Back in the early 90’s, when I was working with my first Seeing Eye dog Dora, three different blind people using guide dogs died after falling into subway tracks. A 1993 NY Times story reported that in one accident at the midtown subway stop, “witnesses said Ms. Schneider got up and tried to find the edge of the platform with her hands as a southbound No. 3 express train roared into the station with its horn blasting.”

I’m not afraid of much, but I am afraid of getting onto subways alone with a Seeing Eye dog. I always enlist a friend to come along as a sighted guide.

Plenty of people who use guide dogs take the subway safely back and forth to work every day, and my friend Karen Keninger is about to join those brave souls. Here’s her guest post about learning the DC Metro system with her new Seeing Eye dog Jimi.

That's Karen.

Have any tips? Bring them on

by Karen Keninger

I am an Iowa girl. I make no apology. We don’t have Metros here. We have some busses, but no subways. So my experience of the subways is limited to going with friends while I’ve been in D.C. and a couple excursions in New York. This weekend we passed through eight or nine Metro stations learning how to get from point A to point Z via points D J and Q. I’m confident that in a month or two the Metro will be old hat and no big deal, but this weekend it was not.

Every station is laid out differently. Although they are clean, well lit, well patrolled, safe, and loaded with excellent signage, it’s going to be a challenge figuring out where to go at each point. For example, there is a talking and Brailled machine to buy your fare cards out of–very easy to use. But how do you know which gates are open to go in and which only go out? They all look the same, and the pattern is not consistent from station to station. Jimi got pretty good at the escalators, but once you get on the platform, how do you know whether it’s a blue train or an orange one? Oh, and how do you know whether it’s the train going out of the city or into it? And it matters!

They’re announcing it, and there are speakers on the outside of the trains, but they’ve said it so often that it’s a monosyllabic grunt most of the time in a particular accent that I’m not used to. The only thing that is easy to understand is the ubiquitous announcements that blare out from the speakers on the posts telling you not to run on the platform, to hold your child’s hand, and to stand back to let passengers off the train. Of course these announcements mask anything you might otherwise have been able to understand from the train conductor announcements.

I have received two specific pieces of advice from people living in D.C. regarding the metro. One is “Don’t live on the green line.” The other is “Pick a commute where you won’t have to change trains.” Excellent advice, but impossible to follow. NLS is on the green line.

For those of you who, like me, are not used to subways, let me see if I can describe them from my point of view. (You cosmopolitan types can skip this part!) First there is an escalator that takes you down from the street. This escalator may or may not be operating depending on who knows what. You prefer to walk down rather than up, and some of them are really, really long escalators. Then there is a row of gates with an attendant’s kiosk in the middle of the row. You don’t know which way the gates are going if you can’t see the lights, because each one can go either in or out depending on I don’t know what. You put your fare card into a slot on your side of the gate. The slot has Braille on it, but you don’t really have time to read “insert card here,” and they all say the same thing. It is sucked away and pops up on top maybe 18 inches away. You pull it out and the gate opens. This way the system knows where you entered.

After the gates may be another set of escalators, shorter this time, taking you down to the platform. Or you might be on the platform. Or you might be on one platform, with another one down below–at which point it is useful to know where you are going lest you end up somewhere else. Sometimes the platform is between two tracks, and you pick the train going your direction of the proper color. (There are red, green, yellow, orange and blue trains, and soon to be silver as well.) Sometimes the two tracks are next to each other and the platforms are on the outside of the trains, so if you start on the wrong side you have to go over a bridge to get to the other side. Sometimes the trains at one level go one way and the trains on the other level go the other way. Sometimes trains of different colors use the same track, alternating blue and orange for instance. Sometimes the trains on the upper level go east and west and the ones on the lower level go north and south. (Please note that cardinal directions are meaningless and used only for illustrative purposes here. The inside of the station has as far as I could tell no relevance whatsoever to the real world.)

