A few years ago I wrote a newspaper story about two Chicago women who’d won a trip to the Academy Awards. They bought new outfits at a studio on N. Elston that names dresses after old movie stars.

One of the women would be wearing the Grace. Glancing down at her own figure, she laughed and said, “Maybe when I wear it, it’s a Liz!

That quote was taken out. “Readers who recognize your byline know you’re blind,” the editor told me. “A blind person couldn’t have known that woman was glancing down.”

I had been standing right next to the woman when she said it. I’d heard her voice go down, then up. I’d felt her movement. I knew she’d glanced at herself.

That's Trina Sotira, who led the session with me.

The editor stood her ground. The accuracy of the story might be questioned. The quote had to go.

I used this anecdote, along with many others, during a presentation Tuesday night called Writing the Unseen. The session was the brainchild of young adult novelist Trina Sotira. Trina is working on her PhD in literature, and it was oh so good to have her up there presenting with me — her writing exercises gave the session some cred. Here from an email sent by a participant:

A great big thank you to Beth Finke and Trina Sotira for their great workshop on writing with the senses! It was amazing to learn from Beth the various struggles she encounters being a blind writer and yet tap into her writing in new ways by using senses other than sight.

I’ve been using my other senses for so long that I guess I forget how “amazing” my stories sound sometimes. Another example I shared Tuesday night was a profile I wrote about the highest ranking female brigadier general. I was relieved to hear a photo would appear with the story. No need to describe in words what the general looks like.

Wrong. The story needed visuals, the editor told me. Its part of good journalism.

I could have just asked the editor what the photo looked like and written that into the story. But that didn’t seem, well, like good journalism. So I picked up the phone and called the general. Her secretary answered. I told her my predicament and asked if she could tell me what her boss looked like.

She thought about this a long while. Finally she said, “All of us around her, even though we know she’s only five foot one, think she’s seven feet.”

It was a great quote. I used it in the story. My editor was happy. She gave me another assignment: Interview Miss America. But then she withdrew her offer, asking how a blind woman could write about a beauty queen.

This made me all the more determined. I showed up for the interview with my Seeing Eye dog and asked Miss America the all-important question. “What do you look like? If this question had come from any other reporter, it might have thrown her off. But Miss America had poise. Plus, she’d looked in the mirror once or twice in her lifetime.

Erika Harold is bi-racial, and pretty comfortable describing herself. “I have caramel-colored skin, long brown hair, and very expressive brown eyes,” she told me. “I think it’s very hard for people to tell exactly what I am.”

That quote went right in the story. I may not be able to see, but I’m still able to ask questions. Sometimes having a disability can make a person pretty resourceful. Asking colleagues to describe the person I’m interviewing — or asking the person to describe themselves to me — makes for good quotes. Which, in turn, can make for good journalism.

Some friends invited us to a Stanley Cup party last Sunday. We always have fun with Dana and Art, but I was reluctant to go.

That's Dennis on the left. He was there the whole game except for the times he stood, inches from the screen, yelling at Chris Pronger. Thanks to Dennis, even I could enjoy the game. (Thanks to Bryn Benson for the photo.)

Without being able to see, hockey can be a tough sport to follow. What would poor, poor Beth do at the party while everyone’s eyes were glued to the 60-inch TV screen? I do love a party, so decided I’d figure it out. Maybe rather than try to follow the progress of the game, I should choose one player, follow his progress instead. Which Blackhawk to follow? That, my dear, was a no brainer. Who else but Nick Boynton.

What?! You’ve never heard of Nick Boynton? Well, he was a plus-two on Sunday night, and Philadelphia’s star Chris Pronger was an unheard-of minus five. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Three months ago, when the Blackhawks called Boynton up, he was playing with the Rockford Ice Hawks. The NHL web site says that before Boynton joined the Blackhawks, he had “five assists and 22 penalty minutes in 15 AHL tilts with Rockford and the Manitoba Moose.” Not sure what all that AHL tilt gobbledygook means. The most important fact there is this: my man Boynton played for the Manitoba Moose. How. Cool. Is. That?

And if playing for the Manitoba Moose isn’t enough to make you love Nick Boynton, there’s this, from the Chicago Tribune:

One day when Boynton, a 19-year-old first-round draft pick of the Bruins, was working at his family’s farm in Canada, he couldn’t get out of bed.

