I’m rooting for the Seahawks in Sunday’s Super Bowl, and here’s why: they’re the only NFL team in the Super Bowl who signed a player with an obvious disability.

Seattle Seahawk running back Derrick Coleman is the NFL’s first legally deaf offensive player. He rushed for 1,700 yards and 19 touchdowns during his college career at UCLA, and he’s educated coaches at all levels of his career about his ability to communicate with his team.

Coleman was not drafted immediately after college, but the Minnesota Vikings signed him as a free agent in 2012. He was waived in training camp, and the Seahawks signed him as a free agent in December of that year.

A video the NFL produced about Coleman before last year’s Super Bowl does a great job showing how he uses resourcefulness to solve problems related to his deafness. It opens with a shot of his mother tearing up her pantyhose: she and Derrick figured out that wrapping it around his hearing aids cuts the feedback he’d been getting under the football helmet.

The video goes on to demonstrate how Coleman educated his teammates about his disability. He can lip-read, so he taught Russell Wilson to always turn around and look directly his way when giving audibles. The quarterback has to take his mouth guard out from time to time, too, so Coleman can see his lips. The filmmakers interviewed the Seahawks coach in the video, and he recognizes the extra effort that Derrick Coleman always puts in. “His work ethic is outstanding,” the coach says. “We just had to put him on the field to see if he could put it all together.” Obviously, he could. Put it all together, I mean. So well, in fact, that he helped the Seahawks make it to this Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Coleman won’t be playing in the game this Sunday, unfortunately – he was put on the injured reserve list after cracking a bone in his foot during warm-ups. I know he’ll be rooting for the Seahawks from the sidelines this Sunday, though, and you know what? So will I.

Note: This post originally appeared this past Wednesday, January 28, 2015 on the Easter Seals blog.

I enjoyed reading a series of posts by blogger Blindbeader about a recent visit to New York City so much that I asked her to write a guest post for us with her NYC recommendations. I’ve never met the author of the Blindbeader blog personally, but I’ve come to know her by reading her posts there — she works for a software developer on their computer helpdesk, and lives in Edmonton, Alberta with her husband, three cats and guide dog Jenny.

New York City — Goin’ in blind

Blogger Blindbeader and guide dog Jenny waiting for a water taxi in NYC.

by Blindbeader

I was 16 years old the first time anyone I knew had ever been to New York City, and since hearing my friends describe their trip (admittedly constrained by high school rules), I’ve dreamed about going myself. An opportunity presented itself last month, so my sighted husband and I packed up our big duffel bag and my guide dog, Jenny, and flew from Edmonton to New York over the Christmas holidays. We had a fabulous time, and I’m delighted to share some of my top New York City tips with you Safe & Sound blog readers.

1. Purchase the New York Pass. I urge anyone who is spending more than three days in new York to get this rather than go on a theme bus tour where you spend 90% of your time on the bus and the rest just taking pictures. Most major museums and sights are included on the New York Pass, as well as unique and awesome walking tours — it doesn’t take long to save money and do some pretty nifty things.
2. Ask licensed tour guides for pointers on places to eat (terrific food!) or apps that might help you get cheap Broadway tickets (something that is a must-do in New York).
3. Walk quickly. If you have a guide dog, the dog will try and guide you around the massive crowds of people on city sidewalks; if you have a cane, you are pretty much at their mercy, living on a hope and a prayer that three people in ten feet won’t trip over it and break it (always carry a spare!).
4. Don’t believe what you’ve heard about New Yorkers being rude. People there were incredibly friendly! I took the Subway by myself and walk from W 40 St and 8 Avenue to E 38 St and Park Avenue (about 8 blocks) with my guide dog and GPS. People in the Subway were helpful with directions to the closest exit to where I wanted to go, and confirmed that I was going the right way. It was an incredibly empowering trip for my guide dog and me,, and you can read more about that journey here.
5. Cross streets when most other pedestrians are crossing.. Traffic is nuts! I ran into situations where I had to cross against the light (cars were blocking the intersections), and there were very few audible traffic signals, at least where we traveled. Just breathe deeply and walk quickly.
6. Take a walking tour. Walking tours are a terrific way to see the city! My personal favorites were the Food on Foot Tour (who could say no to food?) and the NYC Gospel Music Tour provided by Inside Out Tours. No one seemed to bat an eye at our party of two humans and one dog, and 98% of all the walking tours we did were described so well that it didn’t matter if you could see or not.
7. Take a water taxi ride. The New York Water Taxi tour tour guide was descriptive enough that I could picture the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Ellis Island.
8. Visit the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. This museum offers an accessible guide book that we picked up at the information booth, and I was totally blown away! With the tactile/braille maps and the accompanying talking pen (you could scan the pen along the pages and it would tell you where you were, plus it read the information placards for each exhibit directly) that came with the book I could have navigated the Intrepid entirely on my own. It was honestly the coolest accessible booklet I have ever seen.
9. Set up a special tour with the Museum of Modern Art in advance. MoMa allows people with visual impairments to set up either individual or group tours through their exhibits. I booked a two-hour tour and was able to do a combination touch tour of sculptures and descriptive tour of the Matisse cutouts that were on exhibit at the time. The guide was a pro, both describing things well and letting me deal with other museum-goers who were taking pictures of Jenny, not the sculptures. Note: these special tours need to be booked at least 4 weeks in advance.