Your only hope of survival seems to be to memorize each station as a unique and unduplicated space and forget everything you thought about stations in general. Nothing applies. Except that at each station at least one escalator is likely to be out of service. You will note, however, one safety feature that you may come to appreciate–truncated domes on the edge of the platform. Jimi is supposed to be afraid of empty subway tracks. He isn’t. but when I feel those truncated domes (little bumps) under my feet, I know to move him over. Don’t worry, Mom, I’m not going to fall in. So assuming that you find the right train, you wait for the doors to open. This part is easy, and Jimi bolts for the open door. He loves trains! You stride on with confidence and reach for a pole. You hope you find the pole before you find a body, because groping people is not your plan. You hang on because the car is going to start with a jerk and knock you on your tush if you’re not holding on or sitting down.
The next challenge is to know when to get off. Again, the conductor may be your friend, but may not. I think they’re supposed to announce each stop, but I don’t think they always do it in English. At any rate you need to keep track. I find counting on my fingers is the only way I can remember whether we passed Foggy Bottom or not. I’ll have to transfer from the orange train to the green train to get to work. L’Enfant Plaza had my head swimming on Saturday. We tried it again on Sunday and it made more sense. I just hope I don’t get lost my first day of work!!

And then, if you’re lucky, you get off at the right station–and wonder which way is out! Again, the possibilities seem to be endless. First of all, it matters which part of the train you’re on–front? Back? Middle? Did you remember to pay any attention to this little detail? Finding the escalators will be easier if you know how far up the platform you are. Then there are the gates again. You put your fare card in the slot again on the way out and the system knows how much to charge you for the trip. And then some stations have multiple exits. Am I on Georgia going north, or Georgia going south? How can I tell? H’m!!

The metro gets you places in a hurry–it’s just a matter of getting where you want to go. I haven’t experienced rush hour yet–I’m sure that will be a totally different experience from Saturday and Sunday! I’m going to go back through my audio notes and write it all down and with luck I’ll get to work the first day without getting lost!

Now, I know that those of you reading this who live in Boston, or Chicago, or New York, or San Francisco think,”What a rube!! What a hayseed! It’s not that big a deal!!” So if you have tips and tricks, bring them on!!

Here’s guest blogger Mike Knezovich with a status report on some old friends:

Whit is right at home in the city, including on the subway.

So, in case there was any doubt, Whitney’s definitely my new favorite. Though she has brain cramps (children and certain other dogs make her forget herself momentarily), she’s game for the city buzz, she responds to Beth’s corrections, and she will play — infinitely — catch and fetch for as long as a human can. Gotta’ watch her teeth, though — she’s actually shredded a couple Kong toys and even destroyed a Lacrosse ball.

Meanwhile, my old favorites are thriving. Hanni, the eternal star, enjoys a rich life in Urbana with Nancy and Steven. She’s slowed down, for sure — she doesn’t always leap up to greet you every time you enter the room. But she still thumps her tail on the floor at the first hint that you might give her a pet, a scratch, or even just a look. And at 12 years old, she still gets around. Nancy and Steven regularly take her for long walks at Urbana’s Meadowbrook Park or at Homer Lake, which is a forest preserve just outside town.

On one such walk, Hanni showed she’s still got spunk, too. Nancy reports that on a recent walk, a couple dogs got off leash and started a mad dash

Hanni, in retirement repose.

toward her and Hanni. Hanni is typically the most submissive dog I’ve ever seen. If even a tiny dog approaches, she rolls on her back and goes into the “how low can you go” routine to signal her un-aggressive intentions. Which is what she did as the dogs approached, according to Nancy. This time, though, when one of the approaching dogs bared its teeth, Hanni sprung to her feet and let out an authoritative WOOF that sent the would-be bullies packing in the other direction. I always knew she had it in her, and am happy she never really had to use it.

And then there’s Harper, the retired gentle hero. We still miss him, his giant head, his soft ears, and his generally sweet and peaceful disposition. Well, mostly peaceful, it seems. Chris and Larry, who took Harper in when it was clear he couldn’t work any more, have patiently helped him build his confidence and nerve. You may recall that after his and Beth’s traffic near-miss, he refused to venture more than a block or so from our apartment. He was the same in the suburbs, too. But gradually, walking backward while coaxing him to keep walking, Chris and Larry have gotten Harper to walk all the way around the block — and beyond! He regularly plays with the Collie across the street, and he’s even gotten cocky enough to…chase a squirrel into the neighbor’s yard and tree it.

Harper hangin' with his Collie buddy Beau.

OK, OK, we don’t want him terrorizing squirrels. But my heart swells at the thought that Harper is shaking off the trauma that used to freeze him in his tracks. And I’ll admit it — I’m kinda’ proud of the guy.

