 So good morning, everybody. Once again, I'll start over. Our last meeting, I forgot to turn on the recording. And so we didn't get that meeting recorded. So I asked everybody to remind me. So thanks very much for taking time out of your holiday weekend. I didn't realize it was a holiday weekend until I think Thursday. And so we really only have a few people today, but I'm happy that those of you who are here decided to come spend some time with us. In case there's anybody here today who doesn't know me. My name is Anne Thomas, and I'm the president of the Diablo Valley chapter. Zoher Chiba Zoher. Can you just say hello so people know you as our vice president. And Alan concerns our secretary. Hello everyone. This has turned out to become an annual meeting that we have every September about emergency planning. You know, we live in a really precarious situation with global warming and all the fires that we have been experiencing in California. And the fires have been devastating. So this morning before everybody was arriving, I was mentioning to Zoher and Alan that actually giving this presentation is as much for me as for all of you every year, because I don't have all of my ducks in a row either. You know, every time I go ahead and review the presentation I find, oh, I don't think I have that maybe I really need to do it this year. So before we get going, we'd like to give you some zoom directions by this time almost everybody's really familiar with zoom. But in case there's somebody who's joining us today, who's still a little shaky about it. We want everybody to really become comfortable because zoom isn't going away. So we show you how to use zoom using your desktop. And we have a major slide that shows all of the parts. So if you look all the way to the left you see the orange big button, and it's pointing toward a microphone. And that's how you turn the sound on and off for the microphone on the computer that you're using. Next to that is how you turn on the video camera turning it on and off. And the reminder for the video camera is it's very easy to forget when your videos on and everybody wants the video on because it helps with lip reading. To not do something you wouldn't want everybody on the meeting to see early on during the pandemic. Someone a woman completely took off her top because she didn't remember that she was on video for everybody so it's always a reminder. Don't pick your toes or take your clothes off right. We encourage people to chat and the green button points to the chat icon. And in the chat when you do that would we ask that you please make sure that your name is there. And if you're not from our chapter, or even if you want to if you're from our chapter, put the location where you're from so that we have an idea of being able to determine how many people across the country are joining us, because all of our meetings are posted on the HLA calendar, and they're open to anybody in the United States. So the most important thing for all of us, of course, are the captions. You see the CC it says live transcript, and it's the blue button. And right now, everybody's captions I believe should be automatically running. But if something happened, and they weren't what you would do would click on that CC icon, and then you would click on show subtitles. And imagine on these video calls, it's very difficult to figure out how to call on people for questions and answers and other things. So we ask that everybody please raise their hand. And what that does is in the participants list, it puts your hand your raised hand in the order that you raised it so we don't have a problem that maybe somebody was waiting much longer than necessary. So if by some chance, the captions weren't showing, you would click on the live transcript and then three options are available. One is subtitles, subtitles settings and full transcript. So if they weren't showing you would turn on subtitles. If you think that the subtitles are too small, and you would like to make them bigger, click on subtitles settings. So what happens is a window opens up and it has a sliding bar. And so you can slide that to be any size within a reason that you want. Now this third option is something that I think is really important. If you're like me. There are only two lines. And sometimes I realize after the third line has passed that there was something I didn't understand. So when the captions that are automatically streaming. There's nothing I can do about that. But if I have the full transcript open in the right hand side, there's a full transcript running, and I can just scroll back and find out what that word was that I may have missed. So I think that that's a really advantageous feature for us. So you may be wondering how do I raise my hand when I want to ask a question. So if you look at that black toolbar at the bottom of your screen you'll see a happy face with the plus plus, and it says reactions. Well when you click on that reaction, the first option above the window it says raise your hand. So if you want to raise your hand to ask a question or something else, you click on that. And the hand shows up in your thumbnail, which is the picture of yourself, and also on our participants list. If you're finished talking, click on lower hand. In that section there are also other emoticons that you can show approval or sadness. They're clapping hands there's thumbs down, feel free to use those. Another feature that I especially like is the ability to be able to make the presentation or the person larger or smaller depending on which is the best for me. So for some people, they may want the presentation as big as it could possibly be, and they don't care as much about seeing the person's face who's talking, because they have difficulty seeing. See here that where this red circle is, and in the middle there are lines. If you click on that line, you can drag that back and forth, and it makes the presentation or the presenter larger or smaller. I would like to remind everybody to speak a little bit slower. It aids in understanding for all, for all of us, and it also helps the captioner to create accurate text for us. And this is as much for me as it is for any of you. When I get excited, or I get nervous, I speak faster. So if I start talking too fast, somebody just please let me know. And if you didn't know this already, if you use an external microphone, it increases the clarity of the audio exponentially for everybody on the call. So right now I'm using this external microphone, and just by turning the microphone away, you can hear the difference in the sound. And microphones are not particularly expensive. So now we're going to get to the main part of our meeting today. And that's emergency planning. And I hope everybody is staying cool this weekend and whatever way you possibly can. I'm always so surprised as the sun changes that my house is actually cooler in September when it's 100, then it is in July when it's 100 always just really surprises me. So at any rate though I'm prepared you can see today I have on my my sleeveless cool weather clothes. And when we have this hot weather like this, I have memory of the Oakland fire. We have other people who I know who are on this in our meeting today who've had family members who have been devastated by other fires in our state. And so it's something that needs to be close to all of our attention. Not only do we have wildfires we have earthquakes, and we haven't had earth earthquake a sizable earthquake and quite a while. And many of the same things that we need for fire for wildfires and other fires that we might have we also need for need for earthquakes so we need to be prepared for both. And of course I suppose we could have flooding or even other things. The month of September is a national public service campaign to be ready. Be ready for anything that could happen. So the first thing you need to do is to be informed of potential emergencies. You need to make a family plan. You need to build an emergency supply kit. And you need to be act to be prayer be prepared for emergencies. And if you go to ready.gov, there are all