One thing that I did not emphasize as strongly as I should have at the meeting this morning — this is not *MY* blog, it is *OUR* blog. I can help folks with how to enter stuff here, but there is no way that I can come up with all of the needed meaningful content by myself. If you want to make comments on the blog, or would like to write regular articles, please let me know, and I will set you up and get you started.
Lion Marvel gave us a very moving presentation yesterday. In addition to a bit of conscious-raising with regards to blind people, he posed the challenge to us to think about the sorts of things a blind person could do at our own companies.
In a similar vein, I saw a video of a fiddle-player on YouTube a few weeks ago. He wasn’t really great, but he played reasonably well to an appreciative audience. He had no left arm; he played with the bow stuck between his legs. The miracle wasn’t that he could play the fiddle so well, but that he could play at all.
Got me to thinking… I have two working eyes (not perfect, but they do work well enough), and two working arms (again not perfect, but ok). I have no excuse for not doing the very best that I can with what I have.
July 4th, 2007: The Plano Independence Day Parade went off fantastically well!! Mother Nature held off with the rain until the parade was over. AND THE WINNERS ARE…
Representatives from the winners were on hand at the July 7th meeting to receive their awards.
The parade was estimated to be over 2 miles long! We had lots of good media coverage (some things money just can’t buy!), and a great time was had by all. Now, it’s not too early to think about next year’s parade. We have learned a lot in the first two that we have run, and we can look forward to applying those lessons to make 2008’s parade even better.
We raced in Texarkana the first weekend in June! We got some excellent TV coverage, courtesy of KTBS. Here is a link to the wrap-up video on the KTBS.com site. The webmaster is working on getting copies of the videos.
Mark Marvel presented a program about his outreach program for the blind. Mark went completely blind 6 years ago due to complications of diabetes, and rather than dwell on his handicap, he concentrated on what he could do. Mark is an active Lion (Park Cities Lions Club), among other things — you might have seen his display at the convention. Mark left us with a challenge. If you didn’t get a change to hear his presentation, you will want to ask someone who did about it.
We’ve been invited by Lion Mark Marvel to attend a meeting of a support group for the blind, at First Baptist Church of Plano (1300 E 15th) in the Fellowship Hall. Meeting starts at 6pm, runs to 8pm (you are encouraged to bring food items to snack on and share). The support group meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month.