As many of you know, our son Gus lives in a group home in Wisconsin that is operated by Bethesda Lutheran Communities. Gus is developmentally disabled, and he lives with three other developmentally disabled men in a yellow ranch home in a bucolic little burg called Watertown.

Beth, Gus, and the late, great Flo hanging out in his room.

Some terrific people have cared for Gus and his pals. A lot of them, over time, given that the turnover is pretty high. Which is sort of a problem but also, given how difficult the job is, an understandable one.

And the low pay doesn’t help the case a lot. Still, even though the names and faces change, we always feel like the salt-of-the-earth Packer, Badger, and Brewers fans do right by our Gus.

And we have, since he moved up there, felt lucky and grateful to have found a good place for him. We wish he lived closer, but Illinois—a relatively wealthy state—has always been abysmal when it comes to services for people like Gus. I put that down to a lot of things, including what I’d call the corruption tax. That is, resources that could go toward things like solid safe group homes and services for developmentally disabled people are essentially wasted on corrupt contracts, employing well-connected hacks, etc.

States like Minnesota and Wisconsin have always stood in stark contrast to Illinois in terms of their politics—Illinois hardly shining by comparison. It’s no accident that Gus ended up in Wisconsin in his adulthood.

But we got some bad news the other day—Bethesda is closing four homes in the Milwaukee area. I learned about it from a woman, with whom I served on the parent league board. Her daughter is in one of the homes to be closed. (Gus’ home is not affected by this closing.)

The good news is that Bethesda has worked to find placement for the residents of her daughter’s home—they are moving together to a home operated by a different organization, that’s relatively close by.

Still, it’s sobering. A TV news story on the closings stressed that a shortfall of donations is to blame. I’m doing a little research on that, but meantime, I’m quite sure that’s not the only reason. The state’s reimbursements to operators of group homes are woefully low—they have been for years, and apparently, in Milwaukee, push has come to shove.

The funding issue is pretty complicated, a little too much to try to wrestle with in a blog post.

But, in the meantime, it’s worth remembering that for all the Sturm and Drang in the news and on our Facebook pages, there are real consequences to public policy. I’m pretty sure we all agree that we can do better.

A writer in my Monday memoir class named Hugh wrote an essay about a very cool photography exhibit his wife Bobbe Wolf  put together. Fifty Couples Over Fifty is a series of pictures she took of couples she knew decades ago. An updated version is on exhibit again now — I’ll let Hugh explain the rest:

by Hugh Brodkey

Twenty-five years ago Bobbe put together a photo series entitled Fifty Couples Over Fifty. It started out as just a group of photos of our friends and gradually took shape as a well-structured project recording many people who were part of our lives. Some of the couples were long-time friends and some were new. Some of the couples had been together many years and others were fairly recent.

One of Bobbe’s couples: The late, great Bud Lifton and his wife Carol Rosofsky.

A significant feature of the project was that Bobbe also interviewed and recorded the couple, asking them a variety of questions about their relationship and their hopes and expectations for the future. While I wasn’t present for the sittings or the interviews (I would clearly have been a distraction) Bobbe and I listened to the recordings together and picked out a short quote that could be printed on the mat for each picture. Bobbe and I were not yet married then, and we joked that the comments of these couples could be our pre-marital counseling for how to have a successful partnership.

Each photo is 15X15 inches and has a wide white mat so it ends up 20X24 with a uniform simple silver-colored frame. The pictures were first exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago and some were shown at The Blank Museum of Art in Michigan City and The Highland Park Museum of Art. The exhibits received a lot of favorable reviews and publicity but then the pictures went into storage…for a long time.

Recently, we were visiting a friend at The Admiral senior residence in Chicago and noticed a long corridor with an art exhibit. Our friend encouraged Bobbe to talk with their Art Committee about rehanging “Fifty Couples.” They liked the concept and the work and the couples came out of storage. Thirty of the fifty couples went up on the walls.

There was a grand opening night with champagne and many people attending, including many of the couples who had posed 25 years before! “Over 50” plus 25 meant that the youngest in the photos was now 75.

What had happened to our friends over the ensuing 25 years? Some appeared just as enthusiastic, just as vital as when they first posed. Some were slowed down by age or illness. Canes and walkers had been added. Several pictures showed a spouse who had since died. In a few cases, both of the smiling, optimistic subjects had died. But Bobbe photographed several of the attending subjects looking at their own old picture. And the response of the crowd to the pictures was just as enthusiastic as it had been 25 years before.

The pictures now are on display at a senior residence in suburban Evanston where there is room for 47 of the original 50 pictures. And now, several of the old pictures have contemporary pictures hanging below. What you see in these is the subjects looking at the older pictures of their younger selves.

Photography is sometimes thought of as just a cold snapshot of how something looked at a particular time at a particular place. But Bobbe’s pictures show how people felt — about themselves and about their relationship with their partners. Bobbe had caught something in the interaction of each couple — laughing or serious — that resonated true and still resonates as true. That’s the difference between a picture-taker and a photographic artist.

