I published a post here back in March after Chicago Public Radio let me know they wouldn’t be airing pre-recorded essays like the ones I used to do for them. But here’s some good news: reports of my radio-essay death were greatly exaggerated. An essay I wrote aired on WBEZ this morning!

At the WBEZ studios, recording my essay. (Photo by Bill Healy, courtesy WBEZ)

I like working with public radio, so after I got that disappointing note I headed over to the WBEZ studios to meet with the Managing Editor of Public Affairs to see if I had any other options. She told me that in their new format they’d be covering topics in-depth from time to time, and that this summer Aurora Aguilar would be producing pieces on literacy, and Cate Cahan would be focusing on race issues. I told her I’d worked with Aurora and Cate before. She suggested I try pitching ideas to them. I pitched. They responded. I wrote. We recorded.

The piece I did for Aurora hasn’t aired yet. The one that aired today is about how blindness can change the way you look, ahem, at race, and Its part of Cate’s Race: Out Loud series. Here’s how WBEZ describes Race: out Loud on its web site:

We’re asking: What would it sound like if people said what they really think and feel about race, about ethnicity? What if they really talked about how it shapes them, their lives, and attitudes? What would we hear, if we listened?

That part about what we might hear if we listened is what motivated me to pitch my essay. And speaking of blindness, I can read Braille, but I’m painfully slow at it. WBEZ radio producer Joe DeCeault has been recording my essays for years, and the two of us developed a system where he puts me in front of a microphone, asks what the first paragraph in my essay is about, then what the second paragraph is about, and I retell the story paragraph by paragraph in my own words. Essays produced by Joe make me sound like I’m just sitting down talking to you, and we’re both pretty proud of how this works.

Race: Out Loud is a special project, though, so they have a freelancer doing the sound work. Bill Healy consulted with Joe about how to pull this off, but knowing that Cate Cahan and I had gone back and forth via email editing and rewriting the essay, Bill thought we needed to record it exactly how it had been written.

And so, after setting me up at the mike and testing my sound levels, Bill whipped out a printed copy of my essay and began reading it out loud line by line. I parroted what Bill said, and once I’d repeated all my lines, he spliced the sentences together, added sound effects and music, and…voila! When my essay aired on Morning Edition in Chicago today, It sounded like I’d read the whole essay all at once.

If you missed hearing the piece this morning, you can read the transcript and hear it online. Young Bill Healy sure rose to the task. He took photos for the online version and wrote some promotional copy as well. And now he can add “recorded a blind woman reading an essay” to his resume, too.

I spent the past four days at a summer Jazz Camp here in Chicago. That was not a typo. I was at Jazz Camp.

This is the fourth year that the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble combined to present the camp for adults, but it’s the first year they expanded it to a kind of humanities festival rather than simply a series of classes for amateur musicians. A story in the Chicago Tribune explains:

“We’ve extended it way beyond what it ever was … so that arts educators and anybody interested in jazz can see the connection between the music and other art forms,” says Lauren Deutsch, executive director of the non-profit Jazz Institute of Chicago.

The article quoted Deutsch saying that the idea of the Straight Ahead and Other Directions Jazz Summer Camp this year was “to show how jazz really touches everything.” Lectures on topics ranging from “Jazz and Social Justice” to “Jazz and the Stage/Silver Screen” helped them achieve their goal, and the star of the show was New Orleans saxophone master and Mardi Gras Indian Chief Donald Harrison, Jr., who opened each day with a lecture. I know Donald Harrison from watching him play himself on the HBO TV series “Tremé,” and in a talk about Hurricane Katrina he said it was the “worst and best thing” that could have happened to New Orleans. “It forced people to realize how important the culture here is. People from out of town are making a point to come, they are paying more attention to us, they realize now how important it is to continue with it. And the people from New Orleans who are really interested in keeping the culture alive realized that they could have lost it forever.”

My morning master’s classes were for the rhythm section, and I took an afternoon master’s class on beginning improvisation. Donald Harrison sat in on one of the improvisation classes and reiterated some of the musical terms that by that time were already spinning in my head: octotonic, mixolydian, tonic, dorian, altered. I was the only blind student at camp, and by far the least accomplished musician in the master classes.

But hey, jazz musicians are known for their ability to improvise. When I begged off taking the piano part for one tune, reminding the teacher that I couldn’t see to read the chart, a fellow student jumped in to join me on the piano bench and call out the chords. In-between sessions students offered to read the notes on the whiteboard out loud into my digital recorder, and others would lend an elbow to walk Whitney and me to the elevator to find the next session. I learned as much about jazz from the conversations we had during those walks as I did in class.

One of the photos Bill Healey took during our Thursday morning shoot. (Photo courtesy WBEZ.)

