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!

Tomorrow morning Whitney and I head to Skokie for a “Mix ‘n Mingle” at National Louis University. Twenty children’s book authors have been invited to display our wares to school librarians who’ll be there, and before the mingling starts we each get one minute to stand by our table and give a summary of what we do during school presentations.

the event coordinator warned us she’ll be using the stopwatch on her IPhone to keep our speeches short. “What do you wish to accomplish — book school visits? increase the visibility of your books?” she wrote in an email. “Plan out your 1 minute in advance…and I do mean ONE minute!”

That's me at a booth at the IRC conference last March. Whitney's under the table. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

This consists of a slate or template with evenly spaced depressions for the dots of Braille cells, and a stylus for creating the individual Braille dots. With paper placed in the slate, tactile dots are made by pushing the pointed end of the stylus into the paper over the depressions. The paper bulges on its reverse side forming “dots.”

Huh? Obviously using a slate and stylus to create Braille is something you need to see – or feel – in order to understand how it works.

The librarians who stop by our booth tomorrow will get a bookmark of the Braille alphabet to help them “decode” the word I’ve brailled out for them. I’m hoping they’ll share these treasures with their students back home and conjure up ways to use the concept of Braille to encourage the kids to read print. And then, well, they’ll just have to invite Whitney and me to come visit: I read from a Braille version of my children’s book Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound at all our school presentations.

Gotta go now and gather up all the Braille and print stuff to bring along tomorrow and practice that one-minute summary. Who knows? I may even learn to use the stopwatch on my talking iPhone!

Passive House Institute US , the non-profit organization my husband Mike Knezovich works for, is holding it’s 7th Annual North American Passive House conference at the Marriott Hotel in Denver next week, and Whitney and I are going along for the ride.

That’s a home built to the passive house standard in Bethesda, Md.

Passive house is a building energy standard — the most stringent such standard, to be exact. To be certified as a Passive House, a building has to fall below a certain threshold when it comes to the energy required to heat and cool it to comfortable levels. The principles behind passive house  were developed in the 1970s at places like the Small Homes Research Council at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When interest in conservation waned in the United States in the 1980s, the Germans picked up the ball and developed what in Europe is called the Passivhaus standard and building method.

Katrin Klingenberg — a German-born and trained architect — came to Urbana to build her own passive House  as a proof of concept nearly 10 years ago. Since then, she founded Passive House Institute US and has built a community of folks who are building these high-performance buildings around North America. Several hundred of these folks will be getting together in Denver next week.

I’ll be spinning my wheels to  keep up with all these architects, builders, engineers, policy makers,
and academics in the Mile High City next week — trust me, I’m no Passive House expert! I hear about it often enough to be able to tell you this much, though: Windows on houses that meet passive house energy standards usually face the southern sun, but the passive house goes a lot further. Passive house construction uses thick walls and super-insulation — a wall of a passive house is about three times as thick as a typical building. The buildings are super-tight; they use tape-sealed construction to keep cold out, and heat in, during the winter. Vice-versa during the summer. That means air doesn’t leak in or out through cracks and holes. You can open the windows on nice days if you want, but the air quality inside is still fine when the windows are closed — there is a constant, low level ventilator operating. And it uses a heat exchanger so that exhaust air (already heated) transfers heat energy to the incoming air. Mike told me that some homes are heated with the equivalent of a blow dryer. Most don’t need a conventional furnace — or cooling system.

Mike’s been in a bunch of these houses and he says they’re really comfortable and quiet. He wants to live in one someday, and I like the idea, too.  Sound interesting? Well, then maybe you should join us at the conference to learn more! I happen to know there’s still time to sign up (I have connections). For more information, email conference@passivehouse.us (pssst, email sent to that address goes to Mike).

One of my best friends from high school, Matt Klir, died of AIDS on September 17, 1992. Another best friend from those days, Laura Gale, wrote this guest post about how much we all still miss him twenty years later.

