In case you missed it, my friend Nancy Faust was featured in an article in last Sunday’s New York Times. Wow. What a fantastic lead sentence to this blog post. What is astounding about that sentence is not that the retired White Sox organist was featured in The Times, but that I can honestly and sincerely call a famous and talented woman like her my friend.

Nancy graciously took time out on her last day at White Sox Park to talk with me (and Hanni, of course).

Nancy comes to my book events when she can. These days I go to hear her play at venues outside of White Sox Park and spend time between tunes talking politics with her husband Joe. She and I keep in touch via email, and she follows our Safe & Sound blog, too – hi, Nancy!

Nancy Faust retired from the White Sox in 2010, and after 41 years, 13 managers and a World Series title, it’s a well-deserved retirement. Still, I gotta say, visits to the ballpark the past five years just haven’t been as fun as they used to be. It’s not that the team is doing poorly – a baseball fan gets used to that – I just miss the way Nancy played the organ during games.

My relationship with Nancy Faust started on that summer day in 1985 when my eye surgeon told Mike and me that none of the surgeries they tried had worked. The two of us were uncharacteristically silent as we started home, until we got to Comiskey Park and Mike noticed the White Sox were playing. “Wanna go?”

Going to a ballgame after learning I’d be blind for the rest of my life might sound like a strange thing to do, but it beat heading home and sitting on our pitiful second-hand couch and wondering where to turn next. “Between bites and gulps and giving me play by play, Mike bantered with other fans, cursing the underachievers on the team,” I wrote in my memoir, Long Time, No See. “I laughed at the tunes selected by Nancy Faust, the Sox organist-she’s famous for picking songs that play on player’s names.”
I stopped by Nancy Faust’s booth at White Sox Park in 2003 after Long Time, No See was published to sign a copy for her. She was tickled to see her name right there in print in my memoir, and I was tickled to have the opportunity to thank her personally for helping me track what was happening on the field. A friendship was born. Now, a dozen years later, Sunday’s New York Times article credited Nancy Faust for reinventing the role of a ballpark organist by incorporating rock and pop songs into her repertoire:

Faust played songs for the fans, for the moment. She did not think players found her music helpful; they had enough to worry about, she thought.

“I didn’t do it for the player; I was there for the enjoyment of the fans,” Faust said.

And boy oh boy, did I enjoy it. When Nancy Faust was at the organ and played Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” I knew it was ball four. When she played Michael Jackson’s “Somebody’s Watching me,” I knew there’d been a pickoff throw. If she played The Kinks “You Really Got me,” I knew the pick-off play was a success.

Nancy helped me identify who was batting by teasing the player’s name with a tune. Mike’s all-time favorite was the one for Gary Disarcina. No, it wasn’t “Gary, Indiana” from the Music Man. That is wayyyy too obvious. It was “Have you Seen Her?” by the Chi-Lites. As for me, I always loved it when Travis Hafner was in town. At the last Cleveland Indians game I went to, she played “Bunny Hop” for his first at bat, and then J. Geils “Centerfold” “his next time up.

Now this Sunday New York Times story tells me we have Hafner’s Cleveland Indians to blame for the obnoxious loud rock music we hear over the speakers during ballgames – Cleveland was the first MLB team to let their players choose their own walk-up songs. Nancy Faust was still playing for the White Sox when that started happening, and from that point on they had her play walk-up music on the organ only for opposing players. A stadium D.J. controlled the songs for White Sox players from then on. The Sunday New York Times article was about the “surprisingly long, intricate history of walk-up music,” and I absolutely loved this part where Nancy Faust likens the DJ recorded versions as Musical Selfies:

This new approach, she said, eliminated spontaneity, and maybe enthusiasm. “If you have momentum going, and you’ve got three guys on base and the next guy comes up to bat, and you’ve got the fans going crazy — and it all stops to listen to what I might liken to a musical selfie?” Faust said. “It just stops the momentum. And then you’ve got to hope you can get it going again.”

I know what she means. I sure have had trouble getting my Major League Baseball momentum going again since Nancy Faust left in 2010. The article reports on how she retired to fanfare — the White Sox unveiled a plaque for her at a ceremony before one of her final games, and Nancy Faust bobbleheads were handed out the same day. The New York Times said, “Faust, who grew up in Chicago and still lives there, had become a White Sox icon.”

