Wow. Everyone knows the White Sox are red hot right now (7-2 so far against National League teams and seven and one in their last eight games) but who would’ve guessed they’d draw a sell-out crowd against the Nationals in DC last night?! An AP news story says even the President showed up:

Obama’s arrival wasn’t announced inside the stadium, and there wasn’t the stringent security for fans that usually accompanies a public appearance. Joined by daughters Sasha and Malia and sipping a beer in a private box, the president wore a White Sox hat in support of his hometown team just as he did when he threw out the first pitch at the ballpark on opening day.

No doubt everyone was there to see White Sox phenom pitcher Gavin Floyd, who had no-hit the Chicago Cubs through six innings in his last appearance. It was the third time Floyd took a no-hitter into the seventh. I was sipping wine with other authors last evening after a successful day at the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books so didn’t get to listen to the game. By the time Hanni and I returned, Safe & Sound, to our hotel room, the White Sox had managed a 2 to 1 extra-innings victory. No surprise, I guess. The starting pitcher for the Nationals last night was just a rookie. Straussberg? Strassberg? Something like that.

Hello from our seat on the Hiawatha train to Wisconsin. Hanni and I are on our way to Waukesha, where I’ll be leading a couple sessions at the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. I’ll be sitting on a panel about blogging, too, and the moderator sent some questions for we panelists to ponder in advance.

Each of you plays a significant role as a blogger, bringing entertainment, news and social commentary to the world. But you also appear to write your blogs in lighthearted ways. Is this intentional?

You’re often connecting to people who need a voice in the community. How does this influence the specific content of your blog?

As a writer I’m often encouraged to keep a blog and although I have a page on my web site, my writing tends to feel a lot like navel gazing. What advice would you give a blogger in this situation?

What is the most heartwarming connection you’ve made with a reader through your blog?

I’ll have to give those first few questions some thought before our 4 pm

That's OJ, Jen's guide dog.

panel tomorrow. I’m ready with an answer for that last question, though.

I’ve made plenty of heartwarming connections through my Safe & Sound blog, but one I find particularly touching is my connection with Jennifer Doherty, a guide dog user an Ireland. I know all this internet-blogging-connecting stuff is old news by now, but I still find it amazing that a woman in Ireland could pres the keys on her talking computer to search for “guide dog” or “blind” or whatever,, come up with my name, link to my blog, type a few words and shazam! She’s responded to me here in Chicago!

If you enjoyed Jenny’s comments here, you’ll be pleased to know Jenny keeps a blog of her own, too. Paws for Thought talks about life in Ireland with OJ, Jenny’s guide dog. Jenny keeps up with blind bloggers all over the world, and last month she asked a few of us if we’d be willing to write a guest blog for Paws for Thought. I was flattered to be asked, and wrote a post about retiring Dora, my first Seeing Eye dog. You can link to my guest post at Paws for Thought. While you’re there, check out the other guest bloggers that week. Interesting stuff!

Uh-oh. They’re calling the Milwaukee stop, and I still need to come up with answers for those other panel questions. Better stop blogging about blogging here and think about what I’ll say when I’m blah, blah, blahing about blogging at tomorrow’s panel instead. Waukesha, here we come!

Things sure are exciting lately. Last week I spent my Sunday evening with a crazy Canadian hockey fan dressed in party shoes, party hat, Dustin Time t-shirt and the “all important Crown Royal Black.” A week later? Hanni and I are heading to a Sunday evening cocktail reception at an estate on Chicago’s north shore. We’ll be guests of Gordon and Carole Segal, the co-founders of Crate and Barrel. . From Gulfnews Magazine:

There is something storybookish about the way Crate & Barrel came into being. The inspiration for the store came after college, when Segal and his bride, Carole, travelled across Europe. “We found quality cookware in France and interesting pottery in Denmark,” says Segal. “We were 23 years old, and a year out of university. We didn’t like the gifts we had got for our wedding, and the things that we saw in the marketplace in Europe, and the Caribbean were beautiful and inexpensive. We had never seen anything like these in Chicago.

