Now here’s a high scool reunion I’d love to attend

Some members of the memoir-writing class I lead at the Chicago Cultural Center. Wanda is to my left in the photo (the far right as you look at it).

Wanda Bridgeforth has been coming to my writing class for so long that she’s working on the third volume of her self-published memoir. On the Move includes essays about her years at DuSable High School in Chicago: coming down from the ceiling in swings at a high school dance, schoolmates in tuxes tap dancing at formals, jazz bands performing at sock hops every Friday night and “Hi-Jinks” student talent shows that outshone professional theatre in Chicago during the 30s and 40s. “With such musicians as Nat cole and all of those guys, we couldn’t miss!” she told me with a proud laugh.

Singer-pianist Nat “King” Cole and Wanda weren’t the only superstars who attended DuSable High School in Chicago.  Master vocalist Johnny Hartman, piano whiz Dorothy Donegan and saxophone giants Von Freeman, Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin all learned their chops at DuSable as well. Mayor Harold Washington went to DuSable, and so did Ebony and Jet magazine publisher John H. Johnson. Comedian Redd Foxx and Soul Train star Don Cornelius graduated from DuSable, too.

DuSable High School opened in 1935 and is described in Landmark Status reports as “the first high school in Chicago built to serve an exclusively African-American student population.” Wanda joined the DuSable High School Alumni Coalition for Action over a decade ago, when Chicago city leaders first started discussing closing the school. The coalition’s efforts finally convinced the city to designate DuSable as a landmark this year, and reporter Howard Reich was wise enough to seek Wanda out and interview her for a Chicago Tribune article about the landmark status, which will protect the building from future demolition:

”Because this was an all-black school, we did not experience prejudice there,” says Wanda Bridgeforth, class of 1939 — the first to complete four years at DuSable.

 ”When the black kids went to the white schools, we were not permitted or invited to participate in their activities,” adds Bridgeforth, 91. “At DuSable, we did everything.

“When we came along, education was a big thing. That was the goal of almost every kid, of every parent. I know my mother and father always said to me, ‘I want you to do better than I did.’ …”My mother said, ‘I don’t want you to have to do house work. I want you to have a career.”

Bridgeforth did — as an audiometrist and bookkeeper — and she credits DuSable with helping to make that possible.

Wanda at her 90th birthday party with the writers.

Part of the neighborhood near DuSable was flattened in the 1960s to make room for the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project, and The Chicago Tribune reported that some of the people from the old neighborhood refer to the so-called urban renewal as “Negro removal.” The article said commercial life was driven away from the area,” in the process diminishing what so many had worked so hard to build at DuSable.”

Wanda was in the first class to start its freshman year at DuSable, and she often remarks how important her high school days were to her. Now, thanks to the personal essays she writes and her work to get it designated as a landmark, her beloved high school will not be forgotten. DuSable High School Alumni Coalition for Action hopes to stage a major celebration of the landmark status this spring, and if that happens, you know I’ll be asking Wanda to take me along as her date. If she gives me that honor, trust me: I’ll wear my dancing shoes.

Developing character

Back in 2003, the commissioner of Chicago’s Department on Aging showed up at a bookstore event to have me sign a copy of Long Time, No See. Joyce Gallagher must have liked what

That’s my friend Carolyn Alessio.

she read – she phoned me later to invite me to lunch, and in-between bites of egg salad sandwiches at Maxim’s, she asked if I’d teach a writing class for seniors. “I have the application right here,” she said, her fingertips drumming what I guessed was a big brown envelope.

I was not a teacher. I had never taught a class in my life. I said no.

You’ll do great!” she said, passing the envelope across the table to me.

The form had been pretty much filled out already, all I needed to add was a title and syllabus for the course. For that I enlisted Carolyn Alessio to help.

Carolyn was a new friend in Chicago back then. She used to write and edit the Chicago Tribune Book Section, and she had won a Pushcart Prize — a prestigious literary award honoring the best work published in American small presses. Mike and I were still new to Chicago in 2004, and I was just starting to get used to this part of living in a city  –  you rub elbows with accomplished people like this all the time, and it’s thanks to people like Commissioner Gallagher, Carolyn Alessio and dozens of others that the “Me, Myself and I” memoir class I lead for Chicago senior citizens has been an overwhelming success. So successful, in fact, that this week I added a third memoir class to my schedule.

