Podcast appearances and mentions of carroll center

In this episode of Double Tap, Steven Scott flies solo but brings on a special guest, Kate Crohan, a seasoned teacher for children at Perkins School for the Blind. Their conversation delves deep into the world of Braille, exploring its significance, challenges, and future. Kate shares her extensive experience, from her early days teaching newly visually impaired adults at the Carroll Center for the Blind to her current role at Perkins. They discuss the emotional and practical aspects of learning Braille, particularly its role in accepting vision loss and gaining independence. Kate emphasizes the importance of Braille beyond just reading books; it's about labelling, navigating public spaces, and even personal enjoyment, like creating drawings or enjoying tactile jewelry. The discussion also touches on the challenges of teaching Braille, the debate between QWERTY and Perkins keyboards, and the role of technology in enhancing Braille literacy. Steven and Kate explore the concern that audio might overshadow the need for Braille, but they also see technology as a beacon of hope for its future. They stress the importance of Braille for employment and independence, especially for individuals with additional disabilities like hearing loss. The conversation concludes with a promotion of an upcoming YouTube interview with Jake, a student at Perkins School for the Blind, who shares his connection to Braille and his aspirations for the future. Keep in touch by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also find us on social media.

Notes and Links to Andrew Leland's Work        For Episode 222, Pete welcomes Andrew Leland, and the two discuss, among other topics, his early balance of technology and art and creativity that continues to govern his writing and careers, early formative reading, the philosophy of “going blind” versus “becoming blind,” the spectrum of blindness, and salient themes in his book like intersectionality, ableism, and differing ideas of how society sees the blind and disabled, and how this affects Andrew and others in similar situations.      Andrew Leland is a writer, audio producer, editor, and teacher living in Western Massachusetts. His first book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, about the world of blindness (and figuring out his place in it), was published in July 2023 by Penguin Press. He has produced audio for a range of entities, including an interview with the DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark for the New Yorker Radio Hour; a story about disabled astronauts for Radiolab; and a story about reading technologies for the blind for 99 Percent Invisible. From 2013–2019, he hosted and produced the Organist, an arts-and-culture podcast, for KCRW. He has taught nonfiction writing, radio, and “digital storytelling” (?) at Smith College, UMass-Amherst, and the University of Missouri, he's been an editor at the Believer since 2003, and he's edited books for McSweeney's and Chronicle Books.   Buy The Country of the Blind   Andrew's Website   New York Times Review of The Country of the Blind   NPR Article on The Country of the Blind     At about 3:15, Andrew details his background with reading and writing, including how he was influenced by his parents in different ways, as well as how he was indirectly influenced by his uncle, the playwright Neil Simon At about 6:25, Andrew talks about a towering gift from his aunt that really energized his reading and writing journeys At about 9:30, Pete and Andrew discuss David Foster Wallace, his lasting literary legacy, and his marred legacy outside of writing At about 11:15, Andrew responds to Pete's questions about how his background in audio engineering, and how it has affected his writing At about 15:15, Pete reflects on the reading experience and Andrew reflects on how the book moved along due to his audio background, and Andrew shouts out Rachel Cunningham at Penguin Random House as being extremely helpful with structuring his book At about 17:10, Andrew discusses seeds for his book At about 21:00, The two lay out some exposition of the book and discuss the book's opening lines and contradictions; Andrew expands upon Will Butler's ideas of “going blind” vs. “becoming blind” At about 25:20, Andrew gives background on the book's title, and how it's based on a HG Wells' book At about 27:30, Andrew talks about long-held ideas or stereotypes of blind people and the consequences of same At about 30:05, Andrew discusses the myriad ways in which blindness has been used as metaphor, and shouts out a book that explores these tropes, There Plant Eyes, by M. Leona Godin At about 32:45, Andrew explains the difficulties he had with a meetup in Missouri that is featured in the book, as well as some immediate and later revelations that came from this At about 37:30, Andrew delves into his travels and conventions attended that adjusted his mindset and provided many beautiful moments and learning moments  At about 41:55, Andrew discusses genetic testing for his medical condition, and how he and his wife decided whether or not to have their son tested At about 44:00, The two discuss ideas of intersectionality and in Andrew's research and reporting and what he found regarding racism and the strong work put forth by queer women of color in disabled communities At about 48:10, Andrew and Pete reflect on the history of the Bay Area in the fight for disability justice At about 51:00, The two discuss the medical advancements and artificial sight that are coming to the forefront and the ways in which Andrew writes and thinks about them At about 54:20, Andrew details the importance of Ben McFall, the legendary bookseller, and how his obituary connects to how Andrew feels as he started to use a screen reader   At about 58:25, Andrew juxtaposes the Carroll Center for the Blind's philosophy versus that of other organizations that work for and with the blind At about 1:01:10, Pete and Andrew analyze an important set of encounters with a fellow guest at The Colorado Center for the Blind and the implications of their attitudes and philosophies and experiences At about 1:05:30, Andrew talks about exciting new projects      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    I am very excited that starting in February with Episode 220 with Neef Ekpoudom and this episode, I will have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review-I'm looking forward to the partnership!    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 224 with Sarah Rose Etter, the author of 2023's Ripe, and The Book of X, which was the winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award. Her short fiction collection, Tongue Party, was selected by Deb Olin Unferth to be published as the winner of the 2011 Caketrain Award.    The episode will air on February 13.

Below is the information on the second edition of this resource copied from this Carroll Center website: https://carroll.org/the-windows-screen-reader-primer-all-the-basics-and-more-second-edition/ The second edition of The Windows Screen Reader Primer: All the Basics and More is now out. We are making it available to you for free in Word and ePub formats. It is authored by David Kingsbury, an Assistive Technology Instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind. The book is meant to help JAWS, NVDA, and Windows Narrator users work more effectively with the most important PC applications—like Microsoft Office, email clients, and web browsers. These applications include the Windows operating system, the four primary Office Suite applications (Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint), and the three most commonly used web browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox). Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive for Desktop, the three most popular cloud-based file-sharing programs, are also covered. So too is Adobe Acrobat Reader for accessing PDF files. A new chapter on participating in, scheduling, and hosting Zoom meetings is included in this second edition. So too is an appendix on using academic style guides for formatting Word documents. A glossary with over 100 definitions of computer-related terms and a set of practice exercises are also included. The book is intended for both beginners and intermediate users. While all the basics are covered, those already possessing a fair amount of experience using screen reader programs in the Windows environment will find useful tools and techniques to further enhance their skills. Presenter Contact Info Email: david.kingsbury@carroll.org

20230505 In Perspective Originally Broadcasted May 5, 2023, on ACB Media 5 We discussed the history of the Carroll Center for the Blind

