This week brought some good news in the Finke extended family: Ella, who had been born to Beth’s niece Stacey and her husband Ryan prematurely, came home after a stay in neonatal intensive care. In this day and age, one can say, “No big deal.” After all, preemies are common, we have folks scheduling births […]

As spring training for Major League Baseball approaches, the baseball news is a little sparse—so one not-so baseballish item got a lot of attention this past week. Curt Schilling, a former pitcher and current broadcaster, announced he has cancer. Bear with me non-baseball fans, because this isn’t about baseball—but you should probably know a couple […]

Remember my post about Vision Forward, the conference about educating kids who are blind? I signed more Braille copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound at that conference than print ones, and this thank-you note from the mom of a five-year-old boy I met there was so moving that I wrote her back to […]

Remember Charlie Simokaitis? Charlie is a commercial photographer, and a while back I published a blog post about a project he took on honoring his teenage daughter. Faye has a deteriorating eye condition that will soon leave her completely blind, and she was the inspiration for Fade to White, a compilation of portraits Charlie took […]

Whitney and I visited four different classes at Drummond Thomas Montessori School in Chicago last Wednesday morning. After I told one class that even when my eyes are open, all I see is the color black, one preschooler wondered, “Then how do you know when you’re tired?” I can tell you this much: I’m pretty […]