Podcasts about history society

We had Peggy Chong as a guest in episode five of Unstoppable Mindset back in October of 2021. Peggy spends a great deal of her time researching blind people, she calls them her blind ancestors, to learn and write about their histories. For example, did you know that five blind people in the 1930s served as congressmen or U.S. senators? True. Did you know that the typewriter was invented for a blind countess? Did you know that it was a blind person who invented automobile cruise control?   Peggy will talk about all these stories and others. Recently she spent two weeks at the library of Congress researching one project that she will discuss. Spoiler alert: we don't get to hear the end of the story as Peggy has more research to do and more documents to uncover. However, the story she tells us this time is intriguing and spellbinding. So join me on a journey to learn more about the history of blind people and learn why you should even thank blind people for some of the inventions you take for granted today.       About the Guest:   Peggy Chong's first book in print, Don Mahoney: Blind Television Star is on the shelves at many book sellers.  She writes and lectures as The Blind History Lady.  Her infatuation with stories she heard of those she now calls her “Blind Ancestors” surprised and inspired her to learn more, for herself at first and then bring their light to the world.  Peggy researches their stories and brings to life the REAL struggles of what it was and is still, to be a blind person in the United States.   Her works have been published in _The Iowa History Journal, Dialogue Magazine, The Farmington Daily Times, The Braille Monitor and Future Reflections. _ Each month she sends to her email followers another story of a blind ancestor to inspire blind and sighted alike.   Currently, Peggy Chong chairs the Preservation of Historical Documents for the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado, to save the single-source files, records, news clippings and correspondence of the blind of Colorado dating back to 1915.   She has been an active part of the blind community for more than forty years.  Determined to imbue the service delivery system for the blind with a more positive and forward-looking philosophy, Peggy joined with other blind people in Minneapolis, Minnesota to establish Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND, Inc.), a training center for the blind designed to encourage its students to achieve self-sufficient and productive lives.  In 1985, Peggy Chong accepted the position of President of the Board of BLIND, Inc., a position she held for ten years.  During that time, she worked with many students of all ages and varying levels of vision, encouraging them to learn the alternative nonvisual techniques of blindness and fueling their imaginations to dream of a life where each of them could live and work in their communities on a basis of equality with their sighted peers.  She also helped many of them to make intelligent decisions about their vision--when it would be helpful and when it would hinder progress toward independence.   After moving to Baltimore Maryland in 1997, Peggy secured a position with BISM as an outreach/instructor.  In 1998, Peggy left BISM accepting a position with the Job Opportunities for the Blind program at the National Center for the Blind in Baltimore, Maryland.  For more than a year, she led a succession of intensive two-week training sessions designed to teach computer and other important job-readiness skills to blind individuals seeking employment.  She also worked individually with each job candidate to refine the job search according to the unique needs of each, and she worked with numerous employers to ensure that the characteristic of blindness was accurately perceived and the blind job applicant treated fairly.  When a job was offered to any of her students, she provided assistance before  and after securing the job to ensure that each of them had the tools needed to succeed in the new position.  Sometimes this involved connecting her student with other blind persons doing that same job somewhere in the United States.  At other times, she provided information and advice about new, non-traditional techniques that could be used to perform the job successfully.   Later, Peggy served for three years as the National Program Manager for NFB-NEWSLINE®, out of the Baltimore MD offices.  In this position, she formed valuable relationships with national and local newspapers, community-based service delivery organizations and rehabilitation programs, and literally thousands of blind men and women--many of them newly-blind--across the country.   After moving to Iowa in 2002, she became a private contractor providing consulting services and employment training to governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations.  Her work involved the dissemination of job-search, résumé creation and distribution services designed to help individuals--with or without disabilities--to secure competitive employment.  She also taught independent travel to the Blind.  She also served as the NFB-NEWSLINE Coordinator for the state of Iowa for several years.   For more than forty years, Peggy has been active in a variety of community organizations: the National Federation of the Blind, the American Cancer society, the Hawthorn Area Community Council, the Cooperating Fund Drive, Iowa and Albuquerque Genealogical Societies, Friends of the Iowa Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, The Friends of the Colorado Talking Book Library, State Rehabilitation Council for the Commission for the Blind of New Mexico, board member-ADA Advisory Committee for the City of Albuquerque Iowa Shares and Oasis of Albuquerque.    Ways to connect with Peggy:   Website: theblindhistorylady.com   Email: theblindhistorylady@gmail.com       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 subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   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 ** 00:16 Hi. I'm Michael Hinkson, Chief vision Officer for accessibe and the author of the number one New York Times best selling 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. Well, hello and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. We get to do a lot of all of that today. So it's kind of fun. In October of 2021 I had the honor and pleasure to interview well, let me rephrase that, talk with Peggy Chong, known as the blind history lady. Maybe it was a little bit more of an interview then, but we have really reshaped unstoppable mindset to be a conversation and not an interview. So it does get to be something where we get to talk with each other and ask each other questions and whatever else makes sense to do. Well, Peggy wrote a story about blind lady, and the story was published recently, and she did what she always does, she sends it to anyone on her mailing list. And I'm fortunate enough to be on it and read it, and I suddenly realized it has been two and a half years since we had Peggy on, and that has to change. So Peggy, welcome on to unstoppable mindset. Welcome   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. We get to do a lot of all of that today. So it's kind of fun. In October of 2021 I had the honor and pleasure to interview well, let me rephrase that, talk with Peggy Chong, known as the blind history lady. Maybe it was a little bit more of an interview then, but we have really reshaped unstoppable mindset to be a conversation and not an interview. So it does get to be something where we get to talk with each other and ask each other questions and whatever else makes sense to do. Well, Peggy wrote a story about blind lady, and the story was published recently, and she did what she always does, she sends it to anyone on her mailing list. And I'm fortunate enough to be on it and read it, and I suddenly realized it has been two and a half years since we had Peggy on, and that has to change. So Peggy, welcome on to unstoppable mindset. Welcome   Peggy Chong ** 02:22 to me. Yes, that's I was really surprised it had been two and a half years. So thanks for having me back.   Michael Hingson ** 02:29 Well anytime. So Peggy is known as the blind history lady because she specifically researches information about blind people, and she really researches their lives and then tells people about them, and we'll dig into a lot of that, but why don't we start? Maybe it'll be a little bit of redoing of what we did. Tell us about the early Peggy growing up.   Peggy Chong ** 02:52 Well, I grew up in a family where my mother was blind, and I have three blind siblings out of a family of five kids. So there's four of us, and my mother had gone to the North Dakota School for the Blind, so she was not eager to send her children to the School for the Blind at all. She wanted us to go to public school. So we well. She did not like the idea of being so far away from her family. She felt that it really there were some family dynamics that go in to that as well. But basically, she went up there in the end of August, early September, many times came home for Christmas, but not always, and then she went home the end of May. So she was really only with her family, mostly in the summers.   Michael Hingson ** 03:53 I remember when I was growing up and we moved to California from Chicago, and my parents had really heated arguments with the school district in Palmdale because they said I shouldn't go to school there. I should go to the school for the blind, which at that point was in well, and still is in Northern California. It hadn't relocated to Fremont, I don't think, yet, but they wanted me to go there, and my parents said, No, he's going to grow up and go to regular public schools. And it was a huge battle. Well, my parents won, but I suspect it was for probably a lot of the same reasons why your mom didn't want you guys to go.   Peggy Chong ** 04:35 Well, my mom came from a town of 400 people, so the public school there. First of all, if she had gone to public school, most kids didn't get past the eighth grade, you know, they went to work on the farms, and I think she would have not been able to get a lot of material in any kind of a format at a. All her ophthalmologist when she was six years old, wrote in her record that she needed to go to the school for the blind and to learn to read and write in braille, which I thought was amazing, yeah, for a doctor to say that at that time,   Michael Hingson ** 05:17 yeah, the doctors told my parents to send me off to a home, because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything or be useful at all, and all I would do would be to destroy the family dynamic and but you know, the other side of it is, as we know, you and I, places like the School for the Blind in California really did teach a lot. They were at that time. I think Newell Perry was, was still, still there. You know, Tim Brook had been one of his students, and they did teach a lot of the right stuff, along with providing the right material. But still, was a question of whether that's where you really wanted to be sent to or have your child sent to.   