Just another Blind Librarian

I wrote a blog, loving what is Left while Living with Low Vision (2012-2020), that promoted the early screening of children for potentially blinding eye diseases and taught people with vision impairments how to live with their condition rather than merely cope with it. Those blog posts are being compiled into a collection of essays. This new blog will attempt to expose and restore the services, accessibility, and accommodations that were lost during and since the pandemic.

 

The following poem was published in that first blog.  It shows what it is like to live with low vision which I did for sixty years.

 

Hidden Handicap

 

You wouldn't know it to look at me.

You wouldn't know there was anything wrong at all

Until I walked into a wall.

You wouldn't know as your eyes met mine

That I wouldn't be seeing your tender sweet smile

And being stuck up is not my style.

You wouldn't know.

You wouldn't know by my needlepoint

that I couldn't see stars in the evening sky

or shiny airplanes flying by.

You wouldn't know.

You wouldn't know as I drove in my car

that I wouldn't be going very far.

You wouldn't know.

You wouldn't know it to look at me.

That's why I'm telling you these things today.

So, you will understand and stay.

Because you'll know.

 

In 1980, I managed the children's room of the Madison-Jefferson County Public Library in Indiana and nobody knew. After becoming a certified teacher/librarian and lecturing

courses in children’s literature, reading, and writing at several universities in Michigan, nobody knew. When I earned an Educational Specialist Degree in Curriculum, Teaching,

and Educational Policy at Michigan State University, with an emphasis in Literacy, nobody knew.  Even though One of my research topics was vision, literacy, and learning because

I was born with open angle glaucoma that wasn’t diagnosed until I was twenty-two years of age, nobody knew. Five eye operations at The University of Michigan kept the

early vision loss from progressing, but I became legally blind in 2001 due to inoperable cataracts, but nobody knew.

 

When I started to carry a white cane, everybody knew.  I was welcomed as a disability advocate at The University of Michigan School of Public Health and the School of Information Studies where I was invited to speak about preparing patient education materials in multimedia formats.  I was welcomed by local councils and commissions for disability issues and concerns as a member.  I was welcomed by the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired and cohosted several writing workshops while attending many others via ZOOM.

 

My greatest honor came when I was welcomed by a group of other librarians at the award-winning Ann Arbor District Library where we helped to bring the services of the Washtenaw Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped into this public library.  During and after the pandemic, Outreach Services have been sending books, CDs, DVDs, and other requested materials through the US Postal Service.  I am determined to help audio book lovers move off-line and into their public libraries for in-person events after meeting remotely via ZOOM for several years.   

 

After I started using a white cane and everybody knew I had a visual impairment, I was not welcomed by employers, particularly in higher education.  That is why I turned to writing and self-publishing.  Writing is a wonderful hobby, but it does not replace my first love, libraries.  What makes working as a librarian attractive isn’t the books but the opportunity to solve problems by locating and disseminating needed information.

Blind librarians and writers have been around for a long time.  Two famous ones, David Faucheux and Jorge Luis Borges, are worth checking out.