Blog

Mondays with Mike: A happy new year

May 2, 20168 CommentsPosted in baseball, Mike Knezovich, Mondays with Mike, Uncategorized

We’re only a month into this baseball season and I’ve already had more fun watching my White Sox than I have the past three years. They’re off to a great start, 18-8, leading their division, and well, as Ozzie Guillen once said, “Fun is winning and winning is fun.”

Beth and I, weather permitting, are heading U.S. Cellular Tuesday night to see the White Sox take on the Red Sox. It’s the hosiery series, I guess. (In these matchups, I refer to my team as the Right Sox.) It’ll be my second game, Beth’s first. We hope to be joined by another couple, one who is a Cubs fan the other Red Sox fan. Don’t worry, I’ll be good.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 4.52.09 PM

Listen to Chance. He knows.

While last year stunk on the field, Beth and I managed to have a good time during our many visits to the park. Like the time I posted about when we found ourselves seated with a cheering section for the Houston Astros pitcher that night. We learned that Vincent Velasquez was making his major league debut—hence the cheering section. We met his mom and dad and high school buddies. I gotta tell you, he had me right then. And, though I’m no scout, he looked very good that night.

Looks like I might’ve been right. He was traded to Philadelphia in the offseason. So far this season, for a team that was predicted to go nowhere, he’s won four, lost one, has a 1.44 ERA and .89 WHIP. Sorry for all the nerd talk—translation for all non-baseball fans, those are smokin’ numbers.

Here’s to Victor!

But back to the Right Sox. Besides winning, they’re just a lot more fun to watch. If you watch much baseball, you reach a point where you appreciate catching the ball as much as hitting it. And you hate not catching the ball. The Sox are catching the ball. They even turned an historic triple play.

Even the White Sox commercials seem better this year, with Chance the Rapper pitching his favorite team.

Alls’ good. So good that I didn’t even mind that the other team in town is also doing well. And then they went and did this. Win, lose: They’re just innately annoying.

Go White Sox!

Everyone tells me she takes sensational photos

May 1, 201611 CommentsPosted in blindness, careers/jobs for people who are blind, memoir writing, Uncategorized

When I write about the older adults in the memoir classes I lead in Chicago, I never describe what the writers look like. Now you can find out for yourselves!

Our day at the opera: That's me, Sharon, Audrey, Wanda and Darlene Schweitzer.

Our day at the opera: That’s me, Sharon, Audrey, Wanda and Darlene.

Darlene Schweitzer, a writer in the “Me, Myself and I” class I lead in downtown Chicago, played around with something called Adobe Voice and came up with a 60-second photo collage of writers in that class. Darlene narrates her Please Make Dreams Come True collage, and even if, like me, you can’t see the photos, it’s worth linking to her Adobe Voice project just to hear her sweet accent.

Today is the last day to take a minute and vote for the “Me, Myself & I” writers in those photos to win the Lyric Opera of Chicago contest — voting ends at midnight tonight. We’ve been stuck at fifth place for the past week, and I’m afraid that’s probably where we’ll stay. Sigh.

Eyebrows up! The whole experience didn’t cost us a thing, four writers from class got VIP treatment from Lyric Opera staff the day Wanda and Audrey were filmed for the video that promotes memoir-writing, the contest inspired Darlene to learn to use adobe Voice, and it motivated me to finally, finally dip my toes into the Twitter world to tweet for votes.

Once I hit the “publish” button on this blog post, I’ll head over to ChicagoVoices and vote for “Me, Myself and I” one last time. You never know — maybe all the first-place Croatians will be celebrating May Day today and unable to make it to the site for last-minute voting!

Bennett, the Brailliant, and my visit to Tess Corners Elementary in Wisconsin

April 27, 201616 CommentsPosted in blindness, Braille, careers/jobs for people who are blind, parenting a child with special needs, questions kids ask, technology for people who are blind, travel, Uncategorized, visiting schools, Writing for Children

Last week my Seeing Eye dog and I met a second-grader I’ve been hearing about for years. Bennett is a student at Tess Corners Elementary School in Wisconsin, and Whitney and I spent the entire day at his school Friday.

That's me and Bennett.

That’s Bennett and me. He’s holding a Braille copy of Safe & Sound.

