Alicia Berenson shot her husband in the face five times.
She and Gabriel had lived a very comfortable life, she a famous painter and he a notable fashion photographer. One night, he came home late, at 11 p.m., after a photo shoot when Alicia pulled the trigger. Alicia did not admit to the murder, she did not speak of the crime. In fact, she did not speak again. She was taken to a facility, away from public scrutiny, and there psychotherapists tried to work with her.
Theo Faber was fascinated by the case. He worked long and hard to find his way into her world. As a psychotherapist, he was pleased to finally be assigned to work with Alicia in a dual effort to satisfy his curiosity and unlock her secrets that so far were sealed away without words.
A comparison emerged between Alicia Berenson and Alcestis, a woman from Greek mythology, presented by Euripides in a Greek tragedy. Alcestis was a woman who sacrificed her life to bring her husband back from the dead. Is that why Alicia did not speak? Or was it perhaps her tormented mind that crawled to a halt and sequestered her words.
This is a psychological thriller with lots of twists and turns, and even one audible gasp from me! A page turner for sure.
Pictured: Book cover for The Silent Patient, print edition.
_____________________________
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is available as a free downloadable audiobook from BARD for all National Library Services members.
Pictured: Three watches are shown. Top: a smart watch, unknown manufacturer; Middle: An iPod Nano with elastic band crafted as wrist band; and bottom: a man’s talking watch with stretch metal band by Tel Time.
Years ago, my mother bought a cuckoo clock for her home. She hung it on the wall in her living room and every hour the cuckoo called out the time. One loud cuckoo at 1 o’clock, 3 loud cuckoos at 3 o’clock, and so on. And if that were not enough, it bellowed another cuckoo to mark every quarter hour, as well. At 4 A.M. everyone knew the time because you could not sleep through it.
Well, I am not a fan of clocks that announce the time. I think a cuckoo clock is a novelty, and as such, it should be heard once, maybe twice, in a lifetime and that is enough. I feel the same way about talking watches. Remember the crowing rooster watches marketed for the blind?
Talking watches got smarter. Most no longer crow but actually announce the time. “The time is 5:17,” the robotic voice declares. I do not want everyone in the movie theater to know I am getting impatient for the movie to end. I do not want a busload of people to know I have just checked the time. I do not even want that time announcement to talk over the sound of the TV I am watching. I do not like talking, crowing, or cuckooing clocks!
I want a watch I can wear on my wrist that tells me the time when I look at it. I like the clock face to be big with bold hands and high contrast. I do not need to see the numbers – I know where they are. Just give me one indicator at the 12 o’clock position and everything else is relative; no clutter needed!
I have an old iPod Nano that I used for a timepiece for many years. It came with a bunch of clock faces for me to choose from. It had a pedometer and a stopwatch. It even had a radio if I wanted to connect earbuds or headphones. That little thing would even read a 500-page book to me, if I so chose. I hung it on a chain around my neck for a long time and later crafted my own elastic band for it and wore it as a wristwatch. I loved my iPod Nano – until the battery recently lost its oomph.
So I decided to try out a smart watch. They can be quite pricey, so I started at the low end, the very low end. I bought one from amazon for $22.
The smart watch does a lot. It has one clock face (no choice), and it has a pedometer. I can add a SIM card and pretend to be Dick Tracy talking through my wrist for phone calls and texts. It accepts a memory card so I can snap pictures from my wrist. It even sounds an alarm if the watch thinks I have been sitting too long and need to get up and move about. It does even more, more than I care to give much thought to. Notably, however, the band is peculiar, to put it nicely. It takes quite a bit of manipulation and gymnastics to get it around my wrist and locked in place, although I do not feel that it is ever securely fitted in place. Removing it is a dance of its own. The watch is fairly heavy for my small wrist and so when at rest, my wrist is turned to the side.
For $22, this smart watch is truly amazing. Change the band and add a few faces to choose from and I am in! Until then, it is time to keep looking.
Pictured: Two tactile playing cards. These two standard playing cards have braille labels imprinted on them – the Queen of Spades and the three of Hearts are shown.
Card games are fun for everyone. Well, maybe not “52 Pickup,” but every other card game I can think of, and there are so many! Blind and visually impaired people can and do share in the fun. We play with a marked deck!
It is true. The cards are marked!
Any deck of cards can be adapted. Making playing cards tactile is the way. Just add braille! A few raised dots, inconspicuous to sighted players and likely unreadable also, tell the visually challenged player exactly what cards are in hand.
Add braille to the upper left-hand corner and the bottom right-hand corner (opposite corners). Each card is brailled with the corresponding number or J, Q, and K for jack, queen, and king. In addition, the cards are marked with the corresponding suit. So the 3 of hearts is marked with the brailled 3 and brailled H for hearts. The 4 of spades is marked with the braille for 4S, the 9 of diamonds will be 9D. The only exception is the number 10. Because the number 10 requires 3 digits including the symbol for the suit, and all other cards have only 2, that might be an attention-getter. So, the 10 is labeled with a brailled X instead.
If you are blind or visually impaired, it is fairly easy to learn just the braille that is used on playing cards if you do not already know braille. There are only a total of 17 different braille symbols to a standard deck of cards and all 52 cards are uniquely identified with combinations of just those symbols.
