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Mondays with Mike: Staycation

June 2, 20147 CommentsPosted in blindness, Mike Knezovich, Mondays with Mike, Uncategorized

Hey all, apologies for last Monday without Mike. I took Memorial Day off — in fact, I took the whole week off. I hadn’t had a vacation in, well, I don’t remember and I was getting more squirrelly than normal. So, for me and for all those around me, a little rest and relaxation was in order.

My goal was to not think about work or check work email at all for a week, with the intention of getting out of that twitch-respond mode that electronic communications can put us in. A little nature — as in getting out of the concrete jungle of downtown Chicago — was also a goal.

Travel to a faraway place was at the top of my list for a while. Nothing gets me out of my own brain and my own rut like being overseas. But I only had a week<!–more–>

and airfares were sky high so I passed. Thought about a mini-camping trip but…was too lazy.

So, I stayed home. I mean, I left the apartment, but I stayed home and made selected ventures out  —  to see the White Sox-Yankees-Derek Jeter farewell game with my nephew, for example. And to see pianist Eric Reid at Jazz Showcase. Or, just down to Hackney’s to watch a ballgame or hockey game knowing that I had time to do my laundry whenever I wanted — after I slept in. And to Chicago Sweat Lodge, where I shared Russian and Turkish saunas with a bunch of East Europeans and very little English was spoken. It was like going overseas without the jet lag.

Best of all, I got my nature fix when our friend Brad and I spent a fantastic afternoon at Shedd Aquarium. We paid full price and got access to all the newer stuff (like the Oceanarium, whales, penguins, jelly fish and my favorite, the Wild Reef Exhibit. Spectacular). Prices are a little steep but you can also get in for $8 with somewhat limited access that amounted to the original aquarium area I remember from the days of school field trips.

It’d been 10 years since I was at Shedd and about the same for Brad, so we were like a couple of kids, oohing and aahing. It’s cliché, yes, but the diversity of life forms on this earth is almost imcomprehensible. Blue iguanas, puffer fish, anacondas, jelly fish, poison dart frogs. Kicks the daylights out of a 3D movie. It’s like, you know, really 3D.

Which brings me to the only wart on the experience: Incessant picture taking. Now, because I do occasionally suffer from electronic twitch syndrome, I understand the temptation to stop and take a picture of that crazy looking lungfish. Except…why not just pocket the phone, and look at Mr. lungfish directly, unmediated by a lens or electronics? I mean…that’s why you go, right? Because…and this is the killer: because in the modern electronic world, I can find you absolutely stunning photographs of all those species — better than any photo you’ll take on your walk through — on the Interwebs.

Brad and I are separated by around 20 years, but we share some, shall we say, traditional sensibilities. And we were both annoyed by all the folks putting their camera phones to the glass. The topper, though was when a girl — who looked to be a Tweener, nudged me, pointed to the gaggle of girls lined up in front of the glass and in an annoyed voice said, “Excuse me? We’re trying to take a picture here.”

Because, you know, the shark’s not important. The other museum-goers — like the guy with the beard standing entranced in front of the display — aren’t important. What’s important is that WE’RE HERE and we need to tell everyone about it.

I would’ve gone all shark on her but I was well into my vacation and my quick twitch muscles were on holiday, too. I let it all run off the proverbial duck’s back.

I don’t get it though. I really don’t. Probably never will. I think with all the talk about privacy these days, a bigger problem is forgetting how to act in public spaces.

Apart from issues of propriety or decorum, I’m thinking these behaviors limit the shutterflies’ own experiences. As Brad and I walked out, for example, because we were just walking and looking around and not thinking about how we could be advertising ourselves in some way, he noticed some incredible detail in the ceiling of the original Shedd building. And beautiful wall sconces. We just stopped for a bit, heads on swivels, it was the end of a mostly perfect afternoon.

And I’d show you a picture but I didn’t take any.

 

 

DOTTO

May 31, 20145 CommentsPosted in travel, Uncategorized

My friend Nicole Dotto left Chicago this past week to move closer to her family in California, and I’m sure going to miss her.

