A Not-Not Public Service Annoucement

I briefly co-hosted a sports talk radio show at my college, and every so often we were required to read PSA's (public service announcements). My co-host did the announcing. In retrospect, I could have memorized a few and done it myself, but it wasn't my top priority.

Anyway, my friend Andrew (who will hopefully write his own contribution to the blog soon) passed along this information for people with vision issues. I'm well aware that most people who read this are fully sighted, but if you know anyone who isn't, please pass this along... and thanks, Andrew!

We are looking for highly motivated and talented participants for the 2010 IISE course. To be able to reach blind and partially sighted potential candidates around the world we would like to ask you to send a small IISE advertisement to the friends and people in your networks. Please find below the advertisement in English. On the following link you can find the same advertisement in several languages: Advertisement IISE .
If your organization happens to have a Braille magazine, we’d be delighted if you could run the advertisement. Thank you very much for your help!

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Attention! Attention!

Are you a blind or partially sighted person over the age of 18?

Do you experience social discrimination?
Is it your dream to change and improve the situation?
If yes, the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs (IISE) is the right place to be.
The IISE seeks to empower people, especially blind and partially sighted, to become social entrepreneurs in your communities.

Candidates from all over the world who are at least eighteen and older and who can read and write English are invited to apply for this one-year program before the 30th of June 2009.

Computer literacy training, public speaking, fund raising, and management are some of the courses offered here.
For more information please visit our website at http://www.bwb-iise.org/

You can also write to file:///G:/aproject/ABWB/BWBnew/ENGLISH/BrailleWB@gmx.net or per regular post to:

Braille Without Borders - IISE
c/o P. Kronenberg
Vivekanenda Nagar, Vellayani, Ookode, Nemom PO , TRV 695020
KERALA, INDIA

or fax your questions to: Fax 0031848307904

Google Can Map My Heart

Thanks to Google Maps, I will get to work tomorrow.

Having grown up in a gridded borough, I get a little confused when I get to Brooklyn. In fairness, I think everyone does. But sometimes I forget, despite its location in the city of New York, that Brooklyn does not have a convenient system of numbered streets and avenues that tell you how to get where you want to go.

This is where Google comes in. Whenever I'm Brooklyn-bound, or really whenever I'm going somewhere new, I like to scope out the territory on Google Maps. If I know a few street names and can mentally walk the path from the subway to the destination, it makes the journey a lot easier.

The only problem is that, for the most part, it's hard to tell north from south when you step out of an underground subway station. This is where the Street View tool comes in handy. Store fronts make excellent landmarks, and if I can see them ahead of time, I can orient myself before I start walking. This saves a lot of wrong-way travel.

I'm teaching at a school in Brooklyn Heights tomorrow, and although I've been there before, I haven't gone alone . Also, the path to the subway was a little complicated, so I didn't remember it. Google has allowed me to look around the outside of the subway station, walk down the correct street, and slide right up to the door of the school without getting up from my desk.

Now all I need is a Google tool that will allow me to teach my class without leaving my apartment. It's a theater class, so I'm guessing that one is only in the R&D stage.

I Have a Job

Governor Paterson often calls attention to the staggeringly high unemployment rate among the legally blind: nearly 70%, by some accounts. But, as a friend recently reminded me, we are not statistics.

I got a call this afternoon confirming that I have been hired for a job.

It's not full-time work, but as a teaching artist, my goal is to cobble together enough part-time work to support myself as I write plays and participate in theater. Sometimes, I get paid to do all three.

Most organizations that hire teaching artists keep a roster of them. I already belong to one such roster. Getting onto this one involved a highly competitive interview process, two separate stages of training, a third stage of training (if you make the cut-off), and a trial teaching unit, where they send you into the schools. This process started when I interviewed way back in the spring.. It ended today.

This still means that I have to spend a good amount of time looking for work, but I'm guaranteed a certain amount of employment now, which certainly takes off some pressure. Interviewing for jobs is hard enough, even if you don't have to deal with the whole, "I can't make eye contact, but please hire me anyway" thing.

I think I can actually relax this weekend.