Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G
Host Dr. Grace Ambrose-Zaken, President and CEO Safe Toddles non-profit and inventor of the Pediatric Belt Cane for blind toddlers discusses why her mission is to make walking safer for toddlers with a mobility visual impairment or blindness. Listen to: Interviews with families, professionals, adults who grew up with a mobility visual impairment or blindness, and more. For more information about this blog contact: 845-244-6600, info@safetoddles.org
Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G
BREAKING NEWS! Real Tape of Interview with Maureen born 1950 - Dives Deep into Real Life of Living Blind in NYC and Beyond
Maureen Moscato – a really good friend of mine – she is so funny. I found the original tape – It is worth a relisten!! She is much funnier than I am playing her!! Yay!!
Maureen is a real treasure – her stories reveal a woman who grew up in the school of hard knocks and her resiliency go her through – but if you’re interested in the pros and cons of dog guides, long canes, waiting for O&M to get out of the house and be independent and blind politics and ADA- this is a really great listen all the way to the end.
Maureen gives us a unique look inside the life of a blind woman, blind from birth– taxis don’t pick her up – she’ll see you at the taxi commission –
Listening to Maureen you realize- for her- there are no obstacles. She demanded equal access Niagara Falls and then gleefully left her husband, who has some vision, behind – in the mist.
Maureen dreamed of giving young children access to long canes – she said age 6, we say age 10 months. She is living proof blind kids can grow up without safe mobility, but why should we continue this barbaric tradition?
Safe Toddles seeks to end the barbaric practice of blind babies walking without a two-step safety buffer between them and danger.
And remember if you can go where you want to – please do so as safely as possible.
Help support Safe Toddles – to bring safety to the lives of blind toddlers.
Visit our website: Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube
Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!!
Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety.
If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane
Maureen Moscato 1/13/00
[tape 1, side A]
Q. …if you could state and spell your full name.
A. Maureen (I don’t think I have to spell that, right?) een. Moscato.
Q. And your date of birth.
A. 1950.
Q. And where were you born.
A. New York City.
Q. And where do you live now?
A. I live in Yonkers in Westchester County.
Q. And what do you do for a living?
A. I’m a rehab teacher and an academic instructor at the Catholic Guild for the Blind in New York City.
Q. And where did you go to college?
A. I went to, um, undergraduate, the College of Mount St. Vincent in Bronx and I got my Master’s degree in teacher education at Long Island University…at the Brooklyn Center.
Q. Neat. So that’s your highest degree…is a Master’s?
A. Yes.
Q. How long have you have a vision impairment?
A. Uh, since birth.
Q. And what’s the name of it?
A. Um, the new name…the old name was retrolental fibroplasia, and the new name is retinopathy of prematurity.
Q. When did you first realize that you were visually impaired?
A. Uh, I… You know, I never thought of it myself as being that much different until I was about—this sounds funny—until I was about eight and my brother and I went to jump on the haystacks in a field up in Maine and, you know, after that, he was doing things with his friends that I just couldn’t do you know that required a lot of vision. But before that, he was a regular playmate and I just… Then I went to a school for the blind so I just never thought about it.
Q. Right. Um, when do you first learn to travel independent of another person?
A. Um, I started mobility in my junior and senior year of high school. I was cleared for travel, uh… I should say my junior year. I was cleared for travel just before the beginning of my senior year in high school when I was about 18.
Q. So, before then, before you got the official training, what were you doing to get around school? Did you travel with somebody?
A. Well, you know, I knew my way around school.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And I walked around without a cane, and everything, but, before I learned to travel, my mother worked on weekends and I couldn’t go anywhere. All I could do was stay in the apartment she told me to lock the door, and all I did was read books.
Q. Oh.
A. Which was probably good in a way, but then in my senior year, it was great because I could meet my friends, those who could travel, and go visit friends and all of that.
Q. So, you were restricted from leaving the house all weekend long by yourself?
A. Yes.
Q. From the time you can remember until you were in twelfth grade?
A. Well, um, yeah. I was in a different living situation before I was16. But, when I was about 16 and 17, then I moved to Manhattan from the Bronx and, uh, I was in an apartment with my mother and she needed to work—she had two jobs—and she said, you know, don’t open the door for anybody. You know… I couldn’t go anywhere except if, you know, somebody came to take me to church on the weekend. That was about it.
Q. Wow. And did you desire to travel more independently?
A. Well, I wanted to, but I was afraid at the same time.
Q. Yeah. So, you …you remember wanting to do more?
A. Right.
Q. What are your childhood memories of play? What kinds of…did you ride a bike, for example?
A. We did… Well, I remember one time I backed my mother’s car out of the driveway. I must have been about 11.
Q. [laugh]
A. OK? And, well, I got in a lot of trouble for that.
Q. [laugh]
A. But I didn’t wreck the car. But, um, we used to spend time…
Q. You were with your brother and…
A. Yeah, my brother was in on that one.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And, uh…
Q. And you turned the car on and put it in reverse…
A. Yes, yes I did.
Q. [laugh]
A. I remember it was a tan car…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …it was a beautiful car and my mother was really upset. Really. And, um…
Q. Did you have some vision then, or?
A. Uh, not by that time.
Q. Uh huh.
A. By that time, I only had light.
Q. Right.
A. Um, we, we, um… Not too much. I had done…a couple of winters I had tried some ice skating. I didn’t do too well when I got off the learner skates. We did some family sledding in the winter in Bear Mountain when I was about eight, nine, ten.
Q. Oh, sure.
A. And in the summers, we went to Vermont or New Hampshire, and we did swimming and, uh, a little bit of diving and things like that. You know, that was about it. If we played games, with my cousins and stuff…hide and go seek, or something like that. You know…when they came to visit. ‘Cause otherwise, there was just my brother and I. But if my cousins came to visit, there was a lot of us…or we went to see them.
Q. Yeah. Um, so, sounds like a lot of fun. So, you get to eleventh, twelfth grade. Did you anticipate that you were going to start to learn this mobility? I mean, had you been traveling with a cane before then, or…
A. Not really. I had had a little instruction at the Lighthouse when I was about 13…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and, then, I forget what happened…they disbanded it or something happened. And then my counselor from the Commission said, well, if you want to go to college, you’d better think about learning how to travel. So that was really… You know, I started it but I knew I had to achieve it because he said if you don’t achieve it, you can’t go to college.
Q. Ah.
A. And I wanted to go to college.
Q. So, once at 13, did you, like, get a cane and have a cane from then on?
A. I had it in the house, yes.
Q. You had it, but you really didn’t use it.
A. I didn’t use it much.
Q. Did you go places without it? Around school, or…
A. Yeah. At the Institute, nobody ever used a cane.
Q. Nobody used a cane.
A. Nobody.
Q. So, was there a lot of bumping into each other?
A. No, not really.
Q. No?
A. Occasionally, but not really. Everybody knew the grounds, you know.
Q. Yeah.
A. There weren’t too many accidents…maybe one or two a year. That’s about it.
Q. Was there a sort of a thing where you would go sighted guide places too? Or go with other kids who had some vision?
A. Um, now that I remember it, it might have been the rule that we had to carry the cane when we went off campus.
Q. Uh huh.
A. When we were about 16, we could go off campus with our mother’s permission, the parents’ permission. But, yes, we would go with partially sighted people. But I could bet it wasn’t a correct sighted guide technique.
Q. Right.
A. No how.
Q. Right. But, still, together.
A. Yeah.
Q. Um, was there ever a sense there was sort of a hierarchy…people who had some vision, people who were totally blind, I privileges or in any way?
A. No, it’s just that if you wanted to go somewhere, you knew enough to seek out someone with some pretty good vision, or if you…if you dropped something in study hall and you didn’t want the teacher to know that you were fooling around with something you shouldn’t, you’d get the partially sighted person to help you, or something like that. But, um, I think we knew they could see more. You know, we knew that, if we wanted to go somewhere, they would more or less help us. You know, especially if you were a friend of theirs or bought them a Coke or something like that, you know. But, I don’t know that we saw any rivalry about it.
Q. Yeah. Um, hold on, I think that’s the boys. I'm going to just go check.
A. Um hum.
Q. Sorry about that.
A. That’s all right.
Q. Uh… It’s great to have, this is the first time I’ve hand people come and shovel for me, its great.
A. Oh.
Q. Yeah. [laugh] Um, what do you remember now as the method… What happened when they first started teaching mobility and, um… How often did you get it? So, tell me about, um…
A. Well, when I was at the institute, I remember I had, you know, Mr. Doss’s [??] younger brother, and he was training, you know… You know Mr. Doss in the Yonkers school system?
Q. No.
A. He’s with AER. We gave him an award last year.
Q. Oh.
A. Or something. Anyway, his younger brother was training to be a mobility instructor. I think, at that time, Columbia had a program. And, he was my instructor. He was a student instructor and I knew that, OK? I knew it because he was what we called a scholarship student and he lived in the dorm with the boys.
Q. Uh huh.
A. So, as much as I would really take terrible advantage of this guy at times, because I knew he was young and…
Q. [laugh]
A. …I knew I was one of his first teaching assignments. OK, I was smart enough to know that.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But in the beginning, we, um… You know, he showed us how…he showed me how to hold the cane and the, you know, we would go over the rhythm of walking with the cane and making a wider arc. You know, it was two-touch at that time…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …only. I think we started out on the grounds and then we would, like, go down to the candy stand, which was the school owned which was, like, a block away. And then, from there, we were crossing streets and then, because he knew eventually I wanted to travel on the subway, the goal was to go to the nearest subway station. And we did that for a long time in my junior year. And then, like, about the spring, he would take me on the subway. We’d do one stop. You know, the next week, we’d do two, and so on.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But then in summertime, I was in, like, what the prevocational program at the Lighthouse and that’s where I had an instructor. Well, I had her about three times a week and then, when we finished the program, I had her every day for about a month.
