That's Emjoy Gavino on the left. To prepare for her role as Susy in "Wait Until Dark," she hung out with me at our place to get an idea of how I navigate and get things done around the house.

Emjoy Gavino is coming over today. You might remember Emjoy from that post I wrote about the upcoming production of Wait Until Dark at Court Theatre in Chicago. Emjoy has the Audrey Hepburn (Susy) role — she’ll play a newly-blind woman in the play.

I can get a little nervous when I know people are going to be stopping by. I’m a lousy housekeeper. This has little to do with me being blind — a lot of people who can’t see keep immaculate houses, I’m just not one of those people. I never liked cleaning house when I could see, and trust me — things didn’t get better after I lost my sight.

Right at this moment, for example, I should be straightening out the apartment for Emjoy’s visit. And what am I doing instead? Working on my blog!

An entire chapter of my memoir, Long time, No See is devoted to the tricks I use to do things without being able to see — let me see if I can find that chapter. I’m at my talking computer. I hit the letter “h” on my keyboard. The robotic voice calls out a file that starts with “h.” Hanni retires.” Nope. I hit the down arrow. Herb bread recipe, hospice essay, hospital. I keep hitting the down arrow. How We Do it. That’s it! Hit enter. The file opens. Hit “control f4” to do a search. I don’t have a special Braille keyboard — I took typing in high school and still have the letters memorized. The talking computer parrots the letters as I type, so I can hear if I’ve made a mistake.

H-o-u-s-e-c-l-e-a-n-i-n-g Brrring! That little doorbell-sounding chime rings out. My computer starts barking. “Microsoft Word Dialogue,” it shouts to me in that robotic voice. “Word has finished searching the document. The search item was not found. Okay?”

Of course it’s okay. “Okay” is the only option. I try again. Simplify it. C-l-e-a-n-I-n-g. Brring! The robotic shouting. Search item not found.

My God. I thought my poor housekeeping skills were at least kinda sorta a little bit of a joke. But it must be true! That “How We Do It” chapter has sections on how I use a talking computer to write, how I read books, how I measure insulin, how I do laundry, how Hanni and I get through security at airports. Nary a mention of how I clean house. All I can figure is that the editors and I must have decided a three-word “housecleaning” section would be too short to publish: Mike. Does. It.

Mike won’t be home today when Emjoy comes, but you know what? I’m not worried! Emjoy is coming here as part of her research — she wants to observe how I get around the apartment on my own without being able to see. So I figure it makes sense to leave it a mess — Emjoy can watch me attempt to straighten up!

Hanni and I like to think of ourselves as divas, but I gotta admit – it’s pretty unusual for us to ever appear on television. And it’s very unusual for us to be on TV two days in a row. In fact, that’s never happened before. Until last week, that is.

Last Wednesday morning Hanni and I appeared live and in color on WTMJ-TV, the NBC affiliate in Milwaukee. And then on Thursday we were on WLS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Chicago! The Chicago piece was about the volunteer work Hanni and I do with Sit Stay Read!. To see that piece online you need to link to the ABC7 Chicago web site, go to local news, scroll down to “disability issues” and its right there.

Our Milwaukee appearance is easier to find – we appeared on a show called Morning Blend, which, for some reason, I kept misspelling as Morning Blind. Much more appropriate in our case, both because of my lack of sight and the fact that the show started early. I hadn’t had enough coffee yet and was still groping around a bit.

From all accounts, though, Hanni and I looked fine. My publisher at Blue Marlin Publications saw the interview and reported back to me in an email message:

It was extremely well done, both visually and interview-wise. At least three times during the interview, they flashed moving images of the cover and the internal pages we had sent them. The interviewers were extremely well dressed and well spoken also. And you are absolutely fantastic about answering questions on the spot without getting flustered.

I guess all the school visits Hanni and I have been doing lately have trained us well – Hanni was her calm loveable self on the set, and the questions I get from kids have taught me to be quick on my feet. If you missed our TV appearance in Milwaukee, the Morning Blend interview is available online.

The reason we were in Milwaukee and asked to do the Morning Blend TV interview in the first place was because Hanni and I had spent the day at Horace mann Elementary School in West Allis (a nearby suburb of Milwaukee) the day before. Our visit was billed as a reading incentive program, and we were able to return to the school in the evening to spend time with the kids and their parents, too. Families wrote books together after my evening presentation, and it was loads of fun to not only sign copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound for the kids, but also sign my name into the books they’d written themselves.

