My husband Mike Knezovich and I have written posts about our writer friend Jean Thompson many times before – everything from the one I wrote about how she introduced herself to me decades ago from the barstool next to mine at Champaign’s Esquire Lounge to the one Mike wrote after Who Do You Love? (One of her collections of short stories) was nominated for a National Book Award.

Jean was in Chicago for the Printer’s Row Lit Fest last weekend. Her session was scheduled at the same time as the memorial service Mike mentioned in his Mondays with Mike post earlier this week so we didn’t go to hear her panel. Lorraine Schmall to the rescue! Lorraine is a writer in the weekly memoir class I lead in Printers Row. She went to Jean’s panel at the Lit Fest and reports in here for our Safe & Sound blog readers. Here’s Lorraine’s guest post:

By Lorraine Schmall

If you haven’t made it to Lit Fest, a/k/a The Printer’s Row Book Fair, mark it on your calendars for next year. This pageant of poetry and prose has been around since 1985, and it’s really fun.

From left to right, Julia Keller, Jean Thompson, and Vu Tran.

The crowd is happy because vendors give away a myriad of free shopping bags and sunglasses. There are a million gorgeous books, and they’re all on sale. There are writers hawking their work, and young optimists handing out pins that say “every poem is a revolution.” There’s food and drink. There are high-class live events featuring the two hundred some invited authors, like movie star Ethan Hawke, Gourmet Mag Editor Ruth Reichl, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Pulitzer Prize-Winning poet Tracy K. Smith.

It was ninety degrees all day Saturday but the streets were packed, and the bars were crowded: nothing like a short story and a Sangria.

I started my day with a session called “Do We Ever Escape the Past?” an intriguing question, but one left unanswered. The panel of superstar authors with Chicago connections chose to talk more about their art than psychology. But it was worthwhile, nonetheless.

Jean Thompson lives in Urbana and teaches at the U of I. She Poured out Her Heart is her twelfth book. She shared a dais with Julia Keller, a West-Virginia transplant who’s got a condo in Chicago, six best-selling books under her belt, and a Pulitzer Prize for writing (as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune) a “gripping, meticulously reconstructed account of a deadly 10-second tornado” near Starved Rock State Park. I remember the stories and got scared again just reading that in her bio.

Joining them was Vu Tran, born in war-scarred Viet Nam shortly after his father was airlifted out with the U.S. troops as Saigon fell. Vu is now a University of Chicago professor who has written a noir crime thriller featuring 1970’s Vietnamese refugees and an insider’s look at Las Vegas.

They were a stellar panel, all three with books positively reviewed in the New York Times, so they had a prestigious time slot –late morning — and a plush address: the Shedd Room at the Blake Hotel (many other authors had to carry on under tents in the mind-bending heat).

It was a fast hour and a half, listening to them. Funny Jean told us “It’s so much easier to write about bad sex than good sex. Everybody’s had that.” When asked if she starts her books with a plan, she said her characters created themselves. “This time I really wanted to write about higher love. But every day life and ordinary people got in the way.”

Jean’s biggest fan, humorist David Sedaris, claims “no one is beneath her interest…or beyond her reach.” I can’t wait to read her books.

It was exciting to meet Vu Tran, since I just came back from a visit to Viet Nam with my daughter. I assume his book will never be sold in his native country, which regulates speech and art as strictly as a red light camera controls us scofflaws. He said his first novel Dragonfish had a life of its own. “I didn’t know the ending until a week before I turned it into the publisher.” Not surprisingly, this brainy academic said all his characters suffer from a great deal of anxiety, like their creator. “That’s tough for them, but great for me because it’s fascinating to write about.”

Besides his neuroses, was anything else from his past in the book? “I was in a bad relationship at the time. All that menace and anxiety fell onto the pages of my book.”

Julia Keller, a television and radio commentator, was an upbeat moderator, who is happy that people write, read, and love books. “Print is back!” she crowed. She ended the session by quoting Phil Ochs, when she ruminated about why anybody would try to write at a time in history when all hell seems to be breaking loose: “In a time of such ugliness, the true protest is beauty.”

A group of handsome guys with British accents met me for coffee Sunday morning. The rendezvous came after Neale Minch, a longtime friend from my days working at the University of Illinois Study Abroad Office, emailed me the night before.

The British Invasion: From L to R: Neale Minch, Michael Selbie, and Julian Hamilton-Peach.

“I am in apartment in Chicago (55 East Washington) with Mike Selbie and Julian Hamilton-Peach. You quickly came up in the conversation. Are you available to hook up some time this weekend – even if only briefly?” Neale reads this blog (hi, Neale!) and that’s how he knew how to contact me. I was tired from a very busy weekend, but I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity. I hadn’t been with these guys for thirty years or more, and I was flattered they remembered me.

Some background: Before I lost my sight I was the Assistant Director at the University of Illinois Study Abroad Office. I helped college students who wanted to study overseas and arranged housing and other details for students from Britain who were spending a year at the U of I. The job entailed talking with students, checking out what programs might work for them, phoning different college departments or other universities to arrange for the transfer of college credits. I was sure I’d be able to perform these tasks without being able to see.

