After President George Herbert Walker Bush died Friday, the news has been full of stories about his service during World War II, his responsibilities for the Persian Gulf War, his inabilities to rally the economy during his four years in office, and his 1992 loss to Bill Clinton. One big story missing in all that? George Herbert Walker Bush was the president who signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law.

Since the late 1960s, Republicans have not been known for supporting major civil rights legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act, and although I didn’t see eye to eye, ahem, with our 41st president on other issues, I have always been grateful for his support of the ADA. And for the ability to achieve its passage in a bipartisan way.

The ADA requires “reasonable accommodation” for individuals with disabilities in employment and at places of public accommodation such as retail stores, office buildings, sidewalks and movie theaters. I started losing my eyesight in 1984, six years before the Americans with Disabilities Act became law. At first I didn’t use a white cane or a guide dog. I quit driving or riding my bike, but I could still see well enough to walk to work. Most of my day was spent counseling college students on study abroad options; I could have done that with my eyes closed.

As my eyesight got worse, though, I started making mistakes in the office. One morning I spilled grounds all over the office floor on my way to make coffee. I ran into tabletops. I had to sit close to the office computer screen to see the words. At one point my boss took me aside and told me I wouldn’t be going to the annual convention with my colleagues. “You’ll embarrass the office,” she said.

Months later, she terminated my contract.

I am totally blind now, and I use speech software to write for publications and moderate our blog. I’ve had three books published, and my Seeing Eye dog leads me to buses and cabs to get all around Chicago to teach five different weekly memoir-writing classes for people 55 and better.

We still have a long, long way to go before hiring practices are totally fair to those of us with disabilities. But since the passage of the ADA, things are moving in the right direction. Thanks to the wisdom and determination of all the many, many people who banded together to get the ADA passed 28 years ago, we have the law on our side.

Mike and I are heading out with friends tonight, and we’ll raise a glass to the hard work so many disability advocates put into getting this bill passed, and to the late President George H.W. Bush for signing it into law in 1990. The Americans with Disabilities Act has changed a lot of lives — for the better.

Just got back last night from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois — Mike drove Whitney and me down there so I could give a presentation to a lecture hall of 400+undergraduates enrolled in an Animal Sciences class at the University of Illinois.

Inspired by the Pick of the Litter documentary Mike posted about on Monday, I spent a fair amount of my talk going over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor.

Warning: Rated XXX for puppy porn.

I mean, Pick of the Litter does a tremendous job explaining how schools decide which puppies pass the audition to go on to train as guide dogs, but what about the audition to become a guide dog trainer?

Most guide dog schools require instructors to have a college degree and then do an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships can last as long as four years – there’s a lot of learning involved when it comes to training dogs, training people who can’t see, and then making a perfect match between the human and canine.

Once apprentices finish their training and become full-time Seeing Eye Instructors, they’re assigned a string (a group) of dogs and given four months to train that string. Throughout the training, instructors pay close attention to each dog’s pace and pull, and they make careful notes about how each dog deals with distractions, what their energy level is, and all sorts of other characteristics. And then? We blind students fly in from all over North America to be matched — and trained — with a new dog.

Seeing Eye instructors have to be as good at evaluating people as they are evaluating dogs. Our instructors review our applications before we arrive on the campus in Morristown and then ask us tons more questions when we get there. Instructors take us on “Juno” walks (they hold the front of the harness to guide us through all sorts of scenarios to get an idea of how fast we like to walk and how strong of a pull we’ll want from our dog). After that, instructors combine all of this information with what they know about their string of dogs, talk it over with fellow instructors and the team supervisor, mix in a little bit of gut instinct, and voila! A match is formed.

Each Seeing Eye instructor trains more dogs than they’ll need for a class. If a dog has a pace, pull, or energy level that doesn’t match with a blind person in the current class, that dog remains on campus with daily walks and care, and perhaps more training, until the next class arrives.

In my talk yesterday, I described each of the four dogs I‘ve been matched with over the past 27 years. My first dog, Dora, was one of those Seeing Eye dogs who went through a second round of training before she was matched with me. Back in 1991, the Seeing Eye knew that the dog they matched me with would be landing in the home of a very unique five-year-old boy named Gus, and that the dog would be in the hands of a woman who had never had a dog before. They must have figured Pandora would need all the extra training she could get!

After Dora came Hanni, the star of my children’s book Safe & Sound, and then Harper, my hero.

And now? Whitney. This Golden/Labrador Retriever cross Whitney is a hard worker who loves to play as much as she loves to work. Her curiosity gets the better of her at times, but she’s just smart enough to try bending the rules without getting in trouble. Sound like a human being you know?!

