Sierra Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Newsletter ~ May 2026

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Be not a victim of experience, be a survivor as you learn from it and move on.

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The Annual Meeting of the Membership

This year’s annual meeting of the Membership will be held on May 14th at the Love Building in Condon Park.  Those of you who are members are invited to come for the pasta dinner that will be held at 5:30.  Following the dinner there will be the meeting which is open to non-members and the community as it is a scheduled Board Meeting.

At the meeting the Executive Director will present both service and financial information about the activities during the last year, and the agencies hopes for the future.  The board will present any changes they propose in the By-laws, which are subject to a vote of the members to take effect.  There will be an opportunity for members and the community to speak and ask questions of the Director or the Board.  Members can make a motion for consideration by the membership, which will also require a vote.  Ideas not related to the structure of the agency can be referred to the board for consideration at their next meeting as well.

We are one of very few agencies in the State with a voting membership.  We have maintained it to give the community, and the client a direct say in the agency and how it functions.  As a community agency, it is the direct access that assures the community that we are doing what we say we are going to do to maintain the health, independence and community access for the blind and visually impaired of our service area.

If you plan to attend, please contact the office so we know how many will attend, and how many we are cooking for.  Call 530-265-2121.  We hope we will see you there, as our vitality and our ability to fund the agency are dependent on community and client support.

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"Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more."

~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

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The need for volunteer drivers grows

Our most active program is Transportation to and from medical appointment and procedures.  This last year our units of service in that area have grown, and staff and volunteers drove 18,467 miles to appointments as far away as Sacramento.  While most trips are local, we took 88 trips to the retinal center alone.  Occasionally the trip is part of the program as it is when we take a larger group to a local restaurant for a lunch meeting.  Our client count rose from 191 to 201, and we ushered in 44 new clients.  Simply, we are growing in service while the staff has remained at its lowest in over thirty years.  The difference is in the volunteers, and their contribution not only to the agency, but to the client and community as well.

If you are interested in volunteering, call the office, (530-265-2121), for more information and to learn more about the agency and who we serve.  Ask for Melissa, who is our Transportation Coordinator for an simple interview.  All you need is a driver’s license and insurance.  We carry a million dollar policy that covers you for liability, and we pay fifty cents per mile if requested.

We hope you can join us.  Many of our drivers have been with us for years since they find what they are doing is critical to both the health of the client, and their ability to remain active members of the community.  They make a difference and that has its own rewards.

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Fr. Phelan 25^th Annual Golf Tournament

This year’s tournament presented by the Knights of Columbus will be held on Saturday, May 30^th at the Alta Sierra Country Club.  The tournament is held in memory of Father Nicholas Phelan as a fund-raising event for Mount Saint Mary’s Academy.  The Knights of Columbus also grant half of the proceeds to another charity, and this year Sierra Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired was chosen to be that beneficiary.

Sierra Services has also had a golf tournament for two decades, but we had to cancel it due to the loss of a major sponsor when their business was sold.  For us, this is an opportunity to give the players who came to our event another option and still support our service to the community at the same time.

Much like our event, registration starts at 11:00.  Lunch is served from 11:30 to 12:30, and at 1:00 golf begins with a shotgun start.  Dinner is then served and a raffle and awards handed out will finish the event.  The cost is $150 per golfer, which includes the Green Fee, Golf Cart, Lunch and Dinner.  The four person scramble will be age group adjusted so that players in their 70’s and 80’s do not have to compete against those in their 30’s and 40’s.

Information and registration should be addressed to Mike Torre, 15468 Birch Meadow Circle, Grass Valley, 95945, or contact Mike at 510-919-8165, or ucsportdad@sbcglobal.net.

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"Now and then it is good to pause from our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."

~ Dalai Lama

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A new aspect to Counseling

There has always been a need in our counseling program to support the caregivers, either those family members or friends, or our clients themselves who find they are not only having to make adjustments for themselves, but another family member as well.

Caregiving is at times like a roller coaster.  The highs and lows are dramatic at times, and the stress and related frustration can cause the lows to be deep and fast while the climb to the highs will be a slower process.  Both for the caregiver and the one receiving the care.

