Visiting Chicago Public Schools

I wonder. If I could see, would I have been afraid to visit the Chicago public schools Hanni and I went to these past couple weeks? Volunteers drove us to each school we visited, and we were so busy discussing the kids I was about to meet that no one mentioned what the neighborhoods looked like outside the car window. It wasn’t until all three visits were over that I did my research. Turns out we were in neighborhoods I hear about in gut-wrenching stories on Chicago nightly news. Little Village. North Lawndale. East Garfield Park.

Thanks to the generosity of my publisher--Blue Marlin Publications--all the kids who participated in Sit Stay Read went home with a free copy of "Hanni and Beth, Safe & Sound."

At one school, I was told the kids never get to go out for recess. “Gangs,” the teacher told me. “Too dangerous for them to be outside.

Safe inside the schools, the kids were like any others their age. They wanted to know how old Hanni was. They told me stories about older relatives who were losing their sight. One girl raised her hand and said, “I think you’ll like this poem.” It was one of her favorites from the third-grade reading textbook. “I’m going to read it out loud to you.” She did. And she was right. I loved the poem. After I explained how Hanni looks both ways for traffic before she leads me across downtown streets, a third-grader had a question. “Is your dog brave?” he wondered. His question reminded me. We were in a rough neighborhood. This little boy probably knew firsthand how hard it can be to be brave sometimes.

Two of these schools Hanni and I visited participate in a literacy program called Sit Stay Read! (SSR). In order for a school to participate in Sit Stay Read!, 95 percent or more of the students enrolled must qualify for the National School Breakfast program. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Center for Literacy helped Sit Stay Read! design the program to coordinate with school curriculum — it’s meant to improve children’s reading fluency, encourage them to become successful readers, inspire them to explore the world through books, and help them learn to respect people and animals.

The school we visited in Little Village wasn’t part of the Sit Stay Read! program. There’s a waiting list for schools who’d like to participate. The Little Village school would certainly qualify: Every single kid at that school participates in the National School Breakfast program, which means every single kid at that school is from a very poor family.

Here's just one of the thoughtful, handmade thank-you cards I received from the kids I visited.

My friend Pam teaches science at that school, so I offered to come with Hanni and talk to the kids about the senses. They must have really been listening! Days after my visit a package came in the mail. Each student had carefully glued yarn onto construction paper to create words I could read using my sense of touch. “Thank you, Hanni and Beth” and “It was nice having you.” Feeling the letters reminds me that there’s more to those neighborhoods than gangs and crime. Kids live there, too. Thoughtful kids. Resourceful kids. Sweet kids.

Wanna be a Seeing Eye Instructor?

Last Thursday Hanni and I gave a guest lecture for an animal sciences class, and some students came up afterwards to thank me for explaining how Seeing Eye dogs are trained. “I love dogs,” one of them said. “Now I’m thinking maybe I could be a Seeing Eye dog instructor.” You know what? Maybe she could!

From the Seeing Eye Web site:

Staff instructors are full-time employees who hold college degrees from various fields of study and have successfully completed three years of specialized on-the-job training. They relate well to dogs and people and are physically fit, since their jobs are physically demanding and involve working outdoors in all weather. Some of our current instructors came from teaching, business consulting and rehabilitation fields. Some were in the military and worked with dogs before, and many started out as kennel assistants here at The Seeing Eye.

A Seeing Eye trainer demonstrates how dogs learn to negotiate obstacles.

When people ask me about training guide dogs, I always remind them that they won’t just be working with dogs. They’ll be working with people, too. We blind folks are all different ages, and we have all sorts of different backgrounds and experiences behind us. Some of us are newly blind and still adjusting, others have been blind our entire lives. Although some of us might be easy to work with, a lot of us are brats. We test our teacher’s patience.