If you travel with a guide dog to New York City, be forewarned: NYC is an incredibly “doggie” city. If your guide dog is in any way dog-distracted, keep alert. That being said, almost all the dogs we came across were incredibly well-behaved, and Jenny herself did her best to not let other dogs distract her from her work.

Overall, I loved New York City — the vibe, the food, the people — I will most certainly be back!

It’s not far away now. The White Sox annual fan fest just wrapped up Sunday, sold out—partly in celebration of the 10^th Anniversary of the White Sox World Series Championship—but also out of optimism for a great coming season. The Sox added some terrific players, they’ve got some young ones developing fast, and, well, at this time of year, hungry for sunshine and baseball, I’d be optimistic regardless of what they’d done in the off-season.

There was some baseball sadness, too—the great Ernie Banks died on Friday. I could write about Ernie Banks, but man, there’s no shortage of accounts out there. I especially like a couple, one by Roger Wallenstein, a lifelong Sox fan who recalls the Aparicio vs. Banks arguments of his childhood, and one from a local sportswriter and radio guy, Barry Rozner.

Need a little beauty in the middle of winter? Check out Brian Miller’s photo gallery.

All this daydreaming of baseball past and future is a sign—we’re at the point in winter where the doldrums are accumulating, and it’s hard to keep a straight line of thought, at least for me.

Which is my way of saying, I got nothing this week except a couple of articles that I found compelling enough to share. I hope you’ll give them a read.

• When I lived in Washington, D.C. way back when I discovered a magazine called Washington Monthly. It’s fostered some of the very best government and policy journalism and journalists, and happily, it has maintained standards.
  This month, there’s a piece about the legal standing of “corporations as people.” The writer, a Boston College law professor, makes the argument for corporate personhood—with some proper clarifications, and I have to agree. (Read it before you pass judgment.)
• Football’s almost over, thankfully, but it’s going out in a ball (get it, see what I did there?) of fire. Well, here’s an article about a running pet peeve of mine—the claim that big sporting events, from Super Bowls to Olympics—are economic boons. Ask Glendale, Ariz., about that.
• From a self-serving point of view, I love good press about passive house, which is the building design methodology and energy standard that I promote in my day job. Here’s a really nice piece at National Geographic.
• For a little visual relief and some pure beauty, give these albums a look. Our nephew Brian Miller teaches English in Japan, and he’s a superb photographer who’s capturing and sharing what he sees.

And, you know, there’s this, too. Adds ten years to my life every time I see it, at the very least.

[mlbvideo id=”7143453″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /]

See you next week.

Last night a news show on public television called Chicago Tonight ran a feature about “The Village Movement: How Elders are Aging in Place.” If you link to it here and look very closely, you’ll see footage of me at the beginning of the segment.

The back story: I lead three memoir-writing classes in Chicago each week. Two of them are sponsored by Lincoln Park Village, which is one of many “virtual villages” across the country. From the Chicago Tonight web site:

Folks over age 60 are opting to stay in their homes and communities well into their golden years. A collection of “virtual villages” are popping up all over the country, providing engagement, services, and a new way of looking at how we age.

