My husband Mike was at the Greenbuild convention in Philadelphia last week. Left with so much time on my own, I started reading The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s new 771-page novel. I had a hard time putting it down, and I wasn’t the only one. In a New York Times book review, Michiko Kakutani says Donna Tartt’s new book “pulls together all her remarkable storytelling talents into a rapturous, symphonic whole and reminds the reader of the immersive, stay-up-all-night pleasures of reading.”

And that I did. Stay up all night to finish it, I mean.

Nothing holds my attention more than a story about grief and bereavement, and this book is full of that. and more. It starts when 13-year-old Theo Decker and his beloved mother find themselves inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a terrorist bomb explodes. Theo’s mother dies, and the story takes off to Las Vegas, Amsterdam and then back to Manhattan from there.

I always wait until I’m done reading a book before reading the reviews (don’t want to spoil the plot) and after staying up late Wednesday night to finish The Goldfinch,, I woke up and read the reviews Thursday morning. Brilliant, they said. Dickensian. With all the gushing, though, none of them remembered to compliment the clever ways Donna Tartt weaves the sense of smell into her writing. I mean, sure, her editor at Little, Brown & Company said that Goldfinch readers “never doubt for a second that you’re experiencing something real,” but he neglected to mention how using the sense of smell is one of the best ways to draw readers in. If The Goldfinch had been published before I gave my Smelling is Believing workshop at Northwestern University’s Summer Writers’ Conference last August, I could have used it as a textbook.

Writers often overuse similes when describing odors, aromas and fragrances, but saying something smells like lemon, like chocolate, like rotten eggs, whatever can sound tedious. In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s main character Theo weaves aromas into his descriptions smoothly. Some examples:

• With his deadbeat Dad in a room in Las Vegas: “The air was overly chilled with a stale, refrigerated smell, sitting motionless for hours. The filament of smoke from his Viceroy floated to the ceiling like a thread of incense.”
• Waking up in a bedroom near the furniture restoration shop: “Lying very still under the eiderdown, I breathed the dark air of dried out potpourri, and burnt fireplace wood, and, very faint, the evergreen tang of turpentine, resin, and varnish.”
• Buying flowers to bring to a dinner party: “In the tiny, overheated shop, their fragrance hit me exactly the wrong way, and only at the cash register did I realize why. Their scent was the same sick wholesome sweetness of my mother’s memorial service,”
• A close-talker startles him with “a gin-crocked blast that almost knocked me over.”
• A young hip New York City restaurant: “The smells were overwhelming. Wine and garlic. Perfume and sweat. Sizzling platters of lemon grass chicken hurried out of the kitchen.”

Funny. Those examples all focus on the sense of smell, but don’t you just picture yourself in those scenes? Forgive me, I just can’t help myself here, I gotta say it: Donna Tartt’s new book? It smells of success.

LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One, November 22, 1963.

A writer in the Monday memoir class I lead worked for Life Magazine in 1963. Giovanna Breu was at the magazine’s New York office when legendary editor Richard Stolley was negotiating for the right to reprint stills from footage of the assassination filmed by Abraham Zapruder.

The Zapruder film arrived at the Life Magazine office before Giovanna left to cover President Kennedy’s funeral, and in an essay she wrote for class, she describes sitting with her fellow reporters in New York to review the film frame by painful frame. “It was horrific,” she wrote, explaining that out of decency and respect for the President’s family, they decided not to publish every single frame.

Giovanna left the New York office then to catch a train to Washington, D.C. and work with Life photographer Bob Gomel from two different locations to photograph the funeral. “We had credentials to a rooftop where we watched Jackie Kennedy walk with a long stride and a firm step behind her husband’s body to St Matthew’s Cathedral,” she said, reading her essay out loud in class. “Our second spot was at St. Matthew’s Cathedral where little John Kennedy saluted the body of his father as he lay on the caisson.”

Every writer in class reads their completed assignment out loud every week, so I ask them to keep their pieces short. “No more than 500 words!” I tell them. I may not be able to see who I’m wagging my finger at, but after weeks of hearing their stories, I know who they are.

The 500-word limit encourages writers to edit their work. They learn to use stronger words to express themselves. And no matter how busy these seniors are, 500 words a week is an attainable goal. Asking Giovanna to limit this story to 500 words was probably asking too much, though. Her essay read more like a piece of journalism than a memoir. When she was done reading, I reminded all the writers that the word limit was just for class. “If you want to write longer pieces for your family, or even for yourself, that’s fine,” I said. “We just have to stick to this 500 –word rule in class, you know, so everyone has enough time to read.”

I turned towards Giovanna then to suggest she add more emotion to this piece, that she tell her readers how these events made her feel. Giovanna mulled this idea over for a long time, and the class stayed uncharacteristically silent. Her response finally came in two sad, simple words:” I can’t.”

Hi folks–Mike (Beth’s spousal unit) here with a guest post.