The Puppy Place (a Web site created by a group of volunteers who raise puppies for guide dog schools) says it well:

Guide Dog trainers must work with a variety of dogs within a given size range. A great deal of walking and upper body strength is required to mold hyper young dogs into responsible workers. In the beginning, when working with dogs alone, this may not seem bad, but soon the apprentice must team dog training with people training. You can’t leash correct your blind student, or give him/her a dirty look and expect the undesired behavior or wrong actions to stop. You must verbally communicate while physically managing to keep up with the dog. Coming out of yourself to work with both dogs and people is a special skill and not one to be taken lightly.

Schools receive literally hundreds of applications a year from people who want to train guide dogs, so even opportunities to become an apprentice are rare. Most guide dog schools do require instructors to do an apprenticeship, and some apprenticeships last as long as four years. From my observation, apprentices work very hard. And from what I hear, salaries are quite low. I have no idea what people are paid once they pass the apprenticeship and become full-fledged instructors. Considering that guide dog schools are non-profit organizations, I would guess the pay is far below what a lot of today’s college educated people expect to earn.

If you’re looking for job satisfaction, though, this kind of work must be pretty dang rewarding! For general information about working for The Seeing Eye, contact:

Human Resources
The Seeing Eye
P.O. Box 375
Morristown, NJ 07963
or email jobs@seeingeye.org.

Beautiful Topeka

The kids at the Easter Seals Capper Foundation Kidlink preschool were a great audience. (Photo courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

A story in the Capital Journal does a beautiful job describing our visit to Topeka last week.

Jim Leiker, president and chief executive officer of Easter Seals Capper Foundation, explained the purpose of Finke’s visit to Kidlink, which is an inclusive
preschool and child care program for children with or without disabilities.

“She has a disability and has lots of challenges,” Leiker said, “and she has lots of goals and dreams, and she’s been able to achieve those. I think that’s a really positive message for the kids.”

The Capital Journal also took a lot of terrific pictures of me, Hanni, and the kids — here’s the gallery.

In addition to visiting the preschool, we were given a tour of the other facilities and did a talk at Capper’s all-staff meeting that day. We had lunch with folks who’d helped sponsor our trip, then gave a keynote at their advisory board dinner that night. It was a lot to pack into one day, but we enjoyed every minute of it. Hanni and I were treated like gold. This was our first trip ever to Kansas, and trust me, it won’t be our last!

One of our many stops during our Topeka visit was speaking to the Easter Seals Capper Foundation Advisory Board. I signed books after the event.

The next morning, Hanni and I climbed way in the back of a shuttle van for a two-hour ride to the Kansas City International airport. Hanni snuggled in so close to my feet that anyone who got on after us had no idea she was there. In Lawrence, we picked up a passenger who seemed, hmm, how to say it. Sketchy? Down on his luck? He’d come to Lawrence in a Greyhound bus from Colorado, needed the ride to KCI to catch another Greyhound bus to some other town.

The shuttle van was pretty full. Reluctant to let this guy sit alongside any of us in back, the driver ushered him to the passenger seat right in front.

Ours was the first stop at the airport. We let the passengers seated in front of us get out first, and then finally I asked Hanni to get up and lead us off the shuttle van. As we exited, the Greyhound rider looked back and said, “Hey! I saw you on TV last night!”

I’d almost forgotten. A couple of TV cameramen had been there the day before, taking video images of our visit with the preschoolers.
I laughed and told him I’d missed the news. “How’d I look?”

“You looked beautiful!”

That made my day. What a snob I’d been, thinking this guy was sketchy. Obviously, He was quite sharp! And hey, he had a good eye, too.

Reading with Scissors

Hey, have I ever mentioned that my husband Mike has a blog, too? Probably not. Because, to be honest with you, Mike’s Reading with Scissors blog is a bit difficult to explain. At least for me it is. It’s kind of visual, and I’m told even if you can see it’s a little difficult to explain.

But not for Micah Maidenberg, the talented editor of the Chicago Journal. Maidenberg’s article about Reading with Scissors this week is spot on.

