Did you know Art Garfunkel (of Simon and Garfunkel fame) had a lifelong best friend and College roommate who went blind in 1961 while they were in school together at Columbia University in New York City?

On this week’s episode of Outlook, we’ve got a review and discussion with the two of us, and a friend and occasional guest host from Ireland, Barry Toner, of this memoir by Sanford D. Greenberg. It’s entitled “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness Into An Extraordinary Vision For Life”. It’s about the real and lasting ideas about blindness that persist in 2020, even as we try our best to understand what it must be like to lose one’s sight in the middle of college, at a time of such change and growth in any young person’s life. It’s difficult, for those of us who’ve been blind all our lives, to hear how the book frames blindness as a “scourge” that must be ended.

"We stumbled over a blind beggar. He was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. He was lanky, hunched over in soiled and torn clothes, wearing oversized and disintegrating shoes, and holding a metal cup. His unfocused eyes were milky with small black spots, his teeth misshapen and decayed. Anyway, that is how I recall him, and from that moment to today that is the form in which he has been a regular visitor in my dreams."

"Will Ludwig, an old blind man would stand and “watch,” too. No one knew what he did or where he came from. He just stood there in his white T-shirt and gray slacks hiked up on his hips. He was creepy but benign, like a friendly ghost. If he wasn’t there, you wouldn’t notice his absence.”

If these were the only images of blindness you’ve been exposed to, you’re not getting the whole picture.