Live theater is a marvelous thing. Witnessing actual people up there on stage in real time creates a tension and energy that, for my money, makes even middling plays worth the time. And then there are those times when live theater is magical, powerful and unforgettable. That’s how it was yesterday, when Beth and I attended The Herd at the Steppenwolf Theater.

We knew very little about the play, other than it had been positively reviewed and that the cast included longtime Steppenwolf stalwarts—among them John Mahoney, he of “Frasier” fame. As Beth and I settled into our seats, Steppenwolf’s Evan Hatfield stopped by to chat. Beth’s written about Evan here before—he’s the Director of Audience Experience and has created special opportunities for people with visual impairments to experience Steppenwolf—that’s how Beth met him. Evan said he’d run into John Mahoney in the green room and learned that the actor is a huge music fan with eclectic tastes, and that they compared notes on their collections, and even swapped some CDs. In all, Evan was his welcoming and witty self. He said goodbye and that he’d check in with us after the show.

The writing and performances were crisp from the very first moment. We knew we were in for a good one. In short order, we learned that this play includes subject matter very close to our hearts. The story revolves around a special occasion—the 21^st birthday of a young man with severe developmental and physical disabilities.

How life with that young man affected his mother, sister, grandparents and father is revealed over an hour and 45 minutes. It is not maudlin, it is often very, very funny, and yes, heartbreaking enough that Beth had to give me her Kleenex. Regardless of the disability angle, the family dynamics are fantastically written and performed. That the playwright also nailed the particulars of raising a child with multiple disabilities left me sort of stunned. In a good way.

After the play Beth Googled the playwright, Rory Kinnear, and found an interview he gave to the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones. We learned to our astonishment that he is a remarkably accomplished actor, but this is the first and thus far only play he’s written. We also learned that his sister is severely disabled, which explains the uncanny accuracy of the emotions of his characters.

I can’t really say enough about the experience. Just think about pretty much every platitude you’ve ever heard about the power of art and culture. Then repeat.

On the way out we ran into Evan on the sidewalk. He asked how we liked the play, and we gushed. We told him we didn’t know about the plot in advance. “I don’t know if you know, but we have a son who’s disabled,” Beth said. Evan nodded and said, yes, he reads our blogs and he knew.

After Evan got us a cab, Beth and I realized on our ride that Evan had taken some special care of us, knowing about the play and our unique connection to it.

Between the humanity of the play and our Steppenwolf friend, it was a day that reminded me of how good people can be. Thanks, Steppenwolf, thanks Evan, I needed that.

(FYI; The Herd has been extended to June 14—go!)

The first Chicago high school built to serve an exclusively African-American student population opened its doors in 1935, and Wanda Bridgeforth, a 93-year-old writer in my Wednesday memoir-writing class, was a freshman there that year.

Wanda swells with pride any time DuSable High School is mentioned — her Class of ‘39 was the first to complete all four years there. “I was in the birthday class,” she beams.

Wanda at her 90th birthday party with the writers.

DuSable was built on Chicago’s South Side 15 years before the Brown v. Board of Education decision — Wanda says it was built to keep schools segregated. “We had boundaries back then,” she says. “We knew not to cross Cottage Grove, 51st Street or the train tracks.” Everyone inside those boundaries was Black, Wanda says. “That was our neighborhood, and DuSable was our neighborhood high school.”

When DuSable first opened, Wanda recalls some neighborhood parents applying for permits to get their children in nearby White high schools. “Their parents didn’t think a Black school could be any good,” she says, adding that she felt sorry for those kids. “Our classes were crowded,” she acknowledges, remembering 50 or so students squeezing into classrooms at DuSable. “But at those other schools, if you were Black and you wanted to be in a play, you had to be a maid or a butler. At DuSable, we did everything, we were in all the plays, we wrote the school newspaper, we were having such a good time at DuSable.”

