I met Ryan Hartigan While I was training with Whitney. Ryan is the Online Media Specialist at the Seeing Eye, and he interviewed Whitney and me along with a few other guide dog teams for a one-minute video to promote the school. Ryan and his wife Sarah volunteer as puppy raisers for the Seeing Eye, […]

I have a seven-year-old great-niece with a big name: AnnMarie Florence Czerwinski. I call her Floey for short, and you know what? She kinda likes it. Here’s Floey now with a guest blog post about our visit to the Chicago History Museum last Friday. The Great Chicago Fire: Chicago is Burning! By AnnMarie Czerwinski Last […]

Wanda Bridgeforth is 92 years old and has been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for seven years. She grew up in Chicago and her mother worked “in private family,” which means Mama lived at the houses she took care of. Wanda lived with one relative one week, a friend the next, […]

Here’s an understatement: I learn a lot about history by listening to the essays the writers in my memoir groups read out loud every week in class. Last week I asked them to write about a meaningful object they’d lost, broken, or destroyed, and then explain why that object had been so meaningful to them. […]

It’s difficult to put thoughts about our one-of-a-kind friend Sheelagh into words, so I am very grateful to my husband Mike Knezovich for doing that for us in his guest post today. In August of 1986, our son — name still to be determined — was getting ready to be born. About the same time, […]