There are few things I enjoy more than staying at a fancy hotel  — especially when someone else is paying for it. My bed gets made every morning,, clean towels magically appear in the bathroom, and when I walk through the lobby everyone from the doorman to the people behind the front desk ask if they […]

When the packet of thank you notes from the fifth graders at St. Mary of the Lake School arrived in the mail, a light bulb went on over my head: take them along to my presentation at Northern Illinois University! The undergraduates in the class Whitney and I visited last week at NIU are studying […]

You might remember my friend Lauren Bishop-Weidner from a post I wrote two years ago. That post linked to a thoughtful and honest essay Lauren wrote for Two Hawks Quarterly about what it’s like to be able to see and love and live with someone who can’t. That piece was called On His Blindness; the […]

My great-nephew Raymond does not attend St. Raymond Preschool, but when Whitney and I visited there, and I let the teachers know what a saint this loveable three-year-old is, they gave me a t-shirt to present to Raymond as a gift. Thank you, St. Raymond!Note to my blog followers who are blind: the photo shows […]

I interviewed Betsy Folwell for a story in Bark Magazine five years ago, and we’ve kept up with each other via email ever since. We have a lot to talk about, I guess: Both of us lost our sight as adults, and both of us are published authors. I was delighted when Betsy agreed to […]