 Bill Doyle on Vermont issues and Sophie Curson who's my partner and and their guest is Lawrence Seiler and you want to take the first question. Sure. Thank you Lawrence for joining us today. No problem. Yes ma'am. We know that you work for, you advocate for people with disabilities in the state of Vermont. Yes. And so we're just gonna put that out there first but I want to know what brought you to Vermont in the first place. Well what brought me to, what brought my wife and I to Vermont was some services, you know appropriate housing, you know agree because contrary to public belief there's a lot of people that fall through the cracks when they're challenged. Some people have what we call one foot in one foot out. When we both were in New York we weren't getting very many services. It's not that we need a lot but appropriate housing was one of them and some you know where we live in Montpelier there's doctors across the street who doesn't want to live where your doctor's office is right across the street. So you don't have to travel so much. So those are the main reasons why we moved to Vermont. And did you find that you really were having trouble getting those services in New York? Well in New York a lot of people didn't see us as disabled and they still don't. A lot of state organizations don't see us as challenged. I was born with just cerebral palsy and some other challenges but you know they see people well if you're on television because back in New York I was on TV as well. You know you're on TV, you're advocate, you're doing things. You know you don't need our help. So that's basically what but then years ago back in 1998 while I was going to Lehman College I have my degree in journalism there. I saw a way to start advocating by creating a television program and that's what I did and been doing it here in Vermont for about five years and been doing good ever since. That's so wonderful. Yeah say where you first grew up. Oh I grew up well the Bronx is not burning anymore but I grew up in Cove City section of the Bronx 1973 but at that time because I was on your show before back in 2016 but I'm just to just to reiterate some things. Back in the 70s there weren't very many services for people with disabilities. You either were going to Special Olympics or some other thing or you were institutionalized because now here's the thing. Back in the 70s in New York there was a place called Willow State School which Robert Rivera reported on ABC News but through some of the organizations that I've interviewed on Able Done on Air that we do here in Vermont I found out that there are still 39 states institutionalizing people with disabilities. That's just so sickening to hear. You would think that there wouldn't be that many. Back in the 70s they also had something called workshops not classes but a workshop would be a place where a person with a disability would go and they would do piece work and get paid a small salary just to keep busy. Yeah but they stopped in Vermont they stopped those workshops those piece workshops and because I know here in Vermont there was something called the Brandon State School and some other places that got shut down but there is we still have a lot to learn despite everything. I mean why is there still 39 states? It shouldn't be. Right. Just a follow up on the Bronx tell us how the Bronx differs from other parts of New York City. Yeah well back in the 70s they had something called because I was watching old footage the other day a matter of fact on YouTube about the old Bronx. There was a place called Fort Apache which was a police precinct but they used to have a thing where the Bronx is burning you know the burning Bronx and you would see all these buildings falling down because of lack of infrastructure but you know the South Bronx now it's up and coming they have the Hunts Point food market there so there's more people are living now in the Bronx. I mean okay you still have a lot of shootings and bad things have been but they're making the Bronx as beautiful. I mean we have the they have the New York Yankees. Yankee Stadium changed in the Bronx they made it more accessible. I mean the only thing that's not accessible at Yankee Stadium is the food. Family of four you're gonna pay about five hundred dollars by the time you finish but that's about the only thing. But they've changed quite a bit and Vermont is changing quite a bit with transportation there's going to be more there's going to be what we call power transit for people with disabilities. Matter of fact I'm working with an organization now called the Vermont Regional Planning Commission that's the correct name. They're here in Montpillar and they were unable to earn air recently. Dan Curry is the executive director of that well he's the sorry he's not the executive director he's the he's one of the planners of that organization and right now I'm currently working with that organization outside of the show I'm doing public service announcements for I'm working with them to do public service announcements to get the message out that we need more more transportation for people with disabilities. I mean what if you live here in Vermont in a rural area and not Montpillar not stow and you live all the it's called the boondocks you know you live somewhere you live in the sticks and you have nowhere to get to a hospital nowhere to get to a supermarket so you need transportation so that's what Vermont is doing now they're through GMTA they're they're working to change that. Getting back to the Bronx what are some of the other political divisions? What was that? Bronx is the part. Oh you like the Bronx okay and not for one. Other parts other parts I know you're excited. Okay well the Bronx has the Bronx Zoo you know beautiful situation there. Best in the world. One of the one of the biggest in the world although I've been to Israel and they have a zoo Vermont I'm wondering Vermont doesn't have a zoo does it? No. I don't think people are particularly interested after they get done feeding their five llamas their 200 goats and their 90 chickens. And a partridge in a pear tree. Something like that. But yeah I feel in Vermont though we do need more things to do in certain areas like there's no amusement parks but we definitely have beautiful parks one of my favorite parks here in Vermont happen to be happens to be Groton. Groton sorry Groton State Park I've been kayaking there I've been canoeing. How did you get there? Oh I had my