Blind People

If you're blind, the second grader asked stage performer Renaldo, how come you wear sunglasses? It's a question that might have seemed rude to an adult listener. But Renaldo welcomed it and answered without hesitation. "I can't see faces or read printed material, but I can see shadows," Renaldo answered. "The dark glasses help me to see the shadows better," he said. Renaldo can answer the most difficult questions without having his feelings hurt because he is a puppet member of the Kids on the Block, a musical show designed to teach children about diversity.

Michael D. Laciopa, 88, president of the New Jersey Foundation for the Blind, who over more than 30 years brought his courage and his living programs to thousands, died Sunday at St. Clares-Riverside Hospital in Denville, N.J. Mr. Laciopa, blind since his early 20s, founded the organization in 1942 with several blind associates and had served as president for most of the years since. It was 1955 when Mr. Laciopa undertook the creation of a training facility for the blind on the site of the old Diamond Spring Inn in the North Jersey community of Denville.

Despite months of preparation, the guests of honor were fractious. Daisy, a soulful bloodhound, sang off-key during the longer speeches. Paris, an imposing, playful German shepherd puppy, kept pawing Esther, a more diminutive shepherd, and the girls had to be separated. Perhaps worst of all was Eileen, a trying-very-hard-to-be-good golden retriever-yellow Lab mix. Sixth grader Lauren Udell loved cuddling her, but she couldn't hold back a comment: "Woo-hoo, this one's got smelly breath," Lauren stage-whispered, rubbing the wiggly 6-month-old's soft, floppy ears.

Yikes. Not only was Steven Spielberg being stalked, but the ex-con tailing him had gruesome plans to sexually assault the famous filmmaker, according to court documents just released in Los Angeles. In a transcript of grand jury proceedings held in October, a prosecutor said Jonathan Norman had admitted "this obsession with raping" the filmmaker. Norman, arrested July 11 near Spielberg's Los Angeles home, was allegedly toting a bag containing handcuffs, knives and duct tape.

INDULGE YOURSELF Here's some advice for women who feel unusually hungry during the last few days before their menstrual periods begin: Don't feel guilty about eating more; indulge yourself a little. So says Baltimore dietitian Colleen Pierre. As your basal metabolic rate increases in the final days of your cycle, you'll burn 300 to 500 extra calories a day. You can eat a chocolate bar or two a day and not gain an ounce. HELP THE BLIND The Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind in Washington suggests some do's and don'ts for when you meet a blind person.

David Bitting's 20/450 vision, which distorts everything in his line of sight into a blurry muddle, would seem to render him incapable of performing even the simplest tasks found in many job descriptions. But through his participation in a job-readiness program offered by the Montgomery County Association for the Blind, Bitting has found that the biggest obstacles facing visually impaired job hunters are misconceptions among employers about what their limitations are and how easy it is to compensate for most of them.

Belting out songs from behind a piano, Michael Corman entertained diners at the Caribbean Crab restaurant in Oaklyn Saturday night. The crowd enjoyed the saloon crooner's rendition of Billy Joel's "Piano Man. " Yet the applause was a dubious honor, for Corman has the time to sing professionally because he cannot land a job in his chosen field. Corman, 35 and blind, passed the bar exam in Pennsylvania in 1991 and in New Jersey in 1992. He speaks four languages in addition to English and spent all of 1993 clerking for Judge Francis J. Orlando Jr. in Camden County Superior Court.

Children wrote stories, had a scavenger hunt and got their initials painted on their cheeks yesterday - all in braille. They were having fun, with a purpose, at a carnival held at the Philadelphia Marriott as part of the National Federation of the Blind's annual convention. "If you can't read and write, you will have trouble all the rest of your life," said Pam Dubel, director of children's services for the Louisiana Center of the Blind. "We're using braille in games so kids who know it can practice, and those who don't can learn.

After Sonora Carver was blinded in a fluke accident in 1931, the young woman sat in her hospital bed and tried to imagine her future. Carver, now 87, had been in a performance troupe whose members rode horses off a 40-foot steel pier and into a tank of water. As far as she knew, her days of equine freefalls were finished. "Then I thought, well, some blind people do earn a living," Carver said. "They caned chairs and made mattresses, and I thought, goodness, I don't want to do any of those things.

The pages rolling off the conveyor belt to the sound of the clattering of presses bear familiar magazine titles: Kiplinger's, Popular Mechanics, PC World, Spider, Seventeen. But inside, the magazines do not look like typical editions of these popular periodicals. These issues have no pictures and no glossy pages. Page after page, the publications consist of thick white paper bearing hundreds of tiny raised dots. They are entirely in braille. At Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired's nonprofit braille book factory in Center City, even Playboy, the men's magazine known for its risque images, is printed in photo-free form.