Sturgeon Bay Snow Day

Harper didn't know what to make of the Jacuzzi.

While Harper and I were giving an evening presentation at Door County Community Center in Wisconsin last Tuesday night, it started snowing. The next morning, there was 15 inches of snow on the ground.

I tuned in to the local AM radio station and learned Door County has an army of 35 snow plows. Only one of them was assigned to Sturgeon Bay, where Harper and I were staying. “We’ll pass through all the major streets once today,” an official said during an interview with the radio host. “But if anyone especially needs a street plowed, call me at home.”

School was cancelled on Wednesday, and so were the three presentations we were scheduled to give that day. Harper and I were stuck in our hotel room. Ever seen the movie The Shining? Maybe if Jack Nicholson had brought a dog with him he wouldn’t have had such a rough time. Harper and I played endless rounds of fetch with his squeak toy, tinkered with the Voiceover feature on my new talking iPhone, listened to audio books, enjoyed warm baths in the Jacuzzi (well, I did, not Harper–though he was interested) and wandered outside now and then so Harper could pee – and play – in the snow.

A voice from behind the front desk called out a friendly hello during one of our lonely walks through the lobby. It was the hotel bookkeeper. “I live just down the street, so I could walk here,” she said. A cook had made it in, too, so the hotel restaurant would be open for lunch.

My friend Jenny is director of Women and Children’s Services at Ministry Door County Medical Center, and she’s the one who got the ball rolling for Harper and me to come “up north” to make all these presentations. Her husband Dennis owns a truck, so later that evening they plowed through the snow to rescue Harper and me and drive us to the only tavern open in the storm. Neighborhood Pub boasts a wall full of TV screens and was offering a Lenten Special Fish Fry that night. Leinenkugel makes a draft Pub Ale especially for Neighborhood Pub, and it paired well with the perch. By the time we left the pub, it was packed.

Jenny’s cell phone rang on the ride back to my hotel. A man named Ralph Bronner had come from Milwaukee to hear me speak that night. He’d booked a room at my hotel, and he was disappointed my event had been cancelled. Was I willing to meet him personally? I turned to Jenny’s husband Dennis. “As long as you guys come along,” I said. They agreed.

Ralph’s caretaker, a woman from Poland, had muscled their car through drifting snow to get to Door County. We joined Ralph and some of his friends in his room, and over a bottle of wine he regaled me with stories of his father.

If you came of age in the 60s and 70s, you must remember bathing with Dr. Bronner’s all-natural peppermint soap. Shampooing with it. Brushing your teeth with it, too. Even more fun than the soap’s peppermint tingle was reading all the quirky philosophical all-one-God beliefs Ralph Bronner’s father wrote on the label. That’s right: Ralph’s father was the Dr. Bronner who invented the formula for the famous soap.

From what I could gather, Dr. Bronner was more interested in his soap than his kids. Ralph grew up in 15 different orphanages and foster homes. Dr. Bronner was committed to an insane asylum in Milwaukee but escaped in 1947 and fled to California to start his soap company. “They didn’t think he was crazy there,” Ralph told me. Ralph and his brother eventually joined the soap company, and now it is run by Dr. Bronner’s grandsons. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap is still available in health food stores all over America, and the Bronner family is scrupulous about being an environmentally-friendly business. It gives employees generous bonuses and donates 70% of profits to charity. Over the years the Bronners have donated to arts programs in Door County. That’s how Ralph heard about my presentation, and that’s why he made the trip from Milwaukee to hear me speak.

We didn’t stay long in Ralph’s room. They needed to head out for dinner at, where else? Neighborhood Pub! Harper led me back to my room then for one last soak in the Jacuzzi. My trip to Door County may not have turned out the way I’d expected, but it sure was interesting. And here’s some good news: Jenny is going to try to work it out so Harper and I can return in the Fall to make up for the presentations that were cancelled. If Ralph Bronner makes the trip again, I’ll see to it that he gets a front row seat.

