Whitney and I had a ball at the Hamilton Branch of the Madison Public Librarylast Friday, and as always, the kids in the audience had some marvelous questions. My favorite one was this: “Your book says your Seeing Eye dog goes with you everywhere. Does she go in the shower with you, too?” We’re heading […]

My friend Audrey Petty has spent years gathering stories from residents of Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens and Cabrini-Green — all publicly-funded buildings that no longer exist. Audrey collected oral histories from residents and gathered them in a new book called High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing, and I’m […]

Whitney and I had a ball at the Youth Literature Festival in Champaign last week, and the highlight of the entire event was meeting Kayla, a delightful second grader at Westview Elementary School. I usually don’t let kids pet Whitney when she has her harness on, but this was an exception. Kayla is blind, and she’d […]

What a great trip to Denver! In-between a baseball game with a puppy-in-training, a one-on-one tour of the 16th Street Mall with the head security cop there (don’t ask!), a nature walk with an old friend from my days working at the Kane County Cougars and the discovery of a new favorite beer afterwards (90 […]

Passive House Institute US , the non-profit organization my husband Mike Knezovich works for, is holding it’s 7th Annual North American Passive House conference at the Marriott Hotel in Denver next week, and Whitney and I are going along for the ride. Passive house is a building energy standard — the most stringent such standard, to […]