My friend Carolyn is a teacher with successful students, too  – she left her Tribune job to teach at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, a private school known nationally for its innovative ideas and emphasis on building student character. She is extremely generous about sharing teaching techniques and ideas with me and is perfectly willing to let me “steal” the creative topics she comes up with for writing assignments.

During the Chicago teachers strike last month Carolyn wrote an op-ed piece for the Chicago Tribune with an anecdote about how watching clips from the 1982 film “Gandhi” helped her students understand his influence on Martin Luther King Jr.:

Gandhi quiets the crowd in the famous scene and speaks calmly but forcefully. He persuades with logic, feeling and a strong sense of ethics. He skillfully handles the British army partly with humor but also a sincere pledge to avoid physical combat or retaliation. Neither side ends up rioting, at least not as a result of that meeting.

Carolyn and her husband Jeremy have two children who attend a Chicago Public School, and while she was eager to get them back in class last month, she also supported the striking teachers. From that op-ed piece :

It might seem like I was straddling two systems, but as a private school teacher and parent of two students at a strong Chicago public school, I saw shared areas of concern. Teacher evaluations based on student test scores constituted a key dispute between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union, and for good reason — defining teacher performance mainly through test scores could undermine teachers’ deeper mission of developing character.

The Chicago teacher’s strike is over. I’m guessing that “building character among students” was not a topic on the negotiating table, but it should have been. As Carolyn Alessio says, all true educators are on the same side of that mission.

Carolyn Alessio has taught high school in Chicago for the past 12 years. She is the prose editor of Crab Orchard Review, a recent guest editor of Fifth Wednesday, and the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. I am lucky — and honored — to have her as a friend.

What’s wrong with this picture?

That’s Laura Martinez of Charlie Trotter’s.

Charlie Trotter’s, a five-star restaurant here in Chicago, is closing its doors for good this Friday, August 31. Laura Martinez, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, has been working at the iconic restaurant for more than two years, and now she’s having a hard time finding a new job.

Most people with a prestigious cooking school and experience in the kitchen of a five-star restaurant on their resume would have an easy time finding a new job, but Laura Martinez is not like most people. She’s blind.

Laura got her job at Charlie Trotter’s after the famous chef and restaurant owner visited the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind. Laura had been working in the Lighthouse cafeteria kitchen at the time, and it was love at first taste. Charlie is quoted in an article in the Chicago Tribune about Laura:

“I was watching her work and saw how she handled things with her hands, touching for temperature and doneness, and I ate her food and it was quite delicious. We got to talking and she told me about her dreams and I said, ‘What would you think about working at Charlie Trotter’s?’”

Laura was already attending the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary program at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago at the time. Charlie Trotter offered to help with her tuition, and Laura accepted a job at his restaurant after she graduated.

The Illinois Department of Human Services hired a personal assistant to help Laura with on-the-job training, but then staff at Charlie Trotter’s took Laura under their wing and started providing her with supportive job assistance, removing the need for the personal assistant. I had the privilege of meeting Laura last year, and she told me co-workers on the line at Charlie Trotter’s had become comfortable having her there prepping, cleaning and chopping.

Trotter says Martinez is an exceptional worker who brought value to his restaurant. “Besides being a great cook, she brings value through her professionalism. She is a great team member.” When I talked with Laura, I asked if she had a specialty. “Well, a lot of vegetarians come to Charlie Trotter’s,” she said, her voice betraying a proud smile. “They like my vegetable risotto.”

I have Laura’s contact info, but out of respect for her privacy I won’t leave it here. If you do have an idea of a Chicago-area restaurant or restaurateur interested in hiring a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu who is a great team member with years of experience at a world–renowned five-star restaurant under her belt, please leave the idea here in a comment and I’ll pass it along to her.

This mixolydian life

I spent the past four days at a summer Jazz Camp here in Chicago. That was not a typo. I was at Jazz Camp.

