The essays writers bring to our weekly memoir-writing classes teach me a lot about history, geography, and civil rights. Gabriela Freese and her twin sister grew up in South America — their parents had emigrated from Germany to Paraguay during the European depression after World War I. “I grew up in a German household,” she […]

My part-time job moderating the blog for Easterseals national headquarters keeps me in touch with a lot of important people: people with disabilities and their friends and family members who write guest posts. This morning Easterseals published a post written by Bernhard Walke. Bernhard and his wife Rosa are the proud parents of seven-year-old Elena, […]

All five of the weekly memoir-writing classes I lead in Chicago are back in full swing now, and Michael Graff, a writer in one of the Village Chicago classes I lead, generously agreed to let us share a deadpan “Back to School” essay he read out loud Monday for the first meeting of the current […]

This morning my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I take off for Union Station to head to the Chicago suburbs. It’s Disability Awareness Week at Wilmot Elementary School in Deerfield, and we’re slated to give a presentation to eight- and nine-year-olds. The third graders are studying Helen Keller, and you can bet I’ll be publishing […]

Four weeks ago today I was eating cheese and petting goats on a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon in central Illinois. I’ve written here before about Marcel’s Culinary Experience, the culinary retail store and cooking school my childhood friend Jill Foucré opened in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The success of Marcel’s inspired her to open Marché, an […]