Remember that post I wrote about the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust offering touch tours of its historic sites this year? My friend Linda Downing Miller lives in Oak park, Ill., and last Saturday she accompanied me on a special tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio there .

Linda earned an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte — her fiction is forthcoming in Fiction International and appears in the current issue of Crab Orchard Review. She’s a fine writer, and I was delighted when she offered to write this guest post describing our tour from her point of, ahem, view.

by Linda Downing Miller

Twenty years ago, I was infatuated with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Moving to Oak Park, Ill., can do that to you.

Beth checking out the inscription.

The village has a wealth of Wright-designed spaces, and I toured as many as I could in my first years here. My husband and I must have taken every visitor we had through Wright’s Home and Studio, restored to its appearance when he last lived there in 1909.

When Beth invited me to go with her on a Touch Tour of the Home and Studio last Saturday, I said yes mostly for the chance to spend time with her. I figured I’d already seen and heard enough about Wright’s work: his horizontal lines and ribbon windows and half-hidden entrances, reached by walking a “path of discovery” that usually includes a turn or two.

The Touch Tour took me on a new path. I was one of a handful of people accompanying friends or family members who are blind or have low vision. The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust offered the tour in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, part of ADA 25 Chicago — a larger project to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. Being Beth’s companion on the tour, alongside her Seeing Eye dog, Whitney, allowed me to “re-see” Wright’s spaces and consider the challenge of making them accessible through other senses.

Fellow writers might appreciate this observation: details, creative comparisons, and specific word choices helped to convey Wright’s work. Our tour guide, Laura Dodd, explained the position of design elements in relation to bodies (“about neck high”). She used similes (wood beams arranged “like an asterisk”). I told Beth that Wright’s intricate, wood-carved designs on the dining room and playroom ceilings were a bit like the wooden trivets she’d felt in the gift shop. A tour volunteer described the vaulted ceiling in the children’s playroom “like a whiskey barrel.”

After thinking about Laura’s description of the way the Wrights’ piano sat in that room with only the keyboard showing, the back half hidden behind the wall, one of the visitors who couldn’t see articulated it more clearly for all of us: “You mean, it’s embedded in the wall.” Yes.

Enthusiasm, curiosity, puzzlement and understanding moved across people’s faces as they listened and asked questions, and as they touched things: fireplace tiles, wall coverings, sculptures, spindles, glass windows and Wright’s famously uncomfortable straight-backed dining chairs. Some people lingered over each touch opportunity. Others eagerly applied their fingers and moved on. (Guess which style was Beth’s?)

She and I talked afterward about the different frames of reference people might have brought to the experience. Beth knew something about architecture before she lost her sight. Other visitors may have been born blind. Laura is the Director of Operations and Guest Experience for the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, and she asked us for feedback during and after the tour. (The Trust plans additional Touch Tours, and American Sign Language Tours, at its historic sites.)

Our group’s consensus was that she’d done a wonderful job. I thought the three guide dogs in the group also handled themselves well in close proximity.

Frank Lloyd Wright played here. And now, so has Beth.

One of the highlights for me and Beth was when Laura invited her to sit at the piano in the children’s playroom. After instructing everyone else not to pay attention, Beth put her fingers on the keys and ran through a short, jazzy tune. When she’d finished, she and I exclaimed over the fact that Frank himself no doubt played those keys. I felt the ghost of my old infatuation. On our way downstairs, Beth reached up to touch the back end of the piano, suspended over our heads, and continued on her path of discovery.

Photos courtesy of Christena Gunther, Founder & Co-Chair of the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium.

Here’s an idea: how about we use instant replay in the presidential debates?

After the last presidential debate, I did look at various fact-checking services—and it’s incredible how many outright lies and unforgivable exagerrations the candidates put forth. More incredible is that the so-called journalists don’t have the backbone to call them on the spot. But they don’t. At least not during the debate, when it would matter the most. You have to go to alternative sites for that, later.

A confession: I haven’t watched Donald and Company mix it up on stage at the debates. I haven’t wanted to and I haven’t had to. Because it’s reality TV, packaged to benefit everybody but the voters, and you hear snippets accordingly from mass media. All because it’s an inexpensive way to get ratings and attention. So I hear about it whether I want to or not.

Major sports have adopted instant replay challenges in various forms. The idea is to get the call right. It doesn’t always work, but it does move toward greater accuracy.

