Joshua A. Miele and Wendell Jamieson, CONNECTING DOTS: A Blind Life

[1:45]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and, obviously, podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Joshua A. Mealy is the author of Connecting the Dots, A Blind Life. Joshua is a prominent blind scientist, designer, and thought leader in accessible technology and disability. He is a recipient of the 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, an Amazon design scholar, and distinguished fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. He is known for creating inclusive technologies that address critical needs and challenge societal assumptions and for speaking with Frank Humor about the lived disability experience. Doctor. Miele helps guide the non visual customer experience for Amazon devices and advises widely on accessible design research methods and disability inclusion. He is the father of two adult children and lives with his wife in Berkeley, California. Wendell Jamieson, his coauthor, is an author, writer, editor, and painter who spent twenty years working for newspapers from obituary writer at the Jersey Journal in Jersey City to metro editor of the New York Times. He has worked for every major paper in New York City and now writes books and works with others on their books and essays. Welcome, Joshua and Wendell. I have a two for one special here today. Very exciting. Connecting Dots, A Blind Life by Joshua Mealy. Is that how you pronounce it? Mealy? Yeah. Perfect. Yep. Good. With Wendell Jamieson. Welcome to you both. As I keep telling you, I am obsessed with this book. I read it. Every word, I was, like, poring over it, dog earing pages, and I just loved the story and just you know, you as a guy. It was just, like, a really captivating

[4:00]Joshua A. Miele: story. So anyway So thrilling. Thank you. Thank you for saying that, and thank you for reading it and enjoying it. We've been living with this book for three years now, and very few people have read it yet. So, to have that kind of feedback is so amazing and so exhilarating because we, you know, we think it's we thought it was pretty good, but, you know, you never know till the rest of the world gets hold of it. So, thank you. It is an anxiety provoking time. I am sorry you are in that in the throes of that, you know, the beginning promotion stages. But, yes, I can I can say it is definitely great?

[4:40]Zibby Owens: Why don't you talk about the premise of the book, when you decided to make this a book, how the two of you originally teamed up, which I know you write about in the book, but why don't you explain it? So I'm I'm here this is Josh. I'm here with, my coauthor,

[4:55]Joshua A. Miele: Wendell Jamieson. The book is about you know, the book is my book. It's written in my voice, but we wrote it together, and it's because, you know, Wendell is a professional writer, and he can talk more about that, but I've got a story, and Wendell really was an incredible collaborator in helping me tell that story. And the story is that I'm a blind scientist, designer, and inventor of cool things for blind people. And I'm in my mid-50s. I'm at sort of, I'm in a nice point in a very successful career of doing that work, and I wanted to, we sort of as friends decided that, wow, you know, it's time to sort of tell this story because for most of my life, frankly, I've been very interested in doing the work, the accessibility and disability related work that I do around technology, around disability inclusion and rights, and I've been very reluctant to tell my own story because I've always wanted to say, You know, the story's not really about me. The story is about us. The story is about people with disabilities, about blind people, and how we use technology to do the things we want to do and how we could really use better technology if the world would accommodate. And so it's been an interesting switch to realize that telling my own story is actually part of making that change in the world. And Wendell, why don't you say a little bit about the book and the story? Sure. So, John, the

[6:39]Wendell Jamieson: way Josh has described it is quite fascinating and it's very interesting because he doesn't mention how he became blind. And that was something of a, not struggle, but a balance we had to find in the book. Because the way he became blind was a of a shocking thing that happened when we were both growing up in Park Slope, Brooklyn in 1973, which he answered the door of his family's brownstone, which was a few blocks from mine. And a neighbor who was mentally disturbed poured acid on his head and blinded him and scarred him. And this was a very big event in the Park Slope of those days. It was in the newspapers. It was extremely upsetting. I recall being seven years old when my mother crying told me about this and we didn't even know the Melees and the only other memory I have of my mother telling me something in an equally upset way was the day, the night, the morning after John Lennon was shot. So, that just gives you an example of the magnitude of this thing and so, when I was a journalist at the New York Times, I tracked down Josh which is easy to do because he's quite notable and all over Google and I wrote a story about his, you know, what had happened, this crime that had occurred a long time ago and then the life he lived afterwards which to my great happiness was quite a joyous and successful life. And so, Josh was very ambivalent about talking about what had happened, and sometimes ambivalent about talking what happened even as we wrote the book. So, here, I'm going to kick it back to you on that, Josh. Yeah. And you know, it's not because I'm, you know, ashamed of it or I'm, you know, I'm traumatized and don't wanna think about it. Like, of course, it's, you know, it was a trauma, but