I hadn’t planned it this way, but Jazz Camp landed on my calendar days after my Easter Seals job had given me a new laptop with new software to learn. I’d started teaching a second weekly memoir-writing class the week before camp, too, and returned from a last-minute trip to see my oldest sister and her husband in South Carolina the day before jazz camp started. Add to all that, Chicago Public Radio had asked me to write an record a piece for them the day before I left for South Carolina.

My WBEZ piece is about how blindness can change the way you look at race, and it’s set to air in Chicago this Monday, July 30, during the Morning Edition segment of NPR. It’ll be available online after it airs, and when the producer contacted me this week to ask if they could come out to shoot some photos to use with the online segment, I told them the only time I’d be available was on my walk to jazz camp in the morning. We squeezed the photo session in.

All this activity didn’t leave me much opportunity to practice the piano in-between sessions, but in many ways, the timing was perfect. Figuring out chord structures and listening for changes and working out dorian scales helped balance everything else going on. It’s kind of like George Gershwin once said: “Life is a lot like Jazz… it’s best when you improvise.”

This week I wrote a post for the Easter Seals blog reporting my progress using a talking pedometer for their “Walk the Extra Mile” challenge. In that post I quoted from a post on the New York Times Well blog that said one mile of walking covers about 2,000 steps, and Americans, on average, take 5,117 steps a day. After reading those statistics, I knew Whitney and I were well on our way to prove my theory: blind people who use guide dogs — especially those of us who live in big cities — really do walk more than the average person does.

In a previous post I’d written for the Easter Seals blog about this challenge thing at work, I explained that when you live in a city you can’t simply open a sliding glass patio door to let your guide dog out. When Whitney needs to “empty,” I take her down the street, around the corner and to her favorite tree. That’s 1,000 steps per trip, and that trip takes place at least four times a day. The first two weeks of our experiment included one week of 100-degree temperatures in Chicago. We stayed inside with our air conditioner on more than usual, but hey, a girls gotta go. Even in that hot weather Whitney and I averaged 9,871 steps a day. My steps per day increased when temperatures cooled down the next week.

Just when I’d started planning which new equipment Whitney and I would try out when we won the Go The Extra Mile challenge grand prize (a free six-month fitness club membership), I pressed the button to hear the number of steps I’d taken so far that day, and … nothing. My talking pedometer stopped talking. I shook the thing and pressed the button. Nothing. I turned it upside-down and rightside-up again. Nothing. I stuck it in a bag of rice for a day. Nothing.

And so, what happened with the challenge? Well, human resources offered to buy me a new talking pedometer, but I told them not to bother. I have a new theory now: blind people who use guide dogs — especially those of us who live in big cities — walk so many steps that a talking pedometer can’t keep up with us.

Hi all–I’m traveling, visiting with sisters, so  I asked my husband Mike to chip in a guest post — I’ll be back soon, in the meantime, I give you Mike. 

Me and Brad and Roy

by Mike Knezovich

Our favorite neighborhood watering hole and restaurant – Hackney’s Printers Row – draws us frequently (probably too frequently) because it also draws an eclectic, articulate, smart, accomplished and just-plain-nice group of folks from the neighborhood. Attorneys, artists, architects, research scientists, computer programmers, linguists, stock market mavens … you can learn a lot sipping a beer at Hack’s.

Two of my favorite people: Brad and, well, I think you recognize the other one.

One of the Hackney’s denizens Beth and I have learned a great deal from is Stephen Bradley Gillaugh, who goes simply by “Brad.” Brad moved to Printers Row – from Los Angeles – to retire after a long, illustrious career in the art world. He worked for decades in NYC – at the Museum of Modern Art and at the famed Leo Castelli Gallery. Later, in LA, he managed a big corporate art collection (when corporations used to have such things). Brad doesn’t brag, but over time (and libations) Beth and I have gotten lots of inside chatter about the likes of Rauschenberg and Warhol and even Truman Capote. (I’m not telling, so don’t even ask.)

We also learned that Brad has a fantastic art collection, displayed in his apartment, and that he has so much art that some of it has been left in boxes and shipping tubes because there is no room to display it. One evening Brad said he didn’t even remember what he had stored. Beth took exception to this and suggested he go through his stuff, get it framed, and then loan it to friends to hang.

As we know, Beth can be, err, persistent. And so Brad, one day, decided to go through his forgotten works. He found prints and drawings by Roy Lichtenstein, Roger Brown, and other notables. But instead of framing them, he’s gone on a generous donation campaign, giving them outright to friends in the neighborhood.

Thanks to Brad’s generosity, this hangs in our living room.

Including us. He had us over one evening to select from his overage. I took a fancy to the one he’d guessed I’d like — a print of a poster Lichtenstein did for the 1967 Aspen Winter Jazz Festival. It now hangs in our living room.

