What’s it like to be a recent college graduate who is looking for work and trying new adventures and then wham, a pandemic hits? Guest blogger Ali Krage is in that predicament and has generously agreed to write a post describing what that feels like. You might remember Ali from a post she wrote for us during her last semester summing up what it was like to attend Northern Illinois University without being able to see.

by Alicia Krage

Those of you who know me or follow me on social media know that after I graduated from college late in 2019, a friend of mine had coined the year we’re in now, 2020, as “the year of firsts.” The phrase had a nice ring to it, and it carried me through the rest of 2019 with a sense of hope for a better year: a clean slate, a fresh start, newfound hope and motivation. I had a lot to look forward to.

2020 started out great. I wrote a post in January about flying to Houston to visit a friend, spending a week in 70-degree weather, making new friends and being out and about for 12 or more enjoyable hours every day I was there.

Once back home, I looked into teaching iPhone and iPad classes at The Chicago Lighthouse  (I had seen a class while I was in Houston and thought to myself, “I wouldn’t mind doing this every day”). With so many possibilities in front of me, I couldn’t foresee a downfall. There was so much excitement that it was hard to keep up.

I still remember jokingly telling a friend back then that life needed to slow down just so I could process everything. And I think the universe heard me. Life didn’t just slow down — it came to a screeching halt.

March 8, 2020, is the last time I was in a room, face-to-face, with a friend. We are publishing this blog on May 8, which means it has been one month and 21 days since the last time I enjoyed a real live conversation with a friend.

But who’s counting?

If you know me, this is not normal for me. I am an extrovert. I get energy from other people. I’m usually out once a week…at the very least.

At first, I looked at this quarantine as a silver lining, a chance to get back into my hobbies. I wanted to read more, and now I had all the time in the world. I couldn’t see my friends in person, but I was able to connect with them online more — even some I hadn’t been communicating with on a daily basis before.

And then there’s this: I am spending more time with family now. I am staying at home with my parents, but I haven’t seen my siblings in person for almost two months now. We do virtual game nights, but it’s not the same.

My two favorite country artists, Kelsea Ballerini and Ingrid Andress, released their albums one week apart, so that’s all I listen to. Ingrid Andress’ album didn’t have as many new songs, and the songs she did have were a bit more sad. I had to be in the mood for it. Kelsea Ballerini‘s songs were more upbeat, so I listened to that more.

But after a while, my attempts at keeping a positive attitude started to fade. Some days are tough, I won’t deny that. I worry for my friends, especially my best friend who is a certified nursing assistant at an assisted living center — she is likely exposed to the COVID-19 virus every day. I miss getting coffee with friends, and I know I could call an Uber and do the Dunkin Donuts drive-through, but I hesitate to do that. What if the driver had a passenger who had symptoms and didn’t know it? Then the driver is exposed, and we would be exposed, too. My blind friends and I talk about this a lot.

Right now I was supposed to be working — or, at least, somewhere in the employment process. And remember what I said about Ingrid Andress being one of my two favorite country artists? I was supposed to be going to an Ingrid Andress concert with a friend, which would have been the first time in my life I would have been going to a concert without a family member along. Due to the coronavirus, that concert was postponed — a major disappointment in what was supposed to be my year of firsts. My friend from Houston was supposed to fly here. We were supposed to get a group together and go for lunch like we always do. We were supposed to go downtown and visit friends in Chicago.

When I start to get overwhelmed and caught up in everything I was supposed to be doing — everything I’d had to look forward to – I pull myself out of it as best I can.

One thing that helps? I do yoga with my mom every day. It took me a very long time to get into yoga. At first I did it because I knew my mom liked it when I joined her, but after a while I have really come to like it.

Truth is, long before the coronavirus — I mean, wayyyyy before this, like three years ago — I was in counseling, and when I opened up about anxiety, counselors would ask, “Do you do yoga?” They’d tell me it’s a good hobby to take up, especially if you’re feeling anxious.

The next time I’m asked if I do yoga, I can honestly answer, “Yes!” More than ever, it’s important to do what you can for the sake of your mental health (for those of you reading this who are into yoga, my mom and I are subscribed to Yoga with Adriene).

I spend time outside when I can, either going for a walk with my parents or just sitting on the deck drinking coffee and listening to an audio book. I make lots and lots of phone calls and am constantly texting. I’m still in touch with my friends in Houston — we have a group text chain going on What’s App Messenger — and everyone is asking me when I’m coming back to visit again.

So what’s keeping me sane…and hopeful? Those simple pleasures. They really put things into perspective for me.

I’ve been watching more television than normal during the coronavirus lockdown. Or at least different kinds of TV–in normal times my viewing is limited to sports and cooking shows. All I can say is one part of the economy that the coronavirus would not seem to have slowed is the ad industry.

And is it me, or does it seem like there’s a single ad agency churning out serious corona-themed commercials using one cookie-cutter formula?