Lincoln Park Village here in Chicago boasts over 400 members, and its classes — everything from meditation to film studies to my memoir class — meet in people’s homes. Chicago Tonight knew they’d need to show some background video while interviewing experts about the “Village Movement,” so they showed up at our memoir-writing class yesterday to get some footage.

For the class starting on February 5, all Whitney needs to do is get me across the street.

Recognizing that interest in memoir-writing for seniors is growing along with the population, and knowing that seniors here in Chicago are on waiting lists to get into classes, I decided to start another one right here in our Printer’s Row neighborhood:

Easy writing exercises will help writers age 60 and older tell their stories of childhood, adventure, life’s losses and triumphs. The classis open to seniors at all levels — from those who would simply like to start keeping personal journals to those interested in writing a full-fledged memoir.

The course will meet in the Sanctuary at Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on February 5, February 12, February 26, March 5, March 12 and March 19 (note: no class on Thursday, February 19) The fee is $60, and space is limited, so sign up soon. You can use a credit card to register and pay online, and if you’d like to register using a check, no problem. Just email me at info@bethfinke.com for more information.

Writers do not have to live in our neighborhood to join this new class – we’re pretty close to all sorts of public transportation – and you don’t have to be a member of Lincoln Park Village or Renaissance Court to attend this one, either. If you live in the Chicago area, consider joining me for this new class — I’d love to hear your stories.

There’s lots of kinds of teamwork.

Last week my friend Dean and I parked downstairs in his man cave and watched part of an NFL game. At one point, Dean looked away from the screen and said, “These guys just beat the **** out of each other.” I was thinking precisely the same thing at that very moment.

Watching football is getting less and less attractive to me as I get older. Research about the debilitating effect of not only concussions, but the cumulative damage of multiple non-concussive blows to the head, is making me more and more squeamish about watching people do this to one another every weekend. Stories like this about the 1985 Super Bowl Champion Bears make me squirm a little more. When the likes of Mike Ditka says he wouldn’t let his kid play football if he faced that decision today, it’s noteworthy.

I’m not sure what I’d do if I had a kid who wanted to play football. Like any sport, football, if coached well—surely has a lot to offer in terms of learning teamwork and unselfishness and perseverance.

One thing I am sure I’d encourage if I had a kid coming of age—I’d urge him or her to play a musical instrument and play in a band. Growing up, I didn’t associate the notion of teamwork with playing in a school band, or rock and roll band, or jazz ensemble. But of course, it combines all the virtues that are commonly associated with team sports.

In a band or orchestra, you strive for individual excellence, but must put individual interests second to the collective goal of the group. It’s competitive, whether it’s competition for first chair or matching chops in an open jam. You learn you win some you lose some.

I think the same can be said for other group artistic endeavors, like live theater. And, as I’ve learned of late, improv.

For about ever, I’ve confided with Beth that I’d like to take an improv class at Second City or iO, two vaunted institutions of improvisation here in Chicago. I’ve never had delusions of stardom but having watched and enjoyed improv over the years, I developed a fascination with it. Plus, while those who know me know I’m not a conversational wallflower, if you put me in front of an audience I revert to the adolescent, voice cracking, eight grader in speech class.

So, Beth, partly because she always finds the most thoughtful Christmas gifts for me (and I suspect also out of self interest so she wouldn’t hear me talk about doing it anymore) gifted me the eight-week Level 1 class at ImprovOlympic.

I just finished my second session, and I can tell you—it can be nerve wracking, intense, and exhilarating. And you have no choice but to rely on your fellow team members and to support them. It’s not something I understood about improv—doh—but I’ve never done anything, business, sports, or otherwise, that forces me to identify and drop self-consciousness, pre-conceived notions about people, and personal agendas—like this class does.

I’m the oldest in my class, no surprise. It’s been something of a revelation to learn that I can still push myself out of my comfort zone, overcome my fear, and live to enjoy it and tell about it. I hope to write more about it later.

I can happily say that, so far, no one in my group has suffered concussions or other injury.