Jessica and Julia, two grad students from IIT’s Institute of Design, are working on a class project to come up with a product that will help people who are blind. They contacted me as part of their research, and one of the many, many, many questions they asked during an interview was whether there is […]

Second dog syndrome. That’s what they call it at the Seeing Eye. Graduates return after retiring their first dog, and the second dog is never as good. The new dog goes after other dogs. The first one never did that. The first dog always went right to the door you were looking for, never peed […]

The plane slipped on the runway. Mike says no, but I swear I felt the plane skid when we landed in Chicago yesterday. Other than that, our flight home from New Orleans was fairly uneventful. O’Hare was crowded, of course, but everyone seemed pretty cheerful. I guess folks were happy to finally be getting home. […]

…just for this one moment. Eliot Kamenitz, a photographer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, came to my appearance at the Latter Library. His photos are terrific by all accounts, and you can see one of his best — and the whole gallery — at Nola.com. To my blind readers: this is a photo taken by […]

I have a pass to swim laps at the Chicago Hilton pool on Michigan Avenue, and I wanted to swim Sunday morning. The lobby would be packed with fans partying before the afternoon game at Soldier Field, so Mike agreed to work out, too. That way he could walk Harper and me there. Along the […]