298 miles of shoreline

Harper and I woke up this morning in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. My high school friend Jennifer L. Fischer is director of Women and Children’s Services at Ministry Door County Medical Center, and over Thanksgiving last year she had the wonderful, wonderful idea to have Harper and me come “up north” to do some presentations. Once Jenny got the wheels turning, everything fell into place. She’s quoted in a very flattering story in the Door County Advocate about the presentations I’ll be giving this week. The story is titled “Finding Joy through Adversity” and opens like this:

Beth Finke was always the life of the party, and that spirit wasn’t dampened when she lost her sight, says her old schoolmate Jenny Fischer

The story talks about my blindness, of course, but the part I found flattering was the way it described me as, well…a person. More from the story:

She also — because passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act was still five years away — lost her job. She found a few odd jobs — including nude modeling
for a university art class, which led to the career she settled into: writing.

“Staying still so long gave me lots of time to think about my writing, how to reformulate a lead, how to get across a certain idea,” she said. “In fact,
I used that quiet time to put together my very first published essay. I composed it in my head and then typed it into my talking
computer the minute I got home. Nude Modeling: Going In Blind was picked up by Alternet and published in alternative newspapers all over the country.”

The refusal to be held back by her blindness, and the decision to pose for the art class, are examples of why Fischer said one word sums up her old friend.

“She’s fearless,” Fischer said. “She always was.”

We’ll see if I’m fearless enough to let Harper take me for a walk this morning — Door County is a wondrous place, with more shoreline (298 miles of it, according to the Door County official web site) than almost any other county in the continental United States. Harper and I haven’t been for a walk on Chicago’s lakefront this year yet — it’s ben too cold — so today’s walk will be a test. We’ll see if this male yellow lab of mine can resist taking me into the water with him.

In the next two days we’re visiting with students from Sturgeon Bay, Southern Door and Gibraltar middle schools, plus meeting with physical therapists informally at the medical center. I’ll be giving talks to the general public, too. The community events, presented by Ministry Door County Medical Center, are scheduled at 7 p.m. March 22 at Southern Door Community Auditorium in Brussels and 7 p.m. March 23 at Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek. If Harper and I don’t show up at one of these visits we’ve scheduled for this week, don’t worry. Jenny has a nephew in the Coast Guard.

With a Vengeance

That's Brian, the happy groom, walking me and Harper to the altar just before the ceremony began.

After officiating at my niece’s wedding Friday (and dancing up a storm at the reception afterwards) I needed a little blog break. Mike Knezovich to the rescue!

With a vengeance

by Mike Knezovich

I’m starting this post at a Barnes & Noble in Orlando, Fla., where Beth’s making a Hanni/Harper and Beth appearance. I’ll leave it to Beth to  fill you in on the wedding, but I can tell you is this: She and the wedding couple were perfect and everyone had a wonderful time.

But there were a few anxious moments the night before we flew south. I came home Wednesday night after a couple days in Urbana for work. I noticed some red spots on the floor. It looked like blood. This isn’t a totally uncommon experience–sometimes Beth gets a paper cut, or hits her forehead on a corner, and she bleeds without knowing it. Plus, she does frequent finger sticks for her blood sugar checks. Sometimes her finger keeps bleeding. It used to unnerve me a little, coming home after work to a little Lizzie Borden scene. But it’s always been something minor, and usually a little hydrogen peroxide and band-aid do the trick.

This time I looked at Beth’s forehead and fingers. Nothing. Almost at once, we both thought about Harper. I sat down next to him, and sure enough: red spots on his paws, and  his hip. Finally I found the source: A cut on the very tip of one of his ears. Beth immediately guessed what had happened. Earlier that day, as she and Harper tried to get on the elevator to go downstairs, a couple of small dogs growled and leaped at Harper. Flustered, she and Harper chose to wait for the next elevator.

Apparently, though, one of the little rats had gotten a piece of Harper’s ear. So I cleaned it and put some disinfectant on it. Harper was unfazed, a total trooper. I, on the other hand, was envisioning myself as an NFL placekicker, imagining little dogs flying end-over-end through goalposts. Followed by their owner. I hadn’t felt like this for awhile–kind of primal in wanting to set things right after that fact, to protect my little clan. Very Godfather like–you whack my brother, I whack yours. I’m sure I’ve always had this trait, but it was sharpened by by this sense that with all the unavoidable medical stuff that was visited on Beth and Gus, I just couldn’t tolerate any  stupidity that caused any more grief. I made a secret pact with myself:  anyone who made them feel bad would be made to feel at least twice as bad. (If they were lucky, only twice).

