Looking for something to do this Thursday night, October 11? Here’s a great idea from the Facebook page of Women And Children First Bookstore in Chicago:

Jean Thompson in conversation with Beth Finke

Join us as we welcome Jean Thompson for a conversation with Beth Finke about Thompson’s new novel, A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl. This event will also include a reading and book-signing.

Women & Children First
5233 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60640
773.769.9299
www.womenandchildrenfirst.com
“Shop as independently as you think”

Jean’s latest is coming soon to a book store near you.

Some background: I met author Jean Thompson 30 years ago (can it really be that long ago now?) when I was perched on a barstool next to Mike at the Esquire Lounge in Champaign, Illinois. I’d only been blind a few months, I didn’t have a Seeing Eye dog yet, and Mike and I were trying to figure out if I could get to the University of Illinois pool on my own to swim laps. Could I make it to the bus stop with my white cane? The locker room, the showers, the edge of the pool…it all seemed daunting. Until the stranger on the other barstool next to me patted my thigh. “I couldn’t help but eavesdrop,” she confessed, introducing herself to ask a question. “Are you talking about getting to the pool on campus?” I nodded.

“That’s easy!” Jean said. She was a swimmer. “I drive over to the campus pool every other day. I’ll just pick you up and take you with me.” And that’s how I met Jean Thompson. During our drives to the pool, I found out she was a writer. A real writer. She taught creative writing at the University of Illinois. Jean was a natural-born teacher, really — she knew when to set me free, let me try taking the bus and handle the pool on my own. I’ve been swimming on my own ever since.

I’ve been Jean’s friend ever since, too, and she continues to be as generous to me as she was on our first chance meeting. This Thursday serves as a great example. When Women and Children First Bookstore in Chicago contacted Jean about the book launch for A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl, they asked her to choose a Chicago author to serve as a moderator. Jean knows a lot of acclaimed Chicago authors, but she told them of one specific author friend she’d like to include in the celebration.

The friend is me, and Women and Children First is going to have copies of Writing Out Loud on hand Thursday night for me to sign for anyone interested, too.

Publishers sent me an advance copy of the audio version of A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl, and honestly and truly, I am loving it. It’s set in an unnamed Midwestern college town, and Jean’s vivid descriptions conjure up Urbana, Illinois — the town where Mike and I met, got married, raised our son Gus, and made so many lifelong friends. It’s a nostalgic pleasure to go back there with Jean, but even better is reading the magical way she weavs together the stories of so called ordinary people into thoughtful and  compelling stories. As Jean’s biggest fan, humorist David Sedaris, says, “no one is beneath her interest…or beyond her reach.”

Please come and hear us in conversation this Thursday, October 11 at 7 pm at Women and Children First Bookstore. It’s going to be fun catching up.

Writers join the memoir-writing classes I lead for all sorts of reasons. Some tell me they want to hone their writing skills, some hope it will improve their memory, others want to publish their work.

And so on.

None of the writers in my classes have told me they signed up for their first class hoping writing would make them feel better and get healthier, but a post in the Harvard Health Blog last month presents scientific data supporting the idea that writing about your life does exactly that. In his post, Dr. Jeremy Nobel points out the benefits of writing about life events and adds that sharing our writing with others can be energizing, life-enhancing, “ and even lifesaving in a world where loneliness — and the ill health it can lead to — has become an epidemic.” From his blog:

Picking up a pen can be a powerful intervention against loneliness. I am a strong believer in writing as a way for people who are feeling lonely and isolated to define, shape, and exchange their personal stories. Expressive writing, especially when shared, helps foster social connections. It can reduce the burden of loneliness among the many groups who are most at risk, including older adults, caregivers, those with major illnesses, those with disabilities, veterans, young adults, minority communities of all sorts, and immigrants and refugees.

That’s a lot of people.

We need more memoir-writing teachers! The publisher of Writing Out Loud has been working with my husband Mike Knezovich and me for nearly a year to produce an online masterclass for leading classes like mine,and I’ll be debuting our Beth Finke Masterclass on How to Lead Memoir-Writing classes at the 2018 National Village Gathering next week in San Diego.

I lead three weekly memoir writing classes for Village Chicago, and hundreds of leaders from similar nonprofit organizations throughout the country will be at the conference. We’re currently piloting the masterclass with Village Chicago (a memoir-writing class that started last month is led by a writer who was in one of my Village Chicago classes before). During next week’s presentation I may share some of the things I’ve been learning mentoring the new teacher.

