October's guest speaker was our own Derek Lane.

Board member Derek Lane presented his latest acquisition, a Romeo 25 Braille Embosser by Enabling Technologies. Thinking outside the box, Derek will head up a program to translate items like invitations, menus, or even Lion Club member invoices from visual text to braille. Derek is still working out details on the end‑to-end process but look to get the program finalized by the end of the year. Derek will make a presentation in December at the Valdese Rotary Club and, look for him in March at the District meeting.

Besides being a board member, Derek is also a VIP, having been born with a disease that left him blind at birth. This doesn’t stop him though. Derek runs his own audio business, Lane’s Audio (http://lanesaudio.com), that specializes in editing, restoration, production, mixing, and mastering. He also teaches both in person and remotely.

September's guest speaker was Chesley Sigmon Mercado.  Chesley grew up in Morganton and recently returned to the area joining Grace Ridge as their first community’s first music therapist.

Chesley introduced us to the benefits of music therapy and its effects on both the mind and the body from prenatal through end-of-life.  Music therapy is used in healing and recovery in the areas of communication, physical, emotional, social, and cognitive.  She brought different instruments to use and guided us through a music therapy session.  Each instrument was used to evoke a different emotion and with that knowledge, we created our own 'sound' poem based on our thoughts and feelings around the song Lean On Me by Bill Withers.  We ended our session singing Blue Suede Shoes and Amazing Grace.

Thank you Chesley for such a wonderful and informative session.