When I was newly blind and learning to use a white cane, orientation and mobility (O&M) instructors taught me to rely on the surge of traffic at my parallel to recognize when the signal is green and it’s safe to walk. That principle is reinforced every time I travel to Morristown, New Jersey to train […]

Note: In keeping with the mission of the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium, photo captions include detail for visually impaired readers. Longtime Safe & Sound blog readers might recall a post I wrote in 2011 about seeing the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? here in Chicago. Better put, when I felt and heard the play: […]

Chicago friends who read Mondays with Mike this week have been asking what I thought of the inauguration ceremony for our new mayor. Monday was the very first time I have ever attended an inauguration ceremony of any kind, and if they’re all like that one, I’m going again! I hadn’t even thought of attending […]

Lucky us! In the past ten days Whitney the Seeing Eye dog and I have had the privilege of visiting nine different classrooms at five different elementary schools. Somehow, some way, we also managed to wedge a visit to a college classroom in the midst of all those visits to third-graders –last Tuesday we gave […]

If you follow the Safe & Sound blog, you probably recognize my sister Marilee’s name. She and her family have lived in Florida nearly 25 years now, but she made it up here for our annual Finke sisters weekend and is here with a guest post to tell you all about it. by Marilee Amodt […]