Back in—I think it was early1986—Beth was several months into blindness, and a baby was on the way. And I was out of work. At first, unemployment was by choice. I was home to help Beth in the early months of learning to live in a completely different way. Before she lost her sight, we’d made the decision to move out of an old house on Urbana’s tree-lined streets to a somewhat dingy campus apartment that had the virtue of being extraordinarily cheap. It was owned by an eccentric physician who, while he didn’t do a lot of upkeep, kept the cost low for impoverished students and people like us. Beth had put her name on a waiting list years before, and a space had opened. I think it was $135 a month, all utilities included.

Click to read the story at Reveal.

We took it on the idea that it would allow us to save money to buy a place of our own some day. Instead, it was something of a lifesaver during a difficult period. But even cheap rent is rent, and as our savings dwindled I had to find some work. I put out applications everywhere that had any kind of work that I was trained for—in Champaign-Urbana that was a pretty finite universe. So I also looked for, well, anything.

I eventually got a call from a property manager for a local apartment building owner. They needed a leasing agent—someone to take calls, show properties, follow through on leases, etc. They offered and I took the job.

A woman walked me through the tasks, and took me on a ride-along showing or two. I think I did a couple showings on my own before the property owner took me aside. He talked about the nitty-gritty details when it came to getting security deposits and first month’s rent, how to size up potential renters, etc.

Along the way, he sort of hushed his voice and said, “If they’re black, don’t accept a check—ask for cash for security deposit and first month’s.” I must have gotten a look on my face, because then he tried to offer some explanation.

It was a jolt, an eye-opener, and a moral crossroads. If I were in today’s skin, in today’s circumstances, I would’ve popped a rivet. Back then we were pretty beat up and needy. I didn’t say anything. I went home, told Beth about it, and we both stewed.

I went back, dreading having to possibly deal with the owner’s edict. And then I was rescued by a phone call: A local printing company was interested in hiring me. Not exactly my field, but enough for me to end my short-lived real estate career.

I anonymously left a tip for the local tenants’ rights organization. If I had it to do over, I would’ve given my name.

I hadn’t given the incident a thought in decades until Beth happened onto an NPR program called Reveal. Produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting, it covered the results of a yearlong study The Center had done on mortgage lending to black and other minority applicants.

The radio program is based on an extremely thorough piece of work, and I chose to read rather than listen to it. The piece is part of a series called Kept Out. I can’t cover the complexities—I just hope you’ll read it. Bottom line: It found that blacks and other minorities were turned down at rates much higher than whites. This was true even when correcting for multiple factors including income.

Now, one factor not included was credit score. The lenders, when questioned about potentially discriminatory practices, all defended their practices and said that the missing link in the study was credit scores. The Center had requested scores (in aggregate, not identifying individuals, of course)—something the lenders resist, making it impossible to verify their stance. And making me smell a rat.

And even if the scores were made available, there’s this passage from the piece:

At the same time, studies have found proprietary credit score algorithms to have a discriminatory impact on borrowers of color.

The “decades-old credit scoring model” currently used “does not take into account consumer data on rent, utility, and cell phone bill payments,” Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina wrote in August, when he unveiled a bill to require the federal government to vet credit standards used for residential mortgages. “This exclusion disproportionately hurts African-Americans, Latinos, and young people who are otherwise creditworthy.”

One of the findings of the study was particularly disheartening: Geographically, the imbalanced lending practices more or less followed boundaries set by the old government-endorsed redlining system that operated from 1937 to 1968.

It’s like stacking the deck is in our and our institutions’ DNA.

Back when I had the leasing job in 1986, I was naïve enough to think we were past all this stuff. I would never have predicted that today, apparently, we still aren’t.

A piece in today’s New York Times caught my eye.

Am I Going Blind? was written by columnist Frank Bruni, who describes waking up one morning late in 2017 unable to see clearly. “The affliction that stole my vision, or at least a big chunk of it, did so as I slept,” he writes. “I went to bed seeing the world one way. I woke up seeing it another.”

Bruti’s artful account of living with his deteriorating vision would make anyone feel empathy for him. For me, I was struck by some uncanny similarities to my own experience decades ago.