Bobbe Wolf’s Fifty Couples Over Fifty exhibition can be viewed at Three Crowns Senior Residence, 2323 McDaniel, Evanston, Illinois (ask the folks at the reception desk for directions to the photograph gallery in the corridor). The exhibition will be coming down Monday, February 27th around 2 p.m., and Bobbe Wolf asks that if anyone knows of a gallery interested in this exhibit or more of her work, to please contact her via her web site.

Thanks to the talent and persistence of Beth’s publisher, Golden Alley Press, the technical glitches have been un-glitched, all the blog posts and you wonderful subscribers have been relocated, and…

YOU ARE HERE!

Next up: Writing Out Loud!

And so am I!

Pretty nice, ain’t it?

We hope you find it easier to find all things Beth—blog, upcoming appearances, etc.—in one place. I’m pretty sure that the sighted among you already find it a lot easier on the eyes, and easier to use. And, the site has been designed and tested for accessibility. Beth, using her speech software, can vouch for the usefulness of the alt tags and other features.

A few things to bear in mind:

• The old URL for the Safe & Sound blog (www.bethfinke.wordpress.com) will automatically lead you here to the new blog digs for the foreseeable future. But not forever. So while you’re thinking about it, if you’ve bookmarked the old URL, delete it and create a new bookmark for http://bethfinke.com/blog/
• If you’re subscribed to the blog by email (you entered your email address some time in the past and you receive email notifications with each new post), you don’t need to do a thing. You’re still subscribed, and you shouldn’t miss a beat.
• If you’re a WordPress.com follower you will see new posts in the Reader View.
• There are likely to be quirks that we’ll only discover as you all use the site—if you do encounter a problem, please notify us using the contact form. We’ll get on it as soon as we can.

Meantime, welcome to our new home. You’re welcome anytime.

Our cast rehearsing my play “Night at the Emerald City Disco” before our performance on August 13, 2016. Photo by Malic White.

Remember all those posts I wrote last summer about the free playwriting classes I took and the two-minute play Whitney the Seeing Eye dog and I performed with the help of Chicago’s Neo-Futurists? Well, they’re offering another physically accessible eight-week workshop from March 13 to May 1, 2017 free of charge at Victory Gardens Theater this year, and when their Communications Manager Will Sonheim asked if I’d help spread the good word, of course I said “yes!” Here’s the course description and information on how to sign up. .

In this physically accessible 8-week introductory class, students will explore core Neo-Futurist tenets of honesty, brevity, chance and audience interaction in order to create and perform short plays in The Neo-Futurists’ unique, non-fiction aesthetic. The class will culminate in a public performance at Victory Gardens on May 1 as part of ‘Crip Slam’ in the Richard Christensen Theater.

The class is open to everyone; however we will strive to maintain a majority of artists with disabilities in the class. link here to sign up and learn more about the class.

Back to me. Will tells me the 2017 class will have largely the same structure as the one I enjoyed last summer. “You all had great feedback,” he said. “We’re working on applying all of that as well.” Take it from me, there is absolutely no theatre experience necessary to sign up for this — I learned a ton and met a lot of very cool people with and without disabilities taking part in this last summer. Give it a try — what have you got to lose?

When I assigned “My Favorite Year” as a prompt for the writers in the memoir class I lead in downtown Chicago, Anu knew immediately which year she’d be writing about: 1969. That’s when she immigrated to America. Her husband Pawan sat in with our class for a few sessions last year, and it was easy to understand how they “kept postal service on their toes” when they lived apart — they are a charming couple. We were disappointed when Pawan didn’t join up again this year until Anu told us why that is: he’s volunteered to lead Wednesday morning English language classes for Chicago immigrants. Now here’s Anu with the back story:

by Anu Agrawal

I have had many wonderful and memorable years in my life, but I would pick 1969 as my favorite year. I got married on May 9th,1968 and three months after that my husband came to America to do his M.S. in mechanical engineering. I stayed back in India to finish my last year of college.

Both of us were quite busy in our studies. Even then it was quite hard to live so far apart from each other. In those days there were no computers, no Skype, no Facetime, no emails, or chatting. Even making a phone call was almost impossible. The only way to communicate was writing letters to each other. So we wrote letters every day and kept postal service on their toes.

The atrium at Marshall Field & Co.’s State Street store.

After nine months of separation, I came to Chicago in June 1969 to join my husband. I was charmed by the beauty of the city of Chicago, especially the lake front. My husband took me to Field Museum, Art Institute, Science and Industrial museum, Planetarium and Aquarium. I was exploring the whole new world.

The most amazing place was Marshall Field and Co. department store, A store so huge, so beautiful. It was a museum in itself. I was totally mesmerized by the chandeliers and the art work on the walls and ceiling. Even today that place amazes me. In India I had seen palaces and forts with this kind of artistic beauty, but not a shopping place.

1969 was the year the whole world was glued to television to see the moon landing. I could not believe my eyes to see the humans walking on the moon. It was not a science fiction movie. It was real. Even today I get the same feelings what I felt at that moment when I think of that experience.

Most importantly,1969 was the year when I started to mature into womanhood. I was out in the world to live my life without the shelter of my parents. I had to grow up. My dreams, my life, my hopes started to take a shape in 1969.