The Baskis Project

In this episode Steve speaks to John Gunn a Blind musician who dabbles with audio recording and composing. #Podcast #BlindMusician #Baskis360

in this episode Steve speaks to Andre Louis a blind musician and music composer. They discuss different things about Andre's life, influences and where Music is taking him. We also discuss his involvement with the company Native Instruments and how some of their products are accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Here are some links Andre provided:

http://www.andrelouis.com/shorts/

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOnjLouis/

A conversation with Steve's father Who is a scientist that has developed a number of technologies. In this episode Steve talks to his father about life, his fathers influences and the work he has pursued over the years. visit this website to learn more about one of his companies: www.draconisextractiontechnologies.com

A conversation with Dr. Thomas Zampieri president of the Blinded Veterans Association. In this episode we discuss the changes that have occurred in July of 2020 on Capitol Hill for disabled veterans, specifically items related to the special adaptive housing grant. Visit: www.bva.org to learn more about how you can help Blind Veteran's.

Steve Baskis speaks about his experience with smart home technology and how it benefits him as a blind/visually impaired individual.

A conversation with Matt Diemert about his life, music and blindness...

Dr. Fliesler is a SUNY Distinguished Professor, UB Distinguished Professor, the Meyer H. Riwchun Endowed Chair Professor of Ophthalmology, and Vice-Chair/Director of Research in the Department of Ophthalmology, State University of New York (SUNY)- University at Buffalo (UB). He also holds concurrent appointments as a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UB, as well as being a Department of Veterans Affairs Research Career Scientist at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, VA Western NY Healthcare System.

Dr. Fliesler's research is focused on inborn errors of cholesterol metabolism and their impact on the development, structure and function of the retina, as well as blast injury to the eye, using animal models, and has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and reviews. His research program has been funded continuously for more than 35 years by multiple grants from the NIH and private foundations, as well as, more recently, MERIT

Awards from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Fliesler currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), representing the Retinal Cell Biology (RC) Section as well as being President of ARVO. He was inducted in 2009 as a Silver-tier Fellow of ARVO (FARVO) and, in 2014, became a Gold-tier FARVO. In addition, he is a past Councilor, Treasurer, and President of the International Society for Eye Research (ISER). Dr. Fliesler is the Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Eye Research and serves on six other journal editorial boards, including Molecular Vision and the Journal of Lipid Research.

If you would like to learn more about the topics discussed, check out the following websites:

http://grantome.com/grant/NIH/I01-BX002439-02 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29648979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast-related_ocular_trauma https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-2094-10-79 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842954/ https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/retina-may-be-sensitive-gauge-of-blast-wave-pressure-injury https://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440(17)30155-4/fulltext https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2212696

Larry Carlin, a visually impaired veteran, shares some of his experiences during the Tour of the Canyons bike ride that he participated in 2018.

If you would like to watch the Tour of the Canyons Video presented on this podcast, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlOBL0icTI0

This year a group of blinded veterans will be participating in the MR340. Steve is on the phone with Danny Wallace, an Army Veteran that was wounded in Iraq and heavily involved with the Blinded Veterans Association (BVA).

Also on the call is Scott Mansker, Co-founder and race director for the Missouri River 340.

For more information about the MR340, visit https://rivermiles.com

Extreme-sports athlete Lonnie Bedwell is a National Geographic 2015 Adventurer of the Year. He has kayaked some of the most challenging whitewater in the world and is responsible for first blind descents of Africa's fabled Zambezi River and West Virginia's world-renowned Gauley River. Lonnie is best known for his first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon — an effort successfully completed during 2013 as part of a team of boaters assembled by Team River Runner. A command performance in the Grand Canyon in 2014 resulted in the Adventurer of the Year nomination.

A former Navy Petty Officer, Lonnie was critically injured during 1997 in a hunting accident that instantly took his sight. Nevertheless, he raised three daughters as a single father, teaching them all to hunt and fish — and, against all odds, to drive. Once the girls graduated from high school, Lonnie continued to challenge himself, ultimately becoming a renowned extreme sports athlete. When the threshold for running the Grand Canyon was placed at 1,000 kayak rolls, he took his donated kayak to the pond on his farm and rolled it 1,500 times. The rest is history.

Lonnie has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, summited several of North America's highest mountains, rock climbs, and is an avid downhill skier when he has time away from roofing work in his hometown of Duggar, IN.

Lonnie's mission is to motivate and inspire others to embrace life with confidence and courage. Lonnie is dedicated to helping veterans and many others enjoy full lives and while he is an advocate for the blind, blindness does not define either him or his efforts on behalf of others. Lonnie has appeared on The Today Show and Steve Harvey and has been featured in countless publications. He's the author of the award-winning book 226 (the length in miles of the Colorado River stretch through the Grand Canyon) and shares his passion for life and adventure with audiences around the country.