I first heard of Bennett back in 2013, when his mom wrote to tell me how much her five-year-old enjoyed reading the Braille version of my book Safe & Sound. From her note:

“Bennett was so excited about the book. He told me, “I loved that book you got me. It’s a true story, mom. And no one ever writes true stories for kids about people who are blind like me.”

A stellar review — from an expert.

I kept up with Bennett and his mom via email ever since, and in 2014 I wrote a post about Bennett and his parents traveling from Wisconsin to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh to have Dr. Ken Nischal, one of the world’s foremost children’s eye specialists, try a cornea transplant in Bennett’s right eye.

Bennett told me Friday that his vision improved in his right eye after the surgery. “But just for a little while.” Whitney and I got to his Wisconsin school just in time to meet Bennett in person — he’s returning to the University of Pittsburgh this week for more tests.

Bennett and I spent the first hour of the day together with an older boy who has visual impairments — Michael came in special on a short field trip from his middle school. They both had questions about Whitney, and I let each of them inspect her harness and take a few steps with her. After that, we were off to the first presentation.

Tess Corners is a happy school. The teachers expect a lot from their students, and they enjoy their work — I heard smiles in their voices. Their principal taught first and second grades for decades before accepting an administrative position there, and she told me she still misses teaching sometimes. The school librarian had read Safe & Sound out loud to every class before Whitney and I arrived, and with Bennett at their school, the kids at Tess Corners already know a lot about blindness.

They still had questions, though. Bennett and Michael were at my side for the presentation we gave to all the second graders (including Bennett’s second-grade class), and during the Q&A, I answered each question first, then passed it on to my young assistants.

“Can you see at all?” one girl asked. “When I open my eyes, all I see is the color black,” I told her. Michael said, “I can see some things if I hold them really close.” Bennett said, “I can kind of see light, but everything is blurry…like a cloud.”

Another child asked “How do you read if you can’t see?” I described audio books and my talking computer, Michael touched the screen on his iPad so we could hear VoiceOver, and Bennett showed off his Brailliant, a refreshable Braille device.

That's the Brilliant device Bennett uses.

That’s the Brailliant device Bennett uses.

Michael eventually had to return to middle school, but Bennett stayed in front with me long enough to read aloud to his classmates from the Braille version of Safe & Sound. His composure and confidence was remarkable — a credit to his fellow students, his family, the teachers and staff at Tess Corners, and, especially, to Bennett himself.

Bennett left with his second-grade class after that, and Whitney and I presented to the other grade levels on our own. I met up with Bennett again one last time during his lunch break — he wanted to show me how to use a Brailliant.

A Brailliant is an electronic device people who are blind use to read with their hands. The Brailliant transforms the words on a computer screen into small plastic or metal pins that move up and down on a flat panel attached to the computer. Bennett explained how he places his fingers on the panel to read the Braille characters formed by those pins, and then demonstrated by reading a line of text out loud. I’d never seen, errr, felt, such a thing before.

My Braille skills are poor. Bennett used the keys to tap out secret messages and pass the device my way so I could read them in Braille. He couldn’t help but notice — and chuckle — when I struggled to decipher his big words.

Bennett dumbed it down then and used shorter words. He placed my hands on the keys to show me how to compose and send a Braille note back. The blind leading the blind for sure. We exchanged “refreshable Braille notes” for the rest of the lunch hour.

Today fewer than 20 percent of blind children in this country learn to read Braille. Bennett uses VoiceOver to check his school assignments, and he listens to audio books sometimes, too. But he and his teachers know that if he doesn’t learn to read Braille, he won’t learn to spell correctly. He won’t know where to put commas, quotation marks, paragraph breaks and so on. Bennett has already tackled a lot of this stuff.

It’s true I’m not proficient in Braille, but the little I know sure comes in handy when I label CDs, file folders, ID cards, buttons on computers and other electronic devices. My Braille skills are useful on elevators, too, and it was rewarding to know enough Braille to exchange secret messages Friday with that bright, curious, cute — and patient — second-grade boy I’d been hearing about all these years.

Mondays with Mike: Death and Facebook

April 25, 20166 CommentsPosted in Mike Knezovich, Mondays with Mike, Uncategorized

So here are my Prince stories.

Purple Rain was the last movie Beth watched while she could still see. It was at the Thunderbird Theater in Urbana in 1984, when it was still a movie house. And I’ve always thought, well, that’s as a good a last film spectacle as I would choose.