Crazy about life

by Laura Roy Gale

Modeling, acting, playing music, fun, friends, family, wackiness and more — all fit into the life of a man who was only 32 years old when he died of AIDS. Matt Klir was a ball of fire in high school, clearly more sophisticated than the rest of us. He had blond, classic good looks and dressed impeccably. Even as a teenager, Matt had his own wonderful sense of style — professional photographs of Matt and his sisters taken at modeling shoots by the famed Victor Skrebniski lined the dining room walls of their glorious home. His parents were divorced, he lived with his sisters and a free-spirited mom, and his house essentially had no rules.

We all practically lived in that house during high school, and Matt held his annual Elton John parties there, too. Matt dressed as Elton himself, and insisted that everyone else come in a costume inspired from an Elton John song. No one wanted to miss a party at Matt’s — one girl who worked at a fabric store after school used remnants to dress as “moss” from Your Song, a carrot-topped senior donned Alice Cooper make-up for All the Young Girls Love Alice, and a group of four (with Beth as Dorothy) dressed as Wizard of Oz characters from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Matt and I were good friends, but he never told me he was gay, and I did not know he died of AIDS until well after the fact. We were in high school and college during the 70s, and it still wasn’t openly talked about. I suspect he moved away in order to live his life openly and without the gossip that might have ensued if he stayed in his home town.

While composing this blog post, I started reading Elton John’s new book Love is the Cure: Life, Loss and the End of AIDS. Elton begins by describing the huge impact the life and death of Ryan White had on him, and how it changed his life. As I read this, I thought about Matt Klir and his impact on me.

I still have an intense sadness about the loss of Matt, and I think of him often. He was one of the graduation speakers during our 1977 graduation from York High School in Elmhurst,

That’s Matt addressing the crowd at the York High School graduation in 1977.

and I will always remember Matt as he looks here, full of humor, professionalism, and wisdom beyond his years. His off-beat topic for commencement was “I am a sponge,” and he wowed everyone with his sophisticated outlook.

Our high school years were full of escapades directed by Matt: driving downtown in his mother’s Cadillac convertible to Great Gritzbees Flying Food Show to graze the free appetizer buffet, getting caught by security guards in the stairwell of a Chicago highrise that had a window with a great view of the skyline (how did he find that?), riding his motorcycle — without helmets — of course, sharing a locker which he regularly booby-trapped to play songs I hated (Muskrat Love comes to mind) when I opened it. The list goes on and on.

The two of us went on to the University of Illinois, where Beth had started one year ahead of us. He and I remained close freshman year, and dressed as two of the three musketeers for Halloween our first year. He had to be d’Artagnan, of course.

Matt was wildly successful at U of I, the first freshman to direct a student play (Kismet) at the Assembly Hall. How did I not know he was gay? Naiveté and ignorance on my part, no doubt.

Matt and I drifted apart, and he left U of I without graduating after sophomore year. I lost track of him. Beth did not, and she traveled to Florida with her first SeeingEye dog Dora to be with Matt and his sisters the day he died. Her memories are not as stuck in time as mine.

HIV positive. AIDS. These words do not conjure up a death sentence anymore. Our friend Matt suffered through the disease’s early years and lost his life to what is now a chronic illness and not a death sentence. I could say “I wish…..” or “If only…..” about Matt but I believe life is to be lived for today.

We loved Matt and I think of him often. It is Matt’s life that had a significant influence on my own life, and not his death. He lived fully and gracefully, and I am happy and grateful to have known such an individualist and a guy who was so crazy about life during my formative years. Matt Klir will never be forgotten.

Matt’s partner, who wishes to remain anonymous, sponsors a Ribbons for the Children event every year in memory of Matthew Klir. The event celebrates the great improvements that have been made in the medical care of children and adolescents with HIV/AIDS and benefits children and adolescents with HIV/AIDS who are served by the Children’s Diagnostic & Treatment Center’s in Ft. Lauderdale.

