The Humanity Project and other light topics

Some week, huh?

Well, luckily, defying logic, life goes on. Here’s how life has been going on in the Finke-Knezovich worlds of late:

• Beth and Whitney have been on a roll since their staph-infected first few days at the Vermont Studio Center. Beth says she’s getting a lot done, that Whitney seems to be mellowing in accordance with the more pastoral pace and setting. And Beth says the food at VSC is terrific.
  
• While in Urbana this week, I had a great lunch of Thai food with Jean Thompson. Beth has written here at the blog about Jean, our dear, one-of-a-kind friend. Jean was a mentor to Beth while Beth worked at writing and publishing “Long Time, No See.” Jean’s a spookily talented writer who gets into characters’ heads and lays them open to readers like no one else. During her teaching career at the University of Illinois, Jean produced a highly regarded body of short-story collections and novels. One of the collections, Who Do You Love, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Well, since retiring from the academic world, she’s been producing more great work than ever. Her latest – The Humanity Project – just received a thoughtful and glowing review at the New York Times. If you’re a reader, go out and get it, or anything by Jean.
• Roger Ebert is dead. Long Live Ebertfest. My friend Brand Fortner, whose daughter contributed a guest post here about her father’s adoration for Ebert, is at this year’s Ebertfest in Champaign in the newly, grandly renovated historic Virginia Theater. Another Urbana friend—Steven Bentz, of Steven and Nancy—who adopted Hanni, is director of the Virginia, and has been working heroically  to ensure the theater was ready after months of work.
• There are some nice things about being a bachelor for a few weeks. Utter spontaneity is one. A week or two ago, on a Sunday night, I was restless. I’d heard that pianist Eric Reed and his trio was putting on a great Thelonious Monk-themed show at Jazz Showcase. I looked up at the clock, which read 7:30. I closed my computer, I put on my coat, and walked the two blocks to the Showcase. Walked in, bought a ticket, sat down, and enjoyed a sublime set. Sometimes, life is just good.
• I just learned that thanks to the good people who care for our son Gus up at Bethesda Lutheran Communities in Watertown, Wis., Gus will be getting an hour-long joy ride this summer — in either an open-top vintage car or…a sidecar on a motorcycle! (I love motorcycles, and based on how much he enjoyed riding in our bicycle trailer, I think Gus would love either the sidecar or the antique auto).

Happy birthday Flo.

Best of all: Tomorrow, April 20, Flo – Beth’s evergreen mother – turns 97 years old. She’s still living in her own place, and her face lights up about any number of simple pleasures.

Happy 97^th Flo.

This might explain why my tips weren’t so great

I was a very happy six-year-old any time Flo (that’s my mom) dropped me off at the library so she could run errands, and I was an absolutely elated six-year-old the night she dropped me off at the library, headed to the grocery store, drove straight home, pulled the car into the garage, put the groceries away and sat down with her feet up for a while before noticing how quiet it was.

Flo found me outside the library’s locked doors, smiling, sitting next to my pile of books, flipping through pages, anticipating which new book I’d start first. I was in seventh heaven.

That’s me in the middle, flanked by my sisters Bev and Marilee – they must not have gone to the library with me that night!

I met my dear friend Colleen ten years later. We were both waitressing at Marshall Field’s, saving our money for college. She says she knew I was cool right away when she saw me hide my paperback copy of Great Expectations in a pile of folded cloth napkins so I could sneak in a page or two between customers. Goes without saying. Colleen was a bookworm, too.

I lost my sight ten years later, in 1985. No iPhones, no digital recorders, no mp3 players, no laptop computers. Unabridged books on tape were hard to come by back then, and Braille was difficult to learn. How would I survive without being able to read? The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) came to my rescue. NLS mailed books and magazines on audio cassettes directly to our house at no cost, and now their books are available online for download.

The Daily Post reports that ebook sales recently trumped those of hardcover books. “The ease of digital books can’t be beat,” the post says. “How else can you hold hundreds of books in your hand so easily?” The post went on to admit that the sensation of reading a book by machine is undeniably different than cracking open a brand new book in print, and I have to agree. I’m grateful for technology for allowing me to keep up with my fellow bookworms, but if you want to know the truth, I do still miss cozying up in the corner of the couch to read words. In print. On paper. In a good, old-fashioned…book.

