My friend Benita Daniels Black grew up in the Bronx, taught at public schools in Queens, and raised her son in their apartment in the Village. She loves New York City, and she planned on living there the rest of her life. But then she went to her grade school reunion.

That’s Benita with her beloved grandson Sam (photo courtesy of Josh Daniels).

Dr. Henry Black attended P.S. 114 in the Bronx (sixth-grade class of 1954) with Benita and took time off from his job as Chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center here in Chicago to attend that grade school reunion, too. The New York Times published a very sweet story about the epistolary romance that ensued after that. “Within a few weeks, they’d amassed 1,200 e-mail messages,” the story said, quoting Benita saying how exciting it was to be with someone you shared a childhood with. “So much could be shorthanded.”

Benita and Henry were married at the New York City Municipal Building on April 19, 2002. Shortly after joining Henry here in Chicago, Benita started volunteering at Blind Service Association (BSA) to read aloud to people like me.

Week after week she’d help me weed through the pile of books and magazine articles I’d lug into the BSA office on Wabash. We learned a lot about each other in a very short time — she by the things I brought to read, and I by the inflection in her voice as she read them out loud.

When we discovered we were baseball fans, and we both followed the American League, we started going to games together. Henry and Mike joined in the fray, and the four of us started going out for meals, too, mixing politics with baseball talk.

In 2006, Benita let me know that she and Henry were moving to Manhattan. I wasn’t surprised. New York City was their home, after all, and I was just grateful for the serendipity that connected the two of us during her time in Chicago.

We’ve visited each other a few times since, and we keep up with each other via phone and email. When Benita emailed me a few months ago recommending the audio version of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir My Beloved World, I took note. Benita and Justice Sotomayor both grew up in the Bronx, and I am guessing some of the talented students Benita taught at public schools in Queens reminded her of young Sonia. In her email, Benita pointed out that the Supreme Court Justice and I both grew up with hardworking single moms (Sonia’s father died when she was young, just like me) and that I’d be able to relate to Sonia’s stories about learning to give herself insulin injections when she was in second grade (Sonia and I were both diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as children).

But could Sonia Sotomayor write well? If Benita was recommending the book, I figured the answer had to be yes. I just finished reading the memoir, and I figured right. It’s a great read, and it’s well read, too: Rita Moreno is the narrator. Yes, that Rita Moreno. Anita from “West Side Story.” She’s friends with Sonia Sotomayor, and hey, I suppose when a Supreme Court Justice asks you to read, you do it!

You can tell that these two women know each other well by the way Moreno intuits which word to punch, where to pause and which phrases her friend would have said with a laugh. As a reader, the Academy award-winner is second only to Benita Daniels Black. And in a wonderful, wacky 21st century way, Benita still acts as my reader, sending links to New York Times stories she knows I’ll be interested in, and recommending books and authors she’s sure I’ll like.

If only the robotic drone of my talking computer would read with a New YorkYawk accent.

An organization called Art Beyond Sight is working with the Chicago History Museum to learn more about ways people who are blind manage in museums, and I’ve been invited to head over there this Thursday morning to offer suggestions.

Confession: I’m always ambivalent about these things. I credit the institutions for trying. I really do. And some special accommodations–like the advance tour before plays at Steppenwolf — truly enriched my experience. But when it comes to static, visual art, I must confess I’ve been to several accessible exhibits and none have been particularly satisfying or enlightening.

Mind you, I’m not speaking for all visually impaired people. And I’m never one to turn down special privileges, like the ability to touch artifacts that the general public cannot. But for me, touching artifacts does not allow me to appreciate the entire exhibition. It only provides some of the pieces, and hey, I already spend too much time putting mental puzzles together every day.

As for audio tours, well, they can be quite entertaining and educational, yes, but paying to get into a museum just to walk around with headphones on doesn’t make sense to me. I’d rather download the monologue and listen to it at home, lying comfortably on my couch!

I do like living in a big city with lots of museums. I get a lot out of it without being able to see. I attend lectures and read books to learn about exhibitions in town, about the artists and their lives and their significance. I enjoy discussing the exhibitions with sighted friends who go see them, but as for the special tactile things, I confess that they:

• Expect too much. Touch is too particular — I can only take in parts of the artwork that are one fingertip wide
• Make the sighted people feel better about the Braille signs and tactile exhibits than I do
• Leave me feeling obligated to be grateful

But, again–I applaud the effort, and because I’ve been wrong more than once in the past, I figure they asked, so I’ll answer. And in the process, I’ll be forced to climb back on the horse, er, bus…One of the many, many things I’ve had to avoid since my unexpected emergency open-heart surgery is riding a bus alone with my Seeing eye dog. Surgeons were afraid the bus would take off before we found a seat and I’d fall. Not good for my healing sternum.