Equal parts found object, humor and social commentary, Reading with Scissors features scans of advertisements (there are a few obituaries, too) that have caught Knezovich or site collaborator Greg Schafer’s eye. Both say they share a mordant sensibility, antennae that seek out absurdity, goofiness or the plain strange in the ads laced across daily life. There is a laugh-until-you-cry thing happening here.

Maidenberg goes on to explain that Mike and Greg are longtime friends.

Schafer, a flight attendant who lives in Barrington, regularly finds magazines, crossword books and other ephemera during his travels. He flips through what’s left on the planes, saving certain pages. “The job lends itself to time well spent reading,” Schafer said. The best gets sent in big manila envelopes to Knezovich. Knezovich scans the ads, posting one every other day or so.

He sometimes writes a bit of a jab to contextualize the entry, often just a line or two.

While Schafer has been sending Knezovich ads for years, the blog went live in September 2007. Knezovich wanted to experiment with online publishing. About 50 people now hit the blog daily, he said, up from five or six at the launch.

The blog has already gotten attention — and traffic — from Steve Rhodes and his Beachwood Reporter, a terrific Chicago-focused Web site that’s a must-read for Chicagoans. Now it’s caught the eye of the Chicago Journal, and no doubt traffic will double after folks read the entire article. And after they see the stunning photo of Mike Knezovich with his piles of magazine and newspaper clippings? The hits will triple. Quadruple! Do your part and link to Reading with Scissors. WHO knows? Like Mike, you may find Reading with Scissors therapeutic :

“I can pay attention and get utterly depressed, or confused,” Knezovich said. “Or I can find a way to get a laugh out of it.”

The End of “The Story”

The good news: My interview with Dick Gordon on NPR’s The Story aired all over the country last week. The bad news: It didn’t air here in Chicago.

Chicago Public Radio held its pledge drive last week; my interview was bumped so that WBEZ personalities like Ira Glass could cut in and ask listeners to call in and pledge to the station. The nerve! Seriously, Mike and I are members of WBEZ, and I understand why they have to do these pledge drives. But still, I gotta admit…I was disappointed friends and family members in Chicagoland didn’t get a chance to catch me on the radio.

I did hear from people in other parts of the country who heard it, though. A woman in Memphis wrote me to say she’d heard the interview on satellite radio and recognized some of my anecdotes. “I read them in your book!” she said. A man from Las Vegas wrote to tell me he, too, had modeled nude. No mention if he did this for art students, or on the strip.

Mike and I were able to hear the interview online, and I must say, those folks at North Carolina Public Radio did a fabulous job of editing. They took an hour’s worth of tape, condensed it, and came out with a nice little package that makes chronological sense. If you missed hearing the interview on the radio, you can hear it online. Listen to my voice, and to my laughter, and you’ll know what a great job Dick Gordon did setting me at ease in a studio that was halfway across the country from him.

Sticking to “The Story”

Mike and I took a slight detour on our way to the Wisconsin Book Festival on Friday. An NPR show called The Story had contacted me earlier in the week and we had to stop at a studio Friday morning to record an interview. If you’ve never heard The Story, here’s a description of the show from the Serious Radio web site:

The Story is a daily interview program designed to bring great stories to public radio midday’s in a way that will help listeners understand what is going on in their world and why it matters to them. A veteran radio journalist, Dick Gordon interviews people whose real-life experiences help us understand the news of the day or ongoing issues of importance.

The Story originates on North Carolina Public Radio, so Dick Gordon, the show’s host, was in Chapel Hill during Friday’s interview. Me? I sat alone with Hanni in a recording booth in Evanston, IL. The sound man, seated in another room behind a plate of glass, says if you listen carefully you’ll hear Hanni’s harness jiggle as she settles in at the beginning of the taping. She slept for the rest of the hour. She’d heard this all before.

