www.LeonGilbert.org

"Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk" (painted 1880-1883), with descriptive review

2008-10-27T01:47:00.006Z

I Came across this Israeli press review of a Russian painting, published in Haaretz and written by Ariel Hirschfield. I enjoyed the review so much that I looked up the picture, and managed to find it online.

So here it is, with the description!

(Ariel Hirschfield): ".....I will touch on only one painting, which has acquired iconic status in the memory of Russian art, a painting that no one who has been to the Tretyakov Gallery can forget: "Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk" (painted 1880-1883). by Ilya Yefimovich Repin

Here is a link to a high resolution version of the picture

In books it looks like a somewhat banal canvas of a mass of people, part of a "generic" world of ways of life and customs deriving from national love, in the European Romantic style. Only a magnifying glass can reveal its chief greatness, which is in the details. In the gallery it is large but not huge (1.75 x 2.80 meters), and made for close-up, one-on-one viewing. Above all, it is terrible and heartbreaking. Like the number of times I came to it during this visit to Moscow, I will reiterate: heartbreaking, heartbreaking, heartbreaking.

On a dusty dirt road, beneath an unsheltering sky, next to a hill studded with stumps of recently chopped-down trees, a procession slowly passes. In a decorated portable tabernacle, borne on peasants' shoulders, is a sacred image surrounded by burning candles. Pious women carry a reliquary holding the remains of a saint. Another woman, grandiose physically and metaphorically, holds a sacred tome. A palanquin and pennants emerge from the dust-clouded distance: peasants and property owners, priests, soldiers, cripples and beggars. In the midst of this mass are a few horsemen. Some are part of the procession, others are there to keep order. One raises his whip to lash at the people around him.

Most of the foreground of the painting is bare ground, in the middle of which is the shadow cast by a blind man's cane that shows him and his lame companion the way. The shadow's straight diagonal is the direction of the procession and the line that holds the entire painting. But the fact that this line is the line of vision of a blind man, added to the fact that the line is a shadow, imbues the entire work with another voice, grave and mysterious, of knowing and unknowing and the forces that carry human beings and a people on the way." It was impossible not to think that this shadow line leads also to present-day Moscow....

There is no way to reach this plane of description and insight through photography or literature. This is the language of painting at its best and most complex. The paint application technique is very close to that of the Impressionists. Repin was acquainted with the Impressionists first-hand from his time in Paris and was deeply influenced by them, but he was not an Impressionist. This is symbolic realism overlaid with the technique of Impressionism, which endows it with a very powerful sensual immediacy. The brutal light, the heat, the dust, the absolute, pure quotidianness of the gaze are what place the "people" in the painting within the world. It is not by chance that Leo Tolstoy, upon hearing about this painting, visited Repin's studio (thus initiating the friendship that produced Repin's portrait of Tolstoy). Repin has created a painting comparable to a Tolstoyan novel. Rembrandtesque depth in painting people, their characters and facial expressions, joined to a bold, almost wicked interest in the material details, the objects, and a sharp nose for the urge to power and for relations between people, as individuals and as groups; and above it all a gaping heart that sees with terrible cruelty both folly and searing misery, and also something else for which there is no word but only a representation, and only the art of painting can enfold it. Anyone who stands before this painting will know with certainty that every brushstroke in it safeguards a terrible compassion. And there is not a painting like this anywhere in the world."

How on earth did I come across something so obscure, which turned out to be so beautiful? to read and then see... I was doing some online reading for v i p news dot org dot uk and as I did, came across the article from which the above review was taken. It's headline?

Moscow and the shadow of a blind man's cane (Haaretz, 9/10/08)

Great to read something so descriptive, then afterwards be greatful that I have eyes that work well enough, to see it. Leon

Historical figure study: Joice Heth, circa 1674-1835

2007-10-31T12:39:00.000Z

I Hope you find this venture study into the amazing Joice Heth interesting. She was quite some character! LEON.

+++ Part 1. Source information: from "Marx's Telescope, Part 2" +++

Published by workersliberty.org 28th October 2007
from http://www.workersliberty.org

This is the article I was reading when I first came across Joice Heth for the first time.

"Public executions were still a major form of mass entertainment in England until they were ended as late as 1868. The newer forms of mass entertainment, available in the most prosperous countries, were epitomised by P T Barnum.

Barnum began his career as a showman in 1835 with his purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralysed African-American slave woman, Joice Heth, claimed by Barnum to have been the nurse of George Washington, and to be over a hundred and sixty years old.

He then ran a museum in New York, where he made a special hit in 1842 with the exhibition of Charles Stratton, the celebrated midget "General Tom Thumb" and the Fiji Mermaid. His collection also included the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker. After a temporary retirement, and a couple of failures, he opened his last enterprise in 1871 - P T Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome, a travelling amalgamation of circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks".

(End of extract)

+++ Part 2: Joice Heth, from the Museum of Hoaxes +++

from
www.museumofhoaxes.com

Joice Heth was an elderly black woman whom a young P.T. Barnum put on display in 1835, advertising that she was the 161 year old former nurse of George Washington. Heth entertained audiences with tales about the young George Washington, and her exhibition drew substantial attention. When the public's interest in her waned, Barnum rekindled its curiosity by spreading a rumor that Joice Heth was actually not a person at all, but instead was a mechanical automaton. People then revisited the exhibit to determine for themselves whether she was an automaton or a real person. Barnum displayed her until February 19, 1836, on which day she died.

However, even in death Barnum continued to use her to draw crowds. He allowed a public autopsy to be performed on her body for the purpose of verifying her age. Unfortunately for Barnum, the doctor who performed the autopsy declared that she could not have been older than eighty. Barnum struck back by planting a story in the New York Herald (February 27, 1836) explaining that the body that had been autopsied had not actually been the body of Joice Heth.

The Exhibition of Joice Heth, from the Autobiography of P.T. Barnum's collaborator in the scheme, Levi Lyman, later added another chapter to the saga by supplying the Herald with what he claimed was the real Joice Heth story.

This ran in the Herald beginning on September 8, 1836 in a series of six articles. In this article, Lyman claimed that Barnum had discovered the elderly black woman on a plantation and had taught her to pretend she had been George Washington's nurse. But again, this story was also false. The truth was that Barnum had not found Heth on his own. Instead, he had simply bought the rights to exhibit Joice Heth from someone else who was already exhibiting her, and that he had never coached her.

References/Further Reading:
Reiss, Benjamin. "P.T. Barnum, Joice Heth and Antebellum Spectacles of Race," American Quarterly, Vol.51, No. 1 (March 1999).
Adams, Bluford. E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman & the Making of U.S. Popular Culture. University of Minnesota Press. 1997.