Beth wrote recently about people abusing the ADA by falsely or at least loosely claiming their pet was a service dog. Well, the less I say about that phenomenon, the better.

For Whitney (and all of Beth’s dogs) travel by planes, trains (here the L) and automobiles is a big yawn.

On the extreme flip side—at least from what I can glean, is this example of bad airline behavior excluding a blind man and a legitimate guide dog. I’ll link to the Gawker post here that includes a TV news report video, but here’s the gist:

A passenger who is blind named Albert Rizzi boarded the U.S. Airways Express flight from Philadelphia to Long Island. He was asked to have his dog sit under the seat in front of him—yes, like a piece of carryon luggage.

Well, judging from comments at the Gawker blog on this subject, lots of people can’t believe the dog has to scrunch up under the seat. But as a veteran of traveling with a person with a guide dog, I can tell you it’s true. Unless we are seated at a bulkhead (which the airline often moves us to, whether or not we request it), the dog is supposed to get under the seat in front.

And you know what? They manage, just fine. It’s part of their training. The Seeing Eye taught Beth to back her dog into the space, and indeed, all of her dogs—each 60 lbs. at least—fit fine. In fact, it’s pretty routine for  passengers who board after us not to even notice Beth’s dog until we stand to exit the plane—at which point the dog stands, shakes and stretches to the extreme surprise (and occasional shrieks) of nearby passengers.

Now, on long flights or during turbulence, sometimes the dogs stir, and Beth has had to re-situate them. Well, on Mr. Rizzi’s flight, there was a delay and an extended time on the tarmac. During which—from what I can guess, anyway—the dog got up, stretched, and was probably part way in the aisle for a bit and—for a while—not under the seat. At which point Mr. Rizzi and his guide dog were asked to leave the flight.

Which I don’t get at all. Even when they’re up, the dogs are easy to navigate around—easier than getting around, ahem, some humans. Apparently none of the passengers got it either. As in none. When Rizzi and his dog were asked to get off, all the passengers got off with him in solidarity. And the (as did he) took the airline’s offer of a bus ride to their destination instead.

Which, come to think, of it, makes for a heartening if not totally happy ending.

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney thinks city life is pretty fantastic, too. (Photo courtesy WBEZ.)

I subscribe to TED Talks. I can’t see their videos, and I rarely click on them, but reading the descriptions of their featured talk each morning gives me an inkling of what “the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers” are thinking and doing these days.

Yesterday’s update linked to a talk by an architect who has lost his sight. The promo material said Chris Downey’s 12-minute talk “shows how the thoughtful designs that enhance his life now might actually make everyone’s life better, sighted or not.”

Um. Well. Yes. I had to link to this one, doncha think? I wasn’t all that interested in hearing his design ideas, really. What I was dying to know was what the heck an architect who loses his sight can do for work.

Chris Downey’s talk is called City Designed with the Blind in Mind. I found some of it a little trite (he calls his ideas outsights rather than insights, and he likes to think people who don’t have disabilities “just haven’t found them yet”), but I must admit I did find myself nodding in total agreement when he declared “cities are fantastic places for the blind.”

I lost my sight in 1985. Since then, Mike and I have lived in a college town (Urbana), a Chicago suburb (Geneva), an ocean town (Nags Head, N.C.), and a big city (Chicago). We have loved each place for different reasons, and for me, our ten years in Chicago have rewarded me with fantastic opportunities and an unequaled sense of independence.

Downey had been a working architect in San Francisco for years before 2008, when surgery to treat a brain tumor left him blind at the age of 45. He said he was so familiar with the city that within six months he was back at work and using a white cane to commute to the office on his own. He never does explain how he works as an architect without being able to see anymore, but I did find an interview at The Architect’s Newspaper where he explains how he uses wax tools called wikki stix to sketch embossed plans. Maybe they show that in the TED Talk? Well, anyway, in that same Architect’s Newspaper interview, Downey described one of the first projects he worked on after losing his sight: a Polytrauma and Blind Rehabilitation Center for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Palo Alto. “The client and the team were becoming aware that they really didn’t understand how space and architecture would be experienced and managed by users who would not see the building,” he said. “When I showed up as a newly blinded architect with 20 years of experience, there seemed an opportunity to bridge that gap.” The fact that he was a rookie at being blind was a bonus, he said. “I was not that far removed from the experience of the veterans who were dealing with their new vision loss.”

Four short years later, Downey has his own business consulting on design for people who are blind and visually impaired. In addition to the VA project in Pal Alto, he has worked on renovations of housing for people who are blind in New York City and consulted on the new Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. He teaches accessibility and universal design at UC Berkeley and serves on the Board of Directors for the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco.

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! If you plan on listening to Chris Downey’s TED Talk, stop reading this blog post now. I’m about to give the punchline. At the end, he says urban planners who think of people who are blind as prototypical city dwellers will come up with design elements that make life better for everyone, whether sighted or not:

• a rich walkable array of predictable sidewalks
• no cars
• many options and choices at the street level
• a robust, accessible, well-connected transit system

I don’t know about you, but that all sure sounds, ahem, good to me!

