Whitney got a lotta love from the Goudy kids yesterday.

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I spent yesterday afternoon answering questions from third-graders who attend Goudy Elementary, a Public school in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The third graders are part of a Friday “reading buddies” program at Admiral At the Lake, a retirement community where I lead weekly memoir-writing classes.

Goudy is so close to The Admiral that the third grade teacher and her students can walk there. On most Fridays each third-grader brings a favorite book to read out loud to an assigned Admiral resident (their “reading buddy”). Yesterday was different, though. The third-graders had all read my children’s book Safe & Sound before they’d arrived, so rather than reading a book to their buddies, the third-graders gathered around in a circle with a children’s book author (that was me!) so each of them could ask a question.

Every single child told me their name before asking their question, and since their older reading buddies were seated way in the back of the room, I made a point to repeat each question the kids asked.  That way their buddies could hear the question, too. Some examples:

• If you’re blind, you touch things, so can you always feel what your dog is doing?
• Does your dog ever get distracted by squirrels?
• When a Seeing Eye dog has a birthday, do they get the day off so they can just play that day?
• Does your dog ever get distracted and get you into trouble?
• Does your dog ever play with something that doesn’t belong to him?
• How many miles can your dog be away and still hear you?
• If a mom was blind, and her little girl was blind, too, could they have two Seeing Eye dogs?
• Does a Seeing Eye dog ever get to play all day?
• Do other animals help blind people, too, or just dogs?
• How come seeing Eye Dogs are so important for blind people?

Three of the older reading buddies there yesterday also take my memoir-writing class that’s sponsored by The Admiral — those writers were my “in” to yesterday’s presentation, they invited Whitney and me to join in on the fun. Those “reading buddies” tell me spending Fridays with third-grade kids who are full of life and vitality keeps them more active. It gives them something to look forward to every week. And the third graders? They get to leave school Friday afternoons to go outside! Their walk to The Admiral is invigorating, especially in the freezing temperatures we’ve been experiencing in Chicago lately. Once they arrive? The kids get to read to — and learn from — people with loads of life experience, people who are delighted to spend one-on-one time with them.

This is such a cool thing, I wonder why similar programs aren’t going on in other retirement communities. Sure glad it happens here, though — means Whitney and I got to come!

This is a pretty significant Monday here in Chicago.

First, the week began with my fair city winning a dubious honor: A study done at the University of Illinois-Chicago found the Chicago metro area to be the most corrupt in the nation. (Again.) That state of Illinois has some catching up to do: The UIC report ranked it only the third most corrupt in the country.

I’m with Lightfoot. Check out her campaign site for more info.

For you non-Chicagoans, here’s how insane it can be: Key aldermen like Ed Burke and state legislators like Michael Madigan have law firms. A fellow Democratic Party hack has (until very recently) always managed to win the Cook County Assessor’s election. So, once in office, the assessor routinely over assesses large properties owned by those with deep pockets. Those owners then go…where? Wait for it…to the Burkes and Madigans to pay a pretty penny in legal fees to get their assessment adjusted fairly. That’s all legal here in the Land of Lincoln. And that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s see, what else happened today? Oh, a beam supporting a Lake Shore Drive bridge cracked so badly the northbound lanes in a very busy part of the Drive had to be closed. Perhaps there’s a relationship between item #1 and item #2? You betcha. Around here we call it the corruption tax. It’s not just what we pay—it’s how little we get for it because so many people are on the take.

And third, early voting opened across the city. In all 50 wards, Chicagoans can vote for Mayor and aldermen starting today (check out locations and hours). Election day is February 26.

The good news on the corruption front is that the aforementioned Alderman Ed Burke has been indicted by the Feds. Plus, there have been extensive wiretaps (meaning there’s probably more shoes that will drop). Another alderman (Danny Solis), who’s in his own hot water, reportedly wore a wire for a while. And it’s been reported that somewhere on various tapes, House Speaker Mike Madigan—a kingpin in the whole operation—can be heard.

So, cog-by-cog, the machine is falling apart.

