A friend emailed me after last summer’s Democratic National Convention to let me know how much I look like (what was then) the future First Lady. The blog post I wrote about that — titled Do I Look Like Michelle Obama? — garnered many, many replies. Most comments said no. Some weren’t sure what to say –They were afraid that maybe, because I can’t see, I wasn’t aware of one obvious fact that distinguishes me from Michelle. Even last week, comments to a post that had absolutely nothing to do with the Obamas (the post was about our trip to New Orleans) returned to the extremely important ongoing controversy.

For the record, though, I have never thought you look like Michelle Obama. Do people who say that realize that you’re white?!?!?!

My response, of course: “What?! I’m white?!”

And it’s no surprise that one of my four older sisters (it takes that many to put this spoiled baby sister in her place) chimed in right away to point out that I am too old, Michelle is younger than I am. Still, I wanted to believe.

Last week Mike and I went out with a couple of friends for dinner. One of them is a judge in Chicago and a friend of Michelle Obama. What? You didn’t know we hang with friends of the first Family? Dude. That’s how we roll.

Anyway,I’d never told the judge that anyone said I looked like her friend Michelle. If I really did look like the First Lady, though, surely Michelle’s friend would have noticed. But the judge never said a word about any resemblance. And I was seated right across from her. Within eyeshot.

What a disappointment! With all the reports of how classy, sophisticated, lovely, beautiful, stunning Michelle Obama looked during the inauguration last week — more than ever, I really wanted to believe I looked like her. Dang.

But wait! Eyebrows up! There is, to quote the new administration…”hope”! This morning I got an email from a friend in London, he was one of the early nay-sayers, one who felt it necessary to inform me that I am not Black, and so, of course, I could not look like Michelle Obama. His message opened with a review of the decisions President Obama has made so far, a question about which foreign country I think the new President will visit first, that sort of thing. But the message closed with this:

And yes i now do think the wife has a look of the finke about her. Not only the look but the poise. cant explain it but there is an energy to her that you have.

I’m beaming.

PS: Does Michelle beam?

Mike, Hanni and I just got back from a wonderful warm weekend in New Orleans. Dog Fancy Magazine asked me to write a story for their Canine Traveler section, and if all goes well my piece about New Orleans will appear in the upcoming March edition.

The Canine Traveler section is based loosely on those articles you see in human-based travel magazines — you know, “three Days in Seattle” or “A Weekend in San Francisco.” Difference is, the Canine Traveler section is all about spending two or three days in a city with… your dog! I’ve already had Canine Traveler pieces published about Austin, TX and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and I was thrilled to get this assignment about New Orleans. Mike and I have been there many times, and I’ve always considered the city a blind person’s paradise. The smell of green peppers and onions cooking in butter, the sound of live jazz in the streets, the feel of warm air, the tastes of decadent meals and drinks — New Orleans is the only city I’ve been to so far where sight takes a back seat to the other senses.

But is it a good vacation spot for a dog? You’ll have to pick up the March issue of Dog Fancy to find out – it should be on newsstands by late February. Better yet, schedule your dog for a check-up in March — vet offices ALWAYS have copies lying around. After all, Dog Fancy is the “World’s Most Widely Read Dog Magazine.”

Last Tuesday morning a volunteer from Sit Stay Read! (SSR) braved the snow to chauffeur Hanni and me to a southside Chicago Public school. Sit Stay Read! uses volunteers and their dogs to bring the joys of reading to little kids, and it was our turn to make a school visit.

In order for a school to participate in Sit Stay Read!, 95% or more of the students enrolled must qualify for the
National School Breakfast program. The school we visited definitely qualified – the assistant principal told me that every child in the school lives in subsidized housing. “Most of them are from Harold Ickes,” she said, referring to the Harold Ickes housing project on Chicago’s near south side.

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Center for Literacy helped Sit Stay Read! design the program to coordinate with school curriculum — it’s meant to improve children’s reading fluency, encourage them to become successful readers, inspire them to explore the world through books, and help them learn to respect people and animals.

A Chicago Tribune story last year by Rick Kogan explains:

SSR’s mission is fueled by sad statistics: On average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will have the benefit of as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading before he or she enters school, while the child in a low-income family will have 25 hours.

Sit Stay Read! Uses dogs and volunteers in all sorts of clever ways: children read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs, Human volunteers visit as “book buddies” to help individual kids, and people like me come as guest readers – the books we read to the kids always have something to do with, guess what? Dogs!

Guest readers also teach the kids about possible careers – when members of Chicago’s Lyric Opera visit, they read The Dog Who Sang at the Opera to the kids. Firefighters visit and read books about firehouse dogs. Visiting police officers read about police dogs.

I was asked to come with Hanni and talk about being a writer. “The kids will be thrilled to have you!” the Volunteer Manager assured me. I wasn’t sure the kids would be thrilled,, but I hoped my stories of learning new ways to read and write after losing my sight might encourage them to keep trying.

And just in case that didn’t thrill the second-graders to tears, I called my contacts at ABC TV in Chicago to ask if they might want to come along.

And so, a TV crew was with us at the school Tuesday morning to film the big event. The segment is slated for a Thursday ABC 7 Chicago 11 O’clock News show, I just don’t know exactly which Thursday yet.

In the meantime, Hanni and I are featured on another sort of ABC. The American Booksellers for Children (known as ABC) is a national organization of several hundred independent bookstore owners, and its current newsletter lists Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound as a top seller in their “Children’s Book Week Section. We’re in good company, too – get a load of the other great books on this list!