As you know, this podcast is entitled “Unstoppable Mindset” with the tag line “where Inclusion, Diversity and the unexpected meet”. This episodes represents for me one of the most unexpected sessions I have done. I first heard from Tanja Milojevic through LinkedIn. I did not know at the time she was a person who happened to be blind due to the same circumstances that befell me. I discovered this and so much more about Tanja when we finally met to discuss her coming on Unstoppable Mindset.   Tanja was born in Serbia as a premature birth. She was given too much Oxygen that effected her eyes and lead to her being blind. She permanently relocated with her family to the U.S. at the age of five. You get to hear her whole story including how she learned to function successfully in high school, college and beyond.   Our discussions in this episode include much about her life and successes. We also get to talk about one of my favorite subjects, audio drama.   Tanja's insights will help you learn not only much about blindness, but about life in general. I hope you enjoy Tanja's stories, observations, and thoughts.     About the Guest:   Tanja Milojevic Biography   I was born in Serbia as a premature baby. I had retinal detachment as a result of the incubators and was diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity at the age of one. I then had several surgeries on both eyes to restore some vision which were partially successful. These surgeries took place in the United States.   I permanently came to live in the U.S. at the age of five when I was diagnosed with open and close angle glaucoma in both eyes. My medical visa helped me make a permanent home with my family near Boston where I began my mainstream public education.   Advocacy is important to me. I attended public school all my life and that required learning my rights and advocating on my own behalf along with my family. I wanted to learn braille at a young age even though I was able to limp along by struggling with print on my video magnifier. I was aware at that time that my vision would deteriorate over time and I'd lose all of it later in life; thus learning braille and mobility were early self-imposed goals in preparing myself for the gradual transition. I pushed the school system to take a dual learning approach and provide me print/braille materials. My supportive family helped me advocate from a young age and I got involved in my IEP meetings as a teen, which proved invaluable.   I advocated in high school and college to improve the experiences for other students who were blind or visually impaired coming into those institutions. My former TVI tells me these students' lives were much easier after I left because of I urged the school to buy braille translation software, the JAWS screen reader, scanning software, and an embosser. My use of JAWS from eighth grade onward gave me the technology skills I needed later in life and I believe future students should have that early opportunity as well.   I received my guide dog Wendell just before entering college. He was from the Seeing Eye and was a golden lab. Wendell and I were best friends and everyone I met fell in love with him, he was so human-like. My puppy was always a magnet for people and I had no trouble making friends and getting places safely, night or day, rain or shine.   Wendell accompanied me while I attended Simmons College, where I thrived and enjoyed the supportive community, clubs and events. My communications professor pushed me to pursue working at the college radio station where I improved my audio production and on-air skills. He saw audio potential in me--the perfectionist who always strived for improvement. The creativity was flowing and I began to make my own radio dramas. My podcast Lightning Bolt Theater of the Mind was born at that time and thrives today. My love of radio drama stemmed from an accidental discovery of the radio drama Pet Cemetery on tape back in high school.   Making the lives of people who are blind and visually impaired easier and better are objectives that continue to be part of my life. My internship at the Constituent Services Office under Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was challenging and taught me a lot about issues families were facing across the state. I provided feedback on audio description quality during my WGBH Media Access Group internship and learned about ACB's Audio Description Project at that time. My Easter Seals internship provided me the opportunity to take part in the Thrive program, where I mentored a teenager with visual impairment and provided her with transition resources, confidence, and guidance.   I shadowed advocates at the Disabled Persons Protection Commission when I interned there and compassionately assisted vulnerable clients. Individuals with disabilities oftentimes face financial control and abuse in many cases and DPPC helps them take the steps they need to stay safe and resume their lives in a better situation. These experiences stuck with me as I advocated to take radio communications in college and learned the skills to become a professional voiceover talent. I graduated from Simmons College in 2012 with a double minor in Radio Communications/Special Education Moderate Disabilities and a BA in English Writing.   I moved on to UMASS Boston where I had the opportunity to work with the Carroll Center for the Blind and Perkins School for the Blind, to teach adults with visual impairments how to be more independent. I taught these students how to cook, clean, access technology, organize, launder clothes, read braille, learn about needed resources, and take part in leisure activities. The best part was seeing their confidence grow and the self-doubt lessen. I made their lives easier and better by increasing their self-image, confidence, advocacy skills, and independence. However, while attending graduate school, I had some accessibility challenges, but I pursued my Master's degree anyway. I struggled through the process by working with professors to complete my courses with high grades and finally graduated with a Master's in Vision Rehabilitation Therapy from UMASS Boston's Vision Studies Program.   My work at the Perkins Library has been outlined by Ted Reinstein on The Chronicle documentary TV program. It follows my braille production work at Perkins and my voiceover endeavors. I had seven years of experience providing braille and large print to a wide variety of organizations and individuals. Perkins offered many opportunities which I utilize to network: I try new devices when demonstrated, input ideas to MIT students for new technologies, and tested websites/software for various Perkins Solutions clients. My voice over freelance work allowed me to meet many friends and producers which organically lead me to the path of audio description narration work. I now work with X Tracks, International Digital Center and audio Eyes to name a few. Giving back to the blindness community by bringing more quality audio description to the ear is personally rewarding and I'm honored to be able to help advocate further in this field of access.   Further enriching my life experience, my current guide dog, a yellow lab named Nabu, and I were partnered in February, 2017. It didn't take long for our bond to form, and now she and I travel together everywhere. She's a beautiful and loving dog and it's no trouble meeting people with her participating in my adventures. We work closely every day and she rarely leaves my side.   That brings me to the present. In June of 2022, my partner and I founded GetBraille.com, a braille production company where we produce literary braille, large print, and audio materials to all who need them. This on-demand service will make it easier for schools, organizations, restaurants, and individuals to request quality braille at affordable prices. We always provide quotes and project consults at no cost. Our future goals include developing multi-sensory educational materials and assistive technologies for those with print disabilities that we wish had been available to us. Offering work to others who are blind and visually impaired is important to us as we grow; we look forward to the bright future a   How to connect with Tanja: Email me at tanja@getbraille.com Visit our Get Braille website at: https://getbraille.com/ Visit my voiceover website at https://www.tanjamvoice.com/ Find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tanja.milojevic.37 Check out my linked in profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanja-milojevic-94104726/     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson  01:20 Welcome once again, we're glad you're with us. And you have in case you're wondering, reached unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meat. I'm Mike Hinkson, your host and today we're interviewing Tanja Milojevic. And Tanja has a varied background. She is involved with a company called Get Braille. She's a voice actress. And she's going to tell us about the rest. I looked at her bio, and it's a nice long bio. So there's a lot of data there. So rather than putting all of that here in the podcast, Tanja gets to talk about it. How about that? Anyway, Tanja, welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you?   Tanja Milojevic  02:01 I'm doing well, Michael, thank you so much. And it's Tanja. But Tanja a lot of people think that I think it's   Michael Hingson  02:09 well once again, like I should have asked because like with with  Milojevic. I, I just listened to what Josh said. And it said, Tanja, so Tanja.   Tanja Milojevic  02:20 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm really excited. And of course, with your story being so inspiring, too. I, you know, I look forward to helping the community itself and in many different ways, including providing Braille access, and easier Braille access, more affordable, quality, all that fun stuff, and of course, contributing to the world of voiceover and AI voice cloning.   Michael Hingson  02:46 Well, let's start with kind of your history. Tell us about growing up and where you were born and all of that stuff.   Tanja Milojevic  02:54 So I was born in Serbia, I came here to the US at the age of five and a half, because I needed some various surgeries. Honestly, when I was born, I was a preemie premature baby and I had run off the prematurity. So we needed to perform surgery right away, to see if we could reattach the retinas. They had been detached due to the oxygen, the incubator. So my mother was able to gather enough money, fundraise and bring me here to the US at the age of one, we had the surgery that was very successful. And then we came back to the US periodically to get eyedrops medication and check in. By the age of five, these checkups were so frequent that we decided to settle in the US, it made a lot more sense to do that a lot more cost effective. So that's what we did. And I went to public school here, I have the fortune of getting all of my schooling here in the US, and then many other opportunities as life went along its journey. So I was a dual learner in school, I did large print Braille. And then of course, when screen reading technology was more easily obtainable. A lot of audio, JAWS, voiceover all that fun stuff. And I'd say my vision,   Michael Hingson  04:14 able to do much but give your age away. But when were you born what year   Tanja Milojevic  04:18 1989.   Michael Hingson  04:19 So by that time, by that time, ROP was pretty well known. So there was no choice but to put you in an incubator with pure oxygen or what?   Tanja Milojevic  04:34 Well, I mean, you're looking at not a third world country, but but definitely a country that was economically struggling with the war going on and such. And the care really wasn't equal access to everyone and it's sort of like, what you could get into, you know, what opportunities were available to you. And at the time, they had all these premature babies in incubators, that was just the way it was done. They didn't have enough They have to really monitor and I sort of question whether or not much of the staff really cared all that much about it. It's not like you could go to court and sue them and really get anywhere because they would lock you out of the courtroom. So with limited opportunities, you kind of took what you could get.   Michael Hingson  05:18 Yeah. Well, having been born in 1950, when ROP or at that time, rLf was not nearly as well known or certainly not accepted. Although it had been offered as a reasonable issue dealing with premature babies. It still wasn't totally accepted by the medical profession. And I've heard that there were people born around that time who like 30 and 40 years later sued and won. And I always felt, why would I want to do that? If the doctor didn't really know, or wasn't that well known? What are we gonna do by filing lawsuits other than destroying lives, which doesn't make any sense because my life was not destroyed, it just went a different way.   Tanja Milojevic  06:03 Right? I mean, that's a great way to look at it. And I see it as a blessing in disguise, because it was a great opportunity to bring my family over one at a time close family and get them jobs here. Well, not that I got them jobs, but they were able to have the opportunity to better themselves, their situations, and so on and have family here, which is a much more attractive alternative than being in a country that's economically struggling, war torn, etc. At the time, we got out of that conflict, just just in time, because it gotten worse from there, obviously. So having the opportunities to have public education here. All of the various services that were offered here, at the time was just unheard of. The School for the Blind that existed in Serbia was very 1800s, maybe 1950s style, institutional, like dark rooms dirty, just not a place you want to be. So yeah, it's a great, great opportunity for us. So I That's how I see it, instead of worrying about lawsuits and trying to get revenge or whatever.   Michael Hingson  07:14 Which makes perfect sense. Which makes perfect sense. Do you Do you have siblings?   Tanja Milojevic  07:19 I do I have an older sister. We're 17 years apart. So kind of the running joke is she's my mom. Sometimes, you know, state, we go to the certain know your mother can help you with this. Like, this is my older sister. But don't say that to her. She'll be offended.   Michael Hingson  07:36 Your big sister.   Tanja Milojevic  07:38 My big sister.   Michael Hingson  07:39 Yeah. Yeah, that works better. Yeah. So you say you did get some eyesight back from the operations? And yeah, how did that work for you in school?   Tanja Milojevic  07:52 I it was, in a way, it sort of got me into trouble. Not that I wasn't grateful for having the vision, it was just that my teachers were like, well, she can read large print, you know, and if we magnify them enough, and give her the video magnifier, or they call it a CCTV of CCTV, as it's called the video magnifier, but they gave me access to one of those like, well, she doesn't need Braille. Because first of all, we have to pay a whole ton more, we got to pay another person to come in here and work on Braille. And whenever she can give, just get by with large print. And it was a struggle, because after 45 minutes of trying to see the larger text, it hurt my you know, I get a headache, my eyes would start tearing, I might neck, shoulders all that you'd get uncomfortable sitting in in such a weird position for that long. So we had to fight with the school to get them the public school to get them to agree to get me Braille services, so that I learned braille and print and had both in my toolbox, if you will. But also, I would argue that the language barrier was just as much of a hindrance as maybe the lack of understanding of, hey, this is a dual learner. Because when I first started first grade, they put me in a school that was like more special ed versus some teaching someone who's blind, it was more like they had kids with various disabilities. And so the teaching style wasn't a good fit for me. I did learn English and like grade one Braille, which is for anyone that's listening that may not know, is uncontracted Braille. It's long form, you write everything out a letter at a time versus using contractions and the lead condensed bro, which saves a lot more space. So I knew that but it wasn't a great fit because I wasn't being challenged enough. And one of my teachers found that out first grade, and they pushed for me to get moved to a different public school, where it was more of a general ed system. So So I had a year where I was kind of like, stuck in first grade for two years. In a way that was good because I had a chance to learn more of the language and Braille at the same time. And then I was more prepared to move on with the curriculum. But in a way, it also sort of held me back and was a little bit awkward for me, because I was like, Wow, I'm older than these kids here in my class. So a couple of different challenges. But the way that I like to look at it is that the more skills you can gain from tough spots, you're put in, the better problem solving skills you might have or advocacy for yourself later in life, especially if you see that. It's just simply a matter of miscommunication. And as long as you explain things to to folks around you correctly, in a way that resonates with them, it's got to resonate with them, it can't just make sense. They've got to sort of personally understand what it is that you mean, and see the struggle, I guess, if you will, then you're better off doing it that way, then   Michael Hingson  11:01 what do you what do you mean? What do you mean by that? Can you kind of explain I I'm not sure I follow totally.   Tanja Milojevic  11:07 So a general education teacher is busy, they don't have the time to stay after school every day with you and work on extra things. If you can prove to them that giving you an assignment ahead of time, or giving you the notes on the board, or maybe even expressing to them what's confusing about you and setting a time that works for them, you're going out of your way to show that you're dedicated to their class, they personally need to show that their students are succeeding, or they're going to have to explain why it is that that they've got so many struggling students. They're responsible for many kids all at once, and you're just adding more stress. So the more solutions you can provide to them, the easier their life is, and their job is. And the faster they can get out the door because we all have lives and families and yeah. So proving to the school through anecdotal evidence that this is hiring someone else is just going to present their teachers with less obstacles is the way to go. At least for me, from my experience, well, showing effort showing evidence, and it worked. Yeah, yeah, eventually.   Michael Hingson  12:23 Well, how did the teachers react as you started to explain, I would assume that that helped.   Tanja Milojevic  12:29 It did help. I did run into some other snags where the teacher of the visually impaired I was working with at the time, had a lot of her own issues in her own life, day to day. So you for math and science, and so on, I was writing my showing my work writing a lot of the answers in Braille, leaving some space, so double spacing everything so that she could interline it with print, which means writing the print above the Braille line. So then the teacher could go ahead and read it, it was an extremely antiquated way to do it at the time, that was the option. Now, of course, we've got all kinds of technology and Google shirt, you know, Google Sheets, and whatever, all this other more efficient ways to do it. But the point is that it took her a couple of weeks to get these assignments back to my general education, math teacher, for example. And that slowed me down. Because I'd fall behind, I'd be maybe a chapter behind everybody else, I'd still have to pay attention in class, but they were well ahead of where I was. So you know, I was I was having a hard time keeping up. This was like for fifth grade. But it was just another exercise in workarounds and figuring out how else we can do this, I'd show my work and print on the CCTV instead of the Braille, I would find ways to print out material that I wrote off of my something called a Braille note or a Braille light at the time, which is just like a small computer, essentially, that has a Braille display, you can feel one line of brela at once. It's electronic, it stores files, you can change the file format, and I print out my stuff. So I came up with a couple of faster ways to do it.   Michael Hingson  14:19 And what it's what it's actually called as a refreshable Braille display because as new lines display, or new lines are called for the dots pop up representing those lines. So the display constantly refreshes for those who don't understand that. So it's a way of now producing Braille in a much more portable way. That one disadvantages is Tanya's describing it. You only get one line at a time because it's a very expensive process. The displays are not inexpensive to do so. Over time, hopefully we will find that someone will develop a really good full page braille display but that's a waste is off.   Tanja Milojevic  15:01 Yeah, it's still pricey technology. I really there get away from sins?   Michael Hingson  15:08 Yeah, we need to do something different than we do.   Tanja Milojevic  15:12 Definitely the pins get dirty Rogen, etc stuck, and it's very expensive to replace them. Yeah, that's part of the hindrance there.   Michael Hingson  15:21 But it is still a lot more portable than carrying a number of volumes of Braille books. I remember when I was in school, when I was in school I we ordered a catalog case from Sears the catalog case literally was a case where you would put catalogs and carry them around, if you were selling things, you could take catalogs to people, you could put a bunch of catalogs in this case, in my situation, we used to, to so that when I went school, I can carry some Braille books. And I got three or four volumes of Braille. So that carry Braille for a few subjects. But, of course, very bulky, very complicated, not easy to do, and certainly not refreshable.   Tanja Milojevic  16:06 Not at all, I did that for math, science history, especially a lot of the charts. The way that they did it was they'd have thermoform charts, and all the rest of the text was done in Braille. And so you had like not only the volume of the chapter, rail text, if you will, but you also have a separate volume you're carrying, that has all the reference figures associated with that chapter. So you're carrying two volumes, as opposed to where you could just have 213234 Sometimes,   Michael Hingson  16:38 and for those objects. And for those who don't know what thermoform is thermoform is a process where you create an original of something, whether it be drawings, or even documents on paper, and then you buy a machine called a thermoform machine, you put a blank piece of plastic in the machine, lying on top of the Braille sheet, the original Braille sheet, you activate it, and a vacuum pulls down the two sheets together the Braille with plastic on top of it, while it heats them. And the plastic then takes on the shape of the Braille document below it. So it's a way of relatively quickly producing a number of copies of a braille book or, as Tonya said, that, in her case, the diagrams and so on, of course, it's still not inexpensive. And thermoform isn't like using your fingers to read Braille pages, the plastic feels different in it, it's a little more awkward to use. But still, it was a fast way to get Braille comparatively speaking.   Tanja Milojevic  17:43 That's definitely true. The main issue with thermal warm is your fingers eventually go numb, because it's a glossy type paper. And if your hands are sweating, it can inhibit your ability to run your fingers across the page. So that makes your hands go numb faster. So sometimes putting some sort of powder on your hands can help. But well, the drawback to that is it dries your skin out. So there's always positives, and not so much to that process. But it is a more inexpensive way to produce tactile graphics.   Michael Hingson  18:21 See you sighted people think that you have problems in dark rooms trying to read stuff. You're not the only ones who have reading problems. We all have our challenges, don't we?   Tanja Milojevic  18:32 Oh, for sure. All sorts of creative challenges that we constantly iterate on to improve.   Michael Hingson  18:39 And we do iterate and we do improve, which is of course the real point of the whole process. So you went off and you went through school, when Where were you living in Boston or where?   Tanja Milojevic  18:53 So we were living in initially when came to the US. We lived in South Boston for a bit. Then we moved to Chelsea, we were there for about 10 years than ever. And then now I live in Peabody, but relatively same area   Michael Hingson  19:05 of the country spent. I spent three years in Winthrop. Oh, East Boston. So nice. Yeah, that's a nice area. Yeah. It's fun to be there. Well, then you you went on from school to college?   Tanja Milojevic  19:21 Yeah. I went to Sundance for my undergrad. And I studied communication, special ed and writing literature specifically. So that was a great experience. Their disabilities office was extremely helpful. I initially before applying to various colleges. I did a couple of interviews with their disability center. Couple of phone calls, I wanted to get an idea for myself of what their process was, and how willing they were to talk to me about it. So the fact that Simmons was not only transparent about their process, but also willing to answer any questions And when I'm not even a prospective student, yeah, told me a lot. So yeah, I did have a good experience.   Michael Hingson  20:06 So what did they do or say that caused you to like their office in their process, compared to other places that you observed?   Tanja Milojevic  20:16 Well, I mean, for one, it wasn't some email that was automated, or, like, a, I don't know, now, now, I guess you could joke and say, they're gonna send you to a half an hour recording that you have to watch. It wasn't anything like that, where they were just trying to automate everything. I spoke with the, one of the directors of the Disability Center there at the time. And I asked all kinds of questions like how far in advance, would you need these books, if, if that process falls through, if the professor changes the books or a new professor comes into the class, because these things happen all the time, you know, depending on what happens in life. They told me, Well, that's, that's okay. If the book changes, we can work with you, the publisher, or you can try to purchase the book, Online used. And then we can just scan a chapter at a time, if the crunch time is on. And you've already started the semester, get it to you within a week, as long as we have a syllabus, and we know what the timeline looks like for these chapters. And then we bring in the professor and make sure they understand there's a Letter of Accommodation, the professor has to sign that and understand what they're reading. And then if they cause trouble later, you can point to the letter and say, I'm not making this stuff up. There's evidence to support that I need this accommodation for this reason you signed off on it, can we work together on this, and it cuts that cumbersome, miscommunication down quite a bit when you do it that way. So the fact that there are several processes in place made me feel a lot better. I'm a kind of person that likes to have plan A through like E or F, just in case, as, as we know, with tech issues nowadays, we gotta have multiple options. One of the things, the confidence, there was really what drew me to, you know, they knew what they were doing, they were confidently able to answer my questions. They understood why I was asking them, they weren't getting annoyed that I had 50 questions. And that's really what sold me on it, if   Michael Hingson  22:25 you will. One of the things that I experienced when I was at UC Irvine, was our office basically said, we're here to help you and be the muscle and power if you get a lack of cooperation from professors and so on. But if you need material transcribed, or whatever this is, of course, long before offices became more organized, but you'll probably need to be the person to find the appropriate transcribers. Well, I worked with the California Department of Rehabilitation, we found transcribers and we found people to do that work, because the office didn't do it. But what the office basically said was, you need to learn to do this stuff anyway. Because we're not here and other offices and facilities aren't here, when you go out on the job,   Tanja Milojevic  23:21 right? That's a huge consideration is whether or not you're able to easily find people that can transcribe, especially if it's like a math class. So I'll tell you, in college, I avoided languages math, hardcore, because after high school, I had lost, you know, like, you don't just have that library available to just order from the Ames library, which is a common library that school systems use to borrow various textbooks for students. Once you hit college, you're kind of on your own in terms of finding out how you're going to accommodate these tougher classes. I math wasn't my favorite subject. So I tried to avoid that in high school, I took Spanish in German for languages. And because I had done that, there was a possibility for me to take multicultural electives in that place in place of that. And I took a test to opt out of like, the generally because my, my major didn't require math. So I opted out of that by taking a math test. And then I took an intro to computer science class. And I worked a lot with partners on certain tasks that were non visual network, or excuse me that were, it was usually visual, yes. Because there was just no other like you get into the class, you don't have a lot of time to figure out how you're going to make it happen. Transcription takes a while, as you know, so unless you have this well in advance, it's going to be a scramble, and you'll likely get the book later. into the semester. And then it's also a question of who's going to pay for it. It's quite a bit of money. Does the maths commission pay for it in this case? Does the school pay for it? And I didn't want the headache to cheat off to be frank about it. So I avoided it.   Michael Hingson  25:15 Well understand how did you find partners to help with different projects like that?   Tanja Milojevic  25:21 A lot of the time, that professor would just assign somebody in the class. But a couple of the classes I got on with a few of the students sitting near me, maybe all of us were pretty well introverted. So we didn't have a whole lot of people we talked to, and also Simmons is a school that has adult students, it's got, you've got, you know, people in the master's program taking maybe some other electives that are also available to undergrads. So that nice mix of culture really gives you more of a mature group to work with. So partnering with students wasn't too hard at all.   Michael Hingson  26:04 The operative part of that, though, is that you did the work to find a partner. And I know there are some times Yeah, well, what I'm getting at is like, there are colleges, where offices for disabled students says, oh, we'll find you those people. But then you have to work by whatever their rules are. And you learn how to do that yourself.   Tanja Milojevic  26:22 They did have that available. For example, if you needed a note taker, which in my case, I didn't. But if a student wanted a note taker, they could request that some some student say that sign up for work, study job, fill that position, that student would go to your class with you take the notes, send them to you, whatever it is that that they got to do. Sometimes there would be a reader that you could get access to same kind of deal, work study position, the student would work with you for maybe two to three hours a week, and then get paid for it. But the problem with that was you sort of had to coordinate your schedule with their schedule, if your class wasn't in a spot that in a space in their schedule that was open, they could work with you that day. So it was more of a hassle than it was worth. And I didn't need a reader at the time I scanned a lot of my stuff in and would work with a professor or ask if I wasn't clear on something. So yeah, that to   Michael Hingson  27:27 you, you did a lot of it. That is you did the work to to make it happen. In other words, you learned the skills that would help you later on once you got out of college.   Tanja Milojevic  27:36 I am grateful for that. Because when you get into the world of work, it's nothing but figuring out how you're going to make something happen and make your boss happy. So it's a good skill set to have.   Michael Hingson  27:47 So what did you do for Siemens?   Tanja Milojevic  27:50 So I went to UMass Boston, which was a program was mostly remote. We went in a couple of times for intro classes and law labs and things like that. So I initially started in the TDI program, which is future of the visually impaired. Then I switched to VR T vision rehab therapy, which is the differences that TBI works with students up to age 22. And sometimes they can work with adult learners to if they're working for permission or a blindness center. If you're a VRT, you're working mostly with adult students, teaching them daily, basically, daily living skills, where else skills a little bit, recreational, etc. So I switched to that program midway through. And so I was at UMass Boston for five years, and then got my Master's there. And that was, like I said, mostly remote. There are a couple of things that I liked about that. And a couple of drawbacks, for example, you didn't really get that same class feel when it was all remote as I'm sure everyone can attest with COVID than being on Zoom and does zoom PowerPoint by zoom right? PowerPoint deck, but by the boys. Yeah, I had a lot of experience in person asking the professor questions right there. And then with remote, you really couldn't do that as much. And I ran into some more accessibility standards, like test taking, getting the software not to timeout on me or jump my focus around the page. So I worked around those and we made everything work. But the main the main thing was now with labs coming in, getting a partner to work with was a little bit tougher at that point. Because that relationship that you build when you're in person in school wasn't a thing. You're posting online, you're replying to people's comments, and posts, but it's not really the same thing. It's, you're just kind of doing a lot of work on your own. So you feel isolated. And then when you're there in person in a lab, you're like well now I have to work with these people. Get enough information from them. And there will be no you. So it's a lot more communication that has to happen. And the only thing that I'll say that I wish was a little bit longer is some of these labs, we had a little bit more time to do them. Other than that, you know, did run into some accessibility issues, their disability center was a lot more slower and had a lot more red tape around it, their processes were a little unclear and ever changing. So I did have a struggle with that in a few cases. But hey, long story short, I graduated, so I'm happy   Michael Hingson  30:36 when you were growing up before you got into college, and so on, did you have a career goal in mind? What did you want to do when you grew up?   Tanja Milojevic  30:46 Ha, that's a that's a great question. I think a lot of the time, I wasn't really sure I was kind of bouncing from various things. I've always enjoyed acting ever since I was a kid, you know, I really admired good actors or who I considered good actors, performances. And like the genuine attea that they brought, maybe not all films are meant to be genuine. Like, you can think of anime or cartoon they're over the top. But when something is very believable that you get in touch with a character, you feel like they're real. That's the kind of thing I wanted to emulate, and also just living vicariously through them. So when I discovered that voice, acting was a thing. In high school, I was like, Oh, this is exactly what I want to do. I'd always been interested in it since I was kid like, enjoyed making home movies recording, I used to have a tape recorder when I was a kid, bring it around everywhere and annoy the crap out of everybody in my family. Ask them questions, record little stories, it was just creative, fun. But I always thought if I could have this creative vision or creativity be part of my job, I'd be very happy, never enjoyed the idea or prospect of being a drone. Not that everyone working in an office is a drone. But I just found the idea of sitting behind a desk doing the same thing over and over and over again. Absolutely. You know, no freedom to make any decision about anything was was completely suffocating to me the idea of that, I always wanted something where I could move around, work with different people enjoy it, really challenge myself and work in a team to make something awesome. Like art. That's not really a career, per se, it's a hobby that turned into a side gig, that now with working with resemble AI, it's a embedded more so into my day to day job, where I'm recording different voices for them, and so on. It started as like one of those, this would be cool if I could do this. And then this is fun. I'm going to do this as much as I can and kind of more and more experienced networking. And then otherwise. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just gonna say otherwise, I really wanted to give back to the community because I had always been a consumer of audio description and Braille services and these, like the mask mission and my various Braille teachers and mobility instructors, who made lessons a lot of fun in high school, they didn't just make it boring. Gold went across the same street every single week, there was like, No, we're gonna go to the store. And we're gonna learn how to solicit persistence and whatever we're going to forget about these cardinal directions for which I got sick of. But the point is, I enjoyed so much, I couldn't be the person I am today without the services that I've taken advantage of my whole life. So just the idea of giving back, and helping other people making their day a little bit brighter, and helping them understand that we're all gonna have bad days, that's never gonna go away. The grief, if you've lost your sight is never gonna go away. Grief never does. But you know that it's going to be better. If you're feeling bad one day, you know, it can't be like that forever. Something will surprise you. And if you put it out there enough, things are gonna are gonna improve universe always seems to put out with what you expect eventually. Not in the way you expect. But it will happen some somewhere somehow. And those two things I feel like now I'm finally at the point where I've gotten both of them to be a reality.   Michael Hingson  34:33 So the big question of the podcast is, you made all those recordings when you were growing up? Did you keep them?   Tanja Milojevic  34:42 Some of them? I have some of the tapes. It's some of them are so terrible and overdramatic, but it's amusing. It's like just you can tell I was just having fun. And then the recordings through the years as I got better with voice acting kind of took part in different shows. I did save all of those just because you you would be surprised. Maybe not. Maybe you wouldn't be surprised. But a lot of producers will lose things. They'll put something on the backburner, like a project. And then three years later, oh my god, I'm trying to work on this project. I have a lot more time now life got a little less busy. I don't have the recordings anymore. My computer harddrive died. Do you have have not? You know, that happens a lot. And then data, it's easy to just keep a bunch of it. A bunch of data.   Michael Hingson  35:30 As I recall, if I remember the story, right? The movie Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole Academy Award winner, but somewhere along the line, the master was lost. And somehow it was recovered. But even an Academy Award film, things things happen.   Tanja Milojevic  35:53 Exactly. They do. So that's why I'm backup hard drives. I've like two or three of them. back everything up. I usually drama, so I collect those.   Michael Hingson  36:03 Yeah. What's your favorite?   Tanja Milojevic  36:07 Oh, that's top like, I don't know, I don't even know.   Michael Hingson  36:10 Tell me some of the audio dramas you like?   Tanja Milojevic  36:14 So is there a genre you're thinking? Do you are you thinking modern or not? So that's a really hard question to answer. I decided to go based on categories. But there is a version of lock and key that was done on location and main locking key. Of course, anyone listening will? Well, if you're a Netflix person, you'll know that it's an original series on Netflix. But there are books that were written by I believe it's Stephen King's son, and Stephen King. And I'm a huge Stephen King fan. So they wrote this, I think it's a series might be three partners, quote, honestly don't quote me on that. But there are books, it was written as a radio drama and adapted by someone called Fred Fred Greenhalgh from Maine and they recorded on location that a couple of days they did this, it's a six part audio drama, it's available on Audible. It is so good.   Michael Hingson  37:09 The audible copy. And it is, I didn't even know what it was going to be like, when I got it. But it is it is so well done.   Tanja Milojevic  37:21 It's way better than the Netflix series.   Michael Hingson  37:25 I collect old radio shows, I collect old radio shows as a hobby, and I've been doing that for a long time. And you you see all sorts anything from good to bad. But that is a lot of that has spoiled me for some of the acting that I've seen in more modern dramas, because the same level of emotion, isn't there people, a lot of people today don't know really, how to act and produce an audio drama that conveys I think what the author originally intended in the book or the way it was done with a radio. We just sometimes we don't see the same quality, but I remember locking key and it does.   Tanja Milojevic  38:09 That is true, that it's not always the same quality. I think that we're trying, we're really have a couple of different avenues where we're trying to fix that, like there is something called the audio verse awards. They happen every year. There are different, obviously, iterations of this out there. But the audio verse awards really strives not to make it a popularity contest. Yeah, the crowd voting system, people go in, they listened to various things, you got awards for sound design, and acting and writing and music production. Everybody gets recognized, which is important. You can't just recognize the writer or the actor, because that's, that's just a tiny piece of the pie. So it's a good place, I'll say if you don't know where to start, when it comes to listening to good audio drama, or at least vetted audio drama. It gives you a lot of choices. And you can find these things and then you've got people ranking, the quality of things on blog posts and all kinds of places they're   Michael Hingson  39:15 well Gunsmoke, the Gunsmoke, the Western, they call it sometimes the first adult Western in radio that was on from well, all of the 1950s constantly won awards for sound patterns, sound effects, and if you listen to it and compare it even to other old radio programs, there is so much more sound put into it. It's they did an incredible job of really setting the scene and creating the atmosphere with with the sound patterns with the sound effects. So it wasn't just the acting, which was so good.   Tanja Milojevic  39:55 I know. I mean, they got some talented foley artists there. Yeah, and yeah, and I mean, another one with sound obviously that if we're thinking of classic, maybe not as classic as Gunsmoke. But the Star Wars, NPR. I was   Michael Hingson  40:13 thinking of of that. Yeah. The Star Wars program is pretty well done in the acting is good. Hamill did a did a great job.   Tanja Milojevic  40:23 That isn't absolute. I mean, there are other Star Wars, radio dramas in that world that I can think of, but none of them compare to that. NPR version. There's   Michael Hingson  40:36 there's another program that NPR did. That was on for three years called Alien Worlds, which was well done.   Tanja Milojevic  40:42 Oh, you think I heard that one? Yeah. Well, if you I mean, the BBC does some great stuff to do. Oh, they   40:49 do a lot of good stuff.   Tanja Milojevic  40:49 Yeah. Yes. I think my biggest frustration is that there isn't one central directory where you can find all of this stuff and keep up to date with it. You have to go on this website, and this website and Miss directory. And there's no central data, like your collection system, where it's like, oh, I want to learn about the history of audio drama, and I want to know what's available now. And in the past, like archive.org, Doc, excuse me, archive.org is extremely helpful, because you can just search keywords and find a bunch of stuff that was curated, downloaded, cleaned, like nightfall. Amazing, amazing series from 1979 to like, 1981 or 1982. I think they only had 104 episodes, but they're really Canadian horror series. Now, really, really good stuff anthology. So a lot of it was ahead of its time.   Michael Hingson  41:53 Yeah, as we've seen so many times, well, Gene Roddenberry was way ahead of his time as well. Needless to say, yeah, so you've done a fair amount of voice acting, I gather. A bit have we have we heard   Tanja Milojevic  42:10 you might have. I mean, like, for example, some of the longer run stuff going on, it's edict zero. Some, some may be familiar with that. It's a science fiction cyberpunk series. So I'm just like Fraser meets X Files, it's really good. mind bending stuff. You know, our world is a simulation, kind of a lot of fun. That's been running, I don't know now nine years, what maybe more, it's crazy. There's what's the frequency, which is kind of a cool, fantasy, horror, contemporary show. That is one season, I think we're gonna be working on season two. So far, there is I do want to mention the 11th hour project is a great place. If you're new to audio drama, you want to dip your feet in, maybe you want to try your hand at producing or writing or something, you've never done it before. It's an extremely inclusive space. It's 11th hour audio.com. And if you visit that, you'll notice there are obviously shows that have been created. But what it is, is it's a challenge in the month of October to create audio dramas from start to finish and collaborate with people you've never collaborated with before. In this project, this team effort, and it's a race to the deadline. It comes out on world audio drama day, which is the 31st of October, in recognition of world the world's originally 1938. And it's a lot of fun. I've been involved a couple of years there. It's a wonderful community. They're extremely welcoming. The moderators are great. And they're always available to answer any questions, so I totally recommend checking it out. And then other stuff that's horizon, the white vault, there's a group out there called fool and scholar productions. And while we're on the topic of sound design, Travis van Graf, who is the one of the integral members or founders of that group, won several awards through the audio verse awards. Specifically I can think of for sound design on vast horizon and the white vault and some of his other shows, like Tales from the tower. So these are all vast horizon is a horror slash sci fi show that's about this agronomist who wakes up on a spaceship, the rest of the crew is just gone. They're not dead. There's no bodies, no signs of struggle or anything like that. They're gone. But the ship is breaking apart. So she's got to figure out a way to get to some sort of station and the only entity she can interact with is the artificial intelligence on the ship. So I play the artificial intelligence which for me was a huge like dream come true, I guess, if you will, because I've always been fascinated with it. Artificial assistants and all that. And using the screen reader. I mean, I know a lot of my friends who are visually impaired love to imitate screen readers just because it's funny. So and so I finally got to do it and get like, a dig out of it. That was awesome. And then again, vast horizon vast horizons, okay? Yes, it's it's singular, vast horizon horizon, singular, cracked, you got it. And then the white vault is a survival horror show. First Person accounts basically compiled, but not what you would imagine from seeing a lot of these similar kind of tropes, if you will, this is a truly international task. And it takes place all over the world. And they get actually authentic actors from various countries. It's not like, oh, and I want you to do a British RP accent and whatever, it's, it's actually people from there. And there are languages also being represented other languages like Mandarin, and you know, Icelandic and so on. And they, they do it in such a tasteful way where the language starts, then it fades down, and you have the voice actor speaking in English. They got translators, I mean, they really put a lot of thought into this. I highly recommend it. And you can binge all five seasons now. Vast horizon, you can also binge all the seasons. So if you need some listening materially fun road trip stuff. Those are a couple of the project. I mean, there's others, but you know, there's Take, take me, take me a while to go through those.   Michael Hingson  46:37 And with all the languages, I assume nobody though, has done clean Chinese yet?   Tanja Milojevic  46:42 Not yet. But they just Serbian.   Michael Hingson  46:45 Oh, yeah, that's that's not yet but that's okay.   Tanja Milojevic  46:49 Well, willing, that was actually fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It's just really some insight on that. Yeah. If you're interested in, in learning about how the clang on food scene is, is done. In the next generation, I think there was a recent episode where they had this whole banquet such was like this Yeah. entity to look like an octopus, basically, creepy, alien looking. There's an episode of gastropod, where they go into, it's called gastropod, the podcast, and they talk about food in the context of science fiction and fantasy, and how writers work is, has been brought to life, either in books or in movies. And they talk about Star Trek, they actually have the lady who designed the set and the food, like that is literally her job. She designed this food to look perfect on camera. And also so that the actors aren't like, chewing too much, or whatever. They're, it's fascinating. And that's just a talk on cast. It's not audio drama.   Michael Hingson  47:53 So what's been the biggest challenge for you in your career so far on the job and all that?   Tanja Milojevic  48:00 The biggest challenge, I'd say is the ever changing technology, software, tech stacks, soft phones, CRMs, you name it, like, you know, you learn one thing, or maybe a company starts using a new tool just because it works for them. And it's a good presents good workflow. But not all the tools are usable with screen reading technology, like Jaws like NVDA voiceover. And there's this constant need to adapt and learn how to come up with workarounds. And explain to your boss, I understand why you want to use this. But I'm unable to access it because of these inaccessible barriers that I'm running across. How can we work together to make it work. And sometimes it's, well, let's collaborate on Google Sheets. And then I'll post the results up here on this tool that we're using, for instance, resemble uses something called notion. It's a fairly early tool and its development. It's mainly designed for writing and it's think of Trello. It's like cards that you move around. And those denote tasks completed or in process, you're able to put in notes, it is not accessible at all. So a lot of these workarounds is just, you gotta have a lot of communication, make sure that people are on the same page. And so we also use Slack. And then my solution is Google Suite. Because it bridges that gap a little bit. We can always post a Google link in one of those notion cards, and people can access the same info. How do you like say that? It's the best solution that I've run across so far in terms of keeping track of threads and channels, but there's definitely some things that are a little cumbersome with it. For example, sharing files when you're on the desktop version, if you're trying to download files files that folks have sent you. Getting into that, to see the file, sometimes when you tab, basically or so. So imagine that you're on the name of your colleague, and they've shared two files with you, you're going to hit tab to get into the list of files. Sometimes all it does is say bold italics. So then you have to shift tab into the field, pressure up arrow, once, it'll start reading a bunch of stuff, you ignore that you tab once you get to the files, each time you open the modal dialog to download each file. And then you hit the Close button. Once it's downloaded, you're brought right back into the message field, and your focus is no longer on the file list. So then you have to go back up repeat, tab, pass the first file you've downloaded, rinse and repeat the entire process, and it just slows you down. So I find them some way slack is very clunky. But it is the fastest solution when compared to others.   Michael Hingson  50:56 It's really good at being able to have a lot of channels and so on my biggest challenge with Slack is that if you have to monitor a variety of channels, it's not at all trivial. To go from channel to channel quickly. You just spent a lot of time looking through channels to find nuggets or information. And that's an awkward thing. It's it is not it is it is more linear from a voice standpoint, then is is really helpful.   Tanja Milojevic  51:28 Yeah, I mean, even reacting like and find it much easier to react to posts on the phone than on the desktop app. Yeah. And switch between workspaces on the phone. My other thing to bring up is notifications. I feel like Slack doesn't always notify you, right? Even if you're mentioned, sometimes it's easy to miss. So like you said, you have to sit there and hunt through all the channels, make sure that someone isn't trying to get your attention. Sometimes they just want to be like, right? I just want to be like, Can you email or text me or call me? I will get all of those things. Yes, don't bury somewhere, but it's so frustrating sometimes. But it's better than discord in terms of monitoring channels, I've noticed discords accessible, but it's not very usable in a lot of ways.   Michael Hingson  52:17 So you use a guide dog, I understand I do what caused you to decide to use a guide dog as opposed to just using a cane.   Tanja Milojevic  52:26 I've always loved animals. So as a kid, we lived on a farm and we had chickens, turkeys, we had a pig, and so on. So a lot of my job was to collect the eggs and you know, take care of them, whatever, feed them. So I grew up with animals. And then you know, birds as pets and so on. I really wanted to have my own, like dog. And my mom was just like, well, I don't know, I mean, it's a lot of work a lot of responsibility. I don't want the dog in the house. She wasn't a fan of the hair, the shedding and the responsibilities and the costs. So when I found out in high school that I could get a guide dog, you know, I could apply get one. And then I talked to some other folks who already had dogs, like my friend, teachers had dogs, I got to see them every day. And I got to see them working. And they were just so good and very caring. And there's nothing like a special bond between a guide dog and their handler, where the dog trusts you implicitly. And they love you unconditionally. So it's just such a such a it was such an attractive like, Oh, I'm gonna have my own best friend with me in college. And also the fact that you could travel around a lot easier the dog, follow people in front of you get you through a store a lot quicker find doors, elevators, stairs, street crossings. As long as you knew the route, you were good to go. So I loved that whole thing. And I decided to apply because I wanted to have a furry friend I could bring with me to college. College is intimidating when you're in high school because you're like, Well how am I gonna make friends? I'd always had trouble sort of connecting with peers my age. I always found it easier to make friends with folks were older than me. Then people my age were kids, you know kids are are fine too. But it was just that whole awkward of like, if you're the only person with a visual impairment in your school people are just like, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go do my own thing. So when I got a dog, you know, started college. It was a game changer in terms of helping me not be so so sad and like down just like being far away from my family. And being in this they gave me in freshman year they gave me this room that was like for one person and it was like a cell I kid you not. It was tiny. It was a corner of the building. I'd had a tiny closet and just enough room for you to spin around with your arms out That's about it. So I was very sad. I was just like, Wow, I feel like I'm in a prison cell. And I can't, like, see family or anybody, I feel so isolated here. So having the dog was huge for my mental health and not getting depressed, too bad, you know? So I got the dog for a number of reasons. I mean, socialization, huge. People would talk to me want to pet the dog, like they cared about the dog, not me. But it didn't matter. It's still, I still did wanted to do and I could get them to help me. In certain situations, like in the cafeteria, if I needed help, or whatever, finding a certain classroom, I could get peers to help because, like, if you help me find this classroom, you can pat him. Okay. So it worked out really well. Yeah, I just loved having the companionship,   Michael Hingson  55:53 I got my first guide dog going into high school, and that was even learned to use a cane but I was very knowledgeable about travel of dog has made a lot of a difference in what I do. And a dog's Well, a dog dogs in general have taught me a lot about teamwork, I love to say that I've learned more about trust and teamwork, from working with a guide dogs that I've learned from all the business and management experts in the world, because dogs do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. And what you said was true, they trust implicitly, but only if you earn their trust. And they likewise have to earn your trust. And you have to learn to trust them, it's a two way street. But when both members of the team trust each other, it's a sight to behold. And it makes all the difference. And, and there's something to be said for the fact that it's good to have somebody to keep company with, you know,   Tanja Milojevic  56:55 Oh, definitely. I mean, both of my dogs, I feel so fortunate I've had wonderful was my first dog. The hardest thing though, for me is like I get so attached to them. And I, if they're if they're like sick, or they're getting older, I just worry about it and worry about it. And if there's something that I wish, it's that their lives were longer, yeah, and also, I've just had dogs with health issues. My first dog had inflammatory bowel disease, cancer and kidney disease at the end. And it was traumatizing, like we had to unfortunately, you know, put them to sleep and stuff. And after that, it just affected, it still affects me, like I mentioned earlier, grief doesn't go away at all, it's just how you deal with it. And you have to understand they you need to accept it, it's part of your life. And you're always going to remember them. And you got to you got to give them the respect of remembering them fondly and appreciating them for what they gave you. Right there. They gave their soul their spirit for you, you know,   Michael Hingson  57:58 you could dwell on the disease, or you can draw up dwell on the bad things, or you can dwell on the positive things and all the things that we learned together, and one of the things that I've learned through now, eight guide dogs is Wow, when when I got my first one in 1964, so it's been a while. But you know, when when they grow old, or they become ill, and you have to get our dog, it doesn't mean that you think any less of the dog who can't be your partner anymore, but you form a new teaming relationship. And your relationship may change if you keep the old the other dog which we generally have done. But still, the relationship is there. And what you really get to do is to get two dogs used to each other so that they interact and that's a lot of fun. Yeah, and I've had I've had two dogs ganging up on me. So which dog do you think I am? I want to go to work today. Oh, they're so easy. They're sneaky. Oh, that is so sweet. LaTonya this has been a lot of fun. Absolutely. I really appreciate all your time and insights. If people want to learn more about you and voice acting and so on, how would they do that?   Tanja Milojevic  59:18 You can check out my website that has samples of my work at WWW dot Tanja T A N J A. M as in Mary voice.com. That's TanjaMvoice.com. You can email me at Tanja t a