Peggy Chong ** 06:01 You know, one of the interesting things that has changed a lot of my thinking, doing this whole history dive that I have been doing, when I graduated from public school, I didn't really feel like a part of my class, but I thought I had gotten a better education, and at that time, the schools for the blind were changing. More kids were getting into the public schools who were more academic, and the schools for the blind were receiving more of the students who were not academic. So the kids that were graduating from the school for the blind about the same time, I were not always, you know, job ready. They weren't going to do much afterwards. And so my impression at that time was that that's what happens when you go to the school for the blind, not understanding the dynamics that the whole education system was going through and so on. But I look back at some of these people that I've researched, and they talk about how in the farming communities, which many of them came from, because our communities were fairly small, they went to the School of the blind, and they they fit in. They had they had peers at their level. Everything was in enough format. They could read mostly, or it the accommodations were being made for them. They competed in sports. They got involved in some of the community activities in the towns where the schools for the blind were so that they were connected with the community, and they seem to have not all of them. Of course, you you don't always want to tire everybody with the same brush, so to speak, but you don't you see more of a population of kids who had more self confidence, who had more of an idea of what they were going to do as a blind person after leaving the school, as opposed to the public school kids who were exposed to a lot of things, but if they didn't get in with the group, if they didn't get a chance to really participate if they were just sitting on the sidelines. They left the public school system, and they didn't go to college, necessarily. They didn't go to work, they went back to the family home. So when I graduated from high school, I thought a public school education was the best thing for a blind child. I'm not at that time, but I'm not so sure that that's really the case. I think you have to look at the child, the family situation, the school situation. Is the public school gonna provide a good, positive, supportive, learning structure and of course, always happen.   Michael Hingson ** 09:05 Of course, yeah, it still doesn't always happen, although, of course, there is a lot more material and there are a lot of tools available now that even when you and I graduated, were not available and students should be able to get a better public education, but the other part about it is the whole social acceptance and like you, I think I was really mostly on the sidelines. I was active in the science club and a couple things, but really not involved in a lot of the social organization of the schools, and that went all the way through high school, but I did at least have access to Braille books and Braille material, and I had parents who were vehemently in favor of me working to be a. A good student in the school, and they gave me every opportunity that I could. And outside of school, I was in the boy scouts, and so I did have other activities, and again, that was encouraged, and I was very fortunate for the most part. We dealt with scout leaders who encouraged it as well, probably because they had conversations from my parents, or with my parents, who said, look and and gave them an education so but it worked out pretty well. My dad was involved in Scouting as well. But I hear what you're saying, and I think that the schools for the blind, as near as I can tell today, have receded even further and are not really as much focused on the academics of students who are blind, but now they're dealing with multi handicap situations and other things that make it even more of a challenge for them.   Peggy Chong ** 10:50 Yeah, but I do think that you're right. Parents make a big difference. Family Support makes a huge difference. Yes,   Michael Hingson ** 10:59 yeah. Yeah. And the parents really do make all the difference, if they're willing to, as I describe it, be risk takers in that they let us explore, they let us do things. I'm sure they monitor us, but they allowed us to explore. They allowed us to learn about the world, and they knew instinctively that's what they needed to do, just like they would do it with any other kid.   Peggy Chong ** 11:26 Yeah, my parents let us ride bicycles. Yep, which I know that my mother, she did not feel confident enough to ride a bicycle, but as kids, wanted to and and she was, she was gonna just let it happen. And we had a few bike accidents. But, yeah, so does my sighted sister,   Michael Hingson ** 11:49 yeah. I mean, everybody does. So there's nothing, nothing new there. And eventually we bought a tandem bike so my brother and I could deliver newspapers together, and then that worked out pretty well, but I had my own bike and rode it around the neighborhood, wrote it to school for the first three years, and then transferred to a school across town, because there was a resource teacher at who was based at that school, and the resource teacher was the teacher who would work with the blind kids, so I had a period with her every day. And I learned braille in kindergarten in Chicago, but after Chicago, I didn't have access to it for three years, so I had to relearn it, which I did. But you know, things happen. Yeah, they do. So what'd you do after high school?   Peggy Chong ** 12:45 Well, after high school, I met this guy and got married. I thought about going to college, but I was I wasn't quite ready for college. I didn't really think that I was academically ready, so I went to work, and worked as a librarian assistant for two years, and then when our daughter came along, then I quit, became a stay at home mom, and got active in the National Federation of the Blind. I got active in tiny tots, you know, because my daughter went to tiny tots and US mom sat around and exchanged coupons and everything like that. While they were in there.   Michael Hingson ** 13:27 Did you exchange your share of coupons? Oh, yeah,   Peggy Chong ** 13:31 I tried to call my dog food coupons for the things that I needed, like milk or diapers or whatever. And   Michael Hingson ** 13:39 we should say that this guy you got married to, I'm sorry you have to put up with him all these years, but, but his name is Curtis Chung and Curtis has also appeared on unstoppable mindset, but we probably have to get him back on too, because there's lots to discuss.   Peggy Chong ** 13:55 Yeah, we were just discussing actually riding bikes when he was a kid, because his father let him explore and get hurt. His mother was not inclined to do that, and so his dad took a lot of heat, because Curtis would ride around on his three wheeler and crash into the wall or roll out in the street or whatever, but   Michael Hingson ** 14:21 Curtis has to learn to listen.   Peggy Chong ** 14:24 I don't think that's gonna happen.   Michael Hingson ** 14:29 He's not nearby, is he? Oh,   Peggy Chong ** 14:35 catch it on the podcast. Oh, he   Michael Hingson ** 14:36 will. But, but still, but, but even so, he did get to explore, which is, you know, what's really important? And I think that the blind people who have the most confidence or who are the most outgoing are the ones who were really given those opportunities by their parents. I believe. So, yeah, sure. So you didn't go to college, you You did other things, which is cool, and exchanged coupons. I've never been much of a coupon collector, and even with online coupons, I don't do nearly as much of that as I probably should.   Peggy Chong ** 15:14 Well, I don't do that anymore either,   Michael Hingson ** 15:15 but Instacart is our friend. Yeah, that's true. I did   Peggy Chong ** 15:19 go back to college for a while, and it actually was a really big boost in my self esteem, because I went back to college thinking, I've got to start over. Got to start from scratch. And so I took the basic courses that you take when you're a freshman, and I aced them, and I was, I was quite surprised at myself, so it gave me, it gave me a lot more confidence in myself to go ahead and try new things. I got out more into the community, joined the neighborhood group. I wrote letters, wrote articles for newsletters, and really start to come into myself, probably when my daughter was about 10.   Michael Hingson ** 16:10 And she's surprised how much you've learned over the years, right?   Peggy Chong ** 16:13 Well, I was pretty dumb there between her 18th and 21st year, but I got pretty smart after that. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. And since she's 45 now, you know, I've been smart for a while. What a relief. No kidding, I feel very lucky when I look at the relationships that I read about in all these families that I research, and the dynamics of the families and how kids don't get along, and they never spoke to their parents after they were 22 or whatever. And I think, gee, you know, I got my fighting with my daughter all done by the time she was 21 now we're friends, so that's good,   Michael Hingson ** 16:52 yeah, which works out. So when did you start getting interested in this whole business of researching blind ancestors and learning about the history of blind people.   Peggy Chong ** 17:05 Well, that actually started in my 20s. The NFB of Minnesota owned a home for the blind, and we decided that it was it was past its time. We did not need segregated housing for blind people, so we were going to sell the property. That meant you had to clean out the building. And there was a lot of stuff in there, and they had kept the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota, started as the Minnesota State organization of the blind, and in 1920 so they had some correspondence going back to 1919 and they kept everything. I mean, it was really cool. I was given the job of going through all of the boxes and file cabinets and getting rid of stuff, because we were going from this three story building to 1000 square feet office, and has to all fit, so everything had to go into one file cabinet, and I'm and they gave me the job because I had grown up in The blank community, and as a kid, I had known the people from North Dakota and Minnesota who were the blind newspaper dealers, the blind rug weavers, the blind door to door salesmen, the blind janitors. And they thought I would recognize people more than the rest of them would. So I'm going through stuff and pitching and pitching and pitching all this stuff into the trash. Every so often I stopped to read something, and one of the letters that I read was from the early 20s, from one of the board members to another one, describing their meeting with our blind state congressman, our blind US congressman, excuse me, and of course, they don't tell who it is. I didn't know there was a blind congressman, so I put that aside, and I started to pay more and more attention, so that blind Congressman became my first, what I call ancestor. I kept information that I had found here and there, kept those letters and put them in a box, and I went after who, what turned out to be Thomas David Shaw, who was the blind congressman who was working on a bill called the Robbins bill that would have been kind of a rehabilitation bill, putting some things together that would be similar to what our Randolph Shepherd vendor program is today. That bill didn't go anywhere. Um. But he then became a US senator, and he was one of two blind senators in the US Senate in the 1930s the other being Thomas prior gore. Thomas Shaw was killed by a hit and run driver just before Christmas of 1935 and he's a great ancestor to start with, because he had all this mystery around him, and you just had to know. So the driver of the car got out after he driven about a half a block and yelled back, well, he shouldn't have been in the street anyway. Now he was with his cited aid him one of his legislative aides, who was also hit and seriously hurt but but did survive that aid wrote a book about 20 some years later, as did the daughter of a newspaper man from Minneapolis who was killed in the very same way two weeks before Shaw was killed, and that newspaper reporter moved into this apartment a couple of weeks before he was hit by a car out of Thomas Shaw's house in Minneapolis because he was being harassed for the article He was working on about the mafia infiltrating the Democratic Party, and Shaw was helping him with this article. And so Shaw's family believed, as did the daughter who wrote the book about her dad, the reporter, as did the person who was with him that day, they all said that, you know, it was a he was deliberately hit, a man who hit him, he was deliberately hit because, if you talk to his grandson or his daughter in law, that they they believe it was a contract hit. But the man who hit him, who was unemployed. This was, you know, the middle of the Depression. He was unemployed, and all of a sudden, couple of years later, he has a brand new house that's paid for. He has no job. His children are in private school. They go on to college. He has no job. Where'd the money come from? Everybody wanted to know, and it was so he was somebody who I researched a lot, and that's before computers, and that was before you had an opportunity to go online, and before things were digitized. So you had to always go someplace and have somebody look it up for you. And a lot of times I would call and I would say, Well, can you read it to me over the phone? I didn't tell them I couldn't read it myself. I just asked them to read it. And I was surprised how many times people did read it, read articles to me, read them, the collection information to me, and so on. So he was my first ancestor. And because he was probably somebody I researched for good 30 years, I kind of got that in my blood, and then in about 2000 I decided I was going to do my family tree ancestry.com. Had just gotten started, and I thought, well, you know, why not? Keeps me busy for the winter. That is, it's it is worse addiction than chocolate or coke. I am here to tell you. I have been a subscriber of ancestor.com for a long time, and by and large, things are fairly accessible with that, unless you want to read the original document, because things were mostly handwritten, and these are scanned images, pictures of the originals and so on. But I'm surprised how many people are transcribing for their family trees, the information, the articles, the pieces from the books. So sometimes I get into things and it's already transcribed for me, I'm really kind of impressed   Michael Hingson ** 24:17 that works out very well.   