It’s Wanda Bridgeforth’s 94th birthday, and without telling Wanda, I asked her fellow writers in the Wednesday “Me, Myself and I” to surprise her with essays on “What I Learn from Wanda’s Wise Words” and read them aloud to her this morning. Here’s mine. Bee-you-tee-full Wanda Bridgeforth has taught me the meaning of beauty. More […]

If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: She’s witty, she’s talented, she’s 93 years old and she’s been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for a decade now. When Wanda was growing up on the South Side of Chicago, her mother worked “in private family,” […]

Okay, I admit it. Asking writers in my memoir-writing classes to choose any photograph they want and describe it to someone like me, who can’t see, was pretty self-serving. Thing is, though, the writers came back with pretty remarkable stuff! I’m having my husband Mike post the photo writer John Simmons chose here. Before you […]

My one minute of fame from that “Where are They Now?” video about me on the Oprah Winfrey Network last month brought up a lot of questions from friends who didn’t know me back when I modeled nude for art students. One Safe & Sound blog follower emailed me personally with a lot of questions, […]

This past week I asked the memoir-writers in my classes to write about “someone special” in honor of the 25th anniversary of The Americans with Disabilities Act. Mary Rigdon wrote about an athlete who uses a wheelchair and said his determination was the impetus for ensuring the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta were open to […]