This past Tuesday my friend Jamie drove Whitney and me to the north suburbs of Chicago to visit four different groups of third graders there. We were in Deerfield as part of Educating Outside The Lines, a disability awareness program that uses a hands-on approach to help kids discover how things like wheelchairs, sign language, service dogs and Braille books are just tools we use to help do the things we do.

Reading Braille, slowly.

During our visits at Wilmot and Walden Elementary Schools Tuesday, I read a bit of my children’s book, Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in Braille and unfolded my collapsible white cane to show how it works. They listened to my iPhone read texts out loud, and I mimicked the robotic voice of the talking computer I use at home to write books, compose email messages, and…publish blog posts like this one! The questions asked during the Q&A part of the presentation sparked some very thoughtful conversation. Some examples:

• Does Whitney bark when she sees other dogs?
• You said you use that white stick when you go to baseball games, so which team do you like, the Cubs or the White Sox?
• What happens if your dog is too tired to help you?
• Was it shocking when the doctors told you you’d be blind the rest of your life?
• What do you do to keep yourself entertained?
• What system do you use to make your iPhone talk?
• Is it scary sometimes?
• How do you write books if you can’t see?
• When Whitney retires is she still going to live with you?
• How did you spend your weekend?
• When your eyes are open a long time do they start to hurt?
• Is it hard to travel?
• What if you get up at night, and your dog is sleeping, and you don’t have that white stick, and you need to go to the bathroom, but the bedroom door is closed and you walked right into it?
• What does your dog do during the weekends?
• Do you get sad sometimes?
• Are you going to watch the World Series tonight, and, if you are, which team are you backing, the Houston Astros or the Washington Nationals?
• Is your dog a mutt?
• What year was it when you got Whitney?
• How do you drive?
• How do you know what money you have?

About that money question: I keep track of paper money by folding each denomination differently. Twenties are folded in half, tens down to three-quarter size. Fives get the end folded into a triangle and singles I just leave be.

Just as I was starting to explain all that to the boy who’d asked, it dawned on me. I had my wallet with me. Why not just show them?

”Wow, I’m rich! I explained, fingering through my bills to find a stack that was folded in half. “Look at all these twenties!” I said, holding them up for all to admire.

“That’s not a twenty!” one nine-year-old called out. “That’s only one! Another joined in, and then I heard a chorus of numbers. ” “The other one is five!” “It’s a one, it’s another one, a bunch of ones!”

“Shit!” I thought. “What happened?” I said.

What had happened was this: On Monday I’d picked up prescriptions at Walgreen’s, the pharmacists were busy, people in line behind me were anxious, so rather than ask the cashier to call out each bill one at a time, I just accepted the pile, folded the bills in half and put them in my wallet. “I’ll have Mike help me go through these when he gets home,” I figured.

But I forgot.

”Oh, no!” I fessed up to the group of nine-year-olds. “I messed up. Can you guys help me?” They answered with a chorus of yeses, and one by one, I showed them a bill, they called out what each one was, I folded it correctly and placed it back in my wallet.

One of the many things I like kids to learn from our school visits is how good it feels to help others. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help when we need it, and we can learn from our mistakes.

My mess-up at Walgreen’s? It turned out to be a happy accident. I may just add the “What’s This bill?” game to my repertoire now.

My mom taught school most of her adult life, only taking time off when I was born to get me to kindergarten–and then returning to the classroom,. I can tell you, it was not an 8-3 job. It wasn’t a 9-5 job, either. It was—maddeningly for my sister and me—a constantly on-call job. As in, phone calls with concerned parents virtually every evening. They might be worried about grades, or wanted to explain issues at home. My mom would also get stopped at the grocery store or at a shopping mall by a worried parent. And then there were the projects—construction paper and art supplies strewn throughout the kitchen or living room—as she prepared seasonal bulletin boards or what-not.

Esther also worked, at least for a time, with the Lansing Education Association, the local branch of the National Education Association. She was waist high in contract negotiations and therefore was not always the favorite of administrators. But, because she had a whole lot of loyal parents who together formed a formidable support base.

While Esther was growing up in coal mining company town in southwestern Pennsylvania, my grandfather—immigrant Paul Latini—risked life and limb helping to unionize miners. The effort succeeded, and the union eventually made an enormous positive difference in his and his family’s lives.