I made good on my pact. And for a long time, it worked for me. As I age, though, I find I have less energy for the anger–and less to be angry about. Gus is safe and sound in a little house in a little town by the river in Wisconsin. Beth takes me on business trips. We are back in Chicago after a wonderful wedding weekend in Orlando. Life is good. So as for the dogs,  I just sent a polite email to our building manager, asking that she inform the owners and ask them to take better care with their dogs. (And that if they didn’t, the dogs would swim with the fishes. No, not really.)

But I haven’t completely lost my edge. Here’s how I know: I’m an Illinois basketball fan. If you’re an Illinois basketball fan, you really loathe Bruce Pearl, who is the current coach of the Tennessee Volunteers. (If you’re not an Illinois fan, it’d take too long to explain–just trust me on this.) I’ve been diligently sending hateful thoughts his way for a long, long time.

Well, I managed to keep an eye on the NCAA basketball tourney between wedding festivities. And Tennessee was totally annihilated in their first round game. I mean, humiliated. And I learned that Pearl is likely going to lose his job because of NCAA rules infractions. And yeah, I admit, this made me very, very happy.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying, I might be mellowing some, but if you have little dogs, best to keep them on a short leash.

Goin’ to the chapel, and…

That's Billy, who's there for all the most important occasions. Or, is it, we're there for all the most important occasions.

My sister Marilee and her daughter Jennifer flew in from Florida over Christmas, and while they were here they met up with Mike and me at Hackney’s. It was pretty cold that day, and bartender Billy Balducci knew exactly how to warm us up. Before the night was over, Jen had asked if I’d officiate her wedding.

That's Brian and Jennifer, the happy couple. Congrats to them, and a shout out to Marilee and Rick Amodt, proud parents of Jennifer.

Jen and Brian will be married in a civil ceremony today, and I’ll officiate the public ceremony tomorrow. I can read Braille, but I’m so slow at it that if I “read” my lines we’d all still be there Sunday waiting for the part where Brian finally gets to kiss the bride. So I’ve recorded all my lines on a cassette. I plan to have an earpiece in one ear and my finger on the “pause” button. The recorder will read a few sentences at a time, and I’ll repeat what I hear. I am so, so flattered to be asked to do this for Jennifer and Brian, and I could go on and on and on and on here about how terrific it makes me feel that they trust me with this honor.

But hey, time to go. I gotta catch my flight to Orlando!

Good thing Harper’s not a monkey

That's Harper doing his thing at a nearby street corner.

If you have a disability and want to bring your helper parrot, monkey or snake with you in public, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. starting today, March 15, 2011, only service dogs and trained miniature horses are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. These ADA revisions were drawn up after some disability advocates asked the Department of Justice to crack down on people who were faking or exaggerating disabilities in order to get their companion animals into places of public accommodation. I wrote a post for today’s Bark Blog about all this – here’s an excerpt:

It really does make it harder for the rest of us when an animal or his handler’s poor behavior causes people to think badly about service animals. I’ve heard stories about helper parrots pecking at shoppers in stores, a therapeutic rat that quelled anxiety in his owner but caused anxiety to others, and comfort pigs going crazy on airplanes. In my own life, however, the only negative service animal stories that have affected me personally have been about…dogs.

The last time I went to a Cubs game I was stopped while trying to get into Wrigley Field with my Seeing Eye dog. The man taking tickets said he didn’t know if the dog was allowed. I pointed to the harness, told him she was a Seeing Eye dog. He was skeptical.

Turns out that a week earlier someone had brought their puppy to Wrigley, claiming the dog was a service dog. The dog misbehaved, and fans sitting nearby complained. After that, the people working the gates were told to scrutinize anyone coming in with a service dog.

