Last Friday Whitney and I took a train to Deerfield, a suburb of Chicago, to talk with second graders at Kipling Elementary School. It was “Disability Awareness Week” at Kipling, and the kids asked a lot of questions during the Q & A part of the presentation. Some examples:

• Does Whitney like other dogs?
• How do you know when it’s time to go to bed?
• How do you bake bread?
• How do you write books?
• How do you drive?
• If dogs are color blind, can they see any colors at all?
• Does Whitney ever slip on the ice?
• Where did you go to college?
• What’s Whitney’s favorite color?
• My favorite question of the day, hands down, was this one: “If you need to go to school to get a Seeing Eye dog, but you don’t have a Seeing Eye dog yet, how do you get to the school?” Tomorrow morning Whitney and I are taking a train to another suburban school: Sears Elementary, in Kenilworth. This time we’ll be talking with kindergartners. Note to self: go to bed early tonight.

I have a part-time job moderating the Easter Seals blog, and today we published a post there that I wrote about guide dogs and winter weather. I thought you Safe & Sound blog readers might find it interesting, too, so here it is.

The cold and snowy weather last week had a lot of people asking me if my Seeing Eye dog Whitney likes being out in winter weather. Truth is, she doesn’t have much choice. Poor guide dogs, they never get a day off work!

The snow started falling in Chicago last week, and it was still coming down days later. The American Federation of the Blind devotes a section on its web site to traveling in winter weather:

Winter weather is often more time consuming, more physically and mentally tiring, and possibly more fraught with danger than traveling in good weather. The cold often brings personal discomfort, making it difficult to concentrate and learn during travel or mobility lessons. Your toes, fingers and ears are particularly at risk. To protect your extremities, it is necessary to plan one’s clothing and equipment well beforehand.

When I was a kid, I thought it was magical the way snowfall muffled the sound around you. I still do. But on my walks with Whitney the past week, it just wasn’t the magic I was looking for.

Enough snow fell to mask the audible cues I use to navigate the city. Commuters who could see trudged through the Loop (downtown Chicago’s business district) with their heads down to avoid the snow pelting their faces. This would have been fine if they all had dogs like mine to guide them, but they didn’t. Whitney was on her own, weaving me around the blinded commuters in our path.

And that wasn’t all: snow accumulated between the raised, circular bumps I’ve come to rely on to tell me we’re at the edge of a curb ramp, so I wasn’t always exactly sure where we were. The further we got away from the Loop, the fewer pedestrians crossed our path. I’d stop. Listen. No footsteps in the snow, no sounds of shovels, nobody there. Panic. Where were we?

All I can do when this happens is take a deep breath and remember what trainers drummed into our heads when my blind peers and I were first learning to work with our guides: trust your dog. “Whitney, forward!” I hold on tight to her harness, follow her lead, and before long we’re at our destination, safe and sound.

As the snow begins to melt now, salt on the streets is the problem—it gets into Whitney’s paws, and stings. Thank goodness for booties. Whitney’s gotten used to wearing them now, and I’m getting used to compliments, too. Strangers on city streets gush when we pass by. “Awww! Look!” they exclaim. “That dog has shoes!” It makes me smile, and I picture those strangers smiling in the snow too. My dog is more than a guide, she’s a therapy dog, too. “Good dog, Whitney!”

A New York Times article called Why Do We Fear the Blind? quotes everyone from the 18th century French philosopher Denis Diderot to modern essayist Christopher Hitchens to try to explain why Blindness is the most feared and misunderstood of all disabilities. Well, from a journalistic point of view, I’d say the piece was too long, and I think the headline is not representative of the story. Because the story really describes why sighted people fear blindness — not people with blindness.

I mean, let’s be real. People are afraid of blindness because, well, being blind is scary. Maybe seeing someone like me, who is blind, serves as a reminder: this could happen to you, too.