A slate and stylus is all that is needed to turn an ordinary deck of cards into a tactile deck. Or you can spend a few dollars and buy a brailled deck of cards. Your choice.
Pictured: Chart shows the 17 braille symbols used on tactile playing cards. Symbols include numbers 1 through 9, a special braille character for number 10, the four card suits, and the J, Q, and K for the picture cards.
Pictured: Three custom flashcards, one with the word WINK written with bold marker and braille at bottom of card, a second with the word SMILE, and a third with CLAP.
Are you planning to travel to a place where a foreign language is spoken? Do you have young kids just learning to read? Are you learning braille? These are just a few ways flashcards could prove very helpful.
It is easy to make your own flashcards, flashcards that are designed to meet your needs. Flashcards can be created not only with the specific content you want to learn, but also using bold markers or colors that help you to see what is on them. You can even add braille to your flashcards so that a sighted person, a blind person, and a visually impaired person can work together or separately using the same set of cards. Oh, the flexibility!
Laminated (or dry erase) index cards add yet another dimension to your flashcard project. Blank laminated index cards are inexpensive. Their benefit is that once the content is learned, the cards can be wiped clean to be used again with new learning material. With the laminated cards, I do recommend wet erase markers because these will stay fresh on each card until wiped clean with a moistened cloth. Dry erase markers, on the other hand, wipe away too easily, even accidentally, and so the lifespan of a laminated flashcard with dry erase marker can be quite short. If adding braille, however, plain index cards are best because the braille cannot be easily erased for reuse.
Some suggested activities for flashcards:
Arrange selected cards in a row on a table to create words or sentences, patterns, or designs.
Review the content of the cards, one at a time, from a pile.
Use them to create games, such as drawing a card for pantomime or timed challenges (in a group, who reads it correctly first?).
With the laminated cards, copy or trace the written material using a dry erase marker right on the card. Studies show that writing new words helps to preserve them in memory. Great for penmanship practice too.
Create a set of activity cards. For young children learning to read, sight words such as RUN, HOP, SKIP, JUMP, HUM, SMILE, CRY, etc., can promote learning new words and test comprehension at the same time by asking the child to read and then perform each word. This also works for learning a foreign language or even braille.
Arrange pairs of flashcards face down on a table or floor and play the matching game. Find pairs. The winner is the player who has found the most pairs.
Place a series of instructions on separate cards, like recipes, knit and crochet patterns, etc. As you complete each step, move that card to the bottom of the pile. In this way, you will not lose your place. (Remember to number your cards.)
Flashcards can be fun! Do you have some helpful ideas to add?
Pictured: Whiteboards of various types, sizes, and shapes. Shown are large and small whiteboards with markers and eraser, two whiteboard notebooks, and three laminated (whiteboard) index cards with Spanish words written on them: CUANDO, DONDE, and COMO.
I own no pens nor pencils, for what would be their purpose? The scratches they make on paper are not legible, even my own. I use markers, markers with nibs of various sizes, thicknesses, and shapes. Markers of different colors and styles. Markers of different types.
What about devices? There are so many apps for jotting down reminders and lists and even essays.
I have no patience for accessing apps just to jot down an idea or a reminder. There are too many steps,too much time, and it all requires a charge which sometimes is not there, and then there is finding the darn thing. Where did I put it?
I prefer whiteboards.
A simple child’s whiteboard is just so handy and easy to use. I write big and bold and my words are saved.
I use dry erase markers for those things I need only briefly. A tissue or cloth (and sometimes a sleeve) will remove the writing easily and cleanly. If I need to keep those words or pictures a bit longer without them being accidentally erased, I use wet erase markers. A moistened cloth will clean up the space nicely. And for long-term preservation, I use a Sharpie or other permanent marker. But even that can be wiped away with just a little rubbing alcohol.
Whiteboards come in all shapes and sizes too. I keep a small whiteboard spiral-bound notebook in my purse along with a wet erase marker. There are even white erase index cards available. It is easy to make your own whiteboard for the creative people.
Whiteboards or devices? What do you use?
Links to items discussed in this article for information only:. Please note that whiteboard and dry erase are synonymous.
Do you see what I see? Can you see what you can’t see? What is it, and how do you know?
Assistive devices for vision impairment can be very helpful, and very expensive. CCTVs, braille writers, magnifiers, and audiobook players cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars, to name just a few things that could help blind and visually impaired people. Even audiobooks can be beyond our budget. Too often, even tools that can help us with our daily activities and special needs are not even made available for us to try, or even know about. And then, can we afford them? We must rely on word of mouth, and even then the results can be disappointing. It is not like I see what you see, or that you see what someone else sees. With vision impairment, we all see (or don’t see) the same things differently.
Talking about different devices can often lead to success. Even better, there are so many common household items and stationery supplies, and even things we never gave much thought to that provide so much benefit. Sometimes we just have to think outside the box.
For example, did you know you can cook perfect bacon in the oven instead of a fry pan and avoid all the hot oil spatter? Did you know a child’s whiteboard can be the perfect tool for your notes and reminders? Did you know you can easily connect your tablet to your computer screen or TV so you can benefit from greatly enlarged print and images? Did you know there is an online group that gives away used audiobooks and braille books, magnifiers, and more?
We have a lot to talk about. So let’s explore together.
Legally Blind 