It was a Friday night in the fall of 1977. I was a junior in the journalism program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Earlier, I’d gotten an essay exam back during one of my hardest—and favorite classes. I aced it. So, that afternoon, off I went to happy hour at a campustown joint called the Round Robin.

I trust Checkbook’s evaluations because I know how much work is behind them.

I got home around 7:30—home being a classic old rundown house that I shared with seven housemates. Nobody was home when the phone rang. When I picked it up, I heard the voice of Robert Krughoff for the first time. I can say, without exaggeration, that call changed my life for the good, and for ever.

Weeks before the phone rang that night I’d applied for an internship in Washington, D.C. through an agency that shopped potential interns around the Capital—everywhere from congressional offices to federal agencies to lobbyists—and to various nonprofits.

Robert had called to interview me. Now, the first thing I should’ve thought about was this: It was a Friday night at 7:30 CT, 8:30 ET—and Robert was still at the office. But I was so excited that someone was interested that all I could do is answer his questions as best I could. It was like a 45 minute call.

Somehow, I must have done OK. I was offered the spot and by January of 1978 I was living in a shared apartment on Rhode Island Avenue and 14^th NW.

A year or so earlier, Robert and a partner had founded Washington Consumers’ Checkbook. At some point, after a bad experience with a car repair shop, Robert concluded that there should be something like Consumer Reports—but instead of products, it would rate services.

Today Checkbook operations serve seven metropolitan areas with ratings and advice on choosing services like roofers, plumbers, repair shops of all ilks, and the like. It also evaluates health care providers—surgeons, hospitals, dentists, and veterinarians.

That may sound quaint today when we have customer ratings everywhere online. But it was novel back then. And Checkbook’s work still stands superior, in my view, to any popular online ratings sites. That’s because it surveys only its and Consumer Reports subscribers—there can be no ringers or ballot stuffers. It uses actual survey research science in its methodologies. In addition, it does exhaustive price comparisons, and researches complaints (or lack thereof) against firms it rates.

I’m still a subscriber, and still use it regularly.

Robert was an exacting editor and researcher. As my friend Kevin (current executive editor) once said: “Do not ever answer a Robert question unless you are absolutely sure that you know what you’re talking about.” Otherwise, as I learned way back when, you would undergo an exhaustive grilling that would expose you for not knowing your stuff. I can still hear Robert’s deep voice, and his distinctive stammer, as he picked my work apart. It wasn’t cruel, but it was tough.

Robert graduated from the University of Chicago Law School—where he discovered he really didn’t want to practice law. After working at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW—later split into Health and Human Services and the Department of Education), he founded Checkbook in 1976.

Robert was precise by nature and by necessity: when you publish information that makes a business look bad, that information better be perfectly accurate.

I interned through June of my junior year. A year later, after my senior year, they offered me a full time job—in the 1979 economy, jobs were hard to come by so I was grateful.

I spent three years driving around the D.C. metro area, visiting supermarkets and hardware stores and other retailers, carrying a clipboard doing market basket price surveys. More than once I was shooed out by managers. I made countless calls posing as a consumer getting price quotes for specific repair jobs. I visited local consumer offices around the region and camped out for days at a time to go through physical files of complaints that had been lodged. I wrote articles—on a typewriter. I stayed late to call subscribers for donations in the evening hours. I even knocked on doors to solicit donations a couple times.

To borrow from an old Peace Corps slogan, it was the toughest job I’ll ever love. And the experience has served me throughout my career stops.

I share all this because I just learned that Robert Krughoff just retired. He left with his organization in great shape. The magazine is just part of the operation now. There is a health care research unit whose clients include federal and state governments, as well as large insurance companies. Way back in my day, Checkbook sued to make public data about health outcomes—data that helps consumers make better choices and that previously had been closely guarded by the industry. (I actually used that data when my dad was looking at open heart surgery.)

You can learn more about my old boss by reading this press release, and/or his open letter. All I can tell you is he had enormous positive impact.

Including on me. Thanks Robert.

PS: Checkbook serves these metro areas:

Chicago
San Francisco Bay area
Delaware Valley
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Boston
Seattle/Puget Sound
Washington, D.C.

If you live in any, check Checkbook out.

A journalist contacted me a few months ago. “I’m working on a story about restaurants and accessibility,” she said. “Would you be willing to meet me for an interview?”