This is the fourth year that the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble combined to present the camp for adults, but it’s the first year they expanded it to a kind of humanities festival rather than simply a series of classes for amateur musicians. A story in the Chicago Tribune explains:

“We’ve extended it way beyond what it ever was … so that arts educators and anybody interested in jazz can see the connection between the music and other art forms,” says Lauren Deutsch, executive director of the non-profit Jazz Institute of Chicago.

The article quoted Deutsch saying that the idea of the Straight Ahead and Other Directions Jazz Summer Camp this year was “to show how jazz really touches everything.” Lectures on topics ranging from “Jazz and Social Justice” to “Jazz and the Stage/Silver Screen” helped them achieve their goal, and the star of the show was New Orleans saxophone master and Mardi Gras Indian Chief Donald Harrison, Jr., who opened each day with a lecture. I know Donald Harrison from watching him play himself on the HBO TV series “Tremé,” and in a talk about Hurricane Katrina he said it was the “worst and best thing” that could have happened to New Orleans. “It forced people to realize how important the culture here is. People from out of town are making a point to come, they are paying more attention to us, they realize now how important it is to continue with it. And the people from New Orleans who are really interested in keeping the culture alive realized that they could have lost it forever.”

My morning master’s classes were for the rhythm section, and I took an afternoon master’s class on beginning improvisation. Donald Harrison sat in on one of the improvisation classes and reiterated some of the musical terms that by that time were already spinning in my head: octotonic, mixolydian, tonic, dorian, altered. I was the only blind student at camp, and by far the least accomplished musician in the master classes.

But hey, jazz musicians are known for their ability to improvise. When I begged off taking the piano part for one tune, reminding the teacher that I couldn’t see to read the chart, a fellow student jumped in to join me on the piano bench and call out the chords. In-between sessions students offered to read the notes on the whiteboard out loud into my digital recorder, and others would lend an elbow to walk Whitney and me to the elevator to find the next session. I learned as much about jazz from the conversations we had during those walks as I did in class.

One of the photos Bill Healey took during our Thursday morning shoot. (Photo courtesy WBEZ.)

I hadn’t planned it this way, but Jazz Camp landed on my calendar days after my Easter Seals job had given me a new laptop with new software to learn. I’d started teaching a second weekly memoir-writing class the week before camp, too, and returned from a last-minute trip to see my oldest sister and her husband in South Carolina the day before jazz camp started. Add to all that, Chicago Public Radio had asked me to write an record a piece for them the day before I left for South Carolina.

My WBEZ piece is about how blindness can change the way you look at race, and it’s set to air in Chicago this Monday, July 30, during the Morning Edition segment of NPR. It’ll be available online after it airs, and when the producer contacted me this week to ask if they could come out to shoot some photos to use with the online segment, I told them the only time I’d be available was on my walk to jazz camp in the morning. We squeezed the photo session in.

All this activity didn’t leave me much opportunity to practice the piano in-between sessions, but in many ways, the timing was perfect. Figuring out chord structures and listening for changes and working out dorian scales helped balance everything else going on. It’s kind of like George Gershwin once said: “Life is a lot like Jazz… it’s best when you improvise.”

Missing: 30 million words

As a kid, spending three days with a bunch of schoolteachers would have sounded like the ultimate form of punishment. I guess wisdom really does come with age — when the Illinois Reading Council contacted me last Fall to see if I’d be interested in coming to their annual conference and spend time with thousands of teachers from across the state, I considered it a privilege.

That's me at the SCBWI booth. Whitney's under the table. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

My sisters Cheryl and Marilee accompanied Whitney and me on the trip from Chicago, and when we stepped off the train in Springfield, our driver Brian was there with a sign. “It says your name!” they exclaimed, describing the B-E-T-H F-I-N-K-E in bold lettering. I felt like a star.

The star treatment continued throughout this well-organized and well-attended three-day conference. Award-winning author Esther Hershenhorn had published an extremely flattering post about Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound just days before the conference started. Attention from Esther’s Teaching Authors blog brought a lot of teachers to the Illinois Society of Childrens Book Authors and Illustrators (SCBWI) booth to meet new Seeing Eye dog Whitney and me. I Brailled out words for the teachers to take home to their students along with a bookmark of the Braille alphabet. I could almost hear the wheels spinning in the teachers heads, conjuring up ways to use Braille to encourage their students back home to read print.

