It’s been a pretty stimulating month so far:

From front to back that’s Anita, Floey, Moi, my sister Cheryl, and Ray at the Cougars game. My niece Janet took the picture.

• August 1: A lot of talented writers attended my Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground workshop at Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference, and now I can look forward to reading their memoirs once they’re published!
• August 2: Sat in on Kevin Davis’ two-hour workshop at the writer’s conference. My neighbor Margaret was at the conference, too, and on our walk home together we talked about all the new ideas we have now to make the characters we write about come alive.
• August 3: Took a commuter train to the suburbs with Whitney to join family members for a Kane County Cougars baseball game. Renowned baseball organist Nancy Faust has been playing for Sunday afternoon home games for the Cougars ever since retiring from her White Sox gig in 2008, and my friend Amy Mason is the Director of Ticket Operations for the Cougars. So of course Amy set us up with a row of tickets right in front of Nancy — we could actually turn around, name a song, and have Nancy play it instantly on her Hammond B3. I requested Stevie Wonder’s “I wish” and marveled at how she nailed the bass part on the organ’s foot pedals. She played a UB40 tune for my niece Janet, a song from Beauty and the Beast for Floey, and even managed to honor five-year-old Raymond’s request:“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
• August 4: Put together a post for my part-time job moderating the Easter Seals blog in the morning, hopped on a CTA bus with Whitney to lead my Monday memoir-writing class in Lincoln Park in the afternoon, then put on a fancy dress and headed to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. The opening reception for the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) conference was in the lobby there, Mike came along with me, and few things make me happier than being on the arm of a handsome man and having wait staff come around with teeny-tiny unidentifiable concoctions for me to try. Heaven.
  

  That’s me and the legendary baseball organist Nancy Faust. (Cub fans, that’s what a World Series ring looks like.)

• August 5: Our panel at the LEAD conference about the challenges and successes in accessing arts programs if you can’t see was a hit, but that was no surprise — I had Sally Cooper (Volunteer Coordinator at Blind Service Association here in Chicago) and George Abbott (Director of the eLearning Center at the American Foundation of the Blind in New York) at my side! At lunch afterwards I had the good fortune to be seated next to some very fun people from the Pittsburgh Arts Council, and now, who knows, maybe Whitney and I will be heading out there sometime to give presentations and check out the Pittsburgh art scene.
• August 6 & 7 Led my Wednesday and Thursday memoir-writing classes and made some progress on the book I’m writing about all I learn from the writers in those classes . Their topic for next week is “The Best Job I Ever Had,” and after reviewing everything that went on this week, I’d have to say that, hands down, the best job I’ve ever had is the one I have right now. Who could ask for anything more?

Well, we just survived another Lollapalooza, the gargantuan music festival that takes over Grant Park and major thoroughfares like Columbus Avenue for what seems forever every summer. I was going to blog about it–but Beth reminded me, I already had. On August 4, 2014. Since my sentiment’s the same and Lolla is still, OMG, Lolla, I’m just going to repost the first one. 

Mondays with Mike: Note to self—next Lolla, get out of town
Originally published August 4, 2014

Summers in Chicago have dazzled Beth and me since we moved downtown in 2003. Free concerts and movies at Millennium Park. Printers Row Lit Fest right at our front door. Free dance lessons and swing bands at Chicago SummerDance. Every weekend a music and/or neighborhood fest.

Imagine this group, times 50,000, everywhere. For three days.

On the flip side, summer brings lots of tourists. And they seem to have difficulty driving and especially walking—yes walking—in the big city. As in, they like to saunter four abreast unaware of the walking commuters who are trying to get somewhere. They like to stop abruptly on the Michigan Avenue Bridge to take a picture. At 5:00 p.m. on a workday. They rent Divvy bikes and ride them on the sidewalk.