Faking a disability to gain privilege is fraud. It also results in increased scrutiny of people with legitimate disabilities. You can link to the Bark Blog to read my guest post in its entirety. Bonus: there’s an awfully cute photo of Harper and me there, too – it was taken when we were just getting to know each other at the Seeing Eye.

Guide dog leads man to safety after earthquake

That's Nigel, my co-worker.

After hearing about the earthquakes in Japan yesterday, this story is particularly poignant. One of my co-workers at Easter Seals Headquarters is from New Zealand. Wellington, to be exact. Earlier this week Nigel (don’t you think that’s a great name? I do!) sent me a story he saw in a New Zealand paper about a guide dog named Kiwi. The eight-year-old Labrador/Retriever cross led his blind companion Blair McConnell safely out of an office building after last month’s earthquake in Christchurch. Kiwi stayed on task until a stranger gave the shaken pair a ride home. The story was heartwarming, of course, but what I found particularly interesting was this part of the article :

Kiwi’s bravery is already the stuff of urban legend. The story goes that the dog guided his master on foot across town to his home,
which has left McConnell feeling “a bit of a fraud”, knowing he got a ride, but: “I’m quite sure he would have walked me home that day if he had needed to.” 

This is the kind of quirky thing editors at Bark magazine just love. I contacted the blog moderator there to see if she might want me to write a guest post about Kiwi, and she said, “Sure!”

What? You call yourself a dog lover, and you’ve never heard of The Bark?! Here’s a description of the four-color glossy magazine from their web site:

Taking the magazine’s slogan to heart—Dog Is My Co-Pilot—Bark became the first magazine to tap into the exploding phenomena of dog culture and lifestyle, focusing on the growing bond between individuals and their pet companions. Bark’s impeccable pedigree includes publishing many of today’s most acclaimed authors, including Ann Patchett, Augusten Burroughs, Rick Bass, Amy Hempel, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver. 

I’ve published a few articles for The Bark, too, and it’s always a thrill to say I write for the same magazine Ann Patchett writes for! You can read my guest blog about Kiwi at The Bark’s site and link to other Bark stories there, too—if you like dogs, trust me, you’ll like The Bark.

Tweeting by ear

I have a part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters, moderating the Easter Seals and autism blog. Five years ago my then-boss told everyone in the Interactive Marketing Department that we had to open an account on Facebook. I thought this was creepy. I like my job, though, so in a civil-disobedience-type move, I went ahead and opened an account. In my dog’s name. Hanni handed her Facebook account over to Harper when she retired.

This guy look familiar? He's Harper's bro!

My job at Easter Seals has taught me a lot about social media. I’m on Twitter. I’m LinkedIn. I even have an account on Good Reads. And when my nephew Brian offered to set up a Beth Finke Fan Page on Facebook for me? I said “Sure!” It’s one thing to have all these accounts, though, and another thing to actually use them. That’s why I decided to hire Eliza Cooper.

I met Eliza when I was training with Harper at the Seeing Eye. She plays the drums, she’s an avid reader, and…a social media consultant. I liked Eliza the minute I met her, and when we discovered her dog is Harper’s brother, we knew it was destiny. We were meant to work together! And so, I am very pleased to introduce my social media consultant, Eliza Cooper, as a guest blogger today.

Dropping by to introduce myself

by Eliza Cooper

Hi there. I’m Eliza, and I wanted to drop by to introduce myself. I had the pleasure of meeting Beth in late November when she was in training with her new dog Harper at The Seeing Eye. I was also there to receive a new dog (my second), and happened to be matched with Harper’s brother. They’re both high-energy, fun-loving boys — great for city life, and my dog and I are busy taking New York by storm.

Beth and I got to talking about Facebook and Twitter one day during class, and when she found out that I am a social media consultant by trade, she expressed interest in learning more.

What is a social media consultant, you might ask? I seek to empower people, businesses and brands through social media, meaning that I give advice to clients on how to promote their business via tweets, Facebook fan pages, blog posts, and any other social media platform that might be relevant to them. The social media realm is full of opportunities to engage with peers and consumers, and more and more companies are realizing this. It turns out that customers become more devoted to a brand when it has an online personality, and when the employees behind that personality care to listen to ideas — and complaints – from customers. The challenge for companies is to figure out how to reach those consumers who will engage with them online. I help them surmount that challenge.

