Working like dogs

A couple weeks ago I was interviewed for a show on Pet Life Radio: “the #1 Pet Podcast WiFi radio network.” I just love that tag line.

You can hear the “Working Like Dogs” show online now — I was interviewed by a lovely woman who has spina bifida, and her service Dog Whistle was at her side for the entire interview. We spend the first part of the show talking about the work our dogs do. The second half is devoted to the different jobs I myself have held since losing my sight. From the Working Like Dogs web site:

She even shares one of her most humorous stories about how a woman who is blind and her guide dog landed a job as a nude model!

Ah, that infamous stint as a nude model. I must say, it did launch my career as a writer. Staying still for 50 minutes at a time for that job gave me a chance to think about my writing, how to reformulate a lead, how to get across a certain idea. I used that quiet time to put together an essay about my modeling experience. Nude Modeling: Goin’ In Blind was published in The Octopus, the alternative weekly newspaper in Champaign, Ill., and was picked up by alternative newspapers all over the country. I started writing regularly for the paper after that, and only quit working for them after Mike finished his master’s degree in journalism in 2002 and took over as senior editor.

Like so many other weekly newspapers, The Octopus is out of business now. Smile Politely (an online magazine in Champaign) published an oral history of The Octopus this week, and music editor Marci Dodds is quoted about an assignment she gave me to interview bar owners and find out the positives and negatives of hosting live music.

She {that’s me} was thorough — and very good at getting people to talk. Club owners, who had never been asked, had quite a lot to say. Even though she was balanced, the upshot of the piece wasn’t “all live musicians are wonderful and all club owners are greedy, bloodsucking pigs.” I think we pissed off every musician in town with that piece — and oh, my. The scathing letters I got! I had wanted to establish the music section as independent and maybe even a little provocative. I think I succeeded. Perhaps a smidge too well. I swear sometimes I think there are musicians in town who are still mad at me from that story.

What a nice compliment! I mean, I hate to think of musicians in Champaign still walking around angry, but I gotta admit: it was fun to read that oral history and realize that some of the work I — and especially Mike — did for the weekly alternative newspaper in Champaign is still recognized down there.

I am forever grateful to The Octopus for taking a chance on me as a writer eleven years ago — it truly launched my career. And now, when new writers ask me advice on how to get a career started, I can just laugh and tell them it’s easy. “All you have to do is model nude for art students!”