for ophthalmology.
The department also is taking part in two clinical trials focusing on artificial vision, said Ronald Schuchard, director of the Atlanta VA rehabilitation research and development center. The trials involve implanting silicon chips in eyes. The chips act as receptors that can transform light into electrical signals that can be transmitted to the brain. It is cutting-edge research, Schuchard said.
However, Orcutt said, “I think we’re a long way from a practical use of some of these.”
At the VA’s rehab centers for the blind, specialists teach orientation and mobility skills. Visually impaired veterans learn to use a white cane, public transportation and perform daily routines. They also are offered computer instruction and the use of special scanners for reading text. They are assessed and treated, if necessary, for psychological readjustment to their sight loss.
VA does not provide guide dogs, but it helps link veterans with guide-dog schools that commonly provide a dog and training virtually free to veterans, Poel said.
Iraq veterans sometimes find VA blind rehab programs, which cater largely to elderly veterans, to be a poor fit for a younger generation. Castro said he felt somewhat out of place during rehab at a VA facility in Augusta, Ga.
After the Army sent Jesse Acosta to a VA center for the blind in Palo Alto, Calif., for rehabilitation in January 2006, he and his wife became unhappy with the facility, describing it as having a ”nursing home” atmosphere. It is a five-hour drive from his home.
“It did not fit my needs,” Jesse Acosta said.
He left VA after a few months and was accepted, free of charge, into the Junior Blind of America rehab program near his home in Santa Fe Springs. Last month, he completed training with his new guide dog at The Seeing Eye school in Morristown, N.J., and now has Charlie, a German shepherd.
Now all that is left, Acosta said, is figuring out the rest of his life.
He has fought a medical discharge from the Army until his medical care is complete. Ultimately, he will earn disability income for his wounds. Acosta was an energy technician with Southern California Gas Co. before he was called to active duty.
He is still with the company, though unpaid, and a different job awaits him — one tailored to his disability, Connie Acosta said. It’s unclear whether Jesse will want it, she says.
“We’re hoping for the best,” she said. “He’s the type that constantly has to be kept busy. We always have an agenda. I have a calendar going constantly with things happening.”
It begins when they wake, and he wants to know the weather and the color of the sky, she said. Nothing in the house can be moved; he’s memorized the location of every chair and table.
He has his routines and chores, including weightlifting in the backyard or fiddling with the fuel pump on the 1969 Dodge Dart. (He fixed it.) Daughter Brittany, 14, is mustered into duty to operate the computer for her father until she pleads for a break.
“Taking care of Jesse has been an experience,” Connie Acosta said. “He’s a sergeant major in the Army, and they’re tough people. He’s a tough person to live with and then, worse, being blind.
“Sometimes, he can be demanding. And I deal with it. I’m used to making sure that everything’s in line. That he got everything. And that’s basically all I’ve got to do.”
‘I want to feel productive’
Castro thought he knew how his life would play out.
A former Army Ranger who had worked his way out of the enlisted ranks to earn an officer’s commission, Castro commanded a scout reconnaissance platoon and dreamed of one day become a Special Forces team leader.
Instead, the last thing he would ever see was the colorless expanse of an Iraqi roof in Yusufiyah, Iraq.
A mortar round landed a few feet away from him there Sept. 2, 2006. The blast killed two other soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and sent shrapnel tearing into Castro’s left side. The explosion damaged a shoulder, broke an arm, fractured facial bones and collapsed his lungs. Doctors amputated part of a finger.
The blast also drove the frame of his protective eyewear into his face. When Castro regained consciousness days later at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., his wife, Evelyn, sat at his bedside. She told him his right eye was gone, but doctors hoped to salvage vision in his left.
The surgeons later removed one last piece of shrapnel from that eye. When they took off his bandages and flashed a light for Castro to see, he thought the eye was still covered. “That’s when he told me, ‘Ivan, you’re not going to be able to see again,’” Castro recalled. “I swore [it was like] I was standing between the World Trade Center and the two towers had just come down on my shoulders.”
From that moment on, through convalescence and rehabilitation, Castro would struggle to regain a measure of independence.
Castro has become an advocate of rehabilitation funding for the blind, visiting members of Congress. After the 10-mile race in October, he ran the Marine Corps Marathon three weeks later, finishing in 4 hours, 14 minutes.
But he concedes that he needs his wife’s help. Evelyn Galvis gave up her career as a bilingual speech pathologist in Fayetteville, N.C., to help her husband. She supervises his medical care and drives him around.
She guides him through crowds, keeping him aware of raised edges in the walkway and steps. She reads his menu in restaurants and tells him where the food sits on the table. She watches him memorize his hotel room, starting from doorway and circling within the four walls to keep account of beds, the tables, the wastebasket, the bathroom.
“My husband used to be a very independent individual,” she said.
Castro hopes to stay in the military.
The Army has let several amputees stay in the ranks as well as one blind captain, who will be an instructor at West Point Military Academy after completing postgraduate education. Castro awaits word on his future; the Pentagon won’t comment on his situation.
“There’s a world in front of me I can’t predict or envision because I haven’t been there yet. I haven’t lived this yet. I haven’t lived blind,” he said. “All I ask is to stay in the Army and finish out my years ... I want to feel productive.”
The only good news for now is when he sleeps, Castro said.
“I’ve had dreams where I know I’m blind and, guess what? I’ve regained my vision,” he said.
But reality floods back each morning.
“There’s not a night that I don’t pray and ask God, when I wake up, that I wake up seeing.”
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Post by rducasey on Dec 5, 2007 18:07:14 GMT -5
Really cute....I have one of those yellows....Bailey. Karma for making my day. |
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??!!!!!!!!!! Since you don't have speakers, a visit to his website might give you better insight into what it is he does - he is an absolute inspiration.
