One of the fringe benefits that comes with being a reporter – because it\u2019s definitely not the dental plan – is the job is all about knowing what to do. It has very little to do with knowing what to be.<\/p>\n
Reporting is also very much about repetition. No matter where you live and no matter which market you call home base, there\u2019s going to be a lot of repetition. You\u2019re going to stand outside the courthouse at eleven o\u2019clock at night to talk about what happened inside the courthouse at eleven o\u2019clock that morning. You\u2019re going to knock on the door of someone who has been the victim of something terrible, and then you\u2019re going to ask them how they feel. You\u2019re going to do the story about the woman who gave birth on Labor Day, the transplant recipient who has something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving and the strange food you can find on a stick at the state fair. These scripts exist in every newsroom archive in America, and there will be times when you joke about how the producer should just store news Mad Libs in the file directory to save time. This joke, too, has been made hundreds of times. It\u2019s all about the process of learning what to do so that when it happens again, you can run on auto pilot until you figure out how to deal with the particularities.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the variations are funny, even in the context of something terrible. I\u2019ve heard people compare the sound of a tornado to that of a freight train so many times that when I had to cover an actual freight train wreck and the woman who lived in the adjacent neighborhood said the derailment sounded just like a tornado\u2026 well that\u2019s just a big slice of funny.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, you can see the sound bite from two towns over. It doesn\u2019t matter who the next serial killer will be or what he does. There will be a neighbor who describes him as a man who was \u201ckind of \u00a0a quiet guy, kept to himself, didn\u2019t get out much.\u201d There should be a hotkey on our laptops for this phrase, and it can sit right next to the ones for \u201ca parent\u2019s worst nightmare and \u201cYou won\u2019t believe\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Knowing what to do\u2026 reportorial muscle memory\u2026 often got me through the day. What to be, though. That\u2019s a bit trickier. \u00a0What happens is that you completely define who you are via what you do. \u00a0So it\u2019s really not at all surprising that if you talk to any newsroom expat, they\u2019ll tell you, no matter how many years removed they are from the business, they still definite themselves as a journalist. They could be doing public relations for a company that produces pantsuits made of kittens, and which are hand stitched by Malaysian three year olds, but they\u2019ll still tell you that, at heart, they\u2019re journalists. Being a journalist \u2013 it\u2019s going to leave a mark.<\/p>\n
Which is why the last several months have been so disconcerting. OK, yeah, the potentially losing my vision thing\u2026 there\u2019s that too. Still, finding a community to belong to that has nothing to do with everything I\u2019ve always known how to do. That\u2019s a heavy lift.<\/p>\n
The working title of the expedition is \u201cThe Palette Project.\u201d For now, this seems the best way to describe the idea of dipping into the world one color at a time. Preparation, so far, is very much about learning\u2026 or relearning. Navigating my world with enough confidence that people don\u2019t rush to help. Feeling confident on a trail. Earning responsibility and the trust of others. As I\u2019ve said before, it\u2019s grabbing back the mantle of adulthood that one would think, once you have it, you don\u2019t need to claim it again, but that appears to be the case<\/p>\n
I truly love the sailing classes I\u2019m taking because the crew with perfect eyesight is not only willing but eager to entrust those of us who are blind and visually impaired with the real responsibility of keeping them safe. Sailing a racing keelboat, I\u2019m learning, is not the same as operating a cruising boat. There are real dangers aboard. While the two-thousand pound keel will keep the boat itself from capsizing, the mainsail is larger and the boom sits much closer to the deck.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trusting the blind skipper not to unexpectedly tack into the wind (or out of it) and send the boom flying across the deck, and trusting the mainsail operator not to let the sheet out so far that the sail loses tension and starts to jibe, to swing uncontrollably. It\u2019s a big deal. Throw in the stress of a six man crew for an actual race. There are blind racing crews out there, and I mean to join one of them, but even in a non racing context, the randomness of wind pockets, bad weather or plain old miscommunication makes me marvel that the sighted crew is so comfortable with us being on board at all, let alone puts us in charge of the work that keeps them steady and safe. It\u2019s a testament to their simple decency as human beings.<\/p>\n
