While on Books

While on the subject of books, this is what I started reading today. It's like a user guide for us humans. Vivian's going to try to read the title tomorrow and that's going to make for interesting conversation.

Blind Learning

Today, thanks to a friendship formed years ago via the Rosedale Ride, Sara Merritt and four other faculty and a student from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired came to visit Vivian's class. The results were amazing. In the video below Kathy from the TSBVI has randomly paired each student in the class with another student by giving them both a noise making instrument of a unique pair after putting blinders over their eyes. By making sounds and listening the students have to find their pair.

They also did a smell test, colored in pictures printed on swell paper, tried to read, feel and write in Braille, wore vision occluders while attempting various tasks, and learned how to walk with canes - mostly with their eyes closed.

Books and Authors

Back in October of 2010 Karen tagged me to a Facebook meme where I had to list my 15 favorite authors. Sometime this summer Ash and Sharath did something similar, but for books. I'm going to use the original list of authors and just add my favorite work by each. Lazy.

Isaac Asimov - Foundation series
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None 
Enid Blyton - The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat
Louis L'Amour - Hondo
John Irving -  A Prayer for Owen Meany
Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene
Hergé - The Secret of the Unicorn
Richard Feynman - Six Not-So-Easy Pieces
Shakespeare - MacBeth
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
George Orwell - 1984
Tolkien - The Hobbit

So far, the Tintins (by Hergé) and a few Enid Blytons are the only ones I have shared with Evan and Vivian. The John Irving is the only one in the list that I have read only once but I have liked most of what he has written and so he gets included. Everything else I've read at least a couple of times, some many.

I'm adding one more book to the list. I loved it when I was a kid. My dad read every story to Alu and me. And now, a few times a week, I read them to Vivian and Evan. The World's Best Fairy Tales, a 1967 anthology of the 69 best fairy tales, published by Reader's Digest.

The Madness

A few days ago Vivian ran into an old classmate at school when I went to pick her up. Bridget looked at Vivian's shoes with white and pink laces and dramatically screamed "What's this madness?" Since then Vivian has added Evan's penchant for unmatched socks, who himself took it to new heights this morning. "Look - they are not the same color. And they are not the same height", he said proudly.