A modest proposal

If you follow this blog you know that I narrate audiobooks. For nearly 12 years I have volunteered as a reader for Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic). I have logged nearly 2,000 hours in the studio for these good folk, and I plan to continue doing so for as long as they will have me.

In addition to the unknown number of of books I have recorded for Learning Ally, I have done several for Audible.com. The most recent is a non-fiction narrative titled Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege That Turned the Tide of the Civil War, written by Samuel W Mitcham. Here's part of the Publisher's comments about this book:

On July 4, 1863, Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg and the Army of Mississippi to Ulysses S. Grant. Pemberton was immediately denounced as a poor general, whose incompetence and indecision cost the South control of the impregnable fortress. Some Southern newspapers were especially harsh, pointing out that Pemberton was a Northerner (he was born in Philadelphia) and suggesting that treachery was behind the fall of "the Confederate Gibraltar." 

Mitcham explores the events leading up to the siege of Vicksburg, as well as the battle itself, and the participants in the action in great detail, approaching the subject from the Southern point of view. You can follow the link above to learn more about the book, and even listen to a sample of me reading the book.  

But I urge you - DON'T BUY THE BOOK!  Let me give you a copy instead.

Audible.com gives me a limited number of promotional codes for this purpose,and I will pass them on to you. BUT before you say, "Oh, goody - a free book!" let me make these points. The book is likely only going to be interesting to you...

IF you are a fan of Civil War history - and I mean a fan - this sucker is 12 hours long!!

IF you are a Southern Sympathizer and believe that the South will Rise Again!

IF you love hearing endless details of troop movement, battle descriptions and casualty counts!

IF you want to know the life history of every Southern officer (and some civilians) involved!

AND you must promise you will not drive while listening to this book (see the parts above about 12 hours of minute details).

Reply in the comments and I'll give away these promotional codes on a first-come basis, with instructions on how to use it for a free copy of this audiobook. You do not have to be a subscriber to Audible.com - your Amazon sign-on will work - but if they do ask you to set up an account, with the code, you do not have to buy anything.

Be sure to include your email address in the comment. I promise I'm not going to put you on a list or even tell you about my next book. This is a one-off deal as far as I'm concerned. Call it a 4th of July observance of an event that happened 153 years ago.

However, you likely will hear from Audible.com again. It is an Amazon company, after all, and there's a reason they give out these codes.

Elsewhere, USA

I have blogged about the fact that most books we read for the blind are text books. Dull. complicated. tedious. text books. Most often, it is something like the 18th edition of a college sociology text; the first 90 pages are spent pointing out all of the new and exciting things that set the 18th edition apart from the 17th edition, and the next 20 how this particular book is now the best sociology text in the world. Not to mention 10 pages of glowing biographical garbage about the authors. [insert picture here of someone pretending to gag. Okay, just imagine it - that's gross enough]

But occasionally you get a book you really enjoy reading. Like the one this week, Elsewhere, USA. Written by Dalton Conley, Chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University, the cover blurb for this book reads: "Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety."

Now this is not a book review - I only read aloud most of two chapters of the book during my session. I did - for the very first time of all the books I've read from - put my name in it as a purchaser when the book has been read (and checked, and finalized, and sent to New Jersey, etc. before the hard copy is released). In other words, don't hold your breath for my review.

But in my two chapters, I learned the answer to a question I have often asked, "Who was the first person to think it would be a good idea to print an advertisement on a T-shirt?" And the answer will surprise you. Thomas Dewey, candidate for President in 1948. You know, the one that defeated Truman, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune. Okay, probably not Thomas himself, but someone in his campaign came up with T-shirts printed with "Dew it for Dewey" and handed them out to workers and supporters.

But to get to this answer - and beyond - Conley reviews the history of the T-shirt, beginning with the US Navy, who ordered a ton of "crew-neck" undershirts because the standard seaman's v-necked uniform showed too much skin back in the more refined era of the early 1900's. It wasn't long before sailors realized the tee itself was the appropriate uniform for the South seas. Later, of course, all branches of the armed forces adopted the T-shirt as standard dress.