I gave a presentation, enjoyed time with the seven lively teachers at my table as one of the featured guests at the author luncheon, and attended a few sessions, too. Everywhere I went I heard dedicated teachers asking questions, looking for suggestions, sharing ideas, all of them oh so eager to learn tnew techniques and methods to motivate their students.

My Chicago neighbor Margaret MacGregor is one of those dedicated teachers, and so is my sister Marilee Amodt. Margaret teaches in the Chicago Public Schools, and Marilee teaches in the Orlando Public Schools. The two of them teamed up to lead a session about teaching vocabulary to students from lower-income families, and on our train back to Chicago Margaret mentioned how important it is for kids to learn a lot of vocabulary words before they start school.

“Books have a lot of words in them that kids don’t hear spoken out loud,” Margaret said. In fact, children’s books use twice as many words as kids hear

That's Margaret on the left, with Marilee, before their presentation. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

on regular TV. And even, get this, twice as many, like, words, like than, like, college students like, use when they are, like, talking to each other.

Margaret told me about the Hart-Risley Study, which says low-income children hear, on average, 30 million fewer words spoken than their more affluent peers before they turn four. Margaret was not misspeaking, and that is not a typo. I looked it up when we got home. 30 million fewer words.

It seemed particularly fitting to be listening to Margaret and Marilee’s presentation the weekend before Whitney and I head to Hendricks Elementary School on Chicago’s Southside. Hendricks is one of the Chicago Public Schools participating in the Sit Stay Read! (SSR) program I volunteer for. 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. A Chicago Tribune story by Rick Kogan explains:

SSR’s mission is fueled by sad statistics: On average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will have the benefit of as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading before he or she enters school, while the child in a low-income family will have 25 hours.

Sit Stay Read! uses dogs and volunteers in all sorts of clever ways: children read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs, human volunteers visit as “book buddies” to help individual kids, and people like me come as guest readers – the books we read to the kids always have something to do with, guess what? Dogs!

Guest readers also teach the kids about possible careers – when members of Chicago’s Lyric Opera visit, they read The Dog Who Sang at the Opera to the kids. Firefighters read Firehouse Dog during visits, and visiting police officers read about police dogs. I was asked to come with Whitney and talk about being a writer.

I’m looking forward to visiting Hendricks Monday. It’ll be Whitney’s first experience as a Sit Stay Read! dog, and I hope my stories of learning new ways to read and write after losing my sight might encourage the students at Hendricks to keep trying, too.

Her specialty is risotto

That's Laura Martinez of Charlie Trotter's.

Laura Martinez is 26 years old and has always loved to cook. She attended Le Cordon Bleu before accepting a position at Charlie Trotter’s, a five-star restaurant here in Chicago.

And, oh yeah. Laura Martinez just happens to be blind.

In her spare time (!) Laura teaches a cooking class at Friedman Place, a non-profit Supportive Living Community for Chicago adults who are blind and visually impaired. Laura doesn’t live at Friedman Place, but she was there last Thursday when I visited to give a presentation about my writing life. The Friedman Place web site promotes the full range of services and activities they provide “so that residents’ days are healthy, dignified, and stimulating.” While I am confident Laura’s cooking class keeps Friedman Place residents dignified and stimulated, I can’t vouch for the “healthy” bit: she served her signature brownies to residents during my presentation, and the luscious chocolaty treats were downright sinful!

I had a chance to talk with Laura before she skedaddled to her day job, and she told me co-workers on the line at Charlie Trotter’s have become comfortable having her there prepping, cleaning and chopping the food. I asked if she had a specialty. “Well, a lot of vegetarians come to Charlie Trotter’s,” she said,her voice betraying a proud smile. “They like my vegetable risotto.”

