Cane Travel

For the past three weeks, we’ve been delighted to have Adama Conteh as a special student at the Colorado Center for the Blind. Adama is from Sierra Leone, a country of about 6 million in West Africa. She has been in the U.S. under the sponsorship of Hope International, which has provided Adama with training at their headquarters in Tennessee, and transportation to Colorado to attend the Center for these three weeks.

Can’t wait for Halloween to get here? Want something to do on a Friday night? Never been on a scavenger hunt? Well, come and join CCB for a Friday night of fun! We’ll have plenty of activities to test your problem solving skills, mental mapping techniques, spatial awareness, and most of all, your Cane Travel abilities.

We hear tails of what lies beneath the poolroom, or where that screeching down the north hallway comes from, but don’t let those minor obstacles stand in your way. After all, you have goals to achieve, places to be and treats to find.

• A fun and spooky scavenger hunt.
• Bobbing for apples, a fun twist on a good old classic.
• Pumpkin decorating
• Mummy Wrapping, not a rapping mummy.
• A presentation for parents on the ins and outs of independent travel techniques.

And we’ll have pizza, too!

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!

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.

No matter what the calendar says, it’s the first week of summer. The temps are in the 90s, the garden is being planted and summer staff are shadowing their ITP staff counterparts. Friday 25 teenagers (summer students) begin arriving and on Monday the elementary Confidence Camp kids start too.

So here’s another first or two. Above, Amber uses a spade for the first time out in the garden. When asked if she’d dug with a shovel before she promptly answered, “I’m about to.” And then she proceeded to do it. In the process she and classmate Annette planted this year’s pumpkin and zucchini hills.

Since January, fans attending Colorado Avalanche games have been treated to between-periods video of the Try Blind Hockey Day on January 17. Over 50 blind Coloradans went out on the ice that day, some for the first time, others with a stick in their hand for the first time. Fans are impressed by the video, but it is little more than an historical artifact now.

Rebecca’s birthday was Tuesday and she received a special birthday delivery from her mom. It was surely especially welcome since Rebecca has been at CCB for about a month. But really, what mom could forget her daughter’s birthday? The entire center was excited about Rebecca’s birthday. Naturally we sang “Happy Birthday” at announcements, along with “The Dirge”, which only insiders will recognize, but the delivery included mini-cupcakes enough for almost everyone!

On Tuesday both Melissa and J.D. learned at announcements that they were going on their support drops. And happily they made it back in time to get cupcakes!.

We’re delighted this week to have Kirsten Mau here under sleepshades, taking all the usual classes. Kirsten is the new Marketing Director for the National Federation of the Blind, headquartered in Baltimore, but she lives in the Denver area. Typically a telecommuter, she’s been using offices at CCB off and on during home remodeling. This week, however, she commutes to the Center – drives herself – and then dons her sleepshades and grabs her cane.

The purpose of sleepshade training for sighted staff is to give them the sense of how blind people successfully travel, manage information and live the lives we want every day. Kirsten has taken to her training like a champ. She knows our message and believes in blind people.

she’s worked with the NFB in consulting capacities going back several years. A marketing and social media pro, she couldn’t resist a little jab.

Cathy Kudlick, Julie Deden and Anahit LaBarre reunited for dinner last Thursday. Cathy and Anahit, who works in our Senior Services Dept., were students together in 2000 to 2001.

It has been nearly 18 years since Catherine Kudlick first arrived in Littleton as a student at CCB, but the lessons of her training have endured, as she told staff and students in Philosophy Class last Thursday.

Cathy’s blindness is due to Nystagmus and she had never used a cane before she came for training. Still, she counted her travel training as one of the most important classes for her. She told students in frank terms about her internal struggles in that class under sleepshades.