This Thursday marks 12 weeks since my April miracle. My sternum is healed now, and the #22 bus is an easy ride from our place to the Chicago History Museum. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit anxious about the bus trip, and a post my writer friend Jeff Flodin just published called Every trip an adventure is not boosting my confidence, either (it’s about trying to find a seat on CTA buses with his Seeing Eye dog Randy). And so, rather than think about bus rides and well-meaning accessible exhibits, I’m focusing on my reward instead: I’m meeting friends at the museum afterwards for lunch. No special accomodations necessary for that: my four remaining senses are enough to feel the air-conditioning, smell the coffee, taste the food and hear lively conversation.

I’ve been writing without vision for more than 25 years. Next month, at Northwestern University’s Summer Writers’ Conference, I’m going to try teaching people who can see how to do it, too:

Smelling is Believing: Using Your Other Senses — Beth Finke
Writer Beth Finke is blind, and her in-class exercises encourage writers to set scenes using senses besides sight. Each writer will leave with a personal essay to fine-tune at home and send for possible publication in journals, on line magazines, blogs, podcasts or magazines. This session is especially appropriate for new writers, but writers of all levels are encouraged to attend.

I’ve never taught this before, and my Monday memoir-writing class generously agreed to serve as guinea pigs for one assignment I’m considering for the workshop: “Write about a summer experience without using your sense of sight to describe it.”

Bill came back with a lively piece describing summer thunderstorms in his home state of Kansas. Other writers read essays about camping adventures, beach vacations, and road trips. Brigitte grew up in Germany. Her essay explained that surviving searing summer temperatures during graduate school in Iowa City left her feeling less foreign. “I escaped into a hamburger joint to avoid collapsing from the heat,” she wrote, finding the frigid American air-conditioning as extreme as the heat and humidity outside. Bringing a sweater along when temperatures were in the 90s seemed absurd, but once she gave in, the heat started to bother her less. “I was becoming an American. I was always protected from the indoor cold by a sweater.”

Anne tackled the assignment by writing two essays about her family’s annual trip to Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. She used her sight in the first piece, then wrote without:

Anne’s husband and kids at the lake.

Visual version: Our food and gear loaded into the rented motorboat, Grandpa Frederick was at the wheel. He’d been coming here for years and knew exactly where he was going. Lisa, our oldest, sat next to him so she’d be the first to spot the Devin’s Island dock. The dock extended into a narrow passage between two islands, which took some maneuvering. Bruce jumped out, secured the boat and helped us climb onto the dock. The girls took off, running up the rocky path to the house.

The house was the only structure on the island. The screen porch was lined with cots that did double duty as couches and beds. At one end was the large picnic table where we ate breakfast and supper. (Lunch was on the dock.) The kitchen had a sink with a pump, and a wood-burning stove with two propane-fueled burners. The fridge, also propane-fueled, was an essential for Frederick, who would not tolerate two weeks without ice cubes for his daily libations!

Days were spent swimming, canoeing and fishing. The girls explored the largely wooded island, collecting flora and fauna which we examined on the porch while waiting to view the sunset or an oncoming storm. The limited light from kerosene lanterns in the living room cut short the evening’s reading and games and sent us to our beds.

And here’s Anne’s second one:

Non-visual version: Grandpa Frederick was an old-hand at handling the rented motor boat and knew exactly where he was going. Lisa sat next to him up front where the bounce was the strongest. Jennifer and Mary squealed when water sprayed them in the back seats. The girls had been coming here all their lives, and had confidence about the uneven paths to the house and around the small island. They loved moving through the woods, smelling the pine trees, listening to insect noises and feeling the wind on their faces.

Grandma would go with them to search for wild blueberries. They’d pop a few into their mouths, gently crushing them until they popped and the juice coated their tongues. They’d hopefully find enough to make a pie. Nothing smells or tastes as good as Devin’s Island blueberry pie!

The children’s favorite spot was a small sandy beach near the dock. They liked to wiggle their toes in the fine sand. It was here they learned to swim, aided by blow-up rings. They tolerated the cold water — a life-long acclimation that prepared them for later dips in icy lakes and mountain streams.