Bennett and his companion dog Journey.

Remember my post about Vision Forward, the conference about educating kids who are blind? I signed more Braille copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound at that conference than print ones, and this thank-you note from the mom of a five-year-old boy I met there was so moving that I wrote her back to ask if I could share it with my blog readers:

Dear Beth,

I met you at the Vision Forward Conference in Milwaukee this past weekend. I purchased your book, Safe and Sound, for my blind 5 1/2 year old son, Bennett.

My husband read it with him tonight, while I worked on homework with my 9 year old. Bennett was so excited about the book. He told me, “I loved that book you got me. It’s a true story mom. And no one ever writes true stories for kids about people who are blind like me.”

His reaction caused me to think. He is right. If I look on Amazon, there isn’t much out there. Thank you for writing this story and reaching out to children who can not see. Bennett has a Children’s Companion Dog and he said when the story started, he thought for sure it was about his dog Journey.

Thanks again. And it was a pleasure meeting you. Keep writing and we will keep reading 🙂

I swear, any time I’m feeling blue, all I gotta do is read this note. It always makes me smile. A lot of thoughtful people teamed together to make sure Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound came out in Braille the exact same day it was published in print. That hardly ever, ever happens: Braille is so expensive to publish that “braile presses” usually wait until a book becomes a best-seller before putting it out in Braille.

Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound is available in a Print-and-Braille format. The Braille and print match line for line, with the print just above the Braille (no pictures). I can tell you first hand, so to speak, that it’s “good Braille” = the dots are stiff, they stand up straight, They’re easy to read. The only problem for me? The Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound was produced in contracted Braille, a form of Braille I’ve never been able to master.

Contracted Braille has a bunch of shorthand symbols (contractions) for commonly used words and parts of words: there’s a cell for the word “and,” another for the word “the,” and so on. Most of the letters of the alphabet are also used as shorthand for common words, such as “c” for “can” and “l” for “like.” Kind of like texting, only you can’t make as many mistakes!

When I wrote Bennett’s mom back to thank her for her note,  I apologized that my book was only available in contracted Braille, and poor five-year-old Bennett would have a hard time reading it. No problem, she said. Bennett started learning Braille this past summer. “He knows the whole alphabet, all of the “secret” words for the letters when they are alone, and he just started the words that have 2 Braille letters together, like bc for because,” she said. “Not to brag, but this little guy is a genius!”

I say she should go ahead and brag. Not only about Bennett, but about herself and her husband, too, and the family they are raising, all of them supporting Bennett’s love for reading. A little known fact about Braille: less than 20% of the 50,000 blind children in the United States are proficient in Braille. The American Foundation for the Blind reports a severe shortage of certified teachers of the visually impaired (TVIs), especially in rural areas or in small school districts, and without qualified teachers, it can be a lot easier for parents of children who are blind to just let their kids listen to books on audio or hear words on a talking computer. Technology is cool, but if children who are blind never learn Braille, how will they ever learn to spell correctly? How will they know where to put commas, quotation marks, paragraph breaks and so on?

My children’s book publisher, Blue Marlin Publications, teamed up with Seedlings Braille Books for Children (a non-profit organization in Michigan that creates Braille books for kids who can’t see) to produce my children’s book at a reasonable price — the Braille/print version is actually less expensive than the print version. .Blue Marlin didn’t charge Seedlings a penny for the rights to publish the book in Braille, and wait, there’s more: Blue Marlin Publications also decided to donate a portion of the sales of the print version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to Seedlings so they can continue creating books in Braille at a reasonable cost for kids who need them.

I do know enough contracted Braille to read the first couple of pages of my children’s book out loud, and with Safe & Sound available in Braille, I’ve been able to read it aloud at school presentations and show kids what Braille looks like and how it works.

I brought a Braille copy along to a visit with the fourth graders at Crow Island School in Winnetka yesterday, but those kids didn’t need any explanation of what Braille is: Jalena, a smart and cheerful 9-year-old in their class, is blind. I invited Jalena to sit with me and help me during the Q & A part of yesterday’s presentation, and she was happy to do so. We answered questions about whether we feel sad not being able to see colors, if we sleep with our eyes open, and how we put our pierced earrings in our ears without looking in a mirror. Not one kid at Crow Island asked about Braille, though: they’re all experts! Lots of Jalena’s sighted friends are in the school’s Braille Club and have learned uncontracted Braille, the version I know.

When the afternoon was over, I thanked Jalena by giving her the Braille copy of Safe & Sound that I’d brought along, and she was delighted. Gail Wilson, her TVI, told me later that after school sometimes Jalena reads with a book buddy who can see. “We have a hard time finding print/Braille books like yours,” she said. “I know for sure what they’ll be reading later today!”

To find out how to order a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in print/Braille, or to donate to Seedlings to help them create more books in Braille for kids, link to www.seedlings.org.