I’m glad the New York Times had the wisdom to interview her for Sunday’s story, and I can only imagine the tune she is playing in her head as she reads this blog post of mine. Rolling Stones “Miss you,” perhaps?

It was about a quarter mile into the short hike to the Wisconsin River that I threw off the weight. The weight of sirens, impatient car horns, tourists, shootings, and the helpless feeling of being unable to help homeless people.

Looking skyward from the trail.

I stopped in my tracks, recognizing that the only sound to be heard was the wind in the trees. I did not check my phone or even think about the mountain of email that I’d find when I returned. I just looked up into the canopy of trees and felt the thin length of sunshine that made its way through.

That’s when I remembered that the power of nature is the only thing worthy of the term awesome. And it is. Awesome.

Back in the nineties, I worked for a dot.com that took me on a wonderful and demanding roller coaster ride. I reached a point where I was waking up at 2 a.m. thinking about what I hadn’t gotten done or what I had to do. And I was told by my employer to take a vacation.

Beth, I and Pandora the Seeing Eye Dog rented an oceanfront place in the basement of an old Nags Head style cottage in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. We frolicked in the ocean, we ate fresh fish, we befriended our upstairs landlord. And lulled by the sound of the ocean through our bedroom window, I slept. Like a baby.

And so it was this past week in Wisconsin. I was told by my bosses to take a vacation. This time it was a one-room log cabin just about a mile from the Wisconsin Dells. For those of you who don’t know, the Wisconsin Dells is a ticky tack tourist destination where you can eat all the fudge and buy all the moccasins you want and go on amphibious duck rides and slide down enormous water slides and jet ski and well, you know. The Dells are also a real thing—beautiful rock formations carved by the Wisconsin River.

Despite Scott Walker’s best efforts, Wisconsin remains a wonderful place. Full of wonderful people who demonstrate the opposite of the ostentatious. On a walk through town, I passed a pizza joint that had a sign on the door: “Tree fell on our roof at home. We’ll try to be back by 7:00 p.m.”

Wisconsin is also full of natural beauty and fresh water left by glaciers. And a whole lot of trees. I took the hike to the river over and over again just to smell the trees and fresh air. I took a dip in the river while boaters passed by. I went into town to get groceries and drove down the main drag to find that the motel that I’d stayed in with my family decades ago was still there. I missed them. I took a Wisconsin Ducks ride.

My time near the river was too short, but I’d planned my re-entry well. I took a tour of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece residence, and it was an unexpected delight. I went there feeling like it was something I should do because it would be good for me, and I left feeling like… it was good for me.

I then drove to Madison for a night in the “city.” City is in quotes because Madison isn’t really a city like, say, Chicago. It’s more a state of mind. It’s a great college town like Champaign-Urbana or Ann Arbor or Iowa City–times 10. I went to a place on the Capitol Square called the Old Fashioned and had a proper Wisconsin Fish Fry. The perch was superb. I walked down State Street to the University of Wisconsin Student Union and watched sailboats on the lake.

The next morning I walked the Square and took in what has to be the greatest farmer’s market in the world. Well, I’m saying it is, anyway. Street musicians, cheese, local produce, and food trucks. I had the breakfast empanada, and it was sublime.

It was hard to leave. It was hard to come back.

I picked up Beth on my way home. She was visiting with our great-niece Floey and some other friends in the suburbs. Back at our place, I read the mail, dropped my bag, and we headed out to return the rental car. We walked home downtown and stopped for a drink to debrief one another about the past few days.

I was a little melancholy, as the taste of vacation had just whetted my appetite for a longer one. The remedy: We went to the White Sox game Saturday night, John Danks pitched like he was a young man who’d never suffered a shoulder injury, and the Sox beat the Yankees.

On Sunday, we got a text from some dear friends whom we met a few years ago by some crazy happenstance worthy of its own story, for another time. They invited us to a picnic in the little park just outside our place. We ate cheese and olives and a fresh green bean and tomato salad and drank wine, and were cooled by something stronger than a breeze but not strong enough to blow our goods away.

We sat opposite another group that had gathered for their own picnic, and one of them—a friend who lives in our building—brought us some home-made potato salad to share.

It was good to get away. And it is good to be home.

This past week I asked the memoir-writers in my classes to write about “someone special” in honor of the 25th anniversary of The Americans with Disabilities Act. Mary Rigdon wrote about an athlete who uses a wheelchair and said his determination was the impetus for ensuring the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta were open to spectators who needed accessible seating.

