I was a terrible cook when I could see, and a miraculous change didn’t happen when I went blind.

I’m still a bad cook.

That’s Mr. Loellbach. You won’t see him on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

Our neighbor and friend Jim Loellbach is a chef, and before attending Le Cordon Blue, he was an aeronautical engineer at NASA. Proves what I’ve known all along. Cooking is rocket science.

Mike threw a spectacular birthday party for me last year, and one (of many) highlights was having Chef Jim there to create scrumptious appetizers for all the guests. Mike knew Chef Jim would not disappoint: The two of us have had the privilege of enjoying many magnificent homecooked meals with Jim and his wife Janet (a good cook in her own right) ever since we moved to Chicago’s Printer’s Row neighborhood in 2003.

I love hearing Jim’s stories about summers at his grandparents’ small farm in Wisconsin and how he, his sisters and their cousins all helped with growing, preparing and preserving food there. He says back then he never considered cooking as a career, “but a seed must have been planted.”

Over the years Chef Jim has worked as a cook and sous chef in several Chicago restaurants and hotels — including the Four Seasons and the Pump Room. Late last year he opened Custom Provisions, his own business offering personal chef service and culinary instruction. This week a guest post Chef Jim wrote about his first clients was published on the American Personal & Private Chef Association’s official personal chef blog.

Jim opens his guest post acknowledging he’s new to the personal chef game and recently landed his first regular clients. “They’re a busy couple with a one-year-old child and another due in about six months,” he wrote. “In addition to the normal challenges that face any new personal chef, I’ve had to face one more: My clients are vegans.”

Chef Jim’s guest post explains what the vegan diet involves and outlines some of the substitutions for animal products he’s discovered and how he went about developing a “robust menu” for his new clients. Vegan doesn’t sound so bad his way. Read the guest post in its entirety here and you’ll be rewarded with Chef Jim’s own recipe for mushroom Bolognese.

And here’s the pitch, which isn’t a pitch so much,as a recommendation to do it for yourself: For more information about Jim’s personal chef service and culinary instruction, link to the Custom Provisions web site. For pricing information or to schedule a consultation, contact Chef Jim directly.

Beth and I bicycled to the White Sox game again yesterday, this time with our neighborhood friends Jim and Janet. The last time I posted about riding our tandem bicycle to a White Sox game, some people commented on how brave we were.

I’m not sure if they were referring to traffic or that somehow it’s unsafe down there on the South Side.

On count one, FYI: Bike lanes and a little forethought make the ride strikingly stress free and pleasant. Here in the South Loop, we can take the bike lanes—not protected but Wabash is pretty civilized—to 24^th Street. We jog a block west to State, where we take it’s bike lanes to 26^th street. At 26^th  there are bike lanes all the way to Wells. Head south on Wells and you go through a very pleasant, quiet neighborhood and you find yourself at the park before you know it.

It was a beautiful day at the ballpark yesterday.

I think it would be pretty easy to take the lakefront path to 31st and cut over there, too. But if you’re coming from the west, you’ll have to figure out your own route.

On the second point, the neighborhood near U.S. Cellular was for years considered dangerous—in particular, the area east of the park, on the east side of the Dan Ryan Expressway. That’s where hi-rise public housing projects once stood within a short walk from the park.

A lot of black people lived in those projects (though in the early days the projects were pretty racially diverse). Eventually, these buildings became crime-ridden, dangerous places. And that was enough to scare a lot of people—especially white people—out of heading to the park. (Even though, statistically, on game nights and days, area around the park was very safe). And some people were simply scared of black people.

The projects were torn down several years ago, which was not an entirely good thing, especially if you lived there, and it was in my view handled pretty poorly in many ways. That’s an important story worth telling at another time. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some people still have the notion that it’s scary around there.

I’m hear to tell you: It never really was. So get on your bike and come on down!

Two Safe & Sound blog followers who use guide dogs have contacted me describing very different experiences riding with Uber.

Kathy Austin and her guide dog Weller.

Kathy Austin is the Community Engagement Specialist at Second Sense, and she and her guide dog Weller use public transit to get to work every day. “Uber has been a Godsend for me since taxis in my neck of the woods are limited or nonexistent,” she said in a Second Opinions blog post she wrote in reaction to the Taking Uber with a guide dog: jury still out post I’d published here. ”Let’s give Uber a chance to prove they are working to accommodate people with service animals.”

A second blog follower who lives in Chicago emailed me with a different story. She wrote an email message saying that the first time she tried using Uber the driver wasn’t friendly and seemed to be bothered she had a guide dog with her. “But we did arrive @ our destination in a timely fashion…”.