Extra Link: Transcription and scan of the original contract under which Joice Heth was sold to P T Barnum, August 6th 1835

+++ Part 3. Joice Heth, a University of Virginia Study +++
from
http://xroads.virginia.edu

"By 1835, P. T. Barnum was making a modest living as the owner of a grocery store on 156th South Street. In July of that year, however, Barnum would make the acquaintance of a Mr. Coley Bartram who would provide Barnum with a foray into the lucrative world of showmanship. Bartram informed Barnum of a spectacular "exhibit" that he had just sold to Mr. R. W. Lindsay. The "exhibit" was an elderly African American woman named Joice Heth. She was supposedly 161 years old and had been the nurse of George Washington. Barnum was intrigued by monetary possibility that Joice Heth might offer. He visited Ms. Heth and found her to be quite lively: "She sang a variety of hymns, and was very garrulous when speaking of her protégé "dear little George," as she termed the great father of our country"

Ever the astute businessman, Barnum negotiated with Mr. Lindsay to purchase Joice Heth. Lindsay's asking price was $3,000, yet Barnum talked him down to $1,000. With his keen sense of advertising and marketing, Barnum quickly set to work advertising his newest money-making venture. He created flyers for his "exhibit" that claimed, "Joice Heth is absolutely the most astonishing and interesting curiosity in this world!"

Barnum quickly began to exhibit Joice Heth in Mr. Niblo's dwelling house, and he soon began to travel with her throughout New England. When public interest in his exhibit began to wane, Barnum wrote anonymous letters to local newspapers claiming that Joice Heth was in fact a "humbug" in order to reignite a steady stream of paying patrons. One of his letters argued, "Joice Heth is not a human being. What purports to be a remarkably old woman, is simply a curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numbers springs that ingeniously put together, and made to move at the slightest touch according to the will of the operator."

On February 19, 1836 Joice Heth passed away. Barnum agreed to an autopsy on her body in order to determine whether or not she was in fact a "humbug." The surgeon revealed to Barnum, "there was surely some mistake in regard to the alleged age of Joice; that instead of being 161 years old, she was probably not over eighty" 2. Barnum, who would soon be known as the "Prince of Humbugs" had been humbugged on his first venture into the world of entertainment.

Despite the fact that Barnum had been duped, the Joice Heth experience provided him with the impetus to remain in the world of show business. Barnum had learned that, "everything depended upon getting people to think, and talk, and become curious and excited over and about "rare spectacle"

Beginning in April, 1836 Barnum began to work as a ticket-seller, secretary, and treasurer for Aaron Turner's travelling circus. Over the next five years, Barnum grew tired working as a travelling showman, and by the spring of 1841 he was on the verge of beginning his greatest adventure yet: The American Museum."

+++ Part 4, more on Joice Heth from "Documenting the American South": The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +++

The Life of Joice Heth, the Nurse of Gen. George Washington, (the Father of Our Country,) Now Living at the Astonishing Age of 161 Years, and Weighs Only 46 Pounds

Electronic Edition. 12 p. New York Printed for the Publisher 1835
Call number A 1835 .L554 (Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)

from
http://docsouth.unc.edu/

THE LIFE OF JOICE HETH. THE NURSE OF WASHINGTON.

JOICE HETH, the subject of this short memoir, was born on the Island of Madagascar, on the Coast of Africa, in the year One Thousand Six Hundred and Seventy-four. Of her parents little or nothing is known, save what she herself relates of them, in which her recollections are so indistinct, that but very little can be satisfactorily learnt.

At the age of fifteen, she was cruelly torn from the bosom of her parents and her native land by one of those inhuman beings, who, in those days, to enrich themselves, made merchandize of human flesh.

She was imported into America, and sold as a slave to Thomas Buckner, an extensive planter of Virginia. She remained with him several years, when she came into the Washington family, who were then living on an extensive domain, called the Chotank Plantations. About this time, or soon after, she was married to a slave named Peter, belonging to Mrs. Atwood, a relative of the family of Washington, and living the next door neighbor.

In this condition she lived until she became the mother of fifteen children, being the property of Augustine Washington, the father of George Washington, (or little Georgy, as she now calls him,) and was the first person to put clothes on the unconscious infant, who was destined in after days to lead our heroic fathers on to glory, to victory, and to freedom.

In the meant time she made a public profession of religion, and about the year Seventeen Hundred and Twenty, was baptized in the Potomac River, and became a member of the Baptist Church.

By her trusty and faithful discharge of such duties as were assigned to her, she gained the full confidence of all the family, and was treated by them more as an hired servant than a slave. To her was entrusted the whole care and management of both the nursery and kitchen. At the age of fifty-four years she was formally sold and transferred, by a regular bill of sale, for the price of thirty-three pounds, to Mrs. Atwood, who was the then owner of Peter, her husband. This was not done so much on account of the value of the services which she might render, as to accommodate her in the enjoyment of the constant company of her helpmate, (Peter,) who was also at this time something in years, and a favorite domestic servant. By this arrangement, they were permitted to be constantly together, both employed in the lighter services in and about the house.

At the decease of Mrs. Atwood, she fell into the hands of Mr. Boling, he being one of the heirs to the estate. Some years after, Mr. Boling emigrated to Kentucky, and settled in the town of Paris, Bourbon county. He took with him Joice and her husband, who then, from the infirmities of old age, were unable to do much labor; they, however, being old domestic servants, were kindly provided for during the life of Mr. Boling. Soon after his death, died Peter, her husband, at a very advanced age, leaving Joice a single and only witness of the events of the preceding century.

From that time she was followed by legal succession, the branches of the family down to the present time. Some of the time since, according to her own story, she has been very much neglected, laying for years in an outer building, upon the naked floor. In speaking of her past condition, she expresses great thankfulness, that Providence should so kindly provide the comforts of life, and make infinitely better her condition as she approaches towards the close of it.

She would not return to her former residence on any account, and is highly pleased with the idea of her remaining as she is, until death may finally close this mortal scene with her. She has a nurse, whose sole and only business it is to dress, feed, and take care of her, who is very kind and attentive, and leaves nothing undone which could make her more comfortable and happy. Her diet consists of a little weak tea and corn bread, with rare cooked eggs, which is served her three or four times a day. Coffee made very sweet is her drink between meals, which is given her as often as she asks for it. She seems extremely fond of animal food, frequently asking for it; and when denied it, telling her the doctors say it is not good for her, she will make as a quick and spirited reply; "I guess I have lived long enough to know what is good for me, as well as the doctors; if I had minded them I should have been dead long ago." She says that she has never in her life taken any medicine, nor never will.