Q. Wow.
A. And by the time we finished, you know, I could travel on the subway up to the New York Institute by myself.
Q. Um hm.
A. Because Doss had started the trip with me, so she didn’t have to go all the way up there. It was more or less getting to the 59th Street sub-, because I lived on 60th and First.
Q. Right.
A. Getting to 59th Street subway and finding the turnstile and getting…it was the express train all the way down to the lower level…and that sort of thing.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, uh, taking a look at the platform, walking to the edge, knowing where the edge was and all of that. So she started the trip at this end and he started the trip at the other end. So, actually, I had two different mobility instructors work with me on it, but there was no harm done because, you know, I knew both ends and there was no point in her going up there since he had taught me the trip anyway.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, um, I forgot to bring a note when I went back to school in my senior year and, I said, I’m going to go home by myself, and they said, oh, no, you’re not. We have to… And they did haven’t faxes in those days. We have to have permission from your mother. You bring us written permission. So, my mother gave it very reluctantly. She didn’t want me to travel alone.
Q. Um.
A. She gave the mobility instructor a hard time, in fact, she almost threw her out of the house.
Q. Oh, really. Why?
A. She just did not want me to travel alone. She was very worried about it.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, you know what I mean. So, I think my father said, listen, you have to be realistic. You can’t expect her to go off to college and to learn a college campus and everything if she can’t travel.
Q. Um hm.
A. I remember he was pretty strict with her about that. So, I think that’s what saved me.
Q. So, you learned the route on the subway from your house to the institute.
A. Um hm.
Q. Um, did you start thinking about how you might take that subway someplace else, too, or was it.
A. Well, I also used to go visit my girlfriend in Flushing.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But I took buses out there because I really wasn’t a good subway traveler.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But I made it to where I had to go. So, for the first year, I did an awful lot of bus travel OK…to friends and stuff. My only subway experience was really to the institute and back again once a week. But any place else I went, either was by foot or I took a bus, or something like that.
Q. So, what was…what were the techniques that you were to keep in mind for subway travel? Uh, how were you to do that trip?
A. Well, you know, I, I had to be careful, you know, to locate the rails properly from the steps and to locate, um…if it was a one-sided platform, to try to locate the wall side…closest to the wall side. Um, I very seldom, at the time traveled on um, you know, a double-edged platform…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and you can go down to the express at 59th Street and it isn’t double-edged. But I think where I got off at the institute, it was double-edged and I used to a lot of times try to get in the car that stopped closest to the stairway…
Q. Hm.
A. …which I still do, even with a dog…
Q. Yeah.
A. …if I can.
Q. How do you figure out which car that is?
A. Well, um, I think by trial and error and asking people…uh, I think I eventually figured that one out.
Q. So, do you use some sort of landmark once you, you know…
A. Well, I will. I’ll try to remember if there’s a standing sign there or something like that.
Q. Um hm.
A. Um, now that I travel with a dog, ah…
Q. Oh, hold on, I’m sorry. Ah, I do apologize for that.
A. That’s all right.
Q. I didn’t expect that. Um, so, you… They taught you to locate the rail, so you used the railing to go down the stairs.
A. Oh, yeah, I did.
Q. And, uh, and then you used a lot of single-edged platforms so that would be, like, trailing the wall?
A. Ah, trailing the wall or whatever was close to it.
Q. And then, then, would you, like, walk up to the empty platform or would you wait until the train came in and then approach it?
A. Oh, no. I used to get where I wanted to be before a train came.
Q. So, how close would your be to the, say, the edge of the platform.
A. Oh, no, I was never close to the edge. I’d be about two or three feet…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …from the edge.
Q. Would you try and find a pole to touch ?
A. Yes.
Q. Yeah.
A. Um hm.
Q. And, then… Boy, that train comes in and that’s something.
A. Um hm.
Q. And, then, you’d board the train and, uh…locating a seat?
A. Ah, that was never too much of a problem. As I do now, I try to locate a seat next to the door when I’m going to be exiting out of.
Q. Right.
A. That’s what I do now. That’s what I’ve done all my life.
Q. Yeah.
A. And that seems to work well, you know.
Q. So, would you say then, that the training that you got with cane travel… It was sort of around the school, to and from your house… Was it a little around your house, too…in the neighborhood?
A. Yes. The mobility instructor from the Lighthouse taught me how to get to my church by myself. Which was just, like, a block away.
Q. So, was it more or less, sort of, route-specific… It was into about, learning about orientation, but it was about…
A. Oh, it was route-specific, definitely.
Q. Teaching how to get your routes. And, and, did you… When did you get your dog?
Did you… How long did you travel with a cane.
A. Well, I, I traveled with a cane from 1968 until 1981.
Q. Oh, my, so you spent a long time with a cane.
A. Well, I wanted a dog much earlier, but my family… I lived with them and they didn’t want it.
Q. Oh.
A. And what happened is, in 1980, I got married…the marriage didn’t work out, but I got married and he loved dogs.
Q. Oh.
A. So, he said, oh, I think it would be great if you had a dog, and then I did apply to Seeing Eye…
Q. So, in one way it worked out. [laugh]
A. I did apply to Seeing Eye and the Guide Dog Foundation, and a lot of my friends went to Guide Dog Foundation. But, then, I read all the books about the Seeing Eye and I was really enchanted. And then the other thing that really changed my mind is, uh, in February of 1981, I fell on the subway tracks.
Q. Oh, gosh.
A. I was on the Avenue X platform and it was very narrow going around the stairway and I fell and I hit my head.
Q. Oh, my.
A. And they took me to t he hospital and everything, but, uh, my husband was in Florida, but my brother-in-law said, the only way not to be afraid when you fall off the horse is to get up and ride the horse again.
Q. hh
A. So, as soon as I came out of the hospital, he took me right up on the same subway platform
[tape goes silent for some seconds} 65-81 (16 seconds)
A. And I it from the Jewish Guild, when I first learned to travel in 1969. Before I went to college, I didn’t have… I think my cane broke, or something like that…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and I had to get a cane. And, um, they sold me one and I’ve had it ever since…I still have the same came. It’s a straight cane.
Q. Uh huh. With the crook.
A. Yeah.
Q. And, does it still have a tip?
A. Yeah, it still has a tip.
Q. That’s, that’s pretty much of an accomplishment.
A. Yeah.
Q. So you learned on both the straight and the folding.
A. Right.
Q. And you like the folding because…
A. Well, because it’s more convenient. But, today, I like the big rolling tip.
Q. Oh, yeah.
A. Oh, I do. And I don’t do as much two-touch technique as I did. Marilyn Newman worked with me on another technique that she has of, sort of, rolling the tip back and forth…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and she has me beta testing a cane now for her that has a ball tip instead of, like, that… You know how the tip is kind of flat?
Q. Yeah.
A. And it comes out.
Q. Yeah.
A. Well, this is like a ball. But I like the other kind of tip better..
Q. Uh huh.
A. And a couple of my friends says it looks like I’m using…who could see…say it looks like I’m using a ski pole.
Q. [laugh]
A. But, um, I like to keep… You know, there are some people that are dog people will not travel with a cane when they can’t have a dog.
Q. Um hm.
A. But, I always make a practice of, in between dogs, uh, going without a dog for about three weeks or so, so that I can mourn for the one dog and prepare for the next dog. And in that interim, I usually use a cane. And when I go out with my husband, if I really don’t need a dog guide. And we go to the theater or we go to a shopping mall or something like that. Or even to the doctor. And I don’t need to bring Pico. I bring a cane with me.
Q. Tell me what you like so much about that roller.
A. Um, after a while, especially after I fell on the subway tracks and after I used the dog, every time I would use the two-point touch thing, I had this feeling of dizziness.
Q. Oh.
A. And somehow this, this tip… First of all, I think you pick up more texture.
Q. Um hm.
A. More differences in texture with it. It’s sensitive. And I also think that, uh, I don't, I feel more grounded with it. I don’t have that sense of dizziness that I used to get with the two-point touch technique. And I only got that after I fell on the tracks. I never had… So, it might be somewhat of a psychological thing. But, I still feel grounded…I feel I have more control with the rolling tip.
Q. Right.
A. And I especially like it on subway platforms.
Q. Right. Because, why…
A. Well, again, we weren’t taught too much to move it back and forth like that, that I remember, when I first learned to use the cane.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And it picks up he rough, you know, the subway strips, better, and you’re touching the edge before you’re even there with the larger tip.
Q. Right.
A. So, it’s sort of provides, I think, a measure of safety that way.
Q. Now, how long is your cane compared to your height?
A. Well, I was told by some mobility instructors that I should use the 52, but I feel more comfortable with a 48. So, I could go with a 48 or a 52.
Q. Uh huh. Now, what is it about the shorter cane that you like?
A. I always feel like I’m tripping other people with it, you know.
Q. Um hm.
A. I just feel it’s somehow too long. You know?
Q. Uh huh.
A. Oh, I know what Marilyn said. You should use a 46, not a 52. And I didn’t feel comfortable with the shorter 46; I felt very good with the 48, and I can even use 50 and it doesn’t make that much of a difference. But when I get to the 52 or above, then I find that a little too long.
Q. Interesting. Have you tried any other types of mobility tools?
A. Um, I tried that, um, oh, he came out to and he tried it out on me and Therese what’s that called…the Walking Mate the Walk Mate?
Q. Uh huh.
A. I tried that and I find it good when you use a cane and then he let me try it out…
Q. So, now, do you hold that in your hand? What do you do with that?
A. Uh, I’m trying to remember…I only used it once. I think you put that over your shoulder.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But you use a cane as well.
Q. And what did it do?
A. It picks up different sensors from the trees, the awnings, the sidewalk, things like that. And I tried it with a dog just to see if it was… Mr. Lee let me. I think he’s from New Jersey, and he let me do it…reluctantly, though. but I said, I just want to see what happens. And, with a dog, it’s too confusing. Because you’re not really letting your dog lead.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, with a cane, um, I would think it would be all right. I found that there were too many sounds. It got confusing to me to hear all these sounds. But if I did it every day…
Q. Right.
A. …I would probably like it.
Q. Yeah.
A. And if I didn’t have a dog for any reason, I would get one of those Walk Mates.
Q. Great. Do, now, how… Compare and contrast going with a dog and going with a cane. What’s…where are the differences, where are the similarities?
