Thursday, Oct. 8
By Katherine Schneider, for the CVPost
As often happens, just the right inspirational email hit my inbox last week—a blog by Joyce Rupp that mentioned Carrie Newcomer’s song, “You Can Do This Hard Thing.”
The song’s verses describe instances of things Newcomer either felt she could not do or did not want to do. During those times someone encouraged her with “you can do this hard thing.”
In the refrain, Newcomer sings: “It’s not easy I know, but I believe it is so; you can do this hard thing.”
Sure enough, this week has two challenging things for me to do (that I know of). I need to practice and model civility at a County Board meeting and I need to guest lecture an English class about information access for the blind.
County Board’s ‘hot potatoes’
Our County Board is handling at least two hot potatoes this week: Should we have a forensic audit of the Human Services Department? And should the Health Department be able to institute penalties for not masking or not requiring masks in a public place?
At our next meetings we’ll be deciding on the county’s budget in a time of shrinking revenue and increasing service demands. Like our country as a whole, we’re polarized.
The Board voted in a civility policy about a year ago. However, the reality of board discussions does not always live up to that policy. It feels to me like some bullying is going on. I’m well aware I don’t control the bullies, but I struggle with not responding in kind.
Of course, COVID stress and the trials of meeting only on-line only make incivility easier. Concentrating on listening, taking calming breaths and long walks before meetings and now humming “You Can Do This Hard Thing” are my coping strategies.
Information access issues
The hard thing about the information access lecture for the English class is to inspire them to advocate for increased information access in their daily lives. I go through all sorts of ideas, such as describing their Facebook picture posts.
I suggest that instead of just writing “Look at this!” they could write “Look at this sunset!” True enough, I still can’t see it when I scroll through my feed, but at least I know what they’re enjoying.
Or they might volunteer for Be My Eyes. This is a free app where blind people can take a picture of something on their cellphones and have a volunteer describe it. For example, if I want to know whether a can contains peas or corn, I can get a volunteer to tell me instead of having to open the can to find out.
There are also many larger information access problems, like inaccessible websites, inaccessible flat screen technologies, etc. but my goal is to inspire students to start thinking about the issue and realizing they can do something other than saying “That’s too bad.”
Carrie, we’re on it!