My boss, however, was equally sure I could not.

I tried proving her wrong. At first I didn’t use a white cane or a dog. I quit driving or riding my bike, but I could still see well enough to walk to work with a walking cane (Mike and I happened to have bought one as a souvenir during our honeymoon in Scotland months before, when I could still see perfectly well).

As my eyesight got worse, I started making mistakes in the office. One morning I spilled grounds all over the floor on my way to make the morning coffee. I sat inches away from my computer screen to see the words. I ran into tabletops. At one point my boss took me aside and told me I wouldn’t be going to the annual convention with my colleagues that year. “You’ll embarrass the office,” she said.

By the end of that year, I had lost my sight completely. The Americans with Disabilities Act had not been passed yet. My contract was terminated.

I usually remember that time as one long sad year, but Sunday’s short hour with these guys has me thinking differently. Julian is originally from Wales. He was an engineering student in Britain, but he reminded me Sunday that when he was at the University of Illinois he was able to take classes in the humanities along with engineering. “I even took dancing” he laughed.

Neale studied at the University of Sterling in Scotland, and his time at the University of Illinois was his first trip to America. Sunday morning he told us how he’d spent his first weekend in America at a house in the Chicago suburbs, where he asked if he could try their lawn mower. Once he got started cutting the lawn the father there rounded up all his neighbors. “Look!” he said, pointing at Neale. “We have a new English caretaker.”

Mike Selbie told me he’d arrived in Champaign-Urbana from University College London with nowhere to stay. “You’re the one who worked out my housing for me, Beth,” he said. Once he named the address — 801 Main — it all rushed back. I pictured the house perfectly.

Julian lives in Cambodia now, Mike is in Australia, and Neale lives in Colorado here in the United States. Last weekend was the first time they’d all been together in 30 years, and they chose Chicago because the America’s Cup World Series sailing event was here last weekend.

We had a lot of laughs Sunday morning, and hearing their stories has helped me picture that year more clearly, too. With all its challenges, we all had a lot of fun. Before I left, Neale pointed out they were all wearing the same shirt. “It’s not a t-shirt,” he said. “It’s a proper shirt, with buttons.” Neale had complimented Julian’s shirt when they arrived, and when Julian said he’d bought it at Macy’s, they all decided to head to the State Street store to buy one, too.

“We checked out of the hotel today and the woman behind the desk asked us if we were a band!” Neale laughed. Sure enough, a woman at the coffee shop came up as we were leaving to ask the same question. In many ways, they were.

Their American friend Stu was with them, too, and they all followed me out the door to see how Whitney works to guide me down the sidewalk. Once we got to Michigan Avenue, we stopped so I could hug them each goodbye. I wondered later what passers-by must have thought, seeing this woman with her Seeing Eye dog hugging the band members and waving goodbye. I hope they decided I must be their agent.

We get horrified. We get sad. We get voyeuristic—we want the details. We get angry. We want this never to happen again. We blame. It goes away. And it happens again.

We’re doing something wrong. That’s what I know for sure. I have opinions about that, but everybody does right about now; it just sort of stinks to get on a soapbox right at the moment. I think it probably matters more to talk about all this a couple months from now.

So instead, here’s how my gift of a weekend went.

It began with catching parts of various eulogies from various bigwigs for Muhammad Ali. Ali—along with Dr. Martin Luther King—opened my eyes about race when I was a boy living in an all-white suburb that was populated by a lot of people who’d moved from Chicago during white flight. The phenomenon that was Ali made me begin to reckon with a lot of stuff—primarily that counter to comfortable wishful thinking, the Civil War hadn’t put the evil of slavery or racism behind us. More generally, it taught me that at any given time, things aren’t really as they appear. I also learned about great resolve and courage in the face of a veritable mob of angry, hateful people.

I’m grateful, and the better for, having lived in Ali’s times.

Beth and her cousin Randy comparing notes over coffee at a birthday party for Randy’s father, June 7, 1992.

Saturday, Beth and I drove to the suburbs for a memorial service for her cousin Randy, who died this past February at the age of 61. There were no bigwigs speaking, just loving brothers with poignant and brief memories. And Randy’s former husband and lifelong friend, Mark. I knew and liked Randy for a variety of reasons—one being that he, like Beth, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a child. They experienced a lot of the same stuff—including the early death predictions by physicians with the bedside manner of frogs. They had an important bond. (In the end, it was pancreatic cancer that did Randy in.)

But I learned a lot about Randy and his family at the service. For one, that his family—at a time when such things were not openly accepted—recognized and accepted Randy’s sexuality pretty early on. Which probably had a lot to do with what his partner Mark talked about—that Randy had helped Mark accept himself. I got the distinct feeling that the support Randy got from his family was a gift he passed along to Mark.

The Fat Babies cooking at Honky Tonk Barbecue. Photo: Bev Miller.