A. Well, the differences are that you can travel, I think, much faster with a dog than you can with a cane.
Q. Um hm.
A. The reason being is, you don’t have to locate objects. The dog will take you around them.
Q. Right.
A. And you don’t have anything in your hand that’s like a stick to get in your way and you can actually go much faster that way.
Q. Neat.
A. The disadvantage that I find is I think sometimes it’s good to trail, you know, something. Whatever you’re looking at…a wall or…to know that there’s an absolute landmark there. With a dog, its hard to do that. A dog is not going to walk against a wall.
Q. Right.
A. They’re just not going to do it. But if you have a good dog… Now, this Pico is not as good as my last dog. My last dog, you could take her to a building once…once…and go back three months later and she would remember how to walk in there. And my first dog the same way. You know, it just depends on the dog. There are some dogs that are very good like that.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, amazingly enough, Pico would always fool around on 23rd Street when I lived on 23rd…
Q. Oh.
A. …and up here, she finds the house like perfectly.
Q. Hah.
A. Turns right in. I just don’t know what it is.
Q. [laugh]
A. …she’s a country dog, or something. And I find parking lots easier to do with dogs than with I did with a cane.
Q. What do you mean?
A. In the suburbs. You know, if you have to go through a parking lot to get into a store. I find that easier.
Q. Because of your directness?
A. Uh, yeah.
Q. Uh huh.
A. Uh huh. And I just find it’s much freer to travel with a dog. But I think a blind person should be… You know, they should be…know both.
Q. Yeah.
A. It’s important to know both. And to…at certain times, you can’t go with your dog. Like when Sal was in intensive care, I couldn’t bring my dog up there because he was on all these machines…
Q. Yeah.
A. I was also afraid my dog would see him and get all excited and…
Q. Yeah.
A. …you know, and I didn’t want that. And he was really very close to death.
Q. Um.
A. So I had to use… I felt that, in that circumstances, you know, a cane should be used. So, there are certain times that, you know, I have used a cane because… Like, for example, I really don’t like, unless I can help it, to take my dog to Shea Stadium.
Q. Oh.
A. Because, it’s not comfortable for them. And if you go in the afternoon, it’s awful for them because it’s sunny. And there are just certain places… Like, when I go on vacation, I don’t take my dog because I don’t want to leave the dog cooped up in a hotel. And my husband has enough vision.
Q. Right.
A. And one year, we went on a birdwatching expedition and you wouldn’t want to bring a Labrador on a birdwatching expedition.
Q. [laugh] No. [laugh] No, you would not.
A. Another time, we went on Niagara Falls. Um, Cave of the Winds. I don’t know if you’ve ever done it.
Q. No.
A. But, you walk behind the Falls.
Q. Wow.
A. First, he wouldn't let me on, he goes, "I can’t let any blind people go on this". I said, have you ever heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Q. Good for you.
A. He said, go right ahead.
Q. [laugh]
A. So, I had my cane and, you know, Sal’s partially sighted, but he’s not good in dimly lit areas. And this was all this water and spray behind the Falls and you had to go up, up hills and down stairs and this and that. I was way ahead of him. He kept saying, Maureen, where are you? I said, it’s every man and woman for themselves.
Q. [laugh]
A. And, I made it through fine. And in Disney World, I, I…
Q. So, what was that like? I’ve been to Niagara Falls, but I didn’t take, uh…
A. Oh, it’s wonderful.
Q. Is it really loud in there?
A. Oh, it is loud.
Q. Yeah.
A. but you just follow. Actually, you can’t… I mean, you could get lost but you shouldn’t. There's a lot of rails and stuff.
Q. Uh huh..
A. And as long as you follow, you’re all right.
Q. Is it really wet?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. [laugh]
A. When I got out of there, the guy goes, do you want to do this again? I said, no, I don’t think so.
Q. [laugh]
A. I doubt that.
Q. Is it cold?
A. Yes, it is cold.
Q. Yeah.
A. And then, in Disney World, uh, I don’t bring Pico to Disney World because…or Zoe…because, you know, Florida is an awful climate for Labs…
Q. Yeah.
A. …if you don’t live there.
Q. Yeah.
A. It’s not a good idea to take them there because they might get fleas.
Q. Oh, sure.
A. But, we went, uh… You know, we did everything, uh, and now Sal’s using a long white cane, but he had a support vision cane when we went to Disney World. We went horseback riding, and we went to the animal kingdom and I went on all the rides. He couldn’t take it. After the first one, he took the first one and gave up. But I did Space Mountain and all of them by myself.
Q. Oh, oh. [laugh] That was fun.
A. Yeah.
Q. Um, now, how do you get to and from work?
[Side A ends. Side B begins]
A. …and I’m not late, I walk from 56th and Lexington to First.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But, you know that some of my work requires fieldwork. So, um, you know, sometimes it’s not practical for me to take the Riverdale bus. Let's say the person’s in Queens.
Q. Right.
A. Then I would take a bus to the No. 1 train and take No. 1 train to Times Square and, uh, switch for the Flushing Line or whatever line I had to take to go out, depending on where the person lived to go out to Queens. So, usually, when I’m in the field, if it’s not a Bronx deal, or Washington Heights, then I, I will probably take the subway into Manhattan and then switch for some train going into Queens or Brooklyn, depending on where I have to go.
Q. Do you have any tips that you could pass along in terms of the bus transit…taking it?
A. Well, I think, you know, even though that we’ve said that they make announcements, OK… Now, this morning, this happened to me. The third time I got this guy on the express bus. The third time he passed my stop. Of course he told me it was my fault. But he’s the only driver I have this trouble with.
Q. Ah.
A. Other than that, I don’t have any trouble. So, I think that you have to remind, you know… Sometimes, they’re supposed to announce the stops.
Q. Right.
A. But if they don’t you have to ask the person next to you where you are. And you can usually tell…I think I might have fallen asleep, is what I think happened.
Q. Oh.
A. But, um, I like to sit in the back of the express bus with Pico, because otherwise, you know, she’s, you know, in the aisle, and people pet her and that.
Q. Yeah.
A. Where I find we go in the back, it’s very wide and she’s a little arthritic and it’s warmer back there for her, especially in the winter. But, also, we have much more room. I have more room for my feet and nobody trips on her and she’s not in anyone’s way.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, I think, you know, you do have to be specific and you do have to have a good sense of public relations…with the drivers and with the other passengers. Um, I mean, you know, it does happen that they do…even on local buses…go past your stop and I think you have to be gracious and say, well, you know, you really did pass my stop. And either he’ll say, you never told me, which…
Q. Oh.
A. …often is the case, or, oh, I’m sorry, I forgot.
Q. Often is the case is what he’ll say to you?
A. No, what I meant was, they'll usually will say to you, you didn’t tell me, or you didn’t remind me, or whatever the case might be. Now, it’s gotten better since the Transit Authority requires that there be announcements made, especially at the cross streets, like…you know.
Q. Sure.
A. …you know, 57th or 42nd or 23rd. The larger streets. It has gotten much better. And the crosstown streets…the drivers tend to announce all the stops. So, it’s, it's much better now than it ever used to be.
Q. Oh, that’s good.
A. I think.
Q. Yeah.
A. I still have my problems with the subways and cabs, with guide dogs, are still the biggest bug-a-boo I have. I have three hearing…three cases going with the Taxi and Limousine Commission at the moment.
Q. You, yourself.
A. Yup.
Q. Wow.
A. Three of them.
Q. Because they wouldn’t let you in?
A. Right. They wouldn’t pick me up with the dog.
Q. Now, how did you get their license…their tag number?
A. Well, the first one was a taxi service…the Linden Taxi Service…and, um, my father was dying at the VA in St. Albans and I went to see him and Sal and I wanted to make a quick trip to the subway because, on Sundays, you know, the buses really take a long time…
Q. Sure.
A. …to get back to Archer Avenue. So, we asked the VA person at the desk if they know of a car service, and they did, and they called them, and he came and he goes, I don’t like dogs. I’ll send you somebody who does. Well, nobody came. So, they called them back and they said, well, we won’t accept dogs of any kind. So, the VA told me the name of the car service. The other two times, Sal… The numbers are lit up on the top and the second I was coming the animal medical center and I was standing on the corner with Sal and Sal hailed the cab and the guy said, I’m sorry, I don’t take dogs. So this guy, this bystander on the street, said, you know, that’s against the law, and he read the number to Sal.
Q. Good.
A. And the third time, it was New Year’s Eve and the big mistake the guy made was, he backed up, got out of the car and said to Sal, I’m sorry, I’m Muslim. I can’t take dogs. So Sal walks right up to the cab and he could see the number…
Q. Good.
A. …‘cause it was lit up…
Q. Yup.
A. …and that’s how we did it.
Q. And, so, the first time, were you stranded at the VA? I mean, how did you…
A. Well, we called another car service.
Q. And finally found one that would comply with the law.
A. Right. Yes.
Q. And the other times, it was again the same thing. You had to get another…
A. Yes, we always had to get another cab. And, I’ve been to them several times already.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I’ve won every time but one, and that was the last time I had a hearing and actually Sal went for me. But we didn’t win because this judge was kind of stupid and this guy said, oh, he had picked up guide dogs and he got an award from the TLC for taking a guy with a guide dog to the VA and blah, ba…and fine…but the offense is not failing to pick up a guide dog. The offense is always failing to take a passenger to their destination. And the reason is because they won’t pick up someone with a guide dog. But he should have been fined anyway ‘cause he said to the judge, well, I saw him, but I had already picked up with somebody else, or something like…I already saw the other person. So I passed him up. Now, he admitted he actually saw Sal and I.