kinds of tools on that website to help you take care of things. We don't list all of them in our presentation we're just giving you the resources that are available to be able to help you. Our state also has assistance for us. Cal fire has a program called ready for wildfire. And you can find information on that on ready for wildfire.org. And the things that are really need to are important you need to alerting you need to know how to get alerted. You need to plan and you need to know what to do. So the first thing that I would advise you to do is they get the ready for wildfire app. And sign up for the text alerts. One thing that I'm going to mention here on the text alerts. I don't know if everybody is aware of the fact that most smart phones have the ability to alert you by flashing your phone rather than just making a sound or a vibration. And I've had mindset like that for a really long time. And I find it very, very, very helpful. Even when I'm out and about, oh, even since I've gotten my two very successful cochlear implants. I have not turned that feature off on my phone. I really like it. So what's the wildfire action plan. So obviously you need to create an evacuation plan. Some people streets are only one way. Some people have areas where if they leave on one end of their street it might be more difficult if they left on the other wears busy traffic, all those kinds of things. You need to have an emergency supply kit. You need to be prepared, ready, set and go without having to think about everything. And you know that everything is taken care of. So with people with hearing loss, we have needs that other people do not have, and those needs can have a profound impact on who we are, and how we might engage in life. Immediately following a disaster. And even for a longer term or for not able to return to our home. So your evacuation plan. You need to develop several different escape routes. If the fire is blocked. What happens if the fire is coming down your street. So how else could you get out of the area where you are. You need to designate a meeting location outside of the fire hazard zone. So we're talking about this, we usually come on our call at least 15 minutes early to make sure everything's all set up and things and we were kind of chatting about this since it's a topic today. Theoretically, someone in your family could be at home. Somebody could be at the grocery stock, the grocery store. Somebody could be on a trip someplace else. There are all kinds of reasons why you would need to have a meeting location. If something happened, you need to have a place where everybody would know that all of your family members are going to so that you could all be accounted for. And to designate an out of area contact person. So it's possible that you wouldn't be able to call anybody locally. It's even possible you might not even be able to call somebody in the state. If you had family members outside of the state or friends outside of the state, you could designate them as a contact person everybody in your family would contact them and say, could be your Aunt Mary, you know, and say Aunt Mary listen this has happened and I just want you to know that, and you'd set this up ahead of time right. I'm okay and this is where I am. So it was everybody else calls in, you can let everybody know. If you own home. There are things that you need to do and being prepared for fire and emergency. First of all, you need to have a fire extinguisher on hand. You need to know how to use it. And one of the most important things about learning how to use a fire extinguisher is where to direct the extinguisher and the fire. So you need to turn off your gas and electric water main. So, most of us who I'm seeing who on our call today, or many of us let's say many of us live in houses it's easier for us to control that. And I and you and the gas. The fire extinguisher itself has it's like an X on the top, and I keep a key. It's like a big wrench wired right outside my house, so that in case I ever needed to turn that off. I wouldn't have to go look for it it's right there. And I have the same thing of my water, water main. The list of emergency contact numbers near or in your emergency supply kit, in case you need to use them. So the three steps to prepare what you need to do, you need to get a kit. You need to make a plan, and you need to be informed. Now this get a kit can be anything that you want a backpack, it can be a large plastic storage box whatever works for you. And it's easily identifiable. And Alan concert created this one, this wonderful video for us. Something that we were discussing before everybody showed up was the whole idea about batteries, especially since so many devices today are rechargeable. I happened to have an option with my advanced bionics cochlear implants that I can use rechargeable batteries, or they have an accessory that's a zinc air battery charger. And what it does is it replaces the battery pack. It has a pull out piece that you can put zinc air batteries in, and then take the rechargeable battery off. And I actually keep this in my in my purse, because you know you never I never know where I would be and without sound amplification I would be really in deep trouble. So, you hear was saying that he has rechargeable batteries and he never thought to ask if there was an accessory for that. So, if you use rechargeable devices instruments, and you haven't asked about whether there's a zinc air pack. It might be something that you definitely want to add to your list to ask the next time you talk to your hearing healthcare provider. And it seems as a person with hearing loss need to have in their emergency supply kit. The very first thing that you need to have is the make model and serial number of your hearing devices. So I know advanced bionics sent me a card. That says exactly that I have two processors. I'll show you what it is. And that's not it. Oh, so it helps if you can find it right. And it's on the other side. And I have it in my wallet. Oh, they did have it in my wallet. I don't know what I did with it now. See, so there you go. Maybe I lost mine and that shows you how unprepared I am. I said, I always find something. Anyway, so why this is especially important is that in the fires that happen in and around Santa Rosa a couple years ago. Everybody's fleeing willy-nilly, including all of the audiologists, the audiologist and hearing healthcare providers offices burned down. So they didn't know what make and model of hearing aid you had because they lost all their records. The San Francisco speech and hearing center contacted the hearing aid manufacturers and the hearing aid manufacturers said they would replace everybody's hearing instrument. They had the make model and serial number of those devices because the manufacturer could track the device based on the serial number for the device and all that information was lost with the audiologist. They couldn't have helped you period. So you can imagine, you know, thinking about losing a $6,000 upward device and being without hearing amplification would be devastating. So that's a really small thing to do. And now I'm nervous. I wonder what I did with my card, right? So now I have to go look for it as soon as this meeting is done. Okay, so extra hearing aid batteries. So in Santa Rosa, CVS, Rite Aid, everything was burned out. You were completely closed out of that. So, you know, you're thinking, oh, I could, oh, it's no problem. I'll just go buy some. Well, all of the places where you were where you would buy them were also not open. So you couldn't have done that. So you need as in the cute video from Alan, a battery charger for a smart device. And these battery chargers come in a wide variety of sizes. And when I say size, you could be this way or this way, but I actually mean by size, the power of the device. And it's important that you make sure that you get a device that's powerful enough for what you need. So I have a little one that I carry in my purse all the time for my phone. And it's this, this little tiny thing. It's just, it's about the size of two tubes of lipstick