Another: Our son Gus loves music, and when he was otherwise inconsolable for reasons that will forever remain mysterious, certain music was magic. Prince was at the top of the list of magic musicians. We will forever be grateful.

And finally, after Gus had moved to Wisconsin and we’d moved to Chicago, we treated him to a Prince concert at Assembly Hall in Champaign. It was quite the road trip, and the concert was the magnificent thing that Prince always did.

I feel good telling you all this but also just a bit ambivalent and maybe guilty. That’s because this year has been fraught with the death of talented people who had enormous and devoted followings, fans who shared whatever they needed to on Facebook. And I’m not certain how I feel about it all.

If this doesn't get you moving, call the doctor.

If this doesn’t get you moving, call the doctor.

People have always died. Famous, talented, wonderful people. But we haven’t always had social media. And we haven’t been compelled (or had the opportunity to) lament, grieve, and share so publicly.

On the one hand, it’s kind of cool to have a place to go in times like these. To see what other folks are thinking. On the other, sometimes it feels a little smarmy—like a competition to identify as the biggest fan most hurt and affected by the loss. Or just an opportunity to talk about one’s own experiences. You know, like I just did.

And that can feel a little smarmy.

On the other hand, this past weekend people found and posted some incredible footage of Prince performances. Things that affirmed how talented he was.

On that note, I still don’t know how I feel about it all, but I am grateful to have seen this on my feed—courtesy of a friend of a friend (BDB, you know who I’m talking about).

When you have a few minutes, watch it. It’s astounding.

Goodnight sweet Prince.

Oh no! The writers in “Me, Myself and I” have fallen to fifth place inChicagoVoices, Lyric Opera of Chicago,

April 24, 201611 CommentsPosted in careers/jobs for people who are blind, memoir writing, Uncategorized

The “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing class I lead for the City of Chicago’s Department on Aging is in fifth place in a contest put on by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and they need to be in third place by the end of the day Sunday, May 1. The top three community groups who get the most votes will have their stories made into an “original music theater work” with the support of Lyric Opera staff and artists.

Help them sneak into third place. Vote now – you can vote once a day every day24 hours until midnight May 1, 2016.

For those of you wondering what the heck I’m talking about here, I’ll reblog a post from a few weeks ago. Thanks for your help, and I’m sticking to my promise — when they win, I’ll invite you to the opening in the fall.

Dissatisfied with candidates this year? Vote for Wanda instead

That's Audrey Mitchell from class. Click to vote!

That’s Audrey Mitchell from class. Click to vote!

The writers in the Me, Myself and I class I lead in downtown Chicago entered a contest. If they win, the Lyric Opera of Chicago will help them produce an opera about the class!

Only problem? Writers in that class aren’t exactly computer savvy, and to win, they need fans to vote online. That’s where you Safe & Sound blog followers can help.

Wanda at her 90th.

Wanda at her 90th birthday party with the writers.

First, some background. Earlier this year, Lyric Opera of Chicago launched a project called Chicago Voices. Lyric Unlimited asked community groups to submit applications for an opportunity to have their stories told opera-style. I brought the information to our Me, Myself, and I class in January, and writers put their heads together to answer the questions on the form. From a Lyric Opera press release:

After receiving numerous applications showcasing diverse, compelling and community-focused stories, a panel from the Chicago Public Library diligently reviewed and scored each group based on a predetermined set of criteria. Eight dynamic groups have been selected to move forward as semifinalists, each of which will have video profiles featured online for public voting beginning today.

Me, Myself, and I is one of the eight semi-finalists chosen, and now you can vote online for a 90-second video of writers Wanda Bridgeforth and Audrey Mitchell describing our class.

Three groups will move on to the next round and receive 16 weeks of classes from professionals at the Lyric to create original songs and scripts. Artistic support from Lyric Unlimited will help the finalist present its “fully-realized production” to the public in the fall.

Can’t you just imagine? Ninety-five-year-old Wanda as diva…

In order for this to happen, though, you’ve gotta vote for the Me, Myself and I 90-second video. After you vote, please share the link with your friends and family. Members of the public can vote once every day24 hours for the story they find most intriguing, and we need you to do just that to stand a chance against the young computer-savvy whipper-snappers we’re competing against. Please vote! Your reward? When they win, I’ll invite you to the opening in the fall.