His diagnosis (nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy) is quite different from the diabetic retinopathy that stole my vision, and at age 53, he is precisely twice as old as I was when my eyesight began to diminish. Those two facts aside, his other accounts of early vision loss are so similar to my experience that it’s downright uncanny. Let’s start with this excerpt, where he describes his first symptoms:

On that first morning, several hours passed before I accepted that something was seriously wrong. I figured that I was just groggier than usual. Maybe I needed more coffee.

As I sat at my computer transcribing a long interview that I’d just done, I repeatedly took off my eyeglasses to clean them, convinced that the smudginess of my vision was some streakiness on the lenses. When I finally gave up on that, I rinsed my eyes with water — to no avail. It was as if someone had deposited a blob of petroleum jelly in my right eye and nothing would dislodge it.

As for me, I first noticed spots in my eyesight on our honeymoon in Scotland whend Mike had to stop the car to let the sheep cross the road. Here from my memoir Long Time, No See:

Maybe sheep in Scotland have spots on them. Or maybe my contacts were dirty. I took out my contacts, gave them a quick wipe, and put them back in. Still the spots. I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed my eye. Still the spots. I looked up at the blue sky and saw it suddenly go cloudy. I closed one eye, then the other. I could see fine out of the right eye, but in the left eye the spots were spreading into spider webs.

Bruni mentions not just one, not just two, but yes, three injections directly into his eyes. I, too, endured three such injections. He is involved in a research study and may have been given a placebo. Same with me. He was told only 20% of people with his disease lose their eyesight completely. Those were my odds, too, and for nine months after my initial diagnosis I woke up just the way Bruni describes in his article: “It was the same every morning: a stab of suspense, then a gale-force sigh of relief. I could still see.”

And then, one day, I couldn’t.

But that happened to me 30+ years ago. Science, technology, and research are all on Bruni’s side, and I hope–and expect–his remaining eyesight will be saved. And of course I approve of his coping method in the meantime: writing a personal essay about it. He includes some strong reporting in addition to his personal descriptions,too, and I hope you’ll give the piece a read.

February is Love Your Library month, and I’m celebrating in style: The Library of Congress Talking Book Service just released an audio version of my new book Writing Out Loud free of charge to Americans who are blind or visually impaired.

The Library of Congress administers the National Library Service (NLS) a talking-book and Braille program available for free to those of us whose low vision, blindness, or physical disability makes reading regular print difficult. When surgeons told me in 1986 that the eye surgeries hadn’t worked and I’d never see again, one of my first concerns was how I would survive without being able to read books. NLS came to my rescue. Woman’s Day Magazine published an essay I wrote a few years ago about the talking Book Program, and that essay is still available on the American library Association’s “I Love Libraries” web site if you’d like to link there and learn more about how NLS works.

Back in the 20th Century NLS mailed cassette players and tapes free of charge. Now they offer free downloads. I am over the moon that so many more people will now have access to Writing Out Loud,and to that end, I’ll end this post with the description and call letters necessary to order the book from the National Library Service. Happy listening!

Writing out loud: what a blind teacher learned from leading a memoir class for seniors DB89064
Finke, Beth. Reading time: 9 hours, 55 minutes.
Read by Celeste Lawson.

Disability

Journalist who chronicled her loss of sight from diabetic retinopathy in Long Time, No See (DB 56482) reflects on teaching a memoir-writing class to older adults in Chicago. Discusses living in a new city, describes challenges she faces as a teacher, and shares excerpts from her students’ work. 2017.

In the wake of everything that happened last week, I have nothing to say that isn’t being said. And I’m kind of exhausted thinking about it, so I’m going to stick to some banal subjects instead.

Like plumbers. Roofers. Car repair shops. Dry cleaners. Kennels. Veterinarians. Appliance repair shops and virtually any other service firms you might need. And, how to find good ones.

Check out the video.

Here’s a tip: Check out Consumers’ Checkbook magazine at Checkbook.org. Full disclosure: this is a shameless plug for Checkbook—I used to work there full time and I still freelance for them. But it’s also an honest, I-really-believe-in-this-thing plug.

Checkbook is kind of like Angie’s List or Yelp!, but with more integrity. Checkbook rates local services firms much like Consumer Reports evaluates products. Checkbook operates in seven major metropolitan areas, including Chicago. When you subscribe, you get access to ratings and recommendations for dozens and dozens of service types in your area—you can search by zip code.

