Woolman as Blindness Tourism

RantWoman presents yet another fabulous opportunity for blindness tourism, this time disguised as a humble, perfectly ordinary book reading group. Friends in RantWoman's Meeting have been working our way through John Woolman's journal. We are not working quickly. We are meeting once a month and so far we have mostly finished six chapters, taking time to chew through both historical details supplied by people who have various backgrounds and theological details in each turn of phrase.

RantWoman has been grateful that the Friend convening the group has not been in a hurry. RantWoman has mostly felt grateful that people enriching the group with their various supplemental readings have been insightful in their sharing but have not overpowered the likes of RantWoman who basically has neither time nor capacity to try to do anything but read the central text.

Reading the central text is no small task. People in the group are reading more than one print edition. RantWoman is reading from her Kindle. RantWoman has not bothered to look up which edition is on her Kindle. It would not help. The paragraphs are long enough that at RantWoman's preferred font size they take up more than one screen on her Kindle. The screens do not correspond to anyone's page numbers. RantWoman is TRYING to train her reading group members to say what words the paragraphs start or end with. This assuredly is not happening.

Instead members of RantWoman's reading group seem to like to fixate on a small chunk of text described as in such and such paragraph on page such and such of the ... edition. RantWoman keeps the audio to a minimum in her group. Even though RantWoman can actually read with faster speech than her Kindle even does, in places like meetings and reading group, RantWoman keeps the audio to a bare minimum. This means RantWoman gets to try to skim visually. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Visual skimming is not RantWoman's favorite in the first place. Screaming through with text to speech even at the comparatively pokey pace the Kindle can do is gauche in public anyway. So have the time RantWoman has no idea which nugget of Woolman theology and prosody the rest of the reading group is holding forth about. And aside from saying the start or end of the paragraph, there does not seem to be a darn thing to be done except put up with it.

Well, MAYBE RantWoman will have to get her reading done in time to jot notes on paper or in Braille. Maybe!

RantWoman supplemental note: imagine this same lost ina sea of text issue while trying to edit minutes in a committee meeting or in Business Meeting. RantWoman has been VERY grateful to have minutes shipped out in advance by email and to have a clerk and recording clerk willing to engage with RantWoman's numerous vexations over recent months by email.

RantWoman could find it easy to get downright surly about a cerain committee that half the time could not even get minutes out by email until after RantWoman had gotten on the bus to come to a committee meeting. RantWoman was especially , cough, amused one month by a thoroughly well-meant but hopelessly clueless offer: RantWoman was invited to read minutes on someone else's laptop with no accessibility software and a lot of hurry without even time to fuss around and adjust a few settings taht would have helped a tiny bit. But there goes RantWoman being fixated and ungracious, AGAIN!
RantWoman will now resume her efforts to steep herself in Woolman well enough to "keep low" about her endless objections to others' interactions with her reality. RantWoman is afraid she is going to need a lot of steeping!

Oh wait: RantWoman has the same lost at sea problem interacting with the text even when she gets things in advance. The difference: when RantWoman gets things in advance and cannot remember every point it would wander into her head to be fixated on, RantWoman herself has to prioritize and let go! RantWoman is absurdly grateful when she gets to be true to her own Light, not just slog through someone else's sludge. Oh wait, back to steeping....