Peggy Chong ** 24:18 I think so. So I was one who didn't like history in school because it didn't apply to me. And the few things that I had saved from Minnesota, you know, that applied to me because that was an organization I belonged to, and some of the people I had known. So I started with some of them because it applied to me. But once I really got into the family history, I just really got the bug. And when I would stall out on my family, I'd reach into now this collection that was more than a box or two of stuff that I have been collecting. And. Say, Well, I wonder what I can find about this person. Wonder what I can find about that person. And I took all these classes on how to research through the genealogical societies, several of them, and because it was when computers were not really used for genealogical research, they gave me a lot of information on the techniques that they use so they don't have to travel. And I used all of those techniques, and a lot of them are very great techniques that a blind person can use because for a $15 donation to this Genealogical Society, or this History Society, or this public library, there's some volunteer that's just willing to dig into something and find out what it is I want to know, and then they'll send me a nice email back, or a bunch of papers in the mail that I'll have to scan. But it's been really interesting to find out how easy it has been to dig into a lot of these old documents with the help of other people who have no idea that I'm blind at all,   Michael Hingson ** 26:13 which, which is, of course, part of the issue. They don't even know you're blind.   Peggy Chong ** 26:18 No, they have no clue. But they would do that for someone else. Yeah? So, yeah, I just take advantage of the opportunities that are already there and maximize them to my benefit.   Michael Hingson ** 26:31 So what are some of the early stories that you found that really fascinated you and that you found interesting that you've published?   Peggy Chong ** 26:41 Well, the one that just came out this month about Helen may Martin, the blind and deaf woman who was a concert pianist, is a fascinating story to me. And here's another example of this. Is a blind and deaf person who was born in 1895 the schools for the blind didn't take a blind and deaf student, and the schools for the deaf didn't take a deaf and blind student. In many parts of the country to get in as a deaf blind student, you either had to have a lot of money, or there just happened to have, happened to be somebody who was donating extra money at the time. You just happened to have a teacher that was skilled in working with one on one with a deafblind student. So Helen may didn't have that. She was born in Nebraska. The Nebraska school for the blind and deaf didn't want or the Kansas School for the blind and deaf didn't one of the Missouri School for the Blind in the School for the Deaf didn't want her, so her mother decided Helen is going to grow up and she is going to be the best of whatever she can be.   Michael Hingson ** 27:53 There's mom again. There's the family again. Well, mom   Peggy Chong ** 27:56 was a music teacher. Dad was a salesman who was on the road a lot, but he was also musically inclined, and they had a piano in the house. Mom taught music, and she kept Helen with her a lot. And Helen thought this was a game on the piano the keys and doing it, so she wanted to learn the game too. Mom, had her put her hand on the piano to feel the vibrations. Later on, it was the heel of her foot to feel the vibrations and how she would press the key harder and the vibrations of the piano were more full. When Helen started to really learn how to play the pieces, her mother would teach her with one hand, then the other, and they would put it together. And then her mother started to explain musical notes by using beans. A whole note was one bean. A half a note was two Beans. Quarter note was four beans. And explained how that worked to Helen. Then they would play these pieces, and the mother would say, Well, this is a song about the flowers, or this is a song about someone's life. And so Helen needed to know the story, and then the music had feeling her emotions. She understood the music better, and she learned to play with feeling as well. And when she was about 18, she wrote to the schools for the blind, asking again to have somebody come and teach her. Now, her mother was a smart woman. She knew there were magazines for the blind, and so she wrote and got everything she could find. Well, somewhere in New York point, somewhere in Braille,   Michael Hingson ** 29:56 Moon type and all of this. Hmm. And   Peggy Chong ** 30:01 so Helen learned several different ways to read. Her mother learned some of it and taught Helen. And then Helen, through reading these magazines, learned to read much better.   Michael Hingson ** 30:16 Let me stop you for a second, because I think it's important that listeners understand. You know, Braille was developed by Louis Braille in 1824, but it was quite a while before Braille itself was adopted. And one of the things that a lot of schools and people did early on, if you will, was assume that blind students could learn to feel raised regular characters, and then when they discovered that wasn't working as well as it could, other kind of languages were developed. Says Peggy said New York point and I said Moon type, which are two different languages, if you will, of raised characters that are somewhat different from Braille than it was a while before people realized finally that there were advantages to what Braille offered, because it was a very simple in a sense, dot configuration, but people could learn to read it and learn to read it well and read fast with it.   Peggy Chong ** 31:18 New York point was two dots high and four dots wide, right. And the New York point was started in New York, of course, with the schools there, Perkins, the Perkins School for the Blind, which began in the 1930 in the 1830s used the raise print system. They had their own printing press and everything. So they had all of the equipment to print their own books. Therefore they were invested in more ways than one into that raised system. The first school that actually taught Braille in this country was the Missouri School for the Blind in 1860 so Braille didn't quite catch on here. New York point had caught on, and what had spread across, especially New England and the East Coast, far more than Braille, the Braille did, which is why the Matilda Ziegler, what magazine was in Braille. Some of the religious magazines were Matilda Ziegler, I'm sorry, was in New York point at first, before it went into Braille. So   Michael Hingson ** 32:33 why do you think Braille finally caught on?   Peggy Chong ** 32:36 Well, it had a lot to do with money, but it also had to do with the fact that, you know, the schools for the blind, up until probably about the 1860s did more lecture and answer, question and answer, and that's how you learn they're just they didn't have either the money or the printing press or the access to actual tactile books for the kids. So the teachers themselves would lecture, and they would memorize and recite a lot more than than the sighted children did in the schools, although my dad tells stories about how they didn't have school a lot of school books, either in his school when he was growing up. I don't know, maybe that wasn't so different. But when Helen was reading things, she was getting some magazines from France, because Europe, England had publications in braille, and they would they could be received here in the United States. So her mother signed her up for those signed her up for newsletters coming out of California. California was quite a literate state in that the school for the blind, the school in Berkeley, the Institute for the Blind, they all had printing presses so that they could manufacture their books and share them. So Ohio was another place that her mother got her books Helen's books from as well. So she got all this material encouraged Helen to read and read and read, and she also taught Helen to type at the age of six, because her mother knew how to type. So her mother taught her how to type again. It was kind of a game. The keyboard was a game, and she learned to type quite well, so she kept a diary in print, and she wrote articles her mother would read to her, and they developed, at first, their own sign language, and then her mother and her sister. Her learned sign language, and they would spell into Helen's hand. Now, her dad died when she was about 1220, her sister was about 12 at the time, and so the mother had to go back to work. She became a seamstress. She had her own shop. She sewed dresses for people in town, and Helen learned how to do that. Helen had learned how to cook. She was constantly by her mother's side, so when her mother went to work, she was in charge of the house. Her mother got her classes at conservatories of music. Her mother went with her and translated into Helen's hand what was being said for the class. She never graduated from a conservatory, but because of her exposure, people were like this. She's deaf and she's blind and she's playing the piano. This is so amazing. She plays it with feeling. And so she would get a little concert here, and a little concert there. And pretty soon it expanded, and her mother thought, well, let's see where it goes, you know? So she started promoting her daughter, getting her all these concerts. There were all these professionals musicians, educators, even from the schools for the blind, who would come and watch Helen perform, because they just couldn't believe a deafblind person could do this. And when Helen would travel, she had the same experience. Her mother would send ahead all this information about Helen may Martin, the deafblind piano pianist who is going to perform, and there would be the announcement in the paper. But many times, the reporters didn't believe that Helen was deafblind, so they didn't put the article in. They would wait till after the performance, and then there would be the article about Ellen Mae Martin, and I went to see her, and she really is deaf and she really is blind, and she plays beautifully. Ripley's, believe it or not, had a program on the radio. He also had a Ripley's, believe it or not, theater in New York, and he sent someone out to check out Helen and see if she really was a deafblind pianist. And discovered that she was, and he brought her on her show. She was well received in New York, and got a multi week contract to perform at his, believe it or not, theater in New York. So she was in New York for quite a while, several months, performing for many concerts and many theaters in New York. Helen died