“A year later, I was washing dishes and an idea came to me. ‘How come there is no store that stocks such items,’ I asked my wife. ‘There must be other young couples like us who don’t have so much money but would appreciate such items’. So I said to her, ‘Let’s open a store!’ Initially, my wife was not so enthusiastic, but I prevailed.”

After spending about $10,000 on merchandise from Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, they only had $7,000 left for making an old and dirty factory site that was to be their store presentable in just 17 days.

“My wife was very clever,” says Segal proudly. “When the packing crates and merchandise came in, we just pitched them over to use as display cases and we said, ‘Let’s call the store Crate & Barrel’”

The Segals have adopted a retired dog from the Seeing Eye and are eager to have their friends learn more about the organization. They invited a number of graduates to join them tonight for cocktails, and I’ve been chosen (along with two other graduates) to give a short talk about our fabulous dogs. Each guest will receive a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to take home — I’ll sign them in Braille, and Hanni’s pawprint will be stamped in each copy, too.

I plan on keeping my talk extremely short tonight, as I expect a number of guests might want to gather in front of the Segal’s TV set at 6:45 pm. Blackhawk players are going to be honored before the ESPN Sunday night White Sox/Cubs baseball game, they’ll have the Stanley Cup with them, a few will throw out the ceremonial first pitch and then gather to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch.

So who knows, it may be another Sunday night in front of the TV for Beth, just like last Sunday. Minus the party shoes, party hat and “Dustin Time!” t-shirt,though. Tonight, I’ll be wearing Marimekko.

Some friends invited us to a Stanley Cup party last Sunday. We always have fun with Dana and Art, but I was reluctant to go.

That's Dennis on the left. He was there the whole game except for the times he stood, inches from the screen, yelling at Chris Pronger. Thanks to Dennis, even I could enjoy the game. (Thanks to Bryn Benson for the photo.)

Without being able to see, hockey can be a tough sport to follow. What would poor, poor Beth do at the party while everyone’s eyes were glued to the 60-inch TV screen? I do love a party, so decided I’d figure it out. Maybe rather than try to follow the progress of the game, I should choose one player, follow his progress instead. Which Blackhawk to follow? That, my dear, was a no brainer. Who else but Nick Boynton.

What?! You’ve never heard of Nick Boynton? Well, he was a plus-two on Sunday night, and Philadelphia’s star Chris Pronger was an unheard-of minus five. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Three months ago, when the Blackhawks called Boynton up, he was playing with the Rockford Ice Hawks. The NHL web site says that before Boynton joined the Blackhawks, he had “five assists and 22 penalty minutes in 15 AHL tilts with Rockford and the Manitoba Moose.” Not sure what all that AHL tilt gobbledygook means. The most important fact there is this: my man Boynton played for the Manitoba Moose. How. Cool. Is. That?

And if playing for the Manitoba Moose isn’t enough to make you love Nick Boynton, there’s this, from the Chicago Tribune:

One day when Boynton, a 19-year-old first-round draft pick of the Bruins, was working at his family’s farm in Canada, he couldn’t get out of bed.

A misdiagnosis and 35 pounds of weight loss later, doctors in Boston correctly identified that Boynton’s pancreas basically had stopped producing insulin.

You read that right. Nick Boynton has Type 1 diabetes. Just like me. The Tribune story said that after finally diagnosing him correctly, doctors told Boynton to sit out a year. The mighty moose refused. He wanted to play hockey.

One of the other guests at Dana and Art’s party Sunday was a Canadian-born hockey fan named Dennis. Dennis teaches third grade by day and still plays amateur hockey at night. He sat inches from the big-screen, totally focused on the game. I asked him to alert me anytime #24 was on the ice, and Dennis didn’t disappoint.

Throughout the entire game, the cheers and groans from Dennis gave me a clue of what was happening on the ice. “Woooooooo! Ugh. Ahh. C’mon lads! Woooooooo! Argh. Damn. Wooooooo!” By the second period, I had diagnosed my new Canadian friend with Hockey Tourrette’s.

The best part of the game, duh, was any time the Blackhawks scored. With every Blackhawk goal (and there were a lot of goals scored on Sunday) Dennis would run to my seat, say a polite excuse me, and then crush me in a hug.