A few things set Checkbook apart from other referral internet ratings services. To start, Checkbook limits its consumer surveys to it’s own subscribers and Consumer Reports subscribers. (Consumer Reports has been a supporter and partner since Checkbook was founded.) This means there’s no ballot stuffing on behalf of—or negative campaigns against—the firms that are rated.

And just like Consumer Reports, Checkbook takes no advertising, so none of the firms it rates has any sway over what Checkbook does. Checkbook does regular surveys and compiles the research according to standard survey research protocols, and includes information about the statistical limitations of validity.

Checkbook.org

But beyond consumer ratings, Checkbook’s staff does fairly exhaustive independent research on the firms. I know, because I used to do it. When I lived in the D.C. area, I’d spend days at a time at local offices of consumer affairs, parsing physical files of complaints that had been brought by consumers. We then reviewed the nature of each complaint—for example, a company like Sears would have a large file—but we had to delineate auto repair complaints from appliance complaints, for example. Finally, we’d calculate a complaint rate based on the size of the business, which we gathered through other research.

Checkbook also does thorough price comparisons. I did a whole lot of “secret shopping,” calling shops for prices for carefully specified repairs or other services. And I drew my share of suspicion as, clipboard in hand, I collected prices at local grocery stores, hardware stores, and other retailers.

Checkbook still does all that and more. For example, Checkbook routinely rates hospitals, emergency rooms and physicians in cities where it operates. I can tell you, I trust their methods way more than do U.S. News or Chicago Magazine ratings.

Like I said, I’m biased. The founder, Robert Krughoff, was a mentor, he was unrelenting in pressing for thoroughness and accuracy, and he was a fierce editor. I was a green Midwestern kid fresh out of college when I first worked there in 1978. It was a terrific learning experience, and it was, as the slogan goes, the toughest job I ever loved.

Robert founded the organization after he was left pulling his hair out after multiple visits to a local car garage that failed to make his car right again. You can get the whole story in this little video.

Robert is less involved but he’s still at it, and where there was just one magazine in the D.C. area back in the day, the empire has spread across the country.

Which means, here in Chicago I’m still a loyal Checkbook user—and I hope you’ll check out Checkbook.

It never fails. Every time my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I visit a school, one of the kids comes up with a question I’ve never been asked before. Here’s my favorite from a trip we took to suburban Glenview earlier this month. “If you were never blinded, which would you rather be: a cat person, or a dog person?”

I’ll let you guess my answer.

The fifth graders at Glen Grove school.

The fifth graders we were visiting at Glen Grove Elementary that day are working with the Nora Project that I wrote about here earlier this month. They’ve already been paired with a student who has special needs. Now the fifth graders seem excited – yet understandably nervous – to start interviewing their buddy’s family members and others who spend time with their buddy outside of school. Maybe the best way to see how their curiosity about my blindness intertwined with their concerns about the upcoming interviews is to look over some of the questions they asked:

• You say in your Safe & Sound book that you take your dog’s harness off when you get home. How do you get around your house by yourself?
• What would be the best questions to ask to get the best answers from the Nora Project parents?
• You can’t see, so what sense do you rely on the most?
• If you tell your dog to sit, and you can’t see the dog, how do you know it’s sitting?
• What did it feel like when you found out you were blind?
• You and your husband were both working when you found out you were blind, and then they fired you, so what was that like with money?
• How do you know what you’re wearing?
• How can we ask questions to get long answers?
• Do you remember what your childhood was like?
• What do you do if someone answers your question wrong?
• When you’re asking somebody something, how can you tell if the question is a rude question or a curious question?
• You look great in that shirt!

That last one was a statement, not a question, but I didn’t correct the student who said it. I just thanked him…and blushed.

These students will be using iPads to record video of the interviews they do. Soon they’ll combine footage from the interviews with video of their own interactions with their buddies. The documentaries they create from all this footage will be presented at an assembly towards the end of the school year.

I just love this project. Playing a very small part of it during that visit earlier this month was an honor. To learn more about the Nora Project, visit thenoraproject.ngo. Documentaries produced by students from previous years are available there under the Nora Friends tab.