in 1947 so she was like about 5252 years old, so she wasn't really that old. And her sister died in 1939 who was much younger than she was. So Mrs. Martin ended up out living all of her children, neither of Helen or her sister ever married or had children. So her mother ended up, not in poverty, but she certainly was not a wealthy woman when she passed away. But before she passed away, she supposedly gave all of Helen's diaries to some historical society, of which no one can find, which I'm hoping they're in a back box behind the furnace somewhere, and someday they'll be unearthed, because that would be fascinating, the little bits of her journal that were recorded in newspapers. She wrote very well. She had a very strong vocabulary. Some people equate deaf people with having a smaller vocabulary. That was certainly not the case with Helen, and Helen has been somebody that has really touched a lot of people. When you think about what you can and cannot do, nobody told Helen she couldn't. Nobody said, you know, as a deaf person, probably the piano is not something you should try to take up. But encouraged her because she had an interest, and worked with Helen's interests, and worked with what Helen knew, and her mother did that and encouraged her, made sure she was literate because she was a lot older when she went to school, really, when she went to school, she. Took about five years to complete the academic courses at the School for the Blind, and she did get a certificate of graduation she was older than the rest of the students. Her mother had blind pianists come and work with Helen while Helen was growing up, so she had music teachers, and she found some deaf students, graduates from the schools for the deaf, from other states, sometimes Kansas, who would come and work with the family. That's how they learn sign languages. So Helen's mother was extremely important with making Helen who she was I wonder   Michael Hingson ** 40:40 if she ever met Helen Keller. Yes, she did.   Peggy Chong ** 40:44 They both met when they were adults. Helen may Martin had written to Helen Keller, and Helen Keller had heard about the blind woman who was the pianist, the blind and deaf woman. So when Helen Keller went on one of her tours. She went to Nebraska, and Helen and her mother went and stayed with a relative and got an audience with Helen Keller. The Of course, Helen Keller was always followed by reporters, and so they reported on the meeting of the two Helens, and they called Helen may Martin, the second Helen Keller, well, Helen Keller was not happy with that. She said, Are you kidding? She is not the second Helen Keller, she has far exceeded everything I could have ever done.   Michael Hingson ** 41:38 I can see her say that, yes, it   Peggy Chong ** 41:40 was just, it was really wonderful. She scolded the reporter, and that reporter didn't report on the scolding, but another reporter reported on Helen Keller scolding the reporter for saying that she was the second. Helen Keller, and don't you call her at the second? Helen Keller, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 41:59 you know, it's interesting that you, you clearly worked at this pretty hard and found a lot of information about her, even so. And you're you're right. It would be nice to find her journals and the other things, and I bet you will at some point, they're somewhere.   Peggy Chong ** 42:15 I think so I think they're somewhere.   Michael Hingson ** 42:20 Now I have to go back to a story that you talked about a little bit on our first unstoppable mindset episode, because you said something here that brought it up, and that is that Helen may Martin learn to type, tell us about the history of the typewriter. Will you? Oh, I love to I know it's a great story.   Peggy Chong ** 42:42 When I go to talk to the students who are at agencies for the blind learning to be blind people when they're in their adjustment to blindness, training, a lot of them, oh, talk about how difficult the computer is because it's so difficult you can't see the keys. And I love to tell the story of the invention of the typewriter, because it was an invention for blind people. And we have forgotten that as a society, the typewriter was the invention of a man who was overly friendly with this Countess, married to this count. The Count wasn't attentive enough for the Countess, so she had to find other interests, friends, but they would write back and forth. Now the problem was the ladies in waiting who wrote the letters to her friend, her special friend, showed them to the count, and that just, you know, wasn't a good thing. So, and they also didn't get delivered either, because if the count didn't like it, he had the letters tried, so he invented this device where she could type out the letters and then send them to him without having a ladies maid between them. And it caught on the schools for the blind in New York, especially the schools for the blind taught typing at the school and their students by the late 1880s and early 1890s were going to state fairs and the World's Fair demonstrating the typewriter for the Remington company as something that really would help the gentlemen who were secretaries in the office. Lady secretaries were not quite yet the thing and   Michael Hingson ** 44:42 would have helped Bob Cratchit Anyway, go ahead,   Peggy Chong ** 44:46 you never know. Do you humbug? I love that story. Yeah, but yes. So their students graduated, were really good typists and. They saw to him that they got put into insurance companies, law firms, and highlighted their students as typists. And the typewriter was also catching on really well in the business community, because now you didn't have to decipher some of that handwriting. And believe me, that handwriting that still exists from back then is very difficult, always doing to figure out just   Michael Hingson ** 45:27 handwriting of old days or days of your that is hard to understand. So I'm told,   Peggy Chong ** 45:33 No, it's today's but yes, well, and they're actually teaching handwriting again in school. A little side note is that I have a lot of volunteers that have been transcribing documents for me from about 1915 to about 1980 from the collection of old files at the Colorado Center for the Blind that we unearthed and we found we could not use high school students and some younger college students because they couldn't read handwriting. We had to, we had to go into the retirement communities to find our volunteers who were very good, by the way. But anyway, so the typewriter has was really the communication material, tool that was used by so many blind people for a long time, and I think we got away from that now, where we have to have special keyboards for the blind. Some places are really insistent on that. Some blind people are insistent on that when you were meant not to look at the keys. That's why the two little bumps on the F and the H are there is so that you could orient yourself and continue typing looking at the paper. The sighted ladies would look at the paper and type their material and not have to look at their keys. So something that we have forgotten, and you know, like the scanner, is, you know, a product that was originally designed for blind people. We forgotten that, I think, in our society as well. But I like the inventions that blind people have contributed, such as cruise control. That was an invention by a blind man to make the cars in his lot stand out from the other car dealers in his small town. There was a man in Minnesota who had lost his hand as well as his eyesight and part of his hearing. He went to the summer programs for adult blind people at the School for the Blind in the 19 late 20s, early 30s. There were no programs for adult blind in the in the state, really at that point, unless you wanted to make brooms. They suggested that he become a piano tuner. And he said, Well, you know, I really wasn't very musical when I had my sight and my hearing, I don't really see how I can be a piano tuner if I can't hear it and I only have one hand. So what he got out of those summer programs, though, was he met other blind people who gave him job leads, and they told him to go to this broom factory in Minneapolis, because it was owned by a blind guy. And he employed some blind guys and sighted guys as well. So he went up there, and this is during the Depression, and the guy said, you know, I really love to help you. I don't need anybody in the factory. I have all the blind salesmen. Most of his salesmen were blind. I have all the salesmen that I can use for this area, but you know, if you want to branch out and head out to like, say, North Dakota or South Dakota, I'd be glad to hire you. And probably thought he'd never heard from the guy again, but the guy came back and says, Well, I found another guy. He doesn't have a job, he doesn't have a home, but he's got a pickup. So the two of them bought as many brooms as they could put into the pickup, and they headed out. Sold all the brooms. They came back. The two men, in a couple of years, earned enough money where they both bought property, and this guy, he bought the property, and what we would call today flipped. It bought a duplex and got renters in. It continued to sell brooms until he really became pretty handy at flipping houses, buying and selling property. So he got kind of tired, though, because, you know, he's now, like, close to 50 years old. Wild, and he has to change the storm windows on the house in Minnesota. Have to put on the screens in the summer and the storms in the winter. And he's climbing up the ladder. He's only got one hand trying to change the windows on the second story. And thought, There has got to be a better way to do this. I really don't want to keep climbing up this ladder. So I talked to this other guy, a blind guy, who was a furniture builder, had his own furniture shop. And he told the guy, this is my idea. I want to design a window where it comes in on a hinge, and then I can just reach in, pull in the storm, clean it, put it back, and they invented this window. He built a few of them on his own, demonstrated that it worked, put it in his house. This window company came along, bought the patent and the blank, I never worked again. He didn't have to work again. The neat thing though, was when he went blind, his wife had passed away a couple of years before, and he became very depressed, lost his job, lost his house that he had paid for his relatives, and the county came and took his three children away. When he sold his patent, he got two of his children back. His oldest child was now in the service and serving in World War Two. But he got his children back. He provided a home for his mother. He actually remarried again, you know, a man who just came back from nothing, and then out of his own need, created this window that many houses in the Midwest, the older houses built in the late 40s and 50s, have those windows that you pull in on a hinge and open up, clean them and close them   Michael Hingson ** 52:03 back out. Now, of course, we have dual pane windows and other things like that. But, yeah, yeah, so, so who invented the scanner?   Peggy Chong ** 52:12 Well, that was Ray Kurzweil. I   Michael Hingson ** 52:14 just wanted to see if you'd say that it's interesting. Kurzweil   Peggy Chong ** 52:19 is an interesting guy, you know, he is still alive and still very concerned about blind people, and active in the blind community, providing funds for scholarships and so on. We correspond, yeah, and he had this wonderful idea in the 70s to provide a scanner that would read to the blind, and it was as huge. I mean, it was bigger than my washing machine.   Michael Hingson ** 52:48 Yeah, the whole thing weighed 400 pounds, not too gosh, yeah,   Peggy Chong ** 52:51 the library, the public library in Minneapolis, bought one. Unfortunately, not a lot of people used it because they locked it up because they were afraid it was going to get broken.   