Anyway, for the next few months, I’ll be giving Beth some ideas on new ways to build her online presence, and I hope you’ll stay tuned to Beth’s Twitter feed and Facebook fan page.

If you’d like to find out more about me and what I do, please visit my blog, and follow me on Twitter. Thanks! We look forward to your input.

Mike’s gone passive on me

One night when Mike and I were still living in Urbana, we sprung for a babysitter and headed to a nearby bar to hear some live music. The band was fun, the place was packed, and two young strangers invited us to share their table.

That's a just-completed residence built to the Passive House standard, in Salem, Ore.

Through the din of the band and the beer we managed to make conversation and discover that the two of them were newlyweds, both working as architects in Chicago. Katrin was born in Germany. Nic was born near Urbana. They were in town that weekend looking for an inexpensive empty lot where they could build something called a Passive House. I couldn’t make out Nic’s explanation of what a Passive House was, exactly, but before the night ended, Katrin had slipped a business card to Mike, and we promised we’d let them know if we heard of any property for sale.

The next time we saw Katrin, she was a widow. Nic had an undiagnosed brain tumor. He died suddenly. Unexpectedly. Katrin

That's Katrin Klingenberg.

left Chicago and moved to Urbana alone, determined to build a Passive House in Nic’s memory.

The Passive House concept began in Germany and represents today’s most stringent — most aggressive, you might say  — building energy standard. Buildings are constructed or retrofitted to cut the standard slash heating/cooling energy consumption by a whopping 90%. Windows usually face the southern sun, but the Passive House goes a lot further. Passive House construction uses thick walls and super-insulation –  a wall of a Passive House is about three times as thick as a typical  building. The buildings are super-tight; they use tape-sealed construction to keep cold out, and heat in, during the winter. Vice-versa during the summer. That means air doesn’t leak in or out through cracks and holes. But the air quality is still fine — there is a constant, low level ventilator operating. And it uses a heat exchanger so that exhaust air (already heated) transfers heat energy to the incoming air. Mike told me that some homes are heated with the equivalent of a blow dryer. Most don’t need a conventional furnace — or cooling system. Katrin told me that if Americans started using the Passive House design it would help energy conservation in the United States, her new home.

Twenty-five thousand certified passive structures — from schools and commercial buildings to homes and apartment houses — have been built in Europe. Katrin Klingenberg’s Smith House, completed in Urbana in 2002, was the very first Passive House built in the United States. Her determination to get the Passive House standard, literally, off the ground in America did not end with the completion of the Smith House. Local builder Mike Kernagis pitched in on other Passive House projects in Urbana, and in 2007, he and Katrin founded a non-profit called Passive House Institute US (PHIUS). They asked my Mike to sit on the board, and he’s been involved ever since. Since the completion of Smith House, more Passive House structures have been built in the United States, with more in the works. From a story in last September’s New York Times:

Ms. Klingenberg echoes many building science experts when she calls for more rigorous standards for energy-efficiency benchmarks, particularly if there is to be any hope of tackling the environmental and climate problems related to the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. “We have to stop using halfway measures,” she says. “Each new building that we don’t go all the way with now is putting us deeper in the hole.” Ms. Klingenberg was a co-founder of the institute in 2008, intending it as a domestic outlet for the design philosophy espoused for the last 14 years by the passive-house movement’s official sanctioning body, the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany.

To date, Passive House Institute-U.S. has educated about 160 builders, architects and engineers in the standard through a series of training programs and a final certification exam. By year-end, the number is expected to be 300, and Ms. Klingenberg said the institute was having difficulty meeting demand for its courses.

The PHIUS board is meeting in Chicago this weekend, and of course Mike will be attending. Not as a board member, though — as an employee! PHIUS needed someone else on staff to help meet the growing demand for information on the Passive House energy standard, and in January they hired Mike as Director of Marketing and Outreach. Learn more about Passive House Institute U.S. in a February article in USA Today and in another recent article in the Chicago Tribune.

If you like what you read, check out the PHIUS Web site or the PHIUS Facebook page.