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Here’s an easy way to look 38 years younger

October 3, 201452 CommentsPosted in blindness, public speaking, visiting schools

My first high school reunion — the 10-year one — happened right after I lost my sight. I didn’t go.

I haven’t been to any since then, either. Friends and family members who go to high school reunions tell me it’s hard to recognize old friends when you can see them. Blind at a high school reunion? I’d feel like I was a punchline.

Back in high school I was in the marching band.

Back in high school I was in the marching band.

I was a scrawny girl in my teens, and I wore overalls nearly every day. I hoped they’d camouflage the shapeless undeveloped girl hiding underneath. Wire-rim glasses with octagon frames helped me see where I was going, and braces did their best to straighten my teeth. I never had a boyfriend, no one asked me to prom, and I was just unsophisticated and inexperienced enough to think of those four years as fun.

Know what? I still do. I had a ball during my time at York Community High School in Elmhurst, Ill., and many of my closest friends today are kids I met there.

Few of us did anything you’d call admirable, though, and when Mike first read me a letter saying I’d been selected one of York’s “distinguished alumni” I thought it was a mistake. When he got to the part that said the award was called “Dukes of Distinction” I dismissed it as something silly.

I was wrong on both counts.

The Dukes of Distinction award ceremony is an annual grand affair with a string orchestra (York students, of course!) and this year it will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, Nov. 6 at York Community High School, 355 W. St. Charles Road in Elmhurst. Two of the 2014 honorees will be awarded Posthumously: Dr. Martin Stoker (Class of 1939) worked with patients in Elmhurst for 48 years, and Joe Vanek (Class of 2003) is a veteran who died in Iraq in 2007 and was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. The others:

  • Dr. Robert T. Chen (Class of 1973) is a medical researcher working on the AIDS vaccine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
  • John Coughlan (Class of 1960) is a retired college coach who was once named NCAA National Indoor Coach of the Year.
  • Gary Rydstrom (Class of 1977) is a sound engineer who works at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker and has won seven Academy Awards for Sound and Sound Editing.
  • Kathleen Sherman (Class of 1970) is a real-live singing nun who is committed to working for non-violence, especially in Chicago

And then, me. Maybe it was a mistake after all. Or maybe The Dukes of Distinction judge loves dogs. But hey, however it happened, I’m in!

They’re serving free cake and beverages at the ceremony, Whitney and I honest-to-goodness get to walk on a red carpet, and event organizers tell me Les Zunkel (the longtime colorful director of York’s musicals) will be on hand as “stage manager” to guarantee no speech lasts longer than three minutes. I especially look forward to meeting these other honorees — we’re returning to York the next morning to talk with students while class is in session.

So mark your calendars for Thursday, November 6 — the ceremony takes place in a room at York High called the York Commons, described to me as “a beautiful indoor 2-story atrium area that you may remember as the outdoor courtyard.” It’s free, no need to make reservations, you don’t have to be a York graduate to attend, the public is welcome, doors open at 7:00 and the ceremony starts at 7:30 p.m. — let’s make it a mini-reunion! Just remember to tell this Duke of Distinction who you are when you come up to say hello. In exchange, I promise I’ll picture you the way you looked 38 years ago.

You can link to Elmhurst Community Unit School District’s web site for longer bios of this year’s Dukes of Distinction winners. You’ll find photos there, too, in case one of the other DODs has a name that sounds familiar…

Mondays with Mike: Fall classic

September 29, 201410 CommentsPosted in blindness, Mike Knezovich, Mondays with Mike, Uncategorized
Lakefront

The lakefront at dusk on Sunday.

Beth and I took an early fall walk to Lake Michigan yesterday evening. For us, that’s a few city blocks then the serpentine bike/pedestrian path and then we’re looking at the Shedd Aquarium, the Field museum, the Adler Planetarium and…the lakefront. Framed by the skyline. It’s an embarrassment of riches, but no apologies here.

For the two falls we spent on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, there wasn’t a lot of seasonal color on the beach. But we felt it. The change. Water still warm, beaches less populated, breezes that raised goose pimples, the sun warm but pinched. Fisherman casting on the beach instead of sun tanners and body surfers.

Right now back in Urbana, Ill., where Beth and I became Beth and I and, in a real way, Beth became Beth and I became me, I’m sure fall is spectacular. Not mountainous, but big ancient trees with roots that buckle sidewalks, and whose leaves turn crazy colors, making the quiet streets psychedelic tunnels.

