This morning my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I take off for Union Station to head to the Chicago suburbs. It’s Disability Awareness Week at Wilmot Elementary School in Deerfield, and we’re slated to give a presentation to eight- and nine-year-olds. The third graders are studying Helen Keller, and you can bet I’ll be publishing […]

Just a week ago today I was sitting in my own cabana under palm trees working on my laptop. It was 72 or 73 degrees all three days we were in San Diego, the sun radiant and the breeze perfectly balanced the sunshine. Beth attended sessions at the Village to Village Conference—a pretty cool conclave […]

Four weeks ago today I was eating cheese and petting goats on a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon in central Illinois. I’ve written here before about Marcel’s Culinary Experience, the culinary retail store and cooking school my childhood friend Jill Foucré opened in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The success of Marcel’s inspired her to open Marché, an […]

Writers join the memoir-writing classes I lead for all sorts of reasons. Some tell me they want to hone their writing skills, some hope it will improve their memory, others want to publish their work. And so on. None of the writers in my classes have told me they signed up for their first class […]

Greetings from Milwaukee, where Beth, Whitney, and I have just boarded Amtrak’s Hiawatha, which will begin rolling toward Chicago any minute now. We had a good visit with our son Gus at his group home in Wisconsin in a town called Watertown. The home is operated by Bethesda Lutheran Services, and it houses eight  people, […]