If you read Sandra Murillo’s guest post here, you know that the 2012 London Paralympic Games had their opening ceremonies last night. The theme for this year’s Paralympic games is scientific discovery, so Stephen Hawking was the obvious choice for narrator. From a story in the London Telegraph:

The show began with Prof Hawking’s familiar computerised voice ringing out in the Olympic Stadium.
Summing up the spirit of the ceremony, he urged the world to “look up at the stars, and not down at your feet” and to “be curious.”

The people I work with at Easter Seals Headquarters in Chicago are pretty excited for the games, and through the job I have moderating their blog I’ve learned about a pretty cool program in Britain that’s helping average kids there get excited about Paralympic sports, too.

Sainsbury’s 1 Million Kids Challenge sent Paralympics Sports Kits to kids in schools, clubs and organizations all across the United Kingdom to encourage millions of them to try out a paralympic sport ahead of the London Games this week. The kit they sent out included a link to a video game that the British grocery store chain helped put together to simulate what it’s like to be blind and play soccer. A friend of mine at work is a huge soccer fan. She can see, and when she tried the simulation she scored a 35%. I was determined to do better. Here from a post I wrote for the Easter Seals blog about my trial run:

The simulation is supposed to present you with four different soccer challenges: passing, shooting, tackling and dribbling. Superstar David Beckham introduces the video, asking players to use their ears to angle their passes based on what they hear in their headphones.

I linked to the game. David Beckham told me to put my headphones on. I did. He explained how to use the arrow keys to follow the sound of the ball, and then said to hit the space bar to pass. I put my hands on the keys and waited for the action to begin. I waited. And waited.

I could hear children playing, but got no direction of where to pass or dribble, and I had no clue what to press to get the aural clues started. I tried arrowing up, arrowing down. I hit the space bar. I hit it again. Maybe enter? Would that work? No luck.

In the end, I had to call Mike over. He could see where the button was on the screen and pushed it for me. Irony of ironies, the only way I could play the blind soccer game was to have a sighted person help me.

I was ready to get outraged, but I sat back and took a breath instead, and that’s when I realized: the blind soccer simulation video wasn’t intended for people who are blind. It was meant to give people who can see a better understanding about living with a disability.

A study by Sainsbury’s shows that the kids in Britain who tried playing a paralympic sport are more knowledgeable — and excited — about watching the Paralympicsthe in London these next couple weeks. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the children who tried a Paralympics sport were able to specify an event that they are looking forward to watching once the Games start today.

When Whitney and I volunteered at the Summer Military Sport Camp a few weeks ago, one of the guys there encouraged me to try out some of the special equipment the athletes use. I learned that the adaptive equipment doesn’t simplify the sport or make it easier – working those machines was hard, especially on the upper body. It gave me a new appreciation for what these paralympic athletes are up against. And now, just like those kids in Britain, I’m looking forward to watching (okay, listening to) the Paralympic games these next couple weeks — the United States Olympic Committee will be creating original video content for the U.S. Paralympics YouTube channel, and NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) will air one-hour highlight shows on Sept. 4, 5, 6 and 11 at 7 p.m. EDT. Let the games begin!

That’s Laura Martinez of Charlie Trotter’s.

Charlie Trotter’s, a five-star restaurant here in Chicago, is closing its doors for good this Friday, August 31. Laura Martinez, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, has been working at the iconic restaurant for more than two years, and now she’s having a hard time finding a new job.

Most people with a prestigious cooking school and experience in the kitchen of a five-star restaurant on their resume would have an easy time finding a new job, but Laura Martinez is not like most people. She’s blind.

Laura got her job at Charlie Trotter’s after the famous chef and restaurant owner visited the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind. Laura had been working in the Lighthouse cafeteria kitchen at the time, and it was love at first taste. Charlie is quoted in an article in the Chicago Tribune about Laura:

“I was watching her work and saw how she handled things with her hands, touching for temperature and doneness, and I ate her food and it was quite delicious. We got to talking and she told me about her dreams and I said, ‘What would you think about working at Charlie Trotter’s?'”

Laura was already attending the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary program at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago at the time. Charlie Trotter offered to help with her tuition, and Laura accepted a job at his restaurant after she graduated.

The Illinois Department of Human Services hired a personal assistant to help Laura with on-the-job training, but then staff at Charlie Trotter’s took Laura under their wing and started providing her with supportive job assistance, removing the need for the personal assistant. I had the privilege of meeting Laura last year, and she told me co-workers on the line at Charlie Trotter’s had become comfortable having her there prepping, cleaning and chopping.

