The movie Blindness premiered last Friday, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. It’s based on the 1995 novel by Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago — I listened to the audio version of the book years ago, when it was first publishsed. The book was praised for its use of blindness as a metaphor — a bunch […]

Every once in a while I record an essay for Chicago Public radio that, for one reason or another, sits and sits before they ever put it on the air. That was the case with the Navigating a New Workplace essay I recorded for WBEZ back in 2006. The piece was about an internship I […]

This afternoon Hanni and I cabbed over to 1151 S. Wood St. in Chicago. Mike and I had only been married a year when I first visited that address in 1985. Back then it was called the Illinois Visually Handicapped Institute (IVHI). To put a positive spin on my absence, Mike & I anticipated it […]

This month two of my essays aired on WBEZ-FM. If you missed hearing them on the radio, both are available online – one is about the new governor in New York, and the other is about cab drivers refusing to pick me up with my Seeing Eye dog. Both of these essays were inspired by […]

  If you didn’t hear David Paterson give his first speech as governor of New York yesterday, the full text is available online. But really, rather than reading the text, it’s better to hear the new governor saying the words himself. This link does not include the five minutes of introductions — he introduced at […]