At the Q & A session during our visit to St. Anne Catholic School last month a first-grader wanted to know, “How do you cook if you’re blind?” People who are blind can cook, and lots of them are very good at it. “I’m just not one of them,” I said with a shrug.  A […]

Here’s an understatement: I learn a lot about history by listening to the essays the writers in my memoir groups read out loud every week in class. Last week I asked them to write about a meaningful object they’d lost, broken, or destroyed, and then explain why that object had been so meaningful to them. […]

I was tickled to discover my What’s it Like to go Blind segment up on The Good Stuff channel this week. Funny thing, though. I can’t see the video! I can hear the show on YouTube, though, and, really, all you have to do is listen to know how much fun my Seeing Eye Dog […]

Gangs. Drugs. Violence. Poverty. Those were my lingering images of Chicago’s housing projects after they were torn down a decade or so ago. I know a lot more about the history of those projects and the people who lived in them now, though, thanks to my friend Audrey Petty, an Associate Professor of English at […]

My dog got carded last week. Not at Hackney’s, don’t be silly. Everyone there knows Whitney is 21 (in dog years). My Seeing Eye dog Whitney was carded last week in the lobby at 30 N. Michigan, a Chicago high-rise where my doctor’s office is. Every human who walks in has to show an i.d. […]