November 2016

So this is how Tuesday goes at CCB sometimes.

First thing this morning Alie Mays came for our “Birding by Ear” class. Seven of us reviewed recordings of local bird songs, then walked over to Sterne Park, where we heard mallards, doves, goldfinches and of course Canada geese. Today’s mascot was the belted kingfisher, an unexpected find. He just kept calling and calling as he circled over the pond.

In the Senior Resource Room something was happening called sugar scrub. Jenny Callahan led Seniors in making sugar scrub, using sugar (surprise) and oil and scents like lavender and almond. Whatever it is, it sure sounded fun to make, judging by the giggles and cackles.

You hear from us all the time about what’s going on at the Center, so here’s a chance to get a student’s story from the very first.

Graham arrived in Denver from Brooklyn in mid-October, and he’s been blogging each week about his time at the Center for his friends back home and wherever. Check out his blog, See What I Did There.

Yes – Colorado’s single largest charitable giving day is barely a week away! And you can preorder your charitable gift to CCB for delivery on December 6!

On that Tuesday, the Colorado Center for the Blind will be one of nearly 2000 Colorado nonprofits who will receive contributions. During the same 24-hour period last year, more than $25 million was given. Some of those donations were pre-scheduled on the COGives.org web site.

Contributions received on December 6 help qualify us for a portion of the $1 million incentive fund! That’s why prescheduling is important – to make sure your gift to CCB counts toward our total to qualify for the incentive fund.

#### What to do

Before learning to carve a turkey, a blind person can greatly benefit from learning the bird by touch – how things are connected and how they will come apart. Since our students and Home Management staff started preparations for our own Thanksgiving meal (held a week before the actual holiday) Dishon Spears led students through this discovery process with turkeys that had been cooked and then refrigerated over night.

After that are some shots of all the food we ate! We have a lot to be thankful for!

We were more than ready by noon last Thursday! We’d been waiting for this meal for two weeks, smelling the roasting turkeys and the pies and so much more! Of course, all of our students had a part in preparing it, so they’d been right in the kitchen smelling what we were at last all going to be very, very thankful for!

It’s an annual event. A week before Thanksgiving we hold our own Thanksgiving gathering at the Center prior to everyone’s dispersal to families and friends across the country. We start off after morning classes with an hour or so of potluck appetizers furnished by staff and maybe a game or two. It’s our time to be together, and it’s a big deal and a big meal.

A very big meal! This year, under the guidance of our Home Management Instructors Maureen, Shon and Delfina, our students prepared four turkeys, three kinds of stuffing, 30 pounds of potatoes, green bean-mushroom casserole (and one without), mac and cheese, a ham and pumpkin and pecan pies. There were candied yams and sweet potatoes and 100 homemade dinner rolls.

It’s that time again! Colorado’s largest day of online charitable giving is scheduled for Tuesday, December 6, and again featuring an incentive fund of $1 million from the Community First Foundation and First Bank.

It’s that time again! Colorado’s largest day of online charitable giving is scheduled for Tuesday, December 6, and again featuring an incentive fund of $1 million from the Community First Foundation and First Bank.

You might remember that CCB was lucky enough to be featured on 9News’ coverage of the statewide giving program in 2014 and 2015. We don’t expect to be on TV again this year, but we do count on and appreciate the contributions we receive on Colorado Gives Day each year. Most importantly, donations made online on December 6 help to qualify us for a part of the $1 million Incentive Fund – making your donated dollar go even farther!

It’s that time of the year. Just as we start to think about turkey and stuffing with cranberries, it’s time for blind kids in the area to get hands-on with shark innards!

As he has for more than a decade, Arapahoe Community College’s Biology Professor Terry Harrison will lead a shark dissection at CCB on Friday, November 18. Harrison has partnered with CCB to ensure that blind kids in Colorado get actual experience in this one aspect of the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Participants will handle the scalpels, determine sex, examine the lungs, liver and those sharp little dog shark teeth.

Start time is 10 a.m. on Friday and wraps up at 1 p.m. following pizza (no anchovies).

Students, teachers, or parents can contact Youth Services Director Brent Batron for more information or to reserve a spot – after all, there are only going to be so many sharks!

With just a week to go before the third annual exhibit, “Shared Visions Collaborative Artworks”, some Center art students traveled to Arapahoe Community College’s to make some art and to offer some feedback to painting students on their tactile works.

For their very first class with Ann Cunningham, the newest group of CCB art students composed objects on a flat plane and then used a thermoform machine put together by Ceramics Instructor Katie Caron. Some of the results are shown in the photo above – plastic sheets that, using a combination of heat and a vacuum, conform to the shapes of the objects.

It’s basically the same process used in product packaging, but way more legit.

And now raise your lemonade glass in a toast to employees at the Curtis Hotel!

Last weekend, at the 2016 National Federation of the Blind of Colorado Convention in Lone Tree, Marc Greytak of the Curtis Hotel in downtown Denver presented a check to CCB for $3141.25.

That’s pretty exciting, you bet! What makes this donation a bit more interesting, however, is that the money comes from the employees of the Curtis. The Colorado Center for the Blind was selected to be the beneficiary of the Curtis’s #WeLovetheCurtis giving program. Associates at the Curtis can give in a number of ways, including by payroll deduction or from proceeds from its Friday fund-raiser, the “Lemonade Stand.”

How did CCB get picked for the program, you might ask? Well, from our own Maryann Migliorelli , who is one of those Curtis Hotel employees and also president of the NFB of Colorado Boulder Chapter!

Thanks MaryAnn and all the associates at the Curtis – yes, #WeLovetheCurtis, too!

Got about 20 minutes to be wowed?

We’re just back from our 2016 National Federation of the Blind of Colorado Convention in Lone Tree from October 27 to 30. All staff and students attended and, since we’re an NFB training center (the NFB of Colorado started the Center in 1988), Executive Director Julie Deden always makes a report the the entire convention about all that’s happened in the last year. It’s always a highlight of an affiliate convention that is full of highlights.

This year Julie’s report included this video of 2016 highlights and retrospective of our graduates this year. But you’ll have to wait till the end for the really, really cool part …