Q. Right.
A. And he should have been fined for that, but he, but he wasn’t. But that’s the only time I’ve ever lost out of about ten times with theTLF.
Q. So, what do you usually win?
A. Well, I don’t win anything personally, but the driver gets fined…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and the driver gets points on his cab license…
Q. Wow.
A. …and if he doesn’t pay the fine, he can’t renew his license.
Q. Right. So, it definitely is worth pursuing because it’s going to get the message across, sooner or later, that this is, you know, not acceptable.
A. Yeah. I just think it’s ridiculous…and it’s the Middle Eastern cab drivers that I have trouble with…all the time. All the time.
Q. Yeah. How do you handle, once you’re in the cab, um, being in control or giving control or, you know, money…
A. Well, I have a little more trouble now because the cabs are more narrow.
Q. Um hm.
A. And Pico’s a big dog.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I try to get her on the floor, but sometimes…now that she’s arthritic, it’s even harder. It’s, you know what I mean…sometimes it’s so narrow…
Q. Oh, yeah.
A. The older cabs were much wider.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, if she gets on the seat, I don’t yell at her anymore because there’s nowhere for her to go, practically.
Q. Yeah.
A. But she’s pretty good. She sits down and she’s very nice. You know, she’s a quiet girl. She loves to look out the window and stuff. But she’s very good like that. She’s good. She’s well controlled.
Q. But in terms of, not so much…I had not doubt that Pico is a good girl…but taking charge of the…where you want to go, how to get there, what way they might take you, how much they might charge you…
A. Well, I’m very specific, especially because a lot of them don’t speak English that well.
Q. Yeah.
A. I never say “70th” any more; I say “seven oh” because they get that mixed up with something else.
Q. U huh.
A. And I always give them cross streets.
Q. Yeah.
A. ‘Cause it’s one thing… And I’ll say, if I’m going uptown and I know it’s my right side, I’ll tell them. I don’t always know, because it may be someplace I never was before or that I’m going to in a hurry and I was only there once before. But I always try to be very specific about the addresses and so forth like that. And usually I never have any trouble. But, occasionally, you’ll get guys who just don’t speak English, like the time Sal and I were in a hurry and I was reading a lectory for Cardinal O’Connor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral…
Q. Oh, my,
A. …and the guy didn’t know where St. Patrick’s was.
Q. [laugh] OK
A. Now, in other cities, like Chicago, I find they’re very good. They seem to have English…you know, a lot of cab drivers that speak English. In Washington, they seem to have a lot of cab drivers that speak English. In Houston. Atlanta’s like here. Everybody’s from the Middle East.
Q. Right.
A. So.
Q. So, um, well, you made a interesting comment to me which is, I’ve been there before, I know it’s on the right. Um, how… You go to a lot of new places. I mean, obviously new clients and what have you. What kind of… How do you know which street, where it’s going to be?
A. Well, for example, if there's--some of my doctors, if I’m in a hurry and I know exactly where they are…
Q. Umhm.
A. …or, um, I know where the building is where I work, I know 23rd Street and, even though I don’t live there any more, I sometimes will visit friends, you know, if I’ve had a really bad day or something, then I’ll take cab just to make time… Or St. Vincent’s Hospital…my husband’s been in there so many times…and I know how to tell them to go there. These are places that I’ve been to fairly frequently.
Q. Right.
A. And, um, like, Cindy taught me to, um, Cindy Shaw, I don’t know if you know Cindy.
Q. Sure. She used to work for you guys in mobility.
A. And, um…she told me, like, how the building is trimmed and what kind of stone…and I asked her what it looked like.
Q. Neat.
A. So I could be descriptive with the cab driver. Like here, I know, you know, that when you get to Riverdale Avenue you make a left and then another you make another left again and, uh, you know, that my house is on the left and that you can drive around the circle and come in right in front of my house. So, you know, it’s real easy up here because it’s just two lefts from Riverdale Avenue and you’re here.
Q. Right. Right. Um, so, that’s that. Um, let’s see, with the money… Are you ever concerned that they’re going to take you the long way someplace?
A. I have been, but, for the most part, that hasn’t happened.
Q. Neat.
A. Only, you know, once or twice have I had problems like that. But, very uh they would have done it to anybody.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know what I mean? It wasn’t a question of that I was blind. They would have ripped anybody off if they could.
Q. Do you have any strategies for preventing that?
A. Well, if it’s a regular route that I know and I know, sort of, what the fare is going to be then if it’s very much over that, I would discuss it. I would say, you know, usually, this is… And if I knew that we didn’t get stuck in traffic…
Q. Right.
A. …I’d say, OK, usually the fare is so-and-so. That’s what I’d say.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But, as I said, it very seldom happened.
Q. Right. Um, have you ever been disoriented?
A. Yes, especially if I get… I can remember one time one of my dogs, uh, lost a toenail and it was bleeding and I took her to Animal Medical and they removed it and they sedated her and they told me to take a cab home. Well, I got this guy who really couldn’t speak English so well and he told me couldn’t find 135 West 23rd Street. There was no such address. Well, I had lived there for years.
Q. [laugh]
A. …and I knew there was such an address. So, I said, all right, let me out and I really didn’t know where I was. And it was late at night, you know…11 or 12 o’clock at night. Here I’ve got this sedated dog who I can’t depend on to get me anywhere really safely…I wouldn’t.
Q. My goodness.
A. And finally these two girls came along and I told them and there were very nice and they said, oh, you’re directly across the street from 135.
Q. Oh.
A. So they helped me, but, I mean, you know, that’s happened. Or sometimes, a driver will not let you off exactly in front of the building or they’ll let you off across the street from the building.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And you do get disoriented. And very often, if I’m totally not sure, uh, Seeing Eye always says, when in doubt ask.
Q. Uh huh.
A. So I do. Because I don’t want to do diagonal crossing. I don’t want to do something that could be dangerous. So I do ask…exactly where I am. But, you know, people don’t know East and West and North and South.
Q. Right.
A. If you say, like… Even when I get off the Riverdale bus, I’ll say to the driver, well, which side of 56th are you on? He’ll go, what? Well, 56th is to your left. That’s not answering my question.
Q. [laugh]
A. He doesn’t know…they don’t know north from south.
Q. Right.
A. But when I was taught at the Lighthouse, I was taught North and South and East and West.
Q. Yeah. And you use it.
A. And, I remember… And it’s easy in New York City to use that formula ‘cause it really works.
Q. Sure.
A. So, but, there’s so many people that just don’t know that, you know. And you’ll say to them, is this, you know, 60th and… Well, you’re between… No, no they’ll go, yeah. Uh, yeah, what? 60th and what’s the cross street. Well, there’s a street here called Third and one called 60th. Well, where do they intersect? Oh, uh, I don’t know. Things like that.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, you really have to know what you’re doing.
Q. Yeah.
A. The one thing that I am glad happens today is that little children are taught to use a cane very young.
Q. Oh, yeah.
A. And I think that the fears have had less chance to develop and less time for mom to say to you, oh, I don’t want you traveling and dah da dah da dah. I think if a child has a cane in their hand, when they begin at six or seven, it’s almost second nature to them.
Q. Yeah.
A. Then when the have to use it for major travel, it’s not… It’s a part of them by then. And I think, also, that using it to locate, to go around obstacles, and to trail, and that type of thing and knowing, you know, indoor mobility techniques… Then by the time they have to use it for something major, they’re so accustomed to it that they don’t have to worry about the fear of using the stick, the fear of being seen with the stick. You know, which many teenagers… I worked in the public schools for a while and the teenagers just hated using it…including myself. I can remember, um, I went… I was in Ronny Gilligan’s pre-college program…
Q. Oh, my.
A. …and I went out with this guy I met and he was partially sighted so I didn’t bring my cane. So, this was in Syracuse University…very vast campus. So, Ronny Gilligan comes up behind me and she taps me and she says, where’s your cane? And I said, he’s with me. And she said, that’s not very funny. And I said, well, why isn’t it. I don’t want to use a cane. She said, you don’t? Well, how would you like to see what it’s like not to use a cane and have to go somewhere. She said, turn around. Jim, let go of her. Now, find your way back to the dormitory by yourself. She followed me, of course, but I never did it again. I never did it again without a cane. It taught me a lesson.
Q. Yeah.
A. I realized I couldn’t do it without a cane. But, if she hadn’t done that, I, I would have done the same thing over and over again.
Q. Interesting. So you had traveled without a cane for most of your school life.
A. I guess that’s why I thought I could do it.
Q. Yeah.
A. Because the institute was so familiar to us. You know.
Q. Yeah. I didn’t really ask you… Of all your mobility instruction, now, do you remember ever, sort of, doing it where they weren’t with you? It was like a lesson…or were they always with you?
A. Well, it depended. Lots of time, they would have me learn something and then they’d follow far behind.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And, I, you know… I remember that I had an instructor with the Jewish Guild who, this is what she said…that I took off without her and she couldn’t catch up with me and I did the whole trip and thought she was there and she wasn’t.
Q. [laugh] And how did that make you feel?
A. I laughed; I thought it was funny.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And, um, I’ve had many mobility instructors. I, I, I had Martin Yablonski way back when and he was an excellent instructor.
Q. Oh, I bet.
A. And Gene McMahon.
Q. My.
A. Used to work with me in Brooklyn.
Q. Neat.
A. And, always, when I get a dog, I usually have the instructor come home with me. Only because every dog is different and, uh, you know… The dog…the trainer will help me pattern the dog to find the house and the major points that I need to find. And when I came up to, uh, to Yonkers, I didn’t want mobility instructors as much as I wanted a guide dog person because I sort of, I sort of knew where I was going…I had never done parking lots except at the Seeing Eye. I had never had reasons to do parking lots in Manhattan.