Sunday night Beth, her sisters Marilee and Bev (in town for the memorial) and I went to Honky Tonk Barbeque in the Pilsen neighborhood to see The Fat Babies. I’m not a big traditional jazz fan. (In bygone days it was called Dixieland.) But these guys are something else. For one, they’re young by tradjazz standards, for another, they’re just fantastic musicians. And they draw a young crowd that dresses and dances the part. It’s a happy, celebratory scene every Sunday evening. And it’s … free!

I’m surely not going to ignore what happened Sunday. I couldn’t really, even if I tried. But I can’t help but feel that the way we have learned to react to these things in some way feeds them.

And so, what I’ll remember most about this weekend are Muhammad Ali, Randy Moos, and The Fat Babies.

School is out now, which means DJ Mermaid has time to blog for us again. Hooray!

A lot has happened to DJ Mermaid since her last guest post. Most importantly, she had a birthday. Ten-year-old DJ Mermaid has been in a casting program the past couple months. She still has casts from her hips down to her ankles on both legs, and she’s told me many times that she “doesn’t let her physical disability stop her from doing anything she wants to do.” Her guest post today proves exactly that.

by DJ Mermaid

Hey guys, DJ Mermaid here! I’ve gotten back on the guest-blogging trail and I thought this post would be a good way to start off.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I participated in a program with Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. This is a program dedicated to creative design that changes people’s lives for the better. I requested something that would help me with sewing. Two groups of students were assigned to help me with the following problems:

1. Driving the fabric efficiently through the sewing machine
2. Creating an innovative way to use the pedal

I am unable to use the foot pedal because it’s hard to push with my foot. I usually put the foot pedal on the table and use my hands while mom drives the fabric through the machine. The groups came up with two different solutions to the same problems.

Solution One: Sew Good

• The Sew Good group came up with a guide constructed of metal to help me drive the fabric. All I had to do was pushpin the fabric onto the guide and keep my hands on the frame in case the fabric started veering off.
  

  That’s the feed control box designed by the Sew Good group.

• The Sew Good group also created a way for me to use the “foot pedal” with my hands. The students created a box that was able to go to three different speeds simply by turning a knob. The best part about it was that it kept going at a consistent speed I set without any adjustments. The students also painted the box pink and purple, I like those colors. They even used glitter for the writing. I was wowed!

Solution Two: SewMates

• The SewMates group made a voice operated sewing “pedal” — it’s a box I plug into the sewing machine. The box has wires and a chip to record and receive my commands. The students had to use coding to program the commands. The commands are “Robot, Go, Slow, Slower, Fast, Faster and Stop.” I speak into a little microphone on the box, and, magically, the sewing machine goes. It is high tech and I am impressed that they used coding. Coding is awesome and I do it all the time!

Last Saturday I was eager to try them out. They worked! I sewed a headband by myself with very limited assistance from mom.

And then, guess what? Mom broke the sewing machine. Nice Going, Mom! It may be a while before I am able to try my devices again!

Well, that’s a wrap!

-DJ Mermaid

Lots of people have interesting life stories to tell. The hard part? Getting those stories down on paper so that others can read — and reread — them.

As the writers in the memoir classes I lead for the City of Chicago, Lincoln Park Village and at Grace Place in Printers Row master the art of writing about their lives, they find themselves with a new challenge: assembling finished stories into book form.

Our Thursday Lincoln Park Village memoir class celebrated Anna Perlberg’s book over lunch at the home of writers Bruce and Anne Hunt yesterday.

Mike wrote a post last week about The publication of Anna Perlberg’s memoir The House in Prague. Anna Perlberg is a writer in my Thursday afternoon Lincoln Park Village memoir class, and her success is motivating other writers to think about getting their memoirs published as well. Their questions about publishing inspired me to put together a memoir workshop for The Northwestern University Summer Writers’ Conference this year on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus.

This year’s conference starts July 28, 2016 and runs until July 30, 2016.

My 90-minute workshop, called Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground meets from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2016. I plan on giving a couple in-class exercises and discussing techniques to get past whatever it is that’s stopping writers from getting their work done, whether it be worries about writing as a victim, facing issues that come with writing about people we love, or figuring out strategies for organizing the raw material of our lives into book form. The overall emphasis will be on craft and on overcoming the barriers that keep us from writing and assembling our stories.

Each workshop at the Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference is limited to 18 participants, and you can take advantage of early bird registration rates through June 30, 2016. I’ll be participating on a panel at this year’s conference, too — it meets on Friday afternoon and is something new for me:

Writing from the Intersection of the Personal and the Political
Beth Finke, Jarrett Neal, Nnedi Okorafor
This panel will explore the implicit and explicit political response and/or motivation behind fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

I haven’t met either of my fellow panelists yet, but from their bios I know that Jarrett Neal has had his poems, fiction, essays, and reviews in publications like the Good Men Project, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Chelsea Station, Best Sex Writing 2015, Requited Journal, and New City.

Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Nigerian immigrant parents, and she’s an international award-winning novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults. Nnedi is also one of the keynote speakers at this year’s conference. I am honored to be selected to appear with these two accomplished writers. Trust me, I’ll be doing a lot more listening than talking during that panel.