Of course I said yes.

We met at our local, Half Sour, and after introducing herself she asked, ““Do you want me to tell you what I look like?”

I’m getting that a lot lately. People asking me if I want to know what they look like. More and more people giving panel discussions on Zoom, leading presentations at libraries, introducing themselves at lectures are describing their looks out loud after introducing themselves.

I’m Beth. This is my back. I have a red coat.

I answered the reporter’s question with a question of my own: Why would I?

” I don’t know,” she said with a nervous chuckle. “I just read on the internet that I should describe my physical appearance when I introduce myself to someone who can’t see.” I hated hearing this. I have no idea where this declaration started, but it sure has sprouted up on a lot of “disability etiquette” lists lately.

Maybe it has something to do with all the Zoom meetings people have been on the past couple of years? Did some disability advocacy organization decide this is a way to “equalize” the experience for people who are blind? The one thing I do know is this: they didn’t ask me for my opinion on the matter!

In the past year or so I’ve attended more and more events (live and virtual) where the speakers or participants are told to “self-describe” themselves before starting their presentations. You know, for the “benefit of people in the audience who have a visual impairment.”

For me? I’d rather not know. Asking people to describe what they look like is awkward. And let’s be real. Can I trust anyone’s self-assessment, anyway?

In Mike’s “Mondays with Mike” post earlier this week he wrote about the passing of our dear friend Janet Smith. Janet’s husband Jim Loellbach worked with University of Illinois Chicago staff and graduate students all last week to set up and present a virtual celebration of Janet’s life this past Sunday. More than 300 Colleagues, students, family and friends zoomed in, and being virtual and all, people living everywhere from Beirut to Hamburg, Miami to Walla Walla Washington could celebrate Janet with us, too.

I felt honored to be one of the dozen attendees asked to give a short presentation at the event. Knowing Janet’s co-workers and grad students were responsible for the technology assured me it’d all be accessible – I’d be able to “mute” and “unmute” using my screen software.

And I was right. It was.

When I sent an email their way the next day to thank them for their technology prowess, one of them responded with an apology. “I am glad you felt the event was accessible,” they wrote. “I was a little concerned about that, wondered if we should have had all the speakers describe themselves first.”

Argh! I’m sorry they felt this way. Self-describing takes time , and I was much more interested in hearing what people at the celebration had to say about Janet than hearing what the people telling the stories think they look like.

During my short presentation about Janet, I mentioned that one advantage of being blind is that you get to walk arm-in-arm with friends a lot. Janet and I walked arm-in-arm everywhere – to the Chicago River, the Chicago Lakefront, Printers Row Park, Millennium Park, nearby restaurants, bars, and the wine shop. Walking arm-in-arm makes it easier to hear each other, and the conversations we had –especially in these past two years – are a gift from Janet to me.

Another advantage of being blind? not knowing what people look like. In the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., I live in a sensory world where “people cannot be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I’m left to judge others by what they say. And what they do.

Something about this new emphasis on having people self-describe themselves seems counter-intuitive to efforts to become more diverse. Do I need to know what people look like to judge what it is they are saying? I’d rather have them introduce themselves by saying their name and what it is about them that prompted the event to invite them as a presenter.

Which is exactly what happened at Janet’s celebration Sunday. Tears were shed, yes. We laughed some, too. Friends and colleagues spoke with Italian accents, English accents, Scandinavian accents and in all sorts of American dialects. I suppose we all looked pretty different from each other, but who cares? The one thing we have in common is far more important: our love of — and gratitude for — our friendships with Janet.

This just in: public health officials reported this morning that the number of COVID hospitalizations are continuing to decrease in Illinois. With covid “in retreat” now, we’re hoping people will feel more comfortable attending South Loop Neighbors’ Authors Night in person next Wednesday, February 2 at Half Sour, 755 S. Clark in Chicago.

The event is free, and four local authors will give ten-minute talks about our books and our lives as writers. Keeping the talks short should allow some time for questions after the presentations.

The event includes an hourlong social hour with a cash bar from 6 to 7, then our little talks at 7 pm. It all takes place in the “back room” at Half Sour, a large, lovely, open room with plenty of space for social distancing. Books will be available for purchase and we authors will be more than happy to sign copies for book buyers.