Happy Mother’s Day at the time this is published! This episode, it’s all about how I’m doing! We talk about my happenings, including me graduating from the Screen Reader User Tester Training Program at the Carroll Center! We also give a hint of an exciting upcoming announcement! Be sure to tune in to find out in more detail on how ... Read More The post MPP 154: Mom, You’ve Got This! appeared first on Christopher Duffley.

Episode 014 – On the AccessAbility Works podcast, meet Bruce Howell, Accessibility Services Manager for The Carroll Center for the Blind, as he discusses an innovative program that trains stakeholders in the outcomes to improve digital accessibility and usability through their innovative screen reader testers program.

Published by the Carroll Center, the book is intended to help screen reader users to more effectively use Windows, the Microsoft Office suite, web browsers, and several other important applications. Additional target audiences include assistive technology instructors, teachers of the visually-impaired, and others who provide services to the blind. David will discuss: • Why he wrote the book. • The book's content. • Ways to efficiently navigate through the book. • A few of his favorite tips and tricks. The book is available free of charge in Word format from the Carroll Center website. To download it, go to: http://carroll.org/the%20windows%20screen%20reader%20primer/ Presenter Contact Info Email: david.kingsbury@carroll.org

Published by the Carroll Center, the book is intended to help screen reader users to more effectively use Windows, the Microsoft Office suite, web browsers, and several other important applications. Additional target audiences include assistive technology instructors, teachers of the visually-impaired, and others who provide services to the blind. David will discuss: • Why he wrote the book. • The book's content. • Ways to efficiently navigate through the book. • A few of his favorite tips and tricks. The book is available free of charge in Word format from the Carroll Center website. To download it, go to: http://carroll.org/the%20windows%20screen%20reader%20primer/ Presenter Contact Info Email: david.kingsbury@carroll.org

# In the first hour of Main Menu Live, we welcome David Kingsbury, an Assistive Technology Instructor at The Carroll Center for the Blind in Massachusetts, to discuss his new book entitled “The Windows Screen Reader Primer: All the Basics and More”. It is a free book, and we dive deep into its creation and content. In the second hour, we talk all about new Windows 11 Insider features, including all-new natural voices and more. Finally, the Information Access Committee joins all of you to talk all about what is coming up at this year's annual convention.

Show Notes 2022, Episode 1, Entertainment Options- ADP & Books Melt those winter chills by curling up with your TV remote or a good book. We will have four experts presenting on Audio Described TV and various book sources such as Audible, Bookshare, Kindle, and more! Guest Speakers: Carol Richardson chair of the Audio Description Project: Anthony Camdela, BookShare Outreach Coordinator: and Penny Reeder, long time user of BookShare: Brian Charlson: Retired Vice President of Technology, Carroll Center for the Blind, Vice president of Library Users of America. Paul Edwards, President of Braille Revival League (Paul will be joining shortly after 9:00 PM) Both have expertise with Kindle, Audible, Overdrive and other resources Complete resource list available at https://cclvi.info/book-resources This link includes all web links, contact information, as well as the audio for this episode! Let's Talk Low Vision This podcast is a monthly series, recorded on Zoom and distributed in many formats. It is a vibrant discussion featuring Dr. Bill Takeshita as the host and Jessie Wolinsky as co-host. The shows include guest speakers, resources and special topics related to adjusting to low vision. Website - https://cclvi.info/events/ltlv/ General inquiries - CCLVIWebmaster@gmail.com Copyright, Council of Citizens with Low Vision International, 2021. All rights reserved.

In this episode, hear from Greg Donnelly, President and CEO of the Carroll Center for the Blind, as he discusses how the organization achieves its mission of empowering those who […] The post Overcoming Obstacles at the Carroll Center for the Blind– with Greg Donnelly appeared first on PLAN of MA and RI.

In this episode, hear from Greg Donnelly, President and CEO of the Carroll Center for the Blind, as he discusses how the organization achieves its mission of empowering those who are blind and visually impaired to achieve independence and lead a fulfilling life. He also highlights how their mission and goals align with those of […] The post Overcoming Obstacles at the Carroll Center for the Blind– with Greg Donnelly appeared first on PLAN of MA and RI.

In this episode, hear from Greg Donnelly, President and CEO of the Carroll Center for the Blind, as he discusses how the organization achieves its mission of empowering those who are blind and visually impaired to achieve independence and lead a fulfilling life. He also highlights how their mission and goals align with those of their community partner, PLAN of MA & RI. The post Overcoming Obstacles at the Carroll Center for the Blind– with Greg Donnelly appeared first on PLAN of MA and RI.