wife and I through again services through the Vermont is the organization for the blind and visually impaired. They took us on a picnic and we went canoeing. I had I have the connections through through adaptive sports Vermont which is a wonderful organization adaptive adaptive sports they haven't been on my program yet but adaptive sports you do mountain climbing you do canoeing and all that all the kind of nice stuff but they train you how to use the equipment. So you can actually climbing the mountain yet they're actually showing you how to put on the harness and you know they're showing you how to canoe they're showing you how to how to hold the paddle how to put on a life jacket that type of thing. Are they gonna work in tandem you think with the para program? They probably know about it a lot of organizations along the route depending on the routes will be finding out you know like I said a lot of these people a lot of people live in rural Vermont can't get to somewhere but with GMTA you can call them a day before right yeah pretty much I need to get from well how did you call it the sticks out in the stick out in the stick out in the brambles. I'm buried under the bramble on mountain line. Talking about talking about talking about and they'll come get you pretty much but talking about transportation in Vermont the only thing that really needs to change especially with GMTA is the Aboriginal impairment so the brochures that I put out are sometimes in small print now you can request larger print yeah okay a lot of but a lot of organizations don't really want to pay so much money because it costs a lot of money yeah but I put things in larger print. If they're dealing with visually impaired people you would think it would be logical right so it's all about money. So how does your show educate people in Vermont? Well just to let you guys know starting in 2019 we will be abled in on air will be funded by Green Mountain Support Services which is a wonderful organization. Joshua Smith runs that organization but how our show educates people in Vermont we have lots of guests like you guys do and we basically educate people by showing what Vermont has to offer through those organizations because a lot of people with special needs don't know what's available to them as far as services. Yeah I think that's huge. Just yeah if you don't know what services are available to you it's like for example a lot of immigrants who come to this country sometimes they're just dropped off and they don't know where to turn to go somewhere right that the biggest thing is getting lost in the shuffle so we kind of make it easier for a person with a disability. We use our show as an educational tool so if people want to learn about autism or they want to learn about cerebral palsy or they want to learn about some other organization they turn to the show for that. Just to let you know another extension we recently we have a couple of episodes online we recently started a new program called able to cook which is a 30 minute program that focuses on cooking and recipes and you know people with special needs to learn how to cook for those that are scared of the kitchen. We recently this past this year 2018 interviewed someone from Washington County who was so afraid of the kitchen that now despite her anxiety she's cooking and catering events. So yeah so we're going to be expanding by doing more cooking shows and more shows are getting the word out there. We now are airing in Brattleboro we're airing in Burlington we're airing all over different access centers and it's important to get the word out there. We're also outside of the show I'm creating a news portal like a newspaper for people with disabilities and their families and there'll be links to the show through there as well. And what you do is truly remarkable and you've done a great job describing what you do. Okay. But just getting went back to the Bronx just a little bit. Yeah the Yankees were they ever called the Bronx bombers? Yeah they're called the Bronx bombers. The Bronx growing up Jewish the Bronx had places such as Jans Ice Cream Parlor which is no longer there. I don't have the ingredients today and maybe one day I'll come back on the show and make some. There's a old I'm sure you've heard of an what we call an egg cream which doesn't contain eggs at all. It used to it started out containing an egg milk and so on but they took the eggs out years ago because of Salmonella unless you're Rocky Balboa and drinking eggs you know it's not a good thing but an egg cream is basically seltzer chocolate syrup or vanilla syrup and you just mix it up and you call that an egg cream. No ice cream? And if you want ice cream then it's an ice cream soda. Oh okay so an egg cream is an egg cream is just seltzer and chocolate. The chocolate syrup which is which is UBET it's what it's chocolate syrup it's called from a company called UBET chocolate syrup or you can use Hershey's but that's all it is. What you do is truly remarkable and and we congratulate you on the work you are. Yeah Able Denonaire is extremely important. I'll give it a website. It can be seen at www.OrcaMedia.net. I'm also on Twitter and Facebook but you know the show is vitally important to the Specialties Committee and needs to continue and will continue. And for good reason just getting back a little bit to the Bronx Bombers and the Yankees. Are you a Yankee fan? Unfortunately I don't want to say Boston on this show but I'm a Boston fan. You know I've been to I've been to the stadium Boston Red Sox beautiful stadium out there you know but yeah Babe Ruth started with Boston before he became Bronx Bomber. Yeah I love the Bronx Bombers as well. The only thing I don't like it costs too much to go to Yankee stadium. They just need to. What price are we talking about? Hmm? What are the fees? What would you pay to pay? Oh um. In case we want to go over it. Family of Four is gonna least cost you about five hundred dollars by the time you get a hotel room to go and hot dogs and everything else. Parking. The Mountaineers is a beautiful team but we need to have I think Vermont needs a professional baseball club here. If Vermont had a professional baseball club here we would be good to go. I'll take that back to the team that I'm I associate with. So what makes the Yankees very special and take take off and why Yankees are single down it's been quite special. The reason the reason why well it because it brings people that have never