Back in 2003, the commissioner of Chicago’s Department on Aging showed up at a bookstore event to have me sign a copy of Long Time, No See. Joyce Gallagher must have liked what

That’s my friend Carolyn Alessio.

she read – she phoned me later to invite me to lunch, and in-between bites of egg salad sandwiches at Maxim’s, she asked if I’d teach a writing class for seniors. “I have the application right here,” she said, her fingertips drumming what I guessed was a big brown envelope.

I was not a teacher. I had never taught a class in my life. I said no.

You’ll do great!” she said, passing the envelope across the table to me.

The form had been pretty much filled out already, all I needed to add was a title and syllabus for the course. For that I enlisted Carolyn Alessio to help.

Carolyn was a new friend in Chicago back then. She used to write and edit the Chicago Tribune Book Section, and she had won a Pushcart Prize — a prestigious literary award honoring the best work published in American small presses. Mike and I were still new to Chicago in 2004, and I was just starting to get used to this part of living in a city  —  you rub elbows with accomplished people like this all the time, and it’s thanks to people like Commissioner Gallagher, Carolyn Alessio and dozens of others that the “Me, Myself and I” memoir class I lead for Chicago senior citizens has been an overwhelming success. So successful, in fact, that this week I added a third memoir class to my schedule.

My friend Carolyn is a teacher with successful students, too  — she left her Tribune job to teach at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, a private school known nationally for its innovative ideas and emphasis on building student character. She is extremely generous about sharing teaching techniques and ideas with me and is perfectly willing to let me “steal” the creative topics she comes up with for writing assignments.

During the Chicago teachers strike last month Carolyn wrote an op-ed piece for the Chicago Tribune with an anecdote about how watching clips from the 1982 film “Gandhi” helped her students understand his influence on Martin Luther King Jr.:

Gandhi quiets the crowd in the famous scene and speaks calmly but forcefully. He persuades with logic, feeling and a strong sense of ethics. He skillfully handles the British army partly with humor but also a sincere pledge to avoid physical combat or retaliation. Neither side ends up rioting, at least not as a result of that meeting.

Carolyn and her husband Jeremy have two children who attend a Chicago Public School, and while she was eager to get them back in class last month, she also supported the striking teachers. From that op-ed piece :

It might seem like I was straddling two systems, but as a private school teacher and parent of two students at a strong Chicago public school, I saw shared areas of concern. Teacher evaluations based on student test scores constituted a key dispute between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union, and for good reason — defining teacher performance mainly through test scores could undermine teachers’ deeper mission of developing character.

The Chicago teacher’s strike is over. I’m guessing that “building character among students” was not a topic on the negotiating table, but it should have been. As Carolyn Alessio says, all true educators are on the same side of that mission.

Carolyn Alessio has taught high school in Chicago for the past 12 years. She is the prose editor of Crab Orchard Review, a recent guest editor of Fifth Wednesday, and the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. I am lucky — and honored — to have her as a friend.

Whitney and I had a ball at the Youth Literature Festival in Champaign last week, and the highlight of the entire event was meeting Kayla, a delightful second grader at Westview

Whitney and Kayla took to one another…. (Photo by Chryso Mouzourou.)

Elementary School. I usually don’t let kids pet Whitney when she has her harness on, but this was an exception. Kayla is blind, and she’d never been near a guide dog before. The only way for her to see how Whitney’s harness works was to touch it.

This spunky little sprite slid right down to the floor to feel Whitney’s ears, too. And her tail. And her back. And her belly. At one point they were face-to-face. “She’s staring at me!” Kayla exclaimed in delight. “That means she likes me.”

It was true. And really, who wouldn’t like Kayla? The two of us had just met, and already I was learning a lot from her. “That must be why people stare at us sometimes,” I said with a laugh. “They like us, too!”

Before we visited Kayla’s school, Whitney and I had been treated to lunch with faculty, students and staff working on Special Friends, and they explained how the six-week program works to help average kids understand and appreciate children with disabilities.

For all six weeks, kindergarten teachers read stories about children with disabilities to their students three times a week. The Special Friends kindergarteners enjoy a 15- minute learning activity about disabilities three times a week, too. And then, the kids take home one of the books they read in class every week to read and discuss with family members. After this six-week concentration on disabilities, the Special Friends people I had lunch with Friday keep track of the kindergartners to determine the short- and long-term effects of this six-week program.

Westview Elementary, where Kayla goes to school, is one of the schools participating in Special Friends. If Kayla’s confidence and self-assurance is any indication, I’d say the six-week program is an unqualified success. When I complimented Kayla’s mom on what a terrific job she is doing raising her daughter, the mom told me Kayla has visited a couple special education students in college classes to give talks. “She comes in, says she’s blind, shows off her white cane, talks about learning Braille and tells them why they oughta like her,” her mom said with a laugh. “And by the end of the session, they do!”

