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!”

In my husband Mike Knezovich’s guest blog post about our trip to New Orleans last week, he described the “terrifyingly energetic” group of pre-schoolers who showed up to meet Whitney and me at the Latter branch of the New Orleans Public Library. What he forgot to mention was that a reporter from the New Orleans Times-Picayune showed up, too – along with a photographer!

Reporter Leigh Stewart had already interviewed me over the phone before Whitney and I arrived at the library, which was a good thing: she wouldn’t have gotten a word in at the event with all those curious kids there.

Valentine and I regale the kids.

From the Times-Picayune article:

At the library, Finke spoke to the children briefly, read a section of a Braille version of “Hanni and Beth” and invited the children to ask questions.

A class of sparkly-eyed kindergarteners from Morris Jeff Community School were among the most enthusiastic participants, asking questions such as “‘How do you know when to cross the street?” and “How does your dog know a good person from a bad person?” One youngster even asked all in attendance to quiet down, as he thought Whitney was trying to sneak a quick nap.

This boy’s schoolmates took him seriously, using ssuch hushed tones that their teachers had to encourage them to use their “Mardi Graas voices” so I could hear their questions. Kindergarten teacher Ashley Millet was quoted in the Times-Picayune story saying that their class is learning about rules and regulations, so our library visit made for a perfect field trip. “They get to see that even dogs have rules,” Millet said with a laugh.

I did emphasize rules in my talk with the kids, and after I told them the rule about not calling out Whitney’s name while she’s working, I suggested we come up with a fake name to use for her while we were there. “If you use her fake name to say hi to Whitney, she wont’ notice,” I said. “She’ll think you’re talking to someone else!”

The day of our visit was February 14, so I suggested we call her “Valentine.” All the kids loved the idea. Well, except for one. She raised her hand and objected. “It’s not nice to call names,” she said. Touché.

Contributing writer Leigh Stuart did a terrific job capturing the sweet spirit of the children in her Times-Picayune article, and if you link to the entire story online you can admire the pictures staff photographer Rusty Costanza took that day. From what Mike tells me, the photos are sweet, too!

I asked Mike to give you an account of our most recent trip to New Orleans. Here’s Mike Knezovich:

It’s Fat Tuesday, and only a week ago, we were flying home from New Orleans. It feels like it’s been a long time already.

But I do remember…

We snagged our fair share of beads.

…catching three or four pre-Mardi Gras parades without even trying. And catching a whole lot of beads.

…a breakfast dish at Lüke restaurant called “eggs in a jar.” Two perfectly poached eggs, floating inside a jar on bernaise, with a fried softshell crab for a lid. Whoa.

…chandeliers and chandeliers and chandeliers and tapestries and extravagant crown molding and…chandeliers at our grand old hotel, Le Pavillon. And the hotel bartender, a German-born woman who landed in New Orleans decades ago and has been there since. And the hotel piano player, resplendent in a purple suit, who sang a lot like Nat King Cole.

Eggs in a jar. Can still taste that soft shell crab.

…multiply-pierced and tattooed young people playing old-time traditional jazz on the street. Superbly.

Panorama jazz band at The Spotted Cat.

…a great band at the Spotted Cat that we enjoyed for the price of a one-drink minimum.

…leaving the Spotted Cat, crossing Frenchmen Street to see John Boutte (Down in the Treme´,  just me and my baby…) at DBA.

…Riding the streetcar to the Latter Library, where Beth and Whit held court in front of a terrifyingly energetic group of pre-schoolers.

…dinner at Upperline. Go there.

…gumbo at Herbsaint. Go there.

I found a nice, safe, and quiet spot in the library with wireless while Beth and Whitney regaled the kids.

…a brass band, on our last night, playing just off Canal. They weren’t quite Rebirth Brass band, but they might be soon.

…walking. And walking. And walking. Just enough, the scale tells me, to have balanced off the caloric intake.

…dinner with our friends Seth and Bess, who moved to New Orleans from our Chicago neighborhood almost two years ago now. They are a wonderful young couple, who — it’s somewhat bittersweet to say — are plainly as happy as clams in New Orleans, so much so that it’s hard to imagine them back in Chicago.

So, how was New Orleans?

Sublime.

And I can say, having been there countless times, that while we always leave New Orleans, New Orleans never leaves us.

Whitney and I squeezed in a school visit last week before we took off for New Orleans, and during my talks with kids at North Barrington Elementary School, I explained three rules

I took Whitney's harness off for part of the time at North Barrington School.

to keep in mind if you happen to see a guide dog with a harness on:

• don’t pet the dog,
• don’t feed the dog,
• don’t call out the dog’s name.

Unlike other schools I’ve visited with Seeing Eye dogs, the students at North Barrington seem nonplussed by these rules. They’d already read Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, and, more importantly, one of their teachers is raising a puppy for Leader Dogs for the Blind.

Cindy Hesselbein, the Reading Specialist at North Barrington, brings Labrador retriever puppy Rory to school with her every day. At home, she and her husband and their four children all volunteer their time, money and efforts to raise puppies, and once the pups are a year old they return them to Leader Dogs headquarters in Rochester, Mich., to begin intense training to become a guide. Cindy’s youngest son Daniel was in the car when she picked Whitney and me up at the train station, and he admitted he cried when he said goodbye to Mack, their first pup. “We all did,” his mom added. “But we know it’s all for a good cause.”