The group meets twice a month on the first and third Thursday at 1:30.  Many of our elderly clients are also caring for a spouse.  Often their children are themselves approaching a certain age and are facing issues they must accommodate.  The issues related to the pressures of caregiving are not unique, but common even if the situation is individual to the family.  Who better to give advice than those who themselves are having to solve similar problems.  This can be especially critical when the one you are caring for passes and the wave of the rollercoaster becomes more immediate.

If you are a caregiver, do not hesitate to call the office, 530-265-2121, and see of the program can be of assistance to you.  And join us.  Sometimes all you need is a break, and understanding from those who know first-hand what your frustrations are.

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"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation."

~ D Elton Trueblood

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George Carlin questioned words.

Doctors shouldn’t call their work practice.

Why is our money guy called a broker?

If lawyers can be disbarred and Clergy may be defrocked,

can electricians be delighted?

Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Driving on a parkway and parking in a driveway is absurd.

Meow means Woof in cat.

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Hope and Faith

One of the things we try to do is bring some hope to those who are losing their vision.  Many of the things that are going on in medicine, like stem cell research, are hopeful but they are also down the road too far for most of our clients.  We try to help you remain an independent member of the community, but that also means you have to have hope and enough faith in yourself to be independent.

What we have to do is try to decide what hope is.  Like faith, it is an emotion.  It is also personal to each individual.  As we age, the distance hope can reach is shorter than it is for someone just starting to lead an independent life.  What we do is spend more time on faith that we will be able to adjust to a different way of living as the loss of vision and other maladies of aging that do not allow us to do many of the things we have done most of our lives.  This gives us the hope we have for tomorrow.

Hope and faith are also critical to mental health, and keeping us from just taking to a chair and doing nothing.  At one time we had a famous oncologist as a client, and he went back to school to get another doctorate in psychology because he had learned that the cancer patients who were most likely to be cured were the ones that had a positive attitude.  What that positive was, could be found in the fact they had hopes for the future they still wanted to pursue.  They also had faith that they would be able to accomplish them.

In most of his patient’s faith also had more than a religious aspect.  No matter what their religion was, they had the sense that they were being cared for by something they may not see but could feel.  Like hope and faith, they had an emotional base to prepare them to face adversity.

There are two ways we try to foster both hope that the client needs to keep their independent life, and the faith that there are those who care for them that will help in any way they can.  One is the transportation to medical appointments which gives you hope that whatever the ailment, something can be done about it.  Second is counseling both through the group programs, and individually.  We hope we can be one of those who reach out when you need it, and give you the hope to go on.  With the loss of vision your life will change.  If you make those changes, vision loss can be more of an inconvenience than the end of something.  You have the hope and faith in yourself to take that one step sideways so you can continue to move on.

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Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

~ Hellen Keller

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Conundrum

A conundrum is a situation that seems to have no solution.  The core of our program is to foster independence in people who are losing vision.

There is a tendency that when one of our clients has made the adjustment to vision loss and they become independent they become independent in a new hope for the future and have faith in tomorrow.  We don’t see them as often.  This is especially true in the peer group setting.  Historically our clients were often living alone and a spouse and friends were gone.  What they found in the group was new friends.  Conversations become more to their lives than vision loss.  We all have a tale to tell and we need someone to tell it to.  With the new independence they tend to leave the groups, and that weakens the depth and character of the group.  We need them to continue coming not so much for themselves but for the support and the example they set for other members of the group.  The group itself develops a personality where hope and faith can be generated.  We all have new problems that come up, and as vision loss increases another adjustment must be made by the individual client and the group is there to help.

With independence comes some responsibility.  And a danger that you slip into patterns that do not advance our lives, they constrain them.  We now do more individual counseling than we once did, because that new independence needs to be maintained so that we grow as an individual.  Changing is getting harder as the world we live in changes.

As the cartoonist Glasbergen puts it: “It is time for an upgrade, but I’m not sure which part has become obsolete; the computer, the software, or me!”

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We are looking for volunteer drivers! Interested? Please talk with Melissa,

(530) 265-2121