Right now, on a Sunday morning outside my window on Harrison Street, thousands of hearty runners are streaming east toward the finish line for the annual Shamrock Shuffle. Not sure why it’s called the Shamrock Shuffle two weeks after St. Patrick’s day, but … whatever. It’s sunny, and the forecast says we’ll get to 58 […]

Whitney and I are taking a train to Champaign this Wednesday — I’m speaking to an animal sciences class at the University of Illinois, and while we’re there we’ll visit an old friend, too: retired Seeing Eye dog Hanni! Whitney has been guiding me over two years now, and I’ll share some stories with the […]

A woman who teaches two-year-olds who have visual impairments had me sign a few copies of my memoir, Long Time, No See for her at the Vision Forward conference I spoke at last fall. When I was signing her books I had no idea she’d been diagnosed with an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa when […]

This week brought some good news in the Finke extended family: Ella, who had been born to Beth’s niece Stacey and her husband Ryan prematurely, came home after a stay in neonatal intensive care. In this day and age, one can say, “No big deal.” After all, preemies are common, we have folks scheduling births […]

I often write posts listing the questions kids ask me during school presentations, but I don’t always tell you how I answer those questions. Penny Wong-Matzelle has two daughters at Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic School (SSCM) in Deer Park, N.Y., and this article she wrote for the Deer Park-North Babylon NY Patch about our visit […]