The dock was the center of activity. Frederick had a reserved spot for drinking martinis. Dorothy Hunt’s crab salad sandwiches on New England-style hot dog buns (slit along the top) were a ritual. After lunch, we’d sit on the side of the dock and kick up a spray, then spread out a towel and soak up the sun or trek up to the cool shade of the porch for a nap.

There wasn’t much sense of time. Evening came when the temperature dropped, the kerosene lamps gave off their distinctive aroma and June bugs collided with the screens. On colder nights, we’d huddle by a smoky fire in the fireplace, then climb into beds, pull up the covers and have wonderful Technicolor dreams.

“Writing Chicago” runs from August 1 to August 3 this year. Jury still out whether I’ll use this “sightless summer” assignment during my workshop, and your comments to this post would be helpful in making that decision. I’m collecting sample lines and paragraphs from famous writers using senses besides sight in their stories, too, and may use those as handouts. If you have anyrecommendations, by all means please leave them as comments here. Thanks, and seesmell you later!

Beth Finke here. After my first book Long Time, No See was published, I spent weeks on the phone begging bookstores to have me come and do a book signing. I particularly wanted to land a gig at the ever-popular Book Stall in Winnetka, Ill., but when I called Book Stall owner Roberta Rueben, she didn’t sound interested. What to do? Play the blind Card, of course.

”The Hadley School for the Blind is right there in Winnetka, isn’t it?” I asked. Roberta admitted she’s always wondered about that place. “How about I do a booksigning, and then have someone from Hadley come and talk about the school, too?” Even over the phone, I could tell Roberta’s eyes were lighting up. She knew a lot of people who wondered about that Hadley place, she said. A dual presentation like this might bring a crowd.

I didn’t know a soul at Hadley back then, but these were desperate times. I called the Hadley School, pleaded my case, and they liked the idea so much they sent George Abbott, the Dean of Education, over. George charmed the crowd, I sold a lot of books, and Roberta has been championing my writing ever since.

I made a new friend in George Abbott that night, and I really liked this guest post he wrote for Second Sense’s blog – it gives a different look, ahem, on lending an arm to someone who is blind. I think you’ll like it, too.

Add your thoughts here… (optional)

A Xinda by any other name would still be … adorable.

Last year 61 litters – 470 puppies — were born at the Seeing Eye breeding station. That’s a lot of puppies to name.

The Seeing Eye gives the dogs in each litter names that start with the same letter of the alphabet, and once a puppy is named, that name can’t be used again until that dog retires or is removed from the program. Right now 1710 people like me are getting around safely using Seeing Eye dogs, and only one of the working dogs is named Whitney.

What this means is that if I were to call the Seeing eye and tell them, say, that Whitney is starting to cross streets diagonally rather than going straight across, they know exactly who Whitney is –- they wouldn’t have to ask, “Remind me, is this the Whitney in Chicago or Whitney in Sioux Falls?” This also means that the Seeing Eye has to get a little creative with names sometimes. I mentioned the name game in a post titled A dog Called Vondra, and just this week a teenager left a comment to that post that made me smile:

Hi. I came across your blog in a google search when I read the name Vondra. I am a teenage Seeing-Eye Puppy Raiser about to get my sixth puppy to train, and I have not been lucky with names. I have risen
1. Veca
2. Tara
3. VONDRA (not the same one, however, as mine was rejected from the program and lives with me and my family)
4. Norm
5. Xinda (yeah…)
6. X….(all we know is that she is a female lab whose name starts with an X)

We are no happier about the names than anyone else and almost always groan when we find out the names of our new dogs. We often wonder how the dog-namers can do such a thing to an adorable little puppy.

Seeing Eye dogs are our dogs once we finish training with them and bring them home. And since they are ours, really, we could call them anything we want to. The Seeing Eye discourages us from changing our dogs names, though: one, the dogs are used to their name by the time we are matched with them, and two, the Seeing eye keeps explicit records of all the dogs they train, and keeping their original name makes that easier to do.

A classmate hated the name Hootie so much that he had the Seeing Eye paperwork changed to name the dog Rudy. A blind lawyer in one of my classes complained that no one would take her seriously if she entered the courtroom with a dog named Wags. She changed his name to Wagner.

Names are so subjective, aren’t they? I would have loved working with a dog named Wags, though I must agree with the teenage puppy raiser when it comes to Xinda (yeah…). but hey, what’s wrong with Norm?!