I didn’t see the broadcast of the Grammy Awards on TV Monday. I heard it. And that means I got to hear Stevie Wonder sing the lead to Earth, Wind and Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World” in memory of the band’s co-founder Maurice White. And as if that wasn’t enough, I also got […]

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I started our new year of elementary school visits in a big way: we took a commuter train to Elmhurst (The Chicago suburb where I grew up) and gave a presentation to 250 kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders. All. At. Once. Whitney usually leads me to the train station in […]

The opera Bel Canto (based on Ann Patchett’s novel by the same name) had its world Premiere at Chicago’s Lyric Opera Monday night, and I’m going to tomorrow night’s performance. It will be the first time ever that I’ve attended an opera. When I was a kid, the only opera I knew was the Merrie […]

Elementary school teachers commend me for struggling to sound out words when I read from the Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound during school presentations. “That’s what we’re trying to get our kids to do!” They tell me, assuring me I needn’t apologize for my poor Braille-reading skills. “It’s good for the […]

I enjoyed reading a series of posts by blogger Blindbeader about a recent visit to New York City so much that I asked her to write a guest post for us with her NYC recommendations. I’ve never met the author of the Blindbeader blog personally, but I’ve come to know her by reading her posts there […]