Michael Hingson ** 53:03 That makes sense somehow. Yeah, right. It's, it's interesting, though, also to try to describe how the scanner worked, because you, you can't really say it took a picture like you would do today with a phone. No, because the way it worked was there was a piece of technology called a charge couple device. Won't go into the theory of that, but basically, the scanner would move up and down the page, like an inch at a time, scanning across, then dropping down, scanning back, dropping down, and so on, building up an image that took almost a minute to do. And then the computer would take probably anywhere from depending on the complexity, 20 seconds, to 30 or 45 seconds, to process it. And then it would read out loud.   Peggy Chong ** 53:52 But it worked, and you had access to that book right, and   Michael Hingson ** 53:58 you had access to that book right away, and it worked. And of course, it did get better over time. And then Ray was also very much involved in unlimited vocabulary, voice input and other things. So you mentioned two blind senators. Were there any other blind national politicians.   Peggy Chong ** 54:22 There were five blind congressmen all together. There was Thomas Shaw and there was Matthew Dunn. He served from 1935 to 1940 he was the last of any of our national representatives as blind people. And Matthew Dunn came from Pennsylvania. He was an interesting person because he did really he was interested in politics, but it was not what he wanted as a career, but he did it because he was a part of the. The Pennsylvania Association for the Blind, which was one of the original affiliates of the National Federation of the Blind. They were very concerned that the welfare system in the country was going federal, which was a good thing and a bad thing, a good thing if it was done right, a bad thing if it was not. And they knew from just Pennsylvania alone, how a charity system, a welfare system, a poor house system, they had all these different types of programs to serve blind people, as far as financial was concerned, and they had many situations in their state where if you lived on one side of the street as a blind person, you could get maybe $8 a month if you lived on the Other side, maybe only two, because you crossed a county line or you crossed out of the sea. And so they wanted to have some input on a federal level to all this, these pieces of legislation, Social Security, the rehabilitation legislation that was being bandied about, they wanted to have some input into it, to make sure that it wasn't a charity, that it wasn't for the poor, that it was something that would make you have A step up, that you could get out of poverty, that you wouldn't be stuck there, that you would have an opportunity to get a job, that you would have an opportunity to go to school and still get some financial support, that you could own your own home and maybe still get some financial support, because if you were a blind person in Pennsylvania, in some parts of the state, and you went blind at, say, 40 years old, your house was paid for. You had to sell that house or that asset in order to get financial support. And they wanted people to have a right to protect what they have so they can get a step up and get back to work. And Matthew Dunn was sent there by the blind people, and he campaigned on those issues, about wanting to go to Washington to make sure that the new laws regarding social security rehabilitation would provide people an opportunity to progress, rather than stay at home, remain in poor farms, remain in nursing homes. So he was, it was an interesting sort   Michael Hingson ** 58:01 and it's a battle that still goes on today. For   Peggy Chong ** 58:06 you know, as much as we look at history, you know, if you don't know your history, you're bound to repeat it. And you just look at things, and they just cycle through and cycle through. I remember in the 1920 minutes of the NFB of Minnesota. Back then, it was called the Minnesota State organization the blind. There were three resolutions that were just about the same as three of the resolutions at the 1995 convention. We haven't gone very far have we   Michael Hingson ** 58:40 not in some ways, you know, we have been doing this mostly an hour. But I can't end this without saying two things. One, we'll have to do another one, but, but the other one is, tell me a little bit about your recent trip to Washington. That had to be fascinating. It was   Peggy Chong ** 58:59 fascinating. I went to Washington knowing very little. What I thought I knew turned out not to be what I should have known. I came across a newspaper article about, oh, four years five years ago, five years ago, I guess, now, about a blind guy, a broom maker, who had gotten an award from the Harmon Foundation, and I couldn't understand why he got the award, because it didn't really say why he got the award. He just got an award. Well, I didn't find out much about the broom maker, so I decided to look in the Harmon Foundation, and what I had learned online was that the Harmon Foundation had given a lot of support, financial awards, loans to the black community who were into art. And I couldn't figure out how this broom maker, this white guy, Bloom. Broom maker fit in, and there was nothing online about it, until I got into the Library of Congress and found the Harmon foundation collection. And I looked at that and went, Oh my gosh, there must be a lot of data there, because the Harmon foundation collection goes from 1913 to 1965 there's 122 boxes. 14 of them are for this one program. Now there's about, oh, maybe 20, 3040, programs that the Harmon Foundation also has in this collection, none of them have that many boxes connected with it. So I thought I had hit a gold mine, and then way I did just not what I anticipated. The first two days, I spent 11 days in the Library of Congress. The first two days, I took the boxes chronologically and could not figure out what the heck was going on, because it none of it made sense. None of it fit into the stuff I knew about the program and the strangest stuff were coming up. People were writing on behalf of a school for the blind, or a public school area wanting a playground for the School for the Blind, and I'm thinking now in an awards a literary award program, why would you write and ask that? And then there were all these letters from blind people wanting to go to college and asking for a loan. And again, I thought, what? That just doesn't fit. So it took me till the third day before I got an understanding of exactly what was going on the Harmon foundation. William Harmon was the chair. He decided in 1927 he wanted a new program that would provide awards to blind people, much like their literary program that was providing scholarships for college students. They had a essay contest for farmers down in the south, and they would award them money to beautify their their property. They also had this program once I saw their newsletters where they had provided within like a five year period, over 50 playgrounds to schools or Communities for Children. And so it's starting to dawn on me that there's this group of people who've done their research on the Harmon Foundation, and there's a group of people that haven't done their research. And then there's what's going on with the award the Harmon foundation knew they had to reach out to the blind community. Part of their structure, when they were doing new awards, and they did many, was to reach out, put an advisory committee together with sewn from the Harmon foundation and those in that community in which they were trying to enhance so they wanted to reach out to the blind community. They found the Matilda Ziegler magazine, and they had the editor as one of their advisory committees, and they reached out to the American Foundation for the Blind, and ended up with a few of their representatives on that advisory committee, their normal process, the Harmon Foundation's normal process was then to take this advisory committee and then reach down into the community and have all these nominators who would take the applications for the awards and seek out applicants. Get the applications filled out, get the supporting documents filled out. For example, in their their farm and land beautification, one photographs needed to be taken sometimes, or they needed to get the names of some of the plants they were using. Sometimes, fruits and vegetables were sent to the Harmon foundation to show, hey, look how good my garden went, that kind of thing. So the nominators were to make sure that all of that was completed before the application was then sent in. That didn't work the application process. The Harmon Foundation put the application together, much like their other programs, and sent it to the advisory committee, and there were about 12 different versions of it after I went to the advisory committee in the Harmon. Original version that they had asked for award. They were going to give out 100 awards in total, and there were about eight categories, and they were going to have an award for the person who submits this great work of literary work, they were going to have an award for people who wrote essays about how they have made a difference in their life, how they made a difference in other people's lives, as blind people, and especially in that one, there's a little sub noted, and it says, when it's talking about what you might include in the essay, which is usually only about a paragraph it mentioned, and talk about how, as you progressed, your posture got better, your became more involved in the community. Well, the advisory committee ended up pulling all of that out. So the final application had a page of, is this person neat? Is this person polite? What is the posture of this person? All these personal things that when the blind people who were reading the Matilda Ziegler magazine, because Matilda Ziegler put all this information about the awards, they did a lot of promotion about the awards. They sent in essays from their previous editions of their Matilda magazine to the Harmon foundation to say these are the kind of essays that blind people can write, and they can tell you about how they have made a difference in their lives. They've made a success of this career. They have been instrumental in building their community school or their community church. But the Matilda Ziegler magazine people got the application and filled out what they thought was important, the the references and so on. And they get to all this stuff about their personal behavior, and one lady writes in and says, you know, I'm submitting my essay, but I'm not going to fill out these pieces because I don't think it has any bearing on whether or not my essay should be, should be judged on that. So I'm, I'm getting the drift here that the people that were sending in essays were not completing their application. The deadline the applications were sent out on April 15 of 1928 the deadline was August 15 of 1928 AFB provided a list of all of the organizations, the mailing list of all the names, organizations, schools, workshops for the blind, and the Harmon foundation sent out letters asking all of their these agency people to be the nominators. The AFB did not do that. They didn't write separate cover, hey, we're participating in this Harmon Foundation award, and we want you to support this award, be a nominator, and we want you to help fill out these applications and send them back so these principals at the schools for the blind or in the public schools who oversaw the program for public schools or the director of a workshop,   Peggy Chong ** 1:08:51 they they would either totally ignore it, or they would write back, well, sure, I'll be a nominator. I don't know what it involves, but you can use my name. So come August 15, the Harmon foundation doesn't have enough accepted applications to fill the awards, so they they're contacting AFB and Matilda Ziegler, what do we do? They extend the award for children and for been blind for two years. How has how have you progressed in two years to November 1, they still don't get enough because what happened is, especially with a lot of these schools, they saw it as a charity award, not a literary award. And so they would send the application in, partially filled out, and say, this student deserves this award because they came to the school and they only had one set of clothing, and we have been needing to support the student, or you need to gi

