On Monday morning Whitney and I caught a commuter train to Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region to visit the Lily Garden Child Care Center, a preschool and child care program that mixes classes up with kids with and without disabilities. The center is working on a new project this year that features […]

Back in the early 90’s, when I was working with my first Seeing Eye dog Dora, three different blind people using guide dogs died after falling into subway tracks. A 1993 NY Times story reported that in one accident at the midtown subway stop, “witnesses said Ms. Schneider got up and tried to find the […]

Here’s guest blogger Mike Knezovich with a status report on some old friends: So, in case there was any doubt, Whitney’s definitely my new favorite. Though she has brain cramps (children and certain other dogs make her forget herself momentarily), she’s game for the city buzz, she responds to Beth’s corrections, and she will play […]

It happened, literally, in the blink of an eye. Betsy Folwell was at her magazine job, squinting at her computer screen, when all of a sudden her visual field filled up with gray. The diagnosis: nonarteritic ischemic optic neuropathy. She was blind. I met Betsy five years ago when Bark magazine asked me to write […]

Margaret Atwood is in Chicago to give the keynote at the 2012 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference. Aleksandar Hemon is here, too. So is Isabel Wilkerson. And Ha Jin. The list of writers giving presentations is overwhelming, but the one author I am following most? My friend Audrey Petty. Audrey Petty is […]