5:30 to 6:00 Social Time

6:00 to 6:30 Trevor Thomas, Blind Hiker, Envisioning a New Path Forward Talk

6:30 to 8:15 Film The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

Please join us on Tuesday, July 15th, at 6:00pm, for our final Science on Screen event in the 2025 series on the five senses. We will be joined by Trevor Thomas, the first blind person to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Trevor passed through Bethel in 2008 as he entered Maine for the final leg of his 2,175-mile trek. He will join us again in 2025 by ZOOM from his home in Charlotte NC where he lives with his retired guide dog Tennille and his new guide dog Honolulu. 

Trevor will talk about his experience of going blind from a rare autoimmune disease at the age of 35 and his determination to regain his independence through long-distance hiking. Since completing the AT in 2008, he has hiked over 22,000 miles; some of his accomplishments include The Shenandoah Mountain Range, The Great Smokey Mountains, Mount Mitchell, Mount Whitney, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Colorado Trail. How does one overcome such hurdles, adapt to being blind and envision a new path forward? Trevor will share his inspiring story with us and explain how he hikes using his all his senses including echolocation, microclimates, breezes, etc. to cover thousands of miles on foot. Please join us to hear about this special story of determination, strength and grit. A Q&A will follow Trevor’s talk. To find out more about Trevor, please check out his website www.blindhikertrevorthomas.com/.

Following Trevors’s talk we will show the film The Diving Bell & The Butterfly. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a film based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of the French fashion magazine Elle, who becomes completely paralyzed after a stroke at the age of 43. The damage to his brain stem results in locked-in syndrome.  With only the ability to blink his left eye, Bauby painstakingly dictates his memoir through blinking. It took him 14 months, working 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, to write the book. The transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took Bauby about 200,000 blinks to write at an average of two minutes per word. The film is visually stunning with a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film (French with English subtitles).

The memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was published on March 7, 1997. It sold the first 25,000 copies on the day of publication, reaching 150,000 in a week. It went on to become a number one bestseller across Europe with total sales in the millions. Sadly, on March 9, 1997, two days after the book was published, Bauby died of pneumonia.

A huge thank you to:

An initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION.

Tickets for this event are Pay What You Can. All proceeds go to helping cover the cost of the Science on Screen programming.