Elkhart Lake, Wis., has a population of 900+ by the Census Bureau’s count, but by the locals’ estimates, that balloons to 10s of thousands during big tourist weekends in the summer.

I know this because I just got back from Elkhart Lake. I accompanied Beth, who had multiple gigs at the Sheboygan Children’s Book Festival, which she’s likely to report on later this week.

Meantime, I was reminded that despite all the homogenizing forces in modern life—mass media, chain stores, interstate highways and drive-thrus, distinct local culture continues to withstand all those forces.

From those looong Northern Plains oooooooooohs made famous (and exaggerated) in the movie Fargo, to drink specials at local joints offering $3.00 Old Fashioneds (do you want brandy or whiskey, sweet or sour?), to the Friday night fish fry featuring fresh Blue Gill, we knew we weren’t in Printers Row anymore. And it was glorious.

We stayed at a really big resort called the Osthoff, which is a nice place, but like all the best of Wisconsin, not so nice that you would ever feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. It sits next to the water, and the famous Road America race track is less than a mile away. Saturday and Sunday mornings brought the muffled distant roar of sports cars screaming around the four-mile circuit, but even that wasn’t really unpleasant, as it didn’t last, and it beat hell out of the sound of garbage trucks in the morning, which is our neighborhood’s version of the rooster.

The trees, according to the local newspaper, were at peak autumn color. I certainly wont argue. Speaking of the paper, it was delivered outside our door each morning. It’s a Gannett paper, but not the USA today. No, the Sheboygan Press. And I was happy to see that local print journalism is healthy and alive. And any question I had about Sheboygan, Elkhart Lake, and the Kettle Moraine area losing their identities was set straight when I read the round-up of coming events. It included:

Read it for yourself–Sheboygan!

• A fundraising dinner put on by an animal welfare agency to benefit its Trap, Neuter, Return program—which is pretty much what it sounds like: a way of managing feral cats. Featured: a Spay-ghetti and No-balls dinner.
• Juxtaposed in the next column, a Norwegian Lutefisk dinner, presented by the Sons of Norway Vennskap Lodge #5-622. This one promised meatballs—Norwegian ones, among other Norse delicacies.

And one other thing regarding cuisine: around Chicago menus often include “Sheboygan” style bratwurst. As far as I can tell, Sheboygan has meant a course grind, and not the whitish, veal based kind of bratwurst. And I assumed it was the pride an joy of, well, Sheboygan.

Well, Beth was chauffeured around by a volunteer and she kept asking about where to get a good Sheboygan brat. Finally, the volunteer, a great guy who was fearful of sounding rude, told her that they didn’t know of anything called Sheboygan style bratwurst. They just knew bratwurst. Served on a really good roll. They finally stopped for one between gigs, and Beth brought hers home to share.

Whatever it’s called, it was really, really, really good.

On Wisconsin!

It’s “Disability Awareness Week” at Wilmot Elementary School in Deerfield, Illinois, and the kids there had already enjoyed a special guest before I showed up there with Whitney yesterday. Melissa Stockwell, a three-time Paratriathlon World Champion and decorated U.S. Army veteran, had been at Wilmot the day before us.

Melissa was serving in Baghdad in 2004 when a roadside bomb hit the HUMVEE she was traveling in, resulting in the amputation of her left leg above the knee. She was the first female to lose a limb in active combat, and four years later, she was the first Iraqi War veteran to qualify for the Paralympics: she represented the United States on the swim team.

After Beijing, Melissa took to triathlons. She is currently a three-time World Champion, and When she isn’t running, swimming or bicycling, she works as a certified
prosthetist at Scheck and Siress Prosthetics in Chicago, fitting people who have had amputations with artificial limbs.

Whit’s always up for a class visit.

When my talks at Wilmot were over yesterday, I took Whitney’s harness off and let any of the interested kids come by and pet her. As Whitney flipped over and over again
for belly rubs, one of the school volunteers there told me that after the presentation the day before, Melissa Stockwell had the kids come up and touch the prosthetics she works with.

“Wow! I want to go to this school!” I exclaimed to the gaggle of kids petting Whitney. “I know,” one of them said.

