Hi,

My husband Mike’s giving me a blog break again. Here’s his latest:

She’s back on top of the world.

Grateful that the cab driver who took me to the hospital on Saturday morning was tuned into WBEZ and This American Life. After I got in he turned it down to be polite. I asked him to turn it back up, and we rode to the hospital listening to David Sedaris read his story about his jazz-loving father’s record collection, his dad’s ill-fated attempt to enlist his children into his own private jazz combo, and listening to Sedaris’ uncanny Billy Holiday impressions. The cab driver and I laughed together the whole ride.

Two of the memoir-writing classes I lead each week are sponsored by Lincoln Park Village, a non-profit organized by older adults who want to age at home. The Village boasts over 300 members, and its classes — everything from meditation to a “boot camp” that enhances memory  —  meet in people’s homes.

To kick off the new year, the Village Newsletter took an in-depth look at the human brain and perhaps it’s most valued — and vulnerable — aspect, memory. Hollis Hines, a writer in my Monday afternoon writing class, was asked to write an article for that newsletter about how blindness affects her writing teacher’s ability to remember things. Here’s an excerpt from that story:

The visual memories from the 26-year-old girl she was, understandably, are frozen in time. In some respects she will never age, nor will her family and friends; they and she are as they were in her perception long ago.

My sister Cheryl loves this about me, and just last weekend a friend from college happened to mention how she enjoys this aspect of my blindness as well. Both of them follow my blog, so I hope they aren’t too disappointed to read that Hollis also pointed out in her article that I am aware those perceptions may no longer be accurate! “But with no visual cues to replace them, the past is the present. Perhaps this partially explains the spunky, youthful energy that Beth exudes.” Ha! Maybe blindness does have its advantages after all!

This might be what Hollis means by spunky.

Hollis explained how I sing a song of the list of U.S. presidents my great-niece Anita learned in school in order to navigate the streets in the Loop — “Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson”  —  and how I do simple math in my head for banking in order to keep an edge with numbers.

She swims at least 20 laps in a pool, and the first lap she thinks about what she must do today, and with each subsequent lap she thinks of a day in the future. That way she exercises both body and brain.

Questions Hollis asked when she interviewed me for the article got me thinking about how blindness can serve to both enhance and foil my memory. The lack of visual cues really does help me remember things: I’m not bothered by visual distractions. On the other hand, without seeing words in print, I can have a hard time remembering the name of an item or of a celebrity, much less how to spell them.

My mention of celebrities during the interview left Hollis wondering if I get any enjoyment from movies or television. Not really. It’s too much work keeping up with the action and the characters. I told Hollis I’d rather listen to an audio book, and that’s when it dawned on me. “You know, with all the imagining and memorizing I do all day long,” I told her, “Living my life is like reading a book!”
Hollis agreed and added, “it’s your own book of non-fiction.”

Needless to say, she got an A+ in class the next Monday.

We get a zillion channels with a cable package that is included with our condominium assessment. Quantity trumps quality, though, and I too often find myself channel surfing with Bruce Springsteen’s “Fifty seven channels and nothin’s on” playing in my head.

There’s good stuff on, I’m sure. I just don’t have the patience to research it in advance. But sometimes, I get lucky.

Stream it. Rent it. Watch it.

Last night was a lucky night. I happened onto a documentary called “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” screened in timely fashion as the movie “The Post” is released. “Dangerous” (for shorthand) tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg—a one-time U.S. Marine who went to work in the military/intelligence community, originally supported the Vietnam war, then changed his mind as he learned that our presidents, our military, and pretty much our entire government was lying to us. And that those in power knew years before the war ended that it was unwinnable.

It’s not a jaunty watch, but man, it’s worth the time, especially in these times. We have a president who talks about having bigger buttons, and we have people hoping that Oprah Winfrey will run for president on the merits of a speech to an entertainment awards program audience. (And no, I don’t think that she should run and yes, I think that whether it’s her or Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson talking about running it’s a bad, bad thing that speaks to how low we’ve sunk. We can’t careen from one inexperienced billionaire celebrity to another. But I digress.)

