On September 28 last year, Beth and I were in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, thanks to the generosity of her nephew Ben—who owns a sweet little condo right off the lake, and who let us take a break from downtown Chicago.

We got a call – our friend Brad had died after having seemingly survived lung cancer, only to have it roar back in multiple forms. Beth and I were scheduled to stay another night in Wisconsin, but after a very brief talk, we decided to head home to be with our friends, friends who had rallied around Brad to the very end. It was really no decision at all so much as a need.

I’d been working at my laptop at the breakfast bar, and when I stood from the stool to start packing to leave, I was frozen in excruciating pain. My lower right back and hip just radiated misery, and I couldn’t bear weight on my right leg. I remembered that the condo had a jacuzzi—Beth started the hot water and I more or less crawled to the tub. She found the switch for the jets, and I got in and curled up so that they fired on my back and hip.

It worked—I managed to get in the rental car and get us home, and we met our friends at the local watering hole where we’d hung out with Brad. It was therapeutic.

My back remained irksome—and I lost feeling in a couple toes and my foot flopped, so I saw my Dr. I had an MRI and got a call with the results—I had a herniated disc that was pushing on nerves. These nerves, the Dr. explained, controlled my leg, as well as my bodily functions, so I’d best see the spinal surgeon ASAP. Two weeks later, Beth and I sat in the specialist’s office. He showed me the images of my spine and my hoodlum disc. After some conversation, we decided I’d try physical therapy and then come back.

After two weeks, I was still limping, but my foot and leg were measurably stronger, so we stayed the course with PT and no surgery. It was a slog. I was restricted from lifting or any physical vigor. In our household, that required a lot of creativity. Beth has always been able to take the garbage to the chute just down the hall. But recycling requires navigating to the bins in our loading dock. Where there is recycling, there is a way. We got the communal cart that we typically use for groceries and big packages. Beth loaded the recycling bag, and I pulled the cart with Beth in tow. I guided us to the recycling bins, and Beth lifted and emptied the bags.

And so it went. I had groceries delivered and transferred them from a table in the lobby of our building to the cart by more or less tipping the bags over onto the cart. I unpacked the lightweight stuff and Beth took care of the rest.

Come Thanksgiving we ordered a fresh local turkey from our little market down the street. When it came in Beth brought her big backpack and I guided her and our turkey home. Beth put it in the fridge and when it came time to dry brine it, she lifted it out of the fridge and put it on the counter. When I was done, she returned it to the fridge.

On Thanksgiving day, she lifted it into the roasting pan. Together, we lowered the roasting pan into the oven—she grabbed one handle, I grabbed the other and I guided us onto the baking rack.

That’s also how we took it out—teamwork—and for the record, the turkey was fantastic (not dry) and also yielded some great broth.

And that’s how it was for several months. Together we applied the same kind of creativity that Beth and I had to find when she lost her sight nearly 40 years ago, the kind of ingenuity that Beth has to employ to navigate her life to this day.

On December 23 (Beth’s birthday and Festivus!) I had a routine skin check. I’ve had some pre-cancerous stuff removed in the past, so these checks have become a regular ritual. My regular dermatologist was on leave so I saw a different doc. She introduced herself and said, “Word on the street is you have a lot of moles.” Not exactly the reputation I’d cultivate but she wasn’t wrong.

Two spots were suspicious, and both were biopsied and I got stitched up and went home. A week later the results indicated one of the two areas was a real problem. The good news is it was caught early, the bad news is it sits in an awful spot—just above the knee on the inside of my thigh, where things bend.

I’ll save you the gory details save to say—they’re gory. I have a gazillion stitches that bark at me every time I move. They’re coming out Friday but it’ll be awhile before I can do stuff like exercise. This after finally being cleared for the treadmill after months of PT for my back.

And just to top things off, on Saturday, I was making room in the refrigerator to store a big old pot of sloppy Joe’s that I’d made for a neighborhood get-together Saturday night.

As I pushed stuff back on the left side of the shelf, a giant jar of pickles squirted out the right side and landed squarely on my barefoot right big toe. I screamed. Beth ran out of her office to find out what was wrong. I cursed. I iced.

I returned to our chaise lounge, which has been my nest for the past several week. Leg extended, ice pack on my stitches, and now, frozen peas on my toe. A thoroughly inglorious existence.

At this point I was pretty sure I’d skip the party and send the sloppy Joes with Beth and stay on the chaise where I could do no more harm. One of our friends, Steven, offered to drive me the two blocks and promised to take me back home whenever I needed to go.

Ultimately, I donned my sweats, and slippers (regular shoes were too painful for the toe) and Steven brought me door-to-door. I hobbled to a couch, our party host Ruth brought me an ice pad, and I roosted.