Wanda was in high school between 1935 and 1939, and during those four years she walked DuSable’s hallways with some pretty impressive classmates, including:

• Nat King Cole, famous jazz vocalist and pianist
• John H. Johnson, Chairman and CEO of Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines
• Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, one of the first African Americans to sign with an NBA team
• Harold Washington, first African-American mayor of Chicago
• Ella Jenkins, leading performer of children’s music
• Redd Foxx, comedian and actor
• Dinah Washington, jazz vocalist and “Queen of the Blues”

Nat Cole added King to his name later,” Wanda says with a laugh. “You know, like Old King Cole!” She knew Redd Foxx when he was Jon Sanford (yes, like Sanford and Son), and she remembers Dinah Washington as Ruth Jones  — they changed their names once they became stars.

DuSable’s initial fame was in its music program, and Wanda performed in the “Hi-Jinks” student talent shows there. “We put on shows that were better than what was going on in Chicago professional theatres,” she says. “With musicians like Ruthie Jones and Nat Cole and all of those guys, we couldn’t miss!”

The venerable DuSable.

Wanda was quoted in an Chicago Tribune article after her work with the DuSable High School Alumni Coalition for Action finally convinced the city to designate DuSable as a landmark. “When we came along, education was a big thing. That was the goal of almost every kid, of every parent,” she told the reporter. “I know my mother and father always said to me, ‘I want you to do better than I did.'” “My mother said, ‘I don’t want you to have to do house work. I want you to have a career.’” Wanda did  — as an audiometrist and bookkeeper  — and she credits DuSable with helping to make that possible.

At DuSable’s 80th anniversary party earlier this month, Wanda received the Powerful Woman Award and will soon have her picture added to those of her fellow famous alumni on the school’s Wall of Fame. A poem Wanda wrote about her alma mater was included in the 80th anniversary program — I’ll leave you with her words here, along with a hearty congratulations to Wanda Johnson Bridgeforth, one very powerful woman.

Ode to DuSable

by Wanda Johnson Bridgeforth

Birthday Class 1939

Your doors were opened in One Nine Three Five
A lot of folks said you would not survive.
Because you were built in the “Hood”
Your educating would not be good.
To be sure their kids schooling was right
Parents sent them to schools that were white.
“Separate but equal” was their thought
But at DuSable we were well taught.
You produced doctors, dentists, nurses and teachers,
Lawyers, judges, artists, stenos and preachers,
Writers, composers and politicians,
Actors, dancers, singers and musicians.
Entrepreneurs and inventors carry your name
And your athletes have reached the Hall of Fame.
So we lift our voices to the sky
Singing the praises of
JEAN BAPTISTE POINTE DuSABLE HIGH.

Note: A savvy 74-yearold writer from my Wednesday memoir-writing class has started a blog called Beth’s Class where she publishes essays she and fellow writers from that class have written. Wanda’s Ode to DuSable was first published on the Beth’s Class blog, and essays by other writers from that class have been published there, too. Check it out!

A few years ago our German friend Gerald visited with us on his way to an extended hiking holiday in Alaska. He’s smart, perceptive and analytical, so it’s always fun, and sometimes painful, to get his take on us Americans and our America. (For the record, he’s a good sport and takes his share of digs from Beth and me about the myriad quirks of life in Germany.)

Gerald sat in the passenger side of our car as we toured. Whenn he noticed the warning on the side mirror that says “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear,” he looked at me in wonder, his expression begging for an explanation. The same thing happened when we stopped in a convenience store. He bought a lighter for his upcoming camping trip, read the warning sticker out on the Bic out loud, and flashed me the same look. I came up as empty as before.

During this same visit that Gerald wondered aloud, “I don’t know why Americans are so proud of this place.” So many places he’d been were so shabby. “Your roads, airports, trains—they’re like a poor country’s.”

I had no argument then. Still don’t. Our public infrastructure has only worsened since that visit, and I blame it on bottled water.

Well, not bottled water per se, but in my lifetime it sure seems like we have devalued the idea of public space and common interest. It’s like Gordon Gecko from Wall Street has won.

So bottled water. Apart from the idiotic waste in transporting it, packaging it, getting rid of the packaging—and the fact that it’s often not any higher quality than tap water, there’s something more insidious about it. Making water a consumer purchase begins moving away from the idea that clean water is in the public commons that belongs to all of us, and that we all have an interest in keeping it clean and available.