The interview questions centered on my working life. Before losing my sight, I had a job advising college students who wanted to study overseas. The job entailed talking with students, checking out what programs might work for them, phoning different college departments or other universities to arrange for the transfer of college credits. I was sure I’d be able to perform these tasks without being able to see. My boss, however, was equally sure I could not. My contract was terminated. My confidence was shattered. How could I have been so naive? Did I really think I was worth hiring? Why would anyone employ someone who couldn’t see?

That all happened in 1986. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law four years later. It took a while for me to get the gumption to apply for work again, but once I did I met up with some pretty wonderful, flexible employers. A series of part-time jobs helped rebuild my confidence back up. So much so, that in 1999 I took a job many others would never dare try: I modeled nude for University art students. An essay I wrote about the experience was published in alternative newspapers all over the country, and my new career was launched. No, silly. I did not become a professional nude model. I became a professional writer.

The Story is doing a special series called “What’s Working Who’s Working,” and my guess is that when my interview airs, it will be featured in that series. The Story is distributed nationally by American Public Media. It can be heard in North Carolina on WUNC-FM and WRQM-FM (90.9) in Rocky Mount. The show can also be heard on other stations across the U.S. including WBEZ in Chicago and KPCC in Los Angeles. Not sure yet when my particular segment will air, so stay tuned — I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

On Wisconsin

Showing the girls how the harness works.

I spoke at the Milwaukee Montessori School last Wednesday, so I missed out on all the Olympic frenzy going on back here in Chicago last week. The Montessori mom who volunteered to drive Hanni and me back to our hotel after the presentation was the only person to even mention Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. The mom worked for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, and the organization was hopeful Chicago would get the Olympics in 2016. “You took the train here, right?” she asked. I nodded. “So you know. Milwaukee is only an hour-and-a-half away from Chicago.” Her association was hoping tourists might opt to stay in Milwaukee, take the train to Chicago for the games by day, head back to a peaceful retreat by night. Milwaukee would benefit without footing the outrageous Olympic bill.

I was in the hotel lobby working on my laptop when the announcement was made about Chicago losing the Olympic bid. I heard no collective sighs. People there had never assumed Chicago would get the bid, so they weren’t shocked to hear the news. They might have been disappointed, but they didn’t act like the Chicagoans I was hearing about in the news. I didn’t sense anyone in the Milwaukee hotel lobby feeling angry. Or cheated

That’s one – of many things – I love about Wisconsin. People there are sensible. Kind, too. I stayed up there a few days after my Montessori School visit to work on my writing. The seclusion worked. I made good progress on two new books, and rewarded myself with occasional breaks to listen to the incomparable Bob Uecker call Brewers’ games on my transistor radio. Hanni and I felt downright carefree during our three-night stay, everyone there was so willing to guide us when we’d come to the lobby for a change of venue, or when Hanni needed to go outside for breaks. The hotel staff also recognized when Hanni and I were doing fine on our own, so they’d leave us alone.

Another reason I love Wisconsin? Our son lives there, in Watertown. After driving there to visit Gus Friday morning, Mike headed over to Milwaukee to spend the night with Hanni and me at the hotel. We had such a great time in Wisconsin that we’re going there again this Friday. This time, though, we’ll be heading to Madison. Hanni and I are doing a presentation at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison on Saturday morning, October 10 at 10:00. The theme for this year’s festival is Courage.

Presenter(s):
Beth Finke,
Katie McKy
Two writers who’ll appeal to kids from ages 4-8. Themes of courage in the face of disability/difference, and the courage to be oneself. Wolf Camp, by Katie McKy, is a comedy of parents’ unconditional love as their kids try on different skins. And Beth Finke returns with Hanni, her beloved Seeing Eye dog, to talk about the courage they both exhibit every day.

Gus’ house in Watertown is about halfway between Madison and Milwaukee, so it’ll be easy to stop in and see him again this weekend. On, Wisconsin!

Gus, Hanni and I--in front of the Hank Aaron statue outside Miller Park on a previous visit to Milwaukee.