Full Transcript In episode 6 of Manager Minute, employment and VR take center stage during October's National Disability Awareness Month. David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB), and Natasha Jerde, Director of State Services for the Blind of Minnesota (SSB), join Carol Pankow to talk about the state of employment, today's challenges, and the initiatives and practices they implemented to improve employment for individuals with disabilities.   Learn how David and his team at MCB increased their customer base by 25% over the last year and how partnerships and creativity in Minnesota are helping to increase the number of people with disabilities being employed.   Find out more about VRTAC-QM at https://www.vrtac-qm.org/.                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM.   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript:   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management conversations powered by VR, 1manager at a time, 1 minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: So welcome to the manager minute, I am so excited to have David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, and Natasha Jerde, Director of State Services for the Blind in Minnesota. Thank you both for joining me today. Natasha, you've been in your position for two years now. So how's it going in Minnesota?   Natasha: Well, first, thanks for having me, Carol. And for others, I'm actually filling in for detail magazine with Minnesota General, so I am representing both. So I will speak globally and with Minnesota. We are definitely going through a state of evolution because not only are we going through COVID, we are also one of the states that really are going through the racial reckoning that's been happening when George Floyd was murdered. So we are having a lot of diversity and inclusion efforts in addition to trying to figure out what VR is going to look like in this new era. So it's been a challenge, but it's also been an opportunity as well.   Carol: Yeah, it definitely has been a heavy load and thank you for pinch hitting for Dee, too. I knew you could represent both, so that's great. And David, I saw you just had your three year anniversary in August. So how are things in Massachusetts?   David: Thanks for having me on. Things in Massachusetts are going well. I'm excited to talk about all of the various programs that we have. We haven't let COVID stop us at all. We continue to move forward. We're doing realignment projects. We've done a bunch of those that we'll talk about. Hiring is up good things happening in Massachusetts. I know we're going to go into more detail.   Carol: Good to hear it. Well, October is designated as a National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and when I was thinking about an October topic, well, it just made perfect sense to talk about employment and VR. David, I remember last year when we were on a call with RSA and they were highlighting VR's 100th anniversary. You presented what was happening at the Mass Commission and you really had some exciting things happening for customers during the pandemic. And I love following all the work that you do on your social media and I saw y'all have a podcast as well. And Natasha, I know your team well, and they're always creating some wonderful ways to build partnerships with employers and create interesting and lasting relationships that have helped to improve employment opportunities. And you're also a really good partner with Minnesota General. I know two years ago we held the roundtable and recognition of employers in Minnesota during this very month to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I just wanted to talk for a second about some Bureau of Labor Statistics and as I was looking things up as of August 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that unemployment rates for persons with disabilities are 11.5 percent, compared to five point one percent for persons without disabilities. And the labor force participation rate for people with disabilities is 35.6 percent, compared to 75.8 percent for working age people without disabilities. Now, the labor force participation of people with disabilities is higher than it was prior to the pandemic, and John O'Neill, he's the director of the Center for Employment and Disability Research at the Kessler Foundation. He said that this actually has been a bright spot during the pandemic as people with disabilities, and he thought maybe out of economic necessity remained engaged in the labor market. He says the last time that we saw labor force participation at this level was July of 2009. But even given all of that, you know, that bright spot, much work needs to be done to increase the number of people with disabilities in the labor force, which really ties directly to the mission of VR. So I know these past 18 months have definitely been a challenge for you both pivoting to remote work for your staff, figuring out new ways to provide services to your customers and figuring out the reality of this new world of work. And in some ways, I'm really hopeful that the pandemic has proven there are new ways in which work can be done that's going to benefit our consumers in the end. So let's dig in. So, Natasha, can you paint us a picture of your agency? Like, how many people are you serving right now? Do you currently have a waiting list and how are your employment numbers looking?   Natasha: I have both Minnesota blind and general here at Minnesota Blind. We're at about 650 individuals we're currently surveying. And if you look at 2, 3, 4 years ago, we were usually in the 700's. So our applications are still down, but they are trending upwards. We haven't had a waiting list for a few years. All categories are open. Our employment numbers are slowly trending upwards. 2021 brought much higher well, not much higher, 3 higher than 2020. But we are looking to get back our 2019 numbers slowly but surely. And as for Minnesota General, they've had a downward trend. There are about 2000 fewer applications and serving 11 percent fewer applicants than they did in the previous year. Our numbers are pretty on par with the national trends. Minnesota General has been offering services to all people on the waiting list. They reopened their final 2 priority for service categories, which had been closed since the fall of 2014. They have effectively eliminated the waiting list. They are seeing rates of employment at the time of exit decrease overall about 13 percent decrease, which is very identical to the national trends.   Carol: That's big news, though on the waiting list, that's good stuff. That is really good stuff for both of you. So, David, paint us a little picture of your agency.   David: Basically, everything I'm going to talk about is on our website. So let me just start with that. If people hear something that resonates with them, please use us as a resource. We want to collaborate with you. Go to Mass.Gov/MCB Mass.Gov/MCB and find out all that's going on with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. We've seen a 25 percent increase over our previous year in terms of VR despite the pandemic, so that's really a testament to our team, our counselors, and most especially though, the consumers we work with who have persevered and there's just a lot of opportunity in Massachusetts. Some of that might be related to the pandemic, actually. You know, COVID has put real strain on the health care system. We've seen hiring there. But even other service industry things, we've seen hiring there to go back to John O'Neill's data point, which I believe in John very much and Andrew out Anvil that does the entire program first Friday of the month at noon, I faithfully listen to the number come out and they do a great job since the data has been collected in 2008. Yeah, I mean, we made a great amount of progress that COVID happened. We slid all the way back and now we've slowly regained. So at least we're back to where we were, which I think is a good thing for people with disabilities. Specifically to Massachusetts, though, we've seen that, we've seen our VR program increase and consumers typically we have, you know, somewhere between 850 and 950. Now we're at about 1050, 1038 consumers. Exactly, actually that we served as of June 30 at the end of the fiscal year. And of that, we had 155successful closures, and many of those were six figure closures. We had a significant amount of people that got a high level job, so that's very encouraging to us and we've had some good results. I know we're going to talk about some of the specific programs we're looking at pre X, we're looking at the mid-career professional and even older adults who want to reenter the workforce or continue to work beyond retirement age.   Carol: That is super exciting news. It really is. I love it. That's what I remember you talking about with RSA when we were doing that. Other call it like a year ago, like these six figure positions, that's that's incredible. So now that we've gotten this kind of picture of what's going on in general with your agencies, let's just look a little bit at the overall employment picture in each of your states. So what's your employment rate kind of look like and what are your hot employment markets and sectors? And David, I'll go to you first. I know you started a little bit on this. I'll let you expand.   David: Yeah, as I indicated, health care remains strong. In Massachusetts, we're hovering right around five percent for the general unemployment number. Our labor participation rate among the general population remains strong. Unfortunately, among people with disabilities, we're still looking at around two thirds of all working age people with disabilities who are not in the labor force. To me, that's job one, right? That's job one for our agency, for our counselors, is engaging our consumers and trying to get them resolved to want to work. That, I think, is because before you can get the job, we know how to get them the job once they're resolved, but they've got to be resolved to want to work. So that's job one. Then the second part is getting them a job, which is it's not easy, but it's easier, right? I think we're doing well. We've put together public awareness campaigns to really try to get out there. We use actually real allotment dollars from RSA to launch our What's Your Vision campaign, which we're out on TV with 30 second ads. We've been in print or on social media again, go to mass dot gov food slash MQB to check out the full campaign. I know there was a plethora of real dollars coming from RSA, so if you're looking for something to do with those dollars, we've proved the proof of concept that you can do it and it can be effective because we're having more people come to MQB.   Carol: Very cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to looking at that link. So Natasha, how about you? What's going on with the employment overall? The picture in Minnesota?   Natasha: Minnesota is looking great. Our unemployment rate is at 3.8percent, which is well below the national average. Our labor force participation rate is 67.8 percent for all individuals and about 48 percent of Minnesotans with a disability are employed, and that's compared to about 38.8 percent nationally. So the numbers are looking great. And when you're asking about hot jobs across the board, everything is hot right now. Job vacancies are at a record number. Employers across the state are reporting difficulty finding workers. The demand is especially high in health care and social assistance. But those other areas that really were hit hard during the recession, including food service, hospitality, those are soaring right back.   Carol: Wow, thank you for that. So it's no secret that the pandemic had a huge impact on employment and the economy as a whole. But can you tell us how the pandemic has affected employment for the customers you serve in particular? And are there any lessons you learned during these past 18 months you're putting into place for the long term and attached? I'm going to punt that one to you first.   Natasha: We actually had a lot more opportunity than challenge when COVID hit, so we did have a number of individuals with disabilities who were laid off primarily because they were in the service and hospitality industry, and that was hit especially hard. But with COVID, it really showed that teleworking is completely and utterly doable, and all of these job postings we're seeing now are for remote workers. And when you're working with people who have transportation barriers who also live in very rural settings, this has been incredible and they're getting jobs and we're able to accommodate those jobs. The biggest struggle, though, is because we are so remote and virtual is accessibility issues, and we've been doing a lot of education of employers, of our own employer, the state of Minnesota, how to make sure everything is accessible so that if someone is working virtually, they can still do their job. And how we implement accommodations in a virtual world look very different. I think our biggest lesson learned is you just need to roll with it. You have to be flexible and you can't get locked into the way you used to do things. So we did things we didn't think was actually possible. We've done virtual adjustment to blindness training. We've even done virtual job site accommodations where they would walk us around on their phone or their laptop showing us the worksite, and we had been able to give suggestions and ideas how to accommodate without ever leaving our house. You just have to throw the book out the window is what we learned.   Carol: I bet your team has been super busy. I bet those guys are just like, Wow, but it's got to make the work super interesting.   Natasha: It's so much fun. I have never seen such creativity as I have these past 18 months. We have tried anything and everything, and it's been incredible. We're going to use a lot of those things from here on out.   Carol: Oh, very cool. So, David, I know you guys are always super innovative at the mask commission. So what about you? Tell us about how these last 18 months have impacted you and employment for your customers and kind of any lessons you've learned?   David: Yeah, really. Just a big credit goes out to our team and our consumers, one for being resilient. And we closed Friday, March 13 at five o'clock and we were open for business Monday morning, 9:00 a.m. Our counselors were already equipped with mobile laptops. Aware, which is our case management system, is all in the cloud, so we were positioned well to be able to work in this remote environment. So that's helped our counselors and our team. But additionally, I got to agree in Natasha's right, and I think you all listening to this podcast will agree the amelioration of transportation as a barrier or at least the significant amount of that as a barrier has been a game changer. It's really a paradigm shift and is unlocked. So many potentials for not only blind people, but all people with disabilities. I think that the permanence of that opportunity is a huge takeaway, a silver lining. Covid is a very serious situation. A lot of people have suffered, so I don't want to say it's a great thing because we wouldn't want to trade that right. But this is really help people with disabilities. And I think in the long term, it's going to continue to help them. I think that's the top of the full thing. And how can we leverage that even further? Is there are things we can collectively go to RSA for or I think, you know, Carol, I also sit on the National Council on Disability. Although I'm here as commissioner today, I'm trying to influence people on the federal level to think outside the box. And let's consider if there are other ways that we can leverage, whether it's being online or any technology that we can use to bring to bear for the benefit of people with disabilities to work.   David: I think more and more of that is coming, and that's a good thing. We're getting some of the other things we've been doing, though we just want an award. I'm pleased to say for our graphic novel that we put together our Patriots Best Practices guide. That's a good thing. We're trying to engage those students and their families who traditionally you know how some of these RSA guidelines go. They're very dry. They're on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper typed print. This is engaging. We find once you put it in the kids hands, they can't put it down and they're learning about all the steps of VR and the families are learning about that. That's a good thing because we really believe it takes a village and back to the other thing we were talking about where you've got to get the person with the disability resolved to want to work. And yes, they come about that ultimately on their own. But if their families are in on it, their friends are in on it, the community is on it and telling them, Hey, this is a good thing. Work brings independence, self-determination and it really, you're going to be contributing to something. I mean, I would assert somebody's self-identity really work is intertwined with that. So we think that things, whether it's the what? Your Vision ad campaign, this Preets practices guide, all of the other work that we're doing, trying to get out into the broader community. We think that rising tide will lift all ships.   Carol: So is that price guide also on your website, David?   David: It sure is Mass.Gov/MCB. Additionally, we have a companion website that goes with it that shows you the graphic novel and is audio described at the same time. And I think that's quest for independence. It's the UWW, AMC B Dash quest for independence. Again, go toMass.Gov/MCB. You'll get the link to it.   Carol: Awesome. No, I'm sure there's some people going to be interested in that as well. That's a bonus tip all listeners for the price guide. That's great. So it might be a little early on seeing this yet, but have you either have you seen any kind of the signs of the long COVID starting to impact customers? David, I'll ask you that first, have you started to see that?   David: Yeah. So in Massachusetts, we haven't seen too much of that, but we have seen hesitancy getting back out into the community a little bit. And on the consumer side, you know, so we're only going to do that when people are comfortable because it's really it's safety first, it's safety first for our team, for our counselors and then additionally for the consumers. We haven't seen too many breakthroughs, fortunately or too much spread in our community in Massachusetts, which we're grateful for. We have a high vaccination rate. I think Massachusetts leads the nation in the percentage of our people who are vaccinated. I think that's contributed and helped really open things up in Massachusetts here. I wouldn't say it's back to what it was pre-COVID, but I think we're trending in the right direction and hopefully sometimes we'll be able to put this behind us.   Carol: Good. Good, Natasha, what about in Minnesota? Are you seeing any signs of like the long COVID in customers?   Natasha: We have not. Between both general and blind. We haven't seen a single applicant or customer who is dealing with long COVID. Part of me is, yes, it might be too soon, and the other part of me is thinking, I don't know if individuals really are realizing that those long term effects are going to have a disabling impact on them, and they may not even realize what VR is or what disability is. They were living and working just as anyone does. And then this happened. So I think there might need to be some awareness out there in the future.   Carol: I can see a campaign coming. I can see David like launching a campaign around this, how we going to serve the long COVID folks. So back in the day, I used to have this personal philosophy. I like to tag to start with, you know, about employment, and I always felt that I wanted our customers to achieve and obtain or maintain family sustaining wages. And I don't focus used to be like, what? Like, what is that? But I didn't want people to just get a job. I wanted them to give more than a job. I was hoping it could lend itself to a career and moving up and having a ladder and buying a house and doing all of that. So what is your personal philosophy around employment and people with disabilities and Natasha, I'll ask you first.   Natasha: My first philosophy is I agree with you, Carol. Any old job does not mean a good job, and family sustaining wage is essential. My other philosophy is I don't believe there should have to be a philosophy around employment of people with disabilities. I mean, frankly, VR is a long term goal needs to be that we aren't needed, that the only factor in any employment situation should be that the individual can do the job and it should not matter if they have a disability or not. And employers need to recognize that every single person brings value and strength to the organization. And we are doing a family sustaining wage study in Minnesota, and 93 percent of individuals with disabilities who are part of the data did not receive a family sustaining wage. 93 percent, there should not be a gap and they should not be relegated to entry level employment, minimum wage employment if they want and need to do more. My philosophy is there shouldn't have to be one.   Carol: I love that here here, Mic-drop on that boom. So David, how about you? Even though we shouldn't have to have one? Do you have a personal philosophy?   David: I certainly do as a consumer myself, having been completely blind multiple times in my life and now being legally blind right on 20-200, there is a significant amount of suffering that occurs with people with blindness, people with disabilities in general. Coming to that acceptance, that disability is going to be part of the natural human condition, I think is the first thing. So once you can come to terms with that, then it becomes the greatest secret right, which is we become what we think about. So if you focus and your resolve that you want to work, you will achieve that and then move up. And so it starts with goal setting and a plan and all the things we talk about in VR, the tried and true methods of sitting down with your family, with your extended circle and drawing up that plan and sticking to it, the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. You got to hang in there for everyone hundred you ask you. I get 99 no's, and you can't give up until you get that one, yes, even if it's at the hundredth time, so you've got to hang in there, that is. The number one thing is that perseverance, because people with disabilities are naturally inclined to solve problems to hang in there. Whether it's the Accenture study that we know that people with disabilities outperformed in terms of being on time in terms of having less absenteeism, in terms of being productive in many ways. Those are all good traits, but it starts with overcoming the inherent challenges that come with disability. And then once you do that, then come into VR. We've got programs and services, and we've got great professionals who know how to provide opportunities for you.   Carol: I love that. Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said it. That Accenture study as well. It's back to the basics. I always think we used to talk about that. Going back to the basics. I know sometimes it's like, Oh, here's a flashy new program that's going on, but really, it is back to the basics. I am going to ask you, though, have you had any other types of initiatives or practices that you put into place around employment that you're hoping are going to help to move the needle forward? And David, I'm going to kick that to you.   David: So let's talk about some of the realignment projects that we do. I think year one realignment projects that we did. Twenty four separate realignment projects, we follow that up with another six this year. I think we're doing another 6. So we're talking everything from the graphic novel that we talked about to we launched an employer challenge during the pandemic. We get great response on that from the business community, where we challenge the business community to, hey, do one more thing. That's the name of the campaign. Do one more thing. Everybody can be a mentor. You can offer one more internship. How about interviewing and then hiring and then promoting and retaining all of those things? So that's what that campaign is centered around. We launched our Career View podcast. We've got twenty one episodes there on all types of VR topics. We have special guests and staff and counselors sharing their insight, by the way that's available on our website Mass.Gov/MCB. You can also find it on SoundCloud, Apple and Google. So we have our nationally recognized summer internship program. This year, we had nearly 70 individuals participate that joins more than a group of 700 that we've had over the years. In October, we had our job fair. We do that annually at Radcliffe and with partners like Perkins School for the Blind, Carroll Center for the Blind and other community stakeholders. This year we had 40 career ready candidates who pitch themselves. We did reverse pitches, which seem to be a very effective model in the 20 personnel executives that we have loved it and we're getting placements out of that job fair. We did the 60 second elevator pitch, so if you want more information, contact me, be pleased to share it. We did a reach for the stars, which was in that event where we gave out gifts to the people that had the best pitches. And then for Nadeem, we created blogs and worked with our sister agencies, MRC and Match Commission for the death of Hard of Hearing to get it out through their communities to make sure that people know that, yeah, it's about blindness, but it's also about people with deaf blindness and people with blindness and other disabilities as well. So whether it's the virtual town halls that we're doing, I came day celebrations. I mean, we've got a lot of events going on. My team has worked so hard and I think we have the advantage, though, of such institutional knowledge and just great human resources here in Massachusetts with our team at MCB and the consumers. I mean, you just got to have a willing consumer group that wants to take part.   Carol: Well, I think you need to have a session at NCSAB or CSr CSAvR and all the things that you're doing because I could just see, like my old director, wheels are turning. I am sure colleagues from across the country would be like, What are you doing? I want to know more about that.   David: Sign us up. I mean, there is a number of other studies that we did realignment projects. I think in total, Carla and I, who's our communications director, Carla Cathy, does a terrific job. I think we stopped at 52 different projects that we've done over the past 24 months or something like that. So we've got a lot going on. Check us out. Mass.Gov/MCB to find out more.   Carol: Holy smokes. Thanks for sharing that. So Natasha, I know you're representing you and Dee, so are there any other initiatives or practices that you all are doing around employment to move the needle forward?   Natasha: I got sent a whole list that Minnesota General has been doing, but I think the biggest thing I wanted to share first is that we are doing most of these things together. I think Minnesota General and Minnesota Blind had had a long history of being very isolated from one another and siloed. That is no more. We do almost everything together and as one voice, and so a lot of the things I'll be talking about, we are doing this as a team, but with employment, I think pre-employment is the first place we start is when you build that. Relationship between a student and work, so a couple of things that we're doing at SSB is bring your a game where students are meeting monthly and they get information about an Alexa game and then they play that game with their family and friends, and then they come back together with their peers to talk about the game and how it relates to jobs and job skills. And then we also did an open mic night so that we can encourage the artistic side of our students. And they came, Well, they're going to be coming on the 28th. They're singers and bands and poets and comedians and storytellers, so they'll be able to share their talent. We're also expanding our pre-employment transition services programs. We're adding another work opportunity navigator who's going to be focused on providing work experiences in the northern region since we have a ton of students up there and a lot of need. We're also entering into a contract with the third party to host liability insurance so that we can get more students out there for work experiences. That's been our biggest barrier, so we figured let's get over that so we can get students paid work experiences. We have a program in Minnesota called the Connect seven hundred program, which is great but could be better. But Connect seven hundred is like Schedule A, where a person with a disability can come in and have a noncompetitive interview. And the Connect 700 program has just soared this last year. And the stats are that someone who applies for Connect 700 with the state are nearly twice as likely to get hired than someone from the general public firsthand. SSB has had a number of vacancies in every single vacancy, has had to connect 700 applicant and almost every single vacancy has been hired from a Connect 700. So that's been a really great experience. Another huge project, and I'm going to say it's 2 projects. The first is the elimination of subminimum wage. Legislature created a task force to eliminate it by 2025 and going hand in hand with that is our collaboration with the Department of Human Services to help people who are on waivers and receiving vocational rehabilitation to get jobs. We're doing something called service provider alignment, so if someone's on a waiver and getting vocational rehabilitation services, they can have the same provider from start to finish. We have a new framework called Engage Plan, Find and Keep so that it helps people move through that process without any delays so that they can get into employment. And there's no back and forth of who's paying for what. So it's a seamless experience. And then I could go on and on with 50 more things, but for sake of time, I won't. But the final thing is we have increased our collaboration with our WIO partners tenfold because they have connections. We don't we know disability, but they have connections with the business community we often can't replicate. So we've been doing a lot with our title 1 and title 3 partners. And so with that, I'll turn it back to you, Carol.   Carol: Well, I know that's been on your heart for a long time. You've always talked about that partnership with the WIO partners, and that is so critical. You both have so much happening. And so I want to lead us into our National Disability Employment Awareness Month, little part of our discussion and how each of your agencies is drawing attention to this month. So, Natasha, I know that I was following on social media as well and saw that there was an employer event earlier in the month. So can you tell us a little bit about how that went?   Natasha: Yeah, we had over 400 attendees. We invited the creators of the windmill training. If you're familiar with windmills, Milt Wright is the company, and the two owners of that corporation actually came and presented. And the topic was music within disability inclusion in a business world, and that recording is available on YouTube. And if you go to our Career Force website, it's available on there. We also unveiled something called disability inclusion bite-size learning modules for employers, and they are 20 minute modules and there are five of them that employers can go in and learn about disability inclusion, and there's tip sheets and tip cards and how they can incorporate it into their business. We've also done a number of blog posts and of course, we celebrated White Cane Day and we posted three videos regarding White Cane Day and what it means for people with vision loss. And fortunately, our governor is very much in support and issue two proclamations one for NDI and one for White Cane Day.   Carol: Yeah, that was awesome and I loved it. I saw your video too, promoting White Cane Day. I thought that was really well done. Both of you are good at the old social media and David, I follow the mask commission all the time on social media and I saw you were part of a panel a couple of weeks ago for National Disability Employment Awareness Month.   David: Yeah.   Carol: and also I saw there was a podcast dropped and you had a couple of other tweets out and some really cool things with customers. I just wondered if there's any things you want to highlight about the special month.   David: Again, just a shout out to our team for doing such a great job with all of the social. Media, Caller Kath is doing a great job, but did a VR panel with the state exchange for employment for people with disabilities, a seed project which counts on state governments, has an affiliate. It's the National Association of State Personnel executives. So NASPE they had their conference in Boston, so they wanted to hear from me. So we were able to present there about hiring people with disabilities. So we're a model employer state. We talked a little bit about that and how they could do things in their state. So that was good. But we kicked off the month with our vlog and our ad campaign that I mentioned previously. What's your vision, which is on TV and it's in print and it's really getting a lot of traction. We had our job fair. We had our employer of the year and then our Reach for the Stars contest, which we talked about. We had our virtual town hall with our transportation authority, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, about barriers and making sure that people with disabilities have their free or reduced Charlie card in Massachusetts. If you're blind, you have a free travel pass to be able to travel throughout the public transit system. So we talked about that we had a white pain awareness day and celebration where we had some mobility awards within that program. That was fun, but we had a provider's council presentation with the disability commissioners all throughout Massachusetts about human services and things like that. We presented to higher education professionals at Lesley University. We did an event for parents of children with blindness and visual impairments for the Boston Public Schools and New England College of Optometry. Again, just more of the reallotment project. So it's very busy at MCB, but it's a good thing. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing the amount of consumers coming in for VR is up. The amount of closures is up. So it's a good thing. I think it's working.   Carol: I'd say so, David, I think you need to train your peers. I have never seen anyone quite like you and how you've promoted and really gotten traction in Massachusetts and have made some really cool things happen. I think it's amazing. And Natasha, I just wanted to say so that if people wanted to follow what you were talking about with the mini modules for the employers, I looked it up and it's CareerForceMN.com. So if anybody wants to listen to that, definitely. David's promoted his website to a number of times, but folks should definitely go to both because I think that you will get a lot of rich information that is applicable in any state. It doesn't have to be that it was developed for Massachusetts or Minnesota. What's being said are things that are pertinent anywhere. So I know we need to close up here shortly and I just want to ask you each. So if you had a shiny VR crystal ball and you could forecast what is happening with VR 5 years from now and how would employment for VR look? And what do you think needs to be done to just overall improve employment for individuals with disabilities? Natasha, I'm going to go to you first and then I'll go to David   Natasha: O if only I had that crystal ball. You know, I think we can't have VR look the same in 5 years from now as it does 5 years ago. I think we have hung our hats on the old way of doing VR for so long, and we really, really need to reimagine across the board how we work with our customers and everything that David says. This is what I hope that all VR agencies embrace. We need to connect people to not just any old job. We need to be focusing on advancement. We want people to never have to come back to VR. But yeah, that's the majority of our cases. Are people returning. That's why we need to invest people for the long haul and we need to make sure that they have everything that they need so that they do not come back. And the way that we approach businesses, I think, has been kind of archaic and has been from this. Well, we're going to convince you to hire people with disabilities, but we need to be driving home that the expectation is if employers want talented, loyal staff, a strong business model that embraces diversity and inclusion and a workforce that actually reflects their stakeholders and customers, then they cannot disregard the disability community. And VR needs to be the leader in that message. And it cannot be. Just please hire someone with a disability that's not going to work, and that's not our approach anymore.   Carol: Well said. Well said. So, David, how about you? Do you have a crystal ball?   David: Wish I did. But the great poet Santayana said those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, so I think we need to look back. Let's look back at starting with like Smith's best act and all of that and see how much progress we have made. And even it just contemporarily when we're talking about we did away with homemakers, that was a big VR thing. Right now, it's imminent that we're going to get rid of. 14C, that's another step. You know, I look at programs like the SBA8A program. Let's get included in that. I look at Randolph Sheppard as we've seen the pandemic just crushed so many of those vendors there. What can we do now to expand that program or to get that program into other sectors or industries to keep that alive and keep people entrepreneurial? So I. I think the future's bright for VR, I believe in incremental change. These are long standing challenges that are profound. And so to me, it's like, what can we do to look at the existing program, incorporate all of the good things that we've talked about, all of the things that we've been hyper accelerated to learn as a result of COVID. It's the transportation piece that we talked about, the technology piece that we talked about. Let's keep that going so we can provide our people with access to the opportunities. And I'm just very confident that we're trending in the right direction. I want to keep it going.   Carol: Well, thank you, David, for those positive words at the end. I really appreciate that. I think you two are both such a visionary and just talented leaders, and I'm really looking forward to the work you all do over these next five years. Very excited. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate your time. I know you're both busy.   David: Thank you, Carol.   Natasha: Thanks to you all.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR. 1 manager at a time, 1 minute at a time brought to you by the VRtAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

~~411 from the IAC – Part 2: Rehabilitation, providing remote services: Attendees heard from two rehabilitation professionals about what providing rehabilitation services virtually has been like. ♠ Megan Conway from the Helen Keller National Center  ♠David Kingsbury from the Carroll Center for the Blind Discussed providing rehabilitation services virtually, what accessibility challenges they faced and how they worked through them to continue serving their clients. They then began a conversation about remote support-based services. Many continue to work from home and they gave some opinions on the leading products in this space and some tips and tricks when working with each of these products. They discussed Apple, Microsoft, AIRA and more during this part of the 411 presentations. In addition, Judy Dixon made a brief presentation about a new technology found on the latest iPhones. Is this truly the thing to have for your iPhone? Attendees learned how this technology can be put to use in your environment to help follow people in a line, learn about a new space, and locate large objects. Presenters: ♠ Megan A. Conway, PhD, Research and Accessibility Specialist, Helen Keller National Center, Healdsburg, CA ♠ David Kingsbury, Assistive Technology Instructor at the Carroll Center, Stoughton, MA ♠ Judy Dixon, Co-chair of the IAC, Arlington, VA ♠ Ray Campbell, Second Vice President of ACB, Glen Ellyn, IL  Co-sponsored by: Information Access committee and Rehabilitation Issues Task Force Recorded during the 2021 ACB National Convention on July 17~~

2047 Using Various Web Browsers with a Screen Reader (Nov. 18, 2020) Show Notes Sometimes one web browser just isn’t enough. Hosts Nancy and Peter Torpey talk with David Kingsbury from the Carroll Center for the Blind about his new book that describes why this is true and why you might find need for more … Continue reading 2047 Using Various Web Browsers with a Screen Reader (Nov. 18, 2020) →

Join Linda and Bruce Howell, accessibility services manager at the Carroll Center for the Blind, as they discuss what may be the most important, and the most difficult, part of transition - the shift in our identity. Bruce shares wisdom from a 16-year journey through loss, fear, and hope as he embraced new possibilities for himself and his sense of worth. Bruce and Linda talk about how we let go and step towards something unknown. Learn how we can use our own agency to make necessary and sustainable changes in our lives! Don’t miss this 13-minute episode.

