Fresh Start

Here we go with the first week of September, a fresh start for scholars and those who stay in tune with the school cycle. Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time sorting through all my scribbling and organizing them but I didn’t quite get to the evaluation process due to family commitments. So I’ve been sitting here at the computer for 20 minutes trying to come up with a theme. For some reason I thought of “As the twig is bent so grows the tree” so I did a little surfing and stumbled across a booklet about the blind. These were little articles published in 1958 though I think some of them may be older than that. One of the articles was about a gentlemen who became a Director for the State Commission in Iowa, Kenneth Jernigan, where he discussed his struggles with whether or not to use the handicapped parking space that was offered to him. It was a constant temptation to use the space that the security guards offered to him but he felt it wasn’t right to use the spot when there were people who simply were unable to walk further than he was capable of.

“Self deception is one of the easiest and most dangerous mistakes that a person can make.”

He was sorely tempted when the blizzards started but no, he was an example to his students as well as to the public in general. He was an advocate for the blind but he knew what was legitimate needs for the blind and what was excess. I found it an interesting article on doing the right thing even though others were perhaps trying to lead you to take an easier route. He wrote that the security guards were hurt when he continually declined their offer to take the handicapped parking spot and sometimes would end up walking quite a distance in the storm. He could hear the hurt in their voices and that would hurt him, however he remained steadfast though inside he was struggling away.

I’ll end by using his ending:

“So my Federationism [the work he did] and my bodily comfort, my wish to be honest and consistent and my wish to be polite and thought of as a good fellow in short, my spiritual aspirations and my bodily desires were in continuous conflict. What do you think I did? In the circumstances what would you have done? Whoever says that the world is not filled with temptations (for the blind as well as for the sighted) is either a naive nincompoop or a barefaced liar. Of such is humanity made neither angel nor devil but somewhere between, and always becoming.”