Dianne Campbell, Founding Executive Director of Village Chicago, summed it all up in a story published in Classic Chicago Magazine today: “It’s exciting to know that Beth’s work in Chicago can be scaled to seed her winning memoir class model in communities across the country.” I hope so — wish me luck!

Want to be on the “first to know” list once the Beth Finke Masterclass on How to Lead Memoir-Writing classes is released? Send me a message through my website.

The SCOTUS nominee hearings play out in Washington while, here in Chicago, the murder trial of a police officer proceeds. In a literal sense, they have nothing to do with each other. To me, though, their juxtaposition speaks volumes about what’s wrong with us.

Caution: Not for the faint of heart.

In D.C, a man is about to be given a lifetime appointment to one of the most important and powerful government positions in the world. Caution would seem to be in order. He is not on trial; therefore innocent until proven guilty does not apply. Because there are so many other qualified candidates (say, Merrick Garland) about whom there would be no reasonable doubt in terms of disposition or character (see Gorsuch hearings), I would not consider moving onto one of them in light of sexual abuse allegations any great injustice. The current nominee would continue with his cushy life. He would get over the disappointment.

Here in Chicago, a police officer faces years—maybe the rest of his life—in prison for shooting a teenager named Laquan McDonald 16 times. McDonald, needless to say, did not survive. All the usual subtext is there. There is video of the horrible event. By my judgment, there is no justification for one bullet, let alone 16. But Laquan, you see, was not one of us. He was in court countless times, he could be aggressive, he was a hot mess. That’s because he was also abused, moved around in foster care situations, attended schools that the city of Chicago neglected—in neighborhoods it also neglected.

He did not enjoy the advantages that the SCOTUS nominee enjoyed. On the spectrum, my upbringing was somewhere between McDonald’s and SCOTUS nominee, lying closer to the nominee’s, but pretty far from both extremes. I committed crimes as a teenager—they were not violent, they didn’t involve sexual abuse. Nonetheless, but for luck, I could’ve faced charges. And who knows what spiral would’ve ensued.

But I would’ve had a good chance to avoid the spiral. I knew who to call. And I knew I could count on the wrath and, in the end, ironclad support from people I know cared for me.

McDonald didn’t have what the nominee and I had. And part of the police officer’s defense is, on the surface, to suggest that of course a troubled guy like McDonald really was a threat to the officer (even though the officer had no knowledge of the kid’s past when he shot).  Watch the video. A bunch of other cops somehow didn’t see the same threat. Eric Zorn of the Tribune wrote what I consider to be the truth: Some people think the officer should get off just because he got rid of a kid we’d all already written off. From the piece, he articulates what he suspects is in the minds of some:

“that he may not have been a danger to police or bystanders that night but someday he was going to be, so what’s the harm in a little pre-emptive vigilantism.”

Having advantages—like I had and the nominee had to an even greater extent—creates a kind of upward momentum. If you have the advantages, you are apt to be presumed innocent, or granted forgiveness, and advanced to the next level because, well, that’s where you belong. If you don’t have those advantages, the reverse is true, and you’re driven into the ground. It’s a kind of human inertia.

The gap between advantaged and burdened is enormous and getting worse. I’m sort of a survival of the fittest liberal, if there can be such a thing. I don’t resent other people’s success–it’s just that more and more, I feel like that success buys privileges that have not been earned. I want every kid to be thrust into the fray with a set of advantages and challenges that are at least on the same planet as other kids. That’s the only way we’re going to get the best people in important positions. Right now, that’s not happening. And we’re nowhere near the meritocracy we imagine we have.

If you need evidence, just watch the hearings. The Senate is a Confederacy of Dunces. The whiny nominee says his life is ruined. Waaaah. Getting shot 16 times by someone who is sworn to serve and protect you—that’s a life ruined.

Nancy and I celebrated the interview at our local, Half Sour. (Photo: Joe Jenkins.)

At this time one week ago I was in a StoryCorps booth in Chicago interviewing renowned retired White Sox baseball organist Nancy Faust. A producer at StoryCorps Headquarters in New York City had been hounding Nancy for months,  urging her to get in a StoryCorps booth to record her story.

StoryCorps is a non-profit that was set up to “record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives,” and Nancy had no idea why a radio producer in New York City would take such interest in a Chicago baseball organist. “My life story is not that interesting,” she told me. “What would I say?” The NYC producers kept hounding her, though, and she finally told them she’d to it “as long as my friend Beth Finke can be the one doing the interview.”

How about that?

Aside from their studio in New York City, StoryCorps only has two satellite sites: one in Atlanta and the other in Chicago. We asked sound producers at the Chicago site if they knew why StoryCorps Headquarters in NYC had taken such a big interest in Nancy. They didn’t know. But when that happens, they said it means the piece is very likely to be produced into something that will air nationwide on NPR.