From Spa Flo to Baby Flo

Spending an overnight with my 96-year-old mother is like staying at a spa. Flo keeps the thermostat in her apartment at sauna-high temperatures. She rarely drinks coffee or alcohol and offers green tea to guests. She doesn’t have a computer or wi-fi at her place, and there’s no T.V. in the living room. She creates a peaceful atmosphere by stacking traditional jazz and Christmas music on her record changer, sitting back in her favorite comfy chair and encouraging guests to take in the sounds of her console hi-fi with her. And then, when night comes, the slow, deliberate moves Flo makes to get ready for bed allows her guests plenty of quiet time to sit on the couch and meditate.

Whitney and I had a slumber party with Flo last Thursday night, and I was still in my nightgown finishing the traditional Spa Flo heart-healthy oatmeal breakfast when Chauffeur Cheryl showed up yesterday morning to deliver me to her granddaughter’s school.

That’s AnnMarie helping me to field questions from her classmates.

My great-niece AnnMarie Florence Czerwinski is the only offspring in our entire family to be blessed with my mom’s beautiful name. Her birthday was yesterday, and although she’s a big seven years old now, I still refer to her as “Baby Flo.” Baby Flo’s elementary school is relatively close to Spa Flo, and Whitney and I visited Westmore Elementary School yesterday in honor of AnnMarie’s birthday.

Realizing I wouldn’t be able to see when her schoolfriends raised their hands, the birthday girl volunteered to accompany me to all three first-grade classrooms. “Questions?” she’d ask. “Anyone have questions?” AnnMarie is not a shy child. Allowing her the opportunity to stand in front of class and choose who got to go next was the best birthday gift ever.

The first-graders had all read Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound before we arrived, which meant they had time to come up with some pretty thoughtful questions. Examples:

• “What happens if you go to the library and the book you want isn’t there in Braille?
• Why do you need a dog instead of a white stick?
• What if you go to the library and they told you no dogs allowed?
• What if you ate food and it wasn’t what you wanted and you asked for your money back?
• What if the dog is blind and the person can see?
• How do you know what your dog looks like?
• What was the last color you could see before you went blind?

Whitney was as spirited as the students we visited, sneaking out from under me to lick a first-grader in the front row, and somehow managing to roll over – even with her harness on — to beg the kids for a belly rub. We had a ball celebrating Baby Flo’s birthday at Westmore School, but I’ll be honest: two-and-a-half hours with first graders left me yearning for one more night at Spa Flo.

Florence and the trombone machine

My brother’s in town, and he brought his trombone!

That’s Doug: Has trombone, will travel.

Doug graduated from high school the year I was born, and I grew up listening to the jazz records he left behind when he embarked on his music career. Louis Armstrong, Hot Five and Hot Seven. King Oliver. Lil Hardin.

My sisters and I went with Flo to hear Doug perform live a lot, too – he played and toured with the Original Salty Dogs Jazz Band, the Smokey Stover Firehouse Band and Bob Scobey’s Frisco Jazz Band before he had to leave home to join the Marines. We all breathed a sigh of relief when he got into the 3rd Marine Air Wing Band in El Toro, CA – playing for national parades and ceremonies in the United States kept him out of Vietnam.

Before he left home, Doug bought the family a piano, and though it may have been seen as a frivolous expense on Flo’s budget, she made sure we three youngest took lessons. I wouldn’t be playing (or appreciating) the piano the way I do if it weren’t for those two. Thank you, Doug and Flo.

Once his Marine Corps days were over, Doug left his music career behind to focus on raising a family and pursuing a corporate career. Any time Doug’s name was mentioned after that, you could count on Flo to shake her head and lament, “I sure wish Doug would pick up that trombone again.” He finally did in 1996, working long and hard to get his chops back in time to put a band together to surprise Flo on her 80th birthday. Thank you, Doug and Flo.

Doug has been playing his trombone ever since, and while he and his lovely wife Shelley are in town from Louisville this week, he’ll be sitting in with a couple Chicago bands.

• Thursday, August 23: 8 pm at Untitled, 111 W. Kinzie (312.880.1511) with the Jake Sanders Quintet. Jake used to play in New York’s Cangelosi Cards, and now he’s here to bring “the jazz age into the new age” every Thursday at this new River North dance club.
• Sunday, August 26 8 pm at Honky Tonk BBQ on 1800 S. Racine with The Fat Babies, a Chicago-based traditional jazz group that’s heavily influenced by musicians like Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.