Q. Oh, sure.
A. So, and forget about country travel. Last time I was there, I didn’t do it because it was the middle of the winter and, but not only that, they didn’t see any point in making me do it when I really…when the good days we had…it was in ’96 and we had a lot of snow…
Q. Yeah.
A. …and the good days we had, the trainer would take me into New York City. So, I never got a chance… They usually like you to do one morning of traveling in suburbia, in the country, and I didn’t get to do it, never thinking I would ever move to Yonkers. So, then, when I moved to Yonkers, they came up and they worked with me for about a half a day and, you know, gave me some pointers and showed me the safest way to get into the shopping center and all that, without going through the parking lot. I thought I had to, but they showed me another way. So, it’s very good like that and, if I had continued to have trouble, I was going to get, you know, Cindy to come up and work with me.
Q. Interesting. So, um, at what phases in your life and your career would you, say, get Martin of Gene? What was going on?
A. Well, Martin… I went to graduate school at Long Island University and the reason I got him is because they had so much construction in the area and… The phone company was building a building and there was a very large drops and all of that. It wasn’t a particularly nice area. They’ve since… It was a bit on the flummy side. And, uh, my counselor felt it would be best if I had some training to, you know…for my safety. And I had Gene because, um, I got married, and I lived in Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn and it was like a bridge across the bay and it was, again, kind of like suburbia. And I’d never lived in that part of New York City ever and I wanted to certain that my route to work was smooth and that I got there on time and so forth. And I wanted to be able to go to the supermarket by myself, and all that. So, those are the times I got a mobility instructor. And the other time was a Cindy Shaw worked with me, uh, but she told me, you know, when you use a cane, do me a favor and don’t take the subways, you’re such a wreck.
Q. Oh, my goodness. You know?
A. She said…
Q. What did she mean?
A. She said, your technique is good but, she said, your whole demeanor changes when you go in the subway. She said, you look so frightened.
Q. Oh.
A. I really feel sorry for you because I know what happened.
Q. Yeah.
A. And she said, and when you’re with a dog, it’s completely different. So, um, I thought I’d have to retire Zoe back in ’90 and she had very sever ulcerative colitis. So, it turned out they got her on a food at Animal Medical and she was OK. But, um, Cindy gave me some brush-up cane techniques just in case I had to retire her. But I was glad she had because I had forgotten a lot. You know, not using it every day.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, but I… You know, some guide dog users will not have mobility instruction in between dogs and I know one person who won’t even use a cane. She just stops. She stops working, she stops living. And that’s really kind of ridiculous. I mean, a dog could die at any times or get sick or…
Q. Yeah.
A. …whatever.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I think you have to know both skills.
Q. Um, when you’re traveling to new consumers’ houses, now is that mostly by car?
A. Uh, no, it’s usually public transportation.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And Therese likes me to have an escort with me, not because I can’t travel, but to find the numbers on the buildings and the apartments, especially if it’s not a good area.
Q. Yeah.
A. But most of the time, we travel by public transportation…
Q. Neat.
A. …buses and trains and everything. And I'll try to meet my escort…I don’t meet her in the office or him in the office…I’ll meet them…I try to find something that ‘s easy for them and easy for me and, um, in straight proximity with the consumer whoever we’re going to see. So, we try to arrange a place that I can find them easily and they can find me easily and is pretty central.
Q. Neat.
A. So, that’s how we… Believe me, I’ve had thousands--I've had many escorts. Some were real flops and some were great. Because, even though they can see, some of them did not know directions.
Q. Yeah.
A. Believe me, I’d wait for 15 or 20 minutes for them and I’d be very exact and I’d say meet me at the No. 1 train and they’d be at the E train and all of that, you know.
Q. Yeah.
A. But it was always public transportation. And I used to have my lunch on top of a garbage can while I was waiting for the subway. That’s when I used to go out three days a week. Oh no it was all public transportation. Very seldom did I ever get a car to where I had to go.
Q. So, it’s… But it’s… The real skill is also arranging with this other person, then, to…
A. Oh, yes.
Q. …do the escorting.
A. And then getting that person to guide you properly.
Q. Right.
A. To tell that other person, please, don’t do diagonal crossings because, with the dog, you’re not supposed to do that.
Q. Right.
A. OK. And getting them to remember that, which they always don’t remember. And then I always have the directions written down for my escort.
Q. Uh Hm.
A. I used to have a guy that mapped out the routes from the subway maps and the Atlases. Now he’s in a nursing home, so now I have to do my own mapping.
Q. Oh.
A. But he was so good at it, it was unbelievable. I mean, this guy could tell you how to get anywhere. Anywhere in any kind of transportation. In fact, he was my escort until he really became too old and sick to do it. And he was great. I mean. He knew everything. Landmarks. He’d look them up on the map and write them in and everything like that.
Q. Neat. Now, did you pay this person?
A. Well, when he was my escort, I did…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and then when he did my maps, he was such a poor old soul, I’d buy him a meal or I’d, you know, get him film for his camera or something like that. You know, I’d help him out with a few odds and ends there.
Q. Neat. Um, and do you train them to assist you in any way in the home?
A. Um, yes, even when they haven’t been VRAs…
Q. [laugh]
A. …um, usually, they’ll be very good about… What I used to have to train them was to locate the signature line, assist the client in putting the guide on it to sign, and stuff like that, really. And I… Now I have to fill out a lot of forms and, so not only can…should the person just be able to escort you, but they’ve got to be able to read forms. And, um, you know, most of my escorts have been very kind to my clients and they’re usually very solicitous. But, yeah, there’s a lot of training that goes on, like, uh, you know, they’ll go, oh there’s a chair there. Well, where is the chair?
Q. Right.
A. I have to train them, you know. You know, a couple of times I have to say to them, you don’t say this to a client and…
Q. Yeah.
A. …you have to be very careful about what you say and so forth and so on. And a couple of people I had to get rid of. It just didn’t work out or…
Q. Sure.
A. …you know, for various reasons. Their behavior wasn’t what I thought it should be. Their grooming ability and all of that.
Q. Sure.
A. I’ve had a few flops that lasted… One guy lasted one day with me.
Q. [laugh] Well, you have high standards. You should.
A. Well, actually it was him, too. He was a convert from Judaism and would go with me to the clients and preach to them about Jesus.
Q. Oh, no.
A. We couldn’t go into a Jewish woman’s house and have him do that.
Q. No.
A. And when I asked him to stop, he quit.
Q. Yeah.
A. But he was really strange.
Q. [laugh]
A. A couple of times, I did have students from LaGuardia that Charles Shorter used to send me that were doing…had to do something like social service internship and they would worked with me. One guy was very good. He learned a lot. The other guy was learning disabled and I had a lot of trouble with him.
Q. Yeah.
A. You’re going to have trouble with escorts because they don’t get paid that well.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, especially when there’s snow and rain then… You know, I had a few good ones that came all the time but they go, oh, it’s raining, oh, it’s snowing. You want a job, you want a job. That’s all there is to it.
Q. So, what do you do when, I mean when you’re stood up?
A. Well, it depends how safe the area is. If I don’t find it too bad, I go alone. But now Therese really doesn’t want me to.
Q. Yeah.
A. Now, Michelle was my escort before she became a VRA. And I never had a problem with her standing me up or anything like that. Or, my Lillian, who now works for Catholic Charities full time…I never had trouble with her either. And those are the only two times I ever had women escorts and they were both very good.
Q. Uh huh.
A. Before that, I always had men.
Q. Neat. So, you mean you’d go alone… So you’d…you always know exactly where you’re going. If it was a brand new place, would you, maybe, have to not go to the place because you’d never been there before?
A. Well, no, I don’t think that that would be an issue if they didn’t show up. It would be, it would be a safety issue.
Q. Safety, yeah.
A. And, you know, how deserted it was. What kind of neighborhood was it in.
Q. Yeah, yeah.
A. That type of thing. How bad was the building in disrepair? I don’t like to go into housing projects without an escort.
Q. Yeah.
A. So I don’t anymore. I won’t. And Therese knows that. Uh, uh, Cindy was mugged.
Q. Oh, gosh.
A. I was mugged in my mother’s own project.
Q. Oh, my gosh.
A. So I…going to visit my mother.
Q. Oh, my gosh.
A. So, I really don’t like project elevators, you know, and things like that. It’s really, it's not good.
Q. No.
A. So, I try not to do it.
Q. How do you feel about traveling alone to unfamiliar places?
A. Oh, I’ll do it, especially if it’s for my own reasons. You know what I mean, uh, obviously, I’ll have an escort at work because it’s a safety, insurance, and compensation issue. But, when I travel alone, I go to unfamiliar places if I have to. I do. If it’s necessary.
Q. How do you prepare for travel to an unfamiliar place?
A. Well, I try to get as much information as I can about the building and the street and landmarks that are in the vicinity. Like Sal and I are going with Karen to the Museum of Science…having audio tours.
Q. Um hm.
A. But, before that we’re going to meet Karen at a restaurant near her home. So, I was talking to Karen yesterday…last night…and she told me exactly how to go and I asked her for landmarks. Like, she said, tell him the exit nearer to Genovese and then, when you walk down the next block, you pass… You can ask someone…there’s a trade fair…Sal has vision, but, still, I like to know these landmarks so that, even if I don’t have anybody who can see with me, I can say, well it’s
[tape 1, side B ends. Tape 2, side A begins]
A. …and have a name like, uh, Carol Gardens, or something like that. Or, you know, are there steps to your building, or is there a supermarket across the street or is there a drugstore or church or something, you know. I would know…could say to someone, there should be something directly across the street. Then I know exactly where I am.
Q. Yeah.
A. So that’s how I usually do it.
Q. So you like to get the landmarks.
A. I do.
Q. And then, you know, you can use them to say …when you’re soliciting aid.
A. Right.
Q. Exactly.
A. Right.
Q. Terrific.
A. I think that landmarks are just very important and it’s a good thing to know even if you travel in a cab to an unfamiliar place ‘cause you can say to the driver, it’s right across the street from Pathmark…
Q. Yeah.
A. …or whatever it happens to be. And then, you know, you’re more likely to end up in the right place.
Q. Neat. Um, how do you establish your position in the environment?
A. Well, um, I listen and I try to, first and foremost, to figure out exactly where the traffic is in relation to me. And then, when I do that… For example, let’s say a cab driver does drop me off in the wrong place, I’ll try to figure out from listening to the traffic and listening to a noise on the sidewalk whether I’m in the right direction or not. You know, did he leave me on the wrong side of the street or did he just leave me a block down.