Renowned Chicago chef Charlie Trotter first met Laura a few years ago during a visit to the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind. Laura had been working in the Lighthouse cafeteria kitchen at the time, and it was love at first taste. Charlie is quoted in an article in the Chicago Tribune about Laura:

“I was watching her work and saw how she handled things with her hands, touching for temperature and doneness, and I ate her food and it was quite delicious. We got to talking and she told me about her dreams and I said, ‘What would you think about working at Charlie Trotter’s?’”

Laura was still attending the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary program at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago at the time. Charlie Trotter offered to help with her tuition, and Laura has been working for him ever since.

The staff and residents at Friedman Place absolutely gushed over the presentation I gave with Harper last Thursday, so many of them shaking my hand and encouraging me to return with my new dog next year. I am flattered, of course, but I’m not fooling myself: I’m pretty sure they think they’ll get Laura’s brownies again if I come back.

Another reason to love Wisconsin

Me with Gus at Culver's during a recent visit to Wisconsin.

I couldn’t help but notice an article in the Chicago Tribune this past weekend called “Some parents leave Illinois to get disabled kids better services.” The story said that while there is no statistical study showing why families with disabilities might leave one state for another, anecdotal evidence suggests that many parents of children with disabilities here in the Chicago area plan to leave — or have already left — because of the lack of funding for human services here. The writers interviewed many Illinois parents, including the suburban mother of a teenager named Tim who struggles with various cognitive disorders.

Last year, a residential school in Quincy in western Illinois discharged emotionally disturbed students with Individual Care Grants because the state had not paid their bills. Rather than allow Tim to suffer a similar fate, the family is prepared to leave Barrington and establish residency in Wisconsin, where the pockets are perceived as deeper.

Deeper pockets in Wisconsin, and, coincidentally, less political corruption, too. Some people in Illinois joke about the corruption here, but it really isn’t funny. Corruption wastes resources and skews priorities. Despite Wisconsin’s battered economy, the state allocates more resources than Illinois does to people like our son Gus. The Tribune story reported that United Cerebral Palsy ranks Illinois 48th out of 50 for providing services, and the University of Colorado’s Coleman Institute of Cognitive Disorders puts Illinois near the bottom for funding autism spectrum disorders. The National Alliance on Mental Illness gives Illinois a “D.”

It’s been this way for a long, long time — in good economic times and bad. So when it came time for Gus to move away back in 2002, Mike and I felt extremely fortunate and grateful to find Gus a home in a facility hours away in Wisconsin, run by Bethesda Lutheran Communities, Inc. We would rather have Gus live closer to home, you know, drop by whenever we feel like it, take him out for ice cream, bring him home to visit now and then. Just like the families in this Tribune story, though, we feel more confident about services in Wisconsin, and we often talk about relocating their ourselves.

You can find out how your state is doing byvisiting the University of Colorado’s State of the the States in Developmental Disabilities project Web site. Mike and I found the information there extremely helpful when choosing a new home for Gus.

Money, money, money, money

Back in 2009 I wrote a piece for the Chicago Tribune about how difficult it can be for people who are blind to keep track of U.S. currency. From the article:

180 countries use printed paper money, and the United States is the only one that prints bills all the same size and color, no matter how much each bill is worth.

A federal appeals court had ruled in 2008 that the U.S. currency system discriminates against blind people, but Henry M. Paulson, Jr., (the Treasury Secretary back then) had testified against the ruling. He said that people who are blind can function fine using credit cards or electronic scanners to identify different bills, and if that didn’t work they could rely on help from others.

Treasury Secretary Paulson did have a point. I’ve been blind for 25 years now, and in all that time I have never been shortchanged by a cashier. Even Chicago cab drivers — who have an undeserved reputation for being rude — have been honest with me, correcting me when I’ve made mistakes and tried to pay them too much. Still, I feel pretty stupid sometimes when a bill unfolds itself — or gets mangled up in my wallet — and I have to ask what money I’m carrying. So I was happy to find out this week that the U. S. Bureau of Engraving has developed a free app that people like me can use to increase accessibility to U.S. paper money. I was even happier still when Mike offered to download the EyeNote app onto my iPhone for me — I’m still crawling up the learning curve on using that thing!

