Re: you guys may like... (Ruth Spivak) II

(from Ruth:)

How some memories fade and others don't. I slightly remember the girl. I certainly understand how a libertarian could have caused much argument. But I don't remember him at all.

The head pointer was your invention? How did you communicate before then?

* * * * *

well, he was a libertarian nerd!

yep, nobody I had known wore head pointers before me. I always was into communicating... Even before I knew how
to spell. I was good at connecting with people, getting what I wanted across.
But I can't remember when I could not spell. So my family spelled me out... By
breaking the alphabet in half and saying it. If the letter I wanted was in the second half, I would shake my head "no" and they would go to the second half, etc. this is how I communicated most of my life... Still do around the house.

But that did not work with strangers, etc.. They were always trying high tech gadgetry which weren't practical, but glamorous.

So we are up to Redlands in 1964. I got into a special education program. It was in a wing of a grade school campus [Crafton]. There were two classes. One for grade school kids and one for junior high and high school kids like me. There I had a board with the alphabet divided into four lines. The other person would point to each line and I would nod when he got to the right line, etc. a slow process! The doctors dictated I should learn to type with my hand... The normal way to type! I, my teacher, and my therapists all thought it was the wrong direction. but back then doctors were gods. So three times a week they taped a peg in my hand, put me into a standing box I am not sure how that's normal!], and for an hour I tried to get the
peg through holes on a thick plastic key guard to an electric typewriter... Me sweaty, rubbing my wrist raw. In the year, I may have typed a few words! But I quickly had a practical idea. Put a pointer on a headband... my therapists and my teacher [women] wanted to try my idea. But the doctors [men] vetoed the idea. So for a year I was losing ground on my school work. They were getting ready to drop me from the school because I couldn't keep up. Meanwhile the news that next year the class would be moving onto the regular high school campus! Then we had a substitute teacher who tried my idea in art class, putting a brush on a headband. It worked! So my regular teacher ignored the doctors and rigged a pointer from tinker toys and an elastic band. It kept flipping down, hitting my nose.
But within five minutes I was typing on an electric typewriter, without any key guard or any other special equipment. Everything then changed! Btw, the first thing I wrote was a paper on a one world democratic socialist government! And the rest is history!

Talking to people through my board has intimate qualities. It slows people down, bringing them into a softer, smaller, more focused reality. It also reveals things about them through freudian slips, etc. through the years I have designed the board around the other person who is reading the board, rather than around me.

In Freedom,
Frank Moore