It was early in the morning and I was preparing for a big job interview. At that time, I was single and lived alone. Reaching into my closet, I began to pull out the clothes I would be wearing:  my black skirt, matching suit jacket and a coordinating blouse. Then, with a sudden feeling of dread, I remembered that I had two identical blouses.  One was white and would go…

By Suzanne Wilson On January 15, our radio station aired an interview between our own Maria Martin and Rob Kanzer. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because you can hear Rob every Tuesday on the Talking Information Center. As with all of our amazing readers, Rob brings to us a life rich with experience and overflowing with wisdom.

By Sal Kapadia Innovations in technology are attractive to most aspiring people. Whether it be hardware, software, appliances, or books on how to program code, there is a constant need of development. Luckily, we have numerous tech events throughout the U.S. each year such as the Worldwide Developers Conference, Interop, Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the recent 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas last month. This year, CES…

By Suzanne Wilson With November being the month of Thanksgiving, we thought that there couldn’t be a better time than this to introduce you to some of the twenty-plus volunteers who spread LAB’s voice across the Merrimack Valley on our radio station. Each hour that these volunteers donate furnishes hundreds of visually impaired and blind Greater Lowell residents with access to local news that they would have great difficulty finding…

Local communities embrace the existence of nonprofits for their continued, missionary-style development strategies.  We often overlook those who are responsible for maintaining the ecosystem and who drive the approach.  Building a reputation for the past 91 years in greater Lowell is none other than yours truly.  Organizations such as the Lowell Association for the Blind (LAB) involved in supportive roles stick out in the growing nonprofit sector of Massachusetts, and…

By Suzanne Wilson You’ve heard it a thousand times:  if you don’t like the weather here in New England, just wait five minutes and it will change. While that is definitely true, there are experts out there who can predict, with a great deal of accuracy based on scientific knowledge, whether it will rain or snow, be sunny or cloudy. Some of these pundits work for the government; others grace the…

By Suzanne Wilson Vacuums are great when you’re conducting chemistry experiments or perhaps cleaning your rug. But everyone knows that people, and especially agencies, cannot operate in them and remain successful. In fact, one of LAB’s most compelling strengths is our willingness to collaborate with a wide variety of individuals, agencies and educational institutions in Greater Lowell. In March, we received recognition of this quality by being awarded the first…

By Suzanne Wilson When Maria Martin was diagnosed with relapse-remission multiple sclerosis, the news was actually a relief. At last, after a long period of not knowing, she finally had a name to attach and a reason for the visual changes she had been experiencing. In order to share with others some of the important information she has learned throughout her MS journey, she conducted an interview recently for the…

By Suzanne Wilson As children, one of the first things we learned about the classical music composer Ludwig van Beethoven was that he lost his hearing as an adult. What a hardship, what a burden, we thought. And while that is certainly true on one level, it may never have occurred to us that Beethoven’s deafness added an additional complexity and uniqueness to his later works.

Each month, we use the pages of this publication to share information that is of interest to our supporters, volunteers and staff, as well as to the blind and visually impaired community as a whole. It might be an interview; it could be a description of a special event that was held at LAB. This month, we decided to take a slight departure from the norm and begin a two-part…