I love hockey. Go Dennis! Go Boynton! Go Hawks!

That's some of the Eastview kids, who all liked reading and learning about Hanni. Photo by Andi Butler, www.mrsbillustrations.com.

When I found out that three students at Eastview Elementary School were blind, I arranged to have Braille copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound sent there before our visit this week. I’d use one myself to show the kids at different grade levels what Braille looks like and how it works, and the other three copies would be given to Miguel, age 10, and Seth and Ethan, both age 8. I didn’t expect that these three little blind kids would be able to read the Braille books on their own, I just thought that if the other kids at Eastview might be getting books, these three should get a copy they might be able to read someday, too.

The Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound was produced in contracted Braille, a form of Braille I’ve never been able to master. Contracted Braille has a bunch of shorthand symbols (contractions) for commonly used words and parts of words: there’s a cell for the word “and,” another for the word “the,” and so on. Most of the letters of the alphabet are also used as shorthand for common words, such as “c” for “can” and “l” for “like.” Kind of like texting, only you can’t make as many mistakes!

When I met the vision teacher at Eastview, I apologized that my book was only available in contracted Braille. “No problem,” she said. “That’s the only Braille these guys read!” Sure enough, the little buggers were Braille experts.

Really, all the Eastview kids seemed to have a strong interest in reading. The school’s principal, Jim Zursin, emphasizes reading with all the students, and with the help of his staff and the PTO they are making sure reading doesn’t end when summer begins. Every child who participates in Eastview’s summer reading program and reaches their goal will march in the Founders Day Parade this summer, each star reader wearing a sandwich board with a drawing of the cover of his or her favorite book on the front. “There’ll be hundreds of books marching down the street,” Mr. Zursin exclaimed. You didn’t have to be able to see to know there were stars in his eyes, just thinking about it. Kids who read this summer will be invited to a community pool party, too, where Mr. Zursin promises to jump off the high dive – with his clothes on!

That's Miguel on the left and one of the twins in the center. Photo by Andi Butler, www.mrsbillustrations.com.

I’m pretty confident Seth, Ethan and Miguel will be marching in the parade. And swimming at that pool party, too. They love to read, and turns out they can write in contracted Braille, too. Seth, Ethan and Miguel each wrote a poem for me, and they had to work hard to hold back their laughter as I stumbled through some of the contractions when I tried reading their work out loud. They were happpy to help me through, and in the half hour the four of us were able to spend together in their vision resource room we became fast friends. Miguel showed me how his talking watch works, and Ethan and Seth, twin brothers, counted off their favorite rides at Disney World. We all laughed at how other kids find Space Mountain so scary. It’s in the dark” we said. Big deal.

The boys had lots of questions about Hanni, and I told them that in order to train with a Seeing Eye dog they’d have to learn good orientation and mobility (white cane) skills first. “Judging your location by what you hear, how the ground feels, which way the wind is blowing – you’ll need those skills when you get a Seeing Eye dog, too,” I told them. “Most guide dog schools won’t let you train with a dog until you know how to get around with a white cane first.” Later on one of their teachers expressed how glad she was that I’d said that. Apparently the boys haven’t been using their white canes as much as they should. “Now they’ll have an incentive.”

Before I left their room, each boy proudly presented me with a special collar he had made for Hanni. “We strung the beads ourselves,” Seth said, proud of their work. The collars were made of ribbon, and in addition to the beads, each ribbon had a big bell on it, too. “That’s so you’ll always know where Hanni is,” Miguel explained.

The three of them came up after the all-school assembly at the end of the day to say goodbye. When I reached out to shake Seth’s – or was it Ethan’s? – hand, I felt a rubber handle. He was using his white cane! Now I was even more confident he and Ethan and Miguel would be marching in the parade this summer. Marching alongside their book reading schoolmates, but marching independently, using their white canes.

Once home, I tied all three collars around Hanni’s neck. Hearing those joyful bells ring when Hanni prances around makes me think of our new friends at Eastview School. Music to my ears.