It starts with austere, solemn music.

Then a narrator says something like

• In these difficult times…
• In these troubled times…
• In these unprecedented times…

Then it ends with some variation on

We’re here for you and we still want to sell you stuff.

Apart from the one-size-fits-all Coronavirus themed spots,  there are a lot of personal injury law firms trying to get us to sue somebody.

And scads of pharmaceutical ads. Which, collectively, make me wonder: Who makes up the names of these drugs?

Otezla? Rexulti? Really?

All I can say is thank God for the 1990s Chicago Bulls and the Last Dance documentary on ESPN. When that’s over, this lockdown better be over, too.

I am pleased to introduce Barbara Hayler as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. Born and raised in California, Barbara moved to Springfield, Illinois in her forties to accept a position as Professor of Criminal Justice at University of Illinois-Springfield. She moved to Admiral at the Lake in Chicago when she retired, and is now putting her experience in academia to work, generously volunteering to lead the weekly memoir-writing class there in my abstentia as we shelter in place. Here’s the nostalgic essay Barbara wrote when given the prompt “A Change in Habit.” Enjoy!

Before Computers, There Were Typewriters

by Barbara Haylor

As a child I thought typewriters were exclusively business machines. Then I discovered that we had one in our home. Mom used it to prepare meeting agendas and minutes when she was President of the PTA. She typed up recipe cards to accompany her dishes to church potlucks, and sometimes even used it to write letters. But most of the time it was stored in a closet, tucked away on a rolling typing stand. When I was ten I moved the family Remington into my bedroom and taught myself to type.

I was horse-mad that year. I followed all the horses that were in contention for the Kentucky Derby, tracking their success in preliminary races through the spring. The races were covered in Sports Illustrated, which I checked out from the library. I couldn’t tear those articles out to save, so I typed out copies. I became quite adept at two-finger typing, but didn’t learn to type properly until I took a class in high school. My mother thought every girl should have a skill to fall back on “just in case.”

I did so well that my typing teacher thought I could have a great career as an executive secretary, and tried to track me into business math and shorthand classes. My mother put a stop to that. “This is a useful skill,” she told him, “but no vocational classes.” “Barbara’s going to college.”

Three of my siblings had left home for college before me, and my parents sent each of us off with a good desk lamp and a typewriter. Handwritten assignments were acceptable in high school, but college required a typewriter. Mine was a gorgeous green Hermes portable typewriter, probably the best typewriter I’ve ever had. I later learned that it was a favorite of war correspondents because it was all metal and could take a lot of damage.

The study abroad program I went on during my freshman year at Lewis & Clark Colege in Portland, Oregon provided typewriters, so I didn’t take my Hermes with me when I went to France. I soon learned that instead of the standard QWERTY keyboard, French typewriters have something called the AZERTY keyboard. The “A” and the “Q” switch places, as do the “Z” and the “W.” This is supposed to facilitate typing in French (where Q is used much more often than in English) but it wreaks havoc on a touch typist who is used to typing without thinking. Just about the time I got comfortable with the French keyboard, I returned to the U.S. and had to relearn touch typing all over again.

Eventually my Hermes broke down, and no one could fix it. I flirted with a variety of alternatives: an electric portable that was prone to overheating, a variable spacing typewriter that I never got the hang of, a Selectric with that amazing bouncing ball, a memory typewriter that could erase up to a line of type on command. But they were mere machines.

I wrote my entire dissertation in pencil on yellow pads, but of course, it eventually had to be typed. That’s when I made the acquaintance of the dedicated Word Processing machine in the main office. State-of-the-art in 1984, it ran a now-obsolete program called VolksWriter and used 5” floppy discs the size of plates. When you inserted the floppy discs into a large reader that we called “the Toaster,” the screen displayed green letters on a dark background. Sometimes, after hours of typing a dissertation chapter into the machine, I would go home with visions of red letters on a light background dancing in front of my eyes.

My first personal computer was a generic Acer PC. Thirty-five years later, I have a Dell desktop that is slightly larger than the “Toaster,” with a thousand times more computing power. I have gotten used to composing on the computer, and love the ability to edit on the fly. But I’ve also had to get used to more typos, courtesy of autocorrect, and the autocratic rule of Bill Gates, whose Word program insists that “cancelled” is spelled with one “l.” I still sometimes write first drafts on yellow pads, but I got rid of my last typewriter – a portable Olivetti– when I moved to Chicago.

God help me if the power ever goes out!

A friend just sent an email asking for my advice. Subject line? “How do you recognize a smile when you can’t see the face?”

Starting today, May 1, 2020, Illinois residents are required to wear masks in any public situation where we are unable to keep a six-foot distance from others. My friend understands the necessity to wear masks, but it’s all bumming her out. “You know me,” she wrote. “When I’m out doing errands, I amuse myself by trying to amuse others.” What now?  How will she know her jokes are funny if she can’t see people smiling?

