This sweet Letter to the Editor appeared in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune.

Love of life

I enjoyed Beth Finke’s essay about Nancy Faust (“As the pipe organ melodies fade away,” Commentary, Sept. 28). Nancy must have been flattered to hear such praise from someone who relies on her music to stay in the game. Nancy was able to make little editorial comments through her music, using her intelligence, her wit and her sense of irony. After reading Beth’s piece, my friends and I reminisced about our favorite Nancy tunes. This piece brought up memories for all of us who spend time at White Sox park. Perhaps more important, Beth’s story brings us into her world.
Here’s a woman who is a great baseball fan and, as an adult, loses her sight. She doesn’t let this keep her from enjoying the things she loves. I suspect her ballgame may be much richer using the sounds of the Cell than those of us with all our sight and hearing.

Beth’s experiences provide such an opportunity for learning the coping skills and adaptability needed by the blind. I also learned more about bravery and love of life.

– Susan Ohde, Chicago

Whew! That Youth Literature Festival put on by the College of Education at the University of Illinois the past few days sure kept us busy. Hanni and I visited four classrooms Thursday, three classrooms Friday, and then attended an oo-la-la reception for guest authors Friday night. To cap off the festival, we gave two presentations at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts yesterday that were open to the entire community.

That's us at Gerber School.

One of the schools we visited Thursday was White Heath Grade School, the only elementary school in town. The school serves 150 kids through the third grade, and After that they’re bussed to schools in nearby Monticello. A plaque in the center of the village boasts that the area was settled by “Mr. White and Mr. Heath.” After one of our presentations there, one girl worried about a dog living in a big city. “Does Hanni like living in Chicago?” she asked.

At Lincoln Trail in nearby Mahomet, a third-grade boy asked what my favorite car was. That question, of course, gave me an opportunity to brag about driving the blue Ford Mustang convertible 80 miles an hour last year. The kids were amazed.

At some school visits, the more courageous (or curious) kids wait to approach Hanni and me with questions until we are gathering up our stuff to leave. After our presentation to middle school kids at Gerber School on Friday, a boy came up and asked if Hanni ever runs away.

Gerber is a school located at the Cunningham Children’s Home in Urbana. Cunningham kids are dealing with a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems, special education needs and learning challenges. The way this boy asked his question, I got the impression he’d tried running away himself once or twice.

I showed him how the Seeing Eye School taught me to loop the leash over my wrist. “That way, if I drop the harness by mistake, the leash is still attached to me, so Hanni can’t get away.” When I’m sitting down or if I know I’ll be standing for a long time, I loop the leash around my ankle. “But even with all those precautions, I still have nightmares where Hanni runs away and I can’t find her.”

I explained to my new pal what a recurring nightmare is, asked him if he ever has those. “Mine’s about a hook,” he said.

”And you know how your heart is racing during the nightmare? You’re really, really scared and then you wake up and look around and figure out it was just a nightmare?” He didn’t say anything. I assumed he was nodding. I went on. It feels so good to know you’re awake,” I said. “You know where you are. You’re safe. Your heart stops racing. You know everything is alright.”

This time, he spoke. “Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean.”

A girl approached us after our second presentation at Krannert, said her name is Serena, and asked me if going blind made me feel stronger. Wow. That is definitely one question I have never, ever been asked before. I told Serena that, then explained why the question came as such a surprise. “I’m afraid most people think that becoming blind — or having any sort of disability — would make you weak.” Serena disagreed.

“I think it would make you feel like, well, if you could do all this stuff and you are blind, well, you could do anything.” Needless to say, Hanni and I left that room with huge smiles on our faces.

Today Hanni and I are both, ahem, dog tired. But anytime I think about all the kids, teachers, parents, community volunteers, hotel staff, University administrators and donors I met these past four days, and the friends and family members who showed up for Community Day yesterday, well, that big smile lights up my face again. You all make me strong.

The teachers at Longfellow Elementary School in Oak Park had already read Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound out loud to their students before we arrived yesterday.

Knowing the kids would already be well-versed in how a Seeing Eye dog works, then, I packed my white cane for the trip. In addition to showing off how beautiful a dog Hanni is, I’d explain that guide dog users are also encouraged to use our white canes from time to time.