I found “Dangerous” uplifting in a both straight ahead and indirect way. First, it’s about a man—and a lot of other people—who risked everything simply to do the right thing. That kind of idea ages well.

Second, it reminded me how crazy screwed up things were up back then. You’re probably thinking, “Not as screwed up as now.” I had thought the same thing. But hearing the tapes of Richard Nixon suggesting the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam and browbeating Henry Kissinger to “think big” was absolutely chilling. As are his thoughts about taking out the dike system in North Viet Nam—“How many would that kill, 200,000 maybe?” he wonders aloud.

All this with the full knowledge that he, LBJ, JFK and Ike had told bald faced lies about the reasons for, the conduct of, and the progress (or lack thereof) in fighting the war. I knew this already from following it in real time (I grew up in a pretty political household), but it’s easy to forget. The war was a slow motion bi-partisan crime against humanity.

Oh, and there was also an all out war on the press. Sound familiar?

There’s a whole lot of good history in this thing, and I found it more compelling (though it’s a different animal) than the PBS Vietnam series. There are lots of “Oh yeah, I remember” moments: Like the fact that Ellsberg had to line up a Xerox machine and that it took weeks—months—to copy the thousands of pages to send to various newspapers and legislators.

Yesterday afternoon, my cousin Linda emailed her wishes for a Merry Serbian Orthodox Christmas. And she offered this advice: Calm down, this too will pass.

I hope so. But not without us finding the kind of courage that Ellsberg and company did.

When Beth broke her hand awhile back, it was bad news for several reasons—

• She would have to wear a cast, which slows typing considerably, and also makes lots of menial daily tasks—already more difficult because she can’t see—even more difficult.
• She wouldn’t be able to swim, which is her preferred form of exercise.
• It was on her left hand. As in the hand that holds Whitney’s harness.

Because her cast left her with only two working fingers—the index finger and thumb (think crab-like pincers), that just didn’t work. Whitney—like all Seeing Eye dogs—was taught to pull firmly when she leads. That tension is a form of communication—if the dog slows, the tension lessens and Beth’s going to slow down.

Besides that, Whitney pulls hard—those two measly fingers just weren’t enough.

Whitney and Beth on their first walk after the fall. Didn’t miss a beat.

And so, we had a couple mopes around here for a while. Well, Beth only moped for about five minutes at the doctor’s office, her being Beth and all. Whitney was fine for a day or two. Until she understood she was stuck with me walking her, and that she and Beth would be going on no adventures together. Well, the three of us did go out together, but Whitney wasn’t leading. Just not the same.

As written more than once in other posts, these dogs are not robots. They sniff when they aren’t supposed to, sometimes they let temptation get the best of them and they go for a good looking hound in the lobby. So sometimes it’s easy to forget that they derive a great deal of satisfaction from working.

So for two weeks, Whitney behaved and looked bewildered, not to mention, well, depressed.

Beth had a follow-up appointment about a week ago. The bad news: She had to keep a cast. The good news: The doc gave her a new smaller one that gave her enough of her fingers back that she and Whitney could ride again.

I went out with them on their trial walk. I should say I followed them on their trial walk. Because Whitney and Beth were at a brisk downtown walking pace, Whitney with her head on a swivel, alert, smiling, weaving around bad pavement, bits of snow—and I can’t know it, but if a dog can look proud, that’s how she looked—proud.

Whitney and Beth have now been through two of these idle periods—the other one much more protracted (not to mention terrifying).

But both cases, after a hiatus, instead of saying “forget this,” Whitney was elated to be back in the saddle—err, harness—again.

We should all love our work so much.

One of the many, many things Mike and I did to celebrate our wedding anniversary last week was attend the play This Is Our Youth at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. The play starred Michael Cera (of Arrested Development and Juno fame) and nearly all the performances were sold out. The only reason we were able to score tickets last Saturday is because that happened to be the day Steppenwolf set aside a number of tickets for a special audio touch tour of the set for people with visual impairments and their guests.

I’ve written a post about Steppenwolf’s audio touch tours before.

That’s me and my previous Seeing Eye dog Harper with our gracious Steppenwolf hosts on stage a few years ago during the touch tour for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? One of the staff members from Steppenwolf is holding one of the breakable prop bottles and a bouquet of the plastic snapdragons which figure prominently into the play.