A misdiagnosis and 35 pounds of weight loss later, doctors in Boston correctly identified that Boynton’s pancreas basically had stopped producing insulin.

You read that right. Nick Boynton has Type 1 diabetes. Just like me. The Tribune story said that after finally diagnosing him correctly, doctors told Boynton to sit out a year. The mighty moose refused. He wanted to play hockey.

One of the other guests at Dana and Art’s party Sunday was a Canadian-born hockey fan named Dennis. Dennis teaches third grade by day and still plays amateur hockey at night. He sat inches from the big-screen, totally focused on the game. I asked him to alert me anytime #24 was on the ice, and Dennis didn’t disappoint.

Throughout the entire game, the cheers and groans from Dennis gave me a clue of what was happening on the ice. “Woooooooo! Ugh. Ahh. C’mon lads! Woooooooo! Argh. Damn. Wooooooo!” By the second period, I had diagnosed my new Canadian friend with Hockey Tourrette’s.

The best part of the game, duh, was any time the Blackhawks scored. With every Blackhawk goal (and there were a lot of goals scored on Sunday) Dennis would run to my seat, say a polite excuse me, and then crush me in a hug.

I love hockey. Go Dennis! Go Boynton! Go Hawks!

Some people dismiss national conventions as silly schmoozefests, but I gotta say: I’ve met some pretty darned cool people at the ones I’ve gone to. Guess it never hurts to show up with a cute dog at my side, huh?

Signing books at the ASPCA booth during the American Library Association convention.

Two years later, we’re off to New Jersey! Turns out Stephanie’s mom works at a school in Fairview, too, so the triumvirate arranged it so Hanni and I will have not just one, not two but three different gigs while we’re there: one at Stephanie’s library, one at her aunt’s school, and one at her mom’s school. Sweet!

After those presentations were booked, ahem, I contacted Mendham Books in Mendham, NJ. I’d met the store owners on a bus ride between our hotel and Book Expo America in New York back in 2007. They remembered Hanni and me, and said they’d love to have us.

And so, thanks to two very fun conventions, a New Jersey book tour is born. Hanni and I fly to Newark this Saturday, and librarian Stephanie Burke has generously offered to pick us up at the airport and drive us to our hotel. She’ll chauffeur us to the bookstore event Sunday, then cart us around to our library and school visits on Monday and Tuesday. She’s even offered to take Hanni for walks. Pick up after her, too. Now that’s a true friend!

The school visits are only for staff, students and parents, but the library visit and the bookstore appearance are open to all. Mendham is very close to Morristown, NJ, so we’re hoping to meet up with some old friends from the Seeing Eye School at the bookstore appearance Sunday.

May 23 (Sunday), 1 p.m.
Mendham Books
84 East Main Street
Mendham, NJ 07945
973.543.4949
bseller@mendhambooks.com
www.mendhambooks.com

And we’re looking forward to meeting a lot of new friends at the library appearance on Monday:

May 24 (Monday), 4:30 p.m.
North Arlington Library
210 Ridge Road
North Arlington, NJ 07031
201.955.5640

I’ll be signing books in print and in Braille at both events, and of course Hanni’s paw print will be rubberstamped into every book purchased as well. If you know anyone in New Jersey, please let them know about these two events. And if you live in New Jersey…come!

A whole slew of generous hotels across the United States are participating in this very cool Give a Day, Get a Night program — if you give eight hours of community service to a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization, you can stay overnight at a participating hotel — for free! Sounds too good to be true, but I tried it. And it’s for real!

To qualify, your volunteer hours have to be completed between July 1, 2009 and March 29, 2010. You call a participating hotel, tell them when you want your complimentary room, and then all you have to do is show up at check-in with a letter on non-profit letterhead verifying your eight hours of unpaid volunteer service, and…you’re in!

That's Hanni and me luxuriating in our lovely Blackstone room.

Hanni and I volunteer for a literacy program called Sit! Stay! Read!, and the volunteer coordinator was happy to provide me with the letterhead note I needed. Hotels in San Diego, Portland, Denver, Las Vegas, Tucson and countless other cities participate in the program, but I decided to stay right close to home. I booked a room at the Blackstone, a 99-year-old four-star hotel on Michigan Avenue that was recently renovated. Here’s a description from a magazine called “Hotels:

The extensive nature of the renovation shows in many of the details, including the richly detailed brass wall sconces that McHugh refinished in many public areas. When originals could not be salvaged, the team worked with specialty contractors to cast molds to create duplicates. In other historic portions of the hotel, McHugh removed decades-old carpeting to find that the marble floors underneath had been damaged by carpet tacks. Fortunately, the team was able to repair the floors by salvaging the hard-to-match marble from other areas of the hotel where it would not be visible.