I have a part-time job moderating the blog for Easter Seals National Headquarters in Chicago, and I liked Mary’s piece so much that we ran it as a guest post on the Easter Seals blog yesterday morning. Now I’m re-blogging it here for you Safe & Sound readers, too.

How the ADA changed my life: “there is nothing on earth like being there…”

by Mary Rigdon

Basketball stadium map showing accessible seating areas

My life changed drastically when the ADA was passed and I became the compliance officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit. I spent more time out of my cubbyhole office after that, interviewing folks with disabilities who raised complaints, choosing locations to inspect for compliance, and negotiating details of upgraded plans for expanded services for those with disabilities.

Our first real confrontation came with a large hotel at the downtown Renaissance Center. We decided to target that facility as it had hundreds of rooms, was used for multiple conventions, and was in the process of remodeling and updating the buildings. We reasoned that if this hotel agreed to the necessary upgrades, it would stimulate others to get on board with the ADA, too.

A graduate student who used a wheelchair accompanied us to demonstrate the need for rooms with accommodations– wider doors, room numbers lower on the wall with raised numerals and Braille designations, lower sinks in the bathrooms, and showers with no ledges to block entrance. After several months of negotiation we reached a compliance agreement and schedule which we publicized everywhere to pave our way into other venues — more hotels, lots of restaurants and theaters.

I enjoyed attending training sessions at the Department of Justice (DOJ) with people around the country who were dealing with these issues, too. DOJ added an entire new staff in the Civil Rights section to concentrate on the ADA, including one person with sight problems, one with hearing deficits, and feisty Joe, a speed demon in a wheelchair.

Joe was a fanatic wheelchair athlete, having played in a league during college and law school. From this background, he became a primary motivator for making athletic stadiums and sports arenas accessible to those with disabilities, particularly persons with special seating requirements. This was a long and hard-fought battle in many cases, and I cannot forget the excitement in Joe’s voice as he described his thrill in attending his first professional basketball game in person. “I love watching games on TV, but there is nothing on earth like being there at the stadium,” he said. “All that energy, hearing all those fans, seeing the court and watching the players right there — live and in person!”

This determination was the impetus in persuading the Justice Department to press particularly hard for seating accommodations at the principal venues in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It was with great fanfare that Deval Patrick, then the capable Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights, announced that 1% of the seats (850 of 85,000) in the main stadium would be wheelchair accessible with adequate sight-lines, and that those seats would all be near regular seating for accompanying family and friends. This was an historic first for an Olympic site.

Twenty-five years later I am glad to see the continuing ADA accommodations enacted, and when I see the names of my ADA comrades in the news I rejoice in their continuing dedication to the needs of people with disabilities.

Back to me. You can Visit easterseals.com/ada to learn more about this important civil rights legislation.

In its early days, the telephone (land-line variety) was perceived as a threat to family life and the fabric of society itself. It let the outside world in and let the folks inside the house out, if only by wire.

I learned about that in a memorable college class I took called “The History of Communications.”

Pretty lofty title, but it lived up to the billing. The class looked at the cultural and economic ramifications of advances in communications technology.

Disruptive technologies will always be treated as a possible threat. And that’s not all bad. Take the cell phone—and those loud, one-sided conversations in elevators and public places that included TMI like the results of an MRI or maternity test. Bad behavior, that. But it’s gotten better, partly through informal cultural policing.

And then you could take pictures with your phone. Who the hell would want to do that?, I thought.

Then, the smart phone. I resisted until my friend Seth let me play with his brand new iPhone. Uh oh. It was like the first time I used a Mac computer. I put it off, and finally gave in. And haven’t looked back.

Until now. I know you’ve seen this—people sitting with each other—but texting and reading and otherwise playing with their phones instead of paying attention to one another. I get it. It’s the new world. But I recently got busted—by a blind woman, no less—for doing this while we were out, ostensibly with one another.

The worst. I had become one of those assholes! To all my friends—if I’ve done that to you, apologies.

I’m not getting rid of my smartphone by any means. But I am going to enforce some rules when I’m with other humans. The rules are simple: You’re with other humans, turn off the freakin phone.

I’m sure I’ll have lapses, but I’m committed. After all, there are no bad phones, just bad behavior.

