Whitney and I got off the train from Milwaukee Saturday only to turn around and jump in the car with Mike to drive down to Champaign! I spoke to an animal sciences class yesterday morning at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and Whitney stole the show, of course.

My three-year-old Golden Retriever/Yellow Lab cross has been home with me a year already, and I spoke with the class about how confident and comfortable she seems in her

Whitney chillin’ at home.

work now. After that I went over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor. Most guide dog schools require instructors to have a college degree and then do an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships can last as long as four years. I hope I did a decent enough job explaining how complicated it can be to train dogs, train people, and then make a perfect match between the human and canine — if so, those undergrads walked out of class with a new appreciation of why the apprenticeships last so long.

Once apprentices finish their training and become full-time Seeing Eye Instructors, they’re assigned a string (a group) of dogs and given four months to train that string. Throughout the training, instructors pay close attention to each dog’s pace and pull, and they make careful notes about how each dog deals with distractions, what their energy level is, and all sorts of other characteristics. And then? We blind students fly in from all over North America to be matched — and trained — with a new dog.

Seeing Eye instructors have to be as good at evaluating people as they are evaluating dogs. Our instructors review our applications before we arrive on campus and then ask us tons more questions when we get there. Instructors take us on “Juno” walks (they hold the front of the harness to guide us through all sorts of scenarios to get an idea of how fast we like to walk and how strong of a pull we’ll want from our dog) and then combine all of this information with what they know about their string of dogs, talk it over with fellow instructors and the team supervisor, mix in a little bit of gut instinct, and voila! A match is formed.

Each Seeing Eye instructor trains more dogs than they’ll need for a class. If a dog has a pace, pull, or energy level that doesn’t match with a blind person in the current class, that dog remains on campus with daily walks and care, and perhaps more training, until the next class arrives.

My first dog, a Black Lab named Pandora, was one of those Seeing Eye dogs who went through a second round of training before she was matched with me. Back in 1991, the Seeing Eye knew that the dog they matched me with would be landing in the home of a very unique five-year-old boy named Gus, and that the dog would be in the hands of a woman who had never had a dog before. I’m sure they figured Pandora would need all the extra training she could get!

The Seeing Eye took special pains to train Whitney for me, too. She did a lot of her training in New York City, and if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Our past week together serves as a great example of Whitney’s versatility: one day she leading me down streets to a St. Patrick’s Day parade in downtown Milwaukee, the next day down crooked brick sidewalks in rustic Urbana, and today, back to work leading me down Michigan Avenue.

Whitney is very game. She is nonplussed by unusual or chaotic predicaments, and her confidence in the city is contagious. None of the dogs are perfect, though. Whitney chewed through yet another leather leash while lying at my feet on the train ride home from Milwaukee. Hard to blame her, I guess. Sitting on the train is boring. She’s a cosmopolitan girl who needs to go, go, go. I just need to check on her more often when we’re sitting still. And always make sure I’m carrying a spare leash.

Quick. How many people do you need for a team at a Braille Game?

Whitney, me and the Braille crew. Photo by Richard Robbins.

Six, of course. One for each dot in a Braille cell.

Whitney and I learned that, among many, many other things, at our very first ever Braille Games competition in Milwaukee last Friday. A story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explains:

Teams of students rotated from table to table in a made-up world where Braille is written on money, on pizza boxes and orange juice bottles from the grocery store, on clothes in a department store, on “Go Fish” cards and other games.

Braille Games participants came from schools all over southeast Wisconsin, and all of them had significant visual impairments. As Judy Killian, a Braille teacher from Madison, pointed out in the newspaper article, blindness can be very socially isolating. “After this, they’ll be really enthused,” she told the reporter. “It gets them pretty excited about learning Braille.”

Teams of six spent their morning buzzing from table to table to play Braille bingo, spin a Wheel of Fortune, and spend Braille money on groceries marked with Braille labels. My favorite game was Human Braille Cell, and to help you know how it’s played, here’s a beginner’s understanding of what a Braille cell is made of:

• A Braille cell is six dots arranged in two columns of three dots, just like the number six on a pair of dice.
• To make writing and referencing Braille symbols easier, each dot in the Braille cell has a number.
• Down the left hand side, starting from the top, the dots are numbered 1, 2, 3.
• Down the right hand side, again starting from the top, the dots are numbered 4, 5, 6.

The letter “A” in Braille is only one dot, and it’s the one on the very top of the left hand side, dot one. The letter “L” is a straight line down the lefthand side, dots one, two, and three.