Her greatest temporal enjoyment seems to be contained in her pipe and tobacco, the use of which for the last one hundred and twenty years has been constant. Her general health has been perfectly good, her pulse ranging from sixty-five to seventy; full, strong, and perfectly regular. She is, in her intellect, uncommonly bright; hears and understands perfectly all conversation in her
presence; is cheerful and animated in her conversation, when not wearied by company. She takes great interest in conversing with pious persons, upon the subject of religion. She will repeat and sing psalms for hours together, while alone, that were commonly learnt and sung a century and a half ago; converses freely about death, and is willing to meet it, often saying, "Oh! that the Lord would in his mercy and goodness receive me home quickly."

She has certificates in her possession from some of the oldest and most respectable planters in the section of country where she has lived for the last sixty or seventy years, who without any hesitation give her a most excellent character for truth, honesty, and exemplary piety.

The following are some of the certificates she has with her, which she values very highly, and nothing gives her greater trouble than to be informed they will be taken from her:

"This may certify, that I was born and have always lived in Bourbon county, Kentucky; that I am now sixty-seven years of age, and ever since my remembrance I have known Joice Heth, the colored woman, now visiting Cincinnati, as being one hundred and sixty-one years old. I have no doubt but this is her correct age, for as early as I can remember, she was totally blind from age, and so infirm as to be unable to do any labor. She was always called in our neighborhood, Aunt Joice
Heth. She has ever been celebrated for her piety, and I believe no reward or threat could be offered which would induce her to tell a falsehood. She always since my remembrance was fond of relating anecdotes concerning George Washington, whose nurse she always claimed to be, and I never doubted it myself, or heard it doubted by others."

Signed in the presence of, &c.

"This shall certify that I, the subscriber, was born in the town of Paris, in the state of Kentucky. My age is seventy-one years on the 17th of February, 1835. I have ever known Joice Heth, the old colored woman. When I first remember Aunt Joice, as we called her, she was totally blind and unable to work, which must have been fifty-five years ago. It was always understood that Joice was the nurse of George Washington, and slave of his father. She is very religious and honest, and I
believe the most implicit confidence may be put in her word, for nothing in my opinion would tempt her to utter a falsehood."

Signed, &c.

Within the last two or three years, she has travelled through many the States, visited most of the principal cities, and been seen by multitudes, with perfect wonder and astonishment; no one doubting on seeing her, but that she is what she herself claims to be, the nurse of Washington and 161 years of age.

The most learned and scientific men in this country have visited her, and after conversing with and examining her, all without exception, declare her to be the greatest curiosity in the world. In giving the foregoing brief sketch of the life and character of Joice Heth, the writer of this has but one single motive, and that is of charity towards the descendants of this living monument of antiquity.

She has outlived all her descendants save five, and they are her great grand-children, who are now held in bondage by a respectable gentleman of Kentucky, who has generously offered to set them free on being paid two-thirds they cost him. This work, together with what may be collected from exhibition, after deducting expenses, is expressly for that purpose, and will be immediately done whenever there can be realized the sum to do it. Two of them are said to be uncommonly intelligent and active, quick to learn, and great favorites of their master. In consequence of his partiality towards them, they have been instructed to read, and have acquired by their assiduous application upon the Sabbath, a knowledge of the scriptures, of which they are very fond to learn. It is designed that they shall be instructed in the glorious truths of the gospel, so as to become fully qualified to teach their poor unfortunate race the true way to future happiness.

If such should be the case, the writer of this little work would feel himself amply compensated for all his labor, by the happy reflection of having been instrumental, through the favor of the Lord, in opening a new channel through which might flow freely and effectually to those unfortunate beings, the glorious blessings derived from the knowledge of the gospel.

Persons are now engaged in collecting facts relative to the history of this old woman, which will be published as soon as they can be authentically gathered.

The following are notices, which some of the public journals have taken of her:--

From the New-York Sun.
Joice Heth.--The arrival at Niblo's Garden, of this renowned relic of the olden time, has created quite a sensation among the lovers of the curious and the marvellous; and a greater object of marvel and curiosity has never presented itself for their gratification. From the length of her limbs and the size of the bones, it is probable that she was a large, stout woman, in her day; but now, she comes up exactly to one's idea of an animated mummy. Her weight is said to be less than
fifty pounds. Her feet have shrunk to mere skin and bone, and her long attenuated fingers more resemble the claws of a bird of prey than human appendages. The presumed date of her birth is 1674--which would make her age, at the present time, upward of 161!!--Notwithstanding her burden of years and infirmities, she is lively, and seems to retain all her senses wonderfully. Her hearing is almost as acute as that of any person of middle age.

From the New-York Evening Star.
The "old one" has arrived, and crowds of ladies and gentlemen have visited her at Niblo's. She is lively, and answers every question cheerfully. From the bill of sale of the old lady from Gen. Washington's father, we can have no doubt that she is 160 years of age. Her appearance is very much like an Egyptian mummy just escaped from the Sarcophagus.

From the New-York Morning News.
Joice Heth.--This living mummy, on whose head 161 winters have sprinkled their snows, is now exhibiting at Niblo's Garden. She was born in the year 1674, during the reign of Charles the 2d of England, and Louis 14th of, France, and independently of her great age, she is an object of curiosity and interest to the American public, as having been the nurse of the great Washington.

From the New-York Commercial Advertiser.
Antediluvians.--We venture to state, that since the flood, a like circumstance has not been witnessed equal to one which is about to happen this week. Old Joice Heth, whom we mentioned on Friday, holds a drawing-room at Niblo's this day; which is to be continued till Saturday. Ancient or modern times furnish no parallel to the great age of this woman. Methuselah was 969 years old when
he died, but nothing is said of the age of his wife. Adam attained nearly the age of his antiquated descendant. It is not unlikely that the sex in the olden time were like their daughters at the present day--unwilling to tell their age. Joice Heth is an exception; she comes out boldly, and says she is rising 160.

From the Providence Daily Journal.
Joice Heth, the nurse of Washington, will pass a few days in this city next week. She has been several weeks in New-York, and been visited by thousands of ladies and gentlemen. Joice Heth was born in the island of Madagascar, on the east coast of Africa, in the year 1674, and has consequently now arrived at the astonishing age of one hundred and sixty-one years. She weighs but forty-six pounds, and yet is very cheerful and interesting, converses freely, sings numerous hymns, relates many interesting anecdotes of the boy Washington, the red coats, &c., and, when speaking of her young master, George Washington, says, she raised him.