and a little bit fatter. And this will completely charge up my phone. But it's not enough to charge. It doesn't have enough power to charge my phone to charge a laptop, or probably to even do my cochlear implants. So you buy them by Alan, you're going to have to help me here. Is it a hs is what they have a gauge the size of these things. Is that what that's called. That's not that. Let's see. The writing on here, you need a magnifying glass for let's see. Yeah, it's me age. Oh, Alan's looking at his to their tiny. Oh, okay. Lower case M. A case a and lower case H. So, you probably don't really need to remember that just so that when you saw it. If you're wondering, oh, what does that mean. So the number in front of that has to do with the size. And if you went and looked online and went to the manufacturer for the device, they have charts and things on there telling you what size you need to encompass all kinds of things. So in your safety kit, you might want to have one that's pretty big. I know that when we had our blackouts several years ago and we were without electricity what was that for five days. And I was charging my phone and my laptop in my car because I had a car charger and my devices that I had after the second day. They had lost their they had lost their power to so keeping in mind that it might be a lot longer than what you think. It's really important for all of us to think in terms of having an app on our phone and knowing how to use it. That's a speech to text app. So, you know, we're all thinking well great I'm going to have my my hearing instrument whatever and the chances are you may not. If you don't, what would you have I mean you could lose all kinds of things but almost everybody's going to have their phone to be able to use your phone to have somebody speak into it so that you could read what they were saying. And of course, everybody needs to have a pocket talker. I mean, it's the standard deregur item for all of us that unless you have a cochlear implant and you don't have any residual hearing for almost everybody else it would really help you auditorily. And you might want to make sure with a pocket talker. Normally if you have your hearing devices and you would use a pocket talker because the person was further away, or there was lots of background noise. So you could imagine if you were at an emergency shelter that the background noise is probably going to be really loud. And so a pocket talker could really help decrease the distance from the speaker. Theoretically, depending on how bad your hearing loss is. If you didn't have your hearing aids, you might be able to use a pocket talker with a headphone. So it would probably be a good idea to have a headphone and a neck loop in your to go kit. So those are some of the pieces that we need specifically for people with hearing loss. And these are the things that the American Red Cross is telling us that we need everybody needs in general. We need three day supply of food and three gallons of water per person. We need medications and a first aid kit. So you could probably talk to your physician to make sure that you either had enough of a prescription that you could keep in your first aid kit. Or in addition, an additional prescription. You need flashlights and a whistle. And the reason for the whistle is that it may be you may be so tired. Could be days that you would be waiting to be rescued. It's easier to whistle than to shell than to shout. And so you could also be more debilitated and still be able to whistle, but not shout. And in Alan's video, he had the flashlight and don't forget batteries for your flashlights. Extra eyeglasses, contact lenses, a change of clothing and extra set of car keys. Money credit card or travelers checks. Now, you know, there's a good chance that we might not be able to use our credit cards. So you need to have some cash. You know, the banks that the electricity could be out the banks could be down the ATMs might not be available. So you need to have some some way to be able to pay for some things and copies of important documents. And some of these things as you're looking at them, especially the copies of important documents and your money, you might want to make sure to put them in a waterproof pouch. So that nothing would get lost about that. It's not wet for some reason. So what kind of alerting devices do we have, do each one of us need to have to ensure that we have safety. Obviously a smoke detector that we can be alerted to a carbon monoxide monoxide detector. And for weather and a NOAA alerting weather radio with a strobe. So all of you know that I participate in lots of different forums and things for people who have hearing loss. And I'm always surprised by the number of people who live in tornado country who don't know about a NOAA weather radio. So this year it's added to our list, just so that everybody's aware about it, aware of it. It may even be that you need to be aware of it to tell somebody else you know who lives in an area that that would be really, really important. So the first two things people probably have some idea what they look at look like, but you probably have never seen the third one the NOAA weather radio. So I put a oops. Oh, you know what my slides out of order. So I put a picture of what a alerting radio is. And you can see there it says tornado and it flashes. And if you would need one of these you're going to get it from Daiglo. And they're not the only person but they always have everything. So actually, I put the slide in there and I was confused a moment ago and I put it there because we're fortunate enough that we live in a state that offers accessories to us through the California telephone access program, which is CTAP, CTAP is the acronym. And they one of the accessories is the sonic alert home aware, which you see the base unit on the left hand side of the screen. So they give that to us because it can alert you to the telephone ringing. And that's the reason that they give it to us because it's the telephone access program. It turns out that sonic alert has maybe eight different accessories that go with the home alert system. And one of them is a smoke and CO2 alert. And I have the base unit and they gave us a presentation I think August of last year. And I immediately got the smoke and CO2 attachment. And actually what happens is I realize anytime that there's a lot of loud anytime there's noise in and near that, like if I'm vacuuming in my bed in my bedroom, which is where I happen to have that one. Great big flashing alert comes on. So it's listening for the sound of my CO2 and my smoke detector. Okay, so here again is what the weather alert radio looks like. Something that I want to let everybody know about and I've been promoting this for, it feels like 10 years now. It's called smart 911. And if you live in the San Ramon fire department. So we have this as an option, but the fire department that's the north fire department they haven't signed up for it. So I'd encourage all of you and I've written to the that fire department and asked them to do it so I've. It would encourage all of you to go ahead and contact your fire department. And Alan I think you have your hand up and are you going to talk about Walnut Creek now has it or Rossmore has it. No, but conquered and Brentwood. Oh, just have it. Okay, so the cities did it rather than the fire department. Right. Okay, and so this offers you all kinds of additional options that first responders fire departments everybody who would ever come to you would know about for 911. What happens is, and I couldn't think of a way to show you this, but when the 911 caller, when you call 911, and it shows your location for the person who's answering the 911 call. They would get an additional pop up window, and that window tells them everything that you have put into your smart 911 account. So, obviously, you would want your medications and disorders that you have. Want to let them know that you have hearing loss, you might want to let them know what kind of hearing instrument you have. You might want to let them know what prescription medications