How about that?

I’ve done a couple StoryCorps interviews with writers from my memoir classes before, but this one was different. The NYC producer called me ahead of time to check me out, and to let me know they’d be emailing me specific questions to ask Nancy during the interview.

I had to explain I wouldn’t be able to read a list of questions while we were recording, and she was reassuring. “Do your best to memorize them ahead of time,” she said. And if you forget some, that’s okay, too.” Know what? Last week in that recording booth, Nancy Faust and I hit it outta the park! You’re all going to have to wait until the interview airs to hear our answers. Trust me, I’ll let you know if/when it really does get scheduled on NPR, but to whet your appetite, hear are the questions they requested:

Beth to ask Nancy:

How did you feel about baseball (or sports in general) when you were growing up?

Can you tell me the story about how you learned to play the organ?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Tell me about how you ended up getting the organist job with the White Sox?

What was your first day playing for the White Sox like?

How did you come up with songs for players?

Do you have any song choices you’re especially proud of? Are there any song choices that you regret?

Tell me about the first time you used “Na Na, Hey Hey Goodbye.”

Tell me about the most memorable game you ever played at.

What were the White Sox fans like?

Are there any fans who’ve made an impact on you? People you still keep in touch with?

Can you talk about the most difficult part of doing this job?

Why did you decide to retire?

What do you miss most about the job?

What was your last day at the White Sox like?

What lessons has your time at the White Sox taught you?

How would you like to be remembered?

Nancy to ask Beth:

How did we meet?

How would you describe me?

How did you feel about baseball (or sports in general) when you were growing up?

Did you ever come to a White Sox game and see me play?

Were there any song choices of mine that you liked? Ones that you didn’t like?

If you could pick songs for me to play at a game, what would you choose?
What does baseball mean to you now?

Is there something about me that you’ve always wanted to know but have never asked?

You may have heard earlier this month that the Texas School Board recommended the removal of Helen Keller from its required Grade 3 social studies curriculum. The story of Helen Keller’s childhood is well-known. She lost both her hearing and her sight after a childhood illness, and after the breakthrough moment when teacher Anne Sullivan communicated “water,” young Helen Keller learned to read, write and even speak.

I had the honor of speaking at the Perkins School for the Blind early this year. Helen Keller attended Perkins–the courtyard garden is named in her and Annie Sullivan’s honor.

What many people don’t know is that Helen Keller became a radical activist when she grew up. She joined the Socialist Party in 1909, when she was 29, and then the Industrial Workers of the World. She supported Communist Russia and hung a red flag over her desk. The FBI opened a file on her. She advocated for women’s suffrage and for access to birth control. She helped found the American Civil Liberties Union.

Through all that Helen Keller remained the darling of newspaper reporters and columnists, the amazing blind and deaf girl who talks with her hands. When she came out in support of Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in his campaign for the presidency, though, that was the last straw. Newspaper columnists who had earlier praised her courage and intelligence started calling attention to her disabilities.

One newspaper claimed “the poor little blind girl” was being exploited by the socialist party for publicity’s sake, and the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that Helen Keller’s “mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development.”

No matter where you stand politically, I’m sure you can appreciate what a blow this must have been to Helen Keller. She had waited to formulate her opinion until after procuring and reading books about socialism in German Braille, and then asking a friend to come three times a week to spell articles from The National Socialist into her hand. From an Essay by Helen Keller:

She gives the titles of the articles and I tell her when to read on and when to omit. I have also had her read to me from the International Socialist Review articles the titles of which sounded promising. Manual spelling takes time. It is no easy and rapid thing to absorb through one’s fingers a book of 50,000 words on economics. But it is a pleasure, and one which I shall enjoy repeatedly until I have made myself acquainted with all the classic socialist authors.

Helen Keller responded to that Boston Eagle article and referred to a time she’d met the editor years earlier:

At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him…

Helen Keller was a saint until she ruffled feathers, and then they said she was limited intellectually. Instead of addressing her arguments, her critics took pains to discredit her, herself. Sound familiar?

The personal attacks and general nastiness in our public discourse and politics is nothing new. Lots of folks who eventually came to be revered by the broader society — Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, even Muhammad Ali — were reviled as marginal troublemakers and suffered hateful treatment in their own time. I suppose they’re not on the Texas Board’s list of required third grade curriculum, either. If so, Helen Keller is in good company.

Note: the September 14 vote was preliminary, and the Texas Board can amend the curriculum changes further before taking a final vote in November.