What Happens When Seeing Eye Dogs Retire?

“How much does Hanni weigh?”

That was the first question asked after our presentation at Jackson Middle School in Orlando Friday. Not a bad question, really. Just one I hadn’t heard after any of the talks I’d given before.

Seems every time we visit a school, one of the kids in the audience comes up with a new question. If I think it through later, I can usually figure out why that particular subject matter came up.

Take the time I went to Hendricks School on the south side of Chicago, for example. The kids there came from families with low incomes, but they had the same curiosity, and they asked similar questions, as the kids I visit in well-to-do suburbs. You know, things like “How do you know if it’s time to wake up?” and “Is it scary being blind?”

Beth and Hanni both enjoy watching the White Sox. Illustration from “Hanni and
Beth, Safe & Sound.”

Hendricks is located near White Sox park, and since Safe & Sound has an illustration of Hanni and me watching a ballgame, the kids had all sorts of questions about that. “What if you got hit by a ball?” I told them we try to sit under netting. “What if there’s a hole in the net?” I told them Mike usually comes with us to ballgames, so he warns me if a ball is coming. “What if he is going to get hot dogs so he isn’t there and the ball comes?” The ballgame questions went on and on. And it was really, really fun.

Jackson Middle School in Orlando was not that different from Hendricks. I found out from teachers there that a significant number of kids who attend Jackson are homeless. With that in mind, I emphasized how important it is to find someone you can trust, I talked about the trust Hanni and I have in each other, how we work as a team. “We’ve worked together eight years,” I Said. “We have a strong bond. We know each other very, very, well.” Hanni is nine, I told them, and most Seeing Eye dogs retire at around ten years old.

The teacher broke in then. “What happens after they retire?” she asked. I explained my three options:

• I could bring Hanni back too the Seeing Eye, and they’ll find someone to adopt her, or
• we could find a friend who wants to adopt her, or
• we could keep her as a pet, and when I bring my new Seeing Eye dog home we’d have two dogs.

Later on LouisLuis, the boy who had asked how much Hanni weighed, had another question. I answered, then asked if he’d mind answering one for me. “How come you wanted to know how much she weighed?”

The answer was simple. He lived in an apartment where they only let you have dogs who weigh less than 45 pounds. “I was hoping I could adopt Hanni when she retires, but I guess not.” he said, the disappointment obvious in his voice.

LouisLuis is just one of many, many people who admired Hanni during our trip to Florida. She wowed the audience at our Playing by Ear session at the Early Childhood Association of Florida conference Saturday morning, and then again during our book signing at UrbanThink Bookstore that afternoon.

I had a lot of support from family and friends in Orlando. Among them Brian, Jennifer Amodt (Jen's my niece, Brian is her squeeze), and my nephew Robbie Amodt.

I’m composing this message using my laptop on our flight back to Chicago, still marveling at the wonders of technology: my computer is calling out the letters into my headphones as I type, even way up here thousands of miles in the sky.

Pilot just came on telling us to shut down electronic devices, gotta go. Oh, but in case you were wondering: Hanni weighs 63 pounds.

Gillian’s Isle

Ask any guide dog user. They’ll tell you. When a guide dog encounters a fellow worker, the two dogs seem to act…well…respectful of each other.

We had a chance to experience this phenomenon at the Outer Banks of North Carolina last week. I did a book signing at Manteo Booksellers there, and a friend piloted his plane in for the event.

Yes, fans, you read that right. Someone actually flew in for the chance to purchase a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound. Our friend Brand is a physics professor at North Carolina State. He has his pilot’s license and owns a share of a small plane.

That's Bridgette, off-harness on the ground, and Gillian on the wing of Brand's plane as they arrived in Manteo.