“Seeing Eye instructors must have known Whitney and I would make a good match,” I said with a shrug to the college kids yesterday. “We see eye to eye.”

It’s been years since Beth and I attended a movie at like, you know, a movie theater. Part of that is we filter for kinds of movies that Beth likely can enjoy—dialog-heavy, play-like movies. They’re kind of few and far between, and then when we note one that would be a good bet, we’re late to the draw and find it’s already left the local theaters and maybe we see it streaming, maybe not.

Over the past few months there have been more releases of stuff we’d consider than usual. “Can you ever forgive me?”, “The Frontrunner,” “Wildlife,” and “Green Book” all come to mind.

A scene from Green Book. Click to visit trailer.

Well, on Thanksgiving last week, we headed to our local theater to see a matinee, “Green Book.” I’ll never be accustomed to escalators, electronic ticket kiosks, reserved seating and the absolutely awful popcorn that seems to be standard in today’s multiplexes. Or the reclining seats we scored in the disabled seating section (Whitney came along for the walk). Beth, on the other hand, was horizontal snuggled with her coat as a blanket within minutes.

After endless previews and a Dolby sound demonstration loud enough to damage one’s hearing, the movie finally started.

We both liked it a lot. If you’re a Viggo Mortensen fan (I am), it’s almost worth it just for his performance. If you’re a Mahershala Ali fan (I am now), it’s almost worth it just for his performance. Without question, their combined performance plus that of Linda Cardellini is worth the price of admission.

Because of the backdrop—the Jim Crow South, a North that had and has its own institutionalized problems—the movie is fraught. Some reviews say it sugar coated things and lets racists and institutionalized racism off the hook. I didn’t think so.

I’ve read up on the protagonists—the movie is based on a true story—which is a pretty damn good story without any dramatic help. But movies are movies, and I could tell where liberties were taken to state or, in some cases, overstate a point. There was some predictable schmaltz But I, for one, felt tension—authentic tension—from the start that carried through the movie. The kind where you’re dreading something really bad is about to happen even when something good is happening. That’s good filmmaking.

Everyone’s entitled to their opinions. Mine is that this movie wasn’t made to address institutionalized racism. It was made to tell a story, which it did like only a well-made movie can. And thanks to the movie, a whole lot more people are likely to learn more about the story.

Then, last night, we watched another movie called “Pick of the Litter,” thanks to the generosity of our friend Nancy, who streamed it. I don’t think there will be a whole lot of controversy about this one. (Although, you never know.)

Warning: Rated XXX for puppy porn.

Anyway, “Pick of the Litter” chronicles the birth of a litter of prospective guide dogs, their training and socialization by puppy raisers, they’re guide dog training with an instructor, and being paired with a visually impaired partner.

It was filmed at Guide Dogs for the Blind in California. GDB is on the other side of the United States from The Seeing Eye in New Jersey, where Beth has trained with four dogs. But they operate very similarly. For example, every puppy in a litter gets a name with the same first letter. Poppin, Primrose, Patriot, etc.

A lot of what Beth does in daily life—and I, too, to a lesser extent—is explain how the guide dog process works, and how it doesn’t work, often correcting completely understandable misconceptions.

This movie addresses virtually every question and misconception people have ever brought up. And it just nails the process: the incredible amount of training that has to accompany just the right canine demeanor to make a successful guide. The bottomless generosity of puppy raisers who adopt pups in training, put an enormous effort into socializing and training their charges, and then, give them back to the school after a year.

The incredible thing: If a raiser’s dog flunks out at any point, he or she is typically given first dibs on adopting what becomes known as a “career change” dog. But to a person—and we experienced this when we met dozens of puppy raisers at The Seeing Eye—they deeply want their dog to clear all the hurdles and help someone, someone like Beth, for example.

It’s very well done, painstakingly accurate, occasionally heartbreaking, but—if you need reminded (as I do, oh, every day) how good people can be, I give it four paws up.

Whitney got a lotta love from the Goudy kids.

A week ago at this time, Whitney and I were 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 near The Admiral. The third grade teacher and her students walk over, and on most Fridays each third-grader reads out loud to an assigned Admiral resident, their “reading buddy.”

Last Friday, things were different. The third-graders had all read my children’s book Safe & Sound before they’d arrived, and each one wrote a question on a card that they could ask me when it was their turn. Every single child told me their name, then introduced their question a la, “Hello, my name is Sunil, and here’s my question…”. Their older reading buddies were sitting further away, so I made a point to repeat each question. That way they could hear it, too. Some examples:

1. What’s your dog’s favorite toy to play with?
2. What’s it feel like, being blind?
3. How does your dog know where he’s going?
4. Can your dog talk?
5. How old is your dog?
6. Do you like cats?
7. What’s your dog’s favorite game?
8. How old are you?
9. How do you know what you’re wearing?
10. How do you cook?