[8:28]Joshua A. Miele: the reason I don't wanna, you know, the reason I've spent my life trying not to talk about that is because for one thing, it's written all over my face. Anybody who sees me knows that something, you know, serious happened to me, and I spend, you know, it's not a big deal in my mind. Like, I am who I am. I'm blind. I'm burned, but it's just not the important part of what I generally want to be talking about with people. So a lot of the time I have to try to move people away from it. So for Wendell to say, Hey, you know, let's write a story about it. Let's put it in your book. I'm like, Okay, we'll put it in the book, but it's got to be, like, we got to be, you know, we got to hit it and move on essentially in the way I have in my life. I you know, I hit it or it hit me, and we moved on, and the moving on is the really interesting part of the story, not because I'm some amazing, you know, in disability, there's all these stereotypes about disability that, of course, people with disabilities are sort of also trying to get away from, and one of them is the overcoming, you know, oh, I've overcome my disability. No, I haven't overcome my disability or what happened to me. I just I live with it. I do the things I have to do just as anyone would who wants to live a fulfilling life. And to many people who don't live with disability or don't have this kind of trauma in their past, it's very difficult to imagine how that would be. And so the book is really Connecting Dots is really an effort to normalize that, to help people understand. And it does tell the story of, you know, of how I got burned, but it also tells the story of my childhood and how I went through public school in New York City as a burned blind kid and how I learned braille and learned to use a cane to get around and and really how I was a a very self destructive, teenager. You know, lots of drugs, lots of music, lots of fun, lots and how I moved on to build a career in blindness, even though that's not what I set out to do. I didn't want to build a career in blindness. I wanted to be a physicist. But it turned out that not that I couldn't have been successful in physics, I think I could have, but being a person who is blind, who designs stuff for myself and for other blind people, I think was a more it felt more fulfilling. It was a more valuable contribution. It was something that I felt driven to do that I saw as

[11:16]Zibby Owens: a gap, as something that there weren't enough people doing. And I and I'm very pleased with the the works I've done so far, and I hope to do more. That's amazing. What a story. I am not gonna dive deep into an area of your life you'd just as soon not discuss. So we're gonna just go right past that. All I'll say is that it was written beautifully and gave me a view into an experience that I didn't know much about. And so thank you for for exhibiting all the courage that you did, even though you don't feel courageous or whatever. I I still think having your backstory

[11:51]Joshua A. Miele: helps us put everything that follows into some sort of context. I think it's important that you put it in, and I'm glad you did, but Thank you. And let me just say, Zvi, let me just say, it's not that I'd rather not discuss it. Obviously, I'm ready to discuss it. We put it in the book. So, it's not that It's just I don't want to It's a piece of my life. It I get has defined my life, but it isn't the story. I get it. One

[12:18]Wendell Jamieson: thing that I'm very proud about this book that happened organically as we wrote it, as I think now that I've reread it a few times, I think we actually create for the reader Josh's experience that So there's a scene very late in the book where it's sort of a meta thing where I'm actually become a character because I interview him and we introduce to the reader many of his family members from when he was little and sort of catch up with everyone. It's kind of a narrative device that way. But I think that the reader has at that point stopped thinking about the what happened to Josh in the beginning. The reader is with him now out in Berkeley and living his life, and I think that's the way Josh internalizes it as well. And so I think we actually give the reader a visual sense of that that truly how he truly moved on from this thing, which at first glance might seem a hard thing to imagine to do. But guess what? We do do we do it. And the reader does it with us. But I interrupted you, Zebi. You were moving on to some interesting questions. No. No. It's okay. It's totally fine. Was just you know, I

