So many of you were impressed with the post our guest blogger Ali Krage wrote way back in 2016 when she was starting at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and figuring out how to get around a new campus without being able to see. Ali sure mastered that very well – she graduated from NIU in December! To celebrate, she took a round trip flight to Houston to see friends last month – her first time flying without her parents along. Part One of a three-part “Flying Solo” series she wrote for Easterseals was published on the Easterseals National blog yesterday, and here it is now for you Safe & Sound readers to enjoy as well.

by Alicia Krage

Photo by Dolores Pantaleone

I love traveling. I don’t need a big, extravagant trip to feel pleased about my travel abilities, either. Just taking the train to downtown Chicago is enough to make me feel proud of myself, simply because I did it by myself – or at the very least, without my parents.

I’ve taken cabs, buses, Ubers, Amtrak and Metra trains all by myself. I’ve flown many times before, but always with my parents.

I have friends who are also blind and have flown countless times, and thinking about them always left me feeling a mixture of pride and envy. I was proud of them for their independence, but also envious, wishing I had that kind of courage. I really wanted to challenge myself, so I set a goal: this year, 2020, I would fly alone at least once.

A friend of mine who is blind flew out to Chicago from Houston in November to celebrate my birthday with a group of friends, and while Juan was here we discussed my “first solo flight” idea further. I asked him question after question about everything. What airline do you recommend? Any specific airport? Do you do curbside check-in or go to the counter? How did your parents react? Juan’s parents seem similar to mine, especially in how they raised us as children with disabilities. So hearing how his parents reacted to him flying alone gave me the last boost of confidence I needed. Juan invited me to come to visit him and his family in Houston, and I started looking up flights. Imagine how hard it was to get through finals week – my last finals week, no less, as I graduated in December! – spending every minute of my free time looking up airfares. The affordable prices were taunting me.

I was so tempted to act first and think later – buy the tickets, then tell my parents about it. Realistically, I’d never do that, but checking fares and checking my bank account, knowing I could actually afford this…it all amped up the excitement. I can do this!

My parents were very encouraging, and my dad helped me book my flight on the Southwest website. I was pleased that the Southwest website provided me the option to check a checkbox indicating I am blind and needed gate assistance. A few days before the trip I had been waiting so long for, an anticipated snow storm threatened to ruin the entire thing. I spent the day before and the day of the trip asking our Google home device how much snow was expected, already jumping ahead and asking Juan for alternative dates for me to fly from Chicago just in case. He wasn’t worried at all. “This is how Chicago always is!” he laughed. “You’re always supposed to get a storm – it won’t happen.”

And it didn’t!

Stay tuned for Part Two, where Alicia talks about waiting for airport assistance, getting through airport security with a white cane, and, eventually, sitting in the plane ready for takeoff.

I rarely go to the movie theater these days, and Beth and I have never gotten into the streaming thing, so each year, when the Oscar awards are broadcast, I typically say, “Why botha’?” I don’t have any dogs in the hunt. And each year, I end up watching the Oscars. Somehow, I can’t look away.

I don’t know if it’s just a deep-seated habit, having grown up watching every minute of every Oscars with my family. Or that somehow, every year I am actually entertained. Probably a little bit of both.

I do get sucked into some of the acceptance speeches. And Bong Joon Ho, Parasite director, was pretty much worth the price of admission last night. (He may still be drinking in celebration.)

And the Oscars usually has it’s intended effect—that is, it gets me to get out and see some of these movies. So I expect to see Parasite, Little Women, and Ford vs. Ferrari sometime soon.

Oh, and also Hair Love, which took home an Oscar for animated short. And that one’s easy—you can stream it free. I learned about it—as I often learn about pop culture things—from Beth. She listens to lots of public radio, and she heard an interview on WBEZ with filmmaker Matthew Cherry  (Chicago native and former NFL player) and Karen Tolivar, the producer.

She said they were terrific and personable, and that he was inspired by his daughter to make the animated short. He wanted to show more African Americans in animated work, and to, as he puts it, “normalize” black people’s hair.

I’ve learned from our black friends that hair is a big, big deal for them. And unfortunately, it’s sometimes a big deal and (shouldn’t be) in the broader community.

Me, I just wish I had more hair in some places and less in others.

Meantime, congratulations to Hair Love, and enjoy.

On this, the day after the Super Bowl, an annual circus in itself.

A Super Bowl won by a team that plays in Missouri, a victory for which the American president congratulated the people of Kansas (not mentioning Missouri at all).

On the day of closing arguments during an impeachment trial of said president.

On the day of the Iowa Caucuses, an absurd way to start a primary season.

At a time in history people make 3D models of themselves.

And when people pay for alcohol-free booze.