And grateful to our friends Steven and Nancy and Chris and Larry and before them Randy Cox — who took in Pandora (who lived to 17), Beth’s first guide dog. All-time favorites, all of them.

It happened, literally, in the blink of an eye. Betsy Folwell was at her magazine job, squinting at her computer screen, when all of a sudden her visual field filled up with gray. The diagnosis: nonarteritic ischemic optic neuropathy. She was blind.

That's Betsy with her Bear -- her Newfie mix -- and her guide dog Oakley.

I met Betsy five years ago when Bark magazine asked me to write a piece about in-home guide dog training. Most people with disabilities attend three-to-four-week sessions at training centers to work with a new service dog. “But I couldn’t see leaving home and losing my independence for even a month,” Betsy told me in the interview. “Especially at a time when I was struggling to learn my limits.” She taught her own dog Bear to lead her to the local post office, but when she realized the Newfy mix would be too big to get on trains and planes with her when she traveled, she used her reporting skills to find an “in-community” program to bring an instructor and guide dog to her home.

Oakley, a two-year-old Labrador Retriever, leapt from his crate and covered Betsy with kisses when the Upstate Guide Dog Association van arrived at her door. The duo was up at seven every morning to meet their trainer and worked nonstop until six each evening, focusing on routes Betsy and Oakley would take on a regular basis. After two weeks, the trainer left Betsy with her new guide and took off for another town and another dog and client.

Betsy said the program was perfect for her, but she won’t be training that way again when it comes time for a new dog. “Upstate Guide Dogs went belly up,” she told me with a shrug. “Lack of funds.”

The sad Truth is, one instructor for one student can be costly. The good news? Oakley is still a strong worker. Betsy is, too: Adirondack Lifemagazine kept her on after she lost her sight. She’s the creative director there now, and she uses a talking laptop like mine to write stories. From an article about Betsy Folwell in a Vermont publication called Seven Days:

A ruddy, spry redhead with a dry wit, she is generous to a fault with her time. And her blindness is barely apparent to a casual observer. Folwell doesn’t use a cane and, on this reporter’s recent visit to her office, her yellow Lab guide dog, Oakley, was sleeping on the job, perhaps chasing chipmunks in his dreams.

Adirondack Life has a circulation of 50,000 and comes out eight times yearly (six bimonthlies and two special issues). Betsy wrote yesterday touting the magazine’s new web site and letting me know she’s started blogging there, too: she writes the outdoor rec blog every week and posts on Park Life as well. “I’ve got one in the pipeline about winterizing your dog’s paws for snow,” she said, using that spry wit of hers to acknowledge the unusually mild winter we’ve had in Chicago. “That’s still a concern here!”

Margaret Atwood is in Chicago to give the keynote at the 2012 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference. Aleksandar Hemon is here, too. So is Isabel Wilkerson. And Ha Jin. The list of writers giving presentations is overwhelming, but the one author I am following most? My friend Audrey Petty.

That's Audrey, in a shot taken by her daughter Ella.

Audrey Petty is the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
I met Audrey when we still lived in Urbana, and we took to each other the minute we met. Audrey was born and raised in Chicago. She returned here to work on an oral history book project gathering stories from residents of Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens and Cabrini-Green — all publicly-funded buildings that no longer exist. Audrey’s oral interpretations of the residents she’s interviewed is called High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing and will be published by Voice of Witness, the nonprofit division of McSweeney’s Books.

Whitney sat quietly at my feet yesterday as my friend Linda and I heard Audrey on a panel called “Creative Writers as Oral Historians.” Kelli Simpkins also appeared on this panel — she’s one of the original creators and performers of The Laramie Project. I was fortunate enough to see The Laramie Project performed here in Chicago years ago, and it’s a play I’ll never forget. If you haven’t seen The Laramie Project yet, rent or stream it. Kelly is in town to work with Steppenwolf Theatre, author Miles Harvey and his undergraduate and graduate students at DePaul University to collect oral histories about youth violence across Chicago.

Miles Harvey moderated yesterday’s panel, and he gave accounts of his students visiting gang members in rough Chicago neighborhoods and in prisons to collect stories. He told us that one young gang-banger asked the college student to play the tape back when the interview was over. “Which part?” the student asked. “The whole thing,” the gang member answered. Miles said these two young people sat together to listen again to every word of the interview, and when it was done the gang member thanked the student. “No one ever asked me what I thought about all that.” He said.