The Jake Sanders Quintet and the Fat Babies both feature Andy Schum on cornet, and Doug and Shelley can’t say enough about this guy. “All the musicians are young and really enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the old, old stuff,” Shelley says, adding that some of them are 78 collectors. “That’s really unusual…and wonderful!” I was thrilled to read that both of these Chicago venues boast huge dance floors. Mike and I have been enjoying SummerDance lessons in Grant Park the past couple years, and at Doug’s gigs in the early 60s we little girls all shared stints as Flo’s dancing partner. So bring your dancing shoes and look for me this weekend: I’ll be the one swinging like a hep cat on the dance floor. Thank you, Doug and Flo.

I said I’d do what?

My great-niece Anita turns 17 this week, and her mom, my niece Janet, had a birthday last Saturday. I must love those two: I offered to take Janet’s youngest daughter out of their hair overnight as a gift.

That’s AnnMarie and me. Of course, it’s all about Hanni.

AnnMarie Florence Czerwinski heads to Chicago Tuesday to spend the night with her Great Aunt Betha. AnnMarie is the only offspring in our entire family to be blessed with my mom’s beautiful name. She’s six years old now, but I still refer to her as “Baby Flo.” Our slumber party Tuesday will give Baby Flo a chance to get acquainted with my exuberant new dog Whitney – I’m eager to find out which energetic creature will outlast the other.

And how does a doddering old blind great aunt occupy a six-year-old? I do have a few ideas up my sleeve:

• Clean the silver jewelry: we’ll use old toothbrushes to brush my silver with a baking soda paste, then dunk them in vinegar and be awestruck by the bubbles.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Rock ‘n’ roll. Warn the neighbors! Baby Flo plays piano, and I have an accordion. When we get tired of those, there’s always the collection of percussion instruments.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Watch a video with video description. My nephew Robbie was just a kid when I did this with him, and after just one minute he was begging me to turn the narrator’s voice off. “It’s driving me crazy!” Let’s hope it goes longer with Baby Flo.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Scavenger hunt. Baby Flo peruses the apartment to find things to place in my hands. If I guess what the object is, I score. If she fools me, she wins.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Watch the lobby via closed-circuit TV. It’s just like Harriet the Spy.
• Play fetch with Whitney.

Somehow in-between all that fun we’ll have to take Whitney out to empty from time to time, too, and here’s where Whitney’s bell comes in handy. When I was away training with Whitney last December, the Seeing Eye gave us a bell to hang on our dog’s collar during feeding times. When the trainer came around with a bowl of food, Whitney had to stay in her assigned place by my bedpost as I answered the door. The bell on Whitney’s collar gave her away if she moved off her place, and she’d have to go back if she wanted me to place the bowl of food in front of her. Whitney can’t have her food until she stays in her place.

Whitney doesn’t wear that bell much anymore, but during our slumber party Baby Flo will attach it to her collar anytime we go outside. We live in a busy Chicago neighborhood, and Baby Flo knows she has to hold my hand the entire time we are outside. But there’s that half-minute when I take Whitney’s harness off and on to “empty,” and I’m going to challenge Baby Flo to keep that bell absolutely quiet during that time.

Before we go to bed I’m hoping to play my favorite game with Baby Flo: Spa. Baby Flo’s wise mother taught her this one. Baby Flo sets up a towel at the foot of the bed, gets out the lotion and rubs your feet. She usually charges a quarter for the service, but she offered her Great Aunt Betha a deal. I get the spa treatment for free as long as I promise to take my fake eye out when we’re done.

Hint: It’s not a shade of grey

Cherie Colyer (author of teen novel Embrace) regularly interviews fellow children’s book authors on her blog. This week she interviewed…me!

Cherie asked a lot of good questions, and I especially appreciated having the opportunity to answer one
about who my hero is:

My mother is my hero. I am the youngest of seven, my father had a heart attack and died at home a week after my third birthday. Flo had not graduated from high school and worked to get her GED degree and then held a job as an office clerk until she was 70 in order to raise us on her own. The heroic part is that she never complained to us about her lot in life. She took naps when she could, though, always telling us she was “just resting her eyes.” I follow her lead: naps are good when you can get ‘em!

Flo on her birthday. Those naps did her a world of good: she’s a young 96 years old.

You can link to Cherie’s blog to read the entire interview. Cherie was thorough –she even asked me what my favorite color is, and I know you Safe & Sound blog readers are just itching to find out.

Thanks for all the attention, Cheri– you make me feel like a celebrity!

Perfection

My niece Jen and her husband Brian are flying in from Orlando later this morning to stay with us over the weekend. You might remember these two from a post I wrote last year when my previous Seeing Eye dog, the heroic Harper, helped me officiate Jen and Brian’s wedding.

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.