“We’re lucky.”

Budweiser’s been running a very popular commercial against drunk driving that takes a novel approach: Be careful, be responsible, and get home safe…to your dog, who’s counting on you, after all. It’s really effective, all the more if you have a dog thing. You can watch here if you haven’t seen it.

The effectiveness of the dog angle in that little ad reminded me of a David Sedaris story called April and Paris. It opens with a bit of advice for anyone raising funds in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Katrina: Show animals in distress, not people—you’ll get a lot more donations that way. You can read April and Paris here, and it’s well worth the time, like pretty much anything Sedaris does.

Back to drunk driving, I’ve always had an offbeat opinion on the subject. It goes like this: I don’t care why someone does something stupid in a car that results in accident, injury or worse. Driving is serious business, and stupid is stupid. If a driver is perfectly sober and blows a light or changes lanes abruptly without signaling and hurts or kills another person, I don’t care why they did it—but it should carry consequences, whether or not the driver is drunk.

Driving drunk is bad because we know it increases your chances of driving poorly and endangering yourself and other people. But it’s the driving poorly part that is the issue. If you’re guiding a two ton missile and you’re texting or listening to angry hateful radio or you’re thinking about something other than driving safely, you’re as dangerous as a drunk driver. Because it’s an enormous responsibility, not an entertainment and it’s not a right.

This opinion is informed by having ridden a motorcycle on public streets for decades. I always realized it was risky, and to reduce the risk I wore protective gear, and practiced what I learned in multiple riding school sessions. On a bike, you learn to expect the absolute worst behavior from drivers, and the drivers consistently deliver. And when it’s your life, you tend to treat a driver’s failure to yield as a federal offense.

As a pedestrian commuter in a busy city I witness horrible, irresponsible driving, every single day. (And that includes some bicyclists who give bicyclists a bad name.) And off course, Beth’s written about her near misses in traffic here in the past.

I’m not saying that drunk driving is OK. The cultural and legal shift to preventing was absolutely necessary and it’s done a lot of good. I don’t think we should lock people up for failing to use their turn signals (though, sometimes…). We’ve got too many people in jail as it is. I’d just like something of a cultural change that recognizes that driving is serious business. And that enforcement of existing traffic laws (not just speeding) were better enforced, and that penalties for any kind of bad driving were stiffer.

It’s touchy, because we’ve all done stupid things in a car and I think we cringe at the thought that what we consider an honest mistake would be compounded by losing our license or worse. That puts me in a minority about this hawkishness on sober bad driving, and I have learned to mostly keep it to myself. But I began thinking of it again when I read a heartbreaking op-ed called Why Drivers Get Away with Murder by the mother of a 9-year old who was killed by a driver who didn’t see the boy—who was holding his father’s hand as the pair walked across a New York Street (in the crosswalk).

She makes her own argument, and I hope you’ll read it–as well as the comments, many of which are pretty thought provoking. There might be a tendency to dismiss her thoughts as natural, and overwrought, in the wake of a tragic loss. I think the tragedy simply awakened her to the kind of crazy risks lots of us take, every day, that we’ve somehow numbed ourselves to.

So let’s be careful out there, okay?

My first high school reunion — the 10-year one — happened right after I lost my sight. I didn’t go.

I haven’t been to any since then, either. Friends and family members who go to high school reunions tell me it’s hard to recognize old friends when you can see them. Blind at a high school reunion? I’d feel like I was a punchline.

Back in high school I was in the marching band.

I was a scrawny girl in my teens, and I wore overalls nearly every day. I hoped they’d camouflage the shapeless undeveloped girl hiding underneath. Wire-rim glasses with octagon frames helped me see where I was going, and braces did their best to straighten my teeth. I never had a boyfriend, no one asked me to prom, and I was just unsophisticated and inexperienced enough to think of those four years as fun.

Know what? I still do. I had a ball during my time at York Community High School in Elmhurst, Ill., and many of my closest friends today are kids I met there.

Few of us did anything you’d call admirable, though, and when Mike first read me a letter saying I’d been selected one of York’s “distinguished alumni” I thought it was a mistake. When he got to the part that said the award was called “Dukes of Distinction” I dismissed it as something silly.