Digital Eyes June 2007 now complete

2007-07-04T19:07:00.000+01:00

INTRODUCTION AND STATISTICS - Dear readers I hope you all have been enjoying the blindnews service and have found at least some articles of interest. I'm just about finished now on the June 2007 section of the Digital Eyes database through my work on this the blindnews@blindprogramming.com mailing list.

Taking a look back at the accumulated postings, a quick adding up reveals that we've submitted a total of 2844 articles over the last 6 month period. This averages out to 16 posts per day. With no repeats! As far as I'm aware no other news service has met this volume delivery level within the "blindness in the media " field. Neither has any been as up to date or as internationally diverse.

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http://GeoffAndWen.com/BlindNewsRSS.asp?keyword=web%20accessibility

Simply copy these URL's into your feed reader to connect to them. The feed length of each feed is 50 articles, meaning that using RSS Reading software people can access the most recent 50 articles posted on any given topic. The Firefox Web Browser, Internet Explorer 7, Accessible RSS or a whole range of different RSS reading systems which are accessible to blind people, may be used to connect to these feeds.

++THE FUTURE - Much as I do intend to continue my voluntary service to this list to the best of my abilities, there are times when I will need to take breaks. I will try to bridge any gaps caused by this but as a hard working volunteer in a moving and volatile online media environment this won't always be possible. I will however do my best during 2007 to keep our unique and unmatched service as dynamic as possible, and as reliable and informative as ever.

We currently run this service for free and hope to be able to continue to do so on that basis, however our volunteers claim no expenses for their work and meet all the hosting costs themselves. We therefore would still appreciate any offers of sponsorship, donations or technical assistance that may help us to keep the blindnews service going this year. Please write to
blindnews-owner@blindprogramming.com

Or to my personal email at lwg@blueyonder.co.uk

If you feel you may be able to help.

Lastly I would like to conclude by thanking my colleague across the sea, Geoff Stephens (who is the blindnews list owner), for his technical support. And to James Homme of blind programming for his assistance with hosting. From thousands of miles away! And of course, to thank you the subscribers, without whom this world-spanning information service would not exist.

I hope you've all enjoyed reading during the year so far & my best wishes and sincerest regards to all.

Leon W Gilbert (in Middlesex, UK)

Volunteer Day Reader, blindnews@blindprogramming.com
RSS Feed Editor, ACB Radio, www.acbradio.org (these feeds are pending updates!)
Editor & Site Owner, www.vipnews.org.uk (hosted by NLB)
Co-founder & webmaster, The Accessible Friends Network, www.tafn.org.uk
Personal email - lwg@blueyonder.co.uk
Skype ID - leongilbert2006

--BlindNews mailing list
To contact a list moderator about a problem or to make a request, send a message to BlindNews-Owner@BlindProgramming.com
The BlindNews list is archived at:
http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind/
To address a message to all members of the list, send mail to: BlindNews@blindprogramming.com
Access your subscription info at: http://blindprogramming.com/mailman/listinfo/blindnews_blindprogramming.com
To unsubscribe via e-mail: send a message to
BlindNews-Request@BlindProgramming.com
with the word unsubscribe in either the subject or body of the message.

News projects in Progress, Part 3 - Blindnews@blindprogramming.com (a live blog entry)

2006-06-28T02:03:00.000+01:00

(A continuation of "News projects in progress, part 1: www.v i p news.org.u k", and "News projects in Progress, Part 2 - ACB Radio" )

(under construction)

Welcome to all & hope you enjoy reading.

Blindnews@blindprogramming.com

In around October 2004 I was still steadily going along with Day Reading, which included daily research, linking, RSS editing & email posting on blindness related news in the media worldwide as described in my previous posts. I'd started with my own uk link page and turned it into a link project. I'd then started editing and sending links by email. I'd then moved into submitting links to RSS feeds & accumulating. I was practically turning into, a human link!

& Then perchance, a genuinely interested-in-the-subject and well-enthused person like me, found and joined the blind news mailing list.

This was and is a mailing list (moderated) to which anyone can submit news articles, for news about blindness and it wasn't too long before I started sending some articles in to help with the cause.

The list owner could tell I was keen (smile) & wrote to me and after while gave me access to a web-based console through which I could submit news articles, meaning that they would go to 1. the mailing list, 2. the blindnews RSS feed, and 3. the list's database "Digital Eyes" simultaneously.

Lots of email lists archive anyway, so some may even see the fact that a list's postings got archived as nothing particularly new. But one great thing about this one is that it is so specialist - few resources have addressed this amount of media related to blindness & vision impairment in the period of the past few years (which is surely a unique era). In this regard Digital Eyes is truly unique.

Over time I'd done this through 2003, 4 and 5 and I realized that if I didn't do 2006 "Leon style", nobody else was going to!

Already committed, I took on even more putting at least a couple of hours every day. Along with the posting I always added to the database any new publisher that I found, as I went along with the Day Reading. And after having done that every day for about a year and a half, nowadays it' s huge and a great asset which can save acres of time and inconvenience...

The console developed by list owner Geoff in Texas is highly accessible and usable. Not to mention USEFUL, smile. Recently a page zoom script was added to the digital eyes archive, which means that anyone with low vision can magnify the text of any submitted article in the Digital Eyes database.

The Zoom Script

Here is the code for Zoom script, if anyone wants to give it a try (works in Internet Explorer only)

NB: Under construction, blogger doesn't like this script!

About the database

The Digital Eyes Database is keyword-searchable and is at this link.

Digital Eyes Database

IMHO It's great, you can search on any blindness related topic and look up areas of interest, and all articles contain source publisher, author, contact details wherever given and and date published.

Posting Volumes, for this project

On the blindnews@blindprogramming.com mailing list, since October 2004 I have submitted over 12,000 blindness related news articles, the vast majority on the actual day they were published. Quite simply I got into the swing of using the blindnews form and now know it like the back of my hand.

If this sounds like a meaningless number, it may also help to understand the reading pace, by the archive's figures across the calendar month by month, as shown below. Alternatively you could simply visit Digital Eyes records for any day last year, to get a one day taster...

All articles are submitted in plain text format, which we have had very positive feedback on from users of screen readers, braille displays and even PDA's, they are all able to read it without too many problems. In other words I've done a lot of day reading, and through this list work I've also found a way to keep records of it too. Links may expire and frequently do... but archives can remain as long as people are willing to store them.

I actually got a hard copy of Digital Eyes back in March this year and it contains the equivalent in A4 pages, of around 300,000 pages of information!