Much more than just the tactile experience the name implies, a Touch Tour is a pre-performance program that gives those of us who are blind or have low vision an opportunity to:

• participate in an artistic conversation about a production
• experience a detailed description of the set, props and costumes
• handle key props, set and costume pieces
• tour the set with a sighted guide
• meet the actors and learn about the characters they play

Our This is Our Youth audio touch tour opened with stage manager Cambra Overend explaining what an alley theatre is (the stage is surrounded by audience members on two sides) and how they blocked the scenes to allow everyone in the audience to follow the action. She described different scenes and lines from the play that had given the three young actors particular trouble. Pretty cool for a bunch of blind people to get an inside look, ahem, of a production that’s heading to New York City now. ( This is Our Youth opens on Broadway the 11th of September, and Cambra will be the stage manager for that production, too).

Next came Jack Miggins, the Audio Describer. In addition to describing the play via headphones during the performance, Jack gets on stage before the play while we’re still in our seats to “show” us what the set looks like. He talks while he darts around the stage — that way we can track his voice and get a sense of how close (or far) objects are from one another.

“Here’s the door to the hallway,” Jack called out from stage left last Saturday, knocking on the door so we’d know exactly where it was. The door squeaked as he opened it, too. “You can see into the hallway, but all that’s out here is a ten-speed bike missing a front wheel.” Closer to the front of the stage, he patted the arm of a couch. “It’s brown,” he said. “The décor in this apartment is just different shades of brown, really.” He picked up a plastic milk crate near the couch and told us it had a few record albums in it, including one by Frank Zappa. “Lots of cassettes, too,” he said, giving it a shake so we could here them flopping around. “Oh, yeah, and a squishy Nerf football.”

The play is set in the 1980s, back when I had just graduated from college and could still see. As Jack continued around the stage describing the small kitchen, the door to the bathroom, the phone, photos hanging on the wall, well, I could picture it all so well that I didn’t bother going on stage for the touch tour.

The final act of the audio/touch tour, when the actors are called up on stage to introduce themselves, is always my favorite. Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin and Tavi Gevinson all seemed happy to answer any questions we had, and it was a thrill to have this private audience with them.

The play was about to start then, so we were offered headphones connected to a small device to use for volume control to hear Jack describe scene changes, character entrances/exits and other movements during the performance. Everyone had done such a tremendous job introducing us to the play ahead of time that I opted to go without the headphones. As the play progressed, I understood why Jack had pointed out certain things during his on-stage romp during the pre-production presentation. Two examples:

• Kieran Culkin’s character told his parents he was working as a bike messenger, but the missing bike wheel told us he was a liar.
• When Michael Cera’s character wanted to “play catch” in the apartment, we knew he was holding a Nerf football.

The timing of this particular audio touch tour was perfect: it will be fresh on my mind when I sit on a panel at the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) conference this Tuesday. The conference is in Chicago this year, and it’s put together by the Kennedy Center.

Cultural arts administrators from all over the world (most of them responsible for accessibility at their respective cultural arts organizations) are in town to attend seminars and workshops on everything from” Determining Who is Eligible to Purchase Accessible Seats” to “Reaching out to Museum Visitors with Memory Loss and Dementia.” The panel I’m sitting on is called “Finding and Nurturing an Audience for Audio Description” and encourages conference atendees to hear from experts who use Audio Description services-the audience members of Steppenwolf Theatre Company!

The conference web site explains that we’ll “provide an informative journey on the best way to market the arts as well as the challenges and successes in accessing arts programs.” Evan Hatfield from Steppenwolf will moderate the panel along with Deborah Lewis, CEO of California’s Arts Access Now. George Abbott, who was born blind, and Sally Cooper, who has a visual impairment but still has some sight, will be sitting on the panel with me, and it meets on Tuesday, August 5 from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm at the Sheraton Hotel at 301 North Water Street in Chicago.

LEAD conference attendees will be invited to join us at an audio touch tour of The Qualms at Steppenwolf that same night, too, so if you’re at the LEAD conference and happen to have found this blog post, I hope you’ll join us.