Very flattering to be one of the chosen authors along with Amy Bizzarri (111 Places in Chicago that You Must Not Miss), Sylvester Boyd (The Road from Money), and Greg Borzo (Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains).

Can’t make it in person? Watch us online instead. Here’s the zoom info:
Topic: SLN Speaker Series: Author Night
Time: Feb 2, 2022 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82425447490?pwd=OW5VWjlGUWJTTHRqa1JtVWRlSzh2Zz09

Meeting ID: 824 2544 7490
Passcode: 517444

Click on the image to read about the late, great Janet Smith.

A week ago today we learned that a very, very dear friend passed away. Janet Smith, who was also a neighbor, had staved off ovarian cancer for nearly two years. Janet was a tenured professor in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). But that’s just a title. She was a teacher, a mentor, a world-renowned researcher, and an advocate. She was not an ivory tower academic. She was a force of nature. She was 59.

To give you a sense of her broad impact, nearly 400 people attended a Zoom tribute to her yesterday.

I was going to try to tell readers about her in my own words, hoping it would be therapeutic for me. But the enormous scale of her impact (where to start?), the depth of our love for her and her husband, and the freshness of the wound make that impossible.

That may change, but meantime, I invite you to read her official obit from UIC:

https://today.uic.edu/obituary-janet-smith

Janet was also a committed faculty union member: She was President of the UIC United Faculty union. It issued its own statement.

http://uicunitedfaculty.org/uicuf-president-janet-smith-has-passed-away/

And here at the Urban Affairs Association:

https://urbanaffairsassociation.org/2022/01/18/uaa-has-lost-a-respected-and-inspiring-activist-scholar-leader-mentor/

Click on image to see the short clip.

And maybe give a look to this YouTube clip about “battling cancer” from the late comedian Norm Macdonald—who recently died from cancer himself.

I think Janet would have approved.

Our last in-person visit to a school was in February, 2020. As always, lots of questions from the kids. (photo by Jamie Ceaser)

After two years of teaching memoir-writing classes via Zoom, visiting third-grade classrooms via Zoom, sitting on panel discussions via Zoom, participating in my book club via Zoom, visiting family members via Zoom, I’ve been looking forward to life in person again.

Be careful what you wish for.

The calendar Gods have conspired. Starting January 26, a week from today, I have six, count them, six, in-person events scheduled in one week’s time.

Happy to report that all six events require mask-wearing and full vaccination status. And of course, due to that Greek letter that I never needed to know how to spell before, any of these in-person events could be cancelled at the last minute. As of today, though? My in-person schedule looks like this:

1. Wednesday, January 26: 12:15 pm, lead memoir-writing class in person at senior living and retirement community
2. Friday, January 28:12:40 p.m. to 1:40 pm, visit third-graders in person at Indian Trail Elementary School in Highland Park, Illinois.
3. Tuesday, February 1: 10:50 am, visit third-graders in person at Ravinia Elementary School in Ravinia, Illinois.
4. Tuesday, February 1: 2:40 pm, visit third-graders in person at Braeside Elementary School in Highland Park, Illinois.
5. Wednesday, February 2: 12:15 pm, lead memoir-writing class in person at senior living and retirement community.
6. Wednesday, February 2: 6 pm, participate in panel discussion in person at South Loop Neighbors Speakers Series: Authors Night at Half Sour, 755 S. Clark, Chicago, Illinois.

It’ll be nice to cap off the week at Half Sour – the authors event is free, four local authors will give ten-minute talks about our books and our lives as writers, and keeping the talks short should allow time for questions after. . The event includes an hourlong social hour with a cash bar from 6 to 7, then our little talks at 7 pm.

But wait. There’s more! Ellen Sandmeyer from Sandmeyer’s Bookstore will be carting copies of our books from her store in her little red wagon, and of course we authors will be more than happy to sign them for our book buyers.

A nice neighborhood event, I think. Very flattering to be one of the chosen authors along with Amy Bizzarri (111 Places in Chicago that You Must Not Miss), Sylvester Boyd (The Road from Money), and Greg Borzo (Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains). And who can argue with an author’s night that starts with a 6 p.m. social hour? After that long week of coming-and-going, I’m sure to enjoy a little glass of wine before my ten minutes of fame on 02/02/22. Ge whiz. I may even wear one of the two new dresses that have been sitting idle in my closet since I bought them in January, 2020. Look for me there…in person!