The bad news is, Chicago voters have a habit of self-flagellation when it comes to mayoral races. “What’s his name? Daley? Ah, yes. I’ll vote for him.”

And it doesn’t help that the simple act of holding a municipal-only election in February is, in effect, statutory voter suppression. It’s the way the insiders have always wanted it. (Changing the election date is one of four common sense, practical changes recommended in this Tribune guest op-ed—it’s a good read.)

As for my vote? The better known candidates for mayor so far are all very connected in one-way or another to Burke or other smelliness. I’ve also nixed anyone who announced after incumbent Rahm Emanuel announced he would not run. They’re not exactly courageous, crusading reformers.

Among the rest, I’m wholeheartedly voting for Lori Lightfoot. She hasn’t held elected office (is that good or bad?), but she has been meaningfully engaged with police reform and has served in municipal posts. She’s a former Federal prosecutor. She’s currently a successful attorney and a partner at a heavyweight law firm. She has no ties to any of the usual suspects, past or present.

There are other reasons, and this Chicago Sun-Times endorsement covers them nicely.

Subjectively, I just trust her. I judge her to have integrity (she represented Republicans in a gerrymandering case, and won). She seems like she knows how things work. She’s forward thinking but not flaky or naïve.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. My fellow Chicagoans, I hope you’ll support Lightfoot, but if you don’t, I urge you to vote and skip the usual suspects.

Otherwise we’ll all be getting what we deserve.

Note: For non-Chicagoans, the mayoral race is an open election. There are oodles of candidates this year, and this being Chicago, most are Democrats. If no one receives 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote getters will compete in a run-off. 

Amidst the polar vortex news and all the Super Bowl hype, a noteworthy birthday was only barely noted: Jackie Robinson would have been 100 years old last Thursday, January 31, 2019.

The great Jackie Robinson.

With the Super Bowl and football behind us, baseball is just around the corner. And Major League Baseball will be honoring Robinson’s 100th birthday.

He earned it.

I wish I’d been able to see him play. Robinson’s birthday and the imminent opening of baseball spring training made me think of a column by someone who did get to see Robinson play: Mike Royko.

I came to read Royko’s columns regularly once I’d acquired my appetite for news and newspapers in my teens. I still have not read any columnist that I like better—political, humor, sports, local, or national. Royko had an austere style, a little rugged like Chicago, but also elegant in its own way, and economical. He had finely tuned detectors for hypocrisy and dishonesty, and I really can’t do him justice.

Here’s a taste of Royko’s account from his boyhood when he and a pal walked five miles to Wrigley Field to see Robinson play:

Robinson came up in the first inning. I remember the sound. It wasn’t the shrill, teenage cry you now hear, or an excited gut roar. They applauded, long, rolling applause. A tall, middle-aged black man stood next to me, a smile of almost painful joy on his face, beating his palms together so hard they must have hurt.

When Robinson stepped into the batter’s box, it was as if someone had flicked a switch. The place went silent.

You can read the entire column at the University of Chicago Press web site. In fact, you can read three columns, excerpted from a collection called “One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko,” published by the UC Press.

Note: The Robinson piece is the second of three, you’ll have to scroll down a bit to reach it, it’s called “Jackie’s Debut a Unique Day.” Royko wrote it on the occasion of Robinson’s death.

I hope you’ll give it a read.

This post I wrote was published at the Easterseals National blog earlier this week (I work part-time moderating that blog). It occurred to me later that some of you Safe & Sound blog followers might find it worth a read, too, so here it is.

When sidewalks are covered in snow and ice, walking to work — or to school, or just to exercise — can be difficult. Or impossible.

Chicago is one of many American cities where the number of people walking or using public transportation to get to work outnumber the people who drive. Every winter here I find myself questioning why it is that when snow plows clear passage for cars, the snow mounds they leave at bus stops — on curb cuts and crosswalks — go unshoveled. What about the pedestrians? We appreciate you plowing the streets, but how are we supposed to get over those mounds of snow at the curb to cross to the other side? What better place to find information on all this than on a Minnesota web site. A site called Minnesota Walks points out that approximately one-third of the U.S. population does not drive, including:

• Children
• People with certain disabilities
• People age 65 or better
• Those who cannot afford a personal vehicle
• A growing number of people who simply choose not to drive.

