Last Spring a cab driver refused to pick me up in front of the Hilton on Michigan Avenue. “I’m not taking her with that dog,” he said, then sped away.
The doorman took down the cab’s license number, then told me what it was. I got into the next cab and recorded the number onto my handheld tape recorder. Once I got to work I phoned the City of Chicago Department of Consumer Services to file a complaint.
Last Friday was our day in court.
Mike walked outside with Hanni and me Friday morning to hail a cab for us. I still can hardly believe what happened next. A cab slowed down, the driver looked past Mike and saw me standing there with Hanni. “No dog,” he said.
“It’s a Seeing Eye dog,” Mike explained. “A service dog.”
“No dog,” the driver said.
Mike was angry. “You’re going to court!” he shouted at the driver
“I don’t care,” the driver said, then sped away.
So my Seeing Eye dog and I were refused a cab ride on my way to testify against a cab driver who refused to give us a ride. Who needs fiction?
Mike took this driver’s license number down; I’ll be calling the city next week.
But for now, I needed to focus on the court case at hand. The cab driver I’d accused of refusing us at the Hilton had hired an attorney, and the attorney did everything he could to twist my story around. How far were you from the curb? How long did the cab sit there before it took off? You say the cab driver said he wouldn’t take you with the dog. Did the doorman and cab driver say anything after that? What did they say? You don’t know? How is it that you heard the cab driver say he wouldn’t take you with the dog, but then you couldn’t hear if they said anything to each other after that?
That last question was an easy one. “He was emphatic when he said he wouldn’t take me with the dog,” I said. “It was easy to hear him.”
The doorman testified by phone. I had to leave the room for that part, but I found out later that our stories didn’t jive. He told the court that it was a very busy day – I’d said the cab had time to sit there for 30 seconds before speeding away. The doorman couldn’t remember exactly what the cab driver looked like. “It was hard to see him through the partition,” he explained. That means it would have been hard for me to hear the cab driver through the partition, too – How could I have heard him say he wasn’t taking the dog.
And then it turned out this cab doesn’t have a partition at all. The cab driver’s attorney suggested the doorman got the wrong license number, it wasn’t this guy.
The only problem with that was that the cab driver had already given a statement that he didn’t see the dog when he’d refused me a ride. So he’d already admitted to not giving me a ride. But he said he’d been driving a cab since 1993, in those years he’d carried hundreds of Seeing Eye dogs and plenty of pet dogs in his cab. His ex-wife and her mother had a dog when they lived together. What kind of dog, he was asked. A German shepherd, he thought. He got along fine with that dog.
The doorman had testified that someone was standing right behind me that day with a lot of luggage. The attorney suggested the cab driver was so focused on the prospect of a big fare to the airport that he looked right past me.
In the end the judge ruled in our favor. “A hotel doorman looks at hundreds of cab drivers a day,” he said. The fact that the doorman wasn’t able to describe a cab driver who pulled up in front of the Hilton six months ago wasn’t enough to throw out the case. The judge said it was very nice to hear that the cab driver had picked up dogs before, but that didn’t really have much to do with what had happened in front of the Hilton Hotel in April.
The driver was found guilty of two charges. The first was for simply refusing to pick up a passenger of any sort. For that, he was fined $200. He was also found guilty of refusing to pick up a person with a service dog. For that he was fined $500 and had his license suspended for 29 days.
I did not do a dance of joy when this was over. Thing is, I really like cab drivers. They’re hard workers. I like chatting with them when I’m sitting in back. I tip them well. I feel a sort of bond with them – many of them are minorities, like me. Many of them are qualified for other jobs but have had to settle for something else. Like me. I know driving a cab was this guy’s livelihood. I didn’t like the idea of his license being suspended.
But I don’t like being refused a ride, either.
I don’t really want to go to court again, but I’m going to go ahead and file a complaint about the guy who didn’t pick Hanni and me up on the way to court Friday. I have a feeling cab drivers talk to each other a lot. If word gets out that drivers are getting their licenses suspended for refusing a service dog, well, maybe I won’t have to file complaints anymore.

Whatta wonderful Warsaw weekend!  Weather was warm, we walked wherever we went. We witnessed where warriors waged war. We wandered where World War widows wept.
Wedding? Well, we waltzed, whirling wildly, wowing wedding-goers. Whew! Week-end, we were weary, worn-out, weak. Wonder why? Wodka.