And that’s when I got the idea. I invited Kayla to help us with our presentation during the festival Community Day. And so there we were the next morning, Kayla in one seat, me in the other, Whitney sandwiched between us. When it came time for me to show the SRO crowd how I use the “outside” command to have Whitney guide me to a door, Kayla whipped out her white cane to demonstrate how she finds doors, too. When we returned to our seats, a boy in the audience asked Kayla if she was going to get a dog.

Kayla didn’t answer right away, so I butted in and explained that you have to be at least 16 years old to train with a Seeing Eye dog. The Seeing Eye believes working with a guide dog demands a certain amount of physical, mental, and emotional maturity.

“In order to work with a Seeing Eye dog, you have to be with the dog all the time. You have to be the one who feeds the dog, grooms the dog, takes the dog to the vet when you need to – not your mom or dad, not your brother or sister or your grandparents – you,” I said, explaining how that’s all part of the bonding, how it helps the dog understand how important it is to keep their blind companion safe. “You guys in elementary school and middle school are busy all day learning stuff,” I continued. “You don’t get enough breaks during school to take your dog out to empty or give them the walks they need.”

Kayla is a good listener. She understood, and she had an answer for the boy’s question now. “When I’m 16, I’m getting one,” she declared.

I read from a Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to the audience, and then handed it to Kayla as a gift. ”Thank you!” she gushed, and as she busied herself running her fingertips over the pages, I answered questions and explained tricks I use to do things at home: stretching a rubber band over a bottle of conditioner to distinguish it from shampoo, putting safety pins on the tags of anything I wear that’s black (paper clips for white), choosing dresses and skirts made of unique fabrics and interesting textures so I can use my sense of touch to keep track of what I’m wearing.

And then came my favorite question of the morning. A kid in the back row asked, “Kayla, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Kayla’s answer: a fashion designer. “I want to design dresses and skirts,” she told the audience. “I’ll give them to all the girls to make them look pretty.”

What a great trip to Denver! In-between a baseball game with a puppy-in-training, a one-on-one tour of the 16th Street Mall with the head security cop there (don’t ask!), a nature walk

Waiting for our ride to the airport in sunny Denver.

with an old friend from my days working at the Kane County Cougars and the discovery of a new favorite beer afterwards (90 Shillings Scottish Ale from Odell’s Brewery in Fort Collins), I somehow managed to find enough quiet time at the hotel to make progress on a new book I’m writing, too.

More on that book later.

For now, all you need to know is that we arrived home in Chicago just in time to unpack and re-pack our bags for this Thursday, when Whitney and I head to the Youth Literature Festival put on by the College of Education at the University of Illinois. This year the Youth Literature Festival is partnering with Special Friends (a federally funded project promoting social acceptance and friendships among kindergarteners with and without disabilities)to sponsor our visit to Mrs. Coash’s kindergarten class at Westview School in Champaign.

I’ve known Mary Coash for years – her son Joey had severe and profound disabilities, and he was in self-contained special education classes with our son Gus. Like many other kids Gus introduced us to in his early years, Joey died too young. Joey’s short life inspired his mother to get a degree in education, and the kindergarten class Mary Coash teaches now mixes children with and without disabilities. After Whitney and I visit Mrs. Coash’s kindergartners on Friday, we’ll meet one-on-one with a girl who is blind and graduated from Mrs. Coash’s kindergarten a couple years ago. She’s a big second grader now and enrolled in a class with friends she made in kindergarten.

Whitney and I will be part of the festival’s Community Day on Saturday, October 6, too. Our sessions there are free and open to the public, and the Youth Literature Festival also sent special invitations encouraging parents, caregivers and participants involved in the Special Friends Project to come. I hope they do – I’d love to meet them!

Community Day takes place at the I-Hotel at 1900 S. First Street in Champaign, and our first presentation goes from 10:45 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. Our second session goes from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Both of our sessions meet in the “Excellence Room,” and I gotta admit: that makes me a little nervous. Talk about pressure! If you live anywhere near Champaign, I welcome you to come and see if Whitney and I can live up to our billing…

Erin Lukacovic lives in Colorado and has been volunteering as a puppy-raiser for Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) since she was 16 years old. She has applied for an apprenticeship to become a guide dog mobility instructor, and if anyone from GDB is reading this, hey: you’d be fools not to hire her! She not only loves the dogs, but she studies, researches, and reads everything she can get her hands on about guide dogs and the work that goes into training them. That’s how she found my book, my blog, and now… me! Whitney and I had a ball with Oscar, Erin and Erin’s family at Coors Field Tuesday night, and I was so pleased when Erin agreed to write this guest post about our Rockies rendezvous.