you're taking. You might want to give them a picture of who you look like, or who your children look like, so that they would, it would be easier for them to identify you. Can you think of anything else Allen that you might oh pets. You might want to let them know that you have a pet, so that they'd go ahead and look for the pet. This is a free service. If you happen to live in an area that smart 911 is not activated. What happens is that, if you were in your car, and in our area so let's say they have it in from I think it's Alamo south. And then Alan said conquered and Brentwood so if you were driving in any of those areas that has that, and you were registered, and something happened to you that information would come up. PG&E also has information for us and tools a whole tool kit in their safety action center. And if you go ahead and go there there's all kinds of chess checklists and everything else to help you and to teach you how to turn your gas and electricity off. And now I'm going to turn this over to Alan and he's going to take you through the rest of our the whole another part of our program. Alan you're mute. It's strange that you see a yo yo, an emergency preparedness slide deck. Oh, sorry. There you go. And wonder, what does a yo yo have to do with emergency preparedness. Oh yo yo is an acronym for you're on your own. And that is the very essence of what emergency preparedness is. So if you are prepared. There's one less person to worry about. So, and then you're able to help your neighbors. And if you're really interested in serving the community, there are also groups where you could help the community in emergency or disaster areas. And the difference between an emergency and a disaster is your response in an emergency. You could die on 911 and expect a prompt response response. And in a disaster, you're not going to get a response from 911 because the situation would be where the public services are going to be overwhelmed by the circumstances. Let's go on to the next slide please. So this slide, although it says Ross more emergency preparedness. They are a good resource for anybody. And if you go to the website, there's quite a bit of information that you can have access to. Next slide. So that's the header of the Ross more website. And there's resource areas there for local, state and national. Organizations local could be served, which is community emergency response team. And most cities have a search organization. It could be anything pertaining to the Ross more community state resources like Cal fire and national resources like ready.gov and FEMA. They also have recordings of previous meetings that they've held. And a lot of those recordings have very good information and would be worthwhile to maybe go through and look at some of them. One of the best ones is one that they did recently and it's about public utilities and what to do with them in a disaster. And that would include like, what would you do if you're yet a gas leak, or if a power line is down. Most people know about 911, but not too many people, I think probably know about 211 yet. And pertaining to emergency preparedness. It provides assistance with disaster preparedness response and recovery during declared emergencies. Outside of that, it's also used for as a mental health resource and people who need help with housing utilities and food employment assistance and suicide and crisis intervention. One thing here says oxygen dependency and we'll go into that I think in the next slide. Slide please. Okay, independent living resources of Solano County and Contra Costa County is administrator of the disaster, disability disaster access and resource for the state of California. And in our case here, we want to focus with the disability disaster and access resources. And this includes a section on public safety power shutoffs. Next page please. Next slide. So most people know what the PSPS is. That's when they have to shut off power. When there's danger of the weather conditions causing fires. One thing that happens with that is that you have people that rely on medical devices that needs power and shut off and people with oxygen generators. CPAP machines, wheelchairs. Once those things run out of power. They need to be charged or some of them actually need the power to actually perform. And there is a program or in conjunction with PG&E where you can call, if you qualify, you could get free backup power supply. And I've actually had a couple of people. In my entry here that did sign up for it and did receive the assistance. They also have information about PG&E medical baseline which offers discounts to people that need assistance and with their electrical bills. And also discounts for people who qualify under the vulnerable customer situations. Next slide please. So everybody is familiar with the Red Cross. There's a, we're going backwards. Okay. We're focusing here with their part in emergency preparedness. And they have a wide variety of information. Again, a lot of this information overlaps with what some of the other groups get and some of the other groups actually get the information from each other so that's a lot of information that's exchanged. But again, the they're just getting started with a kit, making a plan. And then staying informed and actually across more EPO website at the bottom of their homepage. They have a link there for people to sign up to different sources that send information out. And being in Buona Creek, it's specific to that location, but other locations should have similar resources. And some of these are cities, some are county, some are state. Next slide. So we don't, I don't really want to get involved in this information here except to let you know that people who do want to get involved more. And with a community and emergency and disaster. Period. There is an organization concert community emergency response team. And it does require some dedication, initial training runs about 25 hours. And then you have to remain qualified by meeting certain meetings or exercises. I think it's every two years to stay qualified under the disaster service workers act. And so there's my information there. And if anybody is really interested in it. I could do that. Give you that information and talk to you about that offline. Next slide. This is the header to our redesigned website. And the information section, there are information about hearing loss, but also about the information that we talked about on the emergency preparedness and then a carbon monoxide smoke detector. Let's go to the next slide please. Yeah. So Alan, do you want me to do the rest here? She wants you to go ahead. Yeah. So we kept being asked by all of our chapter members about what needs to happen for disaster planning. So all of the brochures that I've developed for our chapter, and for anybody else who really wants to use them, are as a direct result of questions that people asked, and trying to figure out a way to convey that. So we happen to have a brochure. Do you have a disaster preparedness plan, and it was set up like a checklist. So as you read through it, see in the center where the checklist is. So batteries, so if you've taken care so that you could use it as your own personal checklist. So if you already have the batteries, you can, and you're to go stuff, you can just check it off and then you, you know, just other. Now their batteries are lasting so long it's not as much of a big deal as it was before when they didn't but periodically want to make sure to check and see that they're still there. So this is here and this is on our website where Alan was telling you in under information. We also have a brochure for safety and carbon monoxide smoke and fire. Telling you about the different ways to be alerted and basically being informed of the importance of that. I believe that the rule of thumb is you have three minutes to get out. Three minutes is not a long time. And I know that almost everybody who had more normal hearing at one time cannot imagine that you could really never hear that shrill sound of the alerting device. The key is that if you go to check yours