When water is a purchased good on an individual level, it becomes something different altogether. Clean water becomes another thing that some people can afford to have and others can’t. And the ones who can afford it aren’t as likely to be interested in keeping lakes and streams and public supplies clean. We’re not there yet, but I can see it from here.

This every-person-for-him/herself dynamic is playing out everywhere—public schools, public transportation, public spaces like airports. And Amtrak.

We have the money in this country to have the best rail system in the world, the best airports, the best roads. And no hungry people. That tells me something isn’t working.

If we want these things to be better, they will be. We have the money, if we remember the “we” part.

I have a notion about what’s not working, and I’m working on it. In the meantime, as long as we’re talking about Amtrak and the broader ideology around it, read this New Yorker piece. Please do. (Thanks Lydia!) Here’s an excerpt:

We all should know that it is bad to have our trains crowded and wildly inefficient—as Michael Tomasky points out, fifty years ago, the train from New York to Washington was much faster than it is now—but we lack the political means or will to cure the problem.

Please read it. And vote. And don’t watch TV News. And remember, we’re in this together.

A couple weeks ago as I walked to a sandwich shop I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a boy in a wheelchair and a man, presumably his dad, collecting themselves on the sidewalk. They had clearly just unloaded from the car parked nearby, and were readying for a walk.

We had a nice visit.

It wasn’t the kind of wheel chair designed to be propelled by its user. It was, instead, focused on holding the boy—who clearly had substantial physical disabilities—in proper posture, with a headrest, and foot rests arranged for that purpose, and with high handles to make it easy for someone else, in this case his dad, to push. Seeing it was a flashback to my own rituals of outings with our son Gus.

The father made a last round of adjustments to the boy’s ball cap, to his seatbelt, and then gathered himself to push his son on a walk.

For a moment, I wanted to walk up to him to say something like, well, I didn’t know what. That it’ll be all right? What the hell did I know about whether it would be all right? And as a frog the size of Alaska grew in my throat, I thought better of saying anything to him just then, because well, a stranger walking up and breaking into tears might not lift up his day.

By the time I left the shop with my sandwiches, and I was more composed, the man and his son were long gone.

This past weekend Beth and I traveled to Wisconsin to see our son Gus, who is 28 and living in a group home with three other guys. The weather was nice, and—though Gus did eventually learn to propel his own wheelchair, I supplied the horsepower this time, pushing him with Beth holding onto my arm. (Whitney stayed in our hotel room, as she is either jealous of or unnerved by Gus; a little of both, I think.)

We had a happy, uneventful visit, like we always do, and are always grateful to have. We took our Zipcar back to our Milwaukee area hotel, visited with a friend who moved up there recently from Chicago, and spent a quiet night.

The next morning, we headed to the Amtrak station and boarded right on time. We sat up front in the disability seats so Whitney had room to stretch out. A woman who was sitting in the disability section across the aisle from us noticed the dog after we settled, leaned over and asked whether we wanted her space, as it provided more space for Whitney.

After a few seconds, she realized we had the same kind of spacious accommodations and said, “Oh, I didn’t see you already have room.”

Minutes later, after the train eased out of the station, she leaned over and said to Beth, “Can I be so bold as to ask how long you’ve had that dog and how it’s working for you?”

Well, 20 minutes later we’d learned that she’d lost her sight in one eye and the other was in bad shape. All to diabetic retinopathy—the same thing that got Beth’s eyesight decades ago. That she was a couple years older than us, and that she’d been diabetic for 50 years. A nurse herself, she’d always been praised by her doctors for being a model diabetic. But that’s not always enough.

She and her husband’s situation is a lot like Beth’s and mine had been some 30 years ago. She’d had good doctors and bad doctors and doctors who had the bedside manner of Attila the Hun. She can see some out of one eye and is in that awkward phase where she is doing just well enough and badly enough by herself to annoy or frighten the people around her. She isn’t blind—yet, but she wants to get ready in case total blindness comes. But how? She needed help but didn’t want to drag down her husband with endless needs, nor did she like losing independence and needing his help. For his part, her husband, a “type A” as she put it, seemed to be struggling not to over protect.