Mostly, I hold the “get off my lawn” cranky old man attitude at bay. I’m happy to have visitors enjoy themselves and spend money here. But it’s hard during the biggest tourist event of the season: Lollapalooza. Helicopters. Traffic. Hordes (an estimated 300,000 last year) of young people traveling around the city in marauding bands of six to 12, trying to figure out the CTA. Now mostly, they seem well behaved, save for the odd midday sidewalk vomiter and the ODs being rushed to hospitals by ambulance.

These three Lolla people had become separated from their pack. As I followed them headed north on Clark, the tall guy screamed into his phone, “We’re headed south on LaSalle.”

But there’s something lemming-like about the whole thing. They all look alike. Almost all appear 24-26 years old. Almost all Caucasian. All working hard at clothing that says I’m a laid back music festival goer. And the obligatory tie-dyed t-shirt/headband “Hey this is sorta like Woodstock, right?” look.

They are by their very presence and number annoying as hell. This isn’t a rant about young people. I work with young people who defy all stupid stereotypes of them. There’s just something painfully contrived about this whole event.

Next year, maybe we’ll head up to Wisconsin to see gus.

Meantime, for now: Lolla people! Get off my lawn!

One of the many, many things Mike and I did to celebrate our wedding anniversary last week was attend the play This Is Our Youth at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. The play starred Michael Cera (of Arrested Development and Juno fame) and nearly all the performances were sold out. The only reason we were able to score tickets last Saturday is because that happened to be the day Steppenwolf set aside a number of tickets for a special audio touch tour of the set for people with visual impairments and their guests.

I’ve written a post about Steppenwolf’s audio touch tours before.

That’s me and my previous Seeing Eye dog Harper with our gracious Steppenwolf hosts on stage a few years ago during the touch tour for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? One of the staff members from Steppenwolf is holding one of the breakable prop bottles and a bouquet of the plastic snapdragons which figure prominently into the play.

Much more than just the tactile experience the name implies, a Touch Tour is a pre-performance program that gives those of us who are blind or have low vision an opportunity to:

• participate in an artistic conversation about a production
• experience a detailed description of the set, props and costumes
• handle key props, set and costume pieces
• tour the set with a sighted guide
• meet the actors and learn about the characters they play

Our This is Our Youth audio touch tour opened with stage manager Cambra Overend explaining what an alley theatre is (the stage is surrounded by audience members on two sides) and how they blocked the scenes to allow everyone in the audience to follow the action. She described different scenes and lines from the play that had given the three young actors particular trouble. Pretty cool for a bunch of blind people to get an inside look, ahem, of a production that’s heading to New York City now. ( This is Our Youth opens on Broadway the 11th of September, and Cambra will be the stage manager for that production, too).

Next came Jack Miggins, the Audio Describer. In addition to describing the play via headphones during the performance, Jack gets on stage before the play while we’re still in our seats to “show” us what the set looks like. He talks while he darts around the stage — that way we can track his voice and get a sense of how close (or far) objects are from one another.

“Here’s the door to the hallway,” Jack called out from stage left last Saturday, knocking on the door so we’d know exactly where it was. The door squeaked as he opened it, too. “You can see into the hallway, but all that’s out here is a ten-speed bike missing a front wheel.” Closer to the front of the stage, he patted the arm of a couch. “It’s brown,” he said. “The décor in this apartment is just different shades of brown, really.” He picked up a plastic milk crate near the couch and told us it had a few record albums in it, including one by Frank Zappa. “Lots of cassettes, too,” he said, giving it a shake so we could here them flopping around. “Oh, yeah, and a squishy Nerf football.”

The play is set in the 1980s, back when I had just graduated from college and could still see. As Jack continued around the stage describing the small kitchen, the door to the bathroom, the phone, photos hanging on the wall, well, I could picture it all so well that I didn’t bother going on stage for the touch tour.

The final act of the audio/touch tour, when the actors are called up on stage to introduce themselves, is always my favorite. Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin and Tavi Gevinson all seemed happy to answer any questions we had, and it was a thrill to have this private audience with them.