That's me as Annie Hall, thanks to Nicole.

That’s me as Annie Hall, thanks to Nicole.

Loyal blog readers might recognize Nicole’s name from a 2013 guest post she wrote here after Mike and I were invited to a costume ball for Mardi Gras. The theme of the party was “Hollywood” and Nicole helped me put together a costume. Nicole and I met as volunteers for Sit Stay Read here in Chicago. She runs an online vintage shop called DOTTO on Etsy and has a whole lot of handsome and classic items for sale there, along with what she affectionately calls “interesting train wreck pieces” (she tells me a lot of those are thanks to the colorful 1980s).

Nicole is moving her Etsy business with her to California, but before she left Chicago she was interviewed for a piece about her shop on the etsy blog. The story was on the Etsy front page for two days — a huge deal as far as Etsy goes.<!–more–>

She was pleased that Etsy included pictures of items from her store along with some behind-the-scenes shots of her Chicago apartment, but she did have one complaint. “They totally cropped one photo that had my cat employee snoozing on the ground next to me while I was taking shop photos,” she told me. “The nerve!”

In the Etsy interview, Nicole said that while in Chicago the past three years she lived and worked in a studio apartment and grew to love all parts of running her shop: finding clothing, cleaning, mending, measuring, editing, shipping, and answering questions. She models most of the outfits she sells on her ETSY site, too, an in the ETSY interview she claims she “can take photos with a timer like no one’s business.”

A story in the Lincoln Park Village newsletter this month by Bonnie Keplinger described Millennials like Nicole as:

  • over 80 million strong in the US
  • born roughly between 1980 and 2001
  • self-directed
  • tech-savvy
  • confident
  • multi-tasking
  • upbeat

The Lincoln Park Village article said that if you’re a Millennial, your life-style and friends trump your work. “They aim to change the policies of corporate America to achieve better work-life balance: Hello meaningful, collaborative work and transparency; goodbye performance reviews and 60 hour work weeks.”

Nicole told me that starting her own small business and relying on it as a sole source of income from the start never felt like a huge risk to her. She gives a lot of credit to her family and friends who encouraged and supported her along the way and hopes others will consider opening their own small online businesses. “It can sound terrifying, but I want everyone to know that they can do this kind of thing, too.”

That's Nicole modeling the 'WHO WOULD WEAR THIS?' kind of thing she carries in her online vintage shop. (sorry, folks. It's sold.)

That’s Nicole modeling the ‘WHO WOULD WEAR THIS?’ kind of thing she carries in her online vintage shop. (sorry, folks. It’s sold.)

I can’t vouch for the photos — you’ll have to link to the ETSY blog post and check them out yourself. I can tell you that the interview paints a beautiful picture of Nicole, though, and will end here with her answer to a question about what she loves most about having her own shop on ETSY:

I love the fact that DOTTO allows me to call the shots, give new life to clothing that otherwise might be discarded, pretend that I have the grandest closet in all the land, meet people from around the world, and put cats in my pictures, but what I really love about it is the glorious flexibility it affords me. I joined the Peace Corps after college because I wanted a broader perspective of the world, and I’ve continued volunteering in some way ever since. Having my days free lets me volunteer around Chicago a couple of times a week, which is truly what I love to do. I have working limbs and my wits about me; there is no reason I shouldn’t be helping others as much as I can.

Guess I wouldn't have to worry about blind spots

May 29, 20143 CommentsPosted in blindness, Uncategorized

People have been asking me if I’m excited about the “driverless car” Google is working on. Truth is, I don’t miss driving that much. Mike and I live in a neighborhood in Chicago so close to downtown that I can walk or take a train, cab or bus just about anywhere I want to go. Parking costs a lot here, so many of our neighbors who can see don’t have cars, either.