Were you one of the 30,000 people hoping to run the Boston Marathon this year? Are you hoping to run Boston next year? If yes, then you’ll want to listen to this episode with race director Dave McGillivray.  This year marked the first time since the first Boston Marathon in 1897 that the race was held virtually and not in person. Ordinarily, registration for Boston would have happened in September, but as of right now, October 2020, registration has been indefinitely postponed.  In this week’s interview, Coach Claire talks to Dave about how the virtual event went, how the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) has adapted due to the coronavirus, and what the future of the race might look like, including qualifications.  Dave also shares what he believes to be the silver lining of the pandemic, as well as his own personal health scare story which he started sharing once he learned his experience could help others. Dave has been the director of the Boston Marathon since 1988, but he also practically invented the concept of running for charity when he ran across the United States to raise money for the Jimmy Fund in 1978. He ran 3,452 miles from Medford, Oregon to Medford, Massachusetts over 80 days, averaging 45 miles per day. He ended his run in Fenway Park to a 32,000-person standing ovation. He has personally raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and has been a source of inspiration to countless others. Dave has many other incredible athletic accomplishments under his belt as well. 1980 was a big year as he became the 30th person to complete a Hawaii Ironman Triathlon by finishing in 14th place. In subsequent years, he completed the event an additional eight times. That year, Dave also ran 1,250 miles of the East Coast, starting in Winter Haven, Florida and ending in Boston. He was joined by wheelchair marathon pioneer Bob Hall to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, and they met with President Carter at the White House during the Washington, D.C. leg. And that wasn’t all for 1980. Dave also raised more than $10,000 for the handicapped in the Run For Our Dreams Marathon, running 120 miles in 24 hours through 31 communities in Southeastern Massachusetts, finishing in Foxboro Stadium (now Gillette Stadium) during a New England Patriots game halftime.  In 1981, Dave raised $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund competing in an ultra triathlon which involved 1,522 combined miles of running, cycling, and swimming in six New England states. The race included running up and down Mt. Washington and swimming over seven miles from Martha’s Vineyard to Falmouth, Massachusetts where he was greeted by thousands on the beach. As though running Boston wasn’t challenging enough, in 1982, Dave ran the marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded, accompanied by two guides, raising over $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts.  In 1983, he swam for 24 consecutive hours, covering the distance of the Boston Marathon, to raise money for the Jimmy Fund. He also raised money for his alma mater, Merrimack College, by cycling over 1,000 miles through six New England states in 14 days. He raised more money for charity by cycling for 24 consecutive hours in a five-mile loop in Medford, Massachusetts for a total of 385 miles, while simultaneously directing the annual Bay State Triathlon which was taking place on the same course at the same time. In 2004, Dave ran across the country a second time for TREK USA with nine other marathoners in relay style, raising over $300,000 for five children’s charities. In 2018, he accomplished the World Marathon Challenge, running seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. To date Dave has run 158 marathons, including 48 consecutive Boston Marathons (32 of which were run at night after the official marathon.) His marathon personal best is 2:29:58. His Ironman personal best is 10:36:42.  Fun note: Dave has run his birthday age each year since the age of 12. In recent years, he has both run and cycled the miles. In addition to being a super athlete and philanthropist, Dave is also an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and author.  He has been recognized with numerous honors and awards over the years for his achievements, and through his DMSE Sports and DMSE Foundation, he has raised over $50 million for charity.   Questions Dave is asked:          5:48 The Boston Marathon was held virtually this year, in September.  How did it go?     7:49 I know the BAA discouraged people from running on the course this year, but many people unofficially did.  What is your reaction to that?   9:12 I would love to rewind a little bit and go back to February and March of this year. What were you and the team at the Boston Athletic Association talking about in the early days of COVID?     11:29 Obviously throughout the summer you had to go virtual. What was that decision like?   13:05 As we record this, it is just before the London marathon, which shifted to an elites-only race. Was having an elites-only race an option for the Boston Marathon?   14:46 I don’t know how they’re keeping the spectators away in London. I just interviewed Jared Ward and he said, “I don’t know. I’m just showing up.” I don’t know how they’re keeping them away. I don’t know if you’ve had talks with them or no?   15:47 Looking forward to 2021, obviously there’s a lot of things up in the air. Usually in September, everyone is signing up for the next year’s Boston, and registration is to be determined. Can you shed any light on that and give us any hints?   19:01 How does next year’s Boston being up in the air affect qualifying? Usually you have an 18-month window of qualifying races, but obviously this year was totally different. Qualifying for the Boston Marathon is the Olympics for some people and it’s everything, and what they train for, and what they dreamed of for years, so how does that look from a qualification point of view?   20:34 And the virtual race, that’s not going to count for a qualification, correct?   20:43 If things do change and things are looking good for 2021, what kind of things have you learned from this year and how will it be different?   23:18 When you talk about potentially having a smaller field size next year, the first thing that obviously comes up means the faster runners would be qualified. Is that how you would shrink the field size, by increasing the times?   24:12 Boston isn’t the only race that you direct. You do direct some smaller races, and a smaller race, you have more flexibility to stagger the starts and things like that. Do you see some of the smaller races, Falmouth for example, coming back sooner than the major marathons?   26:49 On a personal note, every year after the end of the Boston Marathon you have a tradition of running the race yourself. Did you run on Patriots Day?   28:04 One thing that people might not know about you is that two years ago, you had open heart surgery, which is very uncommon considering you’ve been such a prolific runner for all your life. Could you talk a little bit about that?   32:07 What did your doctor say about running? Is running bad for your heart?   33:56 What kind of advice would you give someone who is training for Boston right now or that hopes to train for Boston?   35:06 Any silver linings from all of this craziness in 2020 that you can think of? 36:55 Questions I ask everyone:   If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?   What is the greatest gift running has given you?   Where can listeners connect with you?     Quotes by Dave:   “You had to reimagine. You had to start doing things that you don’t necessarily have a skill set in, whether it’s developing an app, or whether it’s developing a virtual expo. How do you do this?”   “We created a COVID committee of experienced scientists, epidemiologists, CDC folks, governmental folks, and put this group together to sort of help us come to some kind of intelligent conclusion as to truly what are we looking at here for next year’s Boston Marathon.”   “I learned a valuable lesson from my open heart surgery. Just because you’re fit doesn’t mean you’re healthy. And shame on me; I always thought it did.” Take a Listen on Your Next Run Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel Mentioned in this podcast:  BAA - Boston Athletic Association Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community RunnersConnect Facebook page claire@runnersconnect.net DMSE Sports Foundation Follow Dave on:   Facebook Instagram Twitter   We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top. The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use. The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!  

Before Pauline Dowell became legally blind in her 40s she was an artist who loved to sail. After her diagnosis, she needed time to get used to things, but she wasn't willing to let go of the things she loved.  In the latest Dangerous Vision episode, Pauline talks with Randy Cohen about her love of sailing.  From a casual sail around Boston Harbor to competitive regattas Pauline shares with Randy her decision to stay in the game.  Since she loved sailing so much she decided to make a life choice that she lives with every day.  She lives in Boston Harbor on her sailboat that she shares with her guide dog Dora. Pauline credits the Carroll Center in Boston and Courage Sailing's Blind sailing instructions for giving her the training and confidence to set sail. Pauline inspires others to sail as well.  In 2019 she was a finalist for the Holman Prize, an international prize created to change perceptions about what blind people are capable of doing. Pauline is creating the first all woman's blind sailing team set to compete in the Newport to Bermuda Regatta.She encourages everyone who may be going through similar challenges to just go out in the world and find what’s out there! Join clubs like Boston Blind Sailing.  Make sure to challenge yourself daily and set up goals even if they are small goals like going outside or seeing a movie in a theater.  Boston Blind SailingCourageous SailingThe Carroll CenterThe Hadley School Books/ Media DiscussedMaiden Voyage Tracy Edwards StoryInfinite Jest David Foster WallaceStrong Motion 

Carroll Center for the Blind Technology Instructor David Kingsbury will talk about his new book titled: When One Web Browser Is Not Enough: A Guide For Windows Screen Reader Users. The new book is a timely resource for blind and visually impaired Windows Narrator and JAWS users who surf the Internet.

Main Menu Live is all about writing and publishing from an accessibility perspective! Please join the Main Menu Live team as we talk all about authoring in the digital age. We first welcome the Carroll Center's David Kingsbury who has written two books all about the web and formatting documents in Word. Which browser are you using today and which one should you use? Learn more from David's book "When One Web Browser Is Not Enough: A Guide for Windows Screen Reader Users". We then turn to publishing and the art of producing your content. We talk with David about his book "Format Your Word Documents with JAWS and NVDA: A Guide for Students and Professionals". We also ask David about his process of producing his books to ensure they meet the needs of his audience. While we will be talking about the books in general, the emphasis will be on the authoring process from an accessibility perspective. Is it possible to produce professional looking documents independently? If so, what tools are being used and if not what gaps exist in the publishing process? In the second hour we speak with Michael Feir, the author of "Personal Power; The iOS Edition". We talk about the publishing business from an accessibility perspective. This book was a labor of love for Michael and is published in multiple formats. Is Mark Down something people should consider in their workflow? What about pdf, HTML, iBooks, Daisy formats and other digital formats? We will dive deep into these topics with Michael. Learn this and much more on Main Menu live, heard on August 26th at 8:00 PM Eastern on ACB Radio Mainstream.

David Kingsbury, an Assistive Technology Instructor at The Carroll Center for the Blind in Massachusetts, has recently written a book entitled “When One Web Browser Is Not Enough: A Guide for Windows Screen Reader Users.” Published by the Carroll Cente

Join Brian and Ed as they discuss all the latest greatest headlines mostly in the assistive technology world. Discussed in this show. CSUN may have waited way to long to cancel their 2020 conference, but they are ahead of the virtual ball for 2021. What in the wide world of California is going on with Uber and Lift? Then it is on to fond memories of Brian taking an uber, or was it an uber? No Apple Watch Beta for you! Is Apple now copying Microsoft Soundscape? Great news for VM Ware Fusion virtual machine users as VM Ware will continue to work with Mac Big Sur. The question of the show, is Aira still worth the cost? Does having to use an ATM piss you off? Well it pisses Brian off. Amazon makes improvements for its low vision Fire TV customers. And back by popular demand, it is more of what ya streaming what ya reading. Brian and Ed also welcome to That Real Blind Tech Show, special guest, David Kingsbury for a conversation about David’s new book, When One Web Browser Is Not Enough. We also learn about David(s background and the work he does at the Carroll Center. Articles Discussed in this Episode. Uber and Lift Shut Down Averted in California until October 1, 2020 https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/20/21377841/uber-lyft-california-judge-block-emergency-stay-employees Now the Janitors are even suing Apple. https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2020/8/20/apple-must-face-lawsuit-involving-a-janitorial-services-canceled-contract Apple is Looking to get in to the Spatial Audio Navigation Game https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2020/8/20/apple-investigating-ways-to-provide-spatial-audio-navigation-to-various-device VM Ware Fusion 12 to Work with Mac OS Big Sur https://www.imore.com/vmware-fusion-12-will-support-macos-big-sur-and-more New Low Vision Feature Comes to Amazon Fire TV https://www.aftvnews.com/new-vision-accessibility-feature-adds-large-text-banner-to-fire-tv-interface/

The church has been weathering plagues for centuries. This week on Ministry Now, we sat down with two church historians to see what we can learn from how Christians have ministered during past pandemics. Dr. Caldwell is a professor of church history here at SWBTS, and Dr. Wills is research professor of church history and Baptist heritage, as well as the director of the B.H. Carroll Center for Baptist Heritage and Mission.

Today we're speaking with David S. Dockery about leading through crisis, weathering upheaval, and recovering from a disaster as a community. Dockery serves as Distinguished Professor of Theology here at Southwestern, as well as Editor of the Southwestern Journal of Theology, Special Consultant to the President, and Theologian-in-Residence with the B.H. Carroll Center for Baptist Heritage and Mission.

2007 Dealing with the Challenges of Vision Loss (Feb. 12, 2020) Show Notes Hannah Fairbairn’s book “When You Can’t Believe Your Eyes: Vision Loss and Personal Recovery” is based on her experience as an instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind as well as her own personal journey with vision loss. Hosts Nancy and … Continue reading 2007 Dealing with the Challenges of Vision Loss (Feb. 12, 2020) →

Bruce Howell, Accessibility Services Manager at The Carroll Center for the Blind, shares two stories that required bravery in the workplace. The first story details his handling of a potentially problematic customer issue and the second story is about Bruce’s journey to The Carroll Center. Join us!

Tek Talk welcomes David Kingsbury, Assistive Technology Instructor, Carroll Center for the Blind to Discuss his new book: “Format Your Word Documents with JAWS and NVDA: A Guide for Students and Professionals.” July 15, 2019

1924 Format Your Word Documents with JAWS and NVDA (June 12, 2019) Show Notes The visual appearance of documents that you create can have a big impact on how they are received by others. Hosts Nancy and Peter Torpey talk with David Kingsbury, Assistive Technology Instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind, about his … Continue reading 1924 Format Your Word Documents with JAWS and NVDA (June 12, 2019) →

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-406 – Dave McGilvary - How to Run Across the Country (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4406.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello, my endurance compatriots, companions and comrades and welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-405.  Had a bit of a scare or a potential set back in my training after the last episode.  You could hear it in my voice that I was had a little something going on and sure enough I woke up that Sunday sick as heck! I was really looking forward to my long run that day.  It was just a plane Jane 3-hour and 15 minute surge run that would get me 21-22 miles.  Nothing complicated.  And I woke up with a fever headache.  After a few seconds of indecision, (you know me), I said ‘you'll hate yourself if you don't go try'.  I met my buddy Tim who was only doing 2 hours and we got out.  I could tell I was hurting so I called it at 2 hours.  Got a solid 13miles in.  Went home.  Took a shower and laid in bed the rest of the day.  I was concerned because I had a busy week with a 2-day road trip.  I figured I'd be out on the road, sick in airplane - you get the visual.  It turned out better than I thought.  Coach had me scheduled for a recovery week anyhow.  There weren't any monster workouts to add to being sick and traveling.  I was able to drug myself up and made the travel and meetings look easy.  And, most importantly it didn't turn into something awful.  You always run into some blips in your training cycle.  My training cycle has been going so well that I was due.  A couple more big weeks would be good for my confidence, but for the most part ‘the hay is in the barn'.   Today I called up our old friend Dave McGilvary, head of DMSE sports and race director for the Boston Marathon.  I had a simple question to pick his brain about.  “What does it take to run across the country?”  We also chat a little about that other race… Section one – the hay is in the barn… What to do when you have late-cycle training issues. Section two – continuing homilies on being … Speaking of the Boston Marathon, they released the bib number assignments.  If you want to track me I'm 18,543.  Think about that.  As hard as I train, with my finishing time around a 3:30 I'm nowhere near the mid-pack of this race.  There's 30,000 runners in the race but only around 25,000 are qualified.  That means close to ¾ of the pack is in front of me.  You'd have to run my old Boston PR of 3:06 just to make it into the first wave.  When they changed the standards by 10 minutes people wondered if the runners could keep up.  There's your answer.  They certainly can.  The entire curve just shifted by 10 minutes and the race is still over-subscribed.  Amazing.  This will be my 21st running of the race and I pulled out all the stops for this one.  I think I'm going to have a good race.  Regardless of what happens it is and has been an honor to be part of this thing, this slice of local history.  On April 15th this year, Patriot's Day in Boston, my buddies and I have done the work and earned the right to play – and play we will! On with the show. … I'll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don't have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member's only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills. M … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – The Hay is in the Barn! - Voices of reason – the conversation Dave McGillivray, Founder DMSE RACE DIRECTOR, PHILANTHROPIST,  MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER,  ACCOMPLISHED ATHLETE. DAVE MCGILLIVRAY IS A PROFESSIONAL WITH A PURPOSE. From his extraordinary 1978 run across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to serving as technical director then race director of the BAA Boston Marathon since the 1980s, McGillivray has helped organize more than 900 mass participatory events since founding DMSE Sports in 1981, while raising millions for worthy causes close to his heart. Here are a few of his many career highlights: In 1978 and over the course of 80 consecutive days, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon, to his hometown of Medford, Massachusetts, covering a total distance of 3,452 miles. He finished to a standing ovation of 32,000 fans in Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. His effort raised thousands of dollars for the Jimmy Fund, a charity that supports research toward eliminating cancer in children. The 1980 East Coast Run to benefit the Jimmy Fund consisted of 1,520 miles from Winter Haven, Florida, to Boston, Massachusetts. McGillivray was joined by Bob Hall, one of the pioneers of wheelchair marathoning, and raised thousands of dollars for the Jimmy Fund. He also met with then-President Jimmy Carter at the White House during the trek through Washington, D.C. In 1980, McGillivray competed in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, the premier individual endurance event in the world. He finished 14th overall and was only the 30th person to have ever competed in an Ironman. The Ironman consists of three back-to-back distance events: a 2.4 mile rough, open ocean water swim, followed by a 112-mile bike race, and finally finishing up with a 26.2-mile marathon run. He completed the event again in 1983-1989 and 2014, for a total of nine times. The Wrentham State School 24-Hour Run was designated as the "Run for Our Dreams Marathon." In 1980, this run traversed 120 miles in 24 hours throughout 31 cities within southeastern Massachusetts, ending in Foxboro Stadium during half-time of a New England Patriots football game. Held to benefit the Wrentham State School for the Mentally Retarded, this particular run raised more than $10,000 for the handicapped. 1981 brought an invitation to participate in the Empire State Building Run-Up. The course consists of 86 stories, 1,575 steps, 1050 feet in elevation, 40" stair height. Finished 10th place overall in a time of 13 minutes, 27 seconds. His 1981 New England Run was a triathlon (running, cycling, and swimming) of 1,522 miles throughout the six New England states. He raised $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. Unusual segments included running up and down Mount Washington and swimming two miles across Lake Winneapesaukee, both in New Hampshire. In addition, highlights included swimming one mile from Woods Hole toward Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts and running three miles with inmates inside Walpole State Prison. Officially completed his New England Run by swimming more than seven miles from Martha's Vineyard to Falmouth, Massachusetts, again raising more money for the Jimmy Fund. McGillivray was greeted by thousands on shore including some of the world's greatest runners, including Alberto Salazar. In 1982, McGillivray ran the Boston Marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded and escorted by two guides to raise more than $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts.. He traded his running shoes for swimming shorts in 1983 for the Jimmy Fund 24-Hour Swim. He swam for 24 consecutive hours in the Olympic-size Medford High School pool, swimming a total of 1,884 lengths and covering 26.2 miles (distance of Boston Marathon), again raising funds for the Jimmy Fund. Over the course of 14 days in 1983, he bicycled more than 1,000 miles throughout six New England states to raise money for a scholarship fund for McGillivray's alma mater, Merrimack College. In 1986, he formed the first sanctioned running club inside a maximum security institution at Walpole State Prison. He also conducted and ran in numerous distance races inside the prison yard, including completing and winning a full 26.2 mile marathon against inmates. Also in 1986, he biked for 24 consecutive hours around a five-mile loop course in Medford while simultaneously directing the annual Bay State Triathlon, which was being held on the same course at the same time. He covered a total of 385 miles, again raising money for the Jimmy Fund. Since 1988, he has been the Technical and Race Director of the Boston Marathon. He manages and oversees all technical and operational aspects of the oldest and most prestigious marathon in the world. McGillivray's many endurance events for charity are legendary, including running 120 miles in 24 hours thru 31 Massachusetts cities; an 86-story, 1,575-step run up Empire State Building in 13 minutes and 27 seconds; and running, cycling and swimming 1,522 miles thru six New England states while raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. In 2000, he was chosen as Race Director of the Year by Road Race Management/Running Times Magazine. That same year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award by Competitor Magazine for more than 30 years of service to the sport of road racing and triathlons. In 2003, McGillivray created the DMSE Children's Fitness Foundation to support non-profit organizations that use running to promote physical fitness in children and help solve the epidemic of childhood obesity. In 2004, McGillivray and a team of veteran marathon runners journeyed across the country following the same path he took in 1978. Trek USA raised more than $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. The race director of the Boston Marathon as well as an accomplished runner, McGillivray has run the marathon each year since 1973. For 16 years he ran it with all the other runners and since he began working with the race in 1988 he has run the course afterwards. His 2006 book, The Last Pick, which he co-wrote with Linda Glass Fechter, chronicles his childhood and career as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, motivating readers to never underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. Order here on Amazon. In 2009 he was awarded the prestigious “Jimmy Award” from the Jimmy Fund of Boston for his 30-year association and his work with helping to raise money to fund cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A skilled motivational speaker, McGillivray has displayed his signature ability to engage and inspire listeners to more than 1,600 audiences from corporate executives to high school students. McGillivray has received numerous awards –  valedictorian at both his high school and college, 2005 Running USA Hall of Champions, 2007 Runner's World Heroes of Running Award, the 2010 Fleet Feet Lifetime Commitment to Running Award, 2010 Ron Burton Community Service Award, the 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center's 2011 100 list, inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in 2011 and also received the prestigious "Jimmy Award" by the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for 30 years of contributing time and expertise to help raise millions for cancer research and treatment. In 2015, he received the MarathonFoto/Road Race Management Lifetime Achievement Award, and was named One of the 50 Most Influential People in Running by Runner's World - tied for 6th place. In 2017 he was inducted into the Road Runners Club of America Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, joined by Ryan Hall, Desiree Linden, and George Hirsch. In 2018, he completed the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. McGillivray has logged more than 150,000 miles, most for charity, raising millions for worthy causes.  He's completed 155 marathons, which include 46 consecutive Boston Marathons (with 31 run at night after his race director duties are fulfilled). In 2018 he published his first children's book, Dream Big: A True Story of Courage and Determination, co-authored with Nancy Feehrer. The illustrated book is based on his 2006 autobiography, The Last Pick. Dream Big may be ordered here on Amazon. His personal bests? Marathon: 2:29:58 and for the Ironman: 10:36:42. Each year he runs his birthday age in miles, starting when he was 12, and has not missed one yet. He was born on August 22, 1954 – you can do the math. McGillivray, DMSE Sports and his DMSE Children's Foundation have raised more than $50 million for various charities, including: The Jimmy Fund, Carroll Center for the Blind, Cystic Fibrosis, Lazarus House, Massachusetts Dietetic Association, Massachusetts Special Olympics, Moth- ers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), Muscular Dystrophy Association, Sports Museum of New England, Wrentham State School.   Section two – Future, Past and Now - Outro Well, my friends you probably have not run 3000+ miles across the country to the end of the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-406, but maybe you will some day.   One thing I would encourage you to do is to look at Dave's resume.  He has accomplished so much in his life.  But, that's not what's special about Dave. What's special is that most of his accomplishments are focused on helping others, he lives his life in service to the greater good.  And even with all he's done he's extremely approachable and humble. A good role model for us.    I've had a great couple weeks since we last spoke.  I did get that quick fever/flu/cold whatever it was but I got through it in a week.  I had a bit of a anxiety spot when I bailed on that long run.  As you may remember I did most of my long runs on the treadmill in February and early March.  I was hitting my paces but in the back of my mind I was always cognizant of the fact that the treadmill is not the road.  Until I road tested some of those paces I was going to be tentative.  Last week was a rest week but coach gave me a nice long tempo run for Saturday.  And of course, the weather didn't cooperate.  We had 20 MPH gusting, swirling winds and I was almost ready to drive into work and knock it out on the treadmill again, especially coming off that cold.  But, I stuck my head outside and it wasn't too bad so I suited up and hit the workout.  The workout was to warm up for 20 minutes then run 50 minutes at faster than race pace. The out and back I run these on starts out as a rolling downhill.  This means that when you make the turn-around, the second half of the run is a rolling uphill.  Which, in theory is a great workout, but in practice sucks as you climb those hills at the end of the tempo session.  It turned out that the wind was a tail wind on the way out and a head wind on the way back.  I don't really look at real-time splits as I'm doing these workouts.  I try to run them by feel.  When I hit that tempo I try to ease into what I think feels like, in this case a 7:50 mile.  I get feedback on my pace every mile.  I was a bit horrified when the first mile split was a 7:30.  Too fast.  I tried to ease off a bit and the second split came in at 7:30 again.  Going into the turn around I really tried to ease up and managed a 7:45. The challenge here is now I was turning back into the wind and up the hill.  In previous training cycles this is where my legs would have gone on me.  But I was able to hold the pace at a 7:39 a 7:49 and a 7:58 up the hill into a stiff headwind without my legs failing at all.  And when I made the turn to be running with the wind for the last half mile I averaged a 7:25. A number of positives.  I was able to go out too fast and recover without failing.  I was able to do the hard work up hill and into the wind and my legs felt great.  I was able to close it hard.  All good signs.  And I followed up this week on Tuesday with a similar step up run, on the same route without the wind, with 30 minutes at 7:50's and closing with 30 minutes at 7:30's.  Last night I knocked out a set of 200-meter hill repeats at sub-7 pace and it felt easy.  How is this possible?  Am I just lucky or gifted to be able to pull this kind of speed out of my butt at the ripe old age of 56 going on 57?  No, I mean, yeah of course there is some underlying DNA involved, but this is the result of 20 years of consistent effort over the long run and 6 months of focused effort on this cycle. What have I done differently this cycle to get such great results?  Near as I can figure it comes down to the following: Consistency – I do the work with consistent focus and effort over time. This isn't different from previous cycles, but it's the baseline.  Nutrition – I have dropped close to 20 pounds over the last 6 months. I usually shed 10 pounds in a marathon cycle. The last few cycles I haven't really focused on going the extra 10 pounds.  The combination of less weight and cleaner eating early in the cycle allowed me to have higher quality training and faster paces. Stretching and core – Another difference in this cycle is an early focus on daily flexibility stretches. This allowed me to train harder and probably kept the injuries at bay.  Finally – good sleep – I haven't been traveling as much and my commute isn't bad. I've been getting that full 8-9 hours of sleep every night and I'm sure that contributes to my ability to execute. Turns out the secrets to success are no secrets.  You just have to do it! Which is the hardest thing, right? It's easy to say these things, it's another to actually do them. But, if you do, I guarantee you'll see the results. Next time we talk will be the weekend before the Boston Marathon.  I've got one more long run and I'm into my taper.  Remember, my number is 18543, If you want to steal it you need to be able to run a sub-3:30 marathon.  Your etymology for the week is the word “compass”.  This is a combination of two Latin words.  ‘Com' meaning with and ‘passus', which means pace or steps.  So following your compass means bringing together your paces. And I'll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Rachel -> Coach Jeff ->  