While large-scale reconstruction of a century-old building is bound to turn up unexpected issues, the most significant one was positive, said Brian Hardy, McHugh’s project manager for the Blackstone work. “The biggest surprise of the building was that it is unbelievably well built,” Hardy said. “It’s extremely sound, structurally.”

I can vouch for that soundness — I somehow managed to bang my forehead on one of those structurally-sound surfaces in our room. Ouch! Not to worry – the room service folks deliver ice to each room every night, you know, when they bring your bedtime chocolates!

I wondered how I’d be received–staying free, and all–but the Blackstone staff knew exactly what the Give a Day, Get a Night program was all about, and they seemed tickled that someone was taking them up on the offer. Hanni and I were treated like gold; so many of the staff helped us out in oh so many ways. One of them, named Arturo, was especially kind. He escorted Hanni and me all the way to the nearby Starbucks to pick up our morning coffee, stayed with us as we ordered, held my coffee cup as we got back into the hotel elevator and accompanied us all the way to the sixth floor.

Arturo marveled when Hanni led us off the elevator and guided us right to room #610. We had fun discussing how Seeing Eye dogs are trained, when it’s okay to pet them and when it’s not, stuff like that. Before he left I fished in my wallet for a tip, but Arturo refused the money. “This was my pleasure,” he insisted.

But the pleasure was all mine. A big thank-you to the Blackstone and to Sage Hotels for sponsoring this generous program. And an especially huge thank-you goes out to Sit! Stay! Read! for giving Hanni and me the privilege of volunteering.

An NPR story called Obama: A New Force in Publishing describes how our president is helping authors sell books.

When he’s seen reading a book on a plane or carrying one in his hand during his travels, it can create a stir. When Obama was photographed holding Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, the book’s sales bumped immediately, and requests for media interviews with the author surged.

Now, that’s the sort of surge I’d love to experience! So here’s my plan: I’m going to send a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to the schools the Obama kids go to. Both Obama daughters attend Sidwell Friends School, but Sidwell’s lower school is in Bethesda, Maryland — that’s where Sasha attends second grade. Malia is in fifth grade, and that’s part of the middle school, located on the same campus as the high school in Northwest Washington.

I’ll send a letter along with each book, explaining the visits Hanni and I make to schools. I’ll tell them about our dear friends in Alexandria, Virginia. “We visit Pick and Hank a lot,” I’ll write.” Next time we’re in town, Hanni and I would love to come visit your students.” I suppose the Sidwell Friends School gets barraged with offers like this, but am hoping my letter might stand out:

• I live in Chicago, and that’s where the Obama girls are from.
• it’s rumored Melee and Sasha will be getting their new dog as an Easter present tomorrow, so dogs will be all the rage at the school.
• Because I can’t see, I won’t know which of the kids in the school are the Obamas. This means I won’t gawk.

I came up with this great idea (to send a book to Sidwell) months ago, when the Obamas first announced that the girls would be attending that school. But as Thomas Edison liked to say, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” So far I haven’t worked up one bead of sweat composing the letter, much less addressing the envelopes or asking Hanni to guide me to the post office to slide the packets into the mail. Now that I’ve put this idea out to the public in this blog post, though, I have to do it, right?

My fantasy, of course, is that Sidwell asks Hanni & me to come. Malia and Sasha love our presentation so much that they take Safe & Sound home from the school library. Their dad greets them on the White House lawn when they return from school, and they hand the book over to him before receiving their hugs. Snap! Snap! Snap! The cameras start clicking, and next thing you know President Obama is pictured hugging his girls with one arm, the other arm hugging a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound. This could be bigger than…well…bigger than Oprah.

From the NPR story:

Perhaps, Seroy (Jeff Seroy, a publicist for the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux} likes to say — only half in jest — Obama will have the kind of influence on book sales that his supporter Oprah Winfrey has had.

“I think there’s room for two Oprahs, and I think if there is a new Oprah, Oprah will be happy that Obama is the new Oprah,”