That’s me and the class at Renaissance Court in the Chicago Cultural Center. Photo courtesy Audrey Mitchell.

A loyal blog reader commented to last week’s post suggesting I publish excerpts from student essays. I love it when you blog readers leave comments to my posts, and I want you to know: I take your suggestions seriously! So here goes with excerpts from last week’s memoir-writing class, when I asked each student to pick a coin, check the date, then write a short essay about something that happened to them that year.

Andrea opened her essay with a confession.

I chose my coin at the end of class, which allowed me the opportunity to cheat on this assignment. The first coin I pulled read “1994”. The year of Dave’s cancer and death. I didn’t want to spend time there. I put that coin back. My second coin-“2004”. That year I closed Kids & Clay and had eye surgery. Too heavy for summer writing. Back in the baggie.

Beverly had an easier time. She chose 1958, the year her daughter was born.

I do remember long conversations in the mornings and the evenings over the merits of the names we were considering. Marsh had pretty much settled on Arabella for a girl and was undecided for a boy.

Arabella Bishop was a character in the movie Captain Blood starring Olivia D’Haviland and Errol Flynn. She was the beautiful niece of the governor of the island where Dr. Peter Blood was being held as a slave. He kidnapped her and fled to freedom.

Beverly wrote that she preferred the name Ramona. Or Sabrina, from the movie of the same name. “Our beautiful daughter was born on January 18, 1958, and she was promptly named Arabella Berkenbilt,” she said, a chuckle forming in her voice. “So much for Ramona and Sabrina!”

Sheila did some research before penning her essay about 1996.

To spur my memory, I Googled the year. Up popped DA BULLS! They’d won their second consecutive championship title. Continuing up to page 52 on Google, nothing but the Bulls championship was noted. Certainly more had occurred on this earth.

Rather than write about Michael Jordan, Sheila described a temp job she had taken that year. “Typists were not allowed to converse,” she wrote. “Only sneezes and the click-clack of typewriters broke the silence.”

One of my students was born in Italy, lived there during WWII, then immigrated to Chicago in her early 20s. She agreed to let me excerpt her essay here as long as I used her nom de plume: Monica Salina. “Monica is the name of my paternal grandfather’s orchard of my childhood,” she explained in an email message. “And Salina is a small enchanted island in Italy, the island where the movie ‘Il POSTINO’ was filmed.” Monica Salina’s essay describes a 24-hour period in 1977 when she took care of her three sons and their cousins during a visit to Italy.

The evening turns out to be fun: kids playing games speaking two different languages with a dictionary as referee. I wake up the next morning sweltering and uncomfortable. “The sun must be high in the sky”, is my first thought. “I hope I’m not late”! Only… it’s not morning yet. And it’s not the sun. It’s a fire in the near- by hills. The trees crackle under the flames. People outside look. Point. Talk all together. We are far enough away to feel safe.

As for Andrea, she eventually did find a coin she liked. 1984 was the year she and her husband rented a place in Ypsilanti.

An Ann Arbor attorney owned the old farmhouse we rented. His secretary told us we could paint if we wanted to. Just give their account number at the Sherwin Williams store.
Did I hear her right? She had just given me a gift! A project. A reason to get up in the morning.
My eye condition HAD FORCED ME TO quit teaching in 1982. My job had been my life. Two years with no identity. Two years in limbo. Two years of hours to fill. But this young woman just casually mentioned a project that actually excited me! I loved to paint. And this house needed me!

Andrea’s eye condition is quite rare; it developed when she was a young adult. She gets around fine without a cane or a guide dog, but it’s difficult for her to read standard print. In class, When it’s Andrea’s turn to read, she makes her way to Wanda and hands her essay over. Wanda reads Andrea’s essays out loud to the class, and I always marvel at how well she can sight-read Andrea’s work. Of course it helps that the essays are so well-written, that makes them easier to read!