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-406 – Dave McGilvary - How to Run Across the Country (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4406.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello, my endurance compatriots, companions and comrades and welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-405.  Had a bit of a scare or a potential set back in my training after the last episode.  You could hear it in my voice that I was had a little something going on and sure enough I woke up that Sunday sick as heck! I was really looking forward to my long run that day.  It was just a plane Jane 3-hour and 15 minute surge run that would get me 21-22 miles.  Nothing complicated.  And I woke up with a fever headache.  After a few seconds of indecision, (you know me), I said ‘you’ll hate yourself if you don’t go try’.  I met my buddy Tim who was only doing 2 hours and we got out.  I could tell I was hurting so I called it at 2 hours.  Got a solid 13miles in.  Went home.  Took a shower and laid in bed the rest of the day.  I was concerned because I had a busy week with a 2-day road trip.  I figured I’d be out on the road, sick in airplane - you get the visual.  It turned out better than I thought.  Coach had me scheduled for a recovery week anyhow.  There weren’t any monster workouts to add to being sick and traveling.  I was able to drug myself up and made the travel and meetings look easy.  And, most importantly it didn’t turn into something awful.  You always run into some blips in your training cycle.  My training cycle has been going so well that I was due.  A couple more big weeks would be good for my confidence, but for the most part ‘the hay is in the barn’.   Today I called up our old friend Dave McGilvary, head of DMSE sports and race director for the Boston Marathon.  I had a simple question to pick his brain about.  “What does it take to run across the country?”  We also chat a little about that other race… Section one – the hay is in the barn… What to do when you have late-cycle training issues. Section two – continuing homilies on being … Speaking of the Boston Marathon, they released the bib number assignments.  If you want to track me I’m 18,543.  Think about that.  As hard as I train, with my finishing time around a 3:30 I’m nowhere near the mid-pack of this race.  There’s 30,000 runners in the race but only around 25,000 are qualified.  That means close to ¾ of the pack is in front of me.  You’d have to run my old Boston PR of 3:06 just to make it into the first wave.  When they changed the standards by 10 minutes people wondered if the runners could keep up.  There’s your answer.  They certainly can.  The entire curve just shifted by 10 minutes and the race is still over-subscribed.  Amazing.  This will be my 21st running of the race and I pulled out all the stops for this one.  I think I’m going to have a good race.  Regardless of what happens it is and has been an honor to be part of this thing, this slice of local history.  On April 15th this year, Patriot’s Day in Boston, my buddies and I have done the work and earned the right to play – and play we will! On with the show. … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills. M … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – The Hay is in the Barn! - Voices of reason – the conversation Dave McGillivray, Founder DMSE RACE DIRECTOR, PHILANTHROPIST,  MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER,  ACCOMPLISHED ATHLETE. DAVE MCGILLIVRAY IS A PROFESSIONAL WITH A PURPOSE. From his extraordinary 1978 run across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to serving as technical director then race director of the BAA Boston Marathon since the 1980s, McGillivray has helped organize more than 900 mass participatory events since founding DMSE Sports in 1981, while raising millions for worthy causes close to his heart. Here are a few of his many career highlights: In 1978 and over the course of 80 consecutive days, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon, to his hometown of Medford, Massachusetts, covering a total distance of 3,452 miles. He finished to a standing ovation of 32,000 fans in Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. His effort raised thousands of dollars for the Jimmy Fund, a charity that supports research toward eliminating cancer in children. The 1980 East Coast Run to benefit the Jimmy Fund consisted of 1,520 miles from Winter Haven, Florida, to Boston, Massachusetts. McGillivray was joined by Bob Hall, one of the pioneers of wheelchair marathoning, and raised thousands of dollars for the Jimmy Fund. He also met with then-President Jimmy Carter at the White House during the trek through Washington, D.C. In 1980, McGillivray competed in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, the premier individual endurance event in the world. He finished 14th overall and was only the 30th person to have ever competed in an Ironman. The Ironman consists of three back-to-back distance events: a 2.4 mile rough, open ocean water swim, followed by a 112-mile bike race, and finally finishing up with a 26.2-mile marathon run. He completed the event again in 1983-1989 and 2014, for a total of nine times. The Wrentham State School 24-Hour Run was designated as the "Run for Our Dreams Marathon." In 1980, this run traversed 120 miles in 24 hours throughout 31 cities within southeastern Massachusetts, ending in Foxboro Stadium during half-time of a New England Patriots football game. Held to benefit the Wrentham State School for the Mentally Retarded, this particular run raised more than $10,000 for the handicapped. 1981 brought an invitation to participate in the Empire State Building Run-Up. The course consists of 86 stories, 1,575 steps, 1050 feet in elevation, 40" stair height. Finished 10th place overall in a time of 13 minutes, 27 seconds. His 1981 New England Run was a triathlon (running, cycling, and swimming) of 1,522 miles throughout the six New England states. He raised $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. Unusual segments included running up and down Mount Washington and swimming two miles across Lake Winneapesaukee, both in New Hampshire. In addition, highlights included swimming one mile from Woods Hole toward Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts and running three miles with inmates inside Walpole State Prison. Officially completed his New England Run by swimming more than seven miles from Martha’s Vineyard to Falmouth, Massachusetts, again raising more money for the Jimmy Fund. McGillivray was greeted by thousands on shore including some of the world’s greatest runners, including Alberto Salazar. In 1982, McGillivray ran the Boston Marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded and escorted by two guides to raise more than $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts.. He traded his running shoes for swimming shorts in 1983 for the Jimmy Fund 24-Hour Swim. He swam for 24 consecutive hours in the Olympic-size Medford High School pool, swimming a total of 1,884 lengths and covering 26.2 miles (distance of Boston Marathon), again raising funds for the Jimmy Fund. Over the course of 14 days in 1983, he bicycled more than 1,000 miles throughout six New England states to raise money for a scholarship fund for McGillivray's alma mater, Merrimack College. In 1986, he formed the first sanctioned running club inside a maximum security institution at Walpole State Prison. He also conducted and ran in numerous distance races inside the prison yard, including completing and winning a full 26.2 mile marathon against inmates. Also in 1986, he biked for 24 consecutive hours around a five-mile loop course in Medford while simultaneously directing the annual Bay State Triathlon, which was being held on the same course at the same time. He covered a total of 385 miles, again raising money for the Jimmy Fund. Since 1988, he has been the Technical and Race Director of the Boston Marathon. He manages and oversees all technical and operational aspects of the oldest and most prestigious marathon in the world. McGillivray’s many endurance events for charity are legendary, including running 120 miles in 24 hours thru 31 Massachusetts cities; an 86-story, 1,575-step run up Empire State Building in 13 minutes and 27 seconds; and running, cycling and swimming 1,522 miles thru six New England states while raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. In 2000, he was chosen as Race Director of the Year by Road Race Management/Running Times Magazine. That same year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award by Competitor Magazine for more than 30 years of service to the sport of road racing and triathlons. In 2003, McGillivray created the DMSE Children’s Fitness Foundation to support non-profit organizations that use running to promote physical fitness in children and help solve the epidemic of childhood obesity. In 2004, McGillivray and a team of veteran marathon runners journeyed across the country following the same path he took in 1978. Trek USA raised more than $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. The race director of the Boston Marathon as well as an accomplished runner, McGillivray has run the marathon each year since 1973. For 16 years he ran it with all the other runners and since he began working with the race in 1988 he has run the course afterwards. His 2006 book, The Last Pick, which he co-wrote with Linda Glass Fechter, chronicles his childhood and career as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, motivating readers to never underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. Order here on Amazon. In 2009 he was awarded the prestigious “Jimmy Award” from the Jimmy Fund of Boston for his 30-year association and his work with helping to raise money to fund cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A skilled motivational speaker, McGillivray has displayed his signature ability to engage and inspire listeners to more than 1,600 audiences from corporate executives to high school students. McGillivray has received numerous awards –  valedictorian at both his high school and college, 2005 Running USA Hall of Champions, 2007 Runner’s World Heroes of Running Award, the 2010 Fleet Feet Lifetime Commitment to Running Award, 2010 Ron Burton Community Service Award, the 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center's 2011 100 list, inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in 2011 and also received the prestigious "Jimmy Award" by the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for 30 years of contributing time and expertise to help raise millions for cancer research and treatment. In 2015, he received the MarathonFoto/Road Race Management Lifetime Achievement Award, and was named One of the 50 Most Influential People in Running by Runner's World - tied for 6th place. In 2017 he was inducted into the Road Runners Club of America Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, joined by Ryan Hall, Desiree Linden, and George Hirsch. In 2018, he completed the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. McGillivray has logged more than 150,000 miles, most for charity, raising millions for worthy causes.  He’s completed 155 marathons, which include 46 consecutive Boston Marathons (with 31 run at night after his race director duties are fulfilled). In 2018 he published his first children's book, Dream Big: A True Story of Courage and Determination, co-authored with Nancy Feehrer. The illustrated book is based on his 2006 autobiography, The Last Pick. Dream Big may be ordered here on Amazon. His personal bests? Marathon: 2:29:58 and for the Ironman: 10:36:42. Each year he runs his birthday age in miles, starting when he was 12, and has not missed one yet. He was born on August 22, 1954 – you can do the math. McGillivray, DMSE Sports and his DMSE Children’s Foundation have raised more than $50 million for various charities, including: The Jimmy Fund, Carroll Center for the Blind, Cystic Fibrosis, Lazarus House, Massachusetts Dietetic Association, Massachusetts Special Olympics, Moth- ers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), Muscular Dystrophy Association, Sports Museum of New England, Wrentham State School.   Section two – Future, Past and Now - Outro Well, my friends you probably have not run 3000+ miles across the country to the end of the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-406, but maybe you will some day.   One thing I would encourage you to do is to look at Dave’s resume.  He has accomplished so much in his life.  But, that’s not what’s special about Dave. What’s special is that most of his accomplishments are focused on helping others, he lives his life in service to the greater good.  And even with all he’s done he’s extremely approachable and humble. A good role model for us.    I’ve had a great couple weeks since we last spoke.  I did get that quick fever/flu/cold whatever it was but I got through it in a week.  I had a bit of a anxiety spot when I bailed on that long run.  As you may remember I did most of my long runs on the treadmill in February and early March.  I was hitting my paces but in the back of my mind I was always cognizant of the fact that the treadmill is not the road.  Until I road tested some of those paces I was going to be tentative.  Last week was a rest week but coach gave me a nice long tempo run for Saturday.  And of course, the weather didn’t cooperate.  We had 20 MPH gusting, swirling winds and I was almost ready to drive into work and knock it out on the treadmill again, especially coming off that cold.  But, I stuck my head outside and it wasn’t too bad so I suited up and hit the workout.  The workout was to warm up for 20 minutes then run 50 minutes at faster than race pace. The out and back I run these on starts out as a rolling downhill.  This means that when you make the turn-around, the second half of the run is a rolling uphill.  Which, in theory is a great workout, but in practice sucks as you climb those hills at the end of the tempo session.  It turned out that the wind was a tail wind on the way out and a head wind on the way back.  I don’t really look at real-time splits as I’m doing these workouts.  I try to run them by feel.  When I hit that tempo I try to ease into what I think feels like, in this case a 7:50 mile.  I get feedback on my pace every mile.  I was a bit horrified when the first mile split was a 7:30.  Too fast.  I tried to ease off a bit and the second split came in at 7:30 again.  Going into the turn around I really tried to ease up and managed a 7:45. The challenge here is now I was turning back into the wind and up the hill.  In previous training cycles this is where my legs would have gone on me.  But I was able to hold the pace at a 7:39 a 7:49 and a 7:58 up the hill into a stiff headwind without my legs failing at all.  And when I made the turn to be running with the wind for the last half mile I averaged a 7:25. A number of positives.  I was able to go out too fast and recover without failing.  I was able to do the hard work up hill and into the wind and my legs felt great.  I was able to close it hard.  All good signs.  And I followed up this week on Tuesday with a similar step up run, on the same route without the wind, with 30 minutes at 7:50’s and closing with 30 minutes at 7:30’s.  Last night I knocked out a set of 200-meter hill repeats at sub-7 pace and it felt easy.  How is this possible?  Am I just lucky or gifted to be able to pull this kind of speed out of my butt at the ripe old age of 56 going on 57?  No, I mean, yeah of course there is some underlying DNA involved, but this is the result of 20 years of consistent effort over the long run and 6 months of focused effort on this cycle. What have I done differently this cycle to get such great results?  Near as I can figure it comes down to the following: Consistency – I do the work with consistent focus and effort over time. This isn’t different from previous cycles, but it’s the baseline.  Nutrition – I have dropped close to 20 pounds over the last 6 months. I usually shed 10 pounds in a marathon cycle. The last few cycles I haven’t really focused on going the extra 10 pounds.  The combination of less weight and cleaner eating early in the cycle allowed me to have higher quality training and faster paces. Stretching and core – Another difference in this cycle is an early focus on daily flexibility stretches. This allowed me to train harder and probably kept the injuries at bay.  Finally – good sleep – I haven’t been traveling as much and my commute isn’t bad. I’ve been getting that full 8-9 hours of sleep every night and I’m sure that contributes to my ability to execute. Turns out the secrets to success are no secrets.  You just have to do it! Which is the hardest thing, right? It’s easy to say these things, it’s another to actually do them. But, if you do, I guarantee you’ll see the results. Next time we talk will be the weekend before the Boston Marathon.  I’ve got one more long run and I’m into my taper.  Remember, my number is 18543, If you want to steal it you need to be able to run a sub-3:30 marathon.  Your etymology for the week is the word “compass”.  This is a combination of two Latin words.  ‘Com’ meaning with and ‘passus’, which means pace or steps.  So following your compass means bringing together your paces. And I’ll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Rachel -> Coach Jeff ->  

