Over sixty people gathered at O'Hara's Restaurant in St. Cloud on May 20, 2006 to hold our semiannual state convention and celebrate the 35th anniversary of our Central Minnesota chapter. A day packed full of information, fun and friendship began shortly before 9:00 a.m. with coffee and rolls.

President Joyce Scanlan called the convention to order at 9:30 a.m. We heard welcoming remarks from Andy Virden, president of our host chapter. Two letters of greetings and congratulations were read: one from Mayor David Kleis of St. Cloud (see his letter following this article) and another from Representative Larry Haws.

Joyce Scanlan gave an upbeat presidential report focusing on national and state matters. The Jernigan Institute is thriving with activities for children, research into new technology, seminars for adults and an affiliate action department that provides support to all our local chapters and state affiliates. We are also holding workshops for professionals in work with the blind so that they can better relate to the consumer view of what they do.

We are extremely close to seeing Congress pass the Louis Braille commemorative coin bill. Minnesotans can be proud that all eight members of the House of Representatives from Minnesota were cosponsors of the bill and were key to its passage in the House. Senator Mark Dayton was one of the first members of the Senate to sign on as a sponsor. Our only holdout is Senator Norm Coleman. Several of our members met with one of his staff and we are hopeful that he will still come to see the importance of this bill to promoting Braille literacy. At this writing, we only need four more Senators to sign on for this bill to become law. When this bill passes we will be able to purchase these commemorative coins in 2009. Proceeds from coin sales will be used to promote Braille literacy.

Joyce talked about the many seminars that have been recently sponsored by the Jernigan Institute in which she has participated. Among them was the seminar for state presidents. Many innovative ideas came out of it and inspired our leaders to work that much harder in the states.

Another seminar was held to examine the role of rehabilitation centers and how the Federation should work with them. There are two schools of thought; one says that the Federation should write a manual for state agencies for the blind so that they could operate centers with an NFB philosophy. Joyce advocated for the other position that we have three NFB centers in this country and we should be putting all our support into those centers since we know that the three centers were built after trying to reform the more traditional agencies.

Joyce also chairs the women's committee for the North America/Caribbean Region of the World Blind Union and has traveled to meetings of that organization.

Joyce announced that seven Minnesotans applied for scholarships from the national organization. We have two winners: Jeff Thompson and Kotumu Kamara. Applications are now being taken for our state scholarship. The committee is chaired by Sheila Koenig.

Joyce also briefly mentioned our day-at-the-capitol and parents’ seminars which were both discussed later in the agenda.

Web-Braille, provided by the National Library Service, has been having technical problems which have now been corrected. It was down for about a week.

Joyce gave us the sad news that Larry Kettner, a longtime Federationist, is suffering from pancreatic cancer. He has moved into an assisted living center; and, of course, he is already training the staff how to deal with blind patients. We need more members like Larry. He still plans to go to Dallas for our national convention.

Tom Anderson, a past president of our Central Minnesota chapter, also has cancer. Tom has lived in Denver for several years and worked as a Braille instructor at the Colorado Center for the Blind. Our thoughts are with him as well.

We are looking forward to a great national convention. This year we will be offering a mentoring program for new convention attendees. Our convention is large and can be overwhelming for first-timers.

Tom Scanlan, our treasurer, gave a report that showed we were in the red last year. One of the reasons for this is that contributions through the move-a-thon were down. Tom reminded us of our responsibility to make it a success.

As always, we were pleased to hear an update from Chuk Hamilton, the director of Minnesota State Services for the Blind (SSB). See his full presentation later in this issue.

Steve Jacobson reported on the recent seminar for parents of blind children. The NFB of Minnesota received a grant from the NFB's Imagination Fund to pay for this seminar. The theme was "Imagine! The Future Starts Now." Speakers included Joyce Scanlan as the keynote speaker (see her speech earlier in this issue); Dr. Abraham Nemeth, creator of the Nemeth Code for Braille; Dr. Ruby Ryles, renowned for her research into Braille reading success of blind children; and Ryan Strunk, president of the National Association of Blind Students. Several of our members helped facilitate workshops; provided the lunch crew and took care of daycare.

During lunch, we were pleased to hear from Andy Virden with a history of the Central Minnesota chapter activities over the past 35 years. Andy recognized Tim Aune as the one person in the room who was present at the first meeting. Andy was the chapter's first president. He also mentioned many others who served including Tom Anderson who now lives in Denver, Colorado and works as the Braille instructor at the Colorado Center for the Blind. One of the first successes for this chapter was getting St. Cloud State University to allow blind students into its teacher-training program. This chapter excels at political action, public relations and dealing with matters of public transportation.

Immediately after lunch we took care of our election of the delegate and alternate delegate to our national convention. They will be Joyce Scanlan and Jennifer Dunnam respectively.

An indication of the active role our Central Minnesota chapter plays in the community is indicative of our first two afternoon speakers. The Whitney Center is one of the most active senior centers in the state and Federation members are an active part of it. John Tonta, a staff member from Whitney, reviewed its diverse programs and services.