Some updates on the people you read about this past summer here at the Safe & Sound blog:

• Let’s start with my husband Mike’s guest post about White Sox pitcher Chris Sale. Last night Mike and I took the El down and got cheap tickets at the last minute to see Sale face Detroit’s Cy Young winning Justin Verlander. Alas. A rain delay. We were left to enjoy our beers and polish sausage while watching the Bears game on the JumboTron at White Sox Park instead. In the end, the game was postponed altogether. We still have Love for Sale, though.
• A cousin in Ohio read the post I wrote about my brother Doug bringing his trombone along on a visit to Chicago and sitting in with some jazz bands here. He forwarded the post to his son and daughter-in-law in Chicago, and Jason and Keely surprised us at one of Doug’s gigs. Friends from the neighborhood came, too, and I had great fun showing off my big brother.
• When Chicago trombonist Tim Coffman taught at that Jazz Camp for adults that I attended in July, I had no idea he knew my brother Doug. The post I wrote about jazz camp described the difficult time I had keeping up with the other jazz campers, and Tim’s reaction when he ran into me at one of Doug’s gigs confirms I was not exaggerating. “You’re Doug Finke’s sister?”
• If you read Sandra Murillo’s guest post about her friend who competed in the 2012 London Paralympics, well, Anjali Forber-Pratt’s races did not go as well as she’d hoped. “I proudly wore my Team USA jerseys,” she said when asked about returning home without a medal. “And I had the experience of a lifetime racing in front of sold out crowds of 80,000 in the stadium.”
• After I mentioned in a post here that Molly Ringwald’s father is blind, her proud dad (and fantastic jazz pianist) Bob Ringwald sent me a link to another Interview she had regarding her new book. Molly is currently on a 15-day book tour, and my brother Doug may be playing with her dad in San Francisco later this month.
• After a guest post by Sue Martin was published here, another guest post she wrote was published on the blog of the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Health Information during National Suicide Prevention Week.
• If you were intrigued by my post about the essay I recorded for Race: Out Loud, they’ve archived the content created for the series. You can hear all of it now by linking to the WBEZ web site.
• I had such fun with the six-year-old great niece I blogged about in July that we invited her back. On her second visit, “Baby Flo” went on a field trip to the Old Town Aquarium store with her Great Uncle Mike. And I mean that word “Great” in every sense of the word.
• And lastly, speaking of great, a blog reader forwarded my post about chef Laura Martinez to an executive chef at a downtown Chicago restaurant. The chef had Laura in for an interview right away. From all accounts, her interview went well — she especially nailed it when asked how she handles challenges in the kitchen. The executive chef is looking to find a spot for Laura on his staff, and in the meantime, she is teaching a cooking class!

I’ll leave you here with the information about Chef Laura Martinez’s class. Sure wish I were 21 again so I could sign up. I could stand to learn from her knife skills!

Chef Laura Martinez is still hoping for a full-time gig. In the meantime, she’ll teach a cooking class for young adults.

The Chicago Lighthouse Vision Rehabilitation Center proudly presents cooking classes with
Chef Laura Martinez
Mondays, 5:00pm-7:00pm, September 24 – December 12
222 Waukegan Road, Glenview, IL 60025
Ages 13-21

Learn to cook: Chinese fried rice; pizza; brioche; couscous; “not your boxed” macaroni and cheese; Grandma’s recipes, and student requests.
Explore: the history and culture of the food of the week; menu planning; seasonal fruits and vegetables and budgetary factors.
Laura Martinez is a graduate of the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary program at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. She is totally blind, and excels in knife skills and in her use of herbs and spices, through her senses of touch and smell. Her finished product is as accomplished as any young chef, although Laura had the prestigious honor of being a chef at one of Chicago’s highest rated restaurants, Charlie Trotters.
To register contact:
Pam Stern, Manager of Youth/Senior Programs
847.510.2054 or pam.stern@chicagolighthouse.org