okay sometimes people have never gone to a baseball game so Yankee Stadium is such where they offer everything for everybody. They offer accessible seating, accessible parking. You're right there by your you're right there by public transportation. The trainees, the buses, people live there but you know it's just a special place. It but it just costs extremely too much to go these days. Well that's good how many games would you go to a year? Well I remember growing up it didn't cost that much. My father many recipes took me to both Yankee Stadium and and the Mets but we would get the cheap seats. One of those things we have to walk. I've been there and I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah yeah yeah. Also the the Yankees have that. Why are the Yankees so special and what are some of the players? Well one of my favorite players on the Yankees happens to be Jorge Posada. Jorge Posada's family has an outfielder. Yeah he's an outfielder but Jorge Posada has a family member who has an autistic son and his foundation helps a lot of the Yankee players set up foundations to help people with autism. So you know there's like so many baseball players of the past, Thurman Munson, his wife set up a foundation to help sick kids, Johnny Bentz and those but the Yankees have I forget his name I have to look it up but there's a player you probably know it more than I do. There's a player that used to play for the Yankees. He he had one arm. Do you know what I'm talking about? No. Last name was Albert I think. I do remember when I'm player but I didn't know the name. Yeah but you know the ball club has things special about it because the Yankees do help people with disabilities and their families and other you know children's hospitals and so on and so forth. One other final Yankee question. How are they doing? They're doing quite well but since I've moved on this side of the track I'm a Boston fan so I hope you're not upset. I'm very impressed. They're interested in special needs as you have pointed out. Yeah well yeah I have no I deal with cerebral palsy. I know let me just let you know this through the show that I've done for the past five years of my wife and I have done we educate our audience and tell them that you know people deal with challenges we don't suffer from it. Many oftentimes as a matter of fact I had to put a journalist which I can't mention paper he worked for but I put a journalist in his place most recently and because the journalist said oh people suffer from disability no we do not suffer from it. You cannot you cannot die from cerebral palsy. You're challenged with it. There are certain days where yeah there are certain days where I have my aches and pains but I just deal with it and move on. You go to school in New York City. Yes I went high school. I went to Christopher Columbus High School. Do these schools have different assignments? Do you have several many many schools explain what yeah well now the Board of Education years ago split up into what we call the Department of Ed. A lot of these schools the only school that I know of well because my wife went to Edward R. Murrow High School that's the only in Brooklyn that's the only school. A great reporter. Yeah great reporter that is the only school that I know of that still is the same and they haven't split up into charter schools. I think it was dealing with money situations and just changing of hands or changing of management but I went to Christopher Columbus High School then I went to LaGuardia Community College and then Lehman College for my bachelor's in journalism. So you live in New York City that New York or how would you show you so many schools that go to City University of New York has about 35. I've also worked for colleges. I've mentored students through the in terms of my media background a lot of my students that was on my show when I was in the Bronx. I worked for an organization called the John F. Kennedy Junior Research Foundation through the City University of New York. That was a mouthful. Your turn Sophie. Oh well he's still talking. Go ahead. And I worked for the CUNY Research Foundation. The CUNY Research Foundation was a longtime supporter of the show I did. The show I did in New York was called in the Bronx was called Special People Special Issues and basically the same thing as Abledon and now it's a different name. And my students would come to me on an after school basis through through the there's a district called District 75. District 75 of the Department of Ed where it was a lot of students that were in special education but they would come to me to learn it would be like an after school job. So I would I would bring them on shoots with me. I would show them graphics. They would be floor managers. They would co-host the show with me on a daily basis on a daily basis so but they would get paid through the school to work with me. So you know and I would be mentoring them. It sounds like a wonderful program. Did you have you started to organize something like that around here? I'm going to be. It sounds wonderful. Where I'm going to be going to all the schools starting with I want to start at Spalding High School and work up or possibly possibly to middle schools but I have to investigate how to go about doing that and getting funding for that. It seems like you have a wonderful intention for the the broader community that is really needed. Broadcasting is one of those things where you can take a camera. Don't worry about the time. You can take a camera and teach. If you can teach somebody what you've been taught that's the advice I can give you passing along or as I say passing it forward. Yeah. Why would a parent have different choices to for their child because there are many different schools in New York City? Well when I went to school there were you had to go to your zone school but that time I was going you don't have to we're okay I'm sorry at that time I was going to a junior high school public assaults and they told my parents the schools of my parents oh he has to go to his own school my parents said no unfortunately back when I grew up there was still a lot of animosity with prejudice so my father fought not to bring me to Truman High School because I would have been the only Caucasian person there right and it would have been because Truman at that time had fighting going on in the schools yeah there was a lot of gangs going on at that time and they said no you're gonna go to Columbus