Those are the Hesselbein kids, returning Mack to school for further training.

More than a dozen schools scattered throughout North America train dogs to guide people who are blind or visually impaired. Most guide dog schools place their puppies with volunteers until the dogs are anywhere from 14 to 18 months old. While Leader Dog puppy raisers are not responsible for training dogs to guide, they do teach social skills, obedience and how to walk in a lead- out position (not like normal obedience training where the dog is behind you at your heel). Cindy got a kick out of watching Whitney turn her head left and right, scanning the environment as she led me through the school. “They don’t do that when they’re puppies,” she observed. “It’s so fun to see the finished product!”

Policies and practices vary in the different guide dog programs in North America. Leader Dogs, where the Hesselbeins volunteer, allows puppy raisers to name the dog they take home. (Mack was named for Michigan’s Mackinac Island, where the Hesselbein family first learned about Leader Dogs.) The Seeing Eye, where I train with my dogs, opts for naming puppies at birth to help keep track of them all.

Another difference: Seeing Eye grads don’t meet the families who raise our dogs as puppies. Leader Dogs has an “open adoption” policy, and it gets mixed reviews from the Hesselbein family. Cindy enjoys keeping up with the young man in Baltimore who is partnered with Mack now, but her youngest son Daniel lamented that attending the Leader Dog graduation to meet the pair meant “having to say goodbye to Mack all over again.”

Cindy asked if Whitney might want to meet Rory while we were at North Barrington School, and I’m sure Whitney would have loved that. She is so new to her job, though, that I thought it might be prudent to keep her on a, ahem, short leash. The two dogs did catch each other’s eye when Rory went out to “empty” during a lunch break. Rory barked out a greeting, but Whitney did not respond in kind. She sat up, and her ears perked, but she stayed quiet, setting an example. After all, Rory was still learning. He’s just a pup, not a professional. Not yet, at least.

That's the Latter Library on St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans

February is Love Your Library month, and I’m celebrating in style: I’m in New Orleans with Mike and Whitney, and tomorrow morning I’m the guest storyteller at the Milton H. Latter Memorial Branch of the New Orleans Public Library.

I am, and have always been, a huge fan of books and libraries. I am among millions of American kids who remember looking forward to trips to the library for a new stack of books to bring home every week. Flo flushes with embarrassment when she recalls dropping me off at the library one evening before heading to the grocery store, coming home and putting those groceries away, then realizing she’d forgotten to pick me up. “There you were, waiting all that time at the library door with your pile of books!” She says. “I felt terrible!” No reason for Flo to feel bad — I was in seventh heaven! I was so busy flipping through the pages and anticipating which new book I’d start first, I didn’t even realize she was late.

When surgeons told me in 1986 that the eye surgeries hadn’t worked and I’d never see again, one of my first concerns was how I would survive without being able to read. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) came to my rescue.

The Library of Congress administers NLS, a talking-book and Braille program available for free to those of us whose low vision, blindness, or physical handicap makes reading regular print difficult. A few years ago Woman’s Day Magazine published an essay I wrote about the talking Book Program, and that essay is still available on the American library Association’s “I Love Libraries” web site.

NLS mails books and magazines in audio and in Braille directly to enrollees at no cost. These days some materials are also available online for download, which means I can keep up with my book club — I’m the only one in the group who can’t see, and thanks to the new digital NLS program I don’t have to wait long to read new releases anymore.

When I was at the Seeing Eye training with Whitney I met a woman who loves — and uses — the talking book program even more than I do. If you watched that short one-minute Seeing Eye promotional video I linked to in a previous post, you saw Karen Keninger — she’s the graduate who gets a little teary-eyed in the video. On our last night of training, Karen and I sat down together over a glass of wine to talk about books and writing. She was heading home to Iowa the next morning (Karen is director of the Iowa Department for the Blind) but then getting on a plane again with her new Seeing Eye dog Jimi the very next day. “I have a job interview in Washington, DC.,” she said to me in a hushed tone, explaining that she was being considered for the position of Director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

The folks at the Library of Congress obviously liked what they saw. Karen got the job. People who can read print may not think much of this position, but to those of us who rely on NLS, this appointment is absolutely huge. I was sworn to secrecy about this new appointment until Karen passed security clearance, and she emailed over the weekend to tell me it’s official.

Karen Keninger was born and raised in Vinton, Iowa, the third of seven children in a happy and lively farming family. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as a child and was completely blind by the age of 20. She graduated from Drake University in 1973 with a B.A. in Journalism and went back to school and graduated in 1991 with a masters degree in English. She served as Rehabilitation Consultant with the Iowa Department for the Blind, Program Administrator for the Iowa Library for the Blind and Director of the Iowa Department for the Blind before accepting her new position. In addition to all of that, she raised six, count them, six children!

I could go on and on about Karen Keninger, but hey, this is my last night in New Orleans, and Mike, Whitney and I are heading out to meet friends for one last decadent meal, and we’ll toast to Karen then. What a comfort it is to know that my beloved National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped will be in such good hands.