The driver’s not-so-friendly attitude made Pam reluctant to try Uber a second time. But then she got an offer from Uber for a free ride (valued up to $15 — money talks!).

Pam requested a ride and was given an option to do a shared ride at a reduced rate. “That was helpful since the total price was more then the $15 free ride promotion.”

When Uber driver Akwasi was getting close, Pam sent a message letting him know she was blind and would be waiting outside with her guide dog. “I wanted him to know I needed him to say something out loud to let me know when he was here.” From Pam’s email:

Akwasi phoned me back and told me that he can’t take me because he has 2 passengers already. I told him that my dog doesn’t require much room at all, he will curl up on the floor at my feet. This is especially possible when I’m sitting in the front seat of a car, but Akwasi told me I’d have to sit in the back, so he was going to cancel my ride.

Uber charged Pam a $5 cancellation fee for the ride Akwasi cancelled. She still needed to get to her appointment, so she requested another ride, but this time she didn’t alert the driver about her guide dog. “That’s when Ralph the driver pulled up and told me I can’t ride Uber pool because it’s a shared ride and people are uncomfortable riding with dogs,” she said. “He told me that I can only ride regular Uber, but not the shared ride.”

Pam tried to explain to Ralph that she’d chosen the shared ride because it’d be less expensive, but he wouldn’t listen. “He kept repeating that other passengers aren’t comfortable riding with service animals and this is a shared ride and I need to use the regular Uber where I can ride alone.”

Ralph drove off without Pam and her dog, but he never cancelled her ride. “Instead he used my free ride voucher to get paid for a ride I never took to and from destinations that I’ve never been.”

Pam missed the appointment she’d been heading to and used that time to call Uber instead. From her email message:

Jake, the young man that phoned me says they will refund my $5 cancellation fee and take care of these matters, but I’m a bit concerned now. Are these drivers going to lose their jobs and come after me?! The world is a crazy place and these men know where I live. Should I be doing something more? Is there someone else that is documenting these situations?

Turns out there is someone documenting these situations. On Thursday Pam phoned Disability Rights Advocates and spoke to Julia Marks, one of the attorneys handling the lawsuit against Uber in California. “She was very receptive to my call and very interested in documenting all that transpired between myself & Uber,” Pam said.

In the end, I’m pretty sure Kathy Austin would agree with Pam’s summary: “The Uber settlement is a great start for us, but now we need to make sure it’s being enforced!”

This is totally anecdotal. Subjective. Not data driven.

But I’m pretty sure that people are gradually losing the art of conversation.

Not that we don’t talk. I think we talk more than ever. But it seems to me that we too often talk at each other, not with. We’re flashing aural bumper stickers at each other.

A good conversation is greater than the sum of its parts.

I’m talking about this thing where conversation can be a medium for learning, but it seems to have morphed, too often, into an opportunity for self-promotion.

For example: You tell me you’re going to Paris. I could say, “Oh, where are you staying?” “Business or pleasures?” “Do you have friends there?” I could seek more information and then see where it goes.

Instead, I say. “I’ve been to Paris. I love Paris. I stayed in the Marais. I had the best falafel every In Paris. Can you believe it?”

And boom. I’ve stopped things in their tracks. Now it’s not a back-and-forth, let’s compare notes, let’s explore where we interpreted things differently, or one of us like something the other didn’t, and learn something new.

Now it feels like a contest of sorts, a competition of our experiences.

This happens all the time. Travel, restaurants/food, and maybe especially health care. One person mentions having their gall bladder out, and next thing you know, their friend is off on a tale about his gout.

The initial impulse is still pure. That is, say, you tell me you’re taking care of a sick relative. I say, yeah, I know what that’s like because…”. The idea being to signal the other party that we have something in common, you’re not alone, you can talk to me.

But in the modern world, it can quickly become a sort of SNL skit about how my experience trumps yours. We’re unwittingly running commercials for ourselves.

I think this is real, and it’s something that has developed in my lifetime. And I have a theory about it. Namely, it’s the hyper-commercialization of our culture, particularly since around the 80s, when we started using terms like, “You have to learn to market yourself.” To the point where, the other day, I saw an ad for a seminar on “How to become a brand.”

As the idea that selling ourselves is a 24-hour job took root, bragging and self-promoting somehow shifted from a vice to a virtue, and only suckers didn’t get the memo.

Fortunately, conversation isn’t extinct. A good conversation can be a little epiphany. You find out something about another person you’d never have guessed. You find out what you had wrong about them. It can make you take a fresh look at your own opinions and find them wanting. You find out you have common ground you’d never believe.