The play was about to start then, so we were offered headphones connected to a small device to use for volume control to hear Jack describe scene changes, character entrances/exits and other movements during the performance. Everyone had done such a tremendous job introducing us to the play ahead of time that I opted to go without the headphones. As the play progressed, I understood why Jack had pointed out certain things during his on-stage romp during the pre-production presentation. Two examples:

• Kieran Culkin’s character told his parents he was working as a bike messenger, but the missing bike wheel told us he was a liar.
• When Michael Cera’s character wanted to “play catch” in the apartment, we knew he was holding a Nerf football.

The timing of this particular audio touch tour was perfect: it will be fresh on my mind when I sit on a panel at the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) conference this Tuesday. The conference is in Chicago this year, and it’s put together by the Kennedy Center.

Cultural arts administrators from all over the world (most of them responsible for accessibility at their respective cultural arts organizations) are in town to attend seminars and workshops on everything from” Determining Who is Eligible to Purchase Accessible Seats” to “Reaching out to Museum Visitors with Memory Loss and Dementia.” The panel I’m sitting on is called “Finding and Nurturing an Audience for Audio Description” and encourages conference atendees to hear from experts who use Audio Description services-the audience members of Steppenwolf Theatre Company!

The conference web site explains that we’ll “provide an informative journey on the best way to market the arts as well as the challenges and successes in accessing arts programs.” Evan Hatfield from Steppenwolf will moderate the panel along with Deborah Lewis, CEO of California’s Arts Access Now. George Abbott, who was born blind, and Sally Cooper, who has a visual impairment but still has some sight, will be sitting on the panel with me, and it meets on Tuesday, August 5 from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm at the Sheraton Hotel at 301 North Water Street in Chicago.

LEAD conference attendees will be invited to join us at an audio touch tour of The Qualms at Steppenwolf that same night, too, so if you’re at the LEAD conference and happen to have found this blog post, I hope you’ll join us.

A passive house in Bethesda, Md.

When friends ask what my husband Mike Knezovich does for a living, it can be hard to explain. I tell them he’s the Director of Communications for Passive House Institute U.S (PHIUS). But what is a passive house, and what does PHIUS do?

Lucky for me, a writer from the Boston Globe bought a passive house last spring, and a personal essay she wrote about what it’s like to live there was published in last Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine. Maria Cramer‘s article does a great job of explaining Passive House standards in a way that is easy to understand, and as a bonus, Mike is quoted at the end!

The Passive House Cramer and her husband bought has walls that are 17 inches thick, “The better to trap the heat from the sun shining through our huge windows, she wrote.”  The house was built by Travis Anderson and Declan Keefe, who assured the homebuyers that their energy bills will be reduced to almost nothing. From the article:

The idea of heat staying trapped inside also made me realize that dead air would remain with it. As if reading my mind, Declan explained that a special vent system would filter out stale wire and draw in fresh wire. You’d just have to make sure you cleaned the filter every six months, he said. The place would run on electricity: Two small Mitsubishi devices, one on the first floor, the other on the second floor, would supply both heat and air conditioning. You’d use them about half as much as you would use a regular heater and air conditioner, Travis said. The sun would provide in the winter, they intoned. In the summer, keeping the windows open would bring in cool night air that we could trap in the morning by shutting the windows. The water would be heated by solar panels, backed up by an in-tank electric coil.

The article goes on to describe what its been like to live in the house so far. Cramer said that the long winter this year forced them to rely on the heat more than they’d planned to during their first month there. By April, though, the sun started shining directly into the kitchen, warming the concrete floor.
“On cool mornings, we no longer had to wear socks to stay warm.”

Their energy bills are a sixth of what they paid in their old place, and Cramer says she was pleasantly surprised to discover that in addition to keeping out the cold and humidity, the thick walls and triple-pane windows keep noise out, too. “At night, when our neighbors stay up late talking or when they set off firecrackers around July Fourth, we need only shut the windows.”