And then there’s this: I was a bad driver when I could see. I miss riding my bicycle independently far more than I miss having a car. I’m in the minority, though — when I talk with others who have visual impairments (more…)

For those of you keeping count

May 25, 20148 CommentsPosted in memoir writing, Uncategorized

That’s Wanda with fellow retiree Hanni back in 2011. Photo by Sheila A. Donovan

So many of you commented here (or told me personally) about how much you liked reading last week’s post about 92-year-old writer Wanda Bridgeforth’s first try at using a new high-tech “caption phone,” that I thought you might enjoy this spirited email from Wanda about her progress with the phone since then:

Hello from Wanda in the Rabbit Hole of Techny-land
So far the score is :

  • Lost calls: five.
  • Lost captions :three.
  • Lost temper: Lost count.

Yes, there is great wear and tear on the instruction book.
But the battle is not to the strong – but to he who endureth to the end.
Family and friends enjoyed your blog Thanks a Million!!!

Hugs all around Wanda B.

Just don't call me late for dinner

May 23, 201414 CommentsPosted in careers/jobs for people who are blind, memoir writing, radio, technology for people who are blind, Uncategorized

Ten years ago the City of Chicago’s Commissioner on Aging contacted me to lead a memoir class at the Chicago Cultural Center. Soon afterward, Chicago Public Radio asked if I’d write and record an essay about the writers who’d signed up. I used my talking computer to e-mail my rough draft to the WBEZ editor and she emailed back with only one suggestion. “You repeat the word ‘seniors’ too much,” she said, requesting I use a “gentler” word. When I couldn’t come up with one, she wrote back. “How about golden agers?”

That’s writer Hanna Bratman, 94, the matriarch of the memoir classes I lead. Her essays have been compiled in a book called “What’s In My Head.” (Photo by Nora Isabel Bratman)

Golden agers? Was she serious?

She was. My recording of the piece is not available online, but I have a CD of it, and if you listen very closely you can hear me choke every time I call the writers “golden agers.”

Turns out the editor was ahead of her time. Just this week on Morning Edition, NPR’s Ina Jaffe opened a series she is doing about older Americans by explaining how difficult it’s been for her to find the right words to describe people who are over age 65.

“I realized what a minefield this was after I’d been on the beat just a few months,” she said, describing a profile she’d done recently of a 71-year-old midwife who is still up all night delivering babies. The headline on the NPR web site used the word “elderly” to describe the midwife. “Listeners were furious,” Jaffe said. “Maybe once upon a time, ‘elderly’ referred to a particular stage in life, but now people think … it means you’re ailing and you’re frail.” Jaffe said she sometimes uses the words older adults or older Americans but has pretty much given up senior. “I’ve met some older people who don’t like that, either,” she said. “And ‘senior citizen’ really seems to annoy just about everyone now…there really aren’t a lot of widely acceptable terms anymore.”

The piece went on and on, and on and on and on, with all sorts of other ideas:

  • Golden years: Jaffe explained this term came from a sales pitch during the late 1950s, when retirement began to be romanticized as a perpetual vacation.
  • Silver tsunami: I’d never heard of this, but NPR actually referenced a guy named Ashton Applewhite about this one. Applewhite blogs about aging and ageism and argues the metaphor is wrong. The 65-and-over population growth is not a tsunami, he says. “It’s a phenomenon that is washing gently across a flood plain.”
  • Our seniors: A term often used by politicians. Jaffe finds it patronizing. “The only other group we talk about like that is children.”
  • Successful aging: Jaffe is over 65 years old herself and says that although this is considered a progressive term, she doesn’t like it. “I think it just means there’s one more opportunity for me to fail.”

I do not research ageism, and I don’t have a degree in aging. I do lead three memoir-writing classes a week, though, and while a couple of my students are still in their fifties, most are in their seventies. Two students, Wanda and Hanna, are in their nineties and still manage to get to class on their own each week with new essays to share. Listening to all these amazing people read their essays teaches me a lot — far more than any of them will ever learn from me!

So what word do I use to describe the people who sign up for my memoir-writing classes? That’s easy. I just call them writers.