Freight Train: Tour Guide

RantWoman reminds her readers of her pending Interest Group at Quarterly Meeting

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/09/interest.html

RantWoman wrote her proposal for her interest group at Quarterly Meeting. Then more events transpired and RantWoman was led to ask for input. RantWoman asked for input in one of her trademark email immoderation emails, this time to a LONG list of people who either personally have earned the email or...:


Hi Friends

This email is a request for input The bottom of this message is a description of an interest group I will lead at Quarterly Meeting, that is unless I find a way to get from Lazy F where I need to be on
Friday night to Yakima for an interpreter training (on handling trauma issues, oddly enough) on Saturday 9/24. Chances are I will make the interest group and this is a request for input.

Awhile ago my clearness committee suggested I talk to children in our Meeting about life with vision loss. For a few different reasons I am clear that it would be better to start by talking to adults.

What would you most like to know about my experience?

What do you find bewildering about interacting with me?

What worries or observations do you have?

Is there someone else you wish I would ask

I DO NOT apologize for email. For one thing, you writing me back helps me keep track of things in a format I can search MUCH better than my notes in my ever scarier handwriting. I am happy to receive phone calls as well but another reason I like to start with email is that I am frequently awake later than many Friends and need to make effective use of my own time.

Also I am having to tell different people the same things over and over, including arguing various variations of "that could not possibly be a problem because we are so sincere, already spent so much time doing it wrong, think we understand based on..."

Some of the time this repetition is just exhausting. Some of the time I come away feeling drained the same way I feel drained when I have had to interpret for, say, a series of appointments with a trauma
survivor and an attorney, the trauma survivor getting restimulated having to relive the story once to tell it, once when the attorney has mashed my interpretation into the kinds of sentences that legal
entities understand or need to hear and I have to sight translate to check for corrections, and then the survivor has to repeat the story AGAIN in front of third parties of varying levels of awareness,
hostility, eptitude / ineptness, responsiveness... Only now it's my
story....

So I would like to get to clear messages much more widely understood and to get there as directly as possible.


Anyway, I mean it about wanting to hear Friends questions. I do not particularly promise to get to all of them in one interest group but I am happy to hold and work with them. Depending on interest, I am happy to consider doing a session at UFM either before or after the Interest Group at Quarterly Meeting.


Here is the workshop description:

Name of Interest Group:
Howling about Diminishments:
The RantWoman Guide to Midlife Vision Meltdown

Description: This interest group is devoted to everything you never
thought you wanted to know about midlife vision loss. What constitutes
“everything” will be determined by leadings of Spirit the day of the
event.

“Everything” may include accessibility measures during silent worship,
a badly-behaved white cane, favorite Bible bits, Braille, reading,
faith healing, Quakerism aboard the bus, nodding and grunting, advice
for elderly drivers, advice for those fretting about elderly drivers,
blogging, and other topics as led.There will also be time for sharing
out of silence.

Thank you for whatever observations you are led to offer.

In the Light

(RantWoman)


From Friend with Many Weighty Titles, some pointedly omitted)
Dear (RantWoman)

If I were coming to your interest group, the thing that first occurs to me is talking about body language - in committee meetings, business meeting, even worship. I think this is a really hard thing for folks to get (and remember!). Your comment in Business Meeting yesterday about nodding as a way of showing approval was very helpful and appropriate. Giving examples would be great. Would you even consider a little role playing with most folks blindfolded?

I have found your comments about kids running around to be another very
important and useful comment, since we don't think about it.

I hope you do get to give this interest group and look forward to hearing
about it.

Friend with Numerous Weighty Titles, some pointedly omitted.


Dear Friend (Numerous Weighty Friend Titles),

Thank you for your suggestions and observations.

First a process point: THIS EMAIL DOES NOT REQUIRE IMMEDIATE RESPONSE. This came in as a reply/all to everyone on my original To: list. I am aware of others' grumbles about email AND I mean to take this partly as an invitation to tell a number of people the same things at the same time and to give you the option of clicking or not clicking on the individual blog posts. That way, if I grumble about how exhausting it is to have endless one on one conversations and if you want to talk amongst yourselves, you are at least all starting from common
information.

Second, I do not particularly apologize for the length. In fact
considering the freight train of matters frying my nerves this week, I
hope you will appreciate my comparative restraint. On the other hand,
if you want to unload some more cars....

--Body language? It's not exactly body language but everything to do
with non-verbal communication. On one hand, I ask people to tell me
when I offend them because I am pretty sure I achieve that more often
than would be preferable and REALLY cannot read faces and am lost
without verbal feedback.
The other aspect of not reading faces though is in a number of
situations I have possibly misinterpreted another speaker (I need to
talk to one person in particular) or I have felt like lots of people
are inappropriately unresponsive to or show serious lack of awareness
about something emotional where some kind of acknowledgment of
difficulty or complexity would be entirely appropriate. The
illustration I have used a couple times is a bit from I think Monty
Python and the Holy Grail where everyone is seated at some kind of
wedding and some knight shows up and starts hacking off hunks of
people while the guests just keep doing whatever and do not even
react. Ask me about exact situations in person or consider whether
this perspective might shed light something you have experienced.

--At my proposed interest group I will do some of the things I do
when I run other meetings as well as a couple additional things.

--Here are a couple blog posts about my experiences in meetings.
Meeting for worship has a whole bunch of links below separately.

with some links to follow
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/06/interrupt.html

meeting for memorial, but still
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/07/agnes-schmoe.html


--A miscellaneous item about running into people, my white cane and a certain much-discussed Friend's ministry of audible eye-rolling.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/06/not-blind-that-we-know-of.html


--I do not think I want to consider role-playing at this event but given enthusiasm I hear (two other voices), I will hold in future consideration for a number of reasons:
--blindfolds are only one form of representing different non-standard visual experiences. Here are a couple blog entries about my experience specifically:

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/08/do-it-yourself-eye-surgery-and-plague.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/12/worse-auntie-grow-your-own-lava-lamp.html


--I am nowhere near centered enough right now about a number of topics to lead a roleplay exercise. I will do well to stay centered enough to talk and do not want to think about ways of handing out
alternate vision experiences. A couple years ago, I was part of a presentation about disaster
preparedness for people with disabilities.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/04/super-duper-powerpoint-festival.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/04/taxed.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/search?q=pantyhose

Before my presentation I got to go to a really great disability simulation exercise put on by someone at the Hearing Speech and Deafness Center. I am more inclined to find a forum where someone from
outside can be invited to, say, UFM than to try it on my own.

I think I should stop here for now. If you have made it this far, thank you for reading. I am happy to talk in person or by phone--or not.

In the Light
(RantWoman)