To play Human Braille Cell, each team of six sits in two rows of three. You know, just like the Braille cell. When the emcee calls out “A,” the kid representing Dot One jumps up like a jack-in-the-box. If the emcee calls out “L,” the three kids representing dots one, two, and three all jump up at once. The June Taylor Dancers had nothing on these kids.

Whitney and I didn’t compete, but I’d say we won the best prize of all: we got to meet every kid there! Each one came to our table to have me sign (in Braille, of course) their grand prize for participating: a Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to read at home.

A big shout-out to my children’s book publisher, Blue Marlin Publications, and to each of you who have purchased copies of the print version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in the past. Blue Marlin Publications donates a portion of the proceeds from every print book sold to Seedlings Braille Books for Children to help them produce high-quality Braille books for children who can’t read print.

My husband Mike does the Facebook thing, and earlier this week he posted a link to a collection of portraits of people who can’t see there. That post of his got so many comments that I thought maybe my blog would be a good place to explain how we met the photographer.

One of the portraits in the “Fade to White” project.

A couple years ago I got an email from a stranger who said he was taking portraits of people who can’t see. “I am emailing you to inquire if you would be interested in participating in the project,” he wrote. “It would be an honor to take your picture!”

Uh-oh, I thought. Another nutjob who heard about my job modeling nude for art students. Before hitting the delete button, though, I did a little research. And guess what? The guy was legit!

Charlie Simokaitis is a sought-after commercial photographer whose 13-year-old daughter has a deteriorating eye condition that will soon leave her completely blind. Faye Simokaitis is the inspiration for Fade to White, a compilation of the portraits her dad has taken of people who are visually impaired or blind. Charlie Simokaitis describes the project as an “effort to try to understand the impending reality” of his daughter’s loss of sight. From his artist statement:

As I spend more time with blind people, I am developing a perverse kinship with the very condition that will eventually lay claim to my daughter’s eyesight. For me, solace lies in the creation of this work.

After reading that, I hit the reply button on his email message. Y-E-S, my talking computer parroted the letters I typed. Sitting for a portrait would be an honor.

Charlie likes to meet with his models to chat before a shoot, so I suggested we meet for lunch at Hackney’s. Once Mike took a look at some of the portraits Charlie already had up on the Fade to White web site, he decided to come along. “These pictures are great, Beth,” he told me. “I want to meet this guy!”

Charlie is as striking as the photographs he takes. Over lunch, he told Mike and me a little about the research he had done before starting his project. Photographing the blind has its roots in street photography, he said. It was pretty much voyeuristic. “You know, the blind person would have no idea the photographer was there.” In contrast, Charlie wanted his subjects to know exactly what he was up to, and he didn’t need us to be grasping white canes or posing with our guide dogs. “Most of my portraits are from the waist up.” More from his artist statement:

This work looks at the unseeing Other while attempting to understand the fetishism of other people’s perceived pain and the taboos and tacit responsibility of representing a blind person.

It was hot the afternoon we scheduled the photo session, and I showed up wearing a dark red tank top. Charlie knew right away where he’d want me to pose, and our session took about an hour. “Look up at the sky,” he’d say. “Don’t smile. Look towards the sound of that truck. Chin down. Don’t smile. Shoulders back.” For most of my shots, I’m standing against a yellow brick wall in Printers Row Park. The session gave me an idea of what it might be like to be a fashion model.

Charlie used film to take his portraits, and he completed his project — and his Master’s thesis — this past year. My portrait is included in the collection, and it’s getting rave reviews. See for yourself: Charlie’s Fade to White photos are available online.

Mike and I were invited to a costume ball for Mardi Gras last month, and when I found out the theme of the party was “Hollywood” I asked my young friend Nicole Dotto to

That’s me as Annie, thanks to Nicole.

help with my costume. Nicole and I met as volunteers for Sit Stay Read here in Chicago. She runs a vintage clothing shop on Etsy and generously agreed to write this guest post about picking out a costume for me.

Wait til Beth feels what I got her!

by Nicole Dotto

Put together an outfit for someone who will not be able to see it?

Oh not daunting at all.

One of Beth’s memoir students cleaned out her closets recently and gave her two really beautiful designer suits: one bright red and one stunning green. Beth asked if I could think of any movie characters who wore either of these—that way she could wear one of the suits and dress up as one of them for the party. I found a photo of Ava Gardner in a red suit. Rear Window’s Miss Lonelyhearts wore a green dress that could have passed. Beth would have looked amazing as Tippi Hedren in The Birds, though Tippi’s suit was pale green. When we realized that my Hollywood characters would require some serious explaining at the party (“No, remember? the lady he was watching across the street? Lonelyhearts”), Beth shrugged and said she’d be happy to go as Annie Hall.