[13:20]Zibby Owens: feel like learning about your experience and some of the challenges of being blind that I could I mean, you outline them and describe them so that we feel we are actually living them with you. Or Wendell, maybe, know, both of you together did that. But even something like your relationship with your seeing eye dog, or the curb height and your activism there, or getting money from an ATM machine, or all these things that a sighted person just might not realize were so making life so difficult for another group of people. And you you and you're not angry about it. You pointed out, like, oh, well, this is really hard for blind people. Like, maybe you know? And so I love how you laid all that out and then tried to find ways to fix everything. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100 European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zippy.

[16:25]Joshua A. Miele: Thank you. Yeah. I'm glad I'm glad that that came through. And, you know, part of the you know, there's there's sometimes, you know, people, as you point out, don't realize where the barriers are or where the difficulties are coming from. And then sometimes people think, oh, well, like, of course blind people can't use computers, or of course blind people can't, you know, go skiing or ride bikes or whatever, and they can, but, you know, so there are so many ways to sort of misconstrue or misconceive or otherwise kind of build your idea of blindness and disability on assumption rather than information, and so it was so much fun to kind of tell these stories and also kind of do some debunking and try to, broaden perspectives while doing it. So one of the stories that you allude to is this ATM story, where ATMs aren't as big of a deal as they used to be now that we're kind of we're moving into a phase where cash isn't as exciting, but it used to be that if you didn't, you know, if you couldn't get cash out of the ATM, you really couldn't, you didn't have money, and we went through a phase for about twenty years here, since about 2000, where ATMs were quite accessible, but before that, in the '90s, which is when the story about my ATM thing takes place, ATMs were not accessible. They didn't talk, and while they had braille all over them, it was performative braille. It was not actually functional Braille. It wasn't Braille that helped you use the machine. It was basically Braille that was put there for sighted people to say, Oh, isn't it great that blind people can use the ATM? But they couldn't, and so it was, you know, there was a story late at night. Was trying to get some cash out of the ATM, so I had memorized all the button sequences I needed to do to get my, you know, $60 out of the ATM or whatever, and I put my card in. I did my sequence, and it didn't work. And I didn't know if it didn't work because the machine was out of money. I didn't know if it didn't work because my PIN was wrong, which it wasn't. I didn't know, so it could have been anything because I couldn't read the screen. And so it you know, there's I won't spoil it for the reader. I encourage people to read it, but I don't usually get very angry, but I did get very angry that night. And one one option Josh has in we were that we write about in Connecting Dots is that you can ask the person next to you to help you. Look. Here. Can you please tell me my balance and withdraw this money from me? Thank you very much. And he'll withdraw, you know, $300,

[19:14]Wendell Jamieson: give you your 60, and walk away. So Or maybe not give you your 60. Maybe just kinda hit you over the head. So we used a little bit of the ATM as a proxy and the the the ATM is a recurring motif of to the various things that to you and I, Zippy, we may not think of, that to Josh were, you know, something to be over to dealt with. I mean, the world is designed

[19:36]Joshua A. Miele: world is designed for sighted people, and my mission in life essentially has been to try to bring accessible design into the mainstream, to try to move us a little further down the road of designing things in a way that it doesn't have to be for blind people only. I want to have the things that work for everyone in the world work for me and other people with disabilities as well. And it doesn't have to cost a lot more. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be thought of at the beginning of the design process and followed through on in a meaningful way that makes sure that that it's actually gonna work for people who need it. Amazing.

[20:23]Zibby Owens: Well, how great to put your brain to good use in that area. Right?

[20:28]Joshua A. Miele: Thank you. It's amazing.

