I can read a talking cassette book in the darkness and iron while the birds go to bed and the crickets begin their chorus. Our neighbors seem finally to have adjusted to the fact that I often weed the lawn and flower beds beginning at twilight. At first they questioned me about what I was doing sitting in the middle of my lawn in the dark and listening to a cassette book. Buckets of dandelions and ground ivy have convinced them that I actually am accomplishing something useful out there in the cool of the evening. I was not always so comfortable letting others observe how I do things.
Society exerts lots of pressure on blind people to do things like everybody else.
It was members of the National Federation of the Blind, at ease with who they were and how they did things, who taught me that it was far better to get things done efficiently than to look like everybody else while I did nothing. This attitude makes eminently good sense, but it helps to know that members of the general public are now reading books like this one and learning why I search for things with my educated fingers and, as often as not, find them.