Blind Luck

Here comes blind luck swingin' his cane
Wonder what he's going to try & pull today
He's always got a trick or two up his sleeve
I've seen him play a few tricks you wouldn't believe

Here comes blind luck he's calling your name
He's got a new set of rules to a brand new game
He's gonna make an offer that you can't refuse
He's got a way of knowing who's got something to lose.
(Peter Case, Blind Luck)

Two very different stories about blind people in the news today. Item: Esther Medley of Centralia, Washington bowled a 244 the other day. Big deal, right? Well, Medley happens to be legally blind. Still not impressed?

She's 94 years old.

Medley, 94, can't see straight ahead, so her 86-year-old husband Ralph tells her which pins are left after her first ball.

That's how Medley recently bowled a score of 244, which included eight strikes, at Fairway Lanes in Centralia. It was the second-highest score of the year for her league.

The Medleys have been bowling in the senior league since 1979.

Do not bowl for money with this woman. She is the ultimate ringer.

Item: Boy, are they strict over there. A Turkish man failed to vote in an election for his village cooperative. So the state prosecutor sentenced him to take a 26 day reading and writing course. One teeny little problem.

The man is completely blind.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A blind Turkish pensioner has been sentenced to a 26-day reading and writing course at his local public library after he failed to vote on time in an election for his village cooperative, his son said Friday.

A prosecutor in the province of Kutahya in northwest Turkey sentenced Ismail Canseven, 73, to the education course after he did not show up for the election of the cooperative's board of directors in May, Isa Canseven told Reuters.

"What am I going to do in a library? I can't see out of either of my eyes, and I can't read or write anyway," Friday's edition of the Hurriyet newspaper quoted Ismail as saying.

Isa Canseven, 42, said he would appeal against the sentence served on his father. "My father can only find the bathroom by holding on to a piece of string we've tied to the (bathroom) wall," he said.

Well, that is certainly a case of justice being blind. And stupid.