now, and you're standing right underneath it, you may still be able to hear it. But if you're sleeping and maybe no hearing instruments in and maybe your head underneath your pillow. You wouldn't be awakened in enough time to get out. And we don't want that obviously right we want to make sure everybody's safe. So these are available there. You can just go and look them up if somebody wants months since we're still not meeting in person. I'm happy to send you one. I want to go back here a minute and so this alarm device right here is called a life tone. And it's a third is made by a third party company and we happen to have one in our ALD library. And it's pretty big. And in here, if it were fire, it flashes fire, but this only does fire doesn't do CO2. So you just need a need to be aware of that that you need to be alerted by fire and CO2 and more than one device having more than one device isn't a bad thing I'm just making sure you know that yeah Alan. Also, if they want to print these brochures themselves. If they go to the website and go to the brochure. And there's a little square with the arrow on it. If I click on that open up a page where they could print the document. And do you know what everybody at the end will probably have some more time and Alan thanks for remembering about that because a lot of people don't realize what that little box does, we can show that to you. So that's the end of our presentation. Does anybody have any questions or answers something that the, well, obviously, somebody have any questions. Is there anything that anybody learned that they didn't know about before that they're thinking. Oh gee, I never thought of that. So we want people to participate here. Just raise your hand. You can even tell us if you thought this was a valuable presentation. Susan back. I thought it was a very valuable presentation. I learned a lot. And I appreciate you putting it on. So, Susan. Can you think of one thing that sticks out that you. You've heard this before because I know you've you've seen it before that this time you heard it differently. So it you went, Oh, I need to do that. Well, the Noah. Weather radio. And also, all the things that you need to accompany your hearing devices. They kind of, you know, you think about water and food. I'm sorry that there's an echo I have my phone to get that. Anyway, it just. And also that conquered now has the smart 911. I've been hoping that that would happen. Thank you. Yeah, well the smart 911 isn't only in, you know, like disaster. It's a car accident. If anything happened, you know, which are anywhere where any emergency people would be called it would be there for you. Thanks, who's in. And by the way, did you ever get your life tone to work? I'm embarrassed to say that I gave up. Well, so listen. So the pandemic is waning at least a little bit. How about if we get together and I fix it for you. I can touch with you. Anybody else. PG&E slide safety action center is actually pretty interesting. If you go through it, it actually has a quiz that kind of guides you to see if you're ready with creating your emergency plan. If your medical devices are stuff you have all the equipment for that. As well as your emergency kit. And then on the page it has a lot of short little video clips covering various topics. And so it might be something that people might actually have fun going to the first time we put this together that's sort of like the current form now. When I went to the pages. There was I had this very heartfelt feeling of being happy that and feeling grateful that I lived in a country that had resources like this that were available to us. In people who spent a tremendous amount of time and effort to ensure our safety. I felt very grateful for that. So no other comments. No questions. You know, this is supposed to be like we're in person chatting right. Okay, so if nobody has, oh, Susan. Yes. Is it possible. I'm sorry about that echo. Is it possible for me to send this recording to friends who don't belong to HLAA. We have a YouTube channel. Our chapter has a YouTube channel and every single one of our meetings is on our YouTube channel. And what we'll do is when we go to the website to show you what that little pop out box is. On our, oh, we just launched a new website. Alan, I think, but was it two weeks ago, maybe. Something like that. Yeah. And you might not notice the difference because it looks very similar to our old website, but it's now much more up to date in the technology pieces that are behind the scenes. So we can go ahead and show you where that pop up window is. And I believe there's a link on the homepage now to our YouTube channel as well. So if you just went to the homepage and clicked on that, it would take you there. Bob's here. I see him. And if we were meeting in person, this would be when Bob would would be giving us all his homemade muffin, which we love. So this kind of makes it feel like we're not quite so far apart for us. For me. We have some announcements. We have upcoming events for our chapter on October 1. We're going to have what hopefully we can get a lot of enough publicity about this. Pat Dobbs who lives in Maine. See the, the wonderful options that we have because we can still zoom is going to be giving us a presentation on partner communication hearing loss as a family affair. On November 5, we switched our December meeting, our November meeting to December and we're still working on the arrangements for November. And December 3, we're very lucky to have sherry eberts and gale hannon, who have just released their brand new book called hearing beyond light live skillfully with hearing loss. I purchased the book right after it was released. And it's really, really, I really liked it. And Alan has some things up his sleeve about, maybe we're going to have a drawing for the book, we just need to figure out how to go about and arrange that. I ordered my book through Amazon. If you like to read, and you would like to hear what somebody else is saying about it. I thought it was the most inclusive book that I may have ever read. I also like the layout and the format of the book. We've had both sherry and gale give us presentations before. And so most of you who are here today have an idea of what they look like. What they did is in the, oh, and you all know I love to read. So they have a little character terms of each one of them at the beginning of where they are in specific places where they talk, and they carried it through the whole book. So I think that that's a really, for me, it's a very amusing piece and I kind of feel like I'm really with them when they're talking and it's not just the spoken. written word. It was really personal. Let me see if you can see that see their little heads. Okay, so we talked about also upcoming and we don't know whether we haven't really signed up to participate. Still kind of worried about, I don't. But this time I'm not so fearful of just getting Colbert because I'm vaxed and boosted and everything else. But I don't want to get long term Colbert and they don't have any. There's no criteria for who gets it and who doesn't. So we're still deferring meeting in person, but the Lafayette Community Foundation is hosting their aging by design on, I think it's the seventh of September. I don't know, it must be the ninth we're talking about. And Alan was saying that Ross Moore is having their emergency preparedness event on October 15. And I think Alan, are you planning on participating in that? You haven't decided yet. I probably will. Okay, so, you know, we're all fence sitting here. But those are events in case that was something that you might want to go to. So I'm looking for committee members. Zoher is the chair for our programs committee. And they we meet they've been meeting once a month. And so other just letting everybody know that others are welcome. And of course, you know, I'm always looking for other advocates to join me and advocating in our community. Recently, Jim Schroeder has done some advocacy work in the last month in Benisha. And so we're hoping to develop some important things here actually, you