Our friend Jim brought me food, our friend Laura brought me beverages, and I had a great time, much better that I would’ve had moping on the chaise.

That very morning our friend Colleen had delivered a care package that included her world famous minestrone (along with some grated parmesan), frozen pesto, and fancy dried pasta. Beth had engineered her visit, which was a surprise, and I about cried. OK maybe I did a cry little bit.

I’ve had some very painful and low-spirited times in the past few weeks. Ultimately, they’ve left me humbled and more grateful for life than I’ve ever been.

I’m lucky because I have good health insurance. It would’ve been easy to avoid that skin check, and if I weren’t insured, there’s no doubt I would’ve skipped it or put it off. And that probably would’ve been it for me.

I’ve got kind, sharp-witted friends who are steps away, and who made me completely forget my stitches and my toe Saturday night.

And best of all, I have a beautiful and intrepid partner who can help me get a turkey in and out of the oven. What else do you need?

Happy New Year from our friends’ place in Urbana, Illinois!

Beth and I have been bathroom refugees since December 26. That is, we’re having our bathroom redone, and since we only have the one, we got outta Dodge while the work is being done.

Our adventure started with a staycation of sorts—I used credit card miles that piled up over the shutdown to book four nights at the Hotel Essex on Michigan Avenue about three blocks from home. The whole thing kind of flummoxed Luna at first. Where they usually made a right, Beth commanded her to make a left, and they zigged where they usually zagged. But it was pretty terrific. The hotel was right across from the Hilton, where Beth swims, so that was convenient. (We would’ve stayed at the Hilton, but I didn’t have enough miles.)

Here’s to a prosperous and happy 2023!

Plus, the hotel restaurant had a great happy hour, so we invited friends from the hood to join us at ourswank new digs.

On Friday, a generous friend loaned us her car and we drove south to Urbana to visit our friends Steven and Nancy, who were Hanni’s people after she retired. We also saw my nephew Aaron and his children and his fiancé.

We ate great Chinese takeout, and yesterday, I whipped up the best batch of black-eye peas and collards I’ve ever whipped up.

It’s been swell.

Eating black-eye peas and collards is a Southern tradition that is believed to bring good luck and good fortune (literally). I learned about that tradition decades ago from my friend Pick, who grew up in Virginia.

Driving around Urbana-Champaign always is sort of paradoxical—our former long-time hometown feels totally familiar, but what with the new high-rises, campus buildings, and new restaurants and shops I’m not familiar with, I feel like a ghost.

But overall, it’s pretty wonderful, and I’m at a point in life where what familiar things remain trigger an avalanche of memories. Which trigger other memories (like eating black eye peas and collards with Pick.)

The past year has been paradoxical, too. My work is meaningful and the non-profit organization I work for is thriving. Beth is going strong, as she posted just last week. We’re mostly healthy (but for a herniated disc that is steadily improving thanks to my physical therapist.)

But there was loss, a lot of it. There was our friend and neighbor Janet, Beth’s niece Stacie (not all that long after the premature loss of her nephew Robbie), my Urbana friend Barry, the irascible and inimitable Brad, Flavio of Printers Row Wine, and the regal, one-and-only Wanda Bridgeforth.

A couple of these losses are felt more intimately—because of the frequency with which we saw them and their proximity, I keep expecting to run into Janet and Brad when Beth and I stroll around the neighborhood. I can recall their gaits; I’d recognize their silhouettes as I squinted to see them approach from down the street. Every once in awhile I think I see them.

When Beth and I experience a loss, our friend Hank, of Jewish heritage, always sends the most comforting of thoughts: May their memory be a blessing.

Their memories are indeed blessings. As was the good fortune of knowing them.

Here’s to a safe, healthy, and happy 2023.

The Printers Row Wine Shop home page.

In 2002, our son Gus moved away from our home in Urbana to a group home in Wisconsin and Beth and I became empty nesters. In 2003 the weekly paper I edited folded and I was out of a job. That spring, Beth’s book, “Long Time No See,”  would be published. I got a gig up north and Beth thought it’d be easier to promote her book if we lived in Chicago.

We both grew up in the suburbs but had never lived IN the city. And so, we ended up in the Printers Row neighborhood that we’ve grown to love. We were drawn to its central location—multiple expressways, bus lines and L stops converge here. And back then, before Uber and Lyft, you could count on catching a cab within a minute or two.

More than that, the place felt like Bedford Falls nestled in a bustling metropolis. It still lives like a small town. Plus, we’ve always been drawn to places where Beth and her Seeing Eye dog could function and get stuff done independently. And Printers Row fit the bill. A bank was just down the street. Even nearer there was Sandmeyer’s Book Store, Kasey’s Tavern, and a little old-fashioned pharmacy/convenience store. I mean, that’s life right there.

