A New York Times article called Why Do We Fear the Blind? quotes everyone from the 18th century French philosopher Denis Diderot to modern essayist Christopher Hitchens to try to explain why Blindness is the most feared and misunderstood of all disabilities. Well, from a journalistic point of view, I’d say the piece was too long, and I think the headline is not representative of the story. Because the story really describes why sighted people fear blindness — not people with blindness.

I mean, let’s be real. People are afraid of blindness because, well, being blind is scary. Maybe seeing someone like me, who is blind, serves as a reminder: this could happen to you, too.

Odds aren’t great, though. Only 1.3 million people in the United States are legally blind. That’s not many. We human beings tend to be fearful of things we don’t know, though, and with so few of us out here, your chances of getting to know a person who is blind is rare. The woman who wrote the New York Times article put on a blindfold to try to understand what it’s like to traverse city streets when you can’t see. I’m afraid all that does is make her readers more afraid. And grateful that they are not blind. But she can go away proud that she was sensitive enough to try walking around with a blindfold in an effort to simulate being blind.

People who are blind can’t take the blindfold off and then talk about how scary it is. We spend miserably difficult months with remarkably dedicated orientation and mobility trainers learning how to do simple things, like walk outside and mail a letter.

I started losing my eyesight in 1984, when I was 25 years old. Before then, I had a job advising college students who wanted to study overseas. The job entailed talking with students, checking out what programs might work for them, phoning different college departments or other universities to arrange for the transfer of college credits. I was sure I’d be able to perform these tasks without being able to see. My boss, however, was equally sure I could not. I tried proving her wrong. At first I didn’t use a white cane or a dog. I quit driving or riding my bike, but I could still see well enough to walk to work with a walking cane (Mike and I happened to have bought one as a souvenir during our honeymoon in Scotland months before, when I could still see perfectly well).

As my eyesight got worse, I started making mistakes in the office. One morning I spilled grounds all over the floor on my way to make the morning coffee. I sat inches away from my computer screen to see the words. I ran into tabletops. At one point my boss took me aside and told me I wouldn’t be going to the annual convention with my colleagues that year. “You’ll embarrass the office,” she said.

Those were scary times.

By the end of that year, I had lost my sight completely. The Americans with Disabilities Act had not been passed yet. My contract was terminated. My confidence was shattered. How could I have been so naive? Did I really think I was worth hiring? Why would anyone employ someone who couldn’t see?

I considered pursuing a Master’s degree in blind rehabilitation then, reasoning that if you work helping blind people, being blind would be an advantage, and I might get a job. After some soul-searching, though, I realized that with my personality I might be able to do more for the blind community by getting outside of it. I’m not shy, and demonstrating to people who might not come across a blind person in their daily lives that a person without sight can live a full, creative, and pleasurable life might show them that we’re nothing to be afraid of.

Which is not to condemn the writer of that New York Times article for trying. I just think, with this article, she failed.

There’s Whit…on a commuter train platform.

The Chicago network of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) emailed me late last year to see if I’d do a program for their January 11, 2014 meeting on how to build a platform. “Your name came up as a possible speaker on this topic,” the message said, “because you are someone who, as a writer, has built a name for yourself across multiple platforms.”

Confession: unless you’re talking about the thing I stand on when I’m waiting for a train, or the kind of shoes Elton John wore at those concerts I went to in the 70s, I really don’t know what a platform is. I didn’t tell them that, though. I was so flattered by their invitation that I said yes.

The program is this Saturday morning. My friend Ellen Sandmeyer of Sandmeyer’s Bookstore is coming along and bringing books (I sign them in print and in Braille, too, of course, and if the weather warms up by then I hope some of you Chicagoland blog readers might come on out and see what I come up with to talk about! The program is free, and you don’t have to be a member of SCBWI to attend. You do need to RSVP, though, so I’ll leave you here with the invitation they sent out:

January 11, Saturday, 10 A.M. – 11:30 A.M.
BUILDING YOUR PLATFORM

Where: 920 W. Wilson, Chicago, IL 60640, Garden Room, off lobby

Parking is available on the street (paybox). Also accessible by CTA Redline, bus #78 and bus #151.

RSVP to janehertenstein@gmail.comIn today’s publishing environment a writer has to do MORE than write. Marketing and promotion requires an author to perform on many platforms. Often an agent or editor will ask: Does he/she have a platform?

Beth Finke is an award-winning author, NPR commentator, blogger, and participates in numerous school visits. As a journalist she has used many different mediums and media to deliver a message. Come hear Beth speak and get your 2014 writing career off to a good start. (She might even tell us about how her part-time job modeling nude for university art students led to an essay on NPR’s Morning Edition and an appearance on Oprah!)

Hey folks, Mike’s filling in for me today:

Happy New Year from The Row.

Well, the holidays. They’re just about over. And as much as I’ve enjoyed them this year (a whole lot), I’m ready to move on. We’re feeling a little splintered down here on the Row in Breezy (these are from Marcus, from Printers Row Wine Shop, his new nicknames for Printers Row and Chicago, respectively). So splintered, that a splintered blog post seemed in order. So I give you … bits and pieces:

• We’ll inevitably see lots of health-oriented news items associated with New Year resolutions, replete with video footage of folks in gyms on treadmills. And you may be tempted to try to turn over a new leaf. By all means, go forth and exercise, and do bad things only in moderation, but before you go out and load up on vitamins and supplements, heed the advice in this article: The best way to live longest may be to do … nothing. I’m on board!
• So about this social media stuff. Like just about everybody I know, I do it without knowing what I’m doing, or why, exactly. One thing I’ve finally sworn off: Attempting to make a political statement or have political discourse via Facebook or any other SM (or should that actually be S & M?) platform. I’ve found it impossible to do so constructively. Social media and other Internet technologies are termed “interactive,” but they are so in only the crudest of terms. They’re essentially I say what I want and I’m absolutely right and you’re absolutely wrong and then you say you’re absolutely right and I’m absolutely wrong.For the record, I’m not against the technology. It’s always easy to blame ills on technology –- been that way since the printing press was invented. The telephone, too, was thought a threat to family life when it came on the scene. It’s the bad behavior that’s the problem (although I grant, social media technology makes bad behavior easier and more tempting than ever. Don’t Ask Me How I Know). It has always been thus — it’s the behavior, stupid. Before there was social media there were listservs and flame wars. Before (and still now) listservs and flame wars there were bumper stickers.