There are thousands of passive houses in Europe, but only about 120 certified and pre-certified structures in the United States. One unfortunate thing about the passive house name is that it implies the approach is only for single family homes. In fact, you can build anything, including skyscrapers, using passive building principles. Mike says that more an more multifamily buildings–apartments, row houses, etc.–are being submitted for certification. And it’s a natural for affordable housing developers, who are embracing it.

I’ll end this post with the best part of the Boston Globe Magazine article — a passage that includes Mike’s quote explaining why that is:

Still, that’s a big jump from 2012, when there were only about a dozen in the United States, according to Michael Knezovich, spokesman for the Passive House Institute US, which certifies the homes. (Not included in the count, Knezovich points out, are homes built to the passive standard but not certified, like the one featured here.) The increase, Knezovich says, is due to developers seeing value in formally validating homes as energy-efficient and home buyers becoming familiar with the passive home concept.“It’s very clear that more and more people are learning about it,” he says. “The early adopters were kind of tree-huggers. But [the houses] are very comfortable. They’re well built, and when people walk through one they say: ‘Oh, this isn’t a flaky thing. It’s not a sacrificial thing. You don’t have to wear a sweater all the time. It’s not just a do-gooder thing.’ These are really nice houses.”

If you want to immerse yourself in passive house, Mike’s organization (PHIUS) is putting on it’s 9th Annual North American Passive House Conference in the Bay Area September 10-14. You can learn more and register here.

Today, this enterprise Beth and I entered into on July 28, 1984, turns 30. That is to say, it’s our 30th wedding anniversary.

Dancing on our wedding day. Roland Kwasny and the Continentals played. On this number, Beth’s sister Bev sat in on the drums, our friend Keith Pickerel was crooning, and the lovely woman in red next to him is Ree Stone.

I’m not sure what to say about that. That’s partly because lately, as I gain in years, I’m having a hard time calibrating time spans. Some stuff that happened 20 years ago seems like it happened yesterday, and stuff that happened last year seems like it was 20 years ago.

Plus, Beth has this mind-warping exercise she runs through from time to time. It goes like this: We’ll hear a song, a familiar song, something like, oh, Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke.” And she’ll say, “You know that was 38 years ago.”

As if that’ s not enough to take in, she goes on.

“So, when you were 12, in 1969, that’s what it was like if your dad heard a song from 1931. “

Like I said, mind warping.

But back to marriage and anniversaries. I’d like to come on all sage-like about what makes for a lasting marriage. But, you know, I got nothing. For one, I think it’s perfectly fine to not be married, and it’s not for everyone. (I can tell you that Beth and I each at various times have thought single life would be just fine.)
And I don’t think of reaching 30 as an accomplishment per se, but I am proud of us.

I can think of a couple things that probably have helped. When Beth and I began our relationship, we were both at the point where we’d concluded, well, if we don’t meet our soul mates, that’s just fine. We entered with no agendas or plan or particular expectations. So our relationship was allowed to take its own organic path.

The other thing: we had to have a very serious talk before we thought about getting hitched. In the course of seeing each other, I learned a lot about how her Type 1 diabetes affected her daily routines—as we saw more of each other, they were affecting our routines.

But I didn’t know everything about Type 1. And Beth, to her immense credit and integrity, believed I needed to know before we thought about something long term. So one evening, after a dinner I cooked for us, she laid it out. She probably shouldn’t have kids. She could go blind. Her kidneys could go. And on and on.

She gave me time to think about it. And I did. And we talked about it and the rest is history, as they say.

Having that kind of communication and honesty gave us a model. And as I think back, the times our relationship was in peril were times we had forgotten how to be that honest. And when we got back to that honesty, things healed, and we went on.

Not having a boilerplate, and being able to level with one another about the most difficult things have allowed us to change individually, grow apart, and grow back together without breaking apart.

We certainly are not the same people we were on a beautiful, sun-drenched Saturday in July in 1984. But we are still together.

Here’s to us.