In 1936, the USC athletics department asked Jockey, Intl. to make an under shirt to prevent chafing of the athletic gear and they foolishlessly stamped them "Property of USC Athletics." They recovered quickly and soon were selling the shirts in the campus store - the first "branded" T-shirts. Dewey's supporters wore the first advertising shirts and Walt Disney and then the Budweiser company knew a good thing when they saw it and the rest, as they say...

How cool is a book that answers questions like that?

A few follow ups...

I mentioned here how delighted we were to have Finches at our feeder. Who knew the little buggers ate multiple times their weight daily? We've refilled the sock twice and swept a big pile of thistle seed hulls off the patio. If they keep inviting their friends (I've seen as many as six clinging to the feeder) we may have to raise the price of lunch!

And in the same Finch article I mentioned the Albert the Adequate church. Noticed a blurb in the paper that Sunday they "staged a medieval Boar's Head Pageant, which is a traditional English performance marking the end of the Christmas season and the Epiphany." They even had a dude dressed up like the knight guarding the chalice in "Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Holy Grail" who "guided people into the church."

And we thought a Christmas Eve candlelight service was edgy.

Oh, the teen-aged director that kept texting instead of keeping up with me? Won't be back. It seems that after he completed his 4oth hour of volunteer service he whipped out his letter from the judge and asked the studio director to sign off on his volunteer hours. The director says that happens fairly often; they used to have people assigned from the courts but the School for the Blind (on whose property the RFB&D studio sits) put a stop to that. Now they just get "stealth" volunteers.

And here I talked about the "community" of children in Peru. This past week two of our Shepherds were in Peru visiting with Miguel and touring the community compound, seeking ways to establish regular and on-going support from Westover! Now that's good news!

How to frighten your Director

Yesterday during my time at the RFTB&D, I was reading a book on creative writing that contained many excellent examples. I enjoyed reading this book, because I could really get into the material.

One essay by Louise Erdrich, an author of Ojibwa extraction, related that in the earliest records, women of the Anishinaabe nation (of which Ojibwa is a part) had names such as Walks with Wind, Lightning Proof, Speaks Well, and Walks Far. When the missionaries came, in an evangelical frenzy those names became Mary and Martha and other good Christian identities. Louise’s grandmother, who started life as Carries Sunshine became just one more Catherine.

Ms Edrich richly described what her later research uncovered about her grandmother's remarkable life as a creator and seller of native craft items and the prestigious place she held in the tribe, but her childhood memories of Grandmother Catherine was of an old woman who spent her days in a chair behind the door in her mother’s house. She lived neither in the present nor the past, but in a world all her own, and sat quietly day by day. But occasionally, some cognition would take place in Grandmother Catherine’s mind and she would get up and start home. Never mind that home was a thousand miles away and no longer existed, Grandmother Catherine would start out traveling unerringly to the East – across neighbor's yards, through creeks, across roadways – on her way home.

She would, of course, be returned to her chair, and until that idea faded from her mind she would have to be restrained in the chair, and the chair tied to the wall.

Now if you know me very well, you know that I did not make it to the end of this essay. I struggled with it a bit, then gave up and sat silently, tears in my eyes. My director, a novice teenager, stopped the recording, and then in a bit, wide-eyed, pressed the intercom to see if I was okay?

I told her that yes, I was okay, and if she worked with me much she would get used to these lapses. It may take her a while to understand, though.

Catching up

I let the 1st of the month slip right by me without a header update. And I'm not positive, but I think I may have used this one before. It's still a nice place and it's getting warm enough to go there.