What a privilege to hear these writers tell their stories to me – and the class – every week. Thank you, blog readers, for asking me to share some excerpts with you. It is truly my pleasure.

My young friend Sandra Murillo was in a terrible car crash last November. Her father was critically injured in the accident, and her beloved brother and only sibling Chris died at the scene. Sandra walked away with minor injuries. Well, minor physical injuries. The emotional injuries were more serious.

That

Sandra has been blind since she was three. A junior in college now, she publishes a blog called Sandra The Future Journalist that tracks her progress as a journalism student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her posts are helpful to other young people who are blind and considering going to college, and they are entertaining to people (like me) who are curious to know how Sandra manages on a campus overflowing with 43,246 students.

Last November Sandra was managing very well during her first semester at U of I. She’d successfully completed her midterms, and her father and brother came down to Champaign to pick her up for Thanksgiving break. The accident that changed their lives happened on the way home.

Until now Sandra has been understandably reluctant to talk about the accident with outsiders. She published one blog post in January to let people know her father was recovering well and to thank those who had helped her family through the previous two months, then put the blog on hiatus for a while. She returned to campus in January to complete her Fall classes along with her regular Spring course load. Back home for the summer, she’s started blogging again.

Working through grief is unbelievably difficult. Sandra is doing remarkably well, and some people have told her mom that since Sandra is blind she must not have experienced severe trauma from the accident. “After all, Sandra couldn’t see what was going on.”

This attitude bothered me. It bothers Sandra, too. So much, in fact, that she agreed to share some details here on my blog. Sandra told me she was so happy to be with her dad and her brother on the drive home that evening that even getting stuck in traffic didn’t bother them. “My brother and I were in the front seat, we were both talking, you know, chatting, laughing,” she told me. “And all of a sudden there was a huge crash, I felt this huge bang behind me and I heard glass shattering all over.” After that, she says, everything went completely silent. ”I knew right away that my dad was unconscious, and my brother…and all this blood…immediately I knew that they were at least in critical condition, “She said. “They weren’t making any sound, and I might be a little graphic here, but, I felt something warm on my pant leg, on my thigh, it was warm and sticky, and I could smell it. It was blood.” From a CBS2 news story:

A total of eight vehicles, including a semi truck, were involved in the crash, Illinois State Police Joliet District Trooper Jeff Liskh said. Preliminary reports that the semi failed to observe a traffic stop could not be confirmed.

A couple of college kids from another car involved in the crash pulled Sandra out through the windshield and guided her away from the scene. “I was freaking out, not being able to see, I was focusing so much on getting out,” she said. “And I was thinking, what if it explodes, my dad and my brother are trapped in there.”

By the time her mother arrived at the scene, Sandra was in an ambulance on her way to one hospital, and her father was being airlifted to another.

“I just want your readers to know that traumatic incidents like this one affect you the same whether you are blind or sighted,” she told me. “Or if anything, the trauma was worse for me because I’m blind.”

Disabilities can make some people nervous. They feel bad for those of us who have disabilities, and sometimes they do unnecessary cartwheels to make themselves feel better. I suppose that some might get comfort in the belief that Sandra’s blindness spared her from some part of the pain of that November evening. But they shouldn’t. Because she wasn’t spared anything. And what she’s gone through since has been what anyone — sighted, blind, or otherwise — would have gone through. The painful period of bereavement and recovery.

Sandra is doing remarkably well, all things considered. Not because she’s blind, but because she’s a marvelous young woman.

Cheers to Hanni for keeping us Safe & Sound.

Every couple of weeks, Hanni and I take the train from Chicago to Elmhurst and enjoy a glass of wine (or two!) with Flo and my sister Cheryl. Whoever opened that cute little wine bar right across the street from the Elmhurst train station sure knew what they were doing! The three of us try to pick a date that marks a special occasion in the family. Last month we met on my sister Marilee’s birthday, and today marked Cheryl’s daughter and son-in-law’s tenth anniversary.