Here in the city it’s different.

Or not.

The light slants against glass and steel and terra cotta and freshwater. The sun is warm but is soft. The lake is calm. The grinding violence of winter is near, but right now the sky’s pastel and the skyscrapers look like intentional works of art and not joints where you slog to work.

The Chicago White Sox just finished a baseball season, and they will not play games until next year. But they won 10 more than last year and I’ll wager they win 10 or more again next. They retired a player … a hero? A role model? I don’t know. Paul Konerko is just a good guy. There was a special celebration of his retirement at the game Saturday night, and we were there, and it was over the top and yes, I cried. All for a guy I don’t know, really, but somehow think I do after watching him for 16 years.

Everybody in professional baseball is talented—but not all work as hard at it as he did. He couldn’t run, he waddled like a penguin and he managed to hit a grand slam in game two of the World Series in 2005. Which the White Sox won in four games.

That was fall. And I remember it vividly. I will always.

I love fall.

Adaptability, resourcefulness, and a little luck

September 25, 201414 CommentsPosted in blindness, questions kids ask, Uncategorized, visiting libraries

Hanni and I making our exit from a classroom at Fairview Elementary School back in 2010.

Back in 2010 I wrote a blog post about a visit to Fairview Elementary School in a Chicago suburb called Mt. Prospect. A first-grader there asked one of my all-time favorite questions:

“How do you know if you picked a four-leaf clover?”

That little girl must be in fifth grade now, and I’m hoping she might show up at our presentation at Mt. Prospect Public Library this Sunday afternoon to ask even more fun questions like that one.

Our presentation starts at 2 p.m. this Sunday, September 28 in Room 154 at the Mt. Prospect Public Library, 10 S Emerson St., Mt. Prospect, Ill. From the library web site:

Beth Finke is an author, teacher, journalist, NPR commentator, and recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She also happens to be blind. Her children’s book about Seeing Eye dogs, Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound is featured on the Martha Speaks Read Aloud Book Club on PBS and won an ASPCA Henry Berg Award for children’s literature. Come meet Beth and her dog and find out more about the job of a Seeing Eye dog. Beth’s heartfelt and funny stories will leave you smiling and knowing a lot more about adaptability and resourcefulness.

The presentation is free, and the library recommends it for children in kindergarten through grade 5 and families. Registration is not required, but if you know you’re coming they’d appreciate you registering just to get a read, ahem, on how many to expect. Ellen Sandmeyer of Sandmeyer’s Bookstore in Chicago is driving Whitney and me to the event, and she’ll be selling copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound and Long Time, No See for me to sign for anyone interested afterwards.

I’m really looking forward to all of this, I just wish I’d checked the NFL schedule before we booked, ahem, this gig. Earlier this week I found out we’ll be giving our presentation right when the Chicago Bears are playing the Green Bay Packers. Rats. With so many Chicagoans glued to their T.V. sets, I wondered if anyone would show up at the library.

Eyebrows up! I just talked with a youth services librarian, and they have 30 people registered already! See what can happen when you have to feel a four-leaf clover over and over again to make sure you have the count right?

Mondays with Mike: Reality check

September 22, 20146 CommentsPosted in Mondays with Mike, Uncategorized

I get exhausted by NFL coverage in any normal season–it’s everywhere, and though I watch the Bears when they’re on, I generally don’t have an affection for football. So, I am especially exhausted by all the recent hype about Ray Rice, Roger Goodell, etc., etc., etc., as the King of Siam would say.

Also troubled. And not necessarily for obvious reasons. But because, as is pretty much business as usual in modern culture, I wonder if real stuff is obscured by hand-waving, hyped up blather.

To start, we have the video of Ray Rice (an NFL star running back, for those who have been lucky enough to miss all this) punching, I mean landing a direct hit, on his then fiancé (now wife). It’s disgusting, and there’s not much to say about it. Though there’s no shortage of loudmouths spouting outrage. There’s also been a lot to say about who knew what when, and whether this has Watergate implications for the commissioner, and what does this say about the game and….

Well, a couple things trouble me. First, it’s sad that domestic violence–which is an everyday, horrible, terrifying and fatal fact of life for countless people (mostly, but not all, women)–only gets this kind of attention when the NFL is involved. It’s perverse really.