Once upon a time, the Great Indian Bustard was close to becoming India's National Bird. However, the species is now considered Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List, with less than 100 individuals remaining in the wild. The species is predominantly found in Rajasthan, though sightings do occur across the Deccan Plateau. Collisions with windmills, hunting of eggs by free-ranging dogs, and the loss of grassland habitat have decimated populations of the Great Indian Bustard. Unfortunately, the three remaining bustard species in India, have a similar storyline.In this episode, I interview Sujit Narwade, the Assistant Director of the Bombay Natural History Society to discuss bustard conservation in India. We predominantly focus on the conservation Great Indian Bustard and the Lesser Florican, the two species which BNHS has extensively worked with.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit anishbanerjee.substack.com

Hilary Blanford explains the area covered by East Surrey (for non UK listeners part of this is directly south of the River Thames in London), the resources available from the Society, events held including online family history fairs, in person meetings and genealogy/local history walks and some of the transcription projects the Society is working upon including the Philanthropic School for Boys, the Westminster Lying In Hospital and the old psychiatric hospital in Epsom. 

If you're interested in tracing your family's roots, the Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador is here to help. They'll have a few tips on how you can get started at an open house later this month. We speak with a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists who's also a board member of the Family History Society of NL. (Anthony Germain with Craig Morrissey)