The afternoon was delightful, and so were the children. Four of the older reading buddies take my memoir-writing classes, and one of them was the mastermind who came up with the idea for Whitney and me to come Friday (thank you, Kate). Another sent me an email afterwards crediting the teacher for having the kids write their questions out ahead of time. “All of them were able to take their turn and speak directly to you,” she said. “The interaction wasn’t just with the most vocal in the group, everyone had a chance to participate.”

The kids really were very, very well-behaved. As a reward, I took Whitney’s harness off and invited them to pet her on their way out the door for their walk back to Goudy. . from Whitney’s happy response, you’d think she was still a puppy! As the knowledgeable third-graders can tell you, Whitney is almost as old as they are. I’ll say goodbye here and leave you with the final words from that email review one of their reading buddies sent me:

But for me the most poignant question was the one about how old Whitney is. It is hard to absorb the fact that she is almost 9 years old and approaching a time she may need to retire. I have now known you and Whitney for seven years and I confess that I still think of her, not as a puppy, but certainly as a young and vibrant dog, and it is a shock to think of her as a senior citizen!

Dear Whitney,

Remember when Mike read that New York Times story out loud to the two of us earlier this month? Yes. That one. The article about Seeing Eye dogs, and how a trip to New York City is part of the training we do:

The school’s training is done in a suburban setting far calmer than Midtown Manhattan, an hour’s drive away. But for its ultimate challenge, and to assess a dog’s focus, trainers take the student-dog pairs into Manhattan as something of a proving ground.

The New York Times story follows two women and their new dogs on that very route you and I took together seven years ago this month, maybe you still remember it? The van ride to the Port Authority, squeezing into a packed elevator, threading through subway turnstiles, avoiding oncoming commuters while climbing a staircase, straining to hear announcements over the noise of passing trains…. Friends who sent me the link to the New York Times story when it was published all asked similar questions. “You did that with Whitney? Weren’t you scared?” Not at that point of the trip. My fear wouldn’t kick in until we got off the subway and headed up to street level.

What you couldn’t know, dear Whitney, was that I’d taken that exact same route with another dog a year earlier, in 2010. That month at the Seeing Eye in 2010 had provided me with the promise of another long partnership with the new dog, a male Yellow Lab named Harper.

But a few months after Harper came home with me to Chicago, a vehicle turned right on red just as my Seeing Eye dog was leading me across an intersection. Harper did exactly what he’d been taught to do. He saved both our lives by pulling us away from the oncoming car–so hard that, when inspecting Harper’s harness afterwards, Mike noticed the metal harness was bent. Harper was a hero, but the trauma left him incapable of continuing his work as a Seeing Eye dog.

That near miss had left me more fearful of traffic than I’d been before, and now, here I was, back in Manhattan, this time with you, another new dog. And our first challenge after getting out of the subway station? Crossing a busy street. Well, not just one busy street. Columbus Circle. A traffic rotary. An entire circle of street crossings.

With sirens, jackhammers and horns blasting around us. Would you hear my commands? Could you keep us safe? Would you get us across, and across, and across?

You stopped at the curb, just as you were trained to do. I listened the best I could to judge the traffic, just as I was trained to do. When I determined the cars had stopped for the light in front of us, I commanded, “Whitney, forward!” You led me across that street safely, and then again at the next one in the circle, and then the next, too. And thousands of busy Chicago streets in our seven years together since then. As that article Mike read to us pointed out, “The dogs receive four months of training at the Seeing Eye, learning to guide around obstacles and obey commands, as well as street-crossing skills, including how to watch for traffic and keep their handlers safe from vehicles that might be turning or running lights.” More from that article:

While not exactly a test, Manhattan’s conditions present the dogs with intense conditions that can help reveal training aspects to work on.

“It’s a training experience that offers more than anywhere else we can take them,” said Dave Johnson, director of instruction and training at the Seeing Eye. “Almost anything can happen in one day in New York — it’s a culmination of sensory overload, even for humans.”

When Mike read this article to us a few weeks ago, I knew I’d be mentioning it in a blog post at some point. Thanksgiving seems an ideal time to do so. I am so thankful to you, Whitney, for working so hard to keep us safe. I am so grateful for the work The Seeing Eye does to make dogs available to those of us who are blind, I appreciate the New York Times for devoting the time and space to such a well-written and well-researched article about how it all works, and I’m thankful to Mike for reading it for us, and doing so, so much more by caring and looking out for us, too. I am one lucky woman, having you and Mike on my side. Happy Thanksgiving!

-Beth