Okay. Enough. But if you wondered how desperate I felt during that TEN HOUR FLIGHT from Warsaw to Chicago, now you know. I killed time dreaming up “w” words to describe the trip.

Yeesh.

The flights back and forth were well worth it, though. Friends from all over Europe met up with us in Warsaw, most of them were people I’d met 20+ years ago through my job working with foreign students. I lost that job when I lost my sight – that was before the Americans with Disabilities Act. That career ended, but the more important thing– these friendships – have endured.

And the wedding, of course, was fabulous. The service took place at city hall, where a woman translated the Polish vows to German. The reception was at the Palac Kultury i Nauki, Palace of Culture and Science. The Palace was built by the Soviets in the 1950s as a “gift” to Polish society. A web site about the Palace says the decision to combine traditional Polish ornamentation with Soviet architecture inspired Warsawans to baptize the Palace as “an elephant in lacy underwear.” I didn’t hear anyone at the reception calling it that, but then again – I wouldn’t have understood their Polish!

And so, like I said in the “w” paragraph, Mike and I had a wonderful time. That “w” paragraph is entirely true, in fact. Oh, okay, except for one thing. Although we danced — a lot! — at the wedding, we didn’t waltz.

As for Hanni, she spent the week in a Chicago palace – with our friends Pat and Carol on Michigan Avenue. When Mike and I walked into their condo to pick Hanni up, the star of “Safe & Sound” did not bound up to cover me with kisses. She did come up to greet me, but then quickly retreated to her spot in her new living room to chew on her Nyla bone. She guided me home safely, but I wouldn’t use the word “overjoyed” to describe her work.
I’m not worried about this – who can blame her? In the end, I think Hanni enjoyed her vacation as much as Mike and I did!

A friend of ours is marrying a woman from Poland this Saturday. Mike and I are flying from Chicago to Warsaw for the wedding.

Hanni’s staying home with friends.

I actually did consider having Hanni go with us and guide me through Poland. It’s true that guide dogs cannot travel with their blind partners into the United Kingdom and Ireland without being quarantined, but from what I gather we would be allowed in Poland.

At least I think so.

A list of European countries and their guide dog regulations called “Guide Dog Access to Public Places and Facilities in Europe” is available at the European Blind Union web site. Trouble is, Poland wasn’t’ even included in the list of countries.

Other countries were missing from the list, too, and the European Blind Union’s Commission on Mobility and Guide Dogs site was hardly reassuring. “Generally,” the web site says, “the presence of a guide dog is tolerated.”

Tolerated?

Truth is, the access situation for guide dogs in some European countries can be pretty complicated. There is no “Europeans with Disabilities Act” like the “Americans with Disabilities Act” we have in the US. In one same country the access rules can change from city to city, region to region. In some countries, there are simply no regulations at all.

Across the board, access for guide dogs in Europe pretty much depends on the good will and support of well-informed staff. This means there is always the possibility of a guide dog user being denied access to, say, a hotel, or a cinema, or a wedding reception.

And then there’s LOT Polish Airlines. Mike and I are flying LOT nonstop from Chicago to Warsaw. While they do allow guide dogs on board, LOT Polish Airlines regulations State that “a blind person’s guide dog should wear a muzzle and an appropriate harness during the whole flight.”

A muzzle? During the whole flight? A ten hour flight would be hard enough on Hanni.  A muzzle would be downright cruel.

Hanni and I have been together 6 years. I’ve only been without her once, when I went to Belfast.  Mike stayed home and took care of her that time. But Mike is coming along on this trip.

I started putting together a list of friends I could ask to take care of Hanni while we were away. The first person on my list said yes. I’ll miss Hanni while we’re gone, and Mike will have to do all the leading – I’m pretty hopeless with a white cane. Hanni will be a little confused, and I know she’ll miss us.  But who knows – maybe she’ll enjoy the time off work.  Who wouldn’t? Our generous friends Carol and Pat love dogs and have a great place for Hanni: a Michigan Avenue highrise, beautiful lake view, and…right across the street from Grant Park.