Hee-Haw-Dini and the Great Zambini by Kim Kennedy, illustrated by Doug Kennedy
Let’s Do Nothing by Tony Fucile
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld
we are all born free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books
listening time by Elizabeth Verdick, illustrated by Marieka Heinlen
Mystery of Blackbeard the Pirate by Carole Marsh
Machines Go To Work by William Low
One Hen by Katie Smith Milway
Monkey with a Tool Belt and the Noisy Problem by Chris Monroe
Melvin Might? by Jon Scieszka
Say Daddy! By Michael Shoulders
Ocean Hide and Seek by Jennifer Kramer

Having our book mentioned along with a title like Monkey with a Tool Belt. is quite an honor! I hear that the Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound cover appears on the list along with our book title, too. And even as a one-inch image, you can still see the ASPCA award sticker.

But the biggest thrill of all today? It came at the end of our school visit. I had told the kids early on in my talk that I used to be afraid of dogs when I was little. As Hanni and I were getting ready to go home, Ms. Keller (the second-grade teacher) told me a student had one last thing he wanted to tell me.
“I used to be afraid of dogs, too,” he said. “But not anymore.”
“What happened to change your mind?” I asked.
“I like your dog!” he exclaimed.
All I could say to that? “I do, too,”

<If you read my post last March about the first blind man to become governor of New York, you know I’m a David Paterson fan. So when Saturday Night Live decided to do a skit a few weeks ago making fun of Governor Paterson’s blindness, I was disappointed.

A confession: I suffer “delusions of grandeur.” I assume someone is watching (or staring at) – Hanni and me when we are out and about, just waiting for us to make a mistake. It can unnerve me.

When David Paterson became governor, I was hoping his success would help boost my confidence. I hoped people would just get used to him, you know, get over the easy Mr. Magoo jokes. So The Saturday Night Live skit made me sad.
But then the editorial in yesterday’s NY Timesabout Paterson’s State of the State address made me very happy. the editorial praised Paterson for his compelling ideas.

Mr. Paterson also spoke at length about health care. One important proposal would allow employees to expand private health care coverage to dependents up
to age 29, a quick way of providing health coverage for an age group that is notoriously underinsured.

Given the power of the food and soft-drink lobbies in Albany, Mr. Paterson set himself a daunting challenge by pledging to fight the alarming rate of diabetes, especially among the young. To combat obesity, he would expand statewide some of most successful changes made by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City, including a ban on trans fats and the requirement that chain restaurants post calorie counts. The governor also wants a surcharge on sugary drinks, a statewide ban on junk foods in schools and a better way of getting healthier foods or green markets in poorer areas.

The editorial didn’t mention Paterson’s blindness at all. It didn’t marvel at how he gives speeches without reading notes, and it didn’t joke about him finding his way to the podium. It simply praised Paterson for his compelling ideas. With all the meaty stuff going on in the world, and so much to parody and ridicule, it was hard to understand why a show that can be so clever with political satire took such easy and (sadly) predictable shots at Governor Paterson. Especially after we Illinoisans have given them a governor who provides more material than they’ll ever be able to use in one TV season.

Ever since I heard last Sunday’s New York Times article, For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can’t (I listened to it online via my supercool talking computer, of course) I’ve been telling friends it’s one of the best articles I’ve ever read about technology for the blind.

Only now do I realize how self-centerred I’m being when I gush over this NY Times article – the reason I like it so much is that it covers some of the same topics I talk about in this blog!

Example: in a post last July called Enter the Letters You See in this Box — If You Can See Them, I wrote about how frustrating it is when you can’t see to read that box of distorted letters that shows up when you’re trying to complete a task on a computer. The New York Times article mentions this, too:

Obstacles on the Web take many forms. A common one is the Captcha, a security feature consisting of a string of distorted letters and numbers that users are supposed to read and retype before they register for a new service or send e-mail. Few Web sites offer audio Captchas.

And just last month I blogged about Texting by Ear. The NY Times story covers this issue and more – the article focuses on T. V. Raman, a computer scientist and engineer at Google who happens to be blind. Raman is working to develop a touch screen phone for people who can’t see.

Instead of asking how something should work if a person cannot see, he says he prefers to ask, “How should something work when the user is not looking at the screen?”

Such systems could prove useful for drivers or anyone else who could benefit from eyes-free access to a phone.

When Mike was looking for Christmas and birthday gifts for me last month, he considered buying me a new-fangled gadget to replace the tape player I use to read books aloud. One of the reviews he found of this particular gadget came from someone who could see. “The guy liked to listen to books while he drove,” Mike told me later. “He didn’t want to take his eyes off the road while fiddling with the audio player.” Dang. If only I’d published a post about that, I could claim I scooped the New York Times on that technology issue, too!
One of my favorite quotes in the NY Times article came from Larry Goldberg, who oversees the National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH in Boston. Goldberg points out that a lot of the innovations designed primarily for people with disabilities end up benefitting the general population. I have never blogged about “universal design,” but I try my best to weave the idea into the speeches and presentations I give.

They include curb cuts for wheelchairs, captions for television broadcasts and optical character-recognition technology, which was fine-tuned to create software that could read printed books aloud and is now used in many computer applications, he said.

Touch-screen cell phones don’t have buttons. That’s kind of the point. You know — touch screen. But without buttons to guide our fingers over a glassy surface, developing a touch-screen cellphone that blind people can use may be too much of a challenge.

But Mr. Raman said that with the right tweaks, touch-screen phones — many of which already come equipped with GPS technology and a compass — could help blind people navigate the world.

“How much of a leap of faith does it take for you to realize that your phone could say, Walk straight and within 200 feet you’ll get to the intersection of X and Y,’ “Mr. Raman said. ”This is entirely doable.”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Or, sorry. Wait and hear.