[tt] NYT: In Strangers, a Blind Centenarian Finds a Literary Lifeline

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Here's hoping that Congress will let the medicine, promised to let this 
101-year old blind couch potato exercise on a tread mill, bypass the usual 
FDA review, since even this hardy survivor is not likely to live long 
enough for the usual time it takes to pass an FDA review. I have read that 
more Americans have died due to regulatory lag by the FDA than in all the 
wars our politicians have managed to get us into.

In Strangers, a Blind Centenarian Finds a Literary Lifeline
New York Times, 8.8.1
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/nyregion/01read.html

By SARAH KRAMER

Stephanie Sandleben, a yoga instructor with tattoos on each
shoulder, just finished Chapter 19 of Tina Brown's biography of
Diana, Princess of Wales. Sara Nolan, a 28-year-old graduate
student, is 30 pages into a Rumer Godden novel. Mark Kalinowsky, 48
and a real estate broker, has long since stopped reading; he just
comes to chat.

These three disparate characters are part of a ragtag crew that
cycles through the worn one-bedroom Murray Hill walk-up where
Elizabeth Goodyear, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday, is
confined after two knee operations. A lifelong lover of books, Ms.
Goodyear lost her sight about four years ago, but in its place has
acquired a roster of readers who stop by regularly, bringing with
them dogs, gifts from their international travels and offerings of
dark chocolate, the elixir she has savored daily since she was 3.

"Usually there's something going on here," Ms. Goodyear observed the
other day during Ms. Sandleben's weekly visit. "It's strange. You'd
think if you got to be 101, nothing much would happen. But it does."

It started with a neighbor two generations younger, who once asked
Ms. Goodyear to watch her bags while she ran back upstairs to fetch
a bow and arrows for a trip to Maine.

As Ms. Goodyear grew more frail, the neighbor, a yoga instructor
named Alison West, started stopping by to kiss her goodnight each
evening. On learning that Ms. Goodyear had outlived her savings, Ms.
West raised money to pay for her rent-controlled apartment and part
of her home health aide's wages. Then, about five years ago, she
posted a sign seeking readers at yoga studios downtown and sent out
an e-mail message that was forwarded and forwarded again.

"Liz has no family at all, and all her old friends have died, but
she remains eternally positive and cheerful and loves to have people
come by to read to her or talk about life, politics, travel -- or
anything else," the message read. "She also loves good chocolate!"

Reading to the blind or the elderly is hardly novel. In New York
City, two well-established programs, Lighthouse International and
Visions/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, have hundreds
of volunteers who make home visits or read to clients at their
offices and in senior centers. The National Federation of the Blind
provides a free telephone service through which people can hear
articles from more than 200 newspapers and magazines, and the Jewish
Guild for the Blind offers a similar program using special radios.

But the casual, organic way in which this particular group came
together around Ms. Goodyear is a window into the way New York can
be a small town, the way strangers become a community, the way
books, reading and, especially, stories bind people together.

"I remember looking forward to seeing you, but also looking forward
to hearing what's happening next in the book," Ms. Sandleben, the
30-year-old tattooed yoga instructor, told Ms. Goodyear the other
day. "I was relieved when you told me that I was the only person
reading the story because I didn't want to miss out on anything."

Rebecca Feldman was one of the first to visit Ms. Goodyear, and has
since married, become a nurse and enrolled in graduate school to
become a midwife. "When I first started visiting, I was afraid she'd
be dead the next time I came," said Ms. Feldman, 31, who is eight
months pregnant and plans to soon bring a new baby to meet Ms.
Goodyear. "When I tell people about her, I say I have this
101-year-old friend. I don't think of it as volunteering anymore."

Ms. Goodyear was born in 1907, a premature twin delivered at home
in, as she said, "a suburb of Philadelphia whose name I cannot
remember." (Her twin, who weighed just a pound, died within an hour
of birth.) On doctor's orders, she said, she was placed in a bureau
drawer with hot water bottles and fed "whiskey and cream" via
medicine dropper.

She came to New York in 1928, seeking a stage career, but said that
after six months at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, "they
told me I had poise, personality and good looks but no acting
ability." Instead, Ms. Goodyear had a variety of jobs, including
assisting the lighting director for the New York City Ballet and
theater press agents. In between, she wrote or collaborated on 20
plays -- including two, "Widow's Walk" and "The Painted Wagon," that
made it to the stage -- and saw many more, the titles of which she
ticks off, alphabetically, in her mind to stave off loneliness and
boredom.

After a brief marriage and an ectopic pregnancy, Ms. Goodyear moved
to the Murray Hill walk-up in 1961, when the rent was $69.
"Everything was red," she said, laughing at the memory of asking a
co-worker to repaint for her. "The windowsills, the walls, the hall,
the doors, everything."

She has taken dance lessons from Martha Graham, had drinks with Duke
Ellington, spent a couple of hours with George Balanchine and his
cats, and accompanied Gypsy Rose Lee, actress and burlesque
entertainer, on a game show. One visitor recalled listening to Ms.
Goodyear's stories and then racing home to Google unfamiliar
characters.

"I think I only remember the amusing things; I don't remember any
depressing things," Ms. Goodyear said in an interview. "I think I
just put them out of my mind. I know everybody has things that they
want to forget, but I don't even have to forget. I just don't
remember."

Ms. Goodyear now has an aide from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to help bathe,
move and feed her. Her only medications are a monthly shot of
vitamin B12 and one daily Tylenol her doctor prescribed because, as
she put it, "I guess I have to do something." Because she can no
longer leave her apartment without an ambulette, her doctor makes
house calls -- once a year.

"He says he has to worry about his younger patients," Ms. Sandleben
said.

Ms. Goodyear may have a glass eye and some teeth missing, but she
can recite detailed plotlines from books she read 60 years ago.

A couple of weeks after her 101st birthday, her refrigerator
contained five bottles of Champagne and dark chocolate in truffle
and bar forms. Birthday cards from her 100th were strung across a
wall of the living room, above the plastic-covered table holding the
beloved books the volunteers-turned-friends have been reading --
many are novels by Rumer Godden, a 20th-century British writer whom
Ms. Goodyear adores.

Glamour photos of Ms. Goodyear from the 1920s sit on the television.
Four decades of bound copies of Theatre World line the hallway
shelves. In Ms. Goodyear's bedroom are a hospital bed and a couple
of stuffed dogs. A "Do Not Resuscitate" sign is posted by the front
door.

Ms. Nolan, the graduate student, started visiting Ms. Goodyear two
years ago, but since moving to Colorado last August to study poetry,
she calls once a week and reads to her over the phone.

Mr. Kalinowsky, the real estate broker, said he also began visiting
Ms. Goodyear two years ago, after both his father and his
grandmother died, because he missed being close to people from other
generations.

Ms. Sandleben brings Ms. Goodyear chocolates from Costa Rica,
Zurich, SoHo. And when she was away in Arizona on Ms. Goodyear's
most recent birthday, she got her whole family on the phone to sing
to her.

"I don't know how I ever managed to do it," Ms. Goodyear said of her
numerous friendships.

"You hook them in," Ms. Sandleben teased.

"They come," Ms. Goodyear responded, "and for some reason, they
always come back."