Laughter in the rain

by Erin Lukacovic

When I read on Beth Finke’s blog that she was coming to Denver I had hoped we might meet, carrying along the realistic expectation that nothing would probably come of it. But what

Beth, Erin, Whitney and Oscar at Coors Field

started as an idle comment on a blog post and a vague hope turned into a wonderful night at a baseball game filled with enthusiastic conversation.

Less than a week after leaving that comment to Beth’s post, I was on my way downtown to meet a fellow blogger and the author of a book I had found by chance at my college library a few years previous.

My last puppy-in-training, Matilda, has returned to campus in San Rafael, so I borrowed Oscar from someone else in our puppy raising club so he could get some socialization. We met Beth at her hotel and after a brief introduction, began the short walk to Coors Field.

Although Oscar was a little distracted, Whitney was composed as she led the way in a strange city. The only break in conversation was a short “you have the green” or “let’s go” as we crossed intersections. We entered Coors Field and found our seats. They were perfect for our purposes: just under the roof and protected from rain. We had a perfect aerial view of the field and even better acoustics: we could hear the strike of ball on bat as if it was yards away.

Our conversation continued throughout the game, touching on topics of puppy raising, family, writing, books, and training with a guide dog. We had a traditional baseball meal of a foot long dog, although the green pepper instead of the more common pickle relish was a little odd.

The game sadly ended in the middle of the 7th inning due to rain. Luckily however, the Rockies broke their losing streak to win against the Chicago Cubs 10-5, despite a lack in fan base. The walk back to the hotel was slightly less pleasant than the walk there. As you can see from the picture, the rain caused both people and dogs to become pretty drenched by the time we had completed our route. We said our goodbyes with a promise of meeting again in the future.

Before I left for Denver I had to get some posts ready for the Easter Seals blog to publish while I was away. I used the writers from my downtown Chicago memoir class as an example in a post I wrote for the Easter Seals blog about how important public transportation can be to senior citizens, and that post was published today.Here's an excerpt:

In addition to moderating the Easter Seals blog, I also lead a memoir-writing class for senior citizens — it’s sponsored by the City of Chicago’s Family and Support Services and it meets right downtown. The youngest writer in class is 63, the oldest is 94. Many are widows, and most of them live alone.

Each week I assign these writers a topic, they go home, write 500-word essays, and bring them back the next week to read aloud. After weeks, months, years of hearing each other’s stories, these writers have come to know each other very well. “It’s not a therapy session,” one of them told me with a laugh. “But it sure is therapeutic.” Very few of the writers in my class own cars, and none of them drive to class. They live on Chicago’s south side, the Gold Coast, in Hyde Park, in west Rogers Park. How do they get downtown? Public transportation, of course!

Easter Seals’ National Center on Senior Transportation works to increase transportation options for older adults and enhance their ability to live more independently within communities throughout the United States. Other riders — those of us with disabilities, for example — benefit from the work the center does, too.

So anyway, that post went up on the Easter Seals blog today, and by chance today’s cover story out here in Denver’s Westward newspaper is about Claudia Folska, who is blind and running for a seat on Denver’s Rapid Transit District (RTD) board. A Denver resident is quoted in the story complaining that Folska is a shoe-in because she’ll get the “sympathy vote.” Well, she may be a shoe-in, but not due to sympathy. More likely because she’s received endorsements from ten other RTD board members, from city council members, and from the Denver Area Labor Federation.F rom the story:

“She has the capacity to understand the technology of transit — the details of it and the bottom line,” says Stan Gronek, the financial secretary-treasurer of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001, which has endorsed Folska, “and she has the heart for the passenger, particularly the segment of disabled passengers who really need public transportation.”

The Denver area is known as one of the best American cities when it comes to public transportation, but when a sighted man donned a blindfold for the Westward story, Folska was able to point out where Denver’s RTD is still falling short. Their experience confirms what Denver residents have been telling me about crossing intersections with Whitney. “The light rail goes right in front of your hotel,” they warn. “So be careful –it’s hard to hear it coming!” Again, from the story:

For instance, many light-rail trains are too quiet to hear until they’ve already arrived and the whooshing automatic doors open in illogical places along the platform. There are dangerous walking paths and tricky escalators and hanging plants that no amount of expert maneuvering with a white cane can detect. And then there are the “virtual corners” — corners without curbs that are easier for wheelchairs but whose slopes provide no clues to blind pedestrians as to where to cross the street, meaning they could end up in the middle of a busy intersection.

Whitney and I have been treading carefully while Mike is busy at his conference, and we have already managed to enjoy a Rockies game at Coors Field and many safe trips to the 16th Street Mall without getting hit by a quiet train. I do hope Claudia wins that election, though. Sounds like the Denver RTD board could use her vision!