It’s official. Hanni and I are the Chicago poster children for disability issues. And why not? I work for a disability organization — Hanni leads me to meetings at Easter Seals Headquarters in downtown Chicago every week. Plus, Mike and I raised a child with disabilities. And, hey…I’m blind!
So last week when ABC Chicago decided to do a story on the presidential candidates and their views regarding disability issues, they came over to Printers Row to film Hanni and me. If you missed our 8 seconds of fame on the morning ABC Chicago news last Sunday, never fear! The story is available online.
Karen Meyer, the reporter who covers the “Disability beat,” for ABC-Chicago, is deaf. As far as I know, she is the only newscaster in America who can’t hear. I unfortunately do not know sign language — thank goodness Karen reads lips. She interviewed me for about ten minutes, but I have a feeling there is more footage of Hanni in the finished piece than there is of my fascinating talk. The cameraman had Hanni walk me down the street a number of times after the interview was over. He needed just the right shot of the real TV star: Hanni!
That’s Wanda helping me as I sign books at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Every Wednesday, Hanni leads me to the Chicago Cultural Center to teach a memoir-writing class for senior citizens.
Eighteen women, great names. Myrna. Sybil. Eldoris. Bea. They’d grown up on the south side, in the suburbs, in Italy, in West Rogers Park. Some have Masters degrees. One finished her undergrad at age 73. Many of them were teachers, a few taught in the Chicago Public Schools. Their stories are fascinating.
Each week I assign these writers a topic, they go home, write 500-word essays, and then bring them back the next week to read aloud. After weeks, months, years of hearing their stories, I’ve come to know a lot of them pretty well.
Wanda is 87 years old and grew up on Chicago’s south side. She has a significant hearing loss, but like so many her age, it went undiagnosed when she was little. In school, Wanda was punished for being rude, or for not listening in class, when she simply couldn’t hear what was being said. Wanda is not a complainer, though – once she sorted things out and got hearing aids, she used her experience to build a career. Her job? She went from public school to public school, testing the kids for, guess what? Hearing loss. Now Wanda sits right next to me during class so she can hear every word. This turns out to be a privilege for me: I get to hear everything Wanda says, too! Today, she said she could tell stories of her upbringing that would “make the hair curl on a bald man’s head.” She often quotes her beloved uncle, Hallie B., who told her, “People who sit and mope with their head in their hands, they never see the good things coming their way.”
The oldest student in class this session is Hannah, age 88. Hannah grew up in Germany. Her family was Jewish. A determined and adventurous woman, Hannah escaped on her own before World War II – she was only 20 years old when she arrived, alone, in the US. Others in her family didn’t make it out in time. “I’ll tell you this,” she says. “I’ve always been very, very lucky.”
Economic news lately prompted me to ask these writers to put something down on paper about the Great Depression. “I’m wondering how it compares to what you see going on now.” Many of them returned with essays about their parents’ view of the Great Depression — Wanda and Hannah were the only ones old enough to have lived through it. The stories the two of them read aloud were so moving that after class I contacted my “connections” at Chicago public Radio, askde them if they’d be interested in recording Hannah and Wanda’s stories.
WBEZ said yes. And though the producer there had only planned on using the stories for a three-or-four-minute bit, he ended up spending more than an hour in the studio with the two ladies. Afterwards he sent me this email:
“Because both stories were so compelling, we just couldn’t cut them TOO short. So, we’re going to air them in two separate parts, on two separate days, as a short “series.” So, Wanda’s will air tomorrow, and we’ll then try to run Hannah’s within a week. I’ll let you know about that one when we have an air date for that. So, I hope that’s cool with you and them. They would have been powerful together, but I think they’re just as powerful on their own.
The producer was sooooooo right. Wanda’s interview aired this morning, and she was sensational. Listen yourself and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m so proud to know these women! I can’t wait to hear Hannah’s story on air next week. I’ll link to her story here on the blog once it airs so you can hear it, too. Stay tuned!
That's me at the Ela library. A great crowd showed up, and the library is a tremendous facility. Say eee-lah (not Ella, despite the title of this entry).
Well, actually I didn’t forget to include it – I left it off the list because it didn’t really qualify: Sheelagh and Beni didn’t come along on that trip. October 13 was Sheelagh and Beni’s last day here. Instead of taking an hour-long train ride with Hanni and me to the suburbs, they opted for one last meal in Chicago. Who could blame them? Chicago has some pretty darn good restaurants!
Sheelagh and Beni are both vegetarians — while they were happily munching away on Moroccan Style Eggplant and Portabella over Lentil & Rice at Andie’s Restaurant on N. Clark, Hanni and I were being chauffeured to the Ela Library. My friend Chris lives in Lake Zurich, and she met us at the train station.
An enthusiastic (and large!) audience greeted us at Ela Library — more than 40 parents and kids were there, and it was a school night! During my talk, I explained three rules to keep in mind when you encounter a guide dog with a harness on: don’t pet the dog, don’t feed the dog, and don’t call out the dog’s name. “Those things can distract a Seeing Eye dog,” I told them. “It’d be like if someone nudged you or kept calling your name wile you were working on your spelling words at school. You wouldn’t be able to concentrate on your work.”
I suggested we come up with a fake name for Hanni. “If you use her fake name to say hi to her, she wont’ notice,” I said. “She’ll think you’re talking to someone else!”
I went a little off-topic from there, explaining that while the word “Ela” in “Ela Area Public Library” begins with a long e sound – it’s pronounced “Eela” – my talking computer says it like “Ella.”
“So for tonight, let’s call the dog ‘Ella,’” I said. “You know, like Ella Fitzgerald.”