You might remember my post about visiting Caren and Mark and their two girls in Minnesota last March. Now you can see them here in a “Fighting Childhood Obesity” news clip on Minnesota TV –they’re all superstars!

But back to our wine date. After toasting Caren and Mark’s anniversary, we toasted a review of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound that came out in New Jersey’s Recorder newspapers today. The timing is perfect: Hanni and I fly to Newark Saturday for a three-day book tour. From the review:

This excellent book should be available in every school and public library.

I’ll toast to that! But wait, there’s more:

The colorful drawings are intriguing, and they show Hanni’s intelligent personality. Hanni talks about how she must disobey Beth’s commands in case she sees dangerous obstacles that Beth can’t see. Seeing Eye dogs can even navigate their companions safely in busy cities and traffic.

Hanni has been doing her fair share of that lately (navigating me through city traffic, that is). She walked me to the downtown Chicago commuter train station to catch the 3:40 to Elmhurst this afternoon, and now she’s sleeping at my feet for the ride back to the Loop.

It is such a gift to have a dog I can count on to get me wherever I want to go, and whenever I feel like getting there. Thanks to Hanni, I felt confident about taking the train out to Elmhurst to meet my sister and mom this afternoon.

Even young children will be able to understand this material about how independent blind people can be. Hanni takes Beth to meetings, concerts, shopping and ball games. She rides on airplanes at Beth’s feet, as other service dogs can also do.

Which reminds me. I’d better get packing for New Jersey. Cheers to the writer who wrote this wonderful review of our book. And most of all, cheers to Hanni.

That's Billy (and me). Let's hope we're still friends after Monday night.

Four years ago I won an award for a White Sox story I did for Chicago Public Radio. Ever since, I’ve been telling people that I am the only blind woman in America to win an award for sports broadcasting. I don’t know if that’s true, exactly, but so far no one has told me differently. It is in that spirit that I am sharing news of three momentous events from this week in sports that could change our lives.

1. I picked Michigan State in the NCAA pool at our local tavern, and for the first time ever, in my entire March madness life, I am still alive going into the final four. Not only that, but I have a chance, although remote, of winning the jackpot. My stiffest competition comes from beloved bartender Billy Balducci. He has North Carolina beating UConn in the final, I have Michigan State beating UNC in the final. In order to get to that final, though, Michigan State has to beat UConn tonight. Mike, Hanni and I will be watching the game from Hackney’s – Billy is bartending, which means he’ll be waiting on us hand and foot as we enjoy a Michigan State victory. Go Spartans!

2. Yesterday NFL quarterback Jay Cutler was traded to the Chicago Bears by the Denver Broncos. Normally I don’t follow football, but this trade is noteworthy to me because Cutler was diagnosed with Type I diabetes a year ago. I have Type I diabetes, too – that’s the disease that caused my blindness. Yahoo Sports had a sportswriter whose own son was diagnosed with Type I a few years ago write a piece about Cutler. The description of Type I in the article is one of the best I’ve ever read. The writer points out that two very different conditions are referred to as “diabetes” – Type I, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, and Type II.

Type II diabetes, often brought on by obesity or poor nutrition, involves a breakdown in the body’s ability to process the insulin it makes. For that reason, improved diet and exercise can often improve the condition and lead to the reduction or elimination of the need for insulin injections. Type I is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks itself and destroys its insulin-making cells. There is no behavior that “causes” it; doctors believe it is a genetic condition often triggered by an environmental stress, such as a virus. It is more typically diagnosed in childhood but in recent years it has become increasingly common for people Cutler’s age or older to become symptomatic. Those who suffer from Type I are completely insulin dependent, and there is nothing that can be done to change that fact.

The writer explains how Type I diabetics balance food, exercise and insulin to walk a tightrope between high and low blood sugars, and how we use blood glucose monitors to check our blood sugar levels regularly (mine has audio output that calls my results out loud).

