Self-Determination

Our Legacy Garden planting is complete, helped again this year by our partners with Arapahoe County Master Gardeners and of course all the rain in the past few weeks. (Actually, all the rain has made it difficult to plant on some days because the ground was too wet.)

It may have been the worst speech synthesis since, well, the VoTrax (circa 1987), but it sounded beautiful because this room full of blind students had coded their BBC Microbits themselves to produce that "Hello!”

It was all part of our two-day camp with Cyber.org's Project Access on coding/robotics here at the Colorado Center for the Blind. We had ten participants - a mix of middle and high school students and our younger Independence Training Program (ITP) students.

It’s Colorado’s biggest online giving event of each year, and just about our biggest fund-raising event too! It’s on the news, in your email box – just about everywhere.

But just so you don’t forget, you can go online at https://www.coloradogives.org/donate/CoCenter and schedule a donation to roll over on December 6. That’s the day your gift will count toward our percentage of the $1 Million Incentive Fund for Colorado Gives Day!

Diane told the crowd that she’s decided 90 isn’t enough, and she plans to make 100 years.
Okay, we’ll start planning that party now!

Yes, it’s the 90th birthday of our founder, Diane McGeorge.

“Don’t ever give up!” That was the advice Diane gave to students and everyone else at a celebration of her 90th birthday yesterday at the Colorado Center for the Blind. And Diane never has.

The certificate has arrived! Of course, the winners of the 2021 Littleton Western Welcome Week Grand Parade were announced back in August, but now that we have that piece of paper we can’t help but crow a little!

And so we won first prize in the Group/School category! Hooray!

Was it the noisemakers? Was it the matching T-shirts? Was it the goofy object Gene wore on his head? Those probably all helped, but it was more likely the excitement and the sense of release as we shook our tamborines and maracas and chanted, “Who are we? CCB!” as we marched the parade route.

They love Chaz Davis in his hometown of Grafton, Mass. But we are just as proud of him here in Littleton, Colo. at the Colorado Center for the Blind!

Chaz, a 2016 Paralympian in Rio and a 2017 graduate of CCB, won the Boston Marathon’s visually impaired division on October 11. It was the 125th Boston Marathon, but the first year that this division was available for blind runners to register in. Previous blind marathoners in Boston just … well, ran.

Blind runners run with a guide to whom they are tethered, meaning that the guide and blind runner must be carefully matched as far as speed and endurance, and marathon runners may change guides during a race.

We send out a loving and hearty “Happy Birthday” to our founder, Diane McGeorge who is 89 today!

Last Friday's vaccination clinic here at the center was a huge success, and we want to give a huge shout-out to our partners, Vive Family Wellness, St. Benedict’s Health and Healing Ministry, and the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition for helping us make it possible for 29 people to get their first Moderna shot on May 14. The convenience was a big draw for staff, students and folks in the neighborhood to drop in, and that was the beauty of the event.

Sure the taco truck was outstanding, too. I mean, really outstanding!

The clinic for the second shot will be held on Friday, June 11 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Maybe we wanted to post this today because the sun is shining in these photos, and it’s been cold and rainy for the past couple of days.

On a warm Friday morning in April we arrived at the center only to find the sidewalk blocked by a very large portion of one of our elm trees. Okay, we didn’t quite arrived, because it blocked the sidewalk in front of the center. The section of trunk was about 15 feet long and 12-14 inches across in places. None of this takes into account the tangle of large branches either. It probably came down in a big gust of wind the evening before, and it was blocking half the of Shepperd Avenue. It was the classic instance of “Lucky no one was around when that fell.”