”Sometimes our dogs get sick,” I said. “As long as we keep our white cane skills up, we can use a white cane to get where we absolutely need to go while we let our dogs stay home and rest and get better.” I whipped out my cane then.

It’s a folding cane, kind of like the stakes some people use to put up tents. An elastic cord inside helps fold it into a neat portable bundle about a foot long, easy to store in my bag.

Note to self: during school visits, that’s where my white cane should stay. In my bag, I mean. The kids couldn’t have been less interested. And Who could blame them? The bundle of sticks in my hand was no match for the bundle of fur lying there at my feet.

“How old is Hanni?” “Does she like to play with other dogs?” “How does she know where you’re going?” “Is it scary crossing the street?” The Longfellow kids were great fun, they were very curious about how Hanni does her job, and how I manage to do all the things I do without being able to see. The hour flew by, all in all a great kickoff for our new season of school visits.

This afternoon Hanni and I are off on a train trip to Champaign. We’re visiting four schools in Champaign County in two days! Better get packing…

There were so many fans surrounding Nancy Faust’s booth at her final game yesterday that the White Sox had to provide a bouncer. “She’ll visit with fans and sign autographs after the game,” he told us.

Nancy graciously took time out on her last day to talk with me (and Hanni, of course).

“But she specifically asked us to stop by”

“Are you a friend of hers?”

I hesitated. Thought about it for a few seconds. “Yes,” I finally said, confident in my answer. “I am.”

The bouncer asked my name, checked in with Nancy, came back and opened the door for us. We were there long enough for me to almost knock over her container of popcorn, give her a kiss on the cheek, listen to her flip around to the keyboard and do a quick “Charge!” cheer, compare Nancy’s retirement with Hanni’s upcoming retirement, talk about keeping in touch and then finally exchange one last kiss goodbye. Hanni and I exited to a quick chorus of “How Much is that Doggie in the Window.” I didn’t cry. I beamed.

Not sure how many White Sox games I’ll be going to next year. Staying home to listen on the radio wouldn’t be meant as a protest against the White Sox, it’s just that deciphering her tunes at the park was a huge part of the fun of going to games.

The Indians have an outfielder named Trevor Crow. You can guess what Nancy played when he was up yesterday, can’t you? The Beatles. “Blackbird.” Natch. And her final tune? Jackson Five’s “Never Can Say Goodbye.”

Here’s an update on some of the women I’ve mentioned in recent blog posts.

Flo saw a nurse at her post-operative visit Thursday (the wonderful Janet drove her, of course!) and everything looks good. Her wounds are healing well, and (most important to Flo) some of the hair on her head is already starting to grow back.

What an honor--Nancy took time away from her keyboards to comment on my blog.

Sandra Murillo is doing so well at University of Illinois that she started volunteering to assist with ESL classes for Urbana Adult Education. Until last week, that is, when an email from the ESL program landed in Sandra’s advisor’s in box. The note said the program was “concerned” that Sandra was “not getting what she needed” out of her volunteer work. The note suggested other places for her to volunteer, all of them places that work with people who have disabilities. Sandra says she respects the disability field, but that wasn’t what she had in mind when she decided to volunteer. She’ll continue volunteering, but now she’ll mentor Latino students at Urbana Middle School instead. Link to Sandra’s blog to follow her progress – interesting stuff!

Hanna Bratman was in the audience with her son during my debut at the disability cabaret. “My son was hoping to talk to you afterwards,” she wrote in an email message. “he wanted to tell you how good you looked.” Dang. Sorry I missed them.

Francine Rich, the wonderful wise woman who published Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, was so taken by the excerpt of Hanna’s writing (published here last August) that she offered to assemble Hanna’s many, many personal essays into a publishable format. Stay tuned, someday soon we may all be vying for a good spot in line at Hanna’s booksigning.

My sister Bev is home safe & sound (gee, what a great title for a book!) from South Korea. She never did have to eat raw horse, but her son Brian surprised her with a mystery meat one night: pig intestine stuffed with noodles. “I told the waitress to hold the rectum,” he wrote in a comment to my blog about his mom and dad’s trip. “Seriously. No joke. They eat rectums here.”

On that happy note, I’ll end this post and try to come up with some good song requests. Need to be ready when I visit my blog-reading pal Nancy Faust at the final White Sox game tomorrow, doncha know.