The beginning and end of the 2016 WA Council of the Blind Annual Convention

RantWoman has this problem sometimes when she goes to big gatherings: it takes longer for her brain to get home than for her body. RantWoman's body has gotten home with an asterisk as described at the end of this post; her brain has not an her inbox is bulging besides.

RantWoman is still collecting and digesting experiences and impressions from the most recent WA Council of the Blind state convention. Here are a couple especially warm moments, though even the warm moments remind RantWoman there are things to follow up on.

Seatac Mayor Pam Fernald offers notes about her experiences

In her welcoming remarks, Mayor Fernald mentioned 3 gardens. RantWoman remembers there were three but only remembers  the name and story of one which Google seems to list jointly with a second.

Highline Botanical Gardens and Seiki Japanese gardens

Mental note for future convention planners: RantWoman enjoy s local sight seeing but cannot necessarily put excursions for herself together on short timelines. if we remember to consult with local contacts a little further upstream we can also help people plan to visit interesting local destinations. RantWoman would LOVE to hear in her various media streams that maybe a few people from the convention found their way to the gardens Mayor Fernald suggested.

RantWoman does live close enough for a day visit, there is a trip planner, and a trip to the gardens would probably make a cool excursion with RantMom.  A number of years ago RantMom moved to WA from MT but she is less likely to go find excursions on her own than to consult RantWoman so stay tuned.

RantWoman thanks Mayor Fernald for mentioning Bernie and his Guide Dog. This jogged RantWoman's memory about a topic RantWoman will post about separately.

Much else transpired between Mayor Fernald's opening remarks and the closing banquet but skip ahead to the closing banquet and presentation of a number of awards:

Steve Raible and Warren Moon Accepting WCB One World Award

Just watch the video! This IS RantWoman so there could certainly be more to say. But RantWoman was so touched by several circumstances and elements of the video that RantWoman is doing the best she can to save her ambivalence about sports for some other occasion.

Production note: the audio includes a lot of banquet silverware clinking. RantWoman also has enough vision to find the visuals panning a room with a cellphone induce vertigo so some readers may wish to ignore the visuals.  RantWoman is further used to securing photo releases or advising attenders that people may be video taping. This may be a quaint concern in the age of ubiquitous video possibilities, but RantWoman admits to being old school.  Aspiring podcasters and digital audio geeks can probably find a number of WA Council of the Blind members who might be able to help them work on such issues. RantWoman herself this week is working on better attribution about use of photos as well as the applicability of the word "editor" for this blog.


Getting to and fro was  no mean feat for Light Rail riders. See details:
SoundTransit Elevator Outage saga

Thankfully, RantWoman has also received notice that the elevator outage vexing 10 or so conference attendees who came and went by Light Rail, the outage which lasted from October 24 to November 10 or so has now been repaired, so next time RantWoman plans a trip to SeaTac....