Odds aren’t great, though. Only 1.3 million people in the United States are legally blind. That’s not many. We human beings tend to be fearful of things we don’t know, though, and with so few of us out here, your chances of getting to know a person who is blind is rare. The woman who wrote the New York Times article put on a blindfold to try to understand what it’s like to traverse city streets when you can’t see. I’m afraid all that does is make her readers more afraid. And grateful that they are not blind. But she can go away proud that she was sensitive enough to try walking around with a blindfold in an effort to simulate being blind.

People who are blind can’t take the blindfold off and then talk about how scary it is. We spend miserably difficult months with remarkably dedicated orientation and mobility trainers learning how to do simple things, like walk outside and mail a letter.

I started losing my eyesight in 1984, when I was 25 years old. Before then, I had a job advising college students who wanted to study overseas. The job entailed talking with students, checking out what programs might work for them, phoning different college departments or other universities to arrange for the transfer of college credits. I was sure I’d be able to perform these tasks without being able to see. My boss, however, was equally sure I could not. I tried proving her wrong. At first I didn’t use a white cane or a dog. I quit driving or riding my bike, but I could still see well enough to walk to work with a walking cane (Mike and I happened to have bought one as a souvenir during our honeymoon in Scotland months before, when I could still see perfectly well).

As my eyesight got worse, I started making mistakes in the office. One morning I spilled grounds all over the floor on my way to make the morning coffee. I sat inches away from my computer screen to see the words. I ran into tabletops. At one point my boss took me aside and told me I wouldn’t be going to the annual convention with my colleagues that year. “You’ll embarrass the office,” she said.

Those were scary times.

By the end of that year, I had lost my sight completely. The Americans with Disabilities Act had not been passed yet. My contract was terminated. My confidence was shattered. How could I have been so naive? Did I really think I was worth hiring? Why would anyone employ someone who couldn’t see?

I considered pursuing a Master’s degree in blind rehabilitation then, reasoning that if you work helping blind people, being blind would be an advantage, and I might get a job. After some soul-searching, though, I realized that with my personality I might be able to do more for the blind community by getting outside of it. I’m not shy, and demonstrating to people who might not come across a blind person in their daily lives that a person without sight can live a full, creative, and pleasurable life might show them that we’re nothing to be afraid of.

Which is not to condemn the writer of that New York Times article for trying. I just think, with this article, she failed.

There’s Whit…on a commuter train platform.

The Chicago network of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) emailed me late last year to see if I’d do a program for their January 11, 2014 meeting on how to build a platform. “Your name came up as a possible speaker on this topic,” the message said, “because you are someone who, as a writer, has built a name for yourself across multiple platforms.”

Confession: unless you’re talking about the thing I stand on when I’m waiting for a train, or the kind of shoes Elton John wore at those concerts I went to in the 70s, I really don’t know what a platform is. I didn’t tell them that, though. I was so flattered by their invitation that I said yes.

The program is this Saturday morning. My friend Ellen Sandmeyer of Sandmeyer’s Bookstore is coming along and bringing books (I sign them in print and in Braille, too, of course, and if the weather warms up by then I hope some of you Chicagoland blog readers might come on out and see what I come up with to talk about! The program is free, and you don’t have to be a member of SCBWI to attend. You do need to RSVP, though, so I’ll leave you here with the invitation they sent out:

January 11, Saturday, 10 A.M. – 11:30 A.M.
BUILDING YOUR PLATFORM

Where: 920 W. Wilson, Chicago, IL 60640, Garden Room, off lobby

Parking is available on the street (paybox). Also accessible by CTA Redline, bus #78 and bus #151.

RSVP to janehertenstein@gmail.comIn today’s publishing environment a writer has to do MORE than write. Marketing and promotion requires an author to perform on many platforms. Often an agent or editor will ask: Does he/she have a platform?

Beth Finke is an award-winning author, NPR commentator, blogger, and participates in numerous school visits. As a journalist she has used many different mediums and media to deliver a message. Come hear Beth speak and get your 2014 writing career off to a good start. (She might even tell us about how her part-time job modeling nude for university art students led to an essay on NPR’s Morning Edition and an appearance on Oprah!)