Her experience rang so familiar that it gave me that feeling I had when I saw that man and his son. This time, though, Beth could carry the conversation while I reset myself. Eventually, as Beth and I related our experiences—and how similar they were to our new acquaintance—it seemed almost revelatory to the woman across the aisle.

On her request, I wrote down the title of Beth’s book and said, “I added my email address, too” and let her know she could contact us. We said goodbye and I followed Whitney as she led Beth off the train. An Amtrak redcap came to assist our fellow traveler.

I would’ve liked, I suppose, to tell her everything will be all right. The same thing I guessed I’d hoped to be able to say to the young father on the street.

But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t, honestly. Beth and I are better than all right. But it isn’t the all right either of us had in mind. And it was harder than hell to get to our version of all right. That’s what the father and his son on the Chicago street and our stranger on the train face. Even if they have great friends and family and resources, it’s going to be really hard.

What I realized, though, was what I saw in that woman’s face was not so much a revelation as relief, relief in knowing, even briefly, that she wasn’t alone.

And if I ever see that man and his son again, that’s what I’ll tell him. You’re not alone.

You might remember my post about Laura Martinez, a blind woman who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and worked at Charlie Trotter’s here in Chicago until the five-star restaurant closed in 2012. After two frustrating years trying to persuade another restaurant to hire her, Laura has opened La Diosa, her own restaurant at 2308 N. Clark in Chicago. I ate there for the first time last Thursday. It. Is. Fantastic.

The food was so delicious, and the staff (Laura and her husband Mauri) so charming that I returned there for lunch Monday, and I’m having lunch there again today, too! Joan Stinton, a writer in one of the memoir classes I lead, took a CTA bus to La Diosa with Whitney and me on our inaugural visit last week, and she generously agreed to write a guest post about our experience.

Everything in its place

by Joan Stinton

She is adorable in her oversized toque and dark glasses. She wears the traditional white, double-breasted jacket and dark trousers of a chef. Her hand rests gently on the arm of her husband, Mauri. This is Laura Martinez, a graduate of the Cordon Bleu, a survivor of Charlie Trotter’s kitchen, and now, the owner of a tiny restaurant in a vintage building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

That’s Chef Laura on the right, alongside her husband and fellow restaurateur Mauri.

Laura, blind since birth, has always wanted to cook. It sounds kind of crazy at first: sharp knives. Hot stoves. The kitchen can be a very dangerous place even for a sighted person.

But if you think about it, it makes sense. Sound. Touch. Taste. Smell. These other senses serve anyone well in a kitchen environment. In addition, a professional kitchen is a very organized place. “Mise en place,” the rigor of “everything in its place,” prevails. Chefs set up their work stations with meticulous precision. Knives, plates, spices, condiments: always in the same order, in the same place, every day. A chef is disciplined enough to prepare an order blindfolded. In a way, La Diosa is a perfect environment for Laura.

I got to meet this chef and her husband Mauri last week at their cozy restaurant. La Diosa is about two tables wide and four tables deep, and the menu has traditional Hispanic dishes and, true to her time with Charlie Trotter’s, exotic fish specials.

But this was not the first time I’d crossed paths with Laura.

After my husband Brian retired a few years ago, he became quite a foodie. When a local charity auction offered “A Day in Charlie Trotter’s Kitchen,” I saw an opportunity to give him something he would really enjoy. I won the bid. Brian would be in the kitchen during an actual restaurant shift. I made a dinner reservation with a few friends for that night so we could eat with Brian and hear all about his big day.

Brian was quite giddy when he sat down with us for dinner and recapped his afternoon. One detail stood out for him. At one point amid all the activity, he heard the words, “SHARPS, SHARPS” behind him. He turned and saw a petite, blind chef, arms stretched forward, holding knives pointed downward, walking confidently through the kitchen. The sort of image that sticks with you, I guess! That woman was Laura Martinez, of course. Brian said it would be easy to assume that this blind chef had an insurmountable obstacle, but she was clearly right at home in Charlie Trotter’s kitchen.

And so it is at La Diosa. Laura is right where she belongs—mise en place, everything in its place.

Beth here. I’m heading back to La Diosa one evening next week with my husband Mike and some other friends. Stay tuned to the blog for a review of their dinner menu.