When I finished college I got a job at the Study Abroad Office at University of Illinois. During one-on-one appointments with U of I students, I’d ask what they might like to study overseas, what sort of living arrangements they wanted, did they speak a foreign language, which countries they were particularly interested in, that sort of thing. I’d describe options available to them, make phone calls to other universities If U of I didn’t offer the option they wanted, and help with paperwork to get their credits transferred. I liked the work, I was good at it, and soon I was promoted to assistant director.

and then, in 1986, I lost my sight. My contract was terminated.

The Americans with Disabilities Act wouldn’t be signed into legislation until four years later. Today, July 26,2015, the ADA is 25 years old, and while I am celebrating all the progress we have made in a relatively short amount of time, I also acknowledge we have a lot more to do. One example: it’s 25 years after the ADA was passed, and the unemployment rate among people who are blind still hovers around 75%.

Here’s my work story: After my contract at University of Illinois was terminated, I attended a residential rehabilitation center for the blind, learned Braille and taught myself to use a talking computer. I applied for a job at the Study Abroad Office again after The Americans with Disabilities Act had been passed and made it through the first round of interviews. Even with the law ON my side, though, I didn’t get hired.

My husband Mike was the lucky guy who got to read the carefully crafted rejection letter out loud to me. Not a word about disability. The reason I wasn’t hired? My lack of recent work experience.

I applied for all sorts of jobs after that. One was with an emergency hotline that took calls from people whose pets have eaten a toxic substance. I emailed them for details. My note didn’t mention I was blind, or that I used a talking computer to send the email. Their response was enthusiastic. I was invited to visit the office to apply for the job.

A friend drove me to the interview. I heard the receptionist leave her desk abruptly as my friend helped me fill out the printed application form. The woman who walked out next was not the receptionist — she had a different stride from the first, and her bracelets jangled. Rather than greeting me, this new woman launched into a speech. Forms had to be filled out with every phone call that came in, she said. Her voice was shrill. The bracelets clattered. Every word had to be documented, she said. Every word by every person who calls the hotline.

I explained how I use a talking computer. I could create digital versions of the forms, complete them on the computer, print them out. “No,” she said. “They’re legal forms. They have to be filled out by hand.” I tried to squeeze out more details, see if maybe there were workarounds. But she wouldn’t listen. That was that.

It was a law suit waiting to happen, but even today, 25 years after the ADA was passed, these law suits are the burden of the person with the disability. To bring a case against that poison control hotline I would have had to pay a lawyer, file, wait months –sometimes years –hoping the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would accept my case. I didn’t file a complaint.

When Mike spotted another want ad for that same position in the paper weeks later, I sent another email asking for another interview. No email response.

A carefully worded letter arrived soon afterwards with task descriptions, each one specifically written to make it perfectly clear that a blind person couldn’t possibly perform them. The product of a legal consultation, I was sure. I got this sort of treatment more times than I care to tell you about. I don’t take it personally anymore, but back then it was painful. And confounding.

I guess it’s the same as other bigotries. Changing the law is one thing. Changing hearts and minds is another, and slowly, slowly those hearts and minds did start to change. As ramps replaced curbs, and theatres and sports facilities added accessible seating, and buses and trains and subway cars ran automatic announcements to call out each and every stop, and handicapped stalls were added to public restrooms, well, a funny thing happened. People with disabilities started eating out at restaurants, enjoying a night out at the movies, cheering on their sports teams at games, traveling on public transportation. People got more used to being around those of us with disabilities, and that familiarity made them more willing to take a chance on hiring us.

I wrote earlier this week about the University of Illinois in Urbana hiring me as a model for art students. After that, a Presbyterian church in Champaign hired me as a volunteer coordinator. When we moved to Geneva, Ill. a minor league baseball team found a job for me in their ticket office. In Chicago, a non-profit organization took me on as their Interactive Community Coordinator, and three different organizations hired me to lead memoir-writing classes. I am grateful to the School of Art and Design at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, McKinley Church and Foundation, the Kane County Cougars, Easter Seals National Headquarters, the City of Chicago, Lincoln Park Village, and the Center for Life and Learning for taking a chance on me. Their confidence in me has helped boost my confidence in myself.

I am also thankful to the legislators, demonstrators, advocates and lobbyists who worked so hard to get The Americans with Disabilities Act passed back in 1990. The next frontier? Bringing that unemployment rate down. Let’s keep working.