Losing my sight meant losing a lot of things I’d taken for granted. One of those was The ability to vote independently, without anyone knowing how I voted. I relied on Mike to help me with a ballot. One time Mike was out of town during elections, so a polling judge from the Republican party and a polling judge from the Democratic party squeezed into the booth with my Seeing Eye dog and me — they both had to be there to confirm the ballot was being marked the way I’d asked.

After we moved to Chicago I got word that the city was sponsoring a free class at the Chicago Public Library to learn how to use new assistive technology that would allow voters who couldn’t see to vote independently. I signed up, put headphones on, and was introduced to a special handheld contraption the size of a cell phone that I could use to maneuver the screen and hear my choices. I sat at the library for hours, getting a feel for the machine and practicing pushing the big button on the middle of the device to mark my ballot.

I was very excited to use this new technology to vote for president in 2008, and my polling place had the special equipment on hand, but no one there knew how to make the sound work.

My experience in subsequent elections has gone something like this: I sign in, and poll workers scramble. All of them seem to want to do right by me, but few of them know what “right” is. Where are the headphones? How do you start the talking machine? Why isn’t the audio working? I wasn’t able to vote independently in the 2012 national election,
either. That time a special poll worker was called to the scene. She said I was the first blind person she’d worked with at a polling place. After flipping through the troubleshooting handbook, she plunked it down on the table next to me, announced there was “nothing in this book about talking machines,” and that was that.

Mike was done voting by then, so just like back in 2008, he signed an affidavit, guided me to a voting booth, read the choices out loud and I told him (and anyone else near enough to eavesdrop) who I wanted to vote for.

That time I called the National Federation of the Blind voting hotline when we got home. The kind woman on the phone sounded surprised. The sort of assistive technology they had at my precinct usually works, she said. She took down my information, and then suggested I call my State Board of Elections. I did.

After a fair amount of time on hold, someone from the Illinois Board of Elections finally answered and listened to my story. “Were you able to vote in the end, then?” Yes, I said, making sure they understood that I wasn’t able to do it independently, and that the Help America Vote Act of 2002 mandates that voting systems provide some way for people to vote independently and privately, including those of us with disabilities. “You got assistance, then?” they asked. I told them yes, that my husband had signed an affidavit, that Mike had helped me in the voting booth. “So you were able to vote, then?” I said yes. “Okay, then, you’re all set,” they said, and hung up.

I cried after that election. The results hadn’t gone my way, I was disappointed in the low voter turn-out, and I wasn’t even allowed to vote independently like everyone else. I wasn’t angry at the poll workers at my precinct – they wanted the technology to work for me, they just didn’t know how to make that happen. In the end, I guess my feelings were hurt. It seemed the whole idea of people with disabilities voting independently in elections was a ruse.Fast forward to yesterday’s special runoff mayoral election in Chicago. I’d researched the issues. I’d studied the two candidates. Nothing else on the ballot. Just who I want for mayor. This should be a breeze.

And you know what? It was! Whitney led me to the polling place across the street, I signed in, a poll worker led us to the special voting booth, she handed me the special contraption, I put the headphones on, the sound came in loud and clear, and…abracadabra!I voted. All by myself. A small thing for some, but huge for me. And for all of us who are blind and want to vote independently.

Come on Chicago. We can do this. There’s precedent.

For most of my lifetime, Chicagoans have voted for mayors who could be described as domineering and dictatorial and most often named Daley. Why they have is hard to figure. A friend offered the notion that the electorate is like the victim in an abusive relationship who keeps going back. Another friend offered that it’s like Stockholm Syndrome.

It sure doesn’t make sense, especially given that the one break in the chain of strong-arm mayors in my lifetime was an unqualified success. Harold Washington’s term as mayor showed Chicagoans that city government could work for everybody, and it didn’t have to be a zero-sum game pitting neighborhood against neighborhood for resources. It also provided a short-lived window of city government transparency, and it made inroads on the pay-to-play cronyism that once again is malignant in Chicago.

Washington won partly because two white candidates, one a Daley, split the white vote. The requirement that a candidate get at least 50 percent of the vote—which forced the runoff election tomorrow was adopted to prevent any such “horror” from happening again. That requirement is why current mayor Rahm Emanuel is in a race with insurgent candidate Chuy Garcia.

A lot has changed since Washington ran, but a lot hasn’t. During that campaign a lot of people (well, mostly they were white people) were scared to death. The folks who lived in neighborhoods that had been favored by the old political machine expected reprisals. In general, a lot of white voters feared some racial payback. Other skeptics condescended that someone like Washington couldn’t deal with difficult financial and political decisions. And that there would be an exodus of businesses on the scale of the residential white flight that had already occurred.

Washington’s reign proved the fears were unfounded. But I hear a lot of the same kind of stuff being said about Chuy Garcia as the election approaches and it’s become clear he has a real chance. With some people there is an implication that unless you’re an absolutely ruthless bastard like Emanuel, you can’t be up to the job. That only the ruthless likes of Emanuel or Daley can run this city. That they get done what others can’t precisely because they are dictatorial, make backroom deals with buddies, and are not particularly democratic. That democracy and clean government are too messy to bother with.

