I always make a point of sitting next to Flo so we can help each other in the holiday hubbub. She can’t hear well, I can’t see–we make a great team.

All six of my brothers and sisters are grandparents. My oldest sister, Bobbie, has three great-grandchildren. As my husband Mike likes to say, “It’s not a family, it’s a nation!” Buying Christmas presents for the entire Nation of Flo is out of the question. So we pick names, and you have to make a gift for the person you choose.

New babies press handprints into clay wall hangings, cousins stuff homemade pillows for gifts, pinecones collected in backyards magically transform into Christmas ornaments -and back-scratchers! Every gift is a treasure, and this year’s were so thoughtful I thought I’d share some highlights:

• My sister Bev and her husband Lon live right next to a forest preserve in Michigan . Lon made a shepherd’s crook from a long stick he found in the woods and gave it to our nephew Mark, who is a Hobbit fan
• Five-year-old Bryce spends a lot of time in that forest preserve too. He made colorful rubbings of leaves he’d found in the woods and framed the rubbings for Schminke (his name for his Great-grandma, Flo
• Our Minnesota niece Caren picked Mike’s name. She’s treating him to two tickets to a White Sox game at Target Field this year, and she made him something he’d need for the game: a long, woolen black-and-white scarf to keep him warm.
• My Florida brother-in-law Rick made a poster for our 9-year-old great-niece Audrey, who absolutely loves going to the Art Institute when visiting Chicago. He had a poster made with super heroes depicted the way Gauguin, Picasso and Van Gogh might have painted them. Audrey was on the poster, too: She was Wonder Woman

The kids seemed especially tickled with the gifts they made for each other this year. One of my favorites was the one 11-year-old Lydia made for her 4-year-old cousin Jack. She started with a “Guess Who?” game
— one where kids examine animals on cards and figure out the differences and similarities between them — and replaced the animal pictures with photos of family members. Jack happened to be right behind me when he opened his gift, and Lydia ran right over to explain what it was. “That’s Addie, she’s one, she lives in Florida,” I heard her carefully explaining to her little cousin. “I don’t think you met her yet, but that’s her, in the picture.”

With three more great-grandchildren on the way in 2014, the Nation of Flo is growing. So the “Guess Who” game will only get more difficult.

My great-niece Floey turns eight years old tomorrow, and gee whiz, what a coincidence that this extremely flattering

The irrepressible Annmarie.

email arrived in my in box just when I was thinking about what to get for her for her birthday – she wrote it as a report for her second grade class:

Beth Finke unfortunaly is my aunt. She is also a great athor, but I like her better as my aunt. She’s actually my GREAT anunt (I’m not just saying that) and she has always been. She’s 54 and is married to my Uncle Mike (Who is coo-coo). He has an aquarium. Aunt Beth is VERY kind.

Thank you Floey. You’re very kind, too! See (okay, hear) you tomorrow….

Plenty of people who use guide dogs take the subway safely back and forth to work every day. I am not one of those courageous people.

Whitney and I walk long distances in the Chicago Loop, jump into cabs, ride CTA buses…but we NEVER take the el by ourselves. Here’s why: during the 1990’s, when I was working with my first Seeing Eye dog Dora, a number of blind people using guide dogs died after falling into subway tracks in Boston and new York City. They fell in, but couldn’t see to find the ladder to get out. This 1993 NY Times story explains how one woman perished:

A blind woman led by a guide dog was killed yesterday when she fell from a midtown subway platform and was struck by a train as she frantically tried to climb back over the platform edge, the transit police said.

“We don’t know how or why, but she apparently slipped over the edge, leaving her dog on the platform,” said Albert W. O’Leary, a transit police spokesman… Ms. Schneider was killed at 9:18 A.M. after she fell onto the southbound express tracks along the Broadway line. Witnesses said Ms. Schneider got up and tried to find the edge of the platform with her hands as a southbound No. 3 express train roared into the station with its horn blasting.

A story in yesterday’s news has a happier ending: a guide dog named Orlando saved his blind companion after the man fell from a New York subway platform onto the tracks. The man and dog survived unhurt, but that’s not enough to convince me to ride the el with Whitney. We’re staying above ground, on terra firma.

There’s one thing confusing me about all the national news stories about yesterday’s near-miss: they all say that the man has to put Orlando up for adoption now because his “medical benefits will cover a new guide dog but won’t pay for a non-working dog.”

I have never heard of any health insurance plans that cover the cost of feeding and caring for a guide dog. Maybe the man was talking about veterinary pet insurance? Guide dog users can choose to pay for the same pet insurance that is available to average people with companion dogs, and it doesn’t really matter if the dog is working or not.

None of the news stories I read gave the name of the health insurance plan the blind man used to cover Orlando., If any of you blog readers know of a health insurance plan that covers the ongoing cost of using a guide dog, please leave the name of that insurance plan here in the comment section. I want to sign up!

Today’s guest post is by Elizabeth Seebeck, the founder of Oglesby Montessori Foundation.

by Elizabeth
Seebeck

Last February, 31 little bodies sat still in their small, Montessori classroom in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago: the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. The children were absolutely mesmerized by Beth, her dog, and her story.

Beth, Judy and the children in Oglesby’s Montessori Program.

It’s not every day that schoolkids get to meet a blind author who answers each and every question they have! And it’s not every day that students on Chicago’s South Side participate in a public Montessori program that develops their curious minds, stimulates their thirst for knowledge, and promises to encourage them to succeed in a neighborhood that makes few promises.

Children at the Oglesby Montessori School benefit from hands on and experiential learning
— like when Beth came and showed them how to read Braille. Now, our students are trying to take a huge step into that big world by building an urban farm and garden for their community to cultivate along with them.

The Oglesby Montessori Foundation funds this alternative school choice for families on the south side of Chicago, and this garden project is one of 5 finalists in a national contest sponsored by Teach for America and Fed Ex. If we win, we’ll get $25,000 for our garden proposal.

Three Potential Gardeners in Oglesby’s Montessori Program

Having free access to nutritious food, and being in touch with that food from seed to harvest is transformative. In order to win, we need the most votes for a short video we made about the garden project, and we need those votes by Friday, December 27. It doesn’t cost a thing to vote (all you need is a Facebook or Twitter account), so please vote for young Chicago gardeners!

Beth here: the site you use to vote is totally accessible with screen readers, so I was able to vote without looking at the video. If you can see and you’re in a hurry, you can vote without taking time to watch the video, too. I bet it’s cute, though!

Thank you.

Kate Hannigan Issa’s The Good Fun! book and my Safe & Sound book were both illustrated by the talented Anthony Alex Letourneau and published by the fabulous Blue Marlin Publications. Kate lives in Chicago, too, and while
waiting for Disney-Hyperion to publish her second book this May she squeezes in time to promote other authors on her “Author of” blog. And I’m delighted that she chose to interview me in a recent post…here it is:

Beth Finke’s ‘Safe and Sound’ Makes an Inspiring Holiday Gift

Christmastime for me growing up meant one thing: my annual plea for a dog. I was obsessed with them, begged Santa to slip one under the tree, read all sorts of books about them, memorized every breed. For kids and families with an interest in dogs, Chicago author Beth Finke’s beautiful story of her relationship with her Seeing Eye dog, Hanni, makes a fascinating, uplifting holiday gift.

…Read the full blog and interview at Author of