It was a relatively calm morning after yesterday’s Bomb Cyclone, with 8 to 12 inches of snow and extreme winds blowing the flakes sideways and into drifts. Admittedly we had to skate our way into the Center before eight this morning, climbing over ice boulders thrown onto the sidewalk along Prince Street by snowplows, but we are here. We are grateful not to be among the nearly 80,000 customers in the Metro area without power this morning.

And we are on for tomorrow’s shark dissection with Arapahoe Community College’s Terry Harrison. We’re plowing and digging and de-icing our way out in plenty of time for that! And the sharks come frozen anyway!

¿Habla Español? ¿Es una persona mayor? Ven al grupo de apollo los invidentes al Centro de Colorado Colorado Para Personas Invidentes.

That’s right, we’ve started a seniors’ group for Spanish-speakers who are losing vision, have lost vision or are blind. It meets on the third Friday of each month from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at 2233 W. Shepperd Ave. in Littleton.

Sí, mañana, a la una de la tarde.

Para más información, llame a Carina Orozco, 303-778-1130, ext. 233, o e-mail, corozco@cocenter.org.

Storm coming. If you’re lying in bed checking Face Book this morning, wondering what else is closing in advance of today’s predicted blizzard conditions, count the Colorado Center for the Blind as another of the closures. I mean, if the Arapahoe Sheriff’s Dept. is closing, who are we!

We well remember the big April storm in 2016 when staff and student’s slogged our way home at 11:00 a.m. through thigh-high drifts with heavy snow still falling.

So, no need to get up now, except to make coffee of course!

Let there be no doubt – students at the Colorado Center for the Blind form lifelong friendships. Monday, three such friends reunited at the center Kathy Kudlick, Bill Lundgren and Anahit LaBarre. They are shown above standing in front of our tactile CCB logo, left to right, Anahit, Kathy, Bill and Director Julie Deden.

All three were students at the same time, in fact, they began arriving shortly after our move to Littleton in August, 2000.

Kathy was first in October of that year. A professor of French History at the University of California-Davis at the time, she came ready to at last embrace her identity as a blind person. Today, she is Director of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University.

Okay, we haven’t been talking about this much, because it’s kind of stressful. But on January 11 the roof of the McGeorge Mountain Terrace Apartments began to leak. The leaks were massive, and the insurance adjuster traced them back to hail damage that would have occurred last summer. Water damaged the ceiling in all 12 of the 2nd story apartments. In most, the damage was minor, in a few others water was collected in buckets for several days while disaster mitigation crews worked to dry things out.

It was a busy time In Washington, DC that week of January 28.

Okay, that’s an understatement.

Congresswoman Diana DeGette was called down to the House floor for a vote just as we were getting off the elevator. (We know this because a bell rings in the House office buildings calling members to the floor, and it sounded just as we got off.). She made it back just as our meeting with her Legislative Aide was coming to a close. So she greeted each of us (about 15 people) and we got the photo above with our high school students, Ian Lee (Aurora) and Deyannira Villa Cazares (Denver).

Editor’s Note: In the fall we invited blind Colorado high school students to apply for our first-ever scholarship to attend the National Federation of the Blind’s annual Washington Seminar. Students were asked to submit an essay telling us why they wanted to go, and we selected two students to come with us. In fact, that’s where some of us are right now, including three staff members and three ITP students along with the high school students.

Tomorrow we’ll be on the Hill going to appointments at all nine offices of the Colorado Congressional delegation. Here’s a press release issued today by the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado.

We hosted the Braille Challenge today, referred to as the “Braille Blizzard Challenge” by the seven Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB) staff members who drove north in the storm, sometimes at 25 MPH or slower. It was also slow going for participants, teachers and parents who came from as far away as Dillon and Fairplay. It even took as long as 90 minutes to get to Littleton from Aurora as wind and snow swirled across the Metro area this morning, beginning about 8 a.m.

There were 14 participants in the Braille Challenge hosted here today, and there were 25 in Colorado Springs last Thursday at CSDB. No doubt, Braille Rules!

We expect no less. But it just goes to show that blind people are not afraid to travel in the snow, not even the new ones who come from such warmer states as South Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Independence doesn’t depend on the weather!

Pictured above is one of our hopeful goose-deterrants. We’re still holding out for a group shot of snow angels. No takers, especially after warnings about goose poop in the snow.

We’re starting 2019 off with a pretty blanket of snow here in Littleton, but warm wishes to all our friends and supporters for a Happy New Year!