Q. Neat.
A. And, very often, I will have to solicit aid but, for example, when I… A couple of times it has happened that the snow and the wind threw me and Pico off course a couple of times. But if I listen for the Riverdale Avenue traffic, which is a lot of traffic, it’s not a small street, and I can line the Riverdale traffic up with the side of my body and I know that, if I come out and the Riverdale traffic is on my left…on my right…I know that I’m going north. I don’t want to go north, so I turn around and I head south and the traffic is on my left. So, especially on listening for where the traffic is, and how much traffic there is…
Q. Yeah.
A. …you can have a pretty good idea from that which is the wider street and which is the narrower street and you can listen to those boxes on the corner. If you hear that boom, boom, you know, the sound that they make sometimes…
Q. What boxes on the corner?
A. You know, the light…what do you call them?
Q. Oh.
A. Light boxes.
Q. Sure. Where the traffic light is.
A. Right. Now, you know, sometimes… I never depend on the clicks because clicks you can’t depend on for a light all the time, but at least you know you’re near a corner.
Q. Yeah. Well, absolutely.
A. So, you know, in that case… You know, I will tell you… I won’t tell you I’ve never gotten disoriented because, um, there are times because of construction, the bus stops in a different, or, tonight, they had a lot of construction… They’re building this classic senior manor by Hyatt, and they have these metal plates on the ground. Well, today they extended all the way out into the street.
Q. Oh.
A. And the reason I was scared to death was ‘cause there was ice coating…
Q. Gosh.
A. …these metal plates. But Pico took me out into the street because she didn’t want to walk on it either.
Q. [laugh]
A. But it had changed from this morning. They didn’t have so much construction going out in the street this morning, they just had the plates there.
Q. Wow.
A. And then, last week they didn’t have them there at all and the week before they had them there. So, when they’re doing construction like this… And a couple, about six weeks ago, they had the whole sidewalk torn open because they were putting in water pipes all the way from here down through the college of Mt. St. Vincent’s, which is about three or four blocks. So there were ditches and boards and everything like that.
Q. Makes there be another good reason for a dog.
A. Right.
Q. OK.
A. Right.
Q. Um, have you used… Do you use maps of any kind?
A. Truthfully, I’m not good at maps, but I did go through training with Baruch for the subway maps and I do think the subway maps are excellent ‘cause from the key you can discover the levels and whether it’s a doubled-edged platform and all of that kind of stuff.
Q. Um hm.
A. But, generally speaking, I’m awful at reading maps. When we get them at AER…
Q. Yes.
A. …I say, that you very much and I put them in my bag.
Q. [laugh]
A. ‘Cause I’m terrible at reading maps. And I don’t know if that blindness or just not a graphic person.
Q. Uh huh.
A. Because I know people who see that are terrible at reading maps
Q. Yeah.
A. They’re just not map readers.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, I don’t know if… I was never, in, in high school, a geometry person.
Q. Right.
A. You know, I was never the type of person who looked into…who really was good at any kind of, even biology graphs, and things like that. So, you know what I mean, I just don’t think I’m a map person. I don’t know if it has as much to do with vision as it has to do with what I’m go at.
Q. Were you ever… Did anybody try to teach you to use maps other than…
A. Well, Seeing Eye had a good map. They had good maps and when I first, uh, uh, went to the Lighthouse, they had this map of the street you could actually. Like, they’d indent the streets and all that kind of stuff. But, if it’s a map with all these Braille circles and lines and stuff on it, then I don’t know what I’m doing.
Q. So you… At the institute, did they have a class on it? Did your mobility instructor teach you how, like, how to…
A. No, no we didn’t have any maps and the only time we had maps was in geography class.
Q. [laugh]
A. But, no, no, we didn’t do… The first time I ever saw a map from mobility was my instructor Ann Walsh at the Lighthouse showed me the map they had.
Q. Ah hah.
A. And that was the first time I ever saw a map for mobility purposes. And then the next time I saw one again was when I went to Seeing Eye.
Q. Right. so geography…that was obviously tactile maps, right?
A. Oh, yeah, they were great. The mountains and the hills and everything.
Q. Did that help pull anything together for you or solve any…
A. Well, not in terms of mobility, but to know where the states were.
Q. Uh huh.
A. Like, we had a puzzle and we had a lot of fun with the teacher one time. We took it apart and we put all the parts in the drawer and he said, now that you’ve done that (now, all of us were totally blind), now that you've done that you can just sit down and put it back together.
Q. Hm.
A. And we did.
Q. Neat. So, it was fun as a game.
A. Yeah.
Q. Did it also, sort of, I don’t know, put things in perspective in terms of North, South, East, and West?
A. Yeah, and that’s um… The mobility maps that the…the overview maps that Baruch has of Manhattan, Bronx…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …that gives you a good idea of exactly, you know, where things are in New York City, like, where the Bronx is in relation to Manhattan.
Q. Yeah.
A. Where Van Cortlandt is in relation to the rest of the Bronx.
Q. Neat.
A. So in that sense, I think it’s very good and I thought the training was very good with he maps.
Q. Neat. Um, what one thing that happens frequently when you’re traveling that you like the least?
A. I like, uh… Well, first of all… What I like the very least is I find the traffic…and I just had a discussion with Seeing Eye about this…especially when you know you have the light and they’re not supposed to turn and you know they’re not supposed to turn…
Q. Right.
A. …and they turn in front of you.
Q. Yeah.
A. And you know you have the right-of-way, and the other thing that disturbs me know is trucks will come right into the crosswalk and, because you don’t know where you are in, you know, the light cycle, you know… You wait for the beginning of the next light cycle, but because this guy has blocked up, you can’t do anything.
Q. Right.
A. You have to wait until either he moves and… And not only you were backed up, the rest of the traffic is backed up.
Q. Yeah.
A. So the thing that I disturbs me…that I don’t remember having years ago was an awful lot of gridlock.
Q. Yeah.
A. And it’s very hard on the dogs. I can imagine a cane traveler… Even on the dogs, it’s very hard. I mean, if they veer diagonally, you almost can’t get mad at them.
Q. Yeah.
A. Because someplace there’s no place to go and we take the path of least resistance.
Q. Yeah.
A. And drivers are not as nice. You know, I’ve been in other cities where they stop on the dime when they see a cane or a dog. Not here.
Q. Right.
A. Not here at all.
Q. Um, what do you want sighted pedestrians to do when they want to help?
A. Well, I think they should always ask. And I think that all people that are blind should refuse kindly. Say, no, I don’t require your assistance. I usually will accept unless I think the person’s been drinking or I get a bad feeling about them.
Q. Uh huh.
A. Then I say, oh, thank you very much. I, you know, I’m able to go it alone. But I would just prefer that they ask me and that they… They’re so anxious to take your arm. And you’ll tell them… You’ll try to take their arm so that you don’t have to say anything, no, they grab your arm again.
Q. [laugh]
A. So, finally, I have to say, you know, the proper way to guide is to let me take your elbow. But, you’d be surprised how often I have to say that.
Q. Yeah.
A. Because, if you don’t do that, and it’s happened to me numerous times… Sometimes, you say, oh, the hell with it.
Q. [laugh]
A. And you don’t know how many times I have been left in the middle of the street.
Q. Oh.
A. And it happens. So, I really try to develop that security of, of, of grabbing their elbow.
Q. Um. So, they just let go…
A. They drag me across the street by the cane or by the dog’s harness.
Q. Yeah. So, you’ll be walking along the street, they have your arm and all of a sudden, they just let go?
A. Yeah. They go, oh, you can take it the rest of the way.
Q. [laugh]
A. Or, I got to run and catch a bus. You know.
Q. [laugh] Thanks, but no thanks.
A. Right. But you’ve got to expect it…in New York, you’re going to find all kinds of people.
Q. Sure. How do you handle being lost or disoriented?
A. Well, it depends how much in a hurry I am and, you know, where I’m going…you know, where it ranks in importance in my life. OK? Um, if I’m going to something of a serious nature and I’m lost, I’m frantic. And I tend to be more hyper. You know, I’m not as well behaved, as I would be under a circumstance where I sort of know where I am but I just have to locate the building.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, what I seem to notice is so many people who can see don’t know what’s around them.
Q. Yeah.
A. I mean, it could be the next building and they don’t know it’s there. I mean, people are just so oblivious to their environment and say, oh, I worked here for ten years and never noticed it. Or something like that.
Q. [laugh]
A. And it just amazes me how comatose people can be.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, um… You’ll love this story: I was going around the corner one day and, uh, I had a suitcase. This was several years ago, I was coming from somewhere. And, uh, this guy literally smashed into me. It wasn’t Pico’s fault; she couldn’t get out of his way in time. It wasn’t Pico; it was Zoe then. So the guy says to me, without looking, what’s the matter, are you blind? And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I am. Well the guy turned around and he was mortified. And I said, oh, good for him.
Q. [laugh]
A. And he goes, I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry.
Q. [laugh]
A. Can I carry your suitcase for you? No, thank you, that’s OK.
Q. [laugh]
A. And I kept going. But that was one of the funniest experiences I ever had, ‘cause the guy was just so mortified.
Q. [laugh] Um, so people don’t know where they are and that’s pretty funny that, when you ask someone… I’ve talked to people and they said, you know, I ask for help, but… ‘Cause usually the first guy’s an idiot or something like that. [laugh] you have to allow for one idiot who doesn’t know anything. [laugh]
A. Or, they’ll go, I don’t speak English. I’ve been here five months…no speak English.
Q. How do you locate someone to ask assistance from?
A. Well, I stand, you know, I try to get to a corner, which is usually the best place to find someone, if I can. And, um, I try to listen to someone passing by and I say, pardon me, could you help me? Now, people are more afraid to help than ever I guess they think you’re going to ask for a handout or something.