This week we feature Angela V. John, an historian and biographer from Wales who serves as the president of Llafur, the Welsh People's History Society. Her latest book, War, Journalism, […]

BIG news for the Natural History Society of Maryland -- like, Mammoth-sized news. A Woolly Mammoth skeleton is headed here … with lectures and events preceding its arrival. We ask Prof. Charles Breeze and Prof. Hali Kilbourne about where it came from, and why some researchers hope to revive the species. Links:  Mammoth master classes at NHSM, upcoming Woolly Mammoth events at NHSM, Oct. 5 lecture with Prof. Hali Kilbourne, Climate Fluctuations of the Pleistocene.  Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers mgerr@wypr.org 410-235-1157 Producer Sam Bermas-Dawes he/him/his sbdawes@wypr.org 410-235-1472

For this conversation, I am joined by Dominic Sandbrook. We talk about the importance of studying history to better understand the world as it was, as it is, and possibly even how it could one day be. You can find/follow Dominic: Website Twitter Resources mentioned in this conversation: The Rest is History Podcast The Rest is History Twitter ________Giving________ Patreon (monthly giving) PayPal (one-time gift) Bitcoin (one-time gift) As always - a massive ‘Thank You' to all the supporters of When Belief Dies! Without you, this wouldn't be possible. ________Social________ Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Website Email: whenbeliefdies@gmail.com _________Gear_________ Camera (Sony A6400) Lens (Sigma 16mm F1.4) HDMI Adapter (Cam Link 4K) Microphone (RØDE PodMic) Audio Interface (Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 3rd gen) Microphone Amplifier (Cloudlifter CL-1) Recording & Interview Software (Riverside FM) #history #society #change

Welcome to Purposely with Stacey Thomas, a highly regarded philanthropy leader who is making a significant impact in the field of philanthropy. Stacey is the CEO of one of Australia's oldest private foundations which is embracing its past and its history at the same time ensuring it puts it resources to work for a more equitable future for the people it helps. Stacey serves as a trustee for two philanthropy peak bodies who have recently pledge their commitment to the Voice, a campaign to change the constitution of Australia to ensure a better future for First Nation people. She is also part-time CEO of a start-up community foundation that she is growing and scaling in addition to her other responsibilities. Stacey's primary role is as CEO of The Wyatt Trust, a private charitable foundation established in1886 by Dr. William Wyatt. The Trust has a $100 million endowment and donates approximately $4 million each year to good causes across South Australia, with a focus on supporting South Australians in need in areas such as employment, education, housing, and financial literacy. Dr. Wyatt was a prominent figure in South Australia, involved in numerous social purpose activities, including serving as a justice of the peace, magistrate, surgeon, state coroner, and founder and board member of several private schools. He was also on the board of many institutions that still exist today, including the Botanic Gardens, the History Society, State Library, Adelaide Hospital RSPCA, and the Adelaide Zoo. Despite its unique history, The Wyatt Trust continues to use Dr. Wyatt's interests and beliefs in doing good around poverty and medicine to guide its grant-making. The Trust allows people experiencing financial hardship to determine what support they need most and works within the framework of what people need most at their time of need. However, The Trust faces challenges in working within South Australia because it is a large state with a relatively small population. The main city, Adelaide, is on the southern boundary of the state, but there are also many regional and remote communities in the state. Stacey's passion for social justice and community development has helped shape The Wyatt Trust's vision and strategy for improving the lives of vulnerable communities in South Australia. Stacey grew up in Victoria and earned a degree in Social Work from the University of South Australia. Later, she pursued a master's degree in Business Administration and began her career in the non-profit sector, working for various organizations focused on community development and poverty reduction. She also gained valuable experience in the private sector, working for companies in the finance and insurance industries. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mark-longbottom2/message

In this episode: - We talk with two of the recipients of the Kathy J. Pedersen Grant to Promote Equitable care (which is available through the nccPA Health Foundation) about their grant outreach projects, what the application process was like, and tips they have for future applicants. (1:01) - Next, a Board Certified PA practicing in pediatrics shares her story of how she's educating her patients on heart health, not just in the exam room, but in a children's book. (23:24) - Finally, we take a look at the PA History Society's newest book on PA History. (32:54)

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This week's interviews included Ricky Young of the Gainesville-Hall County Black History Society and Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), Chairman of the NRSC.You can listen to The Martha Zoller Show every weekday from 9-11 a.m. on AM 550 and FM 102.9 WDUN

Have you considered joining a family history society? Ivor Normand is Chairman of the Aberdeen and North East Scotland Family History Society. He explains how people can benefit through joining a family history society and what records/information are available and gives some hints and tips on researching your ancestors in Scotland.

Welcome to the first Undead Hour, where C. M. Rosens, representing Pagham-on-Sea's History Society, interviews medium Penelope Holdfast. Ms Holdfast is the owner of ESP - Entities living Sympathetically with People - a therapeutic service offering counselling for those who need to learn to co-exist with their hauntings. ESP is based in the old White Horse Bed and Breakfast, which is now Ms Holdfast's place of business and place of residence. Future episodes of the Undead Hour will be hosted by either C. M. Rosens (interviewing the living about the undead) or the revenant Clem Wells (interviewing fellow undead and discussing current hot topics and undead issues).Intro/Outro music: Netherworld Shanty Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In today's episode, Michaela Selway sat down with the president of the History Society, Tess Mazey-Richardson, and Associate Professor Malcolm Campbell to discuss why Australia did not get a treaty during the process of European colonisation, and the effects this has had on their history. This discussion is placed in a global context as the Australian situation is compared to the process of colonisation in America and New Zealand. This interview was recorded in May 2020. N.B. apologies for the sound quality, this was recorded virtually with low quality microphones. Music by Makeshift Locale. Blogposts on related topics can be found at www.tahuhukorero.com/blog

Chapter 3 of The Crows, Meet The Locals, in which Carrie joins the History Society.Theme tune by Gemma Cartmell.CWs for body horror, grotesque taxidermy, maggots, and decomposition.

Frank and David discuss the upcoming election with a live (via Zoom) audience of Edinburgh History Society members. Thanks to Connall of the History Society for hosting and wrangling the questions from the chat! 

Frank and David talk about the role of third parties in presidential elections. Last Drops Frank: Ben Franklin's World David: live show with History Society

We spoke with Charlotte Gray, a Chair of Canada's History Society as well as author of Gold Diggers: Striking it rich in the Klondike about Dawson City, Yukon at the height of the rush.