One of the kids who knew we were going to be on TV the next morning asked my very favorite question of the day: “What does it feel like to be a world famous author?” I could have explained that the TV Appearances were only local ones, Hanni and I don’t really get stopped on the street for autographs, we wouldn’t be boarding a private jet to fly back to Chicago after the interview. Instead, I summoned up the best Tony the Tiger imitation I could come up with and told him the truth: “It feels GRRRRRRRRReat!”

Earlier this week I got an email from “stage management” of Court Theatre in Chicago. The Hyde Park company is staging the play Wait Until Dark — they were wondering if I’d be willing to come by at rehearsal to, well, you know, show them the ropes. Chicago’s Metromix describes the play like this:

A cool-as-ice psychopath smooth talks his way into the home of an unsuspecting blind woman who’s unknowingly harboring a dangerous prize in this classic thriller by Frederick Knott (later adapted to film by Terence Young starring Audrey Hepburn).

I’m pretty sure I’m not harboring a dangerous prize in our apartment (unless you count Hanni, when she’s sprinting to her food bowl at meal time) and I feel fortunate to have no expertise in anything psychopathic. I do, however, know what it’s like to be newly blind and married to a man who can see. And that’s what the cast wanted to know about. From Open Rehearsal, the Court Theatre blog:

It’s a new kind of show for Court Theatre: a populist Broadway hit that most people know from the movie version, and also a thriller…usually a star vehicle (Marisa Tomei played the lead in a disastrous New York production a few years ago), but we’ve cast non-Equity up-and-comer Emjoy Gavino in the lead role of Susy, the blind woman attacked by con artists.

At rehearsal we just sat in a circle and talked. One actor — he might have been the guy playing the psychopath — asked, “If someone was standing in your apartment, not moving, and not saying a word, is there someway you would just sense they were there?” Nope.

Another cast member asked, “If a person you’d met before came your way again, but this time disguised his voice, would you know it was him?” Absolutely not, I told them. I’m horrible with voices. On my street here in Printers Row, passers-by often call out a friendly “Hello, Beth!” Unless they tell me who they are, I really have no idea who is greeting me.

If they disguised their voices? I’d be totally clueless. “But that’s just me,” I reminded them. “I don’t speak for all blind people.” We all have different skills we use to make our way — the cast seemed to understand exactly what I meant.

“How do you think the friends you’ve made since you were blind are different than the friends you made when you could see?” This question came from Emjoy, and was a little more difficult to answer. After thinking it over a bit, I said, “I think the friends I’ve met since I lost my sight are surprised to find out they actually like me.” The minute that came out of my mouth I knew it didn’t make sense. So I tried to explain. “It’s kind of like if I were the first black kid to go to an all-white high school. People want to meet me so they can think they’re cool, they’re open-minded, you know, they can tell other people that they have a friend who has a disability.”

One of the guys around the circle laughed. “You’re telling our story!” he said. I wasn’t sure what he meant, exactly, so just continued. “And then if they take the time to get to know me, they’re surprised to find out they like me.” Another cast member phrased it better. “They’re surprised to find out there’s more to you than being blind.” I nodded.

We sat in that circle for almost two hours – they’d ask questions, I’d answer, we’d get off subject, then back on track again. “This is probably a dumb question…” they’d start off, then ask some of the most interesting questions I’ve heard since losing my sight. Time up, they had to get back to work and rehearse.

As I buttoned my coat to head out with Hanni, I thought about that guy who said I was “telling their story” and realized I had a dumb question of my own. “Is the whole cast black?” I asked. I suppose the question kind of proved the point I was trying to make earlier, you know, about my inability to narrow in on a person’s identity by the sound of their voice. Emjoy said no. “I’m Filipina,” she explained. “But my husband in the play is black.” Another cast member chimed in. “One cop is White,” he said. “The other is Black.” Gloria, the little girl who comes down and visits from the apartment upstairs, is Hispanic. “Did you cast it this way on purpose, or did it just by coincidence, those are the people who tried out?” I ask. The director had left the room by then, but they called him back to answer that one.

Ron OJ Parson is known as one of Chicago’s best directors of realism and is nationally known for his work directing the plays of August Wilson. Ron told me this play is traditionally done with an all-white cast. “But it’s a new era — we’ve got a black president now!” He said it was in that spirit that he decided to cast Emjoy, a Filipina, in Audrey Hepburn’s role. “We didn’t have to change a single line in the play to make this work,” Ron said. “And if you think of it, this play is set in Greenwich Village in the 60s – these are the sorts of people you would see there.”