Flavio, the proprietor of the pharmacy, was a keen entrepreneur, and he decided to transform the pharmacy into a wine shop/liquor store. (He came by his entrepreneurial spirit honestly.) We were concerned at first about losing a business we liked, but we weren’t hurting for drug stores, as CVS and Walgreens stores had popped up everywhere.

We needn’t have been worried. Flavio divided the space, leased out half, and turned the other half into a warm, intimate, friendly space. He stocked wines at multiple price points and he had a knack for finding delicious bottles at very approachable prices. And if you needed a recommendation, you need only tell him the occasion and the menu and you’d walk out with a winner.

On Friday evenings Printers Row Wine Shop hosted wine tastings. They became a regular destination for lots of folks in the neighborhood. That popularity sparked Flavio to convert the tasting bar into a bar-bar, and hence a business within a business was born.

It’s still a retail store. While people sit and sip and converse in an extremely civilized environment—wood floors, tin ceiling, and conversation-level background music—others stroll in and out, picking up a bottle of wine for a dinner party, or beer for the weekend.

Beth and I thank our lucky stars for the people and places that make Printers Row Printers Row. Ellen Sandmeyer and her late and one-of-a-kind husband Ulrich. Totto’s Market. Sofi restaurant and Senoritas Cantina in our building. The folks at Kasey’s Tavern. Jazz Showcase. Half Sour. And Flavio and the great staff at Printers Row Wine.

These places are businesses, yes. But because of the care and attention of their proprietors, and their care and attention to their customers, these businesses become characters in the lives of we who live in Printers Row.

The neighborhood lost Ulrich Sandmeyer a few years back. And, I’m heartbroken to report that we lost Flavio last week. Suddenly, unexpectedly, and given that he was an extremely vital 51, entirely too soon.

He leaves behind his wife and two daughters, the oldest of whom just started high school. A large, tight-knit family and a plethora of good friends—many of whom we met at the shop—are coming together to support Flavio’s family and each other.

Still, our hearts ache for them.

And, of course, we’ll miss him. He reminded me of my grandfather on my mother’s side. Paolo Latini immigrated from Italy and worked in the coal mines of southwestern Pennsylvania. By the time I knew him he was retired, had black lung, and wore straw hats with green visors and sprayed pesticide on his perfect garden just like Marlon Brando did in The Godfather.

He kinda scared me when I was little. And then I got to know him and realized that inside his gruff self was a heart of marshmallow.

I was fortunate enough to see Flavio with his family and to hear him talk about his daughters to know that the perfectionist shopkeeper had my grandfather’s soft and giving heart.

It’s hard for we and our Printers Row neighbors to fathom this loss—there’s been too much loss this year.

When Ulrich Sandmeyer passed away, the neighborhood mourned the loss of a friend and, selfishly, worried that the beloved book store that has anchored the neighborhood for decades would be no more.

We needn’t have fretted. The tiny but mighty Ellen Sandmeyer has it going strong.

The staff at Printers Row Wine is devastated. And committed to maintaining the neighborhood spot just as Flavio would have.  His heart beats there and his blood runs through that place.

And the neighborhood is the better for it. Godspeed, Flavio.

A number of writers from Wanda Bridgeforth’s memoir-writing class came to her memorial service last Saturday. Sharon Kramer was one of them, and she graciously agreed to let me publish this essay she wrote about the event. Mike, Seeing Eye dog Luna, and I were there, too. What an honor to meet — and celebrate Wanda’s well-lived life with — some of the family members and friends Wanda has written about in the many, many years she attended our class. Thanks to Sharon for writing all about it here:

A Wanda State of Mind

by Sharon Kramer

That’s Sharon Kramer to my left and three other writers from our downtown class back in 2016: Audrey Mitchell, Wanda Bridgeforth, and Darlene Schweitzer.

Funerals are not to be enjoyed. They are an obligation, something to be endured. Sort of like death itself.

Not only are funerals sad and dark, but they are often insincere, too. Sometimes the minister has never even met the deceased and calls her “Beatrice” when all of her friends knew her as “Bea.” I even witnessed a rabbi who forgot the name of the departed.

Last Saturday, I attended the funeral of Wanda Bridgeforth. It wasn’t dark at all. In fact, if I could choose a color, I would say it was pink. There were old friends to greet — some I hadn’t seen in person for two years — and even though it was one of Chicago’s coldest days, the mood was upbeat.

