A week ago today my sisters accompanied me to Peach Plains Elementary School in Grand Haven, Michigan—my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I were giving a presentation to Brenda Wittkopp’s fourth-grade class there. Since Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound is a picture book, some schools figure the older kids won’t be interested in what […]

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I spent yesterday afternoon answering questions from third-graders who attend Goudy Elementary, a Public school in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The third graders are part of a Friday “reading buddies” program at Admiral At the Lake, a retirement community where I lead weekly memoir-writing classes. Goudy is so close to […]

We’re back home in Chicago now, and the magnificent Mondays with Mike post Mike wrote about New Orleans sparked a lot of questions from friends here. What prompted the trip? Do you have family there? What is an herbsaint? Answer to that first question? Kismet. Our friends Steven and Nancy and their dog Doug are […]

…You walk and walk and walk and the next morning your legs are really sore, as if you’d walked all that distance on sandy beach because the sidewalks are so addled with cracks and heaves and missing sections. …The classic New Orleans shotgun cottage your friends secured via VRBO in the Marigny neighborhood has been […]

Our friend Ellen Sandmeyer had us over for Christmas Eve this year. Her two sons, her nine-year-old granddaughter Kaia and Kaia’s mom had flown in for the holidays, and we spent the evening together munching cookies, sipping drinks, sharing stories, and…learning Braille. When I called ahead to make sure no one had allergies or a […]