Trotter says Martinez is an exceptional worker who brought value to his restaurant. “Besides being a great cook, she brings value through her professionalism. She is a great team member.” When I talked with Laura, I asked if she had a specialty. “Well, a lot of vegetarians come to Charlie Trotter’s,” she said, her voice betraying a proud smile. “They like my vegetable risotto.”

I have Laura’s contact info, but out of respect for her privacy I won’t leave it here. If you do have an idea of a Chicago-area restaurant or restaurateur interested in hiring a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu who is a great team member with years of experience at a world–renowned five-star restaurant under her belt, please leave the idea here in a comment and I’ll pass it along to her.

My brother’s in town, and he brought his trombone!

That’s Doug: Has trombone, will travel.

Doug graduated from high school the year I was born, and I grew up listening to the jazz records he left behind when he embarked on his music career. Louis Armstrong, Hot Five and Hot Seven. King Oliver. Lil Hardin.

My sisters and I went with Flo to hear Doug perform live a lot, too – he played and toured with the Original Salty Dogs Jazz Band, the Smokey Stover Firehouse Band and Bob Scobey’s Frisco Jazz Band before he had to leave home to join the Marines. We all breathed a sigh of relief when he got into the 3rd Marine Air Wing Band in El Toro, CA – playing for national parades and ceremonies in the United States kept him out of Vietnam.

Before he left home, Doug bought the family a piano, and though it may have been seen as a frivolous expense on Flo’s budget, she made sure we three youngest took lessons. I wouldn’t be playing (or appreciating) the piano the way I do if it weren’t for those two. Thank you, Doug and Flo.

Once his Marine Corps days were over, Doug left his music career behind to focus on raising a family and pursuing a corporate career. Any time Doug’s name was mentioned after that, you could count on Flo to shake her head and lament, “I sure wish Doug would pick up that trombone again.” He finally did in 1996, working long and hard to get his chops back in time to put a band together to surprise Flo on her 80th birthday. Thank you, Doug and Flo.

Doug has been playing his trombone ever since, and while he and his lovely wife Shelley are in town from Louisville this week, he’ll be sitting in with a couple Chicago bands.

• Thursday, August 23: 8 pm at Untitled, 111 W. Kinzie (312.880.1511) with the Jake Sanders Quintet. Jake used to play in New York’s Cangelosi Cards, and now he’s here to bring “the jazz age into the new age” every Thursday at this new River North dance club.
• Sunday, August 26 8 pm at Honky Tonk BBQ on 1800 S. Racine with The Fat Babies, a Chicago-based traditional jazz group that’s heavily influenced by musicians like Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.

The Jake Sanders Quintet and the Fat Babies both feature Andy Schum on cornet, and Doug and Shelley can’t say enough about this guy. “All the musicians are young and really enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the old, old stuff,” Shelley says, adding that some of them are 78 collectors. “That’s really unusual…and wonderful!” I was thrilled to read that both of these Chicago venues boast huge dance floors. Mike and I have been enjoying SummerDance lessons in Grant Park the past couple years, and at Doug’s gigs in the early 60s we little girls all shared stints as Flo’s dancing partner. So bring your dancing shoes and look for me this weekend: I’ll be the one swinging like a hep cat on the dance floor. Thank you, Doug and Flo.

Last week I asked my memoir-writing students to pick a song, any song, and use that song title as the topic for their next essay. Take “All Shook Up,” for example. With a title like that, you could write about living through an earthquake. Or about a startling event in your lifetime that really left you shaken. Or, hey, if you just love Elvis, you could write about him!

That’s percussionist Audrey Mitchell in the foreground. (photo by fellow writer Darlene Sweitzer)

The song titles they came back with were as diverse as the writers who chose them. A new student in class wrote about a memorable road trip she and her husband took to West Virginia to meet his farmer uncle and aunt. Song title? “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Annelore chose Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” and wondered out loud why it is that she easily regards people in their forties as equals but has a hard time looking at her 40+-year-old daughter as a grown-up.

Wanda chose the title of a Billie Holiday tune to describe what life was like when “Mama started “working in private family” – Wanda’s words explaining that her mother had to live with the family she worked for. On Wednesdays, her only day home with Wanda, “Mama” would supply her young daughter with sayings like “God Bless the Child” to help them get through their days away from each other.

