Just got back last night from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois — Mike drove Whitney and me down there so I could give a presentation to a lecture hall of 400+undergraduates enrolled in an Animal Sciences class at the University of Illinois. Inspired by the Pick of the Litter documentary Mike posted about on Monday, I spent a […]

WBEZ (Chicago Public Radio) had me come to the studio yesterday morning to talk about using the Eclipse Soundscapes app to experience Monday’s solar eclipse. If you missed it, you can listen to the 12-minute interview online here. I was relieved when host Tony Sarabia opened the interview saying he’d tried the app himself and […]

A show called The World aired a story on Public Radio International (PRI) last week about an app called eclipse soundscapes made especially for people who are blind or have visual impairments. I could see fine when I was a kid, and I watched the total eclipse of the sun on March 7, 1970 using […]

In addition to leading weekly memoir-writing classes for older adults, I work part-time moderating a blog for Easterseals National Headquarters here in Chicago. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been publishing posts on the Easterseals blog written by people with disabilities who count on Medicaid to help them pay for everything from personal care […]

A couple days ago I sat on a panel at Chicago Shedd Aquarium with a theater director, a mother of three school-aged children, and a lawyer. Theater director Brian Balcom uses a wheelchair, one of Laurie Viets’ children is on the autism spectrum, attorney Rachel Arfa is profoundly deaf and uses bilateral cochlear implants to […]