Yet control not only requires hyper-vigilance, but it also correlates to a risk in the regular occurrence of hypoglycemic episodes, or “lows” – the scariest day-to-day element of diabetes management.

To control blood sugars, most people use one of those finger-stick kits like the one Cutler carries to check their blood-glucose reading on a frequent basis, certainly before meals and often as much as 15 times a day. When that number is higher than the intended target range, additional insulin can be given through shots or via a battery-powered pump that is threaded into the body (the plastic insertion devices typically must be removed, reloaded and relocated every two or three days). When the number is low, fast-acting carbohydrates – usually juice or glucose tablets – must be ingested. It is also important that a person accurately computes the amount of carbohydrates he/she consumes, ideally by reading labels and measuring or weighing portions. Insulin is then dispensed according to a preset ratio (which also needs to be tweaked based on frequent testing).

Sounds pretty complicated. That’s because managing Type I diabetes is complicated. but the writer goes on to say that Cutler isn’t the only pro athlete who has Type I, and that plenty of people with Type I diabetes manage to live happy, fulfilling and healthy lives.

For now Cutler – like Charlotte Bobcats forward Adam Morrison, Seattle Mariners pitcher Brandon Morrow, golfers Scott Verplank, Michelle McGann and Kelli Kuehne, swimmer Gary Hall Jr. and other pro athletes with Type I – can help the cause simply by conspicuously continuing to perform at a high level, despite the daily challenges he faces. And if seeing him suck down a juice on the sideline or prick his finger during a timeout helps some observers gain a better understanding of the rigors of Type I management, that’s not a bad thing.

Amen.

3. Thanks to Hanni, Mike and I managed to get tickets to Monday’s White Sox home opener – the game is sold out, but since she needs room to lie down we qualified for seats in the handicapped section. Rumors are flying, pardon the pun, about Barack Obama throwing out the first pitch. Our president is a big White Sox fan, you know, and he does have experience — Obama threw out the first pitch during the 2005 playoffs, and the 2005 World Champion White Sox won 8 straight games afterwards. I can’t imagine President Obama returning from the G20 Summit overseas in time for Monday’s 1 pm start, and once he sees the weather forecast I doubt he’ll make the White Sox game a priority –it’s supposed to snow.

OMG, it’s 4:37 already. Time to head to Hackney’s. Go, go Spartans!

In my Law & Order: Special Dog Unit post last October, I wrote about testifying against a cab driver who refused to pick Hanni and me up. That very morning, when Mike helped me hail a cab to go to court, another cab driver refused to pick me up with my Seeing Eye dog.

A cab slowed down, the driver looked past Mike and saw me standing there with Hanni. “No dog,” he said.
“It’s a Seeing Eye dog,” Mike explained. “A service dog.”
“No dog,” the driver said.
Mike was angry. “You’re going to court!” he shouted at the driver
“I don’t care,” the driver said, then sped away.

I was somewhat reluctant to report this second cab driver. Going to court the first time was not fun, and I didn’t want to have to go back. But I filed anyway. I figured if word got around that drivers were getting fined for refusing service dogs, maybe I wouldn’t have to file any more complaints after this one.

Good news arrived in our mailbox this week. I guess this second guy pleaded guilty?

re: CSR#07-01972211
DOAH docket number: 08CS00267A

Dear Beth Finke:
This letter is the final update of the Department of Consumer Services investigation of the prosecution of the cab driver you reported for investigation. The Department of Consumer Services (the Department) investigated your complaint, and…the cab driver was found liable of violating the municipal code of Chicago. Accordingly, fines and penalties were imposed on the cab driver.
Thank you for reporting this cab driver…your participation is assisting the departmen’ts goal towards 100% clean and safe cabs and 100% courteous and safe cab drivers.

Sometimes the things you wish for really do come true. Hanni and I never did have to go to court to testify against that second driver, and we haven’t had a cab driver refuse us since I filed that second complaint.