Seems like Hanni and I had just returned home from that Youth Festival in Champaign when we found ourselves boarding a train again Monday morning. This time, our destination was Glencoe, IL. Librarian Melissa Henderson met us at the train station and led us to a local coffee shop for a snack before our morning presentation at the Glencoe Public Library. In between bites of cream cheese and lox on a bialy, I asked Melissa where she’d gone to library school.

“U of I,” she boasted. She had reason to be proud: the U.S. News and World Report ranks University of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) the top program in the nation. “I Was in their LEEP program,” she said. “I absolutely loved it!”

Melissa was amazed I knew what the “LEEP program” was. And she nearly fell off her chair when I told her I am friends with Sandy Wolf.

Back when we lived in Urbana, the University of Illinois Alumni Magazine asked me to write a story about LeEp, an online program at GSLIS that allows students far away to experience synchronous education — live sessions where the professors and students are on line at the same time, interacting with each other. Students are required to spend brief periods of time on the U of I campus taking course work, including a ten-day on-campus summer stay in Urbana that Melissa lovingly referred to as “boot camp.”

The wonderful Sandy Wolf is a librarian at GSLIS, and she was our next-door neighbor when we lived in Urbana. Sandy was a huge help to me with my magazine story about the library school. She connected me with all the right people, including a student named Jenny Schwartzberg. Jenny is deaf and uses a cochlear implant and a hearing aid to enhance both her hearing and her speaking skills. Wwhen I interviewed Jenny, she told me that taking coursework on line allowed her to work on her Masters and keep her day job as a Collection Development Assistant and Gift Specialist at the Newberry Library in Chicago. From my article:

Schwartzberg’s hearing impairment gave LEEP the opportunity to further develop technological delivery of the program. {Manager of Instructional Technology Jill} Gengler worked with LEEP colleagues and University of Illinois’ Disability Resources and Educational Services Division to provide captioning for lectures broadcast over Real Audio. “We provided a second screen for her with captions,” {Publicity and Communications Coordinator Kim}Schmidt said.

“It’s pretty technical, and it delivers the lectures to her in real time, you know, the same time the other students are listening.”

Melissa the Glencoe librarian gushed about the U of I program, and especially about my pal Sandy Wolf. . “I love Sandy! She’s the one who got me through graduate school, she’s the one who would find you the stuff no one else could. She’d even FedEx it to you sometimes, she was so, so good to me,” Melissa said, laughing as she remembered to add one more line. “Oh, And to all the other students, too!” Sandy has been working with GSLIS since 1984. It’s no wonder she received a Distinguished Service Award from the American Library Association last year.

At the end of my talk, I let Hanni off harness and she got rubbed by...everyone.

The coincidences didn’t stop there. As Hanni and I were settling ourselves in to start our presentation, an energetic young woman came bounding up to introduce herself. It was Jocelyn Snower. She’s the woman I wrote about in the Chicago Tribuneafter her boss realized she was visually impaired and fired her. All our interviews had been online or over the phone, so this was the first time I met her in person. She lives in Glencoe, and she brought all four of her kids with her to hear me speak. “I hope they behave!” she laughed.

They did. Behave, I mean. It was a thrill to have the Snower family in the audience, along with so many other kids from Glencoe. My favorite question after our presentation this time came from a little girl in the front row. “So can you not see spiders?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

I told her no, I couldn’t. ”Are you afraid of spiders?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

”Yes!” she said.

”I am, too,” I confessed to her. “So really, it’s not such a bad thing, my not being able to see spiders anymore. I just pretend they aren’t there.”

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.”