Latest episode of Subway Steve

Latest episode of Subway Steve

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-382 – Dave Mcgillivray – 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4382.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello and welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-382 Hello.  This is Chris.  Today we have an excellent interview with Dave McGillivray about his recent experience of running 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days.  We go off script a bit and do a bit of old-guy trash talking too. I was originally going to skip this week because I've been so beat up by work and training recently.  But, when I spoke to Dave and heard how great the conversation was I had to get it out.  In section one I'll talk about how struggling through bad workouts isn't necessarily a bad thing.  In Section two I'll drop a chapter from the audio book version of my Marathon BQ book called “The Dark Place”.  That's the theme for this week I guess, struggle and perseverance.  Stick to the plan.  As of today, we are 50 or so days out from Boston.  My training, although challenging, is, in the grand scheme, going well.  Coming into this weekend I saw that the weather was going to be heavy freezing rain on Sunday and petitioned coach to move my long run to Saturday.  He acquiesced and I did a nice sunny run with my buddies yesterday.  They ended up running about 2:15 and I went a little longer and hit 2:45.  It ended up around 19 and ½ miles for me.  Having run the same 2:45 last weekend on Sunday, that means the two long runs fell into the same 7-day week and I ended up with over 60 miles for the week.  That's something I haven't seen for awhile.  My legs are holding up ok.  I went back out today with some other guys from my club and we did an easy hour in the trails in the freezing rain.  No issues.  I do need to work more core strength and stretching in because I'm tight, but, hey you can't do everything. My tempo runs are coming in around a 7:30 pace which is encouraging.  My engine is very strong.  My heart is solid.  The legs are the constraint right now.  I imagine that should improve with all this volume. Bottom line I'm in a good spot for a strong 20th Boston Marathon if we get good weather. … It's funny, I wrote that Marathon BQ book a couple years ago because it insisted on getting out of my head.  If you were to train with me these are the kind of stories you'd hear over and over.  I started the podcast for the same reason, to take all this stuff about running I'd accumulated and get it out into the public where it might do some good.  The book, putts along at a dozen or so a month, spiking in the spring and fall when people tend to think about qualifying!  I suppose I should make some effort to find a real publisher given the staying power and what they call “irrational enthusiasm” people have around the topic.  I'm too busy.  If you know an enthusiastic publisher who wants a market tested vehicle I'll take the meeting.  But, what really turns me on, what really makes me think ‘huh', is when I get these emails out of the blue that thank me for it.  It really blows me away.  I'll share one here.  Redacted, because I don't have permission.  Chris, I know that you receive countless "thank you" emails from runners who have found success using your Marathon BQ training plan.... but I wanted to offer yet another. Last year, I ran the Chicago Marathon - giving it all that I had - finishing in 3:44:24....essentially the same time that finished at the Disney Marathon several years prior. In one year, using your program, I dropped 23 minutes off of my time, finishing the 2018 Houston Marathon strong in 3:21:04. My goal was to qualify for Boston....and with a BQ cutoff of 3:25 for my age (46) group, it looks like I will get a bib. All of those speed workouts really worked! Looking forward to running Boston in 2019. Can't thank you enough! Sincere yours, Redacted On with the show! … I'll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don't have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member's only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Tale of two workouts - Voices of reason – the conversation Dave race director, philanthropist, author and athlete Dave McGillivray is a U.S.-based. In 1978, he ran across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Presently he is race director of the  (B.A.A.)  and his team at  have organized well over 1,000 mass-participatory endurance events since he founded it in 1981.This was taken toward the end of headlands 100 in sept. In 1978, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from  to his hometown of , a distance of 3,452 miles, ending in  in Boston. His effort raised funds for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Two years later, he ran the East Coast Run to benefit the Jimmy Fund, running 1,520 miles from Winter Haven, Florida to Boston, Massachusetts joined by , a pioneer of , raising money for the Jimmy Fund and meeting with President  at the White House during the run. In 1982, McGillivray ran the Boston Marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded and being escorted by two guides to raise $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Mass. He competed in eight Gatorade Ironman Triathlons from 1980 to 1989, an individual endurance event consisting of three back-to-back distance events: a 2.4 mile rough, open ocean water swim, followed by a 112-mile bike race and finishing up with a 26.2-mile marathon run. In 1981, McGillivray ran in the Empire State Building Run Up, an 86-story, 1,575-step run, placing 10th with a time of 13 minutes, 27 seconds. The same year he participated in the annual New England Run where he triathloned (ran, cycled, and swam) 1,522 miles throughout the six New England states raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. The event required a run up and down Mount Washington and swimming two miles across Lake Winneapesaukee, both in New Hampshire, as well as swimming one mile from Woods Hole in Cape Cod towards Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, ending the course with running three miles alongside inmates within the Walpole State Prison and raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. A year later he swam more than seven miles in the Martha's Vineyard Swim, from Martha's Vineyard to Falmouth, Massachusetts, raising funds for the Jimmy Fund and was greeted on the shore by runners such as . In 1986, he formed the first sanctioned running club inside a maximum security institution at  in Massachusetts. He conducted and ran in numerous distance races inside the prison yard, including completing and winning a full 26.2 mile marathon against inmates. In 1980, he ran in the Wrentham State School 24-Hour Run, traversing 120 miles in 24 hours throughout 31 cities in southeastern Massachusetts, ending in Foxboro Stadium during the half-time of a New England Patriots football game. Held to benefit the Wrentham State School for the Mentally Retarded, the run raised more than $10,000 for the handicapped. In 1983, he participated in the Jimmy Fund 24-Hour Swim, swimming for 24 consecutive hours in the Olympic-size Medford High School pool, which totaled 1,884 lengths and covering 26.2 miles (distance of the Boston Marathon), again raising funds for the Jimmy Fund. Also in 1983, McGillivray took part in the Merrimack College New England Bike Ride where he cycled more than 1,000 miles throughout six New England states in 14 days to raise money for a scholarship fund for his alma mater, Merrimack College. In 1986, McGillivray biked again for 24 consecutive hours around a five-mile loop course in Medford, Massachusetts while simultaneously directing the annual Bay State Triathlon being held on the course at the same time. He covered a total of 385 miles, again raising money for the Jimmy Fund. In 2004, McGillivray and other marathon runners ran across the U.S. following the same path he took in 1978, raising $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. Each year McGillivray runs his birthday age in miles, a tradition he started when he was 12 and realized that running was his passion. McGillivray has also run the Boston Marathon each year since 1973; the first 16 years as an entrant and since working with the race as its director, has run the course after his duties are completed. In 2006, McGillivray wrote “The Last Pick” with writer Linda Glass Fechter, chronicling his childhood as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, telling readers never to underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. The book also covers his life as an athlete and race director.   Section two – Marathon BQ Audio Book Chapter – “the dark place” –   Outro Ok my friends you have run 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents with 7 brides for 7 brothers to the end of another RunRunLive Podcast.  Episode 4-382 finito. I'm going to keep it quick.  Things are weird for me personally, professionally and athletically but I'm keeping my head above water.  I do feel a bit burnt out.  And I think I need to maybe take a couple mental health days in the next few weeks.  It comes and goes. When things get hard I try to remember to be grateful.  How lucky am I to have all the things I have in my life?  It's a bounty.  What you will find is that the more you practice gratitude, the more of a self-fulfilling prophecy it becomes.  I would love to hear what you are grateful for.  Send me some audio and I'll put together a composition for us.  Do it now before you forget.  What are you grateful for? I'll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-382 – Dave Mcgillivray – 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4382.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello and welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-382 Hello.  This is Chris.  Today we have an excellent interview with Dave McGillivray about his recent experience of running 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days.  We go off script a bit and do a bit of old-guy trash talking too. I was originally going to skip this week because I’ve been so beat up by work and training recently.  But, when I spoke to Dave and heard how great the conversation was I had to get it out.  In section one I’ll talk about how struggling through bad workouts isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  In Section two I’ll drop a chapter from the audio book version of my Marathon BQ book called “The Dark Place”.  That’s the theme for this week I guess, struggle and perseverance.  Stick to the plan.  As of today, we are 50 or so days out from Boston.  My training, although challenging, is, in the grand scheme, going well.  Coming into this weekend I saw that the weather was going to be heavy freezing rain on Sunday and petitioned coach to move my long run to Saturday.  He acquiesced and I did a nice sunny run with my buddies yesterday.  They ended up running about 2:15 and I went a little longer and hit 2:45.  It ended up around 19 and ½ miles for me.  Having run the same 2:45 last weekend on Sunday, that means the two long runs fell into the same 7-day week and I ended up with over 60 miles for the week.  That’s something I haven’t seen for awhile.  My legs are holding up ok.  I went back out today with some other guys from my club and we did an easy hour in the trails in the freezing rain.  No issues.  I do need to work more core strength and stretching in because I’m tight, but, hey you can’t do everything. My tempo runs are coming in around a 7:30 pace which is encouraging.  My engine is very strong.  My heart is solid.  The legs are the constraint right now.  I imagine that should improve with all this volume. Bottom line I’m in a good spot for a strong 20th Boston Marathon if we get good weather. … It’s funny, I wrote that Marathon BQ book a couple years ago because it insisted on getting out of my head.  If you were to train with me these are the kind of stories you’d hear over and over.  I started the podcast for the same reason, to take all this stuff about running I’d accumulated and get it out into the public where it might do some good.  The book, putts along at a dozen or so a month, spiking in the spring and fall when people tend to think about qualifying!  I suppose I should make some effort to find a real publisher given the staying power and what they call “irrational enthusiasm” people have around the topic.  I’m too busy.  If you know an enthusiastic publisher who wants a market tested vehicle I’ll take the meeting.  But, what really turns me on, what really makes me think ‘huh’, is when I get these emails out of the blue that thank me for it.  It really blows me away.  I’ll share one here.  Redacted, because I don’t have permission.  Chris, I know that you receive countless "thank you" emails from runners who have found success using your Marathon BQ training plan.... but I wanted to offer yet another. Last year, I ran the Chicago Marathon - giving it all that I had - finishing in 3:44:24....essentially the same time that finished at the Disney Marathon several years prior. In one year, using your program, I dropped 23 minutes off of my time, finishing the 2018 Houston Marathon strong in 3:21:04. My goal was to qualify for Boston....and with a BQ cutoff of 3:25 for my age (46) group, it looks like I will get a bib. All of those speed workouts really worked! Looking forward to running Boston in 2019. Can't thank you enough! Sincere yours, Redacted On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Tale of two workouts - Voices of reason – the conversation Dave race director, philanthropist, author and athlete Dave McGillivray is a U.S.-based. In 1978, he ran across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Presently he is race director of the  (B.A.A.)  and his team at  have organized well over 1,000 mass-participatory endurance events since he founded it in 1981.This was taken toward the end of headlands 100 in sept. In 1978, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from  to his hometown of , a distance of 3,452 miles, ending in  in Boston. His effort raised funds for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Two years later, he ran the East Coast Run to benefit the Jimmy Fund, running 1,520 miles from Winter Haven, Florida to Boston, Massachusetts joined by , a pioneer of , raising money for the Jimmy Fund and meeting with President  at the White House during the run. In 1982, McGillivray ran the Boston Marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded and being escorted by two guides to raise $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Mass. He competed in eight Gatorade Ironman Triathlons from 1980 to 1989, an individual endurance event consisting of three back-to-back distance events: a 2.4 mile rough, open ocean water swim, followed by a 112-mile bike race and finishing up with a 26.2-mile marathon run. In 1981, McGillivray ran in the Empire State Building Run Up, an 86-story, 1,575-step run, placing 10th with a time of 13 minutes, 27 seconds. The same year he participated in the annual New England Run where he triathloned (ran, cycled, and swam) 1,522 miles throughout the six New England states raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. The event required a run up and down Mount Washington and swimming two miles across Lake Winneapesaukee, both in New Hampshire, as well as swimming one mile from Woods Hole in Cape Cod towards Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, ending the course with running three miles alongside inmates within the Walpole State Prison and raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. A year later he swam more than seven miles in the Martha's Vineyard Swim, from Martha's Vineyard to Falmouth, Massachusetts, raising funds for the Jimmy Fund and was greeted on the shore by runners such as . In 1986, he formed the first sanctioned running club inside a maximum security institution at  in Massachusetts. He conducted and ran in numerous distance races inside the prison yard, including completing and winning a full 26.2 mile marathon against inmates. In 1980, he ran in the Wrentham State School 24-Hour Run, traversing 120 miles in 24 hours throughout 31 cities in southeastern Massachusetts, ending in Foxboro Stadium during the half-time of a New England Patriots football game. Held to benefit the Wrentham State School for the Mentally Retarded, the run raised more than $10,000 for the handicapped. In 1983, he participated in the Jimmy Fund 24-Hour Swim, swimming for 24 consecutive hours in the Olympic-size Medford High School pool, which totaled 1,884 lengths and covering 26.2 miles (distance of the Boston Marathon), again raising funds for the Jimmy Fund. Also in 1983, McGillivray took part in the Merrimack College New England Bike Ride where he cycled more than 1,000 miles throughout six New England states in 14 days to raise money for a scholarship fund for his alma mater, Merrimack College. In 1986, McGillivray biked again for 24 consecutive hours around a five-mile loop course in Medford, Massachusetts while simultaneously directing the annual Bay State Triathlon being held on the course at the same time. He covered a total of 385 miles, again raising money for the Jimmy Fund. In 2004, McGillivray and other marathon runners ran across the U.S. following the same path he took in 1978, raising $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. Each year McGillivray runs his birthday age in miles, a tradition he started when he was 12 and realized that running was his passion. McGillivray has also run the Boston Marathon each year since 1973; the first 16 years as an entrant and since working with the race as its director, has run the course after his duties are completed. In 2006, McGillivray wrote “The Last Pick” with writer Linda Glass Fechter, chronicling his childhood as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, telling readers never to underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. The book also covers his life as an athlete and race director.   Section two – Marathon BQ Audio Book Chapter – “the dark place” –   Outro Ok my friends you have run 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents with 7 brides for 7 brothers to the end of another RunRunLive Podcast.  Episode 4-382 finito. I’m going to keep it quick.  Things are weird for me personally, professionally and athletically but I’m keeping my head above water.  I do feel a bit burnt out.  And I think I need to maybe take a couple mental health days in the next few weeks.  It comes and goes. When things get hard I try to remember to be grateful.  How lucky am I to have all the things I have in my life?  It’s a bounty.  What you will find is that the more you practice gratitude, the more of a self-fulfilling prophecy it becomes.  I would love to hear what you are grateful for.  Send me some audio and I’ll put together a composition for us.  Do it now before you forget.  What are you grateful for? I’ll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

Meet Dan Spoone, ACB First Vice President from Orlando, FL; Brian Charlson, Director of Technology at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Boston, talks accessible appliances and cooking gadgets; Calendar of Events

Meet Dan Spoone, ACB First Vice President from Orlando, FL; Brian Charlson, Director of Technology at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Boston, talks accessible appliances and cooking gadgets; Calendar of Events

Doug Powell, new member of the ACB Board, shares unusual jobs from his past, experiences as a triathlete and more; Brian Charlson, Director of Technology at the Carroll Center in Boston, introduces AIRA, a service to help read and navigate your environment

Doug Powell, new member of the ACB Board, shares unusual jobs from his past, experiences as a triathlete and more; Brian Charlson, Director of Technology at the Carroll Center in Boston, introduces AIRA, a service to help read and navigate your environment

In this special episode we share the New England Drupal Camp keynote speech from Brian Charlson.   Brian shares the struggles of a blind person using a good website and bad website.  Brian Charlson is a national authority on assistive technology for persons who are blind or visually impaired.  Brian has worked at the Carroll Center for the Blind as both a classroom instructor and as the Director of Technology over the last 30 years.  Blind himself, he has dedicated his career to ensuring that persons with vision loss have equal access to technology and the skills to independently use it in their daily lives. As Director of the Carroll Center for the Blind Computer Training Services program, and as the Chair of the Information Access Committee of the American Council of the Blind, he has worked with Sun Micro Systems, Adobe Systems, Microsoft, IBM and may other companies to improve the accessibility of mainstream products and services. While working with Freedom Scientific, GW Micro, AI Squared and Duxbury Systems, among others, to assure that access technology keeps up with the rapidly changing information technologies used in school, offices and places of public accommodation. Brian has presented at national and international technology, leadership and special education conferences including traveling to Spain, Israel, Greece, England, Canada and Australia.  He is often a guest speaker on subjects related to access to technology for those with disabilities at universities, library associations and other media events. Brian has taken leadership roles in local, state, national and international consumer groups including the Bay State Council of the Blind, Library Users of America, American Council of the Blind and the World Blind Union.  Brian is an advocate for quality services for people who are blind so that they can achieve their individual best.  Brian’s current passions include universal design so that mainstream technologies can be used by everyone; making access technology training available to everyone who needs it; Major League Baseball as a fan of the Boston Red Sox and internet radio as the co-host of the Yin Yang Show on ACB Radio Interactive.