So, I’m a big supporter of teachers. And more generally, unions. I think they play an important role.

Which is why I’ve found myself a little surprised at feeling conflicted about the current Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike, now in its third day. It has felt, to me, that the CTU was set on striking, no matter what. I can’t know, of course.

But it has also felt like CTU is shadow boxing with a mayor who’s no longer in office (Rahm Emanuel), and a political machine that has actually been rendered pretty impotent. (See indictments of Ed Burke, et al.)

On the other hand, I completely understand pent up frustration with the pent up needs that have, very sadly, gone unfilled for decades. Particularly schools in low-income neighborhoods. While palaces like Jones College Prep, Walter Payton, Whitney Young and other Chicago high schools have enough draw to motivate parents and kids to go through grueling selective enrollment processes, they also tend to hollow out neighborhood schools—the best and brightest leave.

I grew up where the neighborhood schools were part of the neighborhood fabric. When these places are shabby and ignored, it sort of feeds in the broken windows idea. Fix things, and people inherently begin to take more pride in their neighborhoods and themselves.

So I get why the teachers are pushing beyond paychecks to things like staffing, physical plant, and affordable housing—I just personally think, at this juncture in Chicago’s fiscal mess, they may be over-reaching.

I also think that they may be mucking up a chance to turn the corner on union-city relations. We have a new sheriff in town, and in my view, the new boss—Mayor Lori Lightfoot—is not the same as the old boss.

But, a column in today’s Chicago Tribune by Heidi Stevens—the mother of kids that go to Chicago Public Schools—has me thinking the city administration and the CTU may still turn that corner. An excerpt:

I’m not blind to the rhetoric. I see some of the signs on picket lines that demonize the mayor. I see the comments on social media that reduce teachers to caricatures and the issues to one thing: pay.

But that’s not all I see. That’s not even mostly what I see. Mostly I see the people with the most invested in this fight — CPS families — reluctant to fall for answers that sell either side short. Mostly I see parents tired of being pitted against their kids’ teachers, tired of being pitted against their elected officials, tired of being told they’re fools for believing in public education, for believing in Chicago, for believing there’s a better way.

I hope you’ll read the whole column—even if you’re not a Chicagoan, I think she points out a better way for us to address honest conflict.

And mostly, I hope she’s right about CPS and the city turning that corner.

If you’ve followed our Safe & Sound blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: she has been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for over a decade. She’s witty and talented, and today, October 19, not only is Sweetest Day, it’s Wanda’s 98th birthday!

When our “Me, Myself and I” class celebrated the big event last Wednesday, Wanda remembered a prompt I’d given years ago: Write About Something You’re Really, Really Good At. “All I could come up with was…surviving!” she laughed, adding that she sometimes shares the weekly prompts with her daughter, Wanda, Jr. “When I shared the prompt with Junior that week, she came up with an answer I’ve never forgotten,” Wanda said, her voice sounding quite serious now. “She said I’ve always been good at mothering.”

And so, to celebrate this happy, happy birthday today, I am sharing a delightful essay Wanda wrote about how, way back in the 20th Century, she and her husband came up with a name for their daughter.

by Wanda Bridgeforth I

I was the oldest female of a dozen cousins. For almost seven years, I was the only girl. This age difference resulted in being the first to date, to marry, and to become a mother.

The family referred to my father and his brothers as “We Boys.” They had no sisters, so We Boys name their daughters after themselves. This resulted in Albertine, Claudette, Claudine, Earline, Fredricka, Haroldine, etc. That should give you some idea of our naming process.

We grew up in the age of fairy tales, True Romance magazine and and movies that ended with the hero winning the girl and riding off to live happily ever after. Curtis was in the army, and on New Year’s Eve he called me from a train station in downtown Chicago. He could not say which train station he was at, and he couldn’t leave the station because his outfit was on alert. They were being shipped out, destination unknown. He told me not to worry if I didn’t receive mail because all contact with family would cease until they reached their destination. I told him my pregnancy had been confirmed and we would be proud parents in early summer.

In the meantime, the girl cousins back home got busy compiling a list of names for the baby. My husband’s name was “Marvin Curtis,” mine, “Wanda Geneva,” so you can just imagine the suggestions. True to tradition, we had some doozies. For example: Wantis Curanda. Marvinia. Marvetta. The names go on from there. I guess because of their gender, boy’s names were limited to Marvin Curtis, Jr.