We had song titles from the 1930s through the 1980s, from Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera” to Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” And then Audrey surprised us all, choosing the title of a current song, and writing about something she’d signed up for just the week before: a class on Afro-Caribbean and World Rhythm drumming. Audrey wrote that her only previous experience with percussion had been in her kindergarten rhythm band. “I played the bell and triangle then, and that was a long time ago!” Playing percussion must be like riding a bicycle. Audrey took up right where she left off. From her essay:

After a few preliminary instructions, Carlos had this group of 25 stately senior citizens beating bongos and conga drums, tapping bells, shaking tambourines and maracas, reviving rhythms as if we had been doing it all our lives. As we played, one energized participant called out the famous Desi Arnaz’ expression…“Ba ba loo!”

The drumming class met at the Chicago Cultural Center, the same place I teach my class. Audrey has a long commute to memoir-writing class each week – she lives on the southwest side of Chicago and drives to her closest CTA stop and takes a 45-minute bus ride to downtown Chicago from there. In her essay she admits she hadn’t slep well the night before her drumming class. “I drudged on to class and am I glad I did,” she wrote at the conclusion of her essay. “When I left to go back home, I was wide awake. AND NOW, I can’t wait for the next class!”

People sometimes ask me what gets me going, what motivates me to get out of the house and do so much. Well, now you know. I’m inspired by the seniors in my memoir-writing class. Oh, and before I forget, the song title for Audrey’s essay: “Drumming Song” by Florence and the Machine.

PS: Big thanks to my friend Janie for coming up with this song title idea. If any of you blog followers out there have a song title you think might make a good writing topic for my memoir-writing classes, please leave that song title as a comment here. I’m all ears!

Whitney and I sure met a lot of motivated athletes last weekend at the Summer Military Sport Camp, and as is so often the case when it comes to volunteering, we got far more out of it

It doesn’t take long for people to figure out my disability.

than we put in.

Out of respect for privacy, I won’t be sharing any specifics here about the individuals who participated in the camp, but I can tell you this: very few of the Vets I met used wheelchairs or a prosthesis of any kind to get around. The vast majority had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

An op-ed article about the high number of veterans coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan with mental health problems happen to come out in the New York Times the very day I started volunteering at the military sports camp. The piece follows the heartbreaking story of Maj. Ben Richards. He came home in 2007 after suffering multiple concussions in Iraq, and it took three years for him to get a diagnosis of TBI and PTSD. Richards is retiring from the U.S. Army this month, and the article quotes him saying that things might have been easier if he had lost a leg in Iraq.

”I’d trade a leg for this in a heartbeat,” Ben said. “If all I was missing was a leg, I’d be a stud. And if I’d lost a leg, I’d be able to stay in the Army. That’s all I want to do.”

That notion might sound extreme, but after reading the entire piece – and talking to some of the vets at the military sports camp last weekend – I can understand why he might feel this way. From the article:

Richards’s wife, Farrah, was thrilled when he returned “safely” from Iraq in the fall of 2007, and she counted them both very, very lucky. But almost immediately, Farrah says, she noticed that the man who came home wore her husband’s skin but was different inside. “There were obvious changes in his personality,” she recalls. “He was extremely withdrawn; he would go into the bedroom for hours.” A once boisterous dad who loved to roughhouse with his children — now there are four, ages 1 to 14 — Ben no longer seemed to know how to play with them.

I’ve never felt particularly lucky for losing my sight, but at least when people see me with a guide dog or a white cane, they know what’s up. Strangers understand if I fumble for a doorknob. They aren’t hurt when I don’t recognize them waving hello. They don’t push back if I happen to bump into them in line. It’s a different story for Major Richards. Before his injury, he had taught at West Point, and had an I.Q. of about 148. Those concussions he suffered in Iraq have left him with incapacitating headaches, overwhelming fatigue and constant insomnia. After returning to the United States he tried going back to West Point to teach, but found he couldn’t read more than a few pages at a time. He would lose his train of thought in class. Students were questioning his behavior and wondering what was wrong. Last March, Richards asked to be relieved of his teaching duties.

The article refers to traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder as the signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghan wars, “partly because of the strains of repeated combat tours and partly because the enemy now relies more on bombs than bullets.” After spending time with some of those veterans at the military sports camp last week, I think they all should be given medals for courage. Nicholas D. Kristof’s conclusion to his op-ed piece in the New York Timesis spot on:

In speaking out with brutal candor about his injury and decline, Maj. Ben Richards exemplifies courage and leadership. He’s not damaged goods, but a hero. Maybe, if our leaders are listening, one of his last remaining dreams is still achievable: that his story will help win better treatment for so many others like him.