UCSF Meeting and Sunset Doctor

I attended the UCSF physical development meeting, which I feel was somewhat of a useful journalistic experience. One advantage that I ran into was that at the meeting, I ran into several people that I had talked to or interviewed at the Sunset town hall meeting back at the end of January. I found it surprisingly easy to approach them, and start a conversation about the meeting as soon as I got there, since we had already been introduced. Not necessarily for this story, but a lot of the quotes I feel like I can follow up on or use for other stories. A Sunset district resident was upset that since UCSF went smoke-free, her street had become UCSF’s metaphorical ashtray. I think this, as well, might make for a great story on its own.

As a separate note, I found a really interesting doctor in the Sunset district how treats a variety of disorders, diseases and injuries using his own "self-healing technique," which was developed out of a combination of the Bates Method of eye exercises and his own developmental techniques. The doctor, Meir Schneider, was blind at one point in his life. He was born with cataracts and other bad visual problems that forced him to get multiple surgeries on the lenses of his eyes, all to no success. Through the Bates Method, and his own regimen of self-massage and movement, he now enjoys 20/80 vision and has an unrestricted drivers license, and helps others heal whatever health problems, be it physical or mental, using his own Meir self-healing technique. In other words, this guy cured his own freakin' blindness. Crazy. He gives a free holistic health care lecture on Thursdays in the outer Sunset. I attended one, but I am hoping he will let me profile him or at least offer a longer interview than I was able to get at his lecture.