We next heard from Baba Oduackale, Director of the St. Cloud Human Rights Office. Mr. Oduackale aggressively helps insure the human rights for people with disabilities and others in St. Cloud. His many anecdotes showed him to be a strong advocate.

The legislative report provided information that was as current as possible with the Minnesota Legislature still in session. On the transportation front Judy Sanders reported that we will be voting on a constitutional amendment this fall that will dedicate a certain percentage of the sales tax on motor vehicles to public transit. It is still unclear whether it will be a fixed rate or one on a scale that begins at 40 % with the remaining 60 % or less going for road repair. The final wording of this amendment will probably be decided by the courts.

The implementation of HAVA (the Help America Vote Act) will be initiated for this fall's election. Minnesota's townships wanted to be exempt from having to comply with using these machines that give us nonvisual access. They sought an amendment to give them their exemption but we, along with other members of the disability community, were able to keep it from passing. Instead, the townships have permission to purchase their programming costs through a state purchasing agreement. The counties will make the purchases for them and they will reimburse the counties. We will hope that this satisfies them and that they find this new equipment as exciting as we do.

Steve Jacobson described how the equipment will work and urged all of us to take advantage of it when we vote this fall. They will be available for the primary election.

Joyce reported that our amendment to add the word "blind" to the special-education rule has passed into the education omnibus bill and we are waiting for it to pass this session. Special thanks to Representative Lyndon Carlson and Senator Terrell Clark for their leadership on this issue.

Our Riverbend chapter has begun an innovative project with the cooperation of SSB, the New Ulm Lions Club and the New Ulm public library. They have several low vision products on display at the library and our members will demonstrate them to people by appointment. Shannon and Charlene Childrey are coordinating this effort; it is hoped that blind people in Brown and Nicollet counties will get more accurate information about what is available to them than they have been receiving.

Cindy Holthusen is a blind person who announced that she has just begun a new job with Rehabilitation Services working in job placement. Cindy will be helping to find employment for people with disabilities other than blindness. She has a social work degree and has lived in the St. Cloud area for the past six years.

"Looking beyond the Rainbow" was a panel presentation given by BLIND, Incorporated students. Ken Dobratz talked about how he came to choose BLIND for his training. He toured two facilities and decided that the staff at BLIND was more organized and had more spirit. He is working very hard to regain his literacy.

Liz Williams came to BLIND after heart and kidney transplants. She is proud of her ability to travel independently and she is working hard on her Braille. She makes really good fudge which we expect to have at our bake auction in the fall.

Abdirahman Nur came to the United States last year; he had been in a refugee camp in Ethiopia; he is from Somalia. His family was in Houston, Texas and Hurricane Rita forced them to leave and they ended up in Minnesota. He lives in Shakopee. He has been blind for twenty years but had no skills. His SSB counselor introduced him to BLIND and now he is studying all he will need to know to live his life independently.

Shawn Mayo, executive director of BLIND, Incorporated, introduced the two newest members of the staff. We first heard from Greg Stilson, the new computer instructor. He is the past president of the student division of the NFB of Wisconsin. He has been in Minnesota since January. As a kid, he learned Braille and was also exposed to a great deal of technology. His teachers would give him a piece of equipment and he would take it home so that he could take it apart and rebuild it. He now teaches computers, notetakers and is working with the new K-NFB Reader.

Jeff Thompson is a graduate of BLIND and now is working as the industrial-arts instructor. He plans to continue his education at the University of Minnesota and is an NFB scholarship winner this year. He thinks that he has found his niche in teaching.

Jennifer Dunnam explained the workings of the new hand-held K-NFB Reader which is being beta testing throughout Minnesota and the nation. She took interested parties out in the hall for a more in-depth look.

Pledges were taken for the Jacobus tenBroek fund, which owns and maintains our National Center building complex. A motion was made by Jan Bailey and seconded by Andy Virden to have the state treasury match all contributions made by December 1st. The motion passed unanimously.

Federationist shared their experiences in vacationing as blind people. Judy Sanders told about her cruise to the Caribbean; Jennifer Dunnam talked about her trip to Arizona with no plan of what she would do when she got there. Several years later she traveled to England. Pat Barrett took a vacation to Duluth to explore the city and visit the train museum. Andy Virden discussed several vacations to lakes in the St. Cloud area. Joyce talked about her honeymoon with Tom to visit historical sites. Joyce says that she never has enough time to do all the shopping that she wants. Steve Jacobson talked about taking his kids to Disney World. As a blind parent he knew he would be responsible for giving his kids a fun, safe trip.

People talked about making plans for their trip to Dallas and the national convention in July. The excitement could be felt as people compared about the best air fares.

Since many chapters were missing their monthly meeting the convention closed with the playing of the presidential release from Dr. Marc Maurer. It was filled with many convention announcements.

Everyone is already looking forward to our annual convention in the fall to be held in New Ulm.