And I love it. So much so that it inspired me to visit the Art Institute of Chicago to take in the Lichtenstein Retrospective that runs through September 3. It turned out to be a terrific show—but it was all the better because I walked the gallery with Brad.

Along the way, I learned that Lichtenstein was a kind, even-tempered man, not the stereotypical high-maintenance hell-raising artist. He did drawings – studies – that became the basis of his paintings. He didn’t sell the drawings (many of which are in the retrospective), but “around the holidays,” Brad says, “he’d come into the gallery (Castelli) and give them to staff as gifts.” One of them – a study of entablatures – he gave to Brad, signed with a personal note.

I learned that Lichtenstein was easy to work with — as opposed to another prominent artist, who, Brad says “traveled with an entourage and would go through two bottles of Jack Daniels every time we set up a show.”

I learned that Brad had actually handled one of the sculptures in the Lichtenstein exhibit ( it’s a big, metal art-deco-ish piece called “Modern Sculpture with Glass Wave” if you take in the show). Brad pointed at it and groaned, saying only that it was “god-awful heavy” to move around.

The show is spectacular, especially if you – like I did – think only of the famous Pop-Art pieces for which Lichtenstein is known. He did a remarkably wide range of

She’s talking about a different Brad.

work, most all of which I found engaging and fascinating.  If you’re in Chicago, I hope you’ll go.

And for those of you who know Lichtenstein and may be thinking Brad…Brad…no our Brad is not THAT Brad. But I’m glad he’s our Brad, and I marvel at the people Beth and I are lucky enough to call our friends.

When I published that post about the Ann Taylor store telling Becky Andrews she couldn’t come in with her guide dog, a lot of you commented and wondered how a business could be so ignorant. Donna Sword, a volunteer puppy raiser for Canine Companions for Independence, left a response that suggested sometimes it’s negative experiences with fake service dogs that make business owners more wary. I asked her to expand that thought into a guest blog, and she graciously said yes.

Masquerading as an assistance dog

by Donna Sword

The Americans with Disabilities Act protects the rights of a person with a disability to bring their service animal with them in public, and it defines a service animal as “any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability.” I do not have a disability, so I rely on the good faith of businesses to welcome my pup-in-training in their stores to support our socialization efforts.

Donna Sword with her current Canine Companions for Independence pup-in-training, Yaxley (Photo courtesy of Donna Sword).

On the rare occasions when we’re met with resistance by a business, we sometimes find it’s because of a past negative experience with a fake service dog. These folk that bring their beloved, but ill mannered, pets into stores perhaps don’t realize the barriers they’re creating for those who rely on guide dogs or assistance dogs for independence. And we’ve seen these pets on our own outings.

The dog under a restaurant table that first growled, then stood and barked aggressively, as the pup and I walked past. The small dog in the front seat of a grocery cart, standing to alert with a tense mouth when children approached too closely. A Chihuahua in a handbag at a concert, invisible except when barking. And the large dog at the mall that took two hands to control as he lunged to sniff passersby.

Each one of these dogs was wearing a vest that identified them as a type of assistance dog. But were they assistance dogs — or instead pets masquerading as such? To a business owner, there’s not a big difference. Whether it’s due to inadequate training or a personality not suited for service dog work, it’s the same. These dogs are seen as potential liabilities. Will these dogs cause customer complaints, a loss of business? Will they have a toileting accident in the restaurant? And rather worrisome, will these particular dogs inflict damage, personal or otherwise?

I find it interesting, and more than a bit distressing, that an assistance dog cape can be purchased online, complete with certification documents. A Google search will net you several companies that require only a credit card and a dog; no proof of training required. And rather ironically, the ADA does not require working dogs to display any identification nor is an individual required to have their dog certified as an assistance animal. This opens the door to abuse of the law, it seems. Unless challenged, anyone may claim their pet as an assistance dog.

This is wrong.

And so of course, businesses are cautious. And maybe just a bit confused. While the ADA laws are clearly written on the access rights of individuals, some businesses just aren’t educating themselves or their employees. They don’t know that an ill-behaved dog (whether it is a service dog or not)) can be asked to leave their place of business. Or that there are some questions they can legally ask, such as “is the service dog required because of a disability?” or even “what task has the dog been trained to perform?” One question businesses can not ask an individual is “what is your disability?”

A highly trained assistance dog or guide dog is not a pet. They are constant companions and loved by their handlers, that’s for sure, but these dogs are also necessary, a sort of “assistive technology” allowing a higher level of independence.

I’m afraid we’ve allowed the bad behavior of a few to build these barriers for those who rely on these dogs. I agree that many businesses have a need for more education on ADA, but there is also a need to crack down on these fake service dogs. And on the companies out there selling service dog capes and certifications making it too easy to allow public access to pets.