Digital Eyes Archive Volumes, by Month

Year2006

June(499 items)
May(806 items)
April(773 items)
March(718 items)
February(356 items)
January(22 items)

Year2005

December(499 items)
November(356 items)
October(771 items)
September(676 items)
August(446 items)
July(674 items)
June(696 items)
May(668 items)
April(494 items)
March(466 items)
February(391 items)
January(504 items)

Year2004

December(559 items)
November(377 items)
October(334 items)

News Addiction

One of my problems is that Day Reading is very addictive and I'll be perfectly frank here, it was difficult for me to take a break last week. In the back of my mind I cannot help but think of the 200 or so articles that I would have posted daily during the past week, what were they about and what will happen to them now? Will no-one ever discover and get to find out what was there? One thing I do know is that unless there were a lot more hours in a day there is absolutely no way once a period of time has gone past, that I will ever be able to recover the backlog. So when I do start posting again in early July, I'll simply have to start from the date I resume and go from there. I'll "hit the ground running" as it were...

The work I've done for blindnews also helps me with information for the other news services I do, e g any UK articles I find whilst researching for Digital Eyes I may also put on the v i p news.org.u k monthly link archives, or I may submit appropriate material from it to any of the 4 ACB Radio RSS feeds as well.

Plus, as I mentioned before, I enjoy reading it all myself!

Therefore if there are any spinoffs, and in fact if any news article I've posted has led to enjoyment or information or entertainment or interest for anyone out there, great. I most certainly do not feel that I have wasted my time.

News Editing

I do do a bit of necessary editing when submitting articles to the blind news list & try and improve the quality of information for the readership (which numbers several hundred people daily). This includes

* Removing advertisements (which can be sneaky and appear mid-article!),

* Removing excessive line breaks & fixing bad spacing so that the page is more or less uniform,

* Sometimes adding keywords to clarify the article's subject matter if it is unclear,

* Adding the word CAPTION: before any image descriptions (most of which are too short to be meaningful!)

* adding the word LINK: on the line above any spelled-out URL.

Considering the volume of the delivery I do my best with the editing, however it's done at the highest speed I can manage to & like anyone else I am only human and sometimes make mistakes. However, I've NEVER knowingly posted the same article twice! in almost 4 years of day reading.

Thank you for visiting my blog and having read this far!

Subscriber Feedback

We've had a fair bit of feedback from list subscribers & I'll be discussing it in more depth here soon. Here are a few topics...

Firstly we've had a lot of feedback about the list volume. But no-one has ever said it's too low!

Secondly we've had people who are interested in specific subjects only, & we normally point them to digital eyes, however it may be useful for subscribers to know that they can use message filters in their email program to automatically divert content based on keywords, to separate folders. In most cases (but not all) one read of the subject line should be enough information to tell you whether to delete or not.

Thirdly we've had even some people who like it all and read it all! So I just wanted to say to them, I feel the same. & Great minds think alike!

Fourthly a few people wrote to say that they do not like the inclusion of blogs amongst the journalism articles. I'd like to give a fair as possible a reply to this as I can. Even though blogging is a great potential vehicle for great citizen journalism BY blind & visually impaired people, at the same time a lot of blog content can be trivial. Therefore I will try if I do post any blog articles, to only include higher quality & higher relevance ones.

By no means is all of blogging trivial and it's a real growth area of online media. Breaking news ahead of mainstream publishers, unique perspectives, and highly intelligent, original and educational resources have been delivered by it!

Fifthly - the hot topic - a lot of blind people are interested in breaking assistive technology news, which has a very exciting forefront. I try to keep up! It's IMPOSSIBLE, smile.

Sixth - Quite a few guide dog owners & representatives out there, are keen for any guide dog related news. I love reading it too and used to run a page called "The World Wide Woof"! back in 2003 on my UK website. at

http://www.vipnews.org.uk/guidedogs.htm

Seventh - On several articles now, agencies have intervened where unjust situations are happening to blind & VI people from around the world (yes there are many different countries included in the database) and taken real and positive action, to assist.

Either way Myself Geoff and the blindnews team always try to answer enquiries via email if we can.

Eighth - One common error is when people respond to us about the content of an article, even when we have already given original publisher name, URL & contact details. Please do read this information and contact the publisher directly. Blindnews is just an accessible news by email delivery service, we do not publish the articles ourselves and accept no liability for them.

Ninth - On one occasion someone wrote in to us that thought that the blindnews service was automated! They have no idea how this made me feel, after all the work I and others have done on keeping a valuable and unique information service going for all this time. I just feel the need to clarify here, EVERYTHING is done by human hand - the research, the editing, the email delivery, the RSS news feeds, the archiving, all of it.

Gonna conclude

Overall we seem to have a happy readership & have had positive feedback from individuals, NGO representatives, support agencies & even US Radio Reading services.

List Helpers & Useful resources online

Quite a few people have helped us out by sending articles in to the blind news list, and one notable contributor is Blind World Magazine. - This site is a worthwhile web visit for anyone interested in blindness related news - on the web at:-

www.BlindWorld.net

There are lots of other resources & I'll be adding some more here soon.

(THIS BLOG ENTRY IS AN ONGOING WORK & I'LL BE ADDING MORE EDITS SOON)

If anyone out there has read or delivered more blindness related news online than me I'd like to meet you!

Also if you are in the least interested in all this or have anything to say, I've love to hear from you. If you're a new visitor please do feel free to comment or drop me an email.

One of my favourite Quotes is a historical one by Albert Einstein, it's how he explained the new invention "Wireless" in the early 20th century.

Einstein explains.

"The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat".

*Grin* happy reading & peace to all. Leon!

News projects in Progress, Part 2 - ACB Radio (a live blog entry)

2006-06-26T19:20:00.000+01:00

Project 2. ACB Radio

V I P News mailing list subscribers in 2003-4 included some interesting people including Penny Reeder, from the ACB in the US and Sue Ferguson, the information officer for NALSVI (The National Society of Local Societies for the Visually Impaired) in the UK. It also included none other than Mr Dave Williams, the very same guy who went on to succeed Jonathan Mosen as the director of ACB Radio.

I got talking to Dave who said he was very impressed with my commitment to blindness related news, & on his advice I joined the ACB Radio Media Group. At one time ACB Radio used to have a feature on their website homepage called "Stories making news in the blind community", some of you may even remember it. Well, this was an early implementation of RSS, a technology which enables an automated "ticker tape" of links to news headlines. The problem with it was, it was using the Moreover search engine and searching the news by keyword, however many articles were completely out of context because of this.