This past week has been "Read-A-Thon" at the RFTB&D. They do a big push to get every slot filled for every day for an entire week and reach a goal of so many hours of recording. If all seven booths are occupied for the 4 available 2-hour sessions in a day, 56 volunteers are needed daily, assuming no ones doubles up (many do). Additionally, they need extra people to mark and check books for all this activity. To motivate people to agree to do this, staff and volunteers go to all the good foodie places in town and persuade them to donate wonderful things to eat! Wonderful things! Today there was a great lasagna dish from Central Market and lovely breads and spreads from several other places in town. I think one fellow just came for the food and stayed all day every day. I'm not sure he actually read anything. And they did surpass their goal by many hours, so it was good for everyone.

The other day I went to get my allergy shot. I checked in and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, they called me in and I was fussing at them when I walked through the door. The nurse just stood there, hypodermic needles in hand, and said, "You do know that I can hurt you, don't you? Let's have none of that!"

I guess there are some battles not worth fighting.

Adventures In Reading

The other day at the RFTB&D I directed a session of the recording of a Latin textbook. I was the rector, rather than the lector. That makes good sense, since I cannot read Latin so that it can be understood as such. In fact, the number of readers among our group of volunteers who can read Latin seems to be... well, one. There is a gentleman who taught Latin for 41 years, and he has taken on the task of reading and recording an entire text, all by himself. I mentioned before that this is not the way it is usually done; normally a host of readers and directors work in two-hour sessions to quickly complete a book, since they are usually texts requested for pending study courses.

But if there is but one reader... this gentleman has been coming in almost daily and reading as much as six hours a day. I struggle to get through 2 hours! He has almost completed the book - all that remains is the Vocabulary list. Page after page of mind-numbing lists of Latin declinations. Pronounced, spelled, and then the English definition given. For example:

laudabilis, laudatio, laudo - praiswothy
pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum - beautiful, lovely
sinister, sinistra, sinistrum - on the left hand
vester, vestra, vestrum - yours

In my two hour session (his third session of the day) we covered Latin words that begin with 'G' and then started on the the letter 'H'. He tells me it gets more exciting when you get to the letters 'R' and 'S.'

I can hardly wait.

Was it a slip?

During a recent recording session for RFTB&D, while reading a Government text...

ME: "... a characteristic most noted since President George W. Bush has occupied the Evil Office. In the later part..."

DIRECTOR: "Uh, Bob. That should be Oval office."

ME: "What did I say?"

DIRECTOR: "You said 'Evil Office." It should be Oval office. We are not allowed to editorialize. I'll back up."

ME. "Please."

Really Reading for the Blind

I mentioned a few posts back that I was volunteering some at RFB&D. Except I wasn't reading, I was "directing." That's when you follow along with the people that are reading and make sure they are doing it right. Like I would know on some of the stuff - like Math Books.

After you direct long enough, you get to take the reading test, and if you pass that, then they will let you read. Well, I did and I did. Took it and passed, that is. So today I read. You will recall that I've been a little nervous about revealing my history with these folks. They did, after all, reject me once upon a time. But I figured if they rejected me again, I could attack them on my blog, and boy that would show them! But I passed with flying colors so there's no hard feelings about the past.

The test is interesting. It consists of 7 or 8 pages, each representing a typical page that you might actually read. For instance, the first page was a vocabulary list, and it contained words like ACETANILIDE, BOATSWAIN, BOGATA (NJ) and OTIOSE. You are supposed to (correctly) pronounce each word, spell it, then pronounce it again. You do get to look the words up ahead of time. While actually reading, if you encounter a word you don't know how to pronounce, you are supposed to stop and look it up.

The 2nd page is an exercise on analyzing a product map. The text describes the steps to follow and then shows a map that the reader is to analyze. In this case, it is a map of the State of Texas, showing cotton production in 1895. You are supposed to describe the map, point out that the state is divided into 4 different geographic regions, paint a word picture of what area each region covers, then count the cotton bolls in each region and indicate to the listener where cotton was grown and to what extent.

Another page was a flow chart, with decision branching and alternate paths to follow. Or how about the page on Oral Hygiene which included the illustration of a cross-section of a tooth, with labels for the Crown, Dentin, Pulp and Root. But the best page may have been this.


Yes, just the cartoon - and the task is to describe it so a non-sighted person "gets it." Go ahead. Try it.

