Season 1 #1 – An Introduction to NFB-NEWSLINE Tennessee Presents

You can live the life you want. Nobody can stop you. Shoot for the sun.

Hi, welcome to NFB Newsline Tennessee presents, the show that hooks you up with the best that the National Federation of the blind of Tennessee has to offer. I am your host, Yvonne Hubert.

Hello. Hello. Hello, everybody. I'm Yvonne Newbert, and welcome to NFB Newsline Tennessee presents. This is great. I get to do what I like to do best, and that's talk. And our affiliate president James Brown is not standing around tapping his watch and telling me three minutes, three minutes. Okay, that's an inside joke that you'll probably be hearing more about as we go along. I've been thinking about doing this for a while now because it fits into my background and what I was trained to do. I was a student at East Tennessee State University and I majored in mass communications in broadcast journalism. And again, I got to do what I like to do best, and that's talk to people. I guess we'll start with what the podcast is all about. I'm going to be traveling via Zoom and greyhound back and forth across the state and points beyond and bring you stories about people, interviews with other people. Everything's going to be blindness related. A few of the first episodes are going to be from Zoom meetings that I've had in 2024. We're going to start out with what's happening on the Hill, and we're going to be talking about legislation and what's happening on the Hill, both in Washington, DC and in Nashville. I'm also going to be talking with other organizations that the NFB of Tennessee has come in contact with through our individuals or as an organization as a whole. Of course, we're also going to be talking about NFB News line, a great service. It started in 1995, and as we all know, to a degree that access to printed material is not as much of an issue as it used to be, but it's still a thing. But in 1995, the national Federation of the Blind decided to see what they could do to bring materials immediately to the blind and low vision population. It started out as just a phone service where you would call the number and press one for this, two for that, and three for the other thing. We've all done this. It started out with USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. And from those two papers and one way of accessing these papers, it has grown into a pretty big service with over 550 publications and several means of accessing these publications. You can access it now over your phone and you can access it through the Internet an app on the iPhone, and also through braille devices and mobile devices such as the Victor Reader stream. The good thing about the e readers from the National Library Service is that you can get NFB Newsline on those as well. And part of what I do as the coordinator for NFB Newsline Tennessee is I travel around the state and introduce individuals, groups, and other organizations to the NFB Newsline Tennessee service and also, you know, sign people up while I'm there. We have contests that are great. Sometimes it's something as simple as a drawing for a door prize. Last year we had a really good contest where I asked for essay submissions, and there were two categories. One was submit an essay about yourself or something that is blindness related. We also had another category of creative writing and that was open ended. You could write about anything, had some great submissions and two really good winners of this contest. This year we're going to have another contest where I ask you to access certain parts of Newsline. This way you can get familiar with with what publications are out there. There's so many choices to choose from. NFB Newsline offers local newspapers from your state, and you can also access newspapers from other states as well. Tennessee has the commercial appeal out of Memphis, the Clarksville paper, the Nashville Tennessean, Knoxville News Sentinel, Chattanooga Free Press, and Bristol Herald Times. There's several more that I can't think of off the top of my head while I'm sitting here talking to you. We also have national newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, and we also have magazines, Time magazine, National Geographic, ESPN, USA Today. And you can also search for magazines and everything with categories. There's blindness specific where you can get braille, book review, talking book topics, the Braille monitor, and other publications. The good thing about NFB newsline is that it's free. It doesn't cost you anything, and you get access to everything. Local papers, national papers, national magazines, international newspapers, breaking news, weather. You know, whether the weather is cold, whether the weather is hot. You are covered, whatever the weather, because NFB news line, you've got see, there you go. I want this podcast to be interactive. I want the subscribers to be involved in the interview process. What I've been doing is having a guest over Zoom, and then I have people who are on the Zoom call to ask questions. So if you are a subscriber and it's free to subscribe, you can come on the Zoom call and ask your questions and interact with our guests. That's going to be lots of fun. I like hearing what people, you know, have to say about, you know, whoever I'm interviewing, I'm also going to have a tip jar this way, you know, if you can, and if you want to, you can contribute financially to keep this podcast up and going because it's not free, the platform costs to use. And also, you know, there's other fees that are, you know, involved. Transcriptions is one of them. And I think transcriptions are important to a podcast. That way you can just, oh, I remember that. Or you can search, you know, using the transcription. So, you know, I'll ask you, you know, if you can just, you know, give what you can to contribute to it. I'm not going to be making any money off of this. All of this is volunteer with, you know, my time and equipment and effort and everything. But I'm looking forward to doing this. There's no telling where it's going to go and who we're going to have on. I had as a guest on our seniors division called back in November, but somebody forgot to press record, and I didn't get to record the interview. But the author, Andrew Leland, was my guest, and I had several people on there, had a great time talking to him. He's a fascinating guy, so I'm going to have him back on as a guest on the podcast. Some of you who are runners may know of the organization Achilles. That's people who volunteer their time and run and walk with blind people. Our affiliate president, James Brown, is the one who introduced me and got me to knowing who Achilles is. So we're going to cover things, you know, entertainment. And, boy, we've got some entertaining people in the blindness community, got some great singers, great songwriters, actors, just everybody. So that's going to be a lot of fun to sit and talk and learn more about the people who are not necessarily national federations of blind members, but members or not members, but people in the blindness community as a whole. We're going to have, some of our podcasts are going to be just, I guess, training podcasts to talk about technology and some tips and tricks on best ways to use some of the great adaptive technology that we have out there. Now, this is like the 1 June. So I think it was June. Well, it was June 1. That group of us from the Tennessee Valley chapter of the NFB came from Knoxville to Nashville to an exhibit that was held by the Vanderbilt Eye Institute. And they had a lot of people there who were from other organizations and also people there who had businesses who sold adaptive technology and equipment and so on. An upcoming show. I'm going to be talking about who was at the exhibit, and I got a couple little short interviews with them, so we've got that to look forward to. Now, how can you get involved? First off, subscribe to the podcast, and if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future shows, you can send an email to nfbnewsline tnfbtn.org dot. Again, that's nfbnews. L I N E, tnfb tn.org. i really look forward to spending this time with you, and I hope you have a good time. I hope you are entertained and educated and enjoy the time you spend listening to this show. I think it was the fat Albert show a long time ago that said, hey, hey, hey, stick around and you just might learn something. You never know. And, you know, I'll add to that that I hope. I'm wanting to reach out not just to the blindness community, but to other communities and everybody else as well, because that's going to help by increasing awareness and letting people know that, you know, people who are blind, we're just like everybody else, but to varying degrees, our eyes don't work as well. And that's the difference. That's the only difference. I like to tell people that, you know, blind people are just like you. Some of us have halos, some of us have horns. Some of us are sinners, and some of us are saints. We're just like everyone else. And hopefully, you know, maybe this podcast can reach some people and they're going to see, you know, this. So everyone stay in touch through the email and enjoy the podcast. And I will be back with our next episode, which is going to be what's happening on the hill from Washington, DC to Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you all for joining me on another great edition of NFB Newsline. Tennessee presents.