A keyword search in the online news can easily throw up articles not related in the least to blindness or blind or visually impaired people, and this is quite an obstacle which I still deal with to this day. Even using boolean keywords, to for example exclude stories from a search which include the term "blind date", there are so many ways in which automated news feeds can go off-topic. Sometimes I might search manually through several hundred results for a dozen stories, for example.

Anyway I got talking to Dave about scripting etc, and someone over at ACB Radio developed and we then implemented, a cross platform PHP script, which simultaneously scanned a portion of text from within the www.vipnews.org.uk , from the start and end markers of a daily global link post, and output it to a test page on the ACB Radio server. From then on, whenever I updated my UK site, typically once or twice per day, the test page was automatically updated at the same time.

LINK: The old test page for this still exists at

http://interactive.acbradio.org/vipnews2.php

This (or I) gave ACB Radio it's first ever opportunity to have blindness related news links in a human edited form, which meant that it was far more accurate, there were virtually NO off topic articles and the articles coming from more search sources meant it was far more diverse as well. This test page did actually get "plugged in" for a while, to the "Stories Making News in the Blind Community" section on the homepage and all who visited or used it, expressed positive feedback.

Bringing in a CMS (Content Management System)

My work (all done from home) for ACB Radio then went even further, as after they implemented a CMS (Content Management System) called PHP Website which allows site contributing & editing by multiple parties to a website. CMS's are great. You can have people producing, authoring, editing and uploading in teamwork. I had joined the ACB Radio Web Team at this stage & was the out and out choice to be RSS Feed Editor.

Taking RSS Further

The ACB Radio webmaster devloped a web based console script in which multiple RSS feeds could be built, and once built a news reader/editor such as myself could filter and submit articles to custom RSS feeds. "Feeding the feeds" as it were. We started in October 2004 and initially built one, "Assistive Technology News", and within a few months had 4 feeds regularly running, which I manually updated & edited. The other 3 RSS feed titles are "Guide Dog News", "Blind Sports News" and "Blind Arts News", they are operational to this day (at heading level 5 to JAWS users on the home page at http://www.acbradio.org/ ), and the links to these 4 RSS feeds follow:-

LINK: ACB Radio RSS Newsfeed URL's (4)

Assistive Technology News

Guide Dog News

Blind Sports News

Blind Arts News

Please note - you will need an RSS reader program in order to access these RSS news feeds. I recommend the Firefox web browser Alternatively their output can be read in normal HTML at

http://www.cybercane.com/

One of my pages at The Accessible Friends Network, which uses FEED2JS, to output RSS feeds to HTML (please allow time for the above page to load, if you do visit it)

The first comment I need to make about these RSS Feeds at the moment, is that they are accessible but not currently up to date! However watch this space as within the next few days I will be bringing them up to the minute.

So having these RSS feeds on the go added a new dimension to my news reading & linking services. At the end of each days post, I would log in to the console and submit any articles which were relevant to their respective RSS feeds as well. A guide dog realted storiy to the guide dog news feed, etc etc.

The value of old RSS Feeds

Old RSS feeds of course only contain links to articles, but it is surprising how many times even as long as a couple of years after an article's publishing date it is still available at exactly the same URL where it was published. In early 2006 we purged the ACB Radio RSS feeds from the main front page feeds, purely because they were getting too long and took a long time to load. However, before this was done I was sure to make back up copies. So here are some archives of my RSS feeds, why not take a look, I think they speak for themselves and show the value of this work accumulated over time.

LINKS - OLD FEEDS

Assistive Technology News (767 links)
Guide Dogs News (424 links)
Blind Arts News (658 links)
Blind Sports News (610 links)

All the above were built and edited by me during 2004-5.

Linking and Copyright Issues

One thing about linking to an external webpage is that in all circumstances that page remains the copyright of the person who authored it or organisation that published it.

In the UK there is a legal act known as The Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons" Act 2002, and the entire content of both www.vipnews.org.uk and the ACB Radio RSS feeds are fully compliant with that act.

Graphic Design

I also do a bit of graphic design, and did the banner at the top of the ACB Radio page, although I'm not altogether happy with it now, it was just made to match the style of the CMS) was made by me.

(In a future blog entry I'll include some other examples of graphic design I've done with descriptions)

So there you go. Despite all this work I've never actually met anyone from ACB Radio in person (I live in Middlesex UK, which has quite a lot to do with it), but via the internet I was able to make this contribution and give of my time.

Dave Williams did actually interview me on ACB Radio Main Menu, in April 2004 and that interview is available here (please excuse my voice I had a rotten cold at the time, smile)

LINK:
Me on Main Menu with Dave Williams, April 20th 2005

Bye for now until my next blog post. Leon

News projects in progress, part 1: www.v i p news.org.u k (a live blog entry)

2006-06-23T02:38:00.000+01:00

(I am literally writing this online, so it will change as I go along. Leon)

Part 1. "www.v i p news.org.u k"

Please Note: the spacing between the letters above is part of the name. so this projects full name is V (space) I (space) P (space) NEWS (dot) ORG (dot) U (space) K"

I am British amateur webmaster & sighted partner and keen online news reader and one project I have put quite a lot of time into is the UK website www.vipnews.org.uk which provides visual impairment related news links from across the UK and Ireland in around a dozen categories monthly, with "Daily Hop" links to global news stories too.

I've run it on a daily basis entirely voluntarily since I first started in September 2002. To those that have already heard of v i p news, some of the more recent major news about it includes that it's now hosted by The National Library for the Blind. But it's still run on an entirely voluntary basis.

First started on my personal webspace, the aim of the first page was to build a page of direct links to blindness related news stories in the online news, to make them easier for people to find. Apart from my own partner I already had quite a few v i p friends, and when some of them checked out this page they all said it was really good & the feedback was great. I was also involved in a couple of online voice chat communities and working as an online volunteer by email & the support all around for this work was first class. And so I went on with this project, facinated by all the material I found & continuing month by month producing pages of all the links I could find. I wouldn't have got this started and done all this if it wasn't for friends.

Needless to say, the project grew as I went on - one monthly archive in 2003 contained over 800 links! - & through most of 2003 and 2004 I became a "Day Reader" posting all the links on the actual day they are published. I also had a mailing list and used to include not only the day's URL's and Titles in order of "UK & Europe", "USA & Canada" then "Rest of the World" for each day, all global and all blindness related, but at the end I also used to include a link to a philanthropic opportunity* daily.

(A link will be added here soon).