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

That wedding went on without a hitch. Jen and Brian are a perfect couple, and their happiness was contagious. The crowd at the reception was lighthearted, loving, and lively. Flo did the chicken dance, and the entire day was, well…perfect.

The visit to Chicago this weekend is a gift from Jen to Brian for his birthday –Brian is a Boston Red Sox fan, and she got him tickets to see them play the White Sox with us this Saturday night.

The game tomorrow will mark just one week since White Sox pitcher Philip Humber pitched a perfect game. There’s been a lot in the news about it — he was put on waivers until the White Sox picked him up, he wasn’t a regular major league starter until just last year – but one important fact has been lost in all the celebration.

The perfect game was played away, in Seattle. I was listening on TV, and the Mariner fans were strikingly quiet after the very last pitch. But as the announcers chatted away, describing Humber’s teammates piling up on him in celebration, I listened closely and heard the crowd slowly swell up in applause.

Those Seattle Mariner fans are one classy bunch. They lost the game, but they witnessed perfection, and they appreciated what they saw. They were a perfect audience.

It is very cold in Chicago this weekend. Our Florida family members will probably have to borrow winter coats and gloves for tomorrow night’s game, but hey – sitting in the stands, watching baseball with people we love? We’ll be perfectly happy. Go Sox!

Switching the 5 to a 6

My loyal blog readers will remember the tribute to our dad that my sister Cheryl wrote as a guest post here a few months ago. She’s back today with this sweet essay about Flo on her 96th birthday.

Honey Girls

by Cheryl May

Last year we celebrated Mom’s 95th birthday on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Building in downtown Chicago. It was her first time there, and she still talks about that special celebration. This year she told us she didn’t want to do anything special. “It’s gonna be special already,” she said. “The new baby is due on my birthday!”

Well, Mom’s birthday gift was delivered a little early. Her 20th great-grandchild, Addison Rose, arrived on April 13th….and what a beautiful gift. So when we gathered for Mom’s 96th birthday yesterday we raised a glass or two — in celebration of both Mom’s and Addie’s birthday.

Our sister Bev drove in from Michigan and surprised Flo at the entrance of the restaurant, and our cousin Darrell stopped in, too. Mom marveled that her first birthday phone call that morning came at 7 a.m. “Seven in the morning!” she said, shaking her head in amazement every time she said it. “Can you believe that?”

What she couldn’t know then was that a string of phone calls would be waiting on her answering machine when we brought her back to her condo, culminating with a Liberace-style rendering of “Happy Birthday” from Pick and Hank in D.C. Pick at the grand piano, of course!

A neighbor at mom’s condo had decorated her door a la college dorm room days. “The sign said 95,” Mom said. “She got it wrong. I changed the five to a six.” Neighbors couldn’t help but notice the sign, and birthday cards started piling up under her door. “So many cards!” she beamed. She didn’t take a nap yesterday, so much going on and all. I don’t feel tired,” she assured us. “But I know I will once I sit down and put my feet up.”

Some of us can never remember the name of the “new” small restaurant we meet at across from the Elmhurst train station, so we just say, “you know, Honey Girl.” Heads nod, all of us remembering the clothes store that used to occupy that space when we were growing up. And today, it was the perfect name for the place we celebrated Florence Maria Martea Frederika and her new great-granddaughter Addie Rose: Honey Girl!

Settling in

White Sox home opener, 2012. Hot dogs, fireworks, Jack Ingram singing the national anthem, cheering, a fly-over. Both pitchers settled in right from the start, but it took Whitney a little longer — it was the fifth inning before she could sit down!

The White Sox put on a great show – Mike and I had a ball. It was one heck of a well-played, entertaining baseball game. If you appreciate the game, you appreciate great defense, and there was a lot of it: a diving catch in left field by Dayan Viciedo, and shortstop Alexei Ramirez started a double play with a terrific play behind second. Jake Peavy, who suffered a horrendous injury (a muscle literally tore off the bone) two years ago pitched great. The Detroit starter, Max Scherzer, was almost as good for most of the game, so the game went quickly.

Whitney doesn’t yet appreciate the game, so I’m afraid her favorite part of the day was trotting down the ramp to leave the park and go home!

Opening Day started a week of firsts for Whitney. It’s Spa Week in Chicago, so I’ll be celebrating Monday, getting my first massage since coming home with Whitney in December. Will she sit quietly for the entire hour? We’ll see.