So why not something similar in debates? The candidates have been coached not to answer questions, and to ignore the question and go off on their own talking points. When they do answer, they often spout lies or exaggerations. And sometimes they strike a chord with a segment of the audience, and it looks like a win.

But what if, in real time, they were checked. And they got called on their BS. In real time. On TV. In front of real people when it would make the greatest impact. That would be what we call a teaching moment.

Not sure how it would work, but I’m certain it could be made to work. I wouldn’t leave it to the other candidates to call for a challenge, because, well, that’s the problem: I don’t trust them. And none of them wants to be challenged back, so there’d be a reluctance.

It could be a bipartisan panel consisting of reps from conservative and liberal groups (for primaries, too, yes, because BS is BS). They’d have a limited number of challenges each. They’d throw it to factcheck.org or politifact or some agreed upon combination of organizations. Or an agreed upon panel of reps from research institutes and news organizations, fully wired and equipped in a war room. There’d be a pause, yes, but it’d be worth it.

If there’s a challenge, and the candidate is vindicated, fine. But if it’s BS, as with the vaccination thing that got circulated in the last debate, the challenger in the panel gets up to three minutes to grill that lying candidate about why (s)he lied.

It’s not perfect. But since these debates have devolved into bad reality TV, it’d be nice to inject some real-time accountability into it.

And then it’d really be reality TV.

Just got back from a trip to North Carolina, where we attended our first LEGAL gay marriage ceremony on Saturday. You didn’t have to be able to see to know that Patricia and Lori were glowing. The attendees were glowing, too  —  you could feel it in the air.

The recent Supreme Court decision was mentioned more than once during the ceremony — the celebrant even read a couple of paragraphs directly from the August decision. “We asked her to read something from SCOTUS,” Patricia told me later. “We wanted to acknowledge that this really is an amazing time in our lives.” The reading didn’t evoke cheers — instead, it brought tears. Tears of joy.

Patricia and Lori’s only bridesmaid was a five-and-a-half-year-old cherub who referred to Saturday’s event as “the marrying.” The term caught on, and with time on our hands Saturday afternoon before the marrying, we headed to the North Carolina Botanical Garden to experience Homegrown, a recently installed Patrick Dougherty outdoor sculpture.

Checking out the stick sculpture with Whit.

Off-and-on rain that afternoon chased most other visitors away, leaving paths empty and easy for Seeing Eye dog Whitney to navigate. The rain made the garden more fragrant, too, and we didn’t care that the tour guides and docents had left early: we got all the information we needed about artist Patrick Dougherty from the volunteer holding the fort and managing the gift shop.

Stick sculpture artist Patrick Dougherty has organized hundreds of installations around the world – Homegrown is his 256th. Each Dougherty sculpture is created from twigs, branches, saplings and sticks, and the lady at the gift shop spoke admiringly of the 100+volunteers who joined the artist in the north woods last fall to forage for fallen branches and trees to use in Homegrown.

“Volunteers helped him build the sculpture, too,” she said, explaining how hundreds of volunteers from the community worked with Dougherty at the North Carolina Botanic Garden each day for three weeks to weave saplings into mystifying arches. As she said that, I sensed her eying up my 5’9” frame — I dwarf most southern belles. “They’ll reach way over your head,” she determined. “The only way the volunteers could weave them all together like that is if they’re young and supple.”

“You mean the trees?” I asked. “Or the volunteers?”

”The trees!” She laughed, appreciating the opportunity to describe some of the people who’d shown up to weave Homegrown: grandmothers alongside tattooed teenagers, churchgoers with aging hippies, scout leaders, schoolkids and academics of all ages and sizes working together in a big crew. I swear I could feel that mix of energy when I finally left the gift shop to check out the sculpture.

Newlyweds Lori and Patricia at the marrying.

A similar energy filled the North Carolina ArtsCenter for the marrying later that evening. Patricia and Lori have been together for years and have picked up an eclectic crew of friends from stops along the way. What a dream come true this past weekend must have been for the two of them. Not only the marrying, but the gathering of so many loved ones — everyone from preschooler Finn (he spent most of the reception under our table giving belly rubs to Whitney) to 80+-year-old Aunt Fran, who traveled all the way from Edmonton, Canada to be with her beloved niece Patricia on her wedding day. Patricia and Lori’s marrying wove us all together Saturday night. It was an honor to be there, and the joy in that room was so high that this tall girl from Chicago couldn’t reach It  — even on my tippy toes.

Patrick Dougherty’s Homegrown sculpture will be at North Carolina Botanical Garden until the piece completely dries out and disintegrates. Admission to the garden is free, so get there while you can!