After doing this every day for about a year, I did stop the v i p news dot org dot u k mailing list work due to a lack of time but I still kept the "monthly day-by-day link journal" pages going, & it wasn't too long before I looked back and realized what a unique archive it had become. No other website was providing the same volume of "access to blindness in the news" information, and among some of the very positive feedback I got was the following from the New York State Talking Book & Braille Library back in 2003:-

"For up-to-date daily links to blindness and visual impairment related news stories from around the world, go to the English web site www.vipnews.org.uk. Each item has a brief description of the story and a geographical location. Items are presented in a screen reader friendly way, and the site is a first-rate collection of links to world media."

One thing that I realized whilst working on this project was, that not only was news about blind & VI people inaccessible to blind & VI people, news about blind & VI people was inaccessible to everyone full stop. We do hear the word "accessible" a lot nowadays but in this context what I really mean is "findable". It can be done, but to what level and how easy it is, are variables.

And not only that, "news about blind people" can be a pretty expansive topic. What it can include in terms of media is diverse, so along the way of doing the "searching, reading, linking, editing and posting" I was doing to continue as a news link editor essentially I would have to make a lot of decisions on what to, and what not to, include. And because there are only 24 hours in a day I would have to do it quickly! "News about blind people" can be expanded to include "news about relevant to and featuring, blind and visually impaired people, their campagins triumphs and tribulations & the various organizations that support them". It soon becomes expansive.

I could never get to the end of all of the subjects, locations and dimensions of what this news contains. E G - There are the organisations that support blind & visually impaired people, from tiny ones to giant ones, and on a worldwide scale there's a lot of variance between them in their scale, purposes, practices and history. There is blindness prevention, which may take many forms in different countries. There is assistive technology for blind & V I people - a very popular subject in the community indeed - which is a very dynamic subject in it's own right. It may include products for those totally blind, or maybe for those with low vision, it may include a new product which has just come to the consumer market, or it may be news about an exciting new development "in the pipeline", things can be huge and corporate, and more often than not there's "the little guy" out there who is blind himself making scripting and program innovations, barely earning tuppence for his endeavours. Whatever did happen to the vibrating shoes for the blind that I read about, or even the talking washing machine??? We do know that new affordable flexible plastic braille displays are on the way, that talking GPS for mobile phones is practically here, and that the new Haptic (touch) interface controllers are an incredible leap forward.

Each loose category within blindness related news is diverse within itself, therefore the whole picture is incredibly diverse. In terms of being a news editor considering what to or not to include, the best perspective that I seemed to get was "as much as possible".

BUT (and it's quite a big but) the news on this topic which is published on a daily basis, does so in a very random and haphazard order. If I had more time and no day job to maintain, perhaps I could do the research for one day's news, organize it into categories, and distribute it into different streams or feeds according to it's category. But as a Day Reader for blind news (see project 3 below), I put plenty of time and effort in already just to do the daily research and posting, & simply cannot afford the extra time it would take to organize it further daily. Therefore the order of the news on the blind news mailing list I post as a day reader is quite literally "as I find it".

The positive interactions that can happen through "making blind information blind accessible" include outreach, support, entertainment, education, culture, practical help both technical and spiritual, and so much more. Basically it can & does, play a part in raising awareness. And it's certainly all useful information to me as a visual impairment awareness trainer.

To try and address this news diversity issue on the v i p news site, what I did from January 2005 onwards was to put the links into 12 categories all UK, and then have a daily "global hop" section which includes a link to ONE article per calendar day from a non US and non UK country.

The news link categories on v i p news

LINKS: The news categories are as follows:

Categories - Arts Assistive Technology Blind & V I Writers Campaigns & Legal Charities Crime Employment Environment Guide Dogs Miscellaneous Positive Achievers Sports Vision Research Web Accessibility

LINKS:

Latest Global Hop

Global Hop archive page

These links are followed by the details of any UK VI-related events that I read or am emailed about, with direct links.

One or two volunteers helped me to run v i p news along the way in the early days, and a notable one of these was Rod Carne from Somerset, who was one of the founders of the NBCS (National Blind Children's Society). I believe I first met Rod on www.for-the-people.com

As almost the whole site is built on links, it's very tricky to keep those links all working when various publishers move their articles around, Rod used to help me by checking the links & reporting broken ones, or any editing errors. I can still always use home help via the internet with this project, to this day!

Coming forward to halfway through 2006, about where we are now, the nicest thing about this whole project (www.Vipnews.org.uk) is that I can sit back and switch off, knowing that it's something potentially useful to somebody somewhere. I update it about twice a week these days, and although so far it has never made any profit (I didn't want to put google ads in, I can't stand them!) at least from April 1st of this year it no longer costs me to host it online, thanks to the National Library for the Blind. My special thanks to them for that! because along with the positive feedback I've had, this has gone quite a way towards helping this project to keep going and growing.

NLB are at www.nlb-online.org.uk

V I P News currently contains over 20,000 v i news link and for example can inform you of what "happened in the blind world" on this day in history in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

E g on June 23rd 2003, from my old link journals here is one day's post:-

(START OF DAY POST)

V I P World News stories - June 23rd 2003] (32)

Bid for new HQ for the blind (Isle of Wight, England)
Woman blasts vet over guide dog (Essex, England)
The Para who refused to toe the line (Oxfordshire, England)
Phil in plea for charity clothes (for Beacon Centres) (West Midlands, England)
Ireland refuses entry to 9/11 victim's guide dog (Northern Ireland)
Blind miss out on Pottermania: No Braille copies of new book (U K)
Heating 'disgrace' for blind widow, aged 94 (North Wales)
Blind tot's happiness sacrificed for few quid: family fury (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Friendly foes: Derrick Morgan/Prince Buster standoffs didn't extend beyond music (Jamaica) Lobsters help raise money for guide dogs (Montreal, Canada)
Operation Eyesight Universal - Doctor transforms slums of Bombay (Canada)
Blind hiker overcomes odds to walk entire Appalachian Trail (Missouri, U S A)
No limits: 'I'm blind, but I'm just like everyone else,' surfer says (Texas, U S A)
The Big Picture: Broadcast duo turned baseball on its ear (South Carolina, U S A)
Passion for oldies music helps man overcome obstacles (California, U S A)
Free beef recipe book is offered in Braille (scroll down page) (California, U S A)
Put Yourself Here (voiceover artists article featuring v i p Dionne Quan) (Hollywood, U S A)Look, up in the sky (features legally blind Planetarium director Kris McCall (Tennessee, U S A)Blind woman inspires students, community (Naples Florida, U S A)
Local entrepreneur designs voting machine for blind (Kentucky, U S A)
Special ed teachers rejoice in small victories (Arizona, U S A)
Sidewalk ramps now in compliance: Reworked to help vision impaired (Dayton Ohio, U S A)
Party (man's 100th) draws century of friends (Gloucester New Jersey, U S A)
'Til Death Do Us Part: Riders roll to couple's aid (Daytona Beach Florida, U S A)
Albinos - Often Misunderstood (Pennsylvania, U S A)
HP iPAQ pocket PC inspires Freedom Scientific's wireless device (Online)
Audio Tactile Mapping System helps blind people to access & explore spatial information (Online)
Small Community Pulls Together To Help Blind Girl (Australia)
King of radio listeners: Phiroz Siganporia who set up the 5-Star Listeners Club (India)
L I C staff's mistake leaves visually challenged man in the lurch (India)
J I S, H S B C donate to special children (Brunei)
Blind photographer plans to snap street fights (Lithuania)