And then, this Wednesday Whitney takes a train with me to Champaign where she’ll be asked to sit through her first university lecture: I’m giving a talk to an animal sciences class at the University of Illinois. I plan on telling the students what it’s been like transitioning to a new Seeing Eye dog, then going over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor. Most guide dog schools require instructors to have a college degree and then do an apprenticeship, and some apprenticeships last as long as four years.

Considering that guide dog schools are non-profit organizations, I would guess the pay for apprentices and instructors 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 – I’m hoping my talk might motivate some of these University of Illinois students to consider it as a career. I’m also hoping Whitney will settle in to her first university lecture a whole lot faster than she did for her first baseball game – there won’t be any fireworks or hot dogs, and everything I’ll be talking about will be old news to her!

Another great-grandchild for Flo: Addie Rose.

We’ll cap off our week of firsts on Friday when Whitney will attend her first birthday party for Flo, who will be 96 years old on April 20. We’ll ride a commuter train to Elmhurst and meet Flo and other family members to celebrate at the wine bar across from the train station. No need to bring presents; Flo says she already got the gift she wanted. Her 20th great-grandchild, a healthy little girl named Addie Rose, was born on Friday. We’ve got a lot to celebrate, and It’s going to be one joyful celebration. Cheers!

Next thing you know, I’ll be writing for Hallmark

I didn’t buy a lottery ticket last week. I wasn’t afraid of the odds, I just knew money couldn’t make me happier than I am right now.

I know, I know. Too many pink Sweet ‘n’ Low packets. But hey, it’s not all saccharine. There really is evidence-based research on this lottery happiness thing.

Back in 1978, psychologists from Northwestern University right here in Chicago published a study called Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Our Illinois State Lottery had just begun back then, and the researchers asked 22 winners to rate their happiness months after the initial elation of winning the big bucks. In addition, they asked the winners how much pleasure they were taking in mundane activities like reading a magazine or meeting friends for coffee. Then they interviewed 58 people who had not won the lottery but lived in the same neighborhoods as the winners. The results showed that months after the winners were announced, the non-winners were just about as happy as the lottery winners, And by then the so-called losers were finding much more pleasure in everyday activities than the winners were.

As long as they were at it, the researchers decided to interview 29 people who were injured in accidents that same lottery year, too. In each case, the accident left the victim paralyzed. After initial sadness and depression, the newly-disabled people rated their pleasure in everyday activities slightly higher than that of the lottery winners, and their life satisfaction was nearly the same.

Interesting.

It’s Monday. After I finish the cup of coffee Mike made and poured for me after we woke up together this morning, I’ll flip on the radio and listen to some pop music while getting dressed. Ben Folds? Jackson Five? Warren Zevon? Stevie Wonder? From there I’ll head outside with Whitney. It’s a cool, sunny, spring morning in Chicago. Maybe we’ll take the long way home, listen for birds, smell the lilacs.

Back in the apartment, I’ll spend a few hours on my part-time job for Easter Seals and then give Flo a call. She’ll tell me about everyone who phoned her over the weekend. She’ll say how much she is looking forward to sitting outside today and let me know what she has planned for the rest of the week. Her credo is to do only one thing each day that takes her out of her apartment. No more, no less.

Flo is one happy woman.

Our call will end the way it always does. “I love you, Mom.” “I love you, too.” Flo turns 96 later this month.

Out with Whitney again. Maybe this time I’ll brush her, too. Mike is working from home today, so I might listen to a book while waiting for him to finish. I’m re-reading my favorite book from childhood, one my older brothers and sisters read aloud to me when they were teaching me to read: The Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh.

After my trip to the 100 Acre Wood? Off to Costco! I’ll hang on to the back of the cart, eavesdrop on people from all walks of life, try to decipher the dozens of foreign languages I hear, all while Mike pulls us through the aisles. He’ll stop periodically, say “Feel this!” and drop an enormous oversized jar of some unknown substance into my hands. “Miracle Whip!” he’ll exclaim with glee. I always roll my eyes, but I can’t help but laugh, too. And I can’t help but relish, ahem, the $1.50 hot dog and pop we enjoy before we leave. Free refills, too!

After unloading the Land of the Giants groceries at home, we might slink over to Hackney’s to share some wine with friends: Mondays are half-price bottle nights.

Back in our apartment building, if our favorite maintenance man James is working, we’ll stop and talk baseball before stepping into the elevator. Opening day is coming up, Chicago! A dear old college friend emailed today to say he can’t make it to the White Sox home opener on April 13. He’s mailing us his tickets. For free. Who wouldn’t think they’d won the lottery after a day like today? And the thing that makes me the happiest: I didn’t even buy a ticket!