I would like to begin this issue of our newsletter by thanking you for your continued patronage of ONH Consulting. I apologize for not publishing a new newsletter until now. I’ve been extremely busy with current subscribers and my paying business. The company where I work had a significant transition in staffing and a large increase in clientele, and this has taken much of my time over the past winter.

I would like to especially thank our new subscribers since the publication of our last newsletter in December. There has been a lot to report.

I am currently preparing to conduct a workshop to parents and families of children at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children in Pittsburgh.   The workshop, entitled Optic Nerve Hypoplasia: Strategies to Foster classroom Performance & Educational Development, will highlight Optic Nerve Hypoplasia from the teacher’s prospective. 

In this workshop, I hope to fill what I believe is a long-standing void in many professionals’ understanding of our characteristics and the strategies that will help us strive to our fullest potential.

This is an especially exciting opportunity for me, as many of the children in this program are lower functioning. These students have difficulties communicating even their most basic needs.  This workshop will give these professionals and the families of these children a special insight concerning what these children are thinking and feeling and how to reach and teach them. Much of the information in this workshop is from you, the parents and teachers who have contributed your experiences.

As some of you who are on the FOCUS Families List know, my mom and I won a week-long cruise to Miami, Key West and Cancun, which we took at the end of February. We had an absolutely wonderful time, but one experience from the tour we took in Key West stands out in particular.

My mom and I had just completed the tour and were making our way through the shops of Downtown Key West when we ran into a street musician playing a thumb guitar. A thumb guitar is a cross between a piano and a guitar.  You play it by strumming it like a guitar.

It turns out that this musician was a drummer for a reggae band that was from our area and had played one of our major clubs in Cincinnati. I explained that I had perfect musical pitch and actually told him what keys he was playing, which somewhat fascinated him. The musician gave me his e-mail address and one of his CD’s, so I hope to keep in touch with him.

 In some news related to people with innate splinter skills, the National Geographic Channel will be airing a documentary entitled Beautiful Minds.    Produced by a German production studio in 2006, this documentary highlights people with splinter and unique memory skills, including Kim Peek.

Beautiful Minds is the first of a series of three, hour-long documentaries on people with unique skills related to the Autism Spectrum. The final program is devoted to Tenple Grandin and her distinguished career and writings.

The three hour-long documentaries will air consecutively on March 25 2007 starting at 4:00 Eastern Time. For more information about these documentaries, you can visit the “What’s New” Section of Dr. Darold Treffert’s Web site through the Resources page on our site or by simply clicking this link.

I thank you again for your patronage and support of ONH Consulting.

Sincerely,

Christopher Sabine

President

ONH Consulting, LLC