(END OF DAY POST)

I think this daily post - and the many I've done since, almost every day since September 2002 now, shows just how much information there is, & gives at least a glimpse (Pandora's Box-style?) into what was a happening around the world that was blindness-related that got media coverage, on that particular day. Of course there's a lot more going on, unreported! But I guess we'll probably never know about that...

There are many other issues relating to the information itself, and it would be impossible to cover them all, but some key questions include:-

* Does a media article being published necessarily mean that people are then aware of that information? And what can be done to ensure that it IS findable?

* How much VALUE is there in having blindness related media articles more accessible as in findable?

* How can we be expected to examine or consider the quality of such media, if we are unable to gain easy access to it?

To my mind the v i p news project plays a small part in these questions and fulfills a unique place. It has been a lot of work, but for the difference it has made and may make, to me it's worth it. I did address some of these issues in my seminar at Sight Village 2005, ""Vision Impairment and the Media", more about which can be found at:-

LINK:

http://www.geoffandwen.com/blind/newsarticle.asp?u_id=7391

As mentioned above, blindness and visual impairment in the news is an incredibly wide topic. Those new to my online news services have been surprised at the volume and diversity, and I've had a lot of people write in to me with enquiries. My "research by email" service to this day remains Free of charge to v i p's. If there's anything "blindness in the news related" that you wish to find out about, simply send an email to me at mailto:editor@vipnews.org.uk?subject=research

I could probably tell you what happened on this day in history "in the blind world" for the past 3 years, and if there's any product or organization for the blind no matter where in the world there's a good chance I can help put you in touch with it.

A google and vipnews tip

If you are interested in using this project as a researcher in a positive and user friendly way, try going to google, entering the name of any place in the world, and adding the keyword "vipnews" to your search. Then see what results you get!!

(THIS BLOG ENTRY IS AN ONGOING WORK & I'LL BE ADDING MORE EDITS SOON)

If anyone out there has read or delivered more blindness related news online than me I'd like to meet you!

If you're a new visitor please do feel free to comment or drop me an email.

A quote for this page,

"You cannot drink the word water, and the formula h2o will not float a ship" (Author Unknown)

Thanks for visiting - Leon.

A picture of me with my girlfriend Jaye.

2006-06-22T13:10:00.000+01:00

Well here it is! I'm sitting down at a table in my mum's garden in Brentford Middlesex in May 2006 (My mum Marian Gilbert teaches special needs girls at a local school, & John "Gil" Gilbert is a now retired engineer & a very good jazz trumpet player.) I'm sitting next to Jaye in this picture and we're both smiling, I'm wearing a bright shirt, an open light hooded top, and my watercooled Marks & Spencers summer hat. Jaye has beautiful long black hair and is wearing a nice red jumper. I was born in Chiswick & grew up in Brentford & am a now-distant but still supporting BEES Fan (Brentford FC).

Volunteer Day Reader taking a break, & Digital Eyes reminder

2006-06-21T21:48:00.000+01:00

Don't call me Digital Eyes!

By Leon Gilbert

Dear Readers on the blindnews@blindprogramming.com mailing list, just to let you know I'll be away for at least a couple of weeks from today. This does mean that you probably can expect a drop in volume on the list, for a while.

I humbly apologize if in any situation I have caused anyone's inbox to clog up or caused any problems due to the high traffic. I didn't mean to go O T T but did, & last month broke my own monthly posting record, sending over 800 articles. The challenge of my being a volunteer "day reader" in online news (particularly in this subject field) means that my clipboard has most certainly been busy & a lot of information has passed through it this year. So I've tried to make it an interesting read - and it certainly has been for me! The posting I've done has been both a pleasure and a priviledge to read, not to mention educative and entertaining at times too.

To those that have written to me to say how much they've enjoyed the list, I just wanted to say thanks very much. & Before my friends and fans (dare I be so bold as to say I have fans?!) PANIC, I'm not retiring, just taking some respite.

My special thanks to Geoff & Wen in Texas and the blind news volunteers (none of whom I've ever met, they are all thousands of miles away from me) for their continuing work and tech support. We get spam, we get enquiries, we get people with subscription trouble, we sometimes have tech trouble, & it's all valuable and yet unpaid work that keeps it going. While here I'd also like to thank George Cassell in the US, & the many other people fro around the world who have forwarded and sent us articles for the list, or even translated them to English, on a voluntary basis.

DIGITALEYES

The blind news list's archive "Digital Eyes" database has continued to grow & has a considerably increased archive now (over 13,400 Articles last time I checked).

So a reminder to those doing research, that Digital Eyes can be searched by keyword & is a useful internet resource, for all things blindness & vision impairment related.

Digital Eyes is at

www.geoffandwen.com/blind

Nice reading with you all and hope that everyone has a great summer. And please don't forget that anyone can post to this list, I am just one reader. (okay I own up, I've sent 12000 articles, smile) but anyone can do it! All the articles are from the free press, and were found using mainstream news search engines such as google.I have had quite a few enquiries off list, if people want to they can visit & comment on my weblog at www.leongilbert.blogspot.com Not very impressive at this stage I know, but I'm planning to get a lot more on there soon.

All the best & sincerely,

Leon Gilbert. Volunteer Day Reader, blindnews@blindprogramming.com
Editor & Site Owner, www.vipnews.org.uk
RSS feed editor, ACB Radio, www.acbradio.org
Webmaster/co-founder, The Accessible Friends Network,
www.tafn.org.uk

DISCLAIMER. All articles posted are from open source internet news articles and remain the Copyright of their respective publishers. Article source URL's and contact details are given wherever provided, and no responsibility is taken for errors or omissions. This news research & delivery service is provided on a voluntary basis and is non-profit making, intended to be assistive to blind & visually impaired people (v i p's) & is intended solely for accessibility, awareness, education and leisure purposes.

Contact Leon Gilbert via email at lwg@blueyonder.co.uk