Q. [laugh]
A. But, 20 years ago, when I first starting traveling in the last ‘60s, you never had trouble getting help. Never. But, it’s just much harder now. Maybe it’s harder because I have the dog and people are afraid of the dog or whatever. But I don’t think that’s it because I have friends who use canes…
Q. Yeah.
A. …and, you know, they can stand at a light for three cycles. I have an older blind friend, he’s going to be 80 in March, and his hearing is not so good any more so he really doesn’t want to cross streets without assistance. And he told me he can wait practically forever, you know, until someone comes along. And years ago, that was never true.
Q. Hm.
A. People would come and help you all the time. So, it’s… whether people are in their own world or they’re afraid or they don’t know how to approach or because we have such an immigrant population that has some strange ideas about blindness…which they do in other countries… I don’t know what… If people are… just generally don’t care as they once did. But, uh, I don’t think people are as ready to help as they used to be.
Q. Interesting. What kinds of things do you use as landmarks?
A. Um, poles. Um, now, my street here is a hilly street and I know I’m on the correct street when Pico makes that turn and there’s a hill right there. Um, I can’t use my sense of smell any more because I’ve had so many sinus surgeries, so I can’t depend on it, which is too bad ‘cause that used to be a great one, especially if there were a bakery or something around, you know?
Q. Yeah.
A. It’s things like, uh, oh, where there might be… Like, for example, before I turn the corner of the building I go into at work, there’s a coffee stand there in the morning, OK, and that’s a good… It isn’t always there, but it is there in the morning.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And, uh, uh, things like that. Like, if there’s a deli with one of those fruit things that extend outward, you know, those fruit stands with all the fruit and flowers…
Q. Well, if you’re walking with, um, Pico, poles, those kinds of things, they get avoided, don’t they?
A. They do, but, if I were disoriented, I usually know that there’s been a pole or if I’m on a corner, um, especially if it’s in the area of where I work, I know the names of some of the stores, you know, around. And I know exactly where I am. But, even when you through a place like a deli, even though she goes around it, it’s a tight squeeze.
Q. Ah hah.
A. So, I know there’s things around me.
Q. Yeah.
A. OK. I know there’s things out on the sidewalk.
Q. By the way she’s reacting.
A. Right. Because it’s a tight squeeze.
Q. Neat.
A. And she has to go around things.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, I use anything I possibly can as a landmark. Anything.
Q. Neat.
A. From a subway entrance… Like, for example, the, uh… I know that when I get on the bus at 61st Street and Third…the Riverdale bus…I know there’s a hosiery store there. I know that the last crossing, there’s a subway before, an entrance before I make that crossing, and I know that the city bus stops just behind my bus. Uh, so, I try to set myself up right there because I know exactly when I’m in front of it. At 34th Street, I know that the bus stops in front of a pizza place. I know that up here, it’s stops…it’s a big avenue, but on the other side of the street, is a bakery. So, I learned the names of my buildings so that, if I’m ever disoriented, I can ask someone.
Q. That’s great.
A. I know exactly where I am.
Q. So, you’ll just say, like, is so-and-so bakery nearby, or something like that.
A. Yeah.
Q. Neat. Or, do you see something like… Is that what you would do?
A. Right, that’s what I do.
Q. Do you belong to any professional or consumer organizations?
A. Well, I belong to… Uh, I’m the president of Greater New York Council of the Blind…
Q. Neat.
A. …which is part of American Council of the Blind.
Q. Um hm.
A. Um, I belong to Guide Dog Users of New York State.
Q. Neat.
A. And, uh, I’m a member of AER.
Q. Uh huh. Neat. Uh, what do you think drives the split, the divide between NFB and ACB, AER. Seem to be…
A. Well, AER I find is more middle-of-the-road. They’re more in the direction of ACB…
Q. Yeah.
A. …rather than NFB. I think what it is it’s the way we see obtaining reasonable accommodations. What we see as being independent. Like, for the subway strips…NFB sees that as they shouldn’t be there and called just for the blind, so they don’t want them at all. Where I see the subway stripping as even being good for elderly people.
Q. Um hm.
A. With the traction and with…maybe they’re not legally blind, but maybe their vision might not be what is once was.
Q. Um hm.
A. And it might stop people with the, um, truncated domes, from going over the edge…any people.
Q. Yeah.
A. The same as I saw the gates when they put the gates in between the subway cars. I saw that as a safety factor for everyone. Because not just blind people fall on the tracks, or fall in between the cars. More sighted, I would bet…
Q. Sure.
A. …fall in between them. And so I see this as a wider issue. The same with on the plane. NFB, they want to sit near exits and open the door. Even if I could see, I can tell you, I would not want to do it. I’d be a wreck. I wouldn’t remember how to open the door. I know it. And I really think in some of these things you have to be practical. If you’re blind, you’re not going to be a brain surgeon.
Q. [laugh]
A. If you’re blind, you’re not going to be able to open the doors on that plane. But they don’t see it that way.
Q. Yeah.
A. I also think it’s ridiculous that they think blind people can be mobility instructors.
Q. Oh.
A. I don’t know like that idea. I would… I could do indoor mobility.
Q. Uh huh.
A. I could teach someone how to get to the laundry room or the mailbox. But then when it comes to doing streets, I would not want that responsibility because I can’t see what they’re doing.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, the basic difference is, they just… You know, they take this attitude, even… I was in a meeting with Nancy Miller and some people from the Commission about programs for the elderly blind. And what’s his name was there…Carl Jacobson from New York City…Greater New York NFB. And he said, oh, well, it won’t be anything for us when we get old, he said, because we’re adjusted to their blindness. And I said to him, but when you become old, it brings problems that you never thought of.
Q. Sure.
A. And that’s why blind people who are just losing their vision have so many problems. Oh, well, if they were told to get over it and if they just… You know, should adjust like we adjust, I’m not going to have any problems when I get old. And I said, how do you know that?
Q. Yeah.
A. How could you know that now? But, I mean, you know, with the decrease in hearing, arthritis, and loss of a spouse, or whatever it would happen to be, um… You know, these things impact even if you’ve been blind all your life. They have an impact on you when you get older. But, he just couldn’t see it. He just couldn’t see it. It didn't matter what I said, I was wrong.
Q. Hah.
A. And that’s the thing… On the other hand, I think NFB has done a lot of good things with their computer center…
Q. Sure.
A. …and with Braille literacy and the stand program, which I think is very good.
Q. What’s that one?
A. The, um… They were largely responsible for… They have, um… I guess they, way back when, had something to do with the Randolph Shepherd…
Q. Oh, the BEP…
A. …and a lot of the NFB enterprises have a lot to do with these stands.
Q. Neat.
A. So, that, although I don’t agree with their philosophy and would never join them, and Kenneth Jurnigan didn’t have such a good idea about dogs, nor did he about canes…I got to add…I just find that ACB is more middle of the road.
Q. Yeah.
A. We’re more legislation conscious and I think we try to work with AER and to work with, uh, um, NFB…not NFB, American…AFB.
Q. Um hm.
A. And I think we really try to work with organizations instead of opposing them.
Q. Yeah.
A. We more or less feel we could win more flies with honey that we can with vinegar.
Q. Hm.
A. So, I mean, I think that’s the general idea, but, yes, we want independence. We want equality.
Q. Sure.
A. For example, I saw in Frances Mary D’Andrea’s…what’s that…the DOT newsletter that I get…um, that NFB has this book on Braille for Success. But it’s in print.
Q. [laugh] That’s cute.
A. And they’re always fussing. You know, about getting everything in accessible format…
Q. [laugh]
A. And they’re suing, you know, states, to get Braille bills, and all that.
Q. [laugh]
A. And here they have this book and it’s in print only.
Q. [laugh] How did ADA impact you? Do you notice a difference before and after its passage?
A. Well, in the… Yes, in the sense that you can, um, state that a reasonable accommodation is requested. And like that time I told you I went on Cave of the Winds, I think if I had not been able to say the Americans with Disabilities Act that the guide probably would not have let me go on…
Q. Right.
A. …that adventure. But I do also feel, uh, that its greatly taken advantage of.
Q. Oh.
A. By people who don’t need it. And when we need it for a realistic reason, for a reason that really counts, we’re less likely to be listened to because there’s so much abuse of the American with Disabilities Act. One case was, um, twins who were pilots for, um, a charter airline. And they wanted to get a job with United or TWA or something like that. Now, they were not visually impaired as long as they wore their contact lenses, but the standard… Their vision was quite bad without it.
Q. Uh huh.
A. But the standards of the airline somehow said that they would prefer there not be such a difference with lenses…with using contact lenses in the air and, uh, some other degree of vision problem that they had that their standards of visual acuity in piloting were much higher than the charter airline and they told them not to hire these twins. Now these twins, they filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Q. Oh, my.
A. They said that, as visually impaired people, they were being denied…
Q. They’re not visually impaired…they don’t fit any definition of visual impairment.
A. Right, but they said that having a vision…they were not given reasonable accommodation.
Q. Oh, please.
A. Well, the courts of course ruled against them because they said you have to have sufficient vision to fly a plane and that all of the other airlines, but if the policy of the airline…it was that airline’s policy to require a certain vision threshold and certain rules about that, then it was not really discrimination because it took vision to fly and plane, and if they were going to say they had the ability to fly the plane, then they couldn’t go ahead on the other hand and say they were visually impaired.
Q. [laugh]
A. They couldn’t be both.
Q. [laugh]
A. So the court ruled against them, but the other abuses that John Stoessel had on about people being fat and, you know, things like that. Like, they couldn’t get into a seat in a theater and I really think that that’s an abuse. I really do.