RunRunLive 4.0 Episode 4-301, Dave McGillivray and Heart Disease in Runners (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4301.mp3] Link epi4301.mp3 Intro Bumper: Intro:  Prelude: When I started the RunRunLive Podcast in July of 1857 it was a different world.  I know it hasn’t been 150 years but it does seem like a long time ago.  Now here we are at the sharp and dangerous blade edge of another season or edition or chapter – whatever you want to call it.   I chose the meme of running plus living not to show the dichotomy or separation of the two but to highlight the synergy and union of them.  When you combine endurance sports into your life one plus one equals 3.   Running has opened up worlds for me.  I like to say it has transformed me, but that isn’t quite the right way to put it.  I wasn’t a 300 pound diabetic asthmatic on the edge of physical extinction.  I was a normal, family guy stuck instead in the corporate grindwheel of modern existence.   Maybe that’s a form of existential extinction.  Running didn’t so much transform me as it enabled me to realize my own potential.  It snapped the strictures that tied me down and allowed me to transcend.  It broke my frame of reference and allowed my light to leak out into the world in a new way.   And that, my friends is what I still want to do.  I want you to come see the light.  We live in a time of great epidemic.  I don’t mean Ebola or Aids.  I mean the epidemic of people not believing in themselves, not believing in positive change and not trying because they are constantly being told that they can’t make a difference.   You can make a difference.  You can make a difference in your own life and in the lives of others by what you do, what you say and how you approach life.   I can make a difference too, for you, for me and for those tiny humans that I brought into this world.  Frankly, I don’t care if you run or jog or walk or wriggle like a snake to Elvis love songs.  What concerns me is that you do nothing.  That you think small.  That you feel like you have nothing to give.  That it has all been done.  That you’re not smart enough, not fast enough, not rich enough or not talented enough to make a difference in this world of ours.  What scares me is that you are afraid to try.   If all you can offer is a smile or a hug then please for God’s sake give it today, give it now, because that is a tremendous gift that is in short supply.  90% of my days go by without either! What can I give?  What can RunRunLive give?  What small stone can we toss into the shimmering pool of humanity?  What ripples can we make?   For this version of the Podcast we will continue in mostly the same vein as version 3.  I’ll structure it to fit in to a less-than-one-hour envelope.  I’ll retain the 20+ minute interview with someone who can show us the achievement of honest synergy.  I’m going to move the running tips segment to the front half of the show and try to make it useful to you.   Likewise I’ll retain the life skills segment that I think many people like and move that to the back half.  I’ll keep up the intro and the outro comments.  Not that you care so much about what is going in on my life, but just some context and frame and storytelling to glue it all together.   I’m not going to drop in any more music, even though I can’t for the life of me understand why some of you apparently hate punk rock and ska… That’s it, no big changes, just a little shuffling.   Then why would I pause and take this time to ponder a new format?  This is topic that deserves more ink, but in short, because I believe in the power of introspection.  At some point as we draw into the New Year you should pause for introspection on your life and goals and direction too.  It can ignite an epiphany.   I reserve the right to change my mind.  I reserve the right to change your mind as well.  Are you ready to get out there?   Intro: Hello, my friends and welcome to the RunRunLive 4.0 podcast.  My name, is Chris, actually Christopher, which, if you want to talk about morphemes, is Greek for Christ Carrier and I’ve missed you.  Seems like ages since we have chatted.  What have I been up to?  There is so much that It’s hard to summarize.   On the life front I quit my job, left my family and moved to a 50 acre ranch in Pioneer Kansas to raise yaks full time.  It’s a peaceful plot of land amongst the industrial farms straddling Spring Creek.  I got myself 50 head of good breeding yaks.   The running is good too and I’ve constructed some interesting trails but there aren’t a whole lot of hills.  The professional hit man business was fairly frantic throughout the fall so I spent a lot of time on the road.  Unfortunately, while I was gone the yaks went feral and now I have to be careful because they’ve organized and plot attacks against me when I leave the house.  It can be startling when you’re lost in the peaceful reverie of a long run and one of those crazed, shaggy-headed beasts comes crashing out of the alfalfa at you.  ‘Yak Attack’ would be a good name for a band. But – that’s all personal fluff and stuff – you don’t care about that.   On the running side I’ve just been working on maintaining my base and staying healthy since my 15 minutes of fame at the New York City Marathon.  I tried an experiment a couple weeks ago to see if I could run or more than an hour every day for 7 days straight.  Just to see if I could take the load.  The runs felt pretty good but my old and angry nemesis the plantar fasciitis flared up by day five and I aborted that flight of fancy.  Kudos to me to be able to set that quest aside and not hurt myself.  I’ve been logging most of my runs in the woods with Buddy the old Wonder Dog.  Including a nice nighttime headlamp run for 1:30 the day after the Thanksgiving snow storm.  I’ve got a good base and I’m not injured.  We’re going to talk a bit about running in the snow in the first bit of today’s episode.  Poor Buddy was pretty beat up by that run. He’s definitely slowing down.  He was standing at the top of the stairs looking at them the way I look at them the day after a hard marathon.  He still gets pissed if I don’t take him.  I won’t take him on the road anymore, only the trails, off lease so he can pace himself.   If the hikers want to yell at me for having him off leash they can bite me.  That dog is 80 years old and still gets after it like a pro.  They should be so lucky when they’re his age.  The other big adventure I’ve had this fall is around my own advancing decrepitude.   I know, it’s all relative, you’re rolling your eyes, here’s this running geek who does back to back marathons in October complaining about fitness and performance. Truth is I haven’t been able to muster a qualifying race since, I think, Boston 2011.  That’s a long time ago.  I’m still; looking for race fitness since taking the 18 months or so off with the plantar fasciitis.   This fall I’ve taken the time to schedule all my general maintenance and upkeep appointments.  I got a physical, had my bloodwork done and got my eyes checked.  Basically checking the tire pressure and the oil.  Since I’m past the half-century mark my doctor scheduled me for a colonoscopy.  Which is a funny story.   Meanwhile, I’ve been bugged by my heart rate wigging out on me in long hard efforts so I asked him to set me up with a cardio appointment as well.  Not because anything is overtly wrong, just to make sure.  I don’t want to go out for a run and not come back.  I owe to the yaks.  If the answer is “you’re old” I’m ok with that, I just want to be safe.  Which plays into our interview of Dave McGilivary today about his adventures with heart disease.  I spent a week ‘prepping’ for the colonoscopy, which is fairly miserable and involves a diet that is antithetical to what I’m used to, then slamming a variety of laxatives in large doses.  They want your colon to be squeaky clean when they go in there with their camera on a stick.   In the hospital, lying naked on a gurney, waiting for the anesthesiologist, I’m a bit nervous.  My resting heart rate, as you know is normally around 40 beats per minute.  Since I’m nervous I start doing some breathing meditation and it drops to 34-35.  Alarms are going off from the leads they have stuck on me.  The anesthesiologist does an EKG to make sure I’m not dying.  My heart, they tell me, stops beating for up to 2.5 seconds at a time.  I’m like, ‘yeah, so?’  What do you want it to be?  I can control it by thinking about it.  The colon guy wants to go ahead but the cardiologist on call says ‘no’.  4 days of prep, 3 hours of lying around naked in the hospital with leads stuck on me, and they send me home.  The irony here is that I was by far the healthiest person in that place.  They’re wheeling in a parade of sick people, but I’m too fucking healthy to get a camera stuck quip my ass.  The world is a crazy place.  Since then I’ve been to the cardio and had the stress test and echo cardiogram that show there’s nothing wrong with my heart.  I think I have a bit of an arrhythmia in one of my valve when I surge after 40 minutes of running.  That’s what my data shows but they don’t want to see my data.  Their 20 minute stress test was a nice hill workout but hardly long enough to stimulate the symptoms I’m seeing.  We’ll see what the clowns in this circus think when I go back for my consult before Christmas.  Until that point I’m just going to keep doing what I do.  Every day above ground is sacred.  Every footfall crunching the snow, clutching the ground and driving me forward is a sacred act that I savor.  On with the show! (feels good to say that again my friends) Section one - Running tips Cold and snow running - http://runrunlive.com/snow-ho-ho Voices of reason – the interviews Dave McGillivray Dave McGillivray is a U.S.-based race director, philanthropist, author and athlete. In 1978, he ran across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.[1] Presently he is race director of the B.A.A. Boston Marathon and his team at DMSE, Inc. have organized numerous mass participatory fundraising endurance events since he founded it in 1981. Here are a few of his many career highlights: In 1978, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to his hometown of Medford, Mass., covering a total distance of 3,452 miles and ending to a standing ovation in Fenway Park. His effort raised thousands of dollars for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Two years later, he ran 1,520 miles from Winter Haven, Fla., to Boston to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, even meeting with President Jimmy Carter at the White House during the run. In 1982, McGillivray ran the Boston Marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded and being escorted by two guides to raise more than $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Mass. McGillivray’s many endurance events for charity are legendary, including running 120 miles in 24 hours thru 31 Mass. cities; an 86-story, 1,575-step run up Empire State Building in 13 minutes and 27 seconds; and running, cycling and swimming 1,522 miles thru six New England states while raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. In 2003, McGillivray created the DMSE Children’s Fitness Foundation to support non-profit organizations that use running to promote physical fitness in children and help solve the epidemic of childhood obesity. In 2004, McGillivray and a team of veteran marathon runners journeyed across the country following the same path he took in 1978, raising more than $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. Each year he runs his birthday age in miles, starting when he was 12, and has not missed one yet.  He was born on Aug. 22, 1954 – you can do the math.  The race director of the Boston Marathon as well as an accomplished runner, McGillivray has run the marathon each year since 1973. For 16 years he ran it with all the other runners and since he began working with the race in 1988 he has run the course afterwards.  His 2006 book, “The Last Pick”, which he co-wrote with Linda Glass Fechter, chronicles his childhood and career as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, motivating readers to never underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. Order here on Amazon.  A skilled motivational speaker, McGillivray has displayed his signature ability to engage and inspire listeners to more than 1,600 audiences from corporate executives to high school students. McGillivray has received numerous awards –  valedictorian at both his high school and college, 2005 Running USA Hall of Champions, 2007 Runner’s World Heroes of Running Award, the 2010 Fleet Feet Lifetime Commitment to Running Award, 2010 Ron Burton Community Service Award, the 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center's 2011 100 list, and inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in 2011 and the prestigious "Jimmy Award"  by the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for 30 years of contributing time and expertise to help raise millions for cancer research and treatment.  McGillivray has logged more than 150,000 miles, most for charity, raising millions for worthy causes.  He’s completed 126 marathons and competed in eight Hawaii Ironman Triathlons. His personal bests? Marathon: 2:29:58 and for the Ironman: 10:36:42 Section two – Life Skills Working on the important stuff - http://runrunlive.com/the-efficiency-trap Outro And so it goes.  It’s a momentum thing, isn’t it my friends?  If you can start you can keep going and soon repetition becomes habit and habit becomes a body of work.  I have to admit it was hard to get this jump started again – but now that we have it should get easier.  Just finished the book “Running with the Buffaloes”.  It documents a season of the Colorado University cross country team.  It is the year that Adam Goucher won the NCAA meet beating out Abdi Abdirahman and Bernard Lagat.  What I found interesting was the training they went through.  These are 20 year old kids, mind you.  They were running 100+ mile weeks, in singles all through the summer leading into the season and held that volume in the 80’s and 90’s right through the season.  As they came into the racing season they layered on a bunch of high quality anaerobic work as well.   Really shows you what you can get out of your machine if you do the work. On the flip side most of these guys were injured.  Adam made the Olympic trials but ended up having to retire early.  Abdi is still out there and ran the Olympic marathon with Meb in London 2012 – he DNF’ed.  Adam’s wife Kara is still out there too.  She came in 11th to Shalane’s 10th in London.   It was a good book if you’re a running geek and readable in the sense that it has a real narrative vs just the technical bits.  I raced the Mill Cities Relay last Sunday with my club and had a great race.  I did a warm up of 2.5 miles at around an 8:05 pace then raced the 9.5 mile leg at a sub 7:30 – which I felt pretty good about.  I don’t race that much anymore so it’s hard to gauge my fitness.  Next weekend, Dec. 21st Brian and I are putting on the 2nd annual Groton Marathon.  This is a self-supported 26.2 mile run around my home town of Groton Mass.  No big thing just a bunch of us out having a long run and having fun.  You folks are more than welcome to come and run all or part of it with us.  Shoot me note if you’re interested.  I was going to go down to Atlanta for the Jeff Galloway ½ this weekend but my life is just too busy to pull it off and I’ve been spending too many weekends on the road this fall.  I’m a bit fried.   I have, believe it or not a cruise coming up in January.  We’ll see how I can navigate that and my training.  I’m going to have to miss my favorite New Year’s Day race – the hangover classic up in Salisbury with its ocean plunge in the Atlantic.   The ‘How to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 12 weeks’ is in editing.  Thanks for all the inquiries. I’m shooting to get a promotional copy out by the end of the calendar year and you all can help me promote it and then a launch in February.  It’s been fun writing all this down, but challenging as well, because I really don’t have room for more projects in my life! But, I have to follow my own advice and get something done.  The Groton Marathon will be my 48th marathon.  Currently I’d love to find another race in January or February to be my 49th marathon so I can run Boston this year as my 50th.  It’s got a nice symmetry to it, right?   As for Boston I got a charity number again and I’ll be running for the Hoyts even though Dick has retired from Boston.  I’m not sure if someone else is going to be pushing Ricky this year or not.   Those are my plans, as nebulous as they are, for now.  Remember celebrate every day and live in the now because this could very well be as good as it gets.  And I’ll see you out there.  You can reach me, if you need to, at my website, which is due for an overhall, www.runrunlive.com and on all the social media platforms as cyktrussell.   Tagline Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer’s Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com. Chris’ Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad Runners. Email me at cyktrussell at mail dot com Twitter @cyktrussell All other social media “cyktrussell”   

RunRunLive 4.0 Episode 4-301, Dave McGillivray and Heart Disease in Runners (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4301.mp3] Link epi4301.mp3 Intro Bumper: Intro:  Prelude: When I started the RunRunLive Podcast in July of 1857 it was a different world.  I know it hasn't been 150 years but it does seem like a long time ago.  Now here we are at the sharp and dangerous blade edge of another season or edition or chapter – whatever you want to call it.   I chose the meme of running plus living not to show the dichotomy or separation of the two but to highlight the synergy and union of them.  When you combine endurance sports into your life one plus one equals 3.   Running has opened up worlds for me.  I like to say it has transformed me, but that isn't quite the right way to put it.  I wasn't a 300 pound diabetic asthmatic on the edge of physical extinction.  I was a normal, family guy stuck instead in the corporate grindwheel of modern existence.   Maybe that's a form of existential extinction.  Running didn't so much transform me as it enabled me to realize my own potential.  It snapped the strictures that tied me down and allowed me to transcend.  It broke my frame of reference and allowed my light to leak out into the world in a new way.   And that, my friends is what I still want to do.  I want you to come see the light.  We live in a time of great epidemic.  I don't mean Ebola or Aids.  I mean the epidemic of people not believing in themselves, not believing in positive change and not trying because they are constantly being told that they can't make a difference.   You can make a difference.  You can make a difference in your own life and in the lives of others by what you do, what you say and how you approach life.   I can make a difference too, for you, for me and for those tiny humans that I brought into this world.  Frankly, I don't care if you run or jog or walk or wriggle like a snake to Elvis love songs.  What concerns me is that you do nothing.  That you think small.  That you feel like you have nothing to give.  That it has all been done.  That you're not smart enough, not fast enough, not rich enough or not talented enough to make a difference in this world of ours.  What scares me is that you are afraid to try.   If all you can offer is a smile or a hug then please for God's sake give it today, give it now, because that is a tremendous gift that is in short supply.  90% of my days go by without either! What can I give?  What can RunRunLive give?  What small stone can we toss into the shimmering pool of humanity?  What ripples can we make?   For this version of the Podcast we will continue in mostly the same vein as version 3.  I'll structure it to fit in to a less-than-one-hour envelope.  I'll retain the 20+ minute interview with someone who can show us the achievement of honest synergy.  I'm going to move the running tips segment to the front half of the show and try to make it useful to you.   Likewise I'll retain the life skills segment that I think many people like and move that to the back half.  I'll keep up the intro and the outro comments.  Not that you care so much about what is going in on my life, but just some context and frame and storytelling to glue it all together.   I'm not going to drop in any more music, even though I can't for the life of me understand why some of you apparently hate punk rock and ska… That's it, no big changes, just a little shuffling.   Then why would I pause and take this time to ponder a new format?  This is topic that deserves more ink, but in short, because I believe in the power of introspection.  At some point as we draw into the New Year you should pause for introspection on your life and goals and direction too.  It can ignite an epiphany.   I reserve the right to change my mind.  I reserve the right to change your mind as well.  Are you ready to get out there?   Intro: Hello, my friends and welcome to the RunRunLive 4.0 podcast.  My name, is Chris, actually Christopher, which, if you want to talk about morphemes, is Greek for Christ Carrier and I've missed you.  Seems like ages since we have chatted.  What have I been up to?  There is so much that It's hard to summarize.   On the life front I quit my job, left my family and moved to a 50 acre ranch in Pioneer Kansas to raise yaks full time.  It's a peaceful plot of land amongst the industrial farms straddling Spring Creek.  I got myself 50 head of good breeding yaks.   The running is good too and I've constructed some interesting trails but there aren't a whole lot of hills.  The professional hit man business was fairly frantic throughout the fall so I spent a lot of time on the road.  Unfortunately, while I was gone the yaks went feral and now I have to be careful because they've organized and plot attacks against me when I leave the house.  It can be startling when you're lost in the peaceful reverie of a long run and one of those crazed, shaggy-headed beasts comes crashing out of the alfalfa at you.  ‘Yak Attack' would be a good name for a band. But – that's all personal fluff and stuff – you don't care about that.   On the running side I've just been working on maintaining my base and staying healthy since my 15 minutes of fame at the New York City Marathon.  I tried an experiment a couple weeks ago to see if I could run or more than an hour every day for 7 days straight.  Just to see if I could take the load.  The runs felt pretty good but my old and angry nemesis the plantar fasciitis flared up by day five and I aborted that flight of fancy.  Kudos to me to be able to set that quest aside and not hurt myself.  I've been logging most of my runs in the woods with Buddy the old Wonder Dog.  Including a nice nighttime headlamp run for 1:30 the day after the Thanksgiving snow storm.  I've got a good base and I'm not injured.  We're going to talk a bit about running in the snow in the first bit of today's episode.  Poor Buddy was pretty beat up by that run. He's definitely slowing down.  He was standing at the top of the stairs looking at them the way I look at them the day after a hard marathon.  He still gets pissed if I don't take him.  I won't take him on the road anymore, only the trails, off lease so he can pace himself.   If the hikers want to yell at me for having him off leash they can bite me.  That dog is 80 years old and still gets after it like a pro.  They should be so lucky when they're his age.  The other big adventure I've had this fall is around my own advancing decrepitude.   I know, it's all relative, you're rolling your eyes, here's this running geek who does back to back marathons in October complaining about fitness and performance. Truth is I haven't been able to muster a qualifying race since, I think, Boston 2011.  That's a long time ago.  I'm still; looking for race fitness since taking the 18 months or so off with the plantar fasciitis.   This fall I've taken the time to schedule all my general maintenance and upkeep appointments.  I got a physical, had my bloodwork done and got my eyes checked.  Basically checking the tire pressure and the oil.  Since I'm past the half-century mark my doctor scheduled me for a colonoscopy.  Which is a funny story.   Meanwhile, I've been bugged by my heart rate wigging out on me in long hard efforts so I asked him to set me up with a cardio appointment as well.  Not because anything is overtly wrong, just to make sure.  I don't want to go out for a run and not come back.  I owe to the yaks.  If the answer is “you're old” I'm ok with that, I just want to be safe.  Which plays into our interview of Dave McGilivary today about his adventures with heart disease.  I spent a week ‘prepping' for the colonoscopy, which is fairly miserable and involves a diet that is antithetical to what I'm used to, then slamming a variety of laxatives in large doses.  They want your colon to be squeaky clean when they go in there with their camera on a stick.   In the hospital, lying naked on a gurney, waiting for the anesthesiologist, I'm a bit nervous.  My resting heart rate, as you know is normally around 40 beats per minute.  Since I'm nervous I start doing some breathing meditation and it drops to 34-35.  Alarms are going off from the leads they have stuck on me.  The anesthesiologist does an EKG to make sure I'm not dying.  My heart, they tell me, stops beating for up to 2.5 seconds at a time.  I'm like, ‘yeah, so?'  What do you want it to be?  I can control it by thinking about it.  The colon guy wants to go ahead but the cardiologist on call says ‘no'.  4 days of prep, 3 hours of lying around naked in the hospital with leads stuck on me, and they send me home.  The irony here is that I was by far the healthiest person in that place.  They're wheeling in a parade of sick people, but I'm too fucking healthy to get a camera stuck quip my ass.  The world is a crazy place.  Since then I've been to the cardio and had the stress test and echo cardiogram that show there's nothing wrong with my heart.  I think I have a bit of an arrhythmia in one of my valve when I surge after 40 minutes of running.  That's what my data shows but they don't want to see my data.  Their 20 minute stress test was a nice hill workout but hardly long enough to stimulate the symptoms I'm seeing.  We'll see what the clowns in this circus think when I go back for my consult before Christmas.  Until that point I'm just going to keep doing what I do.  Every day above ground is sacred.  Every footfall crunching the snow, clutching the ground and driving me forward is a sacred act that I savor.  On with the show! (feels good to say that again my friends) Section one - Running tips Cold and snow running - http://runrunlive.com/snow-ho-ho Voices of reason – the interviews Dave McGillivray Dave McGillivray is a U.S.-based race director, philanthropist, author and athlete. In 1978, he ran across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.[1] Presently he is race director of the B.A.A. Boston Marathon and his team at DMSE, Inc. have organized numerous mass participatory fundraising endurance events since he founded it in 1981. Here are a few of his many career highlights: In 1978, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to his hometown of Medford, Mass., covering a total distance of 3,452 miles and ending to a standing ovation in Fenway Park. His effort raised thousands of dollars for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Two years later, he ran 1,520 miles from Winter Haven, Fla., to Boston to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, even meeting with President Jimmy Carter at the White House during the run. In 1982, McGillivray ran the Boston Marathon in 3:14 while blindfolded and being escorted by two guides to raise more than $10,000 for the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Mass. McGillivray's many endurance events for charity are legendary, including running 120 miles in 24 hours thru 31 Mass. cities; an 86-story, 1,575-step run up Empire State Building in 13 minutes and 27 seconds; and running, cycling and swimming 1,522 miles thru six New England states while raising $55,000 for the Jimmy Fund. In 2003, McGillivray created the DMSE Children's Fitness Foundation to support non-profit organizations that use running to promote physical fitness in children and help solve the epidemic of childhood obesity. In 2004, McGillivray and a team of veteran marathon runners journeyed across the country following the same path he took in 1978, raising more than $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. Each year he runs his birthday age in miles, starting when he was 12, and has not missed one yet.  He was born on Aug. 22, 1954 – you can do the math.  The race director of the Boston Marathon as well as an accomplished runner, McGillivray has run the marathon each year since 1973. For 16 years he ran it with all the other runners and since he began working with the race in 1988 he has run the course afterwards.  His 2006 book, “The Last Pick”, which he co-wrote with Linda Glass Fechter, chronicles his childhood and career as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, motivating readers to never underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. Order here on Amazon.  A skilled motivational speaker, McGillivray has displayed his signature ability to engage and inspire listeners to more than 1,600 audiences from corporate executives to high school students. McGillivray has received numerous awards –  valedictorian at both his high school and college, 2005 Running USA Hall of Champions, 2007 Runner's World Heroes of Running Award, the 2010 Fleet Feet Lifetime Commitment to Running Award, 2010 Ron Burton Community Service Award, the 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center's 2011 100 list, and inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in 2011 and the prestigious "Jimmy Award"  by the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for 30 years of contributing time and expertise to help raise millions for cancer research and treatment.  McGillivray has logged more than 150,000 miles, most for charity, raising millions for worthy causes.  He's completed 126 marathons and competed in eight Hawaii Ironman Triathlons. His personal bests? Marathon: 2:29:58 and for the Ironman: 10:36:42 Section two – Life Skills Working on the important stuff - http://runrunlive.com/the-efficiency-trap Outro And so it goes.  It's a momentum thing, isn't it my friends?  If you can start you can keep going and soon repetition becomes habit and habit becomes a body of work.  I have to admit it was hard to get this jump started again – but now that we have it should get easier.  Just finished the book “Running with the Buffaloes”.  It documents a season of the Colorado University cross country team.  It is the year that Adam Goucher won the NCAA meet beating out Abdi Abdirahman and Bernard Lagat.  What I found interesting was the training they went through.  These are 20 year old kids, mind you.  They were running 100+ mile weeks, in singles all through the summer leading into the season and held that volume in the 80's and 90's right through the season.  As they came into the racing season they layered on a bunch of high quality anaerobic work as well.   Really shows you what you can get out of your machine if you do the work. On the flip side most of these guys were injured.  Adam made the Olympic trials but ended up having to retire early.  Abdi is still out there and ran the Olympic marathon with Meb in London 2012 – he DNF'ed.  Adam's wife Kara is still out there too.  She came in 11th to Shalane's 10th in London.   It was a good book if you're a running geek and readable in the sense that it has a real narrative vs just the technical bits.  I raced the Mill Cities Relay last Sunday with my club and had a great race.  I did a warm up of 2.5 miles at around an 8:05 pace then raced the 9.5 mile leg at a sub 7:30 – which I felt pretty good about.  I don't race that much anymore so it's hard to gauge my fitness.  Next weekend, Dec. 21st Brian and I are putting on the 2nd annual Groton Marathon.  This is a self-supported 26.2 mile run around my home town of Groton Mass.  No big thing just a bunch of us out having a long run and having fun.  You folks are more than welcome to come and run all or part of it with us.  Shoot me note if you're interested.  I was going to go down to Atlanta for the Jeff Galloway ½ this weekend but my life is just too busy to pull it off and I've been spending too many weekends on the road this fall.  I'm a bit fried.   I have, believe it or not a cruise coming up in January.  We'll see how I can navigate that and my training.  I'm going to have to miss my favorite New Year's Day race – the hangover classic up in Salisbury with its ocean plunge in the Atlantic.   The ‘How to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 12 weeks' is in editing.  Thanks for all the inquiries. I'm shooting to get a promotional copy out by the end of the calendar year and you all can help me promote it and then a launch in February.  It's been fun writing all this down, but challenging as well, because I really don't have room for more projects in my life! But, I have to follow my own advice and get something done.  The Groton Marathon will be my 48th marathon.  Currently I'd love to find another race in January or February to be my 49th marathon so I can run Boston this year as my 50th.  It's got a nice symmetry to it, right?   As for Boston I got a charity number again and I'll be running for the Hoyts even though Dick has retired from Boston.  I'm not sure if someone else is going to be pushing Ricky this year or not.   Those are my plans, as nebulous as they are, for now.  Remember celebrate every day and live in the now because this could very well be as good as it gets.  And I'll see you out there.  You can reach me, if you need to, at my website, which is due for an overhall, www.runrunlive.com and on all the social media platforms as cyktrussell.   Tagline Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer's Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer's Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com. Chris' Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad Runners. Email me at cyktrussell at mail dot com Twitter @cyktrussell All other social media “cyktrussell”