Sanders is ahead in the Democratic polls. He is not even a Democrat, he is not even a socialist, he is right on the edge of being a communist. If Sanders were applying for a Cabinet post, he would never pass an FBI background check. When he attended the University of Chicago, Sanders joined the Young People's Socialist League, the youth wing of the Socialist Party USA. He organized communist events and was a front, the United Packinghouse Workers Union, that was under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He headed the American People's History Society, hat is an organ for marxist propaganda. The produced a documentary on the life of socialist revolutionary Eugene Debs, who was jailed for espionage during the Red Scare and hailed by the Bolsheviks as "America's greatest Marxist." Bernie has made a lot of promises to give American's free stuff, but that stuff comes with a prices and it is call socialist marxist views on controlling the American people. Bernie should be considered an enemy of the people, not a friend, not a leader. Bernie will take this country, our freedoms and destroy them because he believes in an elite form of government where he takes control of every process of living. That is scary and unaccaptable to the American people.

Graham Laycock talks to Daniel Shepherd and Gemma Minter from The Institutional History Society about their research into the lives of inmates and patients at various institutions such as prisons, asylums and workhouse including Woking Prison.

Opportunity Detroit - Dr. John Moore, Spokesperson, Economics and Business History Society Conference in Detroit; Walsh Professor. www.walshcollege.edu

Opportunity Detroit - Dr. John Moore, Spokesperson, Economics and Business History Society Conference in Detroit; Walsh Professor. www.walshcollege.edu

Welcome to the first podcast released by Tāhuhu kōrero! Tāhuhu kōrero is a blog and podcast founded by Kathryn Cammell, Michaela Selway and the University of Auckland History Society. The purpose of this podcast is to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of the study of history and promote the research completed by staff and students at the University of Auckland. Podcasts will be released fortnightly - generally in the first and third weeks of the month. All references and material discussed in the podcast can be found on the related blogpost and in the description box of the podcast so that you can follow up on anything you hear and read further into the topic. In this first podcast, the host Michaela Selway is joined by the president of the UoA History Society - Emma Wordsworth. Michaela talks about the plans for this podcast and how you can get involved and Emma explains the purpose and goals for the History Society and how you can join in with their events - whether you are a history student or not! Thank you for listening and we look forward to fostering your love of history! Make sure to go check out our website www.tahuhukorero.com Music provided by Makeshift Locale.

Mark Connelly is Professor of Modern British Military History at the University of Kent and in this very candid and wide-ranging interview Mark begins by talking about his family background. He was born to a German mother while his father, who is a London cab driver, is a mixture of Irish and Russian. Mark also talks about how his love of history was precipitated by reading Ladybird History Books as a child. Mark was the first in his family to go to university and we discuss our shared arts backgrounds. Mark reveals his earliest memory which is Christmas-related and we learn that he enjoyed going to the Imperial War Museum and the Tower of London when young. Through his parents Mark developed a love of Frank Sinatra, especially his 1950s concept albums, and Mark can just about remember Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ from its original 1973 incarnation. He especially loves Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ and the memories it evokes as well as Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’. We also learn about the time that Mark encountered Chesney Hawkes on a plane and about the importance of film soundtracks in reunion films such as ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ and ‘Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion’. We then learn what inspired Mark, who was the only pupil to take ‘O’ level Religious Education at his school, to enter academia and we find out that he is still in touch with his ‘O’ and ‘A’ level History teacher from school. At University, Mark was the Head of the History Society and organized various trips to quirky places in London as well as being a devotee of West Ham football club. Mark shares his love of radio, in particular comedy shows such as ‘The News Huddlines', as well as ‘Yesterday in Parliament’, and he talks about being a fan of the jingles played on LBC. He also explains why he is misty eyed for Desmond Carrington and he reminisces about ‘Pick of the Pops’ with Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman. In the final part of the interview, Mark recalls growing up in the 1970s, during the ‘doom and gloom’ of the Winter of Discontent but speaks about how he has happy memories of his teenage years. Mark also discusses how his Chrohn’s disease has taught him various lessons and how he is nostalgic for wallowing in solipsistic moments of teenage misery e.g. the music of The Smiths. Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Mark Connelly and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

We are pleased to present the author and historian Frogg Moody's talk at The Fisherton History Society on 10 October 2018. Jack the Ripper: A Concise History Listen in as Frogg gives his audience an overview of the case with an emphasis on the- at times surprising- connections the players and suspects had with the City of Salisbury.

In this episode (part 2) sponsored by mywindowbox.com Joff Elphick talks to John Sales about his early days at The National Trust (1972-1998) We find out how The Trust has changed, choosing trees with GST, policy making, or not, and The garden History Society and Westbury Court. Also, visiting Vita, Pam, and Sybil.'Nookiness'. Should the Trust be more selective? Easter egg hunts at Hidcote. WHY? Grahams humble hatchback, and THE best place for a top class valet. Plus more inside information. You heard it here first!    

Interview with naturalist Nick Spero and master gardener Judy Fulton.

Tom Kutcher of the Rhode Island Natural History Society is interviewed by URI student Marina Capraro.

Despite her crucial role as diplomat for Hudson’s Bay Company Governor James Knight, few people will recognize the name of Thanadelthur. Enslaved by Cree for a year before escaping, Thanadelthur, a young (and likely teenage) Chipewyan woman, made a deal with Knight to work as a translator so that she could be reunited with her family. Her duties included brokering an “impossible” peace between the Cree and Chipewyan so that trading relations could be established and safely maintained. Canada’s History Society web editor, Tanja Hutter, came across Thanadelthur’s story while digitizing the Beaver archive and Thanadelthur immediately came to mind when asked, “Who is your History Idol?”

The Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) hosts its annual Black History Month Kick-Off Brunch on Sunday, January 29, 2017 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This year's event is co-hosted by Tammie Sutherland of CityNews and author/pop/R&B artist Abel Maxwell. The 2017 Kick-Off Brunch celebrates Black History Month in Canada with an afternoon of dynamic history, culture, and recognition of inspirational and talented individuals for their achievements in the arts, community services and more. The award recipients this year are Lawrence Hill, Andre Degrasse, Bryan and Shannon Prince, Dwight Drummond, Spider Jones and Celina Caesar-Chavannes whose is also the keynote speaker. The president of the OBHS, Ms. Nikki Clarke, was recently on our show. During our conversation, Ms. Clarke talked about: – Some background on herself and the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) – How did she get involved with the OBHS – Some OBHS's's successes over the last year – The list of this year's recipients of awards and what to look forward to at this year's brunch You can find out more information about the brunch and the Ontario Black History Society via: Website Twitter Facebook Please feel free to email us at dr.vibe@thedrvibeshow.com Visit our website at: http://www.thedrvibeshow.com/ God bless, peace, be well and keep the faith,  Dr. Vibe

Ausralian News:Nauru Files expose systemic abuse of refugees; https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/62408Victory for farmers as Caroona coal mine cancelled; https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/62400International News:Canada: Greens make history by backing Israel boycott; https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/62413Fidel turns 90 — a revolutionary legacy marked; https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/62409United States: Black Lives Matter movement grows stronger; https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/62405 Interviews:Peter Love President of the Labor History Society, talking about Frank Anstey, leading campaigner in the role against conscription in WW1. Listen here. Jill Hickson, talks about the upcoming film The Women Who Were Never There, and the fight for women’s rights and the Jobs For Women campaign. Listen here.

Institute of Historical Research The Fourth Voluntary Action History Society Research Conference Keynote Lectures 'From benevolence to philanthropy, 1700-1900' Emeritus Professor Hugh Cunningham (University of Kent) Location: Universit...

Institute of Historical Research The Fourth Voluntary Action History Society Research Conference Keynote Lectures 'A transoceanic web of reformers in the age of empire') Professor Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam University) Location: U...