Second, here’s the way I look at it: It wouldn’t matter so much what the freakin’ NFL’s policy on domestic violence was if our public judicial and social systems were in order with regard to domestic violence. Because if someone is threatened, they should be able to go to the police, press charges, and receive the protection they need in the meantime. And if the accused is convicted, presumably (s)he goes to jail or enters some sort of program–the extent to which it interferes with work then coming into the employer’s purview.

I’ve never looked to the NFL for leadership on anything, particularly anything regarding morality or civil behavior. And I don’t think for one second that what the NFL does in the wake of all this will have a substantive effect on how domestic violence is treated in day to day life, out of the spotlight. Unless maybe we take it as a signal to act quietly and resolutely out of the spotlight, as citizens, to change things. Sometimes I think reality TV has seeped into our world views so much that we don’t distinguish between reality and TV.

Drama and happiness

September 18, 201428 CommentsPosted in blindness, memoir writing, questions kids ask, Uncategorized, visiting schools

Yesterday Whitney and I enjoyed a magical morning in a classroom in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side: the

The class at Oglesby.

The class at Oglesby.

Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. Fourth, fifth and sixth graders in a Montessori program at Oglesby Elementary are writing essays for a book they’ll publish in November, and their teacher asked me to come talk about memoir-writing.

The kids and I had to talk about other stuff first, though. Like what it’s like to be blind, whether I can blink or not, does my dog sleep with me in my bed, how I play piano if I can’t see the keys, how come I open my eyes at all if I can’t see. Then a thoughtful fifth-grader asked, “Do your eyes hurt?” Such a sweet, caring question. “I can’t see anything,” I said. “But no, my eyes don’t hurt at all.”

That answer prompted a question I’d never been asked before. “Can you cry?” For a quick moment I considered explaining what tear ducts are, telling the kids how they work, but then I thought about Jamal, a sixth-grade boy in class who’d described the memorial t-shirt he was wearing — it had photos of a cousin who’d died on it. Another boy in class told me he gets angry sometimes because his father is in prison. I kept my answer simple. “Yes, I can cry” I said. “And sometimes, I do.”

Jamal describes his memorial t-shirt for me.

I pictured the kids nodding their heads, understanding. The class was still for a moment, but then a boy in back broke the silence. “Would you win in a staring contest?” We all had fun with that — his question led to a heavy discussion of staring-contest rules. Do you have to look right into someone’s eyes, what if you’re close but not looking right in their eyes, is it just all about who blinks first?

After the Q&A came the writing exercise. We all took a minute to write a few sentences that define our lives, then we read our sentences out loud. I learned that Jamal is new to the Montessori class, but his little sister Shamiya has been at Oglesby Montessori for years. Jamal wrote: “I seen too much drama in my life. I wish I had a dog for a best friend and happiness.” A fifth-grade girl wrote this: “I’m oldest. One brother, 1 sister. Mom raised. Grandma died. Auntie baby died when came out. Happy that I am happy.”

We went through an editing process to cut our stories down to six words, then to three words. The fifth-grade girl decided on “I’m oldest. Happy.” A boy in class ended up with “I am awesome.” Jamal’s three words were downright poetic:” Drama and happiness.”

The classroom teacher had asked me to come up with a writing prompt for the kids to work on after Whitney and I went home, so I told them to finally cut their piece down to one word. “That one word is your writing prompt for today,” I said, and as Whitney and I left to go home, they all squirreled away to start writing on their topics. The kids promised they’ll read their stories out loud if Whitney and I return to Oglesby Montesorri, so among other topics, I can look forward to hearing essays about:

Getting down to one word.

Getting down to one word.

  • twin
  • oldest
  • angry
  • grandma
  • youngest
  • awesome

A teacher-aide told me later that Jamal settled on “drama” as his one word, but then found that topic difficult to write about with all his classmates there in the room with him. “I asked if he thought he could work on writing his memoir at home, and he said he thought he could,” the teacher aide said, adding that she’d suggested maybe he could write about something happy while he was still there at school. “He and I thought he could write about what it has been like to experience Montessori class as a new kid.”

A 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization called Oglesby Montessori Foundation supports and advocates for the Montessori program Whitney and I visited yesterday. The Foundation is looking for help funding chess and yoga classes and camping trips to Wisconsin, the Nature’s Classroom Institute, and Camp MacLean. Please consider donating.