On this day, all I got is George Carlin. Man do I miss him. But his wisdom is eternal:

“When you are born in this world, you are given a ticket to the Freak Show, and when you are born in America, you have a front row seat.”

Try to have a good week.

Okay. Only one dog-related reference in this post. Honest. I promise.

That’s Wanda and me.The two of us are always happy to be together, can you tell? Photo courtesy StoryCorps.

Because here’s the thing. We are wayyyy overdue on news about Wanda Bridgeforth. If you’ve followed our Safe & Sound blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: she’s witty, she’s talented, she’s 98 years old, she’s been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for over a decade now, and guess what? She’s in the news again.

This time it’s The Streeterville News, a Chicago neighborhood paper. She was profiled in a story called Chicagoan Ready for Round Two of the Roaring 20s! The story explains that the year 2020 gives us another opportunity to celebrate the Roaring 20s,and Wanda still remembers growing up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood during the 1920s. She especially remembers yearly visits to downtown Chicago to see the Christmas decorations during that decade. “We got dressed up to come downtown with gloves and hats!” As a kid, Wanda saw neighbors stick together through thick and thin. “The Depression came when I was about six or seven,” she said. “That’s when everybody’s life turned upside down. We had a closeness and a strong community spirit that we don’t have now.”

Wanda credited that same togetherness for helping her when her husband was stationed overseas during World War II.

“When he went overseas it was 56 days from Chicago to India,” she said, explaining that she wasn’t allowed to know exactly where he was stationed, she just knew he was far away from home.

I was interviewed for Wanda’s story, too, and when the reporter asked me how it was that she and I hit it off so well from the minute we met, I told him the truth: everybody hits it off with Wanda right from the start. When he pressed me for more about our enduring friendship, I tried my best to come up with something brainy and important, you know, to make me sound thoughtful and heady. I pointed out to the reporter that Wanda has been profoundly deaf since childhood, and I am totally blind. Maybe our disabilities contribute to our bond, I said. “We both acknowledge our disabilities without letting them defeat us,” I told him. “We both are resourceful, we have to figure out ways to do certain things that others do with their ears and eyes.”

And now, dog-reference spoiler alert. When the reporter asked Wanda that same question about our special bond, she told the simple truth. The story ends like this:

Bridgeforth said there was another reason she was drawn to Finke. “We clicked immediately,” she said. “Primarily through Beth’s guide dog. I love animals.”

For decades now, hosting friends for dinner has been a cherished ritual in
our lives. I’ve always liked to cook—I began learning as a kid. But cooking and entertaining took on an added dimension some time after Beth lost her sight, and later, when Gus was born.

We leaned heavily on friends in those days. For rides, babysitting, you name it. And we had very little discretionary spending money. So, one of the best ways we could thank them was to make dinner for them. Beth learned to bake bread, I tried various cuisines, and we have always had some of the very best times of our lives enjoying meals and conversations with friends.

And that’s what happened yesterday, when we had four neighborhood friends over to meet Beth’s dog—and to catch up with Beth: She’d been gone three weeks.

Beforehand, we went through the familiar ritual: Do we want to have people over? Do we have the time? Energy? Then…the cookbooks. Beth and I narrow it down to, say, a cuisine. Then I haul out the cookbooks and pore over them, running recipes—some new, some familiar—by Beth. (She claims she always tells me what she wants and I always make something else. Not true!)

This past weekend we settled on pasta, so the Italian cookbooks came out. My mom was born to Italian immigrants, so I have some stuff committed to memory. But some of the more complex ones are preserved in handwriting.

I came across one this past weekend—my dad had handwritten my mom’s recipe, essentially recording it as she dictated it to him. Not sure why—might have been when her health wasn’t great.

I must’ve read it 10 times. Not because it was so complicated, but because I experienced that thing where when you happen upon an old handwritten letter or thank-you note, something kind of magical happens. More than the words are communicated. A time, a face, the person who wrote it is there.

On a grander scale, Beth and I visited the LBJ Museum at the University of Texas-Austin several years ago. First, it’s well worth visit. One of the exhibits was Jackie Kennedy’s thank-you note to the Johnsons for allowing her and her children to stay in their White House residence a few days in order to make moving arrangements. It was warm, it was sincere, it reflected an impossible poise given the circumstances.

Somehow, I doubt that an email pulled from a digital archive and displayed on a screen would carry the same impact. Or even the printed email.

Apparently, handwriting may offer other powers that electronic communication doesn’t. Evidence has been mounting for awhile that writing by hand stimulates areas of the brain that typing doesn’t—kids learn better and faster, for example.

So, I’ll try to bear that in mind from time to time, and fire off some snail mail for old time’s sake.

Only one problem: I do it so infrequently that it’s hard to even write my name legibly.