298 miles of shoreline

Harper and I woke up this morning in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. My high school friend Jennifer L. Fischer is director of Women and Children’s Services at Ministry Door County Medical Center, and over Thanksgiving last year she had the wonderful, wonderful idea to have Harper and me come “up north” to do some presentations. Once Jenny got the wheels turning, everything fell into place. She’s quoted in a very flattering story in the Door County Advocate about the presentations I’ll be giving this week. The story is titled “Finding Joy through Adversity” and opens like this:

Beth Finke was always the life of the party, and that spirit wasn’t dampened when she lost her sight, says her old schoolmate Jenny Fischer

The story talks about my blindness, of course, but the part I found flattering was the way it described me as, well…a person. More from the story:

She also — because passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act was still five years away — lost her job. She found a few odd jobs — including nude modeling
for a university art class, which led to the career she settled into: writing.

“Staying still so long gave me lots of time to think about my writing, how to reformulate a lead, how to get across a certain idea,” she said. “In fact,
I used that quiet time to put together my very first published essay. I composed it in my head and then typed it into my talking
computer the minute I got home. Nude Modeling: Going In Blind was picked up by Alternet and published in alternative newspapers all over the country.”

The refusal to be held back by her blindness, and the decision to pose for the art class, are examples of why Fischer said one word sums up her old friend.

“She’s fearless,” Fischer said. “She always was.”

We’ll see if I’m fearless enough to let Harper take me for a walk this morning — Door County is a wondrous place, with more shoreline (298 miles of it, according to the Door County official web site) than almost any other county in the continental United States. Harper and I haven’t been for a walk on Chicago’s lakefront this year yet — it’s ben too cold — so today’s walk will be a test. We’ll see if this male yellow lab of mine can resist taking me into the water with him.

In the next two days we’re visiting with students from Sturgeon Bay, Southern Door and Gibraltar middle schools, plus meeting with physical therapists informally at the medical center. I’ll be giving talks to the general public, too. The community events, presented by Ministry Door County Medical Center, are scheduled at 7 p.m. March 22 at Southern Door Community Auditorium in Brussels and 7 p.m. March 23 at Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek. If Harper and I don’t show up at one of these visits we’ve scheduled for this week, don’t worry. Jenny has a nephew in the Coast Guard.