The three people who spoke at the presentation knew of Wanda’s lust for life and told stories about her joy in being alive. Her Godson, Alex, spoke about Wanda’s love for animals. “When I was a boy, Wanda was the only adult I ever saw kiss a dog,” he said. “And on the lips!” While other adults grimaced at the sight, Alex forever after loved his Godmother for that tender — and possibly sloppy — act. When he graduated from college, Wanda gave him a copy of “Oh the places you’ll go,” by Dr. Seuss, as a gift. Later on, when he graduated from Northwestern law school, people gave him expensive pens, wallets and briefcases. “And Wanda? She wrote me a poem.” He has no idea where those briefcases and other things are now, but he treasures that poem from Wanda and knows exactly where it is.

Wanda’s daughter, Wanda Jr,. told us how fortunate she was to be raised by Wanda. Other kids grew up with parents who scolded them if they did something wrong. But not Wanda. She looked at wrongdoing as an opportunity to give her daughter advice. A story Junior shared about walking home from school when she was ten years old and picking lilacs off a neighbor’s bush along the way tells all. When Junior brought those flowers home to her Mama and gushed about how good they smelled and how beautiful they were, Wanda used a soft voice to ask her daughter a question. “You always like smelling those lilacs when you pass by that bush, don’t you?” Ten-year-old Junior answered enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, Mama, I really do!”

“I imagine other people think they are beautiful too,” her Mama pointed out.

“They sure do, Mama!”Junior replied.

“But they leave them there for all to enjoy,” Wanda concluded.

Lesson learned. Junior went back to apologize to the neighbor who had the lilac bush in her yard, and all was forgiven.

Beth, Wanda’s friend and teacher, spoke directly to Wanda instead of the congregation. I could see Wanda smiling about this: an irreverence Wanda would have loved.

Wanda had been in Beth’s writing class almost from the start — for 15 years — and sat next to Beth at every class. That way Beth could easily hear Wanda, and Wanda, who had a hearing problem, could hear Beth. A wonderful coupling, and as Wanda famously said many times, it was “the deaf leading the blind.”

Leaving the funeral, I felt uplifted instead of sad. How lucky I was to know Wanda and get a glimpse of her amazing life. A pink life. A life full of love, humor and wisdom.

Today as I write this, I am still in a “Wanda” state of mind. Despite my preconceived ideas of funerals, this one was to be enjoyed, just like Wanda.

Luna and I had a great time in Highland Park.

Any time I publish one of these “Questions Kids Ask” posts listing the questions I get at the school presentations I do with my Seeing Eye dogs, our friend and neighbor Mel Theobald hounds, excuse the pun, me to tell him what my answers were. And every time he asks, I come back with the same response: “Wanna hear the answers? You’ll have to come to a school presentation and find out!”

And guess what? Last Thursday he took the bait! He and Jan Devlin, another neighbor and friend, drove Luna and me to Highland Park, Illinois to visit third graders at Sherwood Elementary, a school that participates in an Educating Outside the Lines Disability Awareness Week program. Every day that week someone with a disability came to talk with Sherwood Elementary School students about their disability and the “helper tools” that let us do the things we like — or need — to do.

Luna guided me to two presentations for third graders Thursday morning. At each one I talked with the kids about being blind, what service dogs do, and how I use a talking computer to write books. As my Black Lab and I were readying ourselves for the question-and-answer part at one of the presentations , the teacher there gushed over Luna. “She’s sooooo pretty!” I took my cue, turned to the third-graders and told them I hear that a lot. “I just pretend they’re talking about me!” I laughed, then the questions started pouring in:

• Do you cook your own food?
• How do you, like make your breakfast and your cereal and stuff?
• How can you eat, then?
• How do you know where someone is if you can’t see them?
• Did you ever get robbed because you are blind?
• How do you know what earrings or necklace to wear when you’re getting dressed?
• Have you ever lost your dog when you were walking?
• Can you see in your dreams?
• Can you swim?
• What was the last thing you ever saw?
• How does your dog know where you are when you go on a walk?
• This is not a question, it’s a comment. You’re very pretty. And I mean you, not the dog.
• How old is your dog in people years?
• How can you ride a bike?
• Did your dog ever run away and you didn’t know where it went?
• Is it hard to know which way to go when your dog goes around a tree?
• How do you swim?
• How do you drive?
• When you call someone, are the numbers in Braille?
• Have you ever lost your dog when you were walking?
• How do you get on your bed?
• How does your dog know where you are when you go on a walk?

And with that, I picked up Luna’s harness, commanded, “Luna, Outside!” and the children cheered as my Seeing Eye dog guided me out of the classroom. “Good dog, Luna!”

Special thanks to Mel Theobald for acting as scribe and writing down all the questions the kids asked last Thursday. Dying to know me answers? Just ask Mel. Or Jan!