Under normal circumstances (remember those?!) I can hear a smile in someone’s voice. That skill didn’t come automatically when I lost my sight. They didn’t teach us that at Braille Jail, either. I had to figure it out on my own, and that took time.

I wasn’t blind long before discovering how much I’d relied on lip reading to communicate back when I could see. Lip-reading, and body language, too. You see a person look at you, maybe give you a nod, and start moving their lips? Odds are they are talking to you. Now, sometimes, I don’t have a clue.

Any of you who have been seated on a barstool next to me (remember when we used to do that?) has inevitably witnessed my difficulties in addressing the bartender. I hear one come near, they ask, “Ready for another one?” and I assume they are talking to me. If they’re not, and I respond? Awkward.

Ditto those times when a pharmacist, a bank teller, a post office clerk, a TSA employee, a ticket counter worker (actually, any circumstance where I have to stand in line) calls out, “you’re next.” After inadvertently cutting in line hundreds of times, I finally figured out to point at myself and ask, “Me?” before making a move.

And then there’s the time Mike and I sat down at a bar we didn’t frequent much and I asked a bartender what they had on draft. Little did I know I was sitting smack dab in front of all the beer pulls. The bartender pointed at the pulls (I think) and said, “What are you, blind?”

Good guess.

But back to smiles. When I first started recording essays for NPR, radio pros there encouraged me to smile while talking on the radio. “A smile comes through even when you can’t see the person who is smiling,” they said. “Even if you are saying something that isn’t exactly funny, you should smile: it engages listeners.” After that I started hearing smiles on the radio. (For a good example of a radio announcer who smiles when reading announcements, ask your smartspeaker to “play WBEZ” in the afternoon and listen to our local All Things Considered host Melba Lara — she’s always smiling, and always engaging).

It wasn’t long before I could detect smiles in everyday life, too. When I’m not quite sure? I can always turn to Mike. “Does Emily have a pretty smile?” I might ask. “She always sounds like she’s smiling.”

With many states requiring masks in public now, voices are going to be muffled, lip-reading will be impossible, judging whether people are addressing us is going to be more difficult. So how can my friend know someone is smiling without being able to see their face? With no evidence to the contrary, just picture they are.

Years ago I got the camera bug in a photojournalism class—I shot with department-issued cameras, spent hours in the J-school darkroom, and eventually bought my own SLR camera. I take snaps with my iPhone, but every once in awhile, the phone just falls short. It was a hobby that eventually fell by the wayside.

A longtime neighborhood friend, Anthony, whom we met at Hackney’s way back when, is, among many other things, an excellent and knowledgeable photographer. I started picking his gigantic brain (he’s a linguist, a computer programmer, and lots of other brainy things) about cameras back when we could still chat on barstools. He generously offered to loan me one of his cameras and a fantastic lens—I was a little nervous about taking possession of such a nice outfit. But when he showed up at Half Sour, our local haunt, one evening and handed me a nifty canvas bag containing the camera and necessary accessories, I couldn’t say no.

Well, a lot’s changed since I shot black-and-white Kodak Tri-X Pan and dodged and burned in the darkroom. Yeesh, the features on these things. They’re like Transformers. The lockdown started shortly after Anthony lended me the camera, and I’ve entertained myself by reading endless online reviews cameras, poring over the owner’s manual for Anthony’s camera, trying to fathom everything these new-fangled machines can do.

Over these past weeks, I’ve pestered Anthony with email questions that I would’ve normally asked in person before the shutdown—and he’s patiently answered all of them. Then last week he suggested that I shoot with a different focal length lens to experience the difference. He outlined a precisely choreographed plan for exchanging lenses while maintaining social distancing. (Wouldn’t George Carlin have a good time with that term? Or “shelter in place”?)

Yesterday, on a lovely, mostly sunny spring day, we executed the plan.

“I’m at Dearborn Park,” read his email.

“I’ll be there in minutes,” I replied.

Anthony has become a friend of the squirrels at Dearborn Park, a lovely little verdant oasis in the middle of our concrete jungle. He feeds them hazelnuts, which he buys in bulk just for this purpose, he photographs them, he tells stories about them. He’s like the squirrel whisperer.

And holy cow, as I approached, squirrels were everywhere! None wore masks but all were well behaved.

We stood strides apart, he in a patterned fabric mask, me in one of the masks I’d been sent home with from the hospital after my Covid19 scare. He took his current camera out of his bag. He demonstrated how to remove the lens—noting that it worked the exact same way on my loaner.

He put the lens caps on front and back.

“Your turn,” he said.

I took out my camera, pressed the release button on the front of the camera, just as Anthony had on his. I twisted off the lens, and attached the caps.

Anthony placed his lens on a nearby concrete table.

I retrieved the lens and left my lens on the table.

Anthony retrieved that lens.

We bundled up our bags and said adieu to one another and to the squirrels.

Interesting times.