In reality, the second Daley has been exposed as a horrible manager incapable of responsible fiscal oversight. (It was actually clear in real time, but Chicagoans looked away.) Just ask Rahm about the mess Daley left him.

But here’s the thing: Rahm has been no better. He has arguably been worse. He’s swapped Daley’s group of cronies–who donate money in exchange city business, contracts and influence–with his own. It used to be more of a shot-and-beer club of insiders, now it’s wine sippers.

People have expressed doubt that Garcia is up to addressing Chicago’s substantial financial challenges. That he doesn’t tell us how he’ll solve problems. (In fact, if you’re willing to work harder than the Chicago press, you can find detailed positions and plans at his web site.)

But here’s the thing: The incumbent has had four years and I still don’t know how he’ll solve those problems. No one does. He has been no better and probably worse than his predecessor in terms of pay-to-play corruption. If you have any doubt about that, I implore you to read these two pieces:

• The Case against Rahm outlines in great detail the long sting of corrupt deals and bad financial management Chicagoans have suffered on the Emanuel administration. It also makes a persuasive case that Emanuel is no better than Rod Blogojevich.
• The Moral Bankruptcy of Chicago Elites painstakingly connects the pay-to-play dots under Emanuel’s administration.

Read them—and don’t worry, they’re not ideological screeds. They’re just cold looks at how bad Chicago’s politics are.

At the end of the day, though, whatever we think about the elected officials, Chicagoans need to find some backbone. In the past, voters have spent four years bemoaning a crooked city government, and the very real corruption tax we all pay as a result. And then they go to the polls and say, “Hey, let’s do this again.”

They somehow allow themselves to be brainwashed that without the backroom deals and the cronyism, Chicago would be in trouble.

Wake up! What is great about Chicago has been accomplished in spite of our series of dictator mayors, not because of them. Decades of Daleys and now Rahm have seen a steady shrinking of the city—it’s down from 3.6 million residents to 2.7. These guys have not delivered. Period.

They and their corrupt practices are in fact a drag on the rest of us. Don’t be afraid of democratic (small “d” emphasized) process that allows—that requires—more of us to participate. I’ve lived in places like that—let me tell you, it’s possible and it works.

Four years ago we had the opportunity to vote for a very solid candidate who understood what needed (and still needs) to change.

But Miguel del Valle came in a disappointing third.

We’ve got another chance. Let’s not blow it again. Don’t be afraid. Vote for Garcia Tuesday.

A cab driver who picked my Seeing Eye dog and me up once had such a heavy accent that I couldn’t tell what he was saying. “Dog face on floor,” he demanded. “Saliva.” He repeated that word a few times to help me understand. “Saliva. Saliva. Saliva.” Was it his mantra?

That’s Floey and Ray with Great Aunt Beth at the Indianapolis zoo. We didn’t catch the elephant’s name.

My face must have betrayed my confusion, because the driver went on to explain that he was Muslim, and in his religion dog saliva is impure. “Dog mouth is near me, seven times I must wash.”

The driver understood that United States law required him to pick up people with disabilities who use service dogs, he just wanted me to keep my dog’s face on the ground, far from him. Whitney wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I appreciated him explaining this to me, and I’ve long believed that reasonable accommodation goes both ways. I commanded “Down!” Whitney laid at my feet, and I placed my hand on her head to keep her there.

Once home, I looked this dog saliva thing up, and sure enough, the ruling comes from the hadith:

The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “If a dog licks the vessel of any one of you, let him throw away whatever was in it and wash it seven times.”

That cab ride came to mind again last week after Indiana’s divisive Religious Freedom Restoration Act made news. If the Governor signed it the way it was originally worded, I wondered if Muslim cab drivers in Indiana would have the right to refuse people with disabilities who used service dogs.

As it happened, my niece Janet invited me to join her and her two youngest kids on a Spring Break road trip to Indianapolis last week, so we were there the very day the Indiana governor signed the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. Nine-year-old Floey loves to practice her sighted-guide skills with Great Aunt Beth, and 6-year-old Ray never tires of folding and unfolding Great Aunt Beth’s white cane, so Whitney got a Spring Break, too: she stayed at home and played with my husband Mike while I was gone . I didn’t hear about the new amended law until I got back home — sounds like if Whitney comes along the next time I head to Indiana, the law is still on our side.

Hello from Alexandria, Va., on the last day of our mini-vacation. It’s been, as always, a blast. And as always, it’s ending too soon but it was long enough to stir a big, bubbling pot of nostalgia.

In the fall of 1977, my junior year at the University of Illinois, I enrolled in a political science course on the history of party politics. I ate it up, and the professor was engaging and demanding in a way intended to build into our 20-year-old gelatinous brains a sense of responsibility as U.S. citizens. One day he announced the availability of internships in Washington, D.C. One semester working on Capitol Hill or at a government agency or other Washingtonian kind of place would earn a semester’s worth of credits.

