A few radio stories I’ve heard lately oughta give NPR listeners an idea of what a powerful – and positive — effect men who are blind can have on their offspring. Let’s start with Bob Ringwald. My brother Doug introduced me to Bob years ago — they’re both jazz musicians, and they play together from […]

If you read Sandra Murillo’s guest post here, you know that the 2012 London Paralympic Games had their opening ceremonies last night. The theme for this year’s Paralympic games is scientific discovery, so Stephen Hawking was the obvious choice for narrator. From a story in the London Telegraph: The show began with Prof Hawking’s familiar […]

Charlie Trotter’s, a five-star restaurant here in Chicago, is closing its doors for good this Friday, August 31. Laura Martinez, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, has been working at the iconic restaurant for more than two years, and now she’s having a hard time finding a new job. Most people with a prestigious cooking […]

Last week I asked my memoir-writing students to pick a song, any song, and use that song title as the topic for their next essay. Take “All Shook Up,” for example. With a title like that, you could write about living through an earthquake. Or about a startling event in your lifetime that really left […]

A screen reader called JAWS lets me use a computer to read and write, and when power user Sue Martin generously donated a series of her JAWS refresher classes to this year’s auction benefitting the Seeing Eye, , I bid on it – and won! Sue lost her sight when she was 26, and she […]