Brand’s wife Sue came along for the ride, and they invited a friend to fly with them, too. Their friend, Gillian Lindt, was the first woman to serve as dean of faculty for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. Gillian is in her 70s now, and she has macular degeneration. She found a white cane frustrating, so she decided to train with a guide dog instead. From The Guideway, a publication of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind:

Lindt partnered with Bridgette, a Labrador/Poodle cross in 2005. “Bridgette is a perfect match for my lifestyle and personality,” she says.

Bridgette was also a perfect match for Hanni. Mike, Hanni and I stayed with our friends Katherine and Larry Bray during our four-night stay at the Outer banks. The Brays live right on the ocean, and they generously invited Brand and his brood to come over and share the ocean deck with us once the book signing was finished.

Katherine and Larry are dog lovers, and they marveled at the way Bridgette and Hanni lay motionless at our feet, eyeing each other up as we humans chatted away overhead. One couldn’t help but wonder what the two dogs thought of each other. I pictured them in one of those New Yorker cartoons, you know, the ones where readers are invited to write in with suggested captions.

That's Katherine Bray and I enjoying a glass of wine on Katherine and Larry's splendid oceanfront deck.

Needless to say, the Brays were tickled to provide a little R&R for not just one, but two working dogs. They spoiled us humans, too, supplying us with a tasty crushed lemonade/mint drink to enjoy. As Katherine pressed the chilled glasses into our hands, she said, “If y’all want vodka in there, too, just let me know!” Gillian was happy to take Katherine up on the offer. “I’m not driving home,” she laughed. And after all, it was yappy hour.

Beach Bums

That's Dora--my first Seeing Eye partner--off duty during one of our countless strolls on the beach.

This Thursday Mike, Hanni and I head to North Carolina. I’m doing a book signing at Manteo Booksellers on Saturday, and we’ll spend the rest of the time swimming in the ocean, eating fresh seafood, and visiting old friends

How’d we end up with friends in North Carolina? We used to live there! During the 1990s, Mike worked here in Illinois for an internet company called Spyglass. In his early days at Spyglass, Mike didn’t get a high salary or good benefits. He did, however, receive stock options. And when Spyglass went public in 1995, all of a sudden those pieces of paper were worth a whole lot of money. We decided then to do something we would have never, ever thought possible. We moved to a house on the ocean.

Dora worked until she was 12 and she lived to 17.

Our time on the beach was fabulous, full of simple pleasures. Without worrying about obstacles in my path, I was able to run by myself. Listening for the waves, I’d point my shoulders in their direction and spring towards them like a little girl. Sometimes I’d race to the beach with Dora, my first Seeing Eye dog. She always won.

When the cold and rain arrived in December, Mike stoked the fireplace and I spent quiet time working on writing my first book, Long Time, No See.

The dream ran its course. Before we left Illinois, I wanted to believe I was the type of woman who would be forever happy living by the ocean: listening to books, sitting by the fire, reading, taking daily walks on the beach. Hard as it was to admit, I am not that romantic figure. In the end, two years of dreamy isolation was enough for me.

We made lovely friends in the Outer Banks, but we all lived far apart, and Nags Head had no public transportation. No sidewalks, either, which meant Dora and I were unable to get out by ourselves to do errands. Mike was responsible for getting groceries, banking, mailing packages at the post office, bringing us to doctor appointments. He had the time, and he mostly seemed to enjoy it. But I felt more dependent on others than I wanted to be, and I started feeling disabled.

It’s funny. On the beach or in the water, I enjoyed more of a sense of freedom of motion than I had since going blind. But the sound of the waves, the smell of the air, the feel of salt water on my skin…as fantastic and unforgettable as it all was, the ability to do all the other things by myself was more important. We left the ocean in 1999 and moved back to Illinois. We eventually settled here in Chicago, where public transportation and city sidewalks allow me to feel more independent than anywhere else we’ve lived since I lost my sight. But hey, the city gets a little exhausting sometimes! We’re looking forward to our trip back to the Outer Banks, hoping to return next week relaxed, a little sunburned and full of good beach stories.