I was wrong on both counts.

The Dukes of Distinction award ceremony is an annual grand affair with a string orchestra (York students, of course!) and this year it will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, Nov. 6 at York Community High School, 355 W. St. Charles Road in Elmhurst. Two of the 2014 honorees will be awarded Posthumously: Dr. Martin Stoker (Class of 1939) worked with patients in Elmhurst for 48 years, and Joe Vanek (Class of 2003) is a veteran who died in Iraq in 2007 and was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. The others:

• Dr. Robert T. Chen (Class of 1973) is a medical researcher working on the AIDS vaccine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
• John Coughlan (Class of 1960) is a retired college coach who was once named NCAA National Indoor Coach of the Year.
• Gary Rydstrom (Class of 1977) is a sound engineer who works at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker and has won seven Academy Awards for Sound and Sound Editing.
• Kathleen Sherman (Class of 1970) is a real-live singing nun who is committed to working for non-violence, especially in Chicago

And then, me. Maybe it was a mistake after all. Or maybe The Dukes of Distinction judge loves dogs. But hey, however it happened, I’m in!

They’re serving free cake and beverages at the ceremony, Whitney and I honest-to-goodness get to walk on a red carpet, and event organizers tell me Les Zunkel (the longtime colorful director of York’s musicals) will be on hand as “stage manager” to guarantee no speech lasts longer than three minutes. I especially look forward to meeting these other honorees — we’re returning to York the next morning to talk with students while class is in session.

So mark your calendars for Thursday, November 6 — the ceremony takes place in a room at York High called the York Commons, described to me as “a beautiful indoor 2-story atrium area that you may remember as the outdoor courtyard.” It’s free, no need to make reservations, you don’t have to be a York graduate to attend, the public is welcome, doors open at 7:00 and the ceremony starts at 7:30 p.m. — let’s make it a mini-reunion! Just remember to tell this Duke of Distinction who you are when you come up to say hello. In exchange, I promise I’ll picture you the way you looked 38 years ago.

You can link to Elmhurst Community Unit School District’s web site for longer bios of this year’s Dukes of Distinction winners. You’ll find photos there, too, in case one of the other DODs has a name that sounds familiar…

The lakefront at dusk on Sunday.

Beth and I took an early fall walk to Lake Michigan yesterday evening. For us, that’s a few city blocks then the serpentine bike/pedestrian path and then we’re looking at the Shedd Aquarium, the Field museum, the Adler Planetarium and…the lakefront. Framed by the skyline. It’s an embarrassment of riches, but no apologies here.

For the two falls we spent on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, there wasn’t a lot of seasonal color on the beach. But we felt it. The change. Water still warm, beaches less populated, breezes that raised goose pimples, the sun warm but pinched. Fisherman casting on the beach instead of sun tanners and body surfers.

Right now back in Urbana, Ill., where Beth and I became Beth and I and, in a real way, Beth became Beth and I became me, I’m sure fall is spectacular. Not mountainous, but big ancient trees with roots that buckle sidewalks, and whose leaves turn crazy colors, making the quiet streets psychedelic tunnels.

Here in the city it’s different.

Or not.

The light slants against glass and steel and terra cotta and freshwater. The sun is warm but is soft. The lake is calm. The grinding violence of winter is near, but right now the sky’s pastel and the skyscrapers look like intentional works of art and not joints where you slog to work.

The Chicago White Sox just finished a baseball season, and they will not play games until next year. But they won 10 more than last year and I’ll wager they win 10 or more again next. They retired a player … a hero? A role model? I don’t know. Paul Konerko is just a good guy. There was a special celebration of his retirement at the game Saturday night, and we were there, and it was over the top and yes, I cried. All for a guy I don’t know, really, but somehow think I do after watching him for 16 years.

Everybody in professional baseball is talented—but not all work as hard at it as he did. He couldn’t run, he waddled like a penguin and he managed to hit a grand slam in game two of the World Series in 2005. Which the White Sox won in four games.

That was fall. And I remember it vividly. I will always.

I love fall.