Reports I’m receiving from fellow Seeing Eye graduates tell me the Seeing Eye school, located in Morristown, New Jersey, was spared some of the more devastating damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Training at the Seeing Eye usually includes a trip to the Morristown train station to learn to get safely on and off trains with […]

The Wisconsin Book Festival runs from November 8-11 this year and features Patricia McCormick (a finalist for the National Book Award), Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Russon and David Maraniss, Peabody Award Winner Ben Sidran, Guggenhei Felowship Award Winner Jo Ann Beard, Alex Award Winner Lynda Barry, and ASPCA Henry Berg Award Winner…ME! The theme for this year’s […]

When my Seeing Eye dog wants my husband Mike’s attention, she sits down, looks his way, and bats her big beautiful brown eyes. To get my attention, she butts her head against my computer chair. If I’m standing up, she nudges my hand. Whitney drops the ball at Mike’s feet when they play catch. When […]

I turned the radio on just in time last Friday to hear Fresh Air’s movie reviewer David Edelstein say The Sessions ( a new semi-fictional movie about the life of a writer paralyzed below the neck from childhood polio) was better than some of the other “disability-of-the-week Oscar-bait” pictures he’d seen. Cynical? Maybe. His statement […]

My friend Audrey Petty has spent years gathering stories from residents of Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens and Cabrini-Green — all publicly-funded buildings that no longer exist. Audrey collected oral histories from residents and gathered them in a new book called High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing, and I’m […]