I’ve been invited to come back to rehearsal once they get the stage set — they’ll observe how I find my way around the set. You know, to get ideas of how we blind folks maneuver. And then, of course I hope to be in the audience opening night — that’s March 14, and you can attend previews before that if you’d like. There’s more information about tickets and all that on the Court Theatre web site.

It’s Hanni’s ninth birthday today, and she just received a terrific gift: a message from an iPhone telling us our book won another award!

This one comes from the Dog Writers Association of America — Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound won the 2008 DWAA Maxwell
Award for Best Picture Book.

The iPhone message came from Jude and Francine Rich at Blue Marlin Publications. Blue Marlin Publications is the brilliant publisher who took on our book, and Jude and Francine are at the Dog Writers Association of America (DWAA) annual meeting in New York City tonight. The meeting is held every year just before the Westminster Kennel Club show–that’s when DWAA announces award winners. About DWAA from its Web site:

The best known aspect of the DWAA is its annual writing competition, which is meant to encourage quality writing about dogs in all aspects of companionship plus the dog sport. The competition is open to all writers, photographers, editors and publishers…

Happy Birthday, Hanni! You’re a real winner!

I keep track of money by folding each denomination differently. Twenties are folded in half, tens down to three-quarter size. Fives get the end folded into a triangle and singles I just leave be. I have to trust cashiers not to cheat me – I ask them to call out each bill as it’s placed in my hand, then make them wait as I fold it and put it in my wallet before presenting the next bill.

Last Tuesday’s What Would You Do? show on ABC TV featured a segment about how onlookers reacted when a cashier shortchanged blind Customers.

With the cooperation of Gencarelli’s, a bakery in Bloomfield, N.J., ABC News rigged the store with hidden cameras and hired two blind actors to pose as customers and another actor to portray the unscrupulous salesclerk… She {the blind woman} paid for the $16 cake with a $50 bill. After receiving her change, she asked for assistance in deciphering the bills and was met with even more harsh words.

“What? I have to count this. What am I, the heritage for the blind or something?”

If this wasn’t bad enough, the clerk also cheated her. He handed her what he said were a $20 and a $10, but they were actually singles. Would anyone step up to help the blind woman?

The show mentioned a ruling last year by a federal appeals court that the U.S. currency system discriminates against blind people. In fact, nearly 180 nations around the world use print paper money, and the United States is the only one that prints bills all the same size and color, no matter how much each bill is worth.

The Washington Post reported that the court decision last May was not a unanimous one, and some high muckity-mucks weren’t exactly happy with the ruling, either. The National Federation for the Blind (NFB) strongly opposed the 2002 lawsuit that led to the ruling. They figure that most blind people have found ways to cope with paper currency and say there are other, more pressing needs to address. Treasury Secretary
Henry M. Paulson, Jr. testified against it, too.

Paulson said the blind can function adequately using credit cards or electronic scanners that identify different bills, and by relying on help from others.

The NFB and Paulson do have a point there. In the 20+ years I have been blind, I have never been shortchanged by a cashier. Even Chicago cab drivers – who have a reputation for being rude – have been honest with me, correcting me when I’ve made mistakes and tried to pay them too much. Still, I feel pretty stupid sometimes when a bill unfolds itself, or gets mangled up in my wallet, and I have to ask what money I’m carrying.

Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote the federal court’s majority opinion, explaining it this way:

“The Secretary’s argument is analogous to contending that merely because the mobility impaired may be able either to rely on the assistance of strangers or to crawl on all fours in navigating architectural obstacles…they are not denied meaningful access to public buildings,” Rogers wrote.

In finding for the American Council of the Blind, which first brought the lawsuit in 2002, the court said Treasury did not prove that changing the currency system would unduly burden the federal government. Instead, it found that altering the size or shape of bills would not cost substantially more than other changes the government made in 1996 and 2004 to deter counterfeiting

This court case is supposed to be paving the way for a future redesign of American paper bills, but the jury (literally) is still out. The new system would not necessarily have to use Braille — an embossed stripe on the five, two stripes on the ten, that sort of thing would suffice. The American Council of the Blind has suggested distinguishing bills of different amounts by changing their size, adding embossed dots or foil to the paper or using raised ink. The government worries that changes like those would be costly, however, and could interfere with anti-counterfeiting efforts.

It’s up to the federal government to decide whether to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Until then, those of us who are blind will have to continue relying on the kindness – and honesty – of strangers.