A hand-addressed envelope from a long-time friend showed up in our mailbox Saturday. Dianne had been my supervisor when I interned at Washington Consumers’ Checkbook magazine as a hayseed college junior. She was also kind of a cruise director for me and another intern, making sure we got something out of the work experience and also from living in the Capital of the United States.

Old school technology, timeless sentiment.

Dianne was there again when, after I graduated, I moved for real to D.C. to take a job at Checkbook. That was a tough time for me— I was homesick, felt lost and found myself literally lost virtually every day. The work required a lot of driving, and though D.C. proper was designed in logical fashion by Pierre L’Enfant, suburban Virginia and Maryland never got a whiff of the grid system.

Dianne was a steady force, helping me grow into my professional role, and to stick it out on the personal side. And she introduced me to her friends who became my friends—and are to this day.

Eventually, she was tagged to establish Checkbook’s second magazine, this one in the Bay Area. When she moved, I wrote her a letter expressing my appreciation for all that she’d done for me, and my general admiration.

When I opened the envelope from Dianne, that letter was inside with a sweet note from Dianne saying, “Obviously it meant a lot to me given that I’ve kept it 35 years.”

Just seeing the letter was powerful. The yellow legal paper (I couldn’t be bothered with stationery). My handwriting actually being legible (it no longer is). It transported me to my early 20s, and all of that period rushed back.

I was almost afraid to read the letter, but mercifully, it was pretty well written. And it sincerely reflected my abiding gratitude for all she’d done for me.

I still write emails like the one I wrote to Dianne way back then. But I wondered if these kinds of pen-and-paper experiences will be entirely lost to the digital age.

My uncle George Knezovich (left) and my pop, Mike Knezovich on the right. Thanks Aaron.

Then this morning, I received a text message from my nephew Aaron. He was going through some belongings and happened onto a photograph of my father with his brother, my Uncle George, at a brothers reunion during WWII. That photo was attached. The twinkle in my father’s eye just kind of dropped me in my tracks. And handsome George’s unmistakable jaw line. And their uniforms.

Beyond those memories, it was Aaron, very much in the present day, letting me know he was thinking about me.

So maybe it’s really not about the medium—legal paper and postage stamps and ink vs. pixels and jpgs and cable modems.

Maybe it’s what it has always been: However you accomplish it, never underestimate the power of making clear to people in no uncertain terms what they mean to you.

Ali and Joe.

Mike and I are double-dating this afternoon with a 23-year-old friend of mine named ali and her boyfriend Joe. Ali and Joe and I are blind — Mike will be the odd man out!

I met Ali years ago when she and her mom attended a presentation I gave at a “blind and low-vision fair.” Ali was an 11-year-old squirt back then, and we’ve kept up with each other ever since. She’s grown up now and will be joinging Joe at Northern Illinois University when she transfers there from College of DuPage in the fall. Here she is with a guest post about some of the challenges and joys of being  — and dating — someone who’s blind.

by Alicia Krage

In March of last year, as Joe and I lingered somewhere between friends and a couple, I’d often reflect on my friends’ questions about whether I’d prefer dating someone who can see, or someone who is blind.

I thought about what the challenges were with both, and in the end I realized that being blind and dating someone who is blind is honestly not as hard as it sounds. Transportation becomes a problem sometimes — you can’t exactly stay out until 2:00 a.m. and drive home  — but working on things together like figuring out schedules for trains and buses has helped me gain a different sort of independence.

I visit Joe at his college every other weekend, and I take the train back and forth to Northern Illinois University by myself. I’m much more confident on my own now than I was before I met Joe.

We go on dates a lot, and restaurants are very good about walking us to our seat, offering us Braille menus (if they have some), or reading off some of the selections. If we know where we’re going ahead of time, we use our speech software to look up the menu online before we go.

We’ve talked about experiencing other things on dates, like going to concerts, and I think we’ll be doing more of that together soon. He’s the kind of person that motivates you to be better, the kind that urges you (politely) to step out of your comfort zone a little bit.

Some things take more assistance than others, but it isn’t impossible, and there’s no one else I’d rather share crazy adventures with than my boyfriend Joe.