The more I started to share Beth’s real deal crush on Annie Hall’s look, the more we decided that this was the only way to go. and bonus: it was a little less daunting to complete that outfit. I perused the men’s section at two different thrift stores and found khaki pants, a white shirt, green tie with polka dots, black suede vest, and felt hat in less than two hours. the thrift store is my battleground.

I’d never been a personal shopper before Beth asked, although technically I’ve been personal shopping multiple times a week for the past three years. But that’s just for people that I make up in my head. I run an online vintage shop called DOTTO, and even though I have a whole lot of handsome and classic items for sale there, I carry a number of interesting train wreck pieces we can all thank the 1980s for, too.

That’s Nicole modeling the ‘WHO WOULD WEAR THIS?’ kind of thing she carries in her online vintage shop. (sorry, folks. It’s sold.)

I grew up with a slight aversion to shopping but then discovered it’s pretty fun when I am searching for everyone else in the world but myself. I try to vary what I offer in terms of size and style and BRIGHTNESS. I cannot physically stop myself from heading straight toward anything neon or overloaded with sparkle. My true test for items has always been this: if I can’t imagine someone wearing it, it’s just right for DOTTO. Those are the sort of items I am secretly really happy to offer the world.

But back to Beth as Annie Hall. Let’s be honest here. Beth would have loved the outfit even if I’d gotten all of the colors wrong or hadn’t been able to find the right vest or hat, but watching her feel each item and put everything together while I explained just how dapper the high waist and cuffed pant looked and how the tie had to be worn as long as possible, well, that was icing on the cake. The whole time I was there we kept talking about just how cool Diane Keaton is, but I was kind of thinking, huh, don’t you think the same is true for Beth in general?

Nicole asked me to let you blog readers know she’ll give a 10% discount20% discount discount at DOTTO to anyone who tells her they read this Annie Hall post. Look for the discount code here in the comment section, and shop away!

Two of the memoir-writing classes I lead each week are sponsored by Lincoln Park Village, a non-profit organized by older adults who want to age at home. The Village boasts over 300 members, and its classes — everything from meditation to a “boot camp” that enhances memory  —  meet in people’s homes.

To kick off the new year, the Village Newsletter took an in-depth look at the human brain and perhaps it’s most valued — and vulnerable — aspect, memory. Hollis Hines, a writer in my Monday afternoon writing class, was asked to write an article for that newsletter about how blindness affects her writing teacher’s ability to remember things. Here’s an excerpt from that story:

The visual memories from the 26-year-old girl she was, understandably, are frozen in time. In some respects she will never age, nor will her family and friends; they and she are as they were in her perception long ago.

My sister Cheryl loves this about me, and just last weekend a friend from college happened to mention how she enjoys this aspect of my blindness as well. Both of them follow my blog, so I hope they aren’t too disappointed to read that Hollis also pointed out in her article that I am aware those perceptions may no longer be accurate! “But with no visual cues to replace them, the past is the present. Perhaps this partially explains the spunky, youthful energy that Beth exudes.” Ha! Maybe blindness does have its advantages after all!

This might be what Hollis means by spunky.

Hollis explained how I sing a song of the list of U.S. presidents my great-niece Anita learned in school in order to navigate the streets in the Loop — “Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson”  —  and how I do simple math in my head for banking in order to keep an edge with numbers.

She swims at least 20 laps in a pool, and the first lap she thinks about what she must do today, and with each subsequent lap she thinks of a day in the future. That way she exercises both body and brain.

Questions Hollis asked when she interviewed me for the article got me thinking about how blindness can serve to both enhance and foil my memory. The lack of visual cues really does help me remember things: I’m not bothered by visual distractions. On the other hand, without seeing words in print, I can have a hard time remembering the name of an item or of a celebrity, much less how to spell them.

My mention of celebrities during the interview left Hollis wondering if I get any enjoyment from movies or television. Not really. It’s too much work keeping up with the action and the characters. I told Hollis I’d rather listen to an audio book, and that’s when it dawned on me. “You know, with all the imagining and memorizing I do all day long,” I told her, “Living my life is like reading a book!”
Hollis agreed and added, “it’s your own book of non-fiction.”

Needless to say, she got an A+ in class the next Monday.