I guess I "got it" because today they paired me with a director and I spent 2 hours reading a Business text which featured eleventy-zillion different ways for a company or organization to conduct sessions to improve/benefit/restructure/turn around/rethink/revitalize itself. When I got through, I'm not sure that I knew how to conduct any of the sessions described, but I did know that 2 hours of continuous reading is very hard on the throat!

RFTB&D

That’s Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic. Used to be just RFTB, but they realized that there are more reading difficulties than lack of vision and now almost anyone with difficulty reading printed text can qualify for the program. In fact they have more dyslexic clients than visually-impaired clients. Maybe it should be RFTD&B.

Anyway, I’m volunteering as a reader for this organization. It stems from the “Westover plus One Percent” initiative that our Spiritual Formation minister, Rick McCall has called for. One percent of your income – apart from your church contribution – slated for a cause that exists outside the church “box” and then getting involved in the program itself (someone who shall remain nameless asked Rick if she could give 2% and skip the personal involvement part. He didn’t buy it). Mom is working with Meals on Wheels, and I chose Reading for the Blind. Sounds like a no-brainer, for my part.

Actually, I volunteered for this organization once before, a number of years ago, and they rejected me. I don’t remember the exact reason, but somehow I didn’t meet their standards as a reader. I personally think I was too good for them. Maybe that was part of the problem. But I’m back and thus far they have accepted my efforts. Maybe that’s because I have yet to read. I have been “in training” as a director. The way this works is that there are two copies of each book to be recorded and the reader sits in the recording booth and reads while the director sits outside, listening on earphones, following along in the text and controlling the recording.

It’s a computer-based recording system – digitally recording the voice as well as formatting the recording into pages and chapters. When the reader makes a mistake, you use mouse clicks to stop the recording, back up a sentence or two, play forward until you reach a good starting place and then start recording again. When you reach the end of a page, you electronically “mark” that point and the software starts on the next page unit.

The first couple of sessions I sat with another director, watching the process for the most part with just a little hands-on. Then I graduated to directing alone. After 11 – 15 hours of directing, I can take a reading test and if I pass, I can sit in the booth and make my own mistakes. I’m content to direct at the moment, because I need more experience in how various printed conventions are handled verbally. It’s not like reading fiction or even the Bible; most of the books are school texts, and you have to deal with things like graphs, charts and pictures. Or footnotes. Last week I worked with a text that had more space devoted to the notes than it did the text. Really. And in addition to the ibids and op cits, there were the eds. and vls. and pps – not to mention the ffs and pdqs. Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the picture.

Today I worked with a Math Reader. If you are a Math Reader they start bowing when you walk in the door and they throw flower petals on you and go out and wash and polish your car while you read. Good math readers are rare and hard to come by. We read from a 7^th grade text, and you’re probably aware that the current books are full of charts and diagrams and pictures and illustrations – not to mention the formulas themselves. There’s very little actual text. It goes something like this: “A. Find the approximate area of the shape in illustration B.” Then the Math Reader spends most of the time saying things like, “Illustration B is a grid, made up of 12 squares across by 9 squares down with each square representing 2 square feet. In this grid is an indiscriminate blue shape that completely covers 21 squares, covers half of 7 squares and covers less than half of 3 squares.” And if you’re good, you work this description out on the fly!

You work in 2 hour shifts – that’s about all a reader can do before they get tongue-tied – and it takes many readers to complete a book. You don’t read an entire text, because most volunteers come in only once a week and it would take two years to do a single text. Speed is of the essence; they are reading texts that have been specifically requested by someone – usually next semester’s text. That makes for a lot of variety. Thus far I have “directed” an Economics text in a section dealing with Karl Marx; a Social Studies book dealing with treatment of slaves in the South before the War, the book that was all notes (so boring I don’t even remember the topic) and the Math book. When you get good, you “self-direct.” You go in a booth, control the recording yourself and edit your own mistakes.

Of course, if you don’t make any misteakes…