Last May my friend Lynn LaPlante Allaway, the principal violist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, came to our apartment to perform a private concert to help me heal from open-heart surgery. Whitney and I tried to thank Lynn for her music therapy by visiting her kids at St. Petronille School, and gee whiz, now I have […]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt — did polio make FDR stronger?

I subscribe to TED Talks. I can’t see their videos, and I rarely click on them, but reading the descriptions of their featured talk each morning gives me an inkling of what “the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers” are thinking and doing these days. Yesterday’s update linked to a talk by an architect who […]

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 […]

Renowned Chicago chef Charlie Trotter died this morning. He was 54 years old. The foodie world will miss him, and those of us who are blind will, too. A post I wrote in 2011 explains. R.I.P., Charlie. Her specialty is risotto by Beth Finke Published October 25, 2011 Laura Martinez is 26 years old and […]