At last in mid-April I received a bag of V-mail from my soldier husband. Much of it was blotted out, but it did say the ship had been at sea for 56 days. In case all the mail didn’t reach me, he wrote his name suggestions in several letters. Only two names were on the letters, one mail, and one female. The boys name was his, and the girl’s name was mine.

I always signed my letters with Roman numeral I after my name, so when this baby girl arrived I gave her my name and added “Junior.” Although she changed her last name when she got married, and she’s been married over 40 years, our family and friends still call us “Senior” and “Junior.”

Happy birthday to Wanda, and Happy Sweetest Day to Junior, too — you’re one of the sweetest daughters around.

A week ago today I had a short one-on-one conversation with George R.R. Martin. He’s the guy who wrote the book Game of Thrones. And yes, the conversation was quite short. But still….

That’s me standing on the left; my friend Heidrun is sitting in front of me. If you look hard, Whitney’s in there, too. Oh, and  George is there in the middle.

The back story: last Thursday the Chicago Public Library and Chicago Public Library Foundation honored George R.R. Martin with their Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and I was one of 85 authors with ties to Chicago to be invited to the ceremony.

I thought it’d be a somewhat small affair, but more than 900 civic, cultural and business leaders were there to celebrate and support Chicago’s public library. Eighty-five tables, and one Chicago-tied author was seated at each one. The group at my table were all from the Chicago Community Trust, an organization that had sponsored a bunch of cultural events during the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Thanks in large part to the Chicago Community Trust, I experienced many, many cultural events in 2015 (like architectural tours of Frank Lloyd Wright homes and visits to art museums) I might not have tried otherwise. We had a lot to talk about!

George R.R. Martin was available for photos after the ceremony, but only if you came in a group of 8. My friend Heidrun Downing was with me, and we glommed on to a group of six strangers to wait in line.

Once told it was our turn, I commanded, “Whitney, forward!” Sure enough, Whitney led us right to George R.R. Martin’s knee. The conversation went like this:

• Beth: George, do you like dogs?
• George: Well, um, they’re okay. I’m more of a cat person, though, really.
• Beth: Oh, well, let me get her to lie down so she won’t get in your way. “Whitney, down!”
• Whitney refuses to lie down.
• Beth: Oh, sorry. Let me try again. She’s getting old and tired of her job – she’ll be retiring in December.
• George: What happens to them when they retire? Will you keep her?
• Beth: Well, I could bring her back to the Seeing Eye and they’ll find someone to take her, I could find a friend to take her, or I could keep her, but I live in a highrise, and…
• Photographer: Okay, okay, everyone look this way — smile!

And there you have it. My moment of Zen. The event was elegant from beginning to end, and those of you old enough to appreciate author James Thurber will understand when I describe the entire evening this way: a Walter Mitty experience.

PS: National Public Radio host Scott Simon was at the event as well — he was the one who interviewed George R R Martin on stage. I would have loved to have a conversation with him about his Weekend Edition Saturday show on NPR, mention my availability for an interview, hand him a copy of Writing Out Loud, that sort of thing. But alas, after the ceremony Scott was nowhere to be found. I forgive him for not seeking Whitney and me out, though. I found out later he must have had to leave early to put together a spot he was doing with my favorite young Chicago ssports announcer. You can watch Scott Simon’s wonderful piece about Jason Benetti here, and when you’re done with that, Scott Simon’s candid interview with my new friend George is available on YouTube, too.

As promised, here’s the happy ending to Ali Krage’s post about applying for a part-time job at Northern Illinois University. Before reading this one, though, be sure to catch Part 1.

by Alicia Krage

The interview questions were precisely the ones my parents had asked when we were practicing. I had a question I wanted to ask them, but I was hesitant to ask. I was worried my question would blow everything.

When the interview was over, the interviewer said, “It’s been a pleasure meeting with you!” I felt my window of opportunity start to close. But then the interviewer opened that window right back up again with five little words: “Do you have any questions?”

“Actually, I do,” I said, plastering on a smile, hoping for the best. “I’ll be honest here. Because I take the bus, I don’t feel I know the campus well enough to give campus tours…I mean, I’ll certainly help out if you need it, I’m just asking if…if it would be a problem for me to primarily work the call center shift.”