  The Braille version of “Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound” is here! I received my advance copy in the mail today! That means the “real deal” should be available to blind readers on October 15th, the same day the print edition will officially be released. This is very, very unusual.

Braille is so expensive to publish that “braile presses” usually wait until a book becomes a best-seller before putting it out in Braille. But here it is, already in my dirty little hands.

Okay, that’s a joke. I washed my hands before touching the new book.

The book is in a Print-and-Braille format. The contracted braille and print match line for line, with the print just above the Braille (no pictures).
I can tell you first hand, so to speak, that it’s “good Braille” = the dots are stiff, they stand up straight, They’re easy to read.

A little known fact about Braille: less than 20% of the 50,000 blind children in the United States are proficient in Braille. All too often, the “written word” has been inaccessible to kids who are blind, far easier for them to listen to books on audio or hear words on a computer screen equipped with a screen reader. Technology is cool, but how will these children ever learn to spell correctly? How will they know where to put commas, quotation marks, paragraph breaks and so on?

My children’s book publisher, Blue Marlin Publications, teamed up with Seedlings Braille Books for Children, a non-profit organization in Michigan that creates Braille books for kids who can’t see. Blue Marlin didn’t charge Seedlings a penny for the rights to publish the book in Braille.

Not only that, but Blue Marlin Publications is donating a portion of the sales of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to Seedlings so they can continue creating books in Braille for kids who need them. By producing Braille books for children, Seedlings helps promote “literacy for the blind,” providing visually impaired children equal opportunity to develop a love of reading.

With Safe & Sound available in Braille, I’ll be able to read it aloud at my presentations, too.

To find out how to order a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in Braille, or to donate to Seedlings to help them create more books in Braille for kids, link to www.seedlings.org.

Every once in a while, my talking computer barks out an email from the Illinois chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. I listen and think, gee, that event sounds interesting. And then I find out where they are meeting, or when they are meeting, and I hit the delete button.
But then came the announcement for last night’s soiree. Downtown Chicago. 5:30 pm. Wine and cheese.
We live just south of the Chicago loop. The wine and cheese party was at Carus publishing – they’re the ones who publish Cricket Magazine for kids. Who knows, maybe Cricket is looking for stories about Seeing Eye dogs. And if they’re not? Wine. And cheese! I signed up.
Carus is at 70 E. Lake. A fairly easy walk for Hanni and me. Except during rush hour.
It’s not the traffic that’s the problem at 5 pm – it’s the commuters! Workers are so eager to catch their trains or get to their el stops or talk to friends on their cell phones that they don’t watch where their going. Hanni only got stepped on once during this trip, pretty good. But she was bumped into more times than that.
At one corner Hanni finally retaliated. She ran me right into the poor soul standing there waiting for the light to change.
“Hey!” the woman shouted at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
No answer.
We waited a bit. A noisy corner. Difficult to hear the traffic and figure out when the light turned green.
“Are you crossing here?” I asked the stranger.
No answer. Man, she really was mad at us. We waited. It was especially hard to judge the traffic. I needed help.
“Are you going this way?” I asked, pointing across the street. No answer.
That’s when I realized. The woman we ran into must be developmentally disabled. I left her alone.
Just then a young man walked up. “God you are in your own world!” he complained, nudging the woman so hard that she ran into us. Yeesh, it’s a violent pedestrian world in Chicago! “Take off your headphones!” the guy shouted to his friend. “You can’t hear anything!”
The stranger at the corner wasn’t developmentally disabled – she was voluntarily hearing impaired! The guy kept shouting to her as they crossed the street. We crossed along.
Hanni and I made it to 70 E. Lake. The book writers and illustrators were nice to us. One helped me find a seat, and Hanni immediately curled up next to me to recover from the trip. I drank wine. And ate cheese. And learned a lot about Carus Publications.               Any writers out there who are reading this blog: Cricket and Lady Bug and Baby Bug and all their magazines receive far too many stories about farms. And too many stories about summer adventures. They want more stories with an activity connected at the end. So if you have a story in mind about a winter activity in the city, send it to Carus. If the story centers on boys, all the better – they get far too many stories that relate solely to girls.
Our trip home was much easier – the commuters had all arrived at their destinations. Hanni and I made it home.  Safe & Sound.