Hey folks, Mike’s filling in for me today:

Happy New Year from The Row.

Well, the holidays. They’re just about over. And as much as I’ve enjoyed them this year (a whole lot), I’m ready to move on. We’re feeling a little splintered down here on the Row in Breezy (these are from Marcus, from Printers Row Wine Shop, his new nicknames for Printers Row and Chicago, respectively). So splintered, that a splintered blog post seemed in order. So I give you … bits and pieces:

• We’ll inevitably see lots of health-oriented news items associated with New Year resolutions, replete with video footage of folks in gyms on treadmills. And you may be tempted to try to turn over a new leaf. By all means, go forth and exercise, and do bad things only in moderation, but before you go out and load up on vitamins and supplements, heed the advice in this article: The best way to live longest may be to do … nothing. I’m on board!
• So about this social media stuff. Like just about everybody I know, I do it without knowing what I’m doing, or why, exactly. One thing I’ve finally sworn off: Attempting to make a political statement or have political discourse via Facebook or any other SM (or should that actually be S & M?) platform. I’ve found it impossible to do so constructively. Social media and other Internet technologies are termed “interactive,” but they are so in only the crudest of terms. They’re essentially I say what I want and I’m absolutely right and you’re absolutely wrong and then you say you’re absolutely right and I’m absolutely wrong.For the record, I’m not against the technology. It’s always easy to blame ills on technology –- been that way since the printing press was invented. The telephone, too, was thought a threat to family life when it came on the scene. It’s the bad behavior that’s the problem (although I grant, social media technology makes bad behavior easier and more tempting than ever. Don’t Ask Me How I Know). It has always been thus — it’s the behavior, stupid. Before there was social media there were listservs and flame wars. Before (and still now) listservs and flame wars there were bumper stickers.

  But there are some collective bad behaviors that are somewhat unique to social media. The instant righteousness and condemnation by what are essentially e-mobs is one of them. And I think this opinion piece at Big Think, about that PR executive’s very troublesome tweet that made the news, is worth reading.

• In the “Hell Freezes over” department, George F. Will, conservative columnist (and Urbana, Ill., native and University of Illinois Laboratory High School graduate), took on the subject of mandatory sentencing and how it has damaged countless lives and our society. It’s really good, I hope you’ll read it, and Mr. Will, thank you.
• In the shameless plug department, Beth has already written about our friend Audrey Petty’s High Rise Stories,  collection of residents’ accounts of life in Chicago’s bygone housing projects. Well, Audrey was one of the Chicago Tribune’s Chicagoans of the Year in 2013. And George Saunders (a great fiction writer), appearing on Meet the Press (see it here, at minute 2:24) last week, praised the book and urged President Obama to read it. (Thanks to Audrey’s loving husband Maurice Rabb — a computer scientist and no slouch in his own right — for that little clip).
• Still in the plugging friends mode: Our friends from The Row — Seth and Bess — moved to New Orleans a few years back. They both worked up the courage to pursue their dreams. Bess has built a successful private practice in counseling. Seth opened a specialty butcher shop that’s a big hit. And you can read all about the shop — Cleaver & Co.  Oh, one other thing, Seth and Bess just had a their first child, Tally, a girl born with fullest head of hair I’ve ever seen on a newborn. Congrats kids.
• And in the dreaming of sunshine, summer and the crack of the bat department, there is bad news and good news. The bad: Paul Blair, one of my favorite all-time players, who simply glided around center field for championship  Baltimore Orioles teams, died last week. I don’t recall ever seeing a better centerfielder.The good news: The White Sox are having a terrific off-season (and boy, did they need one).

Here’s to a new baseball season, a brand new year. Frankly, I won’t miss ’13 — this one has been tough for us and a lot of people, but hope springs eternal. And I’m reminded of the last paragraph from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” by Robert M. Pirsig:

Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through. We’ve won it. It’s going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

Happy New Year to you all.