know, smart 911 if some of you who have it now in communities where you live, we could start advocating in other cities and using that as a tool saying, Oh, well, listen, you know, Concord has it. Brentwood has it, you know, what's wrong, you know, if everybody competes with each other, it would be really nice if we had it throughout all of Contra Costa County would be really nice if we had it in the whole state. Another issue that it's looking at low hanging fruit for us. One of them that has been here for a considerable amount of time is that the city of San Francisco was the first place the United States to require captions on all public televisions. And in California, it's been pretty much city by city. And I would like the state to mandate that. But I think it might be as a step before that it might be easier for us to get the county of Contra Costa. The planning commission to mandate the captions be turned on and all public televisions in our county. So that's something that's on my agenda, in addition to hospitals. So here's a look at the at one of the parts of our new website. You can see this top part here looks very similar to our old website. And we'd like to let everybody know in case you're not already a member that we are a member organization. And you can attend all of our events without being a member, but to do the work that we'd like to do in the community to host our meetings to pay for our zoom and captions and things. It costs us money. So just to remind you that you can renew your membership online. So you go online to our website, you click on membership. And when you're a member, you're automatically notified because we have a special system that's a hardware system that takes care of that for us. So membership plays those are what the fees are, and you'll have an option to either pay with PayPal, or you can click on this tab and you can click, click a membership renewal form and mail it to us, whichever you like. All of you know that accessibility and advocating for our rights is dear to my heart, because without the accessibility that we need. We're all cloistered at homebound there's nothing we can't go, we can enjoy the things that we wanted to do before. And as it turns out, in my opinion, we are the stepchild of the disability movement. And I believe that we should be seeing the hearing access symbol as frequently and as often as we see the universal disability access sign which for most of us signals just. And I don't mean just signals mobility issues. So every grocery store we go to has mobility parking. Every grocery store we go to in our county have hearing access. So, communication access helps people with hearing loss, the same way ramps help people with mobility issues. So, maybe, if we keep repeating this and keep, keep repeating this, it'll get easier for people to ask for what they need. The ADA was 32 years old this year. It's not new. There's nobody who can say that I don't know anything about it why isn't it here. Everybody was all the city governments were required to create a transition plan. We were included in that transition supposed to be included in that transition plan. Unfortunately, as I started to say, we're the stepchild in the disability movement. There's always all kinds of things for people with mobility issues, low vision and very little for people with hearing loss and we need to continue to speak up. And where we want it everywhere. You want it at your church you want it at the ball game. You want it at the bank you wanted at the museum at your pharmacy to hospital on your bus at the airport. And a reminder to everybody, you know, because of the pandemic, all of the major social serve the major infrastructure in our countries received all kinds of funds from the government. So they can use some of those funds to provide us with the accessibility that we need. They don't have the excuse that they don't have the money. They have money. They just need to set some aside for us. So that's the end of our presentation here. And I think what I'd like to do Alan is go ahead and go to our website. And so I'll go through some of the new things and like especially the box that you were talking about. So let me go ahead and pull it up. And would everybody like that. Would people like to see these features on the on our website. I didn't see thumbs up but I didn't people didn't leave so I'm assuming that that means that everybody wants to see it. Hey so here's our new website. And see here where it says YouTube. That's our YouTube channel and see here is this box with an arrow. Alan has even made it so cool now that when you put your your cursor over that box it tells you what happens. So it says open a new window which we're going to do now. I'm not sure did it switch to our YouTube window. So tell me put thumbs up because I don't know what you see. Did it. Yeah. So these are tons of our videos. And they're in here for here all our videos. Here's Gail Hannan's video when she gave a presentation to our chapter last last time. Oh, we have 250 views on that. So Susan, we have the presentation from last year here, which is right here about the same presentation to you could send your friends both of them. Okay. And we have a couple of other things that are in here that you may not if you came to look. One is this about hearing loss. This is a short piece that I've used in multiple different things since 2016 with revisions. I'm going to go ahead and play it for you so that you can see it. And there's no sound with that everything is. So there are many opportunities that we've had that I've had to be able to have short pieces connected to something. And this is what I usually use. Oops, don't want to go there. Okay, so if you'd like to subscribe to our news and I think everybody here already is because you've got our meeting announcement you just click here automatically takes you to a subscription option for the news. When Alan was talking about here will open up the emergency preparedness. Hey, see here, the box with the arrow again. When you click on that. It takes you just to the document. So you could just print right from here. If you wanted to do that. And consistently, this box with the arrow. It takes you to another window that is opening just that window. And Alan put here, here's a link to the Red Cross. Here's a link to ready.gov. Hey, so Alan, can you think of some other things you'd like people to learn how to be able to use on our website. I don't think there's anything at the moment that's really different, except for maybe if you go to events and to the meeting schedule. And so if you hover over the event gives them additional information and if we have the registration link ready it would also have the registration link. Oh, so Alan, are you are you saying that in the future will start adding the registration link here to the. So giving people more options to be able to register. Right, if you go to the first one. Ah, there we go. Thank you. So here was the registration for our meeting today. I would like to just I keep repeating this over and over again I'm hoping that people sometime we'll start using this. We had a major project. And it was people kept saying, Well, I don't know what to ask for I don't know what to do. How do I get accommodations. So the first thing that came out of that was the development of this brochure called ask for communication access. These this tells you and it's a little bit dated right now, but these are the options for what kind of technology you might ask for. So you can see here what those are. This tells you what's covered. Who to ask for and where. So then people said, Well, okay, but I don't know who to ask. Who do I ask and the city and local government are title to under the ADA. They're required to have all of their programs and services accessible for people with disabilities. That means us. And when we look at a program or service. That's any single thing you would use in city government. And if you go to a city government counter in the building department and they don't have any kind of assistive technology for you to understand them you need to ask