This Saturday is Billy Balducci’s last official nightshift
bartending at Hackney’s.
Hackney’s is our local tavern, and Billy’s been tending bar there since the day it opened in November, 2001.

Longtime blog followers know Billy as the guy sitting next to me in a photo we originally published with a 2007 blog post called Cheers! — Mike and I are fortunate to know him as a dear friend. He and his wife Kathleen’s good-lookin’ boy Tommy will celebrate his first birthday next week, and Billy is leaving the bartending world for what he calls  “a big boy job.”  We wish him all the best, and in honor of this momentous occasion I am reblogging a post I published a few years ago, shortly after Billy and Kathleen got married.

Accompanied by Billy Balducci

Originally published March 4, 2010

When Billy heard Mike was working the night Hanni and I were scheduled to give a presentation at Prairie Trails Public Library, he offered to drive us. He doesn’t tend bar on Thursday nights, he reasoned (more…)

A strange feeling followed me around last week. Like there was something I was forgetting. Finally, on Friday, during my morning walk to work, it sort of tapped me on the shoulder—for no reason I took my phone out and looked at the date.

April 25. Exactly one year since the benign tumor on Beth’s aortic valve nearly did her in. For just a split second I was brought back to the paralyzing feeling I got when the cardiologist told me that morning that Beth’s heart had gone into fibrillation, that her heart had been shocked back into rhythm, but that there was no time to waste. (more…)

Last Saturday I got all dressed up and went alone with my Seeing Eye dog Whitney to a play. Tuesday the two of us went to the Art Institute of Chicago for a private guided tour. I’ve been invited to sit on a panel about services and programming that museums, theatres and other cultural institutions can provide for guests who are blind or have low vision, and it’s been so long since I’ve attended an art event with special programming that I thought I oughta brush up.

The play I went to at Merle Ruskin Theatre on Saturday featured an audio tour for people with visual impairments an hour before curtain time, and the Art Institute offers guided tours with “TacTiles” meant to help people who can’t see interpret the artwork. Lucas Livingston, the Assistant Director of Senior Programs at the Art Institute, gave me my one-on-one tour Tuesday. He had his work cut out for him.

At best, I’m ambivalent about these special programs. I credit the institutions for trying. I really do. And some special accommodations–like the advance tour before plays at Steppenwolf — have truly enriched my experience.

Me, Harper and our gracious Steppenwolf hosts Hilary and Malcolm, on stage during the touch tour for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Malcolm is holding one of the breakable prop bottles and a bouquet of the plastic snapdragons which figure prominently into the play.

But when it comes to static, visual art, none of the special services I’ve tried have been particularly satisfying or enlightening.

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I’m lucky: I have a walking commute to and from work each day. Okay, Okay … during particularly insane portions of the past winter, I took the CTA Red line. But most days, it’s a mile and a quarter to start the day, and a mile and a quarter back in the evening.

It’s great for body and soul. Some days it’s a blur—I walk fast, and only with the destination in mind, not mindful of much. Other days, like this past Friday morning, a sunny promise-of-spring morning, it’s kind of marvelous.

On Friday, like most mornings, I pass “our guy,” the homeless man that befriended Beth, who hangs out at Harrison and Dearborn and has helped Beth navigate in bad weather. We help him out as much as we can. I know, for example, that he needs $22 to get into his SRO each night. And he’ll let us know how short he is when days are slow.

That’s the Auditorium, viewed from the east side of Michigan Avenue.

I let the traffic lights tell me which route to take most of the time. Friday took me east on Congress past the hostel, where backpackers and international travelers congregate in the lobby or in the Cuban sandwich shop next door.

Next I pass the Auditorium Theatre, a massive, grandiose Louis Sullivan creation. The performance home of the Joffrey Ballet and scads of other artists, it’s renown for its acoustics as well as its design. It was a marvelous achievement when it opened in 1889, and it still is. (more…)

Mim’s in there somewhere. Click on the link to go to a larger version at SI.

My friend Mim Nelson has been on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, she’s been quoted more than once in the New York Times, and she’s been a guest on Oprah. And now, she’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated, too. (more…)