Sidewalks and crosswalks are necessary for those of us who don’t drive to access destinations or public transit, and the Minnesota Walks site also points out that the “Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II Regulation §35.133 requires maintaining ADA-compliant access to walkways year-round, which includes snow and ice clearing.”

For guide dogs, everything can look like a tunnel sometimes.

Those of you stuck at home in the aftermath of a snowstorm may want to use your time inside to communicate and educate transportation professionals and community leaders about snow removal and accessibility. Easter Seals’ Project Action has developed a guide related to transportation and snow removal. The 24-page booklet highlights innovative policies and strategies used by U.S. and Canadian communities to improve accessible pathways and transit stops during winter weather.

Happy reading, and hang in there — it’s gotta melt sometime.

That’s what the web looked like in 1993. Click on the image for a great story in Wired about the excitement Mosaic created.

I just watched a couple episodes of a Nat Geo mini-series that looks back at those heady days of the dot.com boom. Overall I liked The Valley of the Boom more than I thought I would—generally, I think people who’ve had a front row seat for an event that is covered in the news or on the screen find fault in these things.

I certainly did, but more on the fault thing later. What the show captured well was the sense that at the time, it seemed like now all things were possible, all old assumptions and rules were out the window, that the sky was the limit—it bordered on a sort of rapture.  Every staff member at every company woke up every day either thinking they would conquer the world, or go out of business by month’s end, and some days both.

Last year about this time I posted about the 25^thanniversary of the Mosaic web browser. Mosaic was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The Mosaic browser made the World Wide Web—previously the realm of researchers, government agencies, and large government contractors—available to the rest of us. And the rest is history, as they say.

Charlatans were everywhere, and it was hard to pick them out from the crowd because even the good guys could seem delirious and sort of evangelical sometimes.

One of those good guys was my boss, Doug Colbeth—who’s still a friend, I’m proud to say. Doug turned Spyglass, a scientific software company fighting for survival in Champaign, Illinois, into an unlikely dot.com in the middle of DuPage County that went public in 1995 against all odds.

We really didn’t stand a chance against Netscape and other behemoths located in Silicon Valley, with their access to armies of experienced staff and oodles of capital. But somehow….

Doug knew early that the so-called “browser wars” were a blip. That the browser was a commodity, a valuable one, but in the same way that a screwdriver is valuable. And, that there was not a sustainable business to be built on browsers.

He was right. Spyglass licensed and commercialized Mosaic, then licensed its browser code to Microsoft, and that code turned into Internet Explorer. Which ended up absolutely destroying Netscape Navigator, and, eventually, Netscape. Meanwhile, Spyglass pursued what was to some a hare-brained strategy: That web technology and mini browsers would eventually be built into devices ranging from gas pumps to TVs to refrigerators refrigerators. Spyglass built a highly profitable business and was eventually sold to a TV technology company.

Anyway, I confess to some certain satisfaction during the scene in “Boom” in which the Netscape CEO announces the sale of Netscape to AOL. In essence, it was the end of Netscape. And I took some pride in the knowledge that our little company, a mouse that roared, won that browser war.

As for the show, it does what the mainstream press did in real time: For the sake of story, they focus on the high-profile rock stars. Marc Andreessen, the maladjusted tech wunderkind. Jim Clark, a Silicon Valley icon. And Jim Barksdale, the celebrity CEO.

We love boy-hero stories but advancements are always a collective thing, more nuanced, and more inspiring than the wunderkind stuff, if you ask me. It’s story of steady progress built on brilliance and work and stacked on the shoulders of forbears. This web thing goes back to the likes of  Tim Berners-Lee at CERN

and Vint Cerf. And they built on the work of their predecessors and colleagues.

In any case, “Boom” is a worthwhile watch, well acted, and nicely peppered with interviews with the real players looking back on that insane era. And it was nuts!

Glad I had a front row seat.