because they're required to have that. I'm here to tell you more than likely they're not going to have it, but we need to keep pushing them because if we don't they're never going to have it. So the next piece that came out of that was so who do we ask for in city government. So what happened was, we were developing a list of ADA coordinators in the city in the county of Contra Costa County. And we were thinking that if we had this list, then it would be easier for all of our members all of you here to be able to figure out who do I contact. So it turned out, we ended up expanding it to the whole state of California. Alan did just a bang up job here. Okay, so these are governmental ADA coordinators in the state of California. So you live in Concord, if you live in Walnut Creek, if you live anywhere. All you do is here if you click on the jurisdiction. It just alphabetize them. So here's the person for Alameda County, and it happens to be the city clerk. So frequently so that you know, if the city clerk is the designated ADA coordinator, generally they don't have an official ADA coordinator which they're required to have, and somebody needs to nudge them. So this list, see this plus right there. When you click on that plus a drop down window opens up it gives you the phone number the website. Additional information, the address where they're located, everything. Okay, so then that part, so that got expanded to be all of California. So I would love to have this for the whole United States I don't know how that would happen yet at this time but it's a dream of mine. So the next piece that came out of this. I think that all of you know that I sit on the HLA get in the hearing loop committee. And so we have been diligently working for a long time for tools for advocates. Sherry Paris early the chair and I both really created our own tools because no tools really existed. And so we have a get in the hearing loop tool kit that exists today. We're in the process of creating a handbook and an advocacy guide. And as part of this there were hearing loops that were installed throughout the United States. We're trying to compile a list now some people created some lists that weren't accurate there are two apps that don't have accurate list so we didn't feel that we could tell people to really use them so for example in our county. One of the apps listed every single city council chamber is having a hearing loop and they all have fms. All that information was wrong. Well anyway so since I'm involved in these things I had the list of what we had of known hearing loop venues in California. And that's what's here. So these are the known hearing loops that we know in California. If you want to know what's available in your area. You click there and it alphabetizes everything you click up the other way and it goes the other direction. And there may be hearing loops that aren't here. So at the request of the HLA get in the hearing loop committee, we approached Google Maps. And at our request, they added an accessibility feature for hearing loops, and this was officially launched in late spring. Now you can go on your phone. Before you go anyplace do you want to notice this place have a hearing loop. So you go on your phone, and you go to the about section. Let's see I can do it on my computer but it's not going to be as easy for you to see you go to the about section, and you click on about and then you scroll down. And there's a place there it says accessibility and it says assistive hearing loop. So our committee has been seeding Google Maps with hearing loops domestically and in Canada, we have sent them over 5000 loops. We hope that the Google Maps will continue to have additional loops including international loops. So this is a way that you're that all of us are going to be able to much more easily find out about the list compared before we go. So if anybody knows of a hearing loop that's not on this list. Please let me know, and I'll ensure that it is added to the HLA list. And also I'm getting ready to send out a one of our mail chimps about directions on how to add to the list and also we have a survey a document that we created. To help you be able to list an individual loop you just fill it in with all the information's a couple pages that automatically behind the scenes comes to the get in the hearing loop committee. So these things are all here for you. We just we want you to use them. I didn't create the documents and the other things because I didn't want anybody to use them Alan hasn't taken all this time and effort to create this fabulous website for us, because we hope that it just sits here nobody uses it. So our hope is if we continue to talk about it and share with you what's really here that it might make it easier for you to use it. We recognize that most of us didn't grow up with this technology. And it's not second hand for us like it is for people in their 30s. And so the more we go ahead and go over it, the greater the chances are that the first thought you'll think of rather than a book is Oh, we need to go to the website. And this is whether it's our website, or anybody else's website. This particular window here is really, really, really important. Because sometimes it can be hard to find what you're looking for. So this is called a search window, and it's icon is the magnifying glass. So sometimes you'll see the magnifying glass, but it's hard to see the other box, just click on that magnifying glass and the box will open up. Okay, so I'm going to take a I'm going to put something in here, and I hope I'm going to be lucky it comes up. So emergency so we know we have a brochure, and we have the YouTube I don't know what's going to happen and Alan did you check that you check this. Oh, well, there we go. It came up as emergency preparedness here. Smart 911. So see all kinds of additional information is here. And all you really had to do was put one word in there. That makes a whole lot easier. So I can't think of anything else to share here. Oh, let's see. So we changed. There used to be some of these things were at the top in the menu bar up here. And now they're there actually at the bottom. So it makes the most important things the easiest to find. And if you have never read the book that HLA a put out that were quotes from Rocky stone. I really recommend it. I really didn't understand why everybody kept talking about this person who really haven't been with us for a really long time. I never met him. And when I read his invisible condition. I was so moved it brought tears to my eyes. And so we've always left it here. So here under HLA history when you click this. There's his book and it was compiled 14 14 years of editorials. And here's the book. And you can download it. And it's 83 pages and HLA actually had this in a hardback that they sold for some time before my time. Very, very moving. So, and here's the here's the box again you can do that. You didn't want to download it and print 80 pages. And just pick what you want and read anything you want for inspiration. He was really a very amazing man. Let's pick one little thing. Okay. The most pervasive physical handicap in America today is an invisible condition hearing loss, because it's invisible. It affects us in varying degrees of severity. The ability to deny it is enhanced. The smaller the loss, the more we or our parents are able to deny it or conceal it and delay efforts to cope to face the fact that adjustments must be made. The greater the loss, the more we or our parents are compelled to recognize it and to do something about it. Shush was founded for all of us hearing and hard of hearing alike. It was founded because of my conviction that little progress toward prevention, detection, management or possible remedies can be made until we all better understand the reality of the situation. The loss is about communication. It's involved with a problem of listening and trying to understand what is being said, rather than just hearing noise and isolated words. Amplification on the telephone permits me easily to hear sound of another voice. My trouble is I can't understand what