[20:30]Zibby Owens: Of the things I loved about the book was how you write about your family and the family relationships and even the evolution of some of the relationships over time, particularly with your mom's partner. I have a stepdad. I am married. My husband is a stepdad. I found that relationship, which became quite influential in your career trajectory and started off from, you know, not of not the best place. And I used to kind of make fun of his accent the whole time. It's, like, Clarios because you're obviously very funny. But the way you write about all of them with your your siblings and your mom and your dad and all of that. Talk about writing all all of that and how you're dealing with the fact that, you know, these are people that are going to probably read the book and have to handle their depiction in it. Yeah. That was scary.

[21:20]Joshua A. Miele: I won't I'm not gonna not gonna pretend it wasn't. And the thing is that everyone in my family one of the the reason why I feel I have been so able to kind of be a successful blind person and be sort of self actualized in this way is that nobody in my family ever said, You can't do that because you're blind. The people in my family said to me, Let's figure out how you're gonna do this, and gave me opportunities to figure it out for myself and to advocate for myself. And so without a family like that, I'm sure you can imagine that it didn't necessarily need to be that way, and many people don't have a family that behaves that way with enormous impacts on the psyche of the blind person, right? To be told as a child, You can't do that because you're blind. Don't touch that. Keep your hands to yourself. Those are terrible messages for blind kids. So it's my family that made me, and I wanted to honor them and you know, talk about them in the book, but, you know, nobody's perfect, and there's a lot of imperfections that are funny and adorable and loving, and Wendell and I, when we first started writing it, I said to Wendell, okay, we can do this, but it has to be funny. And he said, funny? I'm not sure if it's a funny story. I said, it is a funny story. Oh, I'm not

[22:56]Wendell Jamieson: sure that's true. I always we Josh and I always have a good time, and I always thought there was a lot of humor, and he's very funny. You know, our our outlook from growing up in Park Slope in those days is similar. One thing I I'm so happy is that you picked up on a family thing because as an outside observer, right, as the journalist who was trying doing a lot of the reporting and putting it together, I felt that each member of Josh's family represented a different internalized journey and response to what had happened to him as a little boy. This was very obviously, this was very tough on his mother and his sister and his brother. His sister became a very loving caretaker, probably going above and beyond what such a little kid should need to do, whereas his brother became quite angry and sort of distanced himself from Josh at points in their childhood. Not maybe directly as a response to what happened, but that's how played out. And of course, Claus, his stepfather, was a scientist and sort of was was in many ways keys to showing Josh that the life of a scientist could be a glorious life and his father who's a tough guy from the 70s like saved his life on the night this happened. So, everyone and his mother of course, I will have to give credit to everyone, incredibly nurturing, slightly wonderfully eccentric force. So, everybody played one of these roles in helping him and themselves move forward. So, I thought I think I'm so happy you picked up on that because I thought it was it was a fascinating part of the the book and the reporting.

[24:24]Joshua A. Miele: But it is funny.

[24:25]Wendell Jamieson: It is very funny. Some are funny. Yeah. Some are funnier than others. Yes.

[24:29]Zibby Owens: I think it's funny too. And I also think I mean, you had you had times there when when you were talking about being in the the cave or underground at Berkeley with all the other, you know, cool blind or disabled people, and you're like, yeah. And then one night it got really hot, we all took off our pants because, like, what? We weren't gonna be able to see each other? I mean, you're just you're just, like, poke fun. It's like Or using the braille machine to heat up,

[24:54]Wendell Jamieson: grilled cheese sandwiches, right? I mean, necessity is the mother of invention. Exactly.