The name suited Hanni. She’d make a good Ella, actually. And gee, in that one moment, the kids learned a lesson in phonics, adaptive technology for the blind, and…jazz history!
Kids lined up after my talk to have me sign copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound. As always, I enjoyed talking to the kids one by one.
Our hero Mike arrived at the end to drive us home –that way we were back in Chicago in time to join Sheelagh and Beni after their meal. We met them at Hackney’s, our local tavern, for one (or two) pints of draft beer. Monday was the Irish pair’s last night in Chicago, after all. It was important to toast their vacation!
Our little Printers Row Bike Riders Association, at least those who showed up. In honor of Sheelagh and Beni, from right to left: Beni, Sheelagh, (Big) Mike Rogers, me, Chuck, and Chuck. That's the Museum of Science and Industry in background. Thanks to Patricia Wright for the photo.
Last week Sheelagh — my first-ever volunteer reader — and her friend Beni came from Northern Ireland to spend 8 days in Chicago with us. Sheelagh was an exchange student from Belfast when I met her in Urbana, IL in 1986. She’d signed up for volunteer work at the University of Illinois to “meet people from the community.” They sent her to me, and we’ve been friends ever since.
Sheelagh gets around – I visited her twice while she was living in Berlin, twice in Italy and twice in Northern Ireland. She’s come back to the US to visit us in our various homes, too — in Urbana, in the Chicago suburbs, and in North Carolina. There‘s something special about Sheelagh. We always have fun together, no matter what we do.
Note: Mike rolls his eyes any Time I introduce Sheelagh to someone and claim she was my first volunteer reader. “She only read to you once!” he always says. If I lower my eyebrows and look his way, though, he backpedals. “Okay, twice. ”
It’s true. My white-cane skills were terrible when I met Sheelagh. I was a new mother then, and I hadn’t yet trained with a Seeing Eye dog. I liked being read to, but what I needed more than anything was to simply get out of the house. So when Sheelagh arrived to read, I’d tie Gus to my chest in his snuggly, grab her arm, and we’d head off for coffee somewhere instead. Or we’d put the baby in the buggy (she called it a “pram”), and I’d hold onto the side as Sheelagh pushed on to the grocery store. On our return, Gus would be surrounded with our purchases. When we were feeling especially adventurous, Sheelagh and I would get out the tandem, put Gus in the baby seat, and take off.
When Sheelagh arrived in Chicago last week, she was amazed to see that very same “Schwinn Twinn” parked in the living room of our loft apartment. “That bicycle was old when we rode it 22 years ago!” Schwinn Twinns were built by Schwinn Bicycle Company in Chicago from the 1950s to the 1970s. The tandems came in two different models — the single speed Twinn and the five speed Deluxe Twinn. We’ve got a red Deluxe — Oo la la!
And so, somewhere in-between the Frank Lloyd Wright House tour in Oak Park, the day trip to Andersonville , lunch at Hamburger Mary’s, the play in Lakeview, cheering on the Chicago Marathon runners, jazz at Andy’s, Millennium park, Cajun food at Heaven on Seven, nightly visits to Hackney’s and going to hear my friend Marcus’ gospel choir on Chicago’s south side not just once but, twice, well…in the midst of all that, somehow we managed to meet some of our neighbors for a Saturday early morning bike ride along lake Michigan. (Make sure to check out our action video at the bottom of the page, courtesy of Beni.)
Sheelagh and I surprised ourselves. We took off relatively smoothly. It was just like, well, like riding a bike! A highlight for me came when Sheelagh suddenly had to swerve around a pedestrian on a cell phone –the woman darted out, not even noticing. The near-miss gave me the opportunity to hear Sheelagh utter one of my favorite Irish expressions. “Bloody hell!”
I have always loved biking. One of the many heartaches of losing my sight was giving up the beautiful blue Peugeot bicycle Mike had given me for my 25th birthday. I lost my sight the next year.
Mike to the rescue– again! Perched on the backseat of the second-hand Schwinn Twinn he bought for us after I retired my Peugeot, I chit-chat and enjoy the same breezes, sounds and fresh air my pilot does. Heaven.
The movie Blindness premiered last Friday, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. It’s based on the 1995 novel by Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago — I listened to the audio version of the book years ago, when it was first publishsed.
The book was praised for its use of blindness as a metaphor — a bunch of people in one city suddenly go blind, and the government quarantines them, afraid the blindness is contagious. Anyone trying to escape is killed immediately.
The prisoners are supposed to be given food and supplies, but that turns out to be an empty promise. It’s a survival story, kind of like the TV show lost. And they really are. Lost, I mean. Example: when the blind inmates can’t find their way to the bathrooms, they simply relieve themselves on the floor or in their own beds. Not exactly a positive look at what happens to people who lose their sight!
For Marc Maurer, who’s blind, such a scenario – as shown in the movie “Blindness” – is not a clever allegory for a breakdown in society. Instead, it’s an offensive and chilling depiction that Maurer fears could undermine efforts to integrate blind people into the mainstream.
“The movie portrays blind people as monsters, and I believe it to be a lie,” said Maurer, president of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind. “Blindness doesn’t turn decent people into monsters.”
I chose to stay home rather than join the protest — I explain why in an essay called Blindness over Blindness. I recorded the essay for Chicago Public Radio early last week, and it aired while I was in Little Rock. If you missed it (like I did!) you can listen to the essay online — once you get to the Chicago Public Radio page, there’s a little button thing there you have to click to play, I think it either says “download” or pop out,” can’t remember now. And in the end, maybe it’s not worth all that trouble to hear the essay — Blindness got bad reviews from movie critics. Unlike the newly-blind in the film, few movie-goers are falling over themselves to live the metaphor.