I look back at my previous relationships and question my motives, but in the end, I know those relationships taught me a lot. I learned what I want in someone and what I don’t, what works and what doesn’t, and I took that into consideration.

Joe and I will celebrate our one-year anniversary next week, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Back to me. Ali, Joe, Mike and I will be hearing Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon play with The Columbia College Jazz Ensemble at the 4:00 p.m. show at Jazz Showcase in Chicago this afternoon, a weekly all ages show that owner Joe Siegel refers to as his effort to “save the children” from the pop music they usually listen to. Live nearby? Visiting Chicago? Come join us!

It’s been a busy travel week for my Seeing Eye dog and me. We flew back from our fun-filled Sisters’ Weekend in the Pacific Northwest Monday night and then turned around Wednesday to take a three-hour train ride from Chicago to Champaign, Illinois. The next morning the two of us gave a presentation for an animal sciences class at the University of Illinois. While there, we stayed overnight in Urbana at the home of an old friend: retired Seeing Eye dog Hanni.

There’s Whit with Hanni’s bone during a previous visit to Urbana.

Whitney and Hanni are both Labrador/Golden Retriever crosses, they are both graduates of the Seeing Eye school In Morristown, N.J., and both of them are very, very smart. I had no trouble telling them apart, though. Hanni is a tail wagger — you know it’s her when you hear a thump, thump, thump on the floor. She’s taken on more and more of her Golden Retriever side in these matronly years: she wears her hair long and full. Her coat matches her personality: fluffy.

Whitney, on the other hand, is a lean, mean machine. She’s six years old now, and she no longer shows signs of childish jealousy that she used to on visits with her predecessor.

Sixteen-year-old Hanni is in very good hands with her people Steven and Nancy. She retired five years ago, and she’s slowed down since then, of course.

Hanni no longer runs to greet us when we enter the room. Like the royalty she is, she simply lifts her head and acknowledges us from her bed. The only person she gets up to greet at the door now is her beloved Nancy. At 16 years old (you figure it out in dog years, I can’t do the math) Hanni still gets out regularly with Nancy for walks. Sometimes, when they head to Homer Lake, Hanni even runs.

Nancy and Hanni came in our bedroom Thursday morning to check on us just as I was picking up the Seeing Eye dog harness — it was time to head over to campus for the guest lecture. “Whitney, come!”

“Think Hanni will want you to put it on her instead?” Nancy wondered out loud. I held the harness up, Whitney lifted her head to slide in, and as I buckled her in, Hanni answered Nancy’s question loud and clear. She turned 180 degrees and happily left the room. The girl enjoys her retirement, and who can blame her? It’s a joy to behold.

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 birthday party with the writers.

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 day 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 we win, we’ll invite you to the opening in the fall.

As Beth just posted, she’s been in Anacortes, Washington, for the last few days, hanging out with her sisters.

And I’ve been here. At home in Chicago. She got the better of the weather. But I did all right.

The highlight was getting to the White Sox home opener on Friday afternoon. That Friday morning—that gray, cold, windy, rainy Friday morning—it didn’t look good for the game. But the rain stopped, the sun popped out while I was on the Red Line headed to the park, the anthem was sung, the Polish sausage (wit onions, and no, no “h” on the wit) was purchased, I wiped off my seat, and play ball!

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor ….

It was cold, and there would eventually be snow—enough to cause the Cleveland centerfielder to lose a ball in the flurries temporarily—and the Sox really played like drek. And it didn’t matter. It was a gas.

I like going to games by myself. Not all the time. But I can listen to chatter, move around the park as I please, and be alone in a crowd. There’s something really satisfying about that.

I think I have an alone-in-a-crowd disposition. But it goes beyond that. I think probably my and Beth’s circumstances make my alone time all the more important to me. If you read Beth’s last post about navigating travel from Chicago to Anacortes, you got a notion about the tedious and sometimes daunting logistics that come with blindness. I know them well. .

Apart from travel, the truth is the logistics of my daily life have also been complicated by Beth’s blindness in so many small and large ways–but we’ve been at this for so long that I’m not even aware of the extra little things or the different things I need to do or can’t do in day-to-day life. It’s only when she’s gone that I understand that, wow, life can be a lot simpler on my own. It’s nice.

But it’s not as good.

Beth gets home tonight.