[24:59]Joshua A. Miele: Exactly. And, you know, you mentioned the cave at Berkeley, which is, you know, sort of the, you know, sort of community, this impromptu community center of blind and disability thinking, on campus at Berkeley. It's gone now, by the way. And I think another big part of this book is my sort of my blind awakening because as a child, even though I was so empowered and so supported by my family in doing the things I wanted to do, I was not I was not down very, with being thought of as a blind kid. Was just, I was a kid. I wanted to be thought of like everybody else, and just like everybody else, I had these ideas about blindness and disability that were very negative, and I didn't want to be thought of that way. So I didn't want to hang with other blind people. I didn't want to like, I didn't want to talk to blind mentors. Like, what would they have to say to me? They would teach me how to be blind and pathetic. And it wasn't until I got to Berkeley that I met a community of blind people that I was like, Oh my God, I've been totally ableist. I've been thinking of blind people as this negative stereotype and trying to get away from it, when in fact, blind people, like being blind you know, can be cool and blind people can be cool. And I met an entire community of amazing, smart, funny, interesting, and cool blind people at Berkeley and really realized that it wasn't the blindness that I didn't want to be part of. It was the representations and the stereotypes of blindness that are so pervasive in sort of history literature and popular culture. And so I really became I embraced blindness at that point and have, you know, have been on that journey since.

[27:00]Zibby Owens: Well, I feel like it is just this fabulous coming of age with your everybody has their own stuff. Right? Your stuff is something that I think a lot of people are curious about. What what would it be like to be in your shoes? And yet you go through all the stages of adolescence and, you know, the phone freaking or whatever that was. Like, all the funny and dating and falling in love and just all the things which make the story just so heartwarming and compelling. And I don't know. I feel like this should be an Academy Award movie or something We like

[27:36]Wendell Jamieson: agree we agree with you on that.

[27:40]Joshua A. Miele: Would be great and terrifying.

[27:43]Zibby Owens: If there's something, like, if you could just distill it down, which is a tough ask, into just something that readers need to take with them when they put down your book. What is that what is that thing that you're like, if you miss if they missed it, they missed the whole purpose of it? Wow. I think I said it was tough. It was tough. It's a tough issue. Yeah. I'm gonna say that blindness is just another way of living in the world. It's not tragic.

[28:07]Joshua A. Miele: It's not scary. It just is. And if we would design the world more thoughtfully for everyone, then blindness would be easier. And I want people to know about that. Amazing.

[28:22]Wendell Jamieson: How about you, Wendell? Oh, what he said, of course. But, you know, he did get a draw a bad card that day in 1973, and he persevered. And he went on to have an unbelievably successful, joyous life. And so if you have draw a bad card one day, don't throw in the towel. I mean, Josh would say, well, of course, he didn't throw in the towel. He had no choice but to move forward and I think that's in a way kind of an inspiring thought. So, I would, that's what I would like someone to take away and also, you know, the humor of this book is very important to us. It is a funny book and I just think you might say, well, I read a book about a guy that burned with acid in the first chapter and at the end, he won a big, well, I don't wanna give away anything. He got a big award at the end. It might not initially sound like a laugh riot but if it is and so I'd like people to have a joyous reading experience and and take away also some joy from the various sort of slightly mundane parts of it that you've mentioned. The The bullying in love, teenager, and doing drugs and stuff. That is many people's experience if we're not blind, but it also is part of the journey and can be exciting to read about.

[29:30]Joshua A. Miele: And, you know, Wendell used the word inspiration, and that's another one of those triggering words for people with disabilities, but it's not actually a terrible thing to be inspired. But the kind of inspiration is really important, and, you know, I don't I'm not trying to do a chicken soup for the soul where people, you know, with kittens and puppies and people feel good. And I'm not trying to inspire people to say, Wow, what a great guy. I could never do that. I am trying to inspire people to say, Wow, I didn't realize that. I think now that I want to be that kind of person. I want to take on some of the challenges that are being talked about in this book. The kind of inspiration that inspires people to do and to be is is powerful, and I wanna encourage that. So I'm hoping that that's that's where that's what'll come from reading this book. It definitely does. You don't have to accept things the way they are, and you can always improve things. And that's something that

[30:35]Zibby Owens: it comes through in every in every paragraph. Right? That Thank you. Wow. Thank you. Yeah. Congratulations. Sorry for sort of fawning all over you guys. I was so obsessed. But, anyway, Connecting Dots of Blind Life, congratulations, and thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Zibby. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.