“We need more people working the call center shift, anyway,” she said. I heard the smile in her voice, and that gave me a huge sense of relief. “That’s no problem at all. Thanks for asking!”

Six days later, I got the email congratulating me on getting the job. My fingers were flying on the screen, typing as fast as I could, texting my immediate family in a group text. “I got the job!!!!!” I wrote, hoping multiple exclamation marks would help them hear my enthusiasm.

Group training sessions were next, and a lot of the initial training involved loads of paperwork. I had someone read it all to me and help me fill it all out, and then at group training we learned a lot about each building on campus and what each building consisted of: type of classes that met there, what major, that sort of thing. One day after training, one of the employers asked me to stay back for a second so she could ask me a question. I’d normally get anxious and think something was wrong, but I wasn’t worried. I felt strongly that I really fit in here, but the question she asked confused me. “Are you free at all next week?”

Free? Free for what? Before I could ask, she went ahead and explained. “I’d like to meet with you one-on-one,” she said. ”That way we can go over the website we use for the call center.”

Oh, no. The last time I’d applied for a job at a call center, the web site was the reason I got turned down for the job. The website used for that call center made calls automatically. They didn’t need a person.

“Oh, the calls are made automatically on the computer then?” I asked, trying not to sound too panicked, although internally, I was.

“No,” she replied, calmly explaining that the website they use displays the name of the person you’re calling on the screen, and they’d like to go over it with me to make sure it works with my computer and software. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll have the entire summer to work with the Disability Resource Center to fix it.”

I can’t even put into words the feeling of relief that coursed through me at the sound of those words. We met a week later and she talked me through how to use the site, step-by-step. We didn’t need any extra help. It was accessible.

So, training lasted the rest of the semester, and I have the job now. I work in the call center, making calls to prospective students to promote campus events or follow up after a recent one.

I spent my first few weeks on the job calling students who had recently toured our campus, so it was more of a survey. What was your favorite part of the tour? What could we improve on?

For now we are calling students to invite them to our open houses, and one specific call stands out. I called a student, and their mother ended up answering the phone. What is normally a one-minute call turned into maybe 15 minutes! Somehow a call about an open house turned into her asking me about majors, if it’s possible to change your major, how easy it is to do that. This call was seriously going off-script. I hesitated a minute before answering those questions of hers. How long were we allowed to have conversations with these people? I didn’t sense anyone standing nearby, looking over my shoulder or anything, so I chanced it.”It’s pretty easy,” I said, letting her know I had changed my major.

“Oh, you did?” she replied. “What did you major in before, if I might ask?”

“I was a sociology major,” I told her. We discussed how to change majors, how simple the process was, and about my own experience attending campus events.

“Did you go to the open house?” she asked.

“I’ll be honest with you — I did not,” I said, wincing at my own response. I was promoting this event I’d never gone to. Oops. I was hoping no one heard that. I was also hoping this mom on the phone would appreciate my candor.

“I did go to the orientation for transfer students, though. There were presentations, and then we were grouped up by major and got a tour, I think. It was so long ago, I don’t remember specifics, but it was a lot of fun. I’m sure your son will really like it – I know I did.”

“You were a transfer student?” she said, excited. “Oh, where did you transfer from? My son is a transfer student, too!”

I smiled, marveling at how we’d even gotten to talking about community college instead of the upcoming open house, but not really caring about checking the clock. I wanted to keep the connection…literally. I wanted her to stay on the line. I was going really, really off script but I was helping, giving her information – and giving her hope for her son. Or something like that.

“College of DuPage,” I said.

“Oh! I’m from that area!” she answered. I laughed, then I knew I had to end this at some point. “It’s a good school,” I said. “I do need to make other calls, though, but it was really nice to talk to you. I hope I was helpful.”

“Thank you!” the mother replied. “Sorry for keeping you on so long.”

I reassured her that it was all fine. “I’d love to answer more questions, I just…kind of can’t.” I said with another laugh. “But really, it was good talking to you, and I’m glad I seemed to know more than I thought I did!” When we hung up, I felt like I had really made a difference, and that I’d really done a great job representing our school.

Some students might dread going to work after a long day of class, but I love it. It’s the highlight of my day. I love the job and I love the people I work with. I’m so grateful. I get the chance to talk to a variety of different people, represent our campus — and most of all, feel a sense of belonging.