No one’s immune from the conversation-killing bug, including me. I try to catch myself and remind myself: Ask questions — you learn more from listening than talking. It’s OK to bring up your own experience in the interest of exploring the topic, but not with the intent of changing the spotlight. The spotlight will shift back and forth if you let it. And, well, just listen.

I’ll try to remember all that, and talk with you soon, I hope.

This past week I attended two plays I would have never seen experienced otherwise.

Let me explain.

Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater moved to its new location at Biograph Theater in 2006  (yes, the landmark building where gangster John Dillinger was ambushed). The refurbished building boasts an elevator, ramps, wide hallways, widened doorways. A perfect location for Access Project, a nationally-recognized outreach effort to involve people with disabilities in all aspects of theater. Access Project designates certain performances as “Access Nights” by offering additional accessibility services to Victory Garden patrons. But wait…there’s more! Access Project also teams up with smaller theater companies (some who usually perform in small inaccessible spaces in basements, above taverns, down narrow hallways) from time to time to sponsor a one-night-fits-all production in Victory Gardens’ very accessible space.

Both productions I went to this week were produced by smaller Chicago theater companies hosted by Victory Gardens at the refurbished Biograph Theater:

1. Once in a Lifetime, a 1930 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, was performed by Strawdog Theatre company at Victory Gardens Thursday night.  a review by Kerry Reid in the Chicago Tribune said the play is “seldom revived, and a lot of that has to do with the humongous cast of characters, featuring nearly 40 speaking parts.”
2. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go blind is a production by the Neo-Futurists that attempts to perform 30 skits in 60 minutes. They performed their “ever-changing menu” last Saturday night at Victory Gardens.

Dozens of characters. Actors playing multiple parts. Many, many scene changes. These particular two plays could have been recipes for blind disaster, but the thought put into the touch tours before each production — coupled with speedy Shayne Kennedy providing audio description in my headset for both plays — helped me take it all in.

Okay, maybe not all, but far more than I would have otherwise. Because, honestly, without this sort of special accommodation, I wouldn’t have considered attending these two complicated plays at all.

Audio touch tours are much more than just the tactile experience the name implies — a touch tour is a pre-performance program that gives those of us who are blind or have low vision an opportunity to:

• participate in an artistic conversation about a production
• experience a detailed description of the set, props and costumes
• handle key props, set and costume pieces
• tour the set with a sighted guide
• meet the actors, hear the voices they’ll be using on stage, and learn about the characters they play

When the plays were about to start, I was offered an ear piece connected to a small device the size of an old-fashioned cell phone — the contraption had a volume control dial so I could rev it up to hear the audio describer alert me to scene changes, character entrances/exits and other movements during the play. I usually can follow the play just fine and opt to go without the ear piece. Not this time, though. With one show offering 30 skits in 60 minutes, and the other featuring 40 speaking parts, trust me, I cherished those headphones — almost as much as I cherished the opportunity to seetake in these two lively performances.

I suppose in a perfect world, every Chicago theater — big or small, well-funded or not — would be wheelchair accessible and offer ASL and audio description at their site, but hey — I got the memo. The world isn’t perfect. I’m a huge fan of “reasonable accommodation” and believe that the “reasonable” part should go both ways. Expecting every tiny theater company in Chicago to refurbish the space they rent or pay for an ASL interpreter or audio description for every play would not be reasonable, but it is reasonable on their parts to pair up with established theaters already set up for this —steppenwolf theater did exactly that when working with Gift Theater to produce Richard III. I have learned first-hand that efforts like those by Steppenwolf and Victory Gardens Theater’s Access Project can put a human face to people with disabilities and inspire their fellow arts organizations to keep us in mind when making plans.

The Neo-Futurists who put on the accessible performance of Too Much Light last Saturday are offering a class this summer to explore the process of creating a 2-minute play in the Too Much Light style, writing and crafting pieces based on true life experiences. In partnership with Victory Gardens’ Artist Development Workshop, Intro to TML at VG will meet at Victory Gardens Theater, thus offering an opportunity to study the fundamentals of Neo-Futurism in a physically accessible setting. Accommodations will be provided for students with other disabilities, too. Artists with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply and will be given preference in acceptance into the workshop.

As for Strawdog, after the show was over Thursday night, the company’s general manager announced that the second-floor venue they usually perform in is going to be demolished soon and replaced with condos. “All of our productions next season will take place at The Factory Theater,,” he said, adding with glee that the new place is at street level. “It’s wheelchair accessible!” The crowd, well, we couldn’t all rise to our feet, but trust me, we showed our appreciation.