that voice is says. In the spectrum of hard of hearing people, there are many different problems and the method of alleviation may vary. What works in one case may not work in another, but there is one common denominator. Hearing loss affects human beings. Being human is both unique and precious. If you look around our philosophy in these pages, you will see that belief as the foundation of thought and uppermost in our minds in what we advocate. Being human is both unique and precious. The whole thing is like this. So please, I hope that you all take an opportunity to possibly take a look at that. So I might have missed, if we hadn't been going through the web page, I might have missed mentioning that that's really there. And a lot of you might not have even known that. So I don't have anything else to say. Does anybody have something that they would like to comment about that we have some people here from the East Bay chapter, something that's going on over there. Now, if you didn't remember, they meet on the second Saturday of the month. So you can always attend their meeting as well. Yes. Are you going to announce LMS man. Oh, well, I don't I didn't want to have it be a sad place to leave but since you brought it up so many of us from our chapter, the East Bay chapter in northern California. I attended lip reading classes with our beloved Ellen Mastman, and I received news that she passed away. I don't have very many details about it. I someone after I kept following up told me that they had heard she had cancer. I sent an email out to those of us who I knew had taken lip reading with her this morning and sent the address to send a card to her husband if you'd want to do so. This is a tremendous loss for all of us. I think that Evelyn taught, I mean, Ellen taught lip reading in in and around San Jose and in Palo Alto and all of us in our chapter took it at the car when she taught there. I've been doing for a long time that she'd move online completely and my understanding is during the pandemic her classes did move online, but we do not have anywhere near the number of lip reading speech reading teachers anywhere in the United States that we all need. You know it's a reminder right and I was, I was genuinely shocked, because I didn't know that she was even sick. What it is to do what you really need and want to do every single day, so that your day is filled filled with things that bring you happiness, because none of us know how long we're here. You know, so anything else. Kathy nice to see you. So Kathy is from the East Bay chapter and she attends almost all our meetings. And I do and I not only enjoy them but I learned something at every meeting, especially from you and today I again. I can't believe how much I learned just listening to you and Alan again today. Kind of refresh me even though I've heard your presentation, at least once and probably a couple times before. I learned something every day when I joined the D chapters well of course, in addition to our East Bay chapter which is meeting as you said, on the second Saturday of the month. We have an interesting meeting coming up. In fact, next Saturday, I won't be there because I have unfortunately have to go to Memorial for a friend who died of COVID. Recently, but I'm hoping some of you can join. It's going to be by Dr Allison Freeman, hoping with hearing loss, taking care of our mental health. Of course, we're talking about, you know, all the things that have gone on with mental health but particularly in relation to people who have hearing loss like you and me. So hope you can join in. And of course I'll be providing a summary of the presentation in the seat would be the messy the, I guess it would be in the October. October newsletter so if you miss out on it. Take a look at that please. And for those of you who don't know Allison. She's also hard of hearing. Yes, lives in the Los Angeles area and isn't a member of the Los Angeles chapter. Yes. She has given this presentation before. So I believe it's going to be a video presentation with follow up by her for questions and answers at the same time as you run your meetings, 10 to about 1130. Sometimes it goes a little later to about 12. So please feel free to join us and I know some of you do regularly I know Alan and and oftentimes you join and and Bob. So please continue to do so you're always welcome and any new people who would like to join in of course are welcome as as well. Yeah. So you had a presentation that I wasn't able to attend to, because I went to a celebration. And that was your meeting last month about cochlear implants. Yes, I know that we have other people here who have cochlear implants and if somebody wants to see that that's available to view as a video. Yes, actually it was quite a marvelous presentation one of the best I've seen on cochlear implants and and I was actually a little surprised to not see you there. Because I know you have a cochlear implant. Do you have two or is it just one. Okay, you have to I actually don't have a cochlear implant so I thought well, it might not be much interest to me, but you know what I found out it was quite interesting. It's detailed and a lot of good PowerPoint slides and demonstrations about how how cochlear implants work. If you want to see my summary, it is on the will be posted soon, if you haven't already. If they haven't already posted it. I have my summary in the newsletter so you can always go to our, our website which is here. This is a hearing loss eb.org. So feel free to check that out when it comes out. And otherwise, if you want to copy of the recording, you can contact are either Dale or George Chan who takes care of sending those out. Say Bob's Astro. Are you getting another implant. I don't know yet. They say told me to read normally does not their seconds. But they're about it with the doctor directly. The doctor does the implants and see if you approve a second implant. So you're still waiting to hear waiting. I did. I did have another hearing. I failed. On conduction. We tried that. I said this last one was conductive loss. Not a century girl was. Oh, the conduction test. I got zero reception. Sounds. I didn't, I didn't. That's all I got was a bunch. Yeah. So for those of you who are here, when it's a conductive loss, it means that your middle ear. It means these little bones in them. And the bones. Okay, so the sound goes in from your outer ear into your middle ear. And these bones vibrate. And that's what sends the sound impulse forward. And so if there's something going on with that middle place. The sound doesn't get to your cochlea doesn't get to your inner ear. And so whenever there's something with the middle ear like that, it's called a conductive hearing loss. So Bob, do they think you have otosclerosis? Do they have any idea why. You're having this middle ear problem. No, I don't know. I didn't want to first order. I did have an infection. And I didn't know I had an infection for a couple of days. And the pressure belt wrapped wrapped from the air drum. And from what I still had a hole in the drum. That's never healed. So you do know that they can perform a surgery where they patch that. Right. They mentioned that. I don't know yet what's going to happen. But just checking in on you, you know, this is, this is our chance every month to kind of get caught up to date with everybody. Let me take going down to see you hopefully next week or so. Thanks. Okay, everybody. So last chance. Anybody want to say anything. Julie Johnson, don't you want to say hello. Hello everybody. I'm just so glad that, you know, I found HLAA. I would have been lost. So thank you so much. And Ann, I hope we're going to talk sometime soon. Good. I have some things I want to talk to you about. Good. Did you start your business? No. Okay. I'm cross keeping my fingers crossed. Okay. Okay, everybody. So then we'll see you. Next month. And I'll try and put together a mail chimp to let everybody know about the events that are happening. Sometimes, you know, I get to that sometimes I just don't get there. So. Talk to you later. Thanks for coming. Have a nice weekend and stay cool.