Dianne and Hank

I filled out the application, sheepishly asked for recommendation letters from past professors, and the next thing I knew, I was living at 1430 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, in Washington, D.C. In minutes I could be walking by the Washington Post Building, the one where Woodward and Bernstein worked, and in another block or so I had a nice view of The White House. Then there were all the Smithsonian Museums, the monuments, all just a stroll away. As Gomer Pyle would say, “Shazam!”

Then again, making a wrong turn (or right turn, depending on your point of view) landed me on a patch of strip clubs and seedy bars. Fourteenth was notorious. Heading north was treacherous; the neighborhoods that had burned in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination hadn’t recovered. (That all has changed, but that’s another post.)

I was as green as green got. But I landed in the right place, Consumers’ Checkbook magazine. My supervisor Dianne took me and a fellow intern, who hailed from South Carolina, under her wing. Next thing you know Dianne introduced us to Pick, and Venita and he (fellow southerners) talked trash over games of backgammon.

Before the feast.

I went back to complete my senior year and met a girl named Beth in my basic reporting class. I told her about my internship, and she eventually did the same program in D.C.

A couple years later, I’d graduated and taken a real job at the magazine and moved to Northern Virgina. At some point Pick needed a roommate and so did I, so we got a place together. Pick introduced me to his North Carolinian friends, a married couple named Michael and Susi, who ended up living upstairs. Pick and I and Mike and Susi all became fast friends, making camping trips along Skyline drive, and one to the Outer Banks of North Carolina—my introduction to saltwater.

I eventually moved back to Illinois and about the time I reconnected with Beth in Urbana, Pick met Hank, and we more or less share anniversaries. Saturday night, Pick and Hank hosted a dinner party for me, Beth, Mike, Susi, and Dianne.

Hank cooked a marvelous meal, Pick made sure everyone had a glass, and a thousand memories were triggered. But it wasn’t maudlin “good old days” stuff. Way back when was fun, but we were all working harder at finding our way in life than we have to now—well, I should say I know I was—and we did plenty of stuff worthy of gut laughs, particularly in hindsight.

There’s a lot good about growing older, at least for us lucky ones. We get more comfortable in our own skins and shed insecurities. Troublesome things that seemed to be really important a long time ago have dissolved, replaced by gratitude and appreciation for a few hours of the company of the people we love. Here’s to all of you.

And to Professor Seligman. I’ll never forget him.

Last week I asked my downtown Chicago group of memoir-writers to come up with 500-word essays titled What Makes Me Happy. “Don’t come back with lists, or with vague things like ‘family and friends’,” I said. I asked them to write about an event from the past couple weeks that left them feeling fresh, energized, rejuvenated. “What was it about that specific experience that made you so happy?” The writers did not disappoint.

Sandy wrote about the teeny-tiny narrow view she has of Lake Michigan from her 7th floor Chicago apartment. “If I stand in the right hand corner of my living room and look to my left with my forehead resting on the window, I can see my small piece of the sky, sand and water.” The sky was a rosy pink the morning she wrote her piece, and the huge blocks of ice at the edge of the lake were starting to melt. “We can see the sand again,” she wrote. “And, instead of non-moving frozen water on the lake, the small waves are showing their white caps as they roll in at the shoreline.”

Nancy shares lunch and laughter with two longtime friends every Sunday, and her essay described them playing a card game after a recent lunch. “I seem to lose more often than I win, but IF Jo and Elaine were here, they’d tell you I was exaggerating.” She said every week each of them thinks they are the loser. “By the following Sunday, nobody remembers who won the week before anyway.”

Thumbing through a photo album she started in 1960 reminded Sheila that the photography hobby she enjoys to this day started with a memorable gift. “Aunt Anona gave me my best 8th grade graduation present,” she wrote. “It was a Kodak Hawkeye camera.”

Tycelia had just returned from a trip to Mexico City where she visited the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacan. “When my husband passed this summer, I felt that all of my happiness had died with him,” she wrote. “But I felt happy to have succeeded in my attempt to climb that magnificent temple — for the first time in months, my heart had a break from sorrow.”

Yesterday was the last meeting for this eight-week session with that group of memoir-writers, and it was energizing to end on such a happy note. The seniors in all four memoir-writing classes I lead here in Chicago are all on spring break now, and so am I.

On the left that’s Pick (a.k.a. Keith Pickerel) and on the right Hank (a.k.a. Henry Londner). We’re lucky to count them as friends.

No doubt I’ll be publishing a post soon on a happy event: Whitney, Mike and I are taking off tonight for a four-day visit in Washington, D.C. We’ll be staying with our dear friends Pick and Hank, and being with those two, enjoying Hank’s fine cooking, singing along to Pick’s sensational piano playing, sharing stories and jokes and laughs, well, that always makes us happy.