If you watched the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off show Private Practice when it was on ABC a few years ago, you know who Dr. Gabriel Fife is. The genetics specialist was introduced in the third season as a love interest who worked for a rival medical practice. The character used a wheelchair, and so does the actor who played him: Michael Patrick Thornton.

Michael Patrick Thornton

Private Practice went off the air in 2013, but national TV watchers loss is Chicago’s gain: Michael Patrick Thornton is a native Chicagoan, and now that he’s back in town full-time we get to see him live on stage here.

I myself appeared on stage last week at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre with Michael Patrick Thornton, and after sharing the stage with him, you know, I just call him Michael. We were there with other disability advocates at “Greater Together,” Chicago’s first Cultural Accessibility Summit.

My job was to give a short testimonial on how important it is for civic and cultural leaders (hundreds of them were there in the audience) to support accessible programming at the museums, theatres and foundations they work for. Michael was there in his real-life role as the Artistic Director & Co-founder of The Gift Theatre in Chicago. He talked candidly with the audience about the spinal stroke he suffered at age 23 and what it was like to emerge from a coma three days later on life support.

“It took a while for doctors to figure out what happened to me — it was very Dr. House-like,” he said, the sound of dark humor in his voice. He left the hospital paralyzed from the neck down, and after years of hard work at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago he’s regained some of his mobility.

Michael Patrick Thornton’s interest in theater started when he was in high school, and he and William Nedved had founded The Gift Theatre Company two years before Michael’s spinal stroke. Michael didn’t take much of a break from The Gift during his recovery — a 2006 story in the Chicago Reader  marveled that months after suffering a second stroke during rehab, Thornton “was directing Language of Angels, holding auditions at RIC while still an inpatient.” During the Q&A last week an audience member thanked Thornton for applauding the work the Chicago arts community is doing to improve accessibility for patrons, but she wondered if the same could be said for performers. “Have things improved for actors in wheelchairs, too?”

Michael answered with an immediate “no.” Actors with disabilities are woefully underrepresented on stage and screen, he said. “I’m pretty much it.”

He told the audience that one thing he can do to advance the cause for other actors with disabilities is to take on roles as someone’s best friend, or a lawyer, or a criminal, people like that — avoid lead roles in inspirational stories about heroes with disabilities who triumph over adversity. “I want parts where the wheelchair never once gets mentioned.”

Michael Patrick Thornton played Iago in Gift’s production of Othello last year, and when I talked to him after our presentation last week he told me how thrilled he is to be directing the world premiere of David Rabe’sGood for Otto at Gift next month.

But wait. There’s more: in March of next year he has the lead role in Gift’s production of Richard III, which will be staged at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre to accommodate larger audiences. Here’s a prepared statement from Michael about the upcoming season, which will be The Gift’s 15th:

Great theater asks great questions. Our milestone anniversary season asks: ‘What does it mean to be human?’ In perfect circuitousness, we begin where many of us first met — at Steppenwolf. In collaboration with our lead production sponsor, The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, we will present a definitive ‘Richard III’ for the ages, performed in conjunction with Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary. It will re-define what disability, ability, and Shakespeare’s villain can look like.

Good for Otto opens at The Gift Theatre in Chicago’s Jefferson park neighborhood next month, and Richard III opens in March, 2016 at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theatre at 1650 N. Halsted in Chicago. Mark your calendars now and look for me at both performances — I’ll be in the audience this time.

About this thing in Kentucky: When you cut through the screeds and snark, it really is a pretty big deal. But something isn’t getting enough play.

That is: The First Amendment is why we have religious freedom in the United States. Preventing the government from promoting or projecting any one religion over another is why we can have so many people practicing so many different faiths. And when you think about it, without such a protection, things could get really ugly and crazy fast. Like, the government could promote one flavor of Christianity over another. Or Orthodox Judaism over Reformed.

Best, the founders thought, to keep government out of the religion business altogether, and to prevent it from stopping anyone from practicing their particular faith.

I think what we’re witnessing reflects a troublesome ignorance of the principles behind the First Amendment. That clerk in Kentucky doesn’t know that she’s spitting on the part of the constitution that ensures she can worship as she pleases.

Beyond ignorance, it takes a certain kind of selfish entitlement to presume that while working as a public servant she can refuse service to someone who doesn’t share her faith and attendant beliefs. They have the same right that she does–to worship (or not) as they see fit.

It borders on crazy. But that’s where we’re at these days.