  But there are some collective bad behaviors that are somewhat unique to social media. The instant righteousness and condemnation by what are essentially e-mobs is one of them. And I think this opinion piece at Big Think, about that PR executive’s very troublesome tweet that made the news, is worth reading.

• In the “Hell Freezes over” department, George F. Will, conservative columnist (and Urbana, Ill., native and University of Illinois Laboratory High School graduate), took on the subject of mandatory sentencing and how it has damaged countless lives and our society. It’s really good, I hope you’ll read it, and Mr. Will, thank you.
• In the shameless plug department, Beth has already written about our friend Audrey Petty’s High Rise Stories,  collection of residents’ accounts of life in Chicago’s bygone housing projects. Well, Audrey was one of the Chicago Tribune’s Chicagoans of the Year in 2013. And George Saunders (a great fiction writer), appearing on Meet the Press (see it here, at minute 2:24) last week, praised the book and urged President Obama to read it. (Thanks to Audrey’s loving husband Maurice Rabb — a computer scientist and no slouch in his own right — for that little clip).
• Still in the plugging friends mode: Our friends from The Row — Seth and Bess — moved to New Orleans a few years back. They both worked up the courage to pursue their dreams. Bess has built a successful private practice in counseling. Seth opened a specialty butcher shop that’s a big hit. And you can read all about the shop — Cleaver & Co.  Oh, one other thing, Seth and Bess just had a their first child, Tally, a girl born with fullest head of hair I’ve ever seen on a newborn. Congrats kids.
• And in the dreaming of sunshine, summer and the crack of the bat department, there is bad news and good news. The bad: Paul Blair, one of my favorite all-time players, who simply glided around center field for championship  Baltimore Orioles teams, died last week. I don’t recall ever seeing a better centerfielder.The good news: The White Sox are having a terrific off-season (and boy, did they need one).

Here’s to a new baseball season, a brand new year. Frankly, I won’t miss ’13 — this one has been tough for us and a lot of people, but hope springs eternal. And I’m reminded of the last paragraph from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” by Robert M. Pirsig:

Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through. We’ve won it. It’s going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

Happy New Year to you all.

I always make a point of sitting next to Flo so we can help each other in the holiday hubbub. She can’t hear well, I can’t see–we make a great team.

All six of my brothers and sisters are grandparents. My oldest sister, Bobbie, has three great-grandchildren. As my husband Mike likes to say, “It’s not a family, it’s a nation!” Buying Christmas presents for the entire Nation of Flo is out of the question. So we pick names, and you have to make a gift for the person you choose.

New babies press handprints into clay wall hangings, cousins stuff homemade pillows for gifts, pinecones collected in backyards magically transform into Christmas ornaments -and back-scratchers! Every gift is a treasure, and this year’s were so thoughtful I thought I’d share some highlights:

• My sister Bev and her husband Lon live right next to a forest preserve in Michigan . Lon made a shepherd’s crook from a long stick he found in the woods and gave it to our nephew Mark, who is a Hobbit fan
• Five-year-old Bryce spends a lot of time in that forest preserve too. He made colorful rubbings of leaves he’d found in the woods and framed the rubbings for Schminke (his name for his Great-grandma, Flo
• Our Minnesota niece Caren picked Mike’s name. She’s treating him to two tickets to a White Sox game at Target Field this year, and she made him something he’d need for the game: a long, woolen black-and-white scarf to keep him warm.
• My Florida brother-in-law Rick made a poster for our 9-year-old great-niece Audrey, who absolutely loves going to the Art Institute when visiting Chicago. He had a poster made with super heroes depicted the way Gauguin, Picasso and Van Gogh might have painted them. Audrey was on the poster, too: She was Wonder Woman

The kids seemed especially tickled with the gifts they made for each other this year. One of my favorites was the one 11-year-old Lydia made for her 4-year-old cousin Jack. She started with a “Guess Who?” game
— one where kids examine animals on cards and figure out the differences and similarities between them — and replaced the animal pictures with photos of family members. Jack happened to be right behind me when he opened his gift, and Lydia ran right over to explain what it was. “That’s Addie, she’s one, she lives in Florida,” I heard her carefully explaining to her little cousin. “I don’t think you met her yet, but that’s her, in the picture.”

With three more great-grandchildren on the way in 2014, the Nation of Flo is growing. So the “Guess Who” game will only get more difficult.

My great-niece Floey turns eight years old tomorrow, and gee whiz, what a coincidence that this extremely flattering

The irrepressible Annmarie.

email arrived in my in box just when I was thinking about what to get for her for her birthday – she wrote it as a report for her second grade class:

Beth Finke unfortunaly is my aunt. She is also a great athor, but I like her better as my aunt. She’s actually my GREAT anunt (I’m not just saying that) and she has always been. She’s 54 and is married to my Uncle Mike (Who is coo-coo). He has an aquarium. Aunt Beth is VERY kind.

Thank you Floey. You’re very kind, too! See (okay, hear) you tomorrow….