Persona: Hunter – Navigating the everyday with an Occluder

 

Personal Background:

• Name: Hunter
• Age: 55 – 65
• Lives in Nashville, TN
• Married with two children, and two grandchildren
• Songwriter, Musician, Historian
• BA in History Vanderbilt University
• Berklee College of Music alum
• MA in Liberal Arts and History Vanderbilt Univesity
• PHD Candidate in Public History – focus on Ethnomusicology/  MTSU

 

Interests:  How we construct, understand, and archive public history, Ethnomusicology, History of music, Folk music, Music from around the world, the Nashville Number system, Art, Poetry, Philosophy, Train watching, Trinidad & Tobago, Carnival,  Reading, Writing, Meals on Wheels, Room in the Inn, Religion, Community Engagement

 

Day in the Life:  “My schedule is a little different now that Im back in classes. I get up at 5, make a cup of instant coffee which is my only caffeine for the day. Then I will sit down for an hour to two hours. Routine of devotional readings and scripture that’s split up. I probably read the Bible cover to cover every year ( for the last 10-20 years). This all includes petition type prayers, and journaling time, thinking about the concerns of loved ones, strangers, and my community. I keeps a daily journal to express daily thoughts and what I feeling intuitively may be answers or things I need to pay attention to or work on, and then looking at the page before. I have a list of annual retreats, personal affirmations and journal entries that I’ll also reference.

Then I will go exercise or go for a long walk. Walking is a new addition and have really love the Rebecca Solnit History of Walking book. Then I shower & eat breakfast, working on school work – either reading or writing, preparing for class, or class related project. In addition to religion, family is most important to me. We watch the grandchildren regularly in the morning and I try to call in to catch up with friends. Depending on the day I do more or less of that. Like today I took my grandson Walt to the train yard to watch trains go by.

I’ll make my own lunch, classes start at 2:40 and will sometimes bring lunch in car with me. My commute is about an hour commute. Will sometimes work at school, library or coffee shop. Will come home and watch True Detective, even just a 10 minutes segment at time, and by 10pm trying to close it down and get ready for bed. Will do a nighttime devotional and self reflective examination check sheet that’s part of my Men’s group. Then will catch up with my wife while getting ready for bed and then watch Trevor Noah. Sometimes we’ll watch Stephen Colbert, but we really like Trevor. I also sometimes read something light that I keep on my bedstead before going to bed like a train magazine. Sometimes on weekends will see movies. I just saw If Beale Street Could Talk and thought the acting in it was so great.

Anytime I encounter print through the day, I have to make the decision to put on an occluder. Before its been like I definitely needed it but in the last week I’ve been able to read without it. Originally glasses worked for near or far.

I have difficulty with Distance perception, writing something down, putting pen to paper and not knowing when the pen will hit til it actually hits the paper.  Difficulty putting glasses away in the cabinet and not sure if he’s going to bash against the other glasses.  I think it would help to have something in the corner in the glasses in a way that would count down the distance as I approach it somehow, especially with steps. I’ve recently  fallen on the stairs (was last step) where the steps were granite and couldn’t distinguish the color difference between the last step and the floor. Fortunately had railing. However even coming down steps at school  at MTSU, the transition between the last concrete step to pavement with its uniform color has been a little tricky. I have to stay mindful to always really feel if I’m at the next step.

 

 

Main Problem:

• Double vision possibly from 4th cranial nerve palsy, a possible degradation of nerve damage from childhood Shingles.
  • Seeing 2 images of the same thing/ right eye sees slightly under and to the right of what the left eye is seeing
• Current difficulty reading unless one eye is covered. Uses a black out clip on for glasses to cover eye
  •  easy to loose
  • makes class difficult when alternating between looking down at text and up at teacher
  • distance perception with stairs and everyday objects.

 

Questions:

• is there a way to be able to calculate the distance, showing when I’m about to touch a surface, like maybe a kind of ar element in to lens that counts down?
• Is there a way to employ the effect of fade to black sunglasses, on one lens only, activated with a touch of a button verses the activation of UV light

 

Goals:

• Honor his religion beliefs
• Be there for his family
• work towards his PHD in a way that is helpful to the community
• being able to do his readings in a less cumbersome way
• adjusting to his double vision depth perception

 

Content preferences: All media, music, film and books. Lecture based classes where you alternate between note taking and listening to the professor / watching media clips. Research engines like jstor, reading sheet music

 

Keywords: Depth perception, streamlined functionality, double vision