These oral histories about youth violence in Chicago will be made into a theatre piece that will play in libraries across the city, and with Kelly Simpkins and Miles Harvey involved, I know the productions will be high-quality. Miles Harvey is someone I’ve known since college — both of us wrote for the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois. He is the author of national and international bestseller The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime, and I was delighted when he accepted a position at DePaul University. It meant he’d be staying here in Chicago, and I knew he would serve as a terrific mentor to hundreds of writing students. His generosity of spirit encourages many a writer, including me, to keep at it.

Most of the panelists yesterday were in the midst of their projects, and they agreed it can be difficult to know when to stop the research. Kelly Simpkins said that in the end they had 400 hours of interviews to narrow down to the two-hour play that became the Laramie Project. I just did the math. That’s 17 days of interviews.

Yikes.

I attended that panel yesterday to cheer on my friend Audrey Petty, but there was some self-interest involved, too. I was curious about oral interpretation as a medium. It seemed a natural for a writer like me, someone who can’t see. But if I learned one thing from yesterday’s panel, it’s this: avoid taking on any oral history projects! I know I’d like doing the interviews, and the work could be rewarding, but oh, all that transcribing. And then the decision-making, the editing, the cuts. I admire these folks for putting their hearts and souls into getting these important stories out there. I look forward to reading Audrey’s new book, and to attending one of the performances Kelly, Steppenwolf Theatre, Miles and his Depaul students come up with after reviewing their hours and days and weeks of interviews.

Reports of libraries' demise have been greatly exaggerated (that's Chicago's Harold Washington Library, a few blocks from my home)

And now, some updates on librarians I admire who are marking the end of “Love Your Library” month by making big transitions.

• Karen Keninger. Karen is my fellow Seeing Eye graduate who is leaving her position as director of the Iowa Department for the Blind to become Director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Karen is moving away from her familiar farm home in Iowa to take the new job. She is deciding between settling in a quiet place on the Metro line far enough away to escape busy DC, or embracing the urban environment and renting an apartment near her office. I have moved many times since losing my sight, but always under the guiding eyes of my husband Mike Knezovich. Karen is moving alone. Well, not completely alone – she’ll have her new Seeing Eye dog Jimi at her side. She wrote to say she’d be staying with friends in a Virginia suburb for a few weeks. “That way I can get my feet under me and figure out where I want to rent at first.” New job. New home. New town. New dog. New environment. New responsibilities. I admire Karen’s courage, and her dedication to the library service she loves.
• Mary Dempsey. With the city of Chicago’s entire public library system in transition, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is replacing longtime Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey with a technology-focused administrator from the San Francisco library system. Mary Dempsey holds a Master’s degree in library and Information Science from my alma mater, the University of Illinois, and it was a boost to my journalism confidence when editors at the Illinois alumni magazine asked me to interview her for a profile in 2001. Mary Dempsey oversaw the construction of dozens of new libraries during her tenure, but the Chicago Sun times reports that the 37-year-old technology guru who is replaicing her says it’s time to “re-envision what libraries look like, both in the physical space as well as in the digital space.”
• Stephanie Burke Bellucci. My young New Jersey friend Steph left her job as Library Director at the North Arlington Free Public Library this month to accept a position as Library Director at the Cliffside Park Free Public Library. Stephanie went to high school in Cliffside Park and is delighted to have the opportunity to
  Work for a library that has the familiarity of home.

When I told Stephanie I planned on publishing a post about Mary Dempsey being replaced by a technology guru, she told me that friends used to ask her if being a library director meant she got to read all day long. “Now they’re asking something even sillier,” she said. “They want to know if we still really need libraries.” Stephanie is not even 30 years old yet, and a lot of her personal philosophy about her vocation has to do with staying up to date with the most current technologies. She feels even more strongly about the importance of libraries as the cultural and social centers of their communities. “Just think about it,” she said. “Libraries offer help to job seekers, free internet access, story times, book clubs, discussion groups, author visits, free lectures and on and on. Libraries are much, much more than the books on their shelves.”

The American Library Association reports that library usage is up in the United States. “So how do I answer that silly question about whether or not we still need libraries?” Stephanie says. “With a resounding YES!”