and I was like okay but but my point being is that with all this prejudice stuff that's still going on why can't we all just get along like recently we had that huge synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh which you guys probably heard about we should just all get together have more shows like the show that you do the show that I do and invite people to to talk about if we talked more about what's going on in the world and how to fix it because not everything can be fixed with a band-aid it's like years ago you had programs like the Brady Bunch and so many others you can't fix family problems in a half an hour but programs like ours yours and mine educate so we have more educational programming on television like mr. Rogers who passed away um and they have documentaries about him and so many others you would learn more instead of picking up a gun and she's shooting people I mean that that thing in Pittsburgh was ridiculous now in a community like you're trying to support I feel like you guys need a clubhouse and it's probably the same for everyone the boys have their clubhouse the girls have their clubhouse the folks with cerebral palsy have their clubhouse and wait a minute we shouldn't segregate no no I'm just saying like you guys can have you know a legitimate baseball game where everybody's on the same page and it's not like you know this person's going above or beyond or below the line and anybody can be incorporated and anybody can play and anybody can be part of the team and so I don't know I'm just really grateful you're doing the work you are and thank you again for having me on the show one final question how do yorkers feel about john f kennedy oh well john f kennedy's family um now that you mentioned um unis kennedy schriver started a special olympics john f kennedy back in 1963 signed an act to before he died uh to um get more services for people with mental and physical challenges um I went to a place called the rose of kennedy center as you know rose rose kennedy had a challenge she had challenges but the rose of kennedy center gave me my physical therapy as a matter of fact I'm now going back to adult physical therapy which you know at any age if you need it it's there and it's good physical therapy exercising I've since I've been in vermont of the last five years I've lost a total of a hundred pounds yeah so we live in a place we live in a place where there's organic food we live in a place where you um where there's not so much greasy food too much with the exception of certain places but you can there's farmers markets there's all kinds of places to go um although I feel that the co-op needs to bring their prices down just a little bit um this is my opinion free speech tv so far you want um some questions from so far but well it's like we live in vermont we can pick and choose yeah well I just think that the your observations having been here for five years you're picking up on some really important and we still need to change we still need to change we're not perfect there is support in certain places it's not like you can it's not like a and um people with special needs shouldn't be treated as labels one thing i'm going to mention is vitally important when I first got to vermont and this last thing I had to go to a hospital in vermont just to get my medication regulated and stay there a day or so because you know I also deal with epilepsy so I had to get that checked up in the forms that I was filling out where it says diagnosis they still had the word mental retardation now a lot of states are changing that and have changed that because you're not supposed to put those words on medical forms anymore because back when did that happen back in new york back in the 70s they uh when other thing was going on when all these institutions started leaving um because you can't just diagnose somebody mental retard they don't use they use challenges they use other words they got the word handicapped out of you know medical jargon so basically uh with all these changes words are for or labels are for medication bottles not people and so special ed is that still considered to not very polite term or what is um how is that well special ed special education is a service okay but they don't they don't use the word handicapped anymore and they don't use certain words anymore because um well uh words hurt but unless you're a doctor because it has to go it's going according to HEPA unless you're a doctor you can't just diagnose somebody without getting to know them right so that's why they change those words and and you know and um you know before we program and are there some special things you'd like to see happen which i would like um i would like to see well just to let you know the future goals of the of our shows we're going to do more of them and keep that going and um get more funding um as we go on but what i would like to see uh for monsters do um is have um you know people with special needs should um have more employment and we should have a living wage um so we don't because i recently um this past year taped to state house the the poor people's campaign which was started by Martin Luther King Jr. um if we had more of a living wage then there wouldn't be a poor people's campaign so i would like to see certain states especially Vermont that people with special needs are treated like everybody else given a living wage more housing and so on and so forth so we wouldn't have to go backwards and be quote-unquote stigmatized as always being poor always being this always being that right so that's you know grateful for the work that you do you any closing comments you'd like to make well just that like i'm ready to see the baseball team yes i know your team whatever you know it's just it's really um it's heartwarming to hear that there is an advocate for people who are sort of unintentionally but sidelined and um we don't i'm very grateful for that we don't need to be sidelined but a lot of people need more people need to speak up for themselves and start advocating for more services to mention so Sophie has her own baseball team that she cares about and bills my outfielder put me in coats okay all right um so well thank you so much Lawrence for joining us and very best of luck to you nice job thank you Lawrence good luck to you projects yes and we'll keep you know keep an eye on you and thank you for having me on um on our pleasure of course thank you we are fortunate to have you okay