Q. Yeah. You personally, have you had any personal benefit, you think, derived from it?
A. Well, I think it’s easier to, um… One thing that I noticed… I had an operation at St. Vincent’s a couple of years ago, and I think before the Americans with Disabilities Act you wouldn’t have found this. They gave me my patients’ rights in Braille.
Q. Nice.
A. And they said, I‘m sorry, you have to give it back to us ‘cause we have only one copy…
Q. [laugh]
A. …we’ll give you a print copy. No, I said, no, that’s fine as long as I read it.\
Q. Sure.
A. So, I say there while I was waiting to be… for pre-admissions…and I read it.
Q. Neat.
A. And that was really acceptable to me.
Q. Yeah.
A. But I remember I went to Lenox Hill for an operation my eye removed last March and they said, oh, here’s your patients’ rights and I said, well, where is the Braille copy, and they said, what Braille copy. And I said, well, you know with the Americans with Disabilities Act you really have to have this in some accessible format, Brailled or tape. And, she said, is that true. Yes, I said, you’d better discuss it with your administration.
Q. Neat.
A. So, everywhere I go, I try to…
Q. Terrific.
A. …you know, tell them about this. I tell my clients ask your bank for the checks, you know the yellow checks with the raised black lines and they say well, what if` they way we can’t. Say the Americans with Disabilities Act says that they’re supposed to provide that accommodation. It’s not an expensive accommodation to provide for you. Most of their checks…most of the banks order the checks from the same company anyway. You know, there’s only a few companies that make certain kinds of check and I said I’m certain if other banks get it, they can get it, too.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, it’s things like this that, you know… I have found that they, you know, really do try to… I think there has been, but I think there needs to be more of it. You know. I think some of it’s a little ridiculous… Like, my doctor told me that the operating room at Roosevelt Hospital has Braille on all the doors. Now when I’m being brought …
Q. [laugh]
A. …into the operating room, I’m not going to get up and feel a door.
Q. [laugh] Well, if you’re looking for something, you can’t rule it out as a place, maybe. I don’t know. [laugh]
A. Right, but I mean, they have it and they have Braille labels on all the machines and stuff. Yeah that’s a little much, unless they have technicians that are going to fix them. But, then, at the Catholic Guild for the Blind—we’re in the Archdiocese Building—there are no Braille labels when we get off the floor. We don’t have ladies’ and men’s rooms sign in large print or Braille…
Q. Um.
A. …and if it’s not Braille, at least large print. Um, the cafeteria has glary lighting and in the elevators, the numbers are all over the place. They don’t make sense like they do at the Lighthouse.
Q. Yeah.
A. They’re just all over the place, and when they had to old elevators, which they said they weren’t ADA compliant, you could find he numbers and the lighting was brighter.
Q. [laugh]
A. So, um, you know it’s just things like this … You know. I’m working with them, like, I always have to stand in front of the outer door and wait for the guard to let me in. I don’t like to take Pico through the revolving doors…not that she can’t do it, but I don’t know who’s in front of me.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I’m afraid her head will get caught in there because it’s so fast. So I try to go through the straight doors, but, unlike the Lighthouse where the doors open automatically, I have to wait for someone to come and open the door.
Q. Oh, gee.
A. But, if someone didn’t come, I could go through the revolving doors. But there’s a girl on my floor who has MS and she’s in a wheelchair and she can’t do that.
Q. Right.
A. And in the coldest weather, she has to wait until somebody comes and opens the door.
Q. That’s really ridiculous to keep those doors locked. They’re not supposed to.
A. No. They aren’t.
Q. I just hate revolving doors, just as a matter of course. I just don’t like going through them and I prefer
[side A ends. Side B starts]
A. suggested that they do a turnstile, ’cause we’ve have incidents at Catholic Charities, you know, we have the homeless up there…
Q. But, you know, you have…
A. …you know the prison ministry, and like that.
Q. …you have revolving doors. I mean, just because the other kind… that doesn’t mean you’re going to get more people because the other kind are unlocked. You know what I’m saying?
A. Well, even if he had a switch there, where, if he saw somebody…
Q. But it doesn’t make any sense. They would go as easily through a revolving door and through another door.
A. Right.
Q. I mean, you know [ laugh] That’s no reason.
A. Well, they really should have the doors that open automatically because then this girl wouldn’t have to ask anybody for help.
Q. That's, yeah.
A. And she could just come in by herself.
Q. That’s true.
A. And the Cardinal said he wanted an open-door policy.
Q. [laugh]
A. And what kills me is they remodeled the lobby. So if the remodeled it at that time, why didn’t they put in ADA-standard doors?
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, it just doesn’t make sense. Like, the Lighthouse building is all ADA-compliant. All the doors up in the music school and everything.
Q. Neat.
A. They’re all ADA…and, it’s funny, ‘cause the doors on our floor are ADA-compliant. Um, and all of that kind of stuff, but downstairs in the lobby they’re not and up in the cafeteria it’s not ADA-compliant. They remodeled the cafeteria and they have the soup so high that someone in a wheelchair would never be able to reach it.
Q. Oh.
A. And they write the menu out in handprint so a partially sighted person could never read it.
Q. Sounds like you’re very aware of visual things. I mean, you make a lot of references to dim lighting and what have you.
A. Yeah.
Q. You really keep abreast of that.
A. Well, I have light perception.
Q. You do?
A. In, in my, uh, left eye and I have prostheses in my right eye.
Q. Neat. What do you attribute to your present level of mobility?
A. Well, I think I had good mobility instructors in the beginning, who gave me good foundations, and I also think, um, with the confidence I have in using a dog, I think that gave me a greater level of independence and mobility that I ever had with a cane. But I would never discount the foundation of travel skills that I got with all my instructors, ’cause I think I learned something from each one of them.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I don’t think you can really discount, you know… When the guide dog schools first started, they never required people to have mobility skills. And now all of them do.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, which I think is a good thing. And in fact--
Q. Well, guide dog schools are older than mobility [laugh] instructors.
A. Yeah, but, um, now they do require it and, like, Lucas Frank is on the staff at Seeing Eye…
Q. Sure.
A. …and he’s a certified mobility instructor. In fact, he worked for the Catholic Guild for a while.
Q. Oh.
A. And, in fact, he worked with them after he trained me with Zoe and then he worked for us part-time and Martin Yablonski used to be on the staff of Guiding Eye…
Q. Sure.
A. So, I think they’re starting to realize just how important it is that that person, before using a dog, know traffic patterns. Can analyze their environment. How important these things really are.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, especially if the dog becomes ill, or there might be a certain circumstance where they can’t use the dog, um… Like, when I go have my nails done across the street from the Guild, I don’t bring the dog in for a good reason. ‘Cause she pulls me afterwards and messes up my manicure.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, it’s just two streets I can cross myself with a cane.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, I, I… There are occasions like if I go out with my friends from work. Therese is deathly afraid of dogs. Deathly. So if we go out, say, for dinner, sometimes I’ll leave the dog in my office and we go out together and I come back and get her later.
Q. Yeah.
A. I figure, the dog’s more comfortable, she has a pillow, a rug, and all that. Or, you know, if I go out with the secretaries from Catholic Guild and, you know, we’re going to go shopping or something like that, I’ll leave the dog behind ‘cause it’s easier to try on clothes and things like that, you know, than to find a place for the dog and all of that. Um, sometimes when I take my mom…if I take my mom to the doctor, I might leave the dog at her home because she’s very elderly, it’s very hard to get her in and out of a cab, and she really needs both Sal and I to help her. So, you know, there are places I’ve been to where I won’t take a dog. I don’t think a dog is meant… Seeing Eye said the dog is not a ball and chain. The dog is a mobility aid. And if there’s nothing for that dog to do in terms of mobility, leave the dog home.
Q. Yeah. Neat. Would you get more mobility instruction?
A. Uh, I think I would. I think if I have to go back to a cane again, I might ask Therese to let Rick give me, you know, a few brush-ups because, I don’t do it every day.
Q. Yeah.
A. And there are things you forget.
Q. Right.
A. Or I’ll ask Marilyn Newman to give me a few hours or something. You know.
Q. Um hm.
A. But I think I might.
Q. Neat.
A. And, a lot of my friends do in between dogs.
Q. Oh.
A. They realize it’s been ten years since they’ve ever had and, they might get someone just to come for a few hours and remind them about, you know, the swing and, you know, the walk, the sliding technique, and all of that. So, you know, I’m not the only who does that. A lot of my friends will do that.
Q. That. Well, Maureen, you have just been a lot of fun.
A. OK.
Q. This has been a lot of fun for me and I really appreciate you taking the time out to talk to me. Uh…
A. I do want to say one more thing.
Q. Yeah.
A. One advancement in the area of mobility is that reflector tape, and the kind… I also have it… You know, now we have it on our harnesses…I don’t know if all the schools use it, but Seeing Eye does. And, um, I also… Sal got a flasher that he’s going to give to me and he has one… When I cross Riverdale Avenue at night, I use it. It’s a red flasher and can be seen for five miles.
Q. Oh.
A. And the reason I use it is because, with all the lights… Riverdale has all those rises and valleys in the road, the way it does naturally, a car could not even see you until it gets over the rise and they come through here at a billion miles an hour.
Q. Yeah.
A. Even though you’re supposed to have the light… And the flasher will, will let the car see you.
Q. Oh, that’s a great one.
A. And Seeing Eye tells us not to wear…especially if we have black dogs…don’t wear a dark color coat.
Q. Yeah. Makes a big difference.
A. Then, I think the reflector vests are also a good thing to use. But I think the reflector tape, especially some of the newer kinds that can reflect at 400 feet…I really think that’s great and all people should use it on their canes and on their harnesses and all that.
Q. Oh, that’s a great tip, a great tip. Well, thank you so much.
A. OK. All right. It’s been good. And we’ll…
[tape ends]
Interviewed by: Grace Ambrose
Interview date: 1/13/00
Transcription Lenni
Transcription Date: 1/30/01
Reviewed by: Grace Ambrose
Review date: 10/14/2001