It also leads me to feel deeply troubled\u00a0about something I wrote earlier.<\/p>\n
What I wrote was I didn\u2019t want to be a member of a blind hiking group. I wanted to be a member of a hiking group. Period. The implication in that sentiment\u2026 that any activity that involved more than one person with a handicap was a pity gesture. A fun but meaningless outing for the special kids. An activity more about letting the organizers feel good about themselves without making a bit of difference in fostering independence.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m coming to realize is the blind helmsman, the paraplegic kayaker and even, or especially<\/em> the child with Down\u2019s Syndrome at the Cheesecake Factory get-together are absolutely unequivocally equal in every respect, because these are the people who are out there doing something<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 They are saying in their own words, in our<\/em> own words, that they\u2026 that we<\/em> have a place in the world. That we have just as much right and the ability as anyone to push ourselves as far as our bodies will take us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To me, the idea of withdrawing from the world in the face of a handicap is a concept so foreign as to have no meaning. When I lost the sight in one eye at thirteen and first realized I was living on borrowed time with the other, it never occurred to me to change anything about my life or my future, because it didn\u2019t occur to anyone I\u2019d ever known. No teacher, no friend, and certainly not my family. That this was not universal never once occurred to me.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve since heard some stories and seen others firsthand so disheartening that they make me weave between disbelief on one side and infuriation on the other. Of the parents who petitioned a municipality to install a street sign to warn drivers a blind child lived on the block. Of the blind teenager who, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, replied that he would collect SSI. Of the blind woman in her twenties who never learned how to wash her clothes or clean her home because it was assumed these skills were beyond her. Of the thirty year old man who has been losing his sight since the age of five, but who can\u2019t cross the street without trying to follow the shape of the person next to him and, in his words, \u201chope that person doesn\u2019t have a death wish.\u201d In my book, these people who have never been taught that using a cane, learning Braille, or relying on every other sense that we as human beings are so fortunate to have is somehow more shameful than risking your life or living in filth is abuse. Pure and simple.<\/p>\n This is why my being in any way disparaging of anyone with a handicap who says yes to anything that results in independence and ability is something about which I feel particularly shameful. It\u2019s not that anyone with a handicap should get an award for simply waking up in the morning and managing to get out of bed. I\u2019ve said all that needs to be said about the need for altered perceptions and raising expectations. It\u2019s that the blind hiking group that I implicitly mocked\u2026 those are the people who are pushing the boundaries. Not of everyone else, but their own.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When you\u2019re a journalist, the ideal is to be objective\u2026 to be for nothing. You don\u2019t take sides and you don\u2019t plant your flag. Being a part of anything is discouraged because you never known when you might have to cover that person, that group, that cause\u2026 the story that comes out of nowhere. Within the business itself, it\u2019s a calling and I like to think there was even, at times, something noble about it\u2026 that act of placing yourself beyond impropriety in the service of a\u00a0story that can be trusted. In that world, I\u2019m proud to say I drank the Kool-Aid and went back for seconds.<\/p>\n Today, however, the challenge for me, as it is for any former journalist is how to do what everyone else does without a second thought\u2026 to stand for something. While next week is all about big announcements and big plans, it\u2019s also about building a community.<\/p>\n I just have this one last comment to make first\u2026 that I\u2019ve been coming to realize that so much of what the expedition – the Palette Project, if you will – is not about what I want to do, but what I want to be. It\u2019s about standing for something.<\/p>\n And I think that something is just simple dignity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the fringe benefits that comes with being a reporter – because it\u2019s definitely not the dental plan – is the job is all about knowing what to do. It has very little to do with knowing what to be. Reporting is also very much about repetition. No matter where you live and no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Rim5-25","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}