I’m gaining ground, though — after a bit of a hitch at the start, Mike and I were able to get the EyeNote app working pretty quickly. The app is available as a free download at the Apple App Store. It runs without any special filters or background material, and you don’t have to have a data connection for the app to work. I double tapped on the EyeNote app, My iPhone read the directions out loud to me, I pulled a bill out of my wallet, pointed the iPhone camera lens at it, listened for the shutter to sound, waited a few seconds and…voila! A woman who sounds like she’s from Ireland called out the denomination! EyeNote was designed to work when the banknote is held in one hand and the mobile device is in the other hand — real life conditions. We played around with it, and it didn’t matter if I pointed the lens to the front or the back of the bill — I could even point it at an angle and that Irish woman inside the phone got it right. And if there comes a time I don’t want to hear her sweet little voice, I can go to “privacy mode.” Specially keyed vibrations/tones will identify the denomination for me. The U.S. government’s Money Factory site claims the EyePhone app is not in lieu-of any other accommodation they are considering, but in addition to other ideas.

It simply provides another option for the public which would preclude a user from having to carry a separate reader if they also own a compatible mobile device.

Recent studies say that over 100,000 people who are blind or visually impaired own Apple iPhones. The EyeNote app is one of a variety of measures the government is working on to help us keep track of our cash. A recent Federal Register notice says other measures include

• implementing a Currency Reader Program whereby a United States resident, who is blind or visually impaired, may obtain a coupon that can be applied toward the purchase of a device to denominate United States currency,
• continuing to add large high contrast numerals and different background colors to redesigned currency, and
• raised tactile features may be added to redesigned currency, which would provide users with a means of identifying each denomination via touch.

EyeNote will not be able to tell me if a bill is counterfeit, but the app will be updated to recognize when the design of U.S. paper money changes from time to time. The Bureau of Engraving says my EyeNote will work with the new $100 banknote after its introduction into circulation, so if any of you want to send one of those my way, let me know and I’ll give you my mailing address. I’d be happy to check that out.

Still not ready to sing na, na, hey, hey,. Goodbye to Nancy

Nancy graciously took time out on her last day to talk with me (and Hanni, of course).

I was out of town for yesterday’s home opener at White Sox park, so I listened to the game on the radio. The fans were loud, the Sox scored right away, Edwin Jackson struck out 13 batters and we won. All great stuff, but I couldn’t help but notice. Something was missing. For the first time in 42 years, legendary White Sox organist Nancy Faust was not playing on opening day. Loyal blog readers might remember the piece I wrote for the Chicago Tribune about Nancy Faust when she retired last year:

 

During one game, I had my Seeing Eye dog Hanni lead me to Nancy’s booth so I could thank her for helping me track

what was happening on the field. Nancy was absolutely lovely in person, and Hanni and I waltzed back to our seats to a pipe organ chorus of “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?”

A reporter interviewed Nancy for an article in yesterday’s Daily Herald about what she’d be doing on her first day off work. Probably watching the game on TV, she said. The story credited Nancy for reinventing the role of a ballpark organist by incorporating rock and pop songs into her repertoire, and gave a shout out to Rollie Hudson (another organist I’ve blogged about here). It also listed some of the clever songs she’d come up with over the years:

• A Whiter Shade of Pale for Henry Blanco
• In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida for player Pete Incaviglia
• I Could Have Danced All Night for Chone Figgins

Don’t get that last one? It’s a reference to Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, of course. Rhymes with Figgins! My favorite literary reference from the Daily Herald article was this one:

Acquiescing to tastes beyond the literary library of most baseball fans, Faust once followed a fan’s suggestion to welcome Detroit Tiger Brandon Inge with The Hollies’ song “Bus Stop” in reference to the classic work “Bus Stop” by playwright William Inge. The next day, two fans excitedly rushed up to Faust to tell her that connection was brilliant.

“I guess I made three people happy,” Faust says. “The fan who suggested it and those two.”

Make that four happy people, Nancy. You may be retired, but these stories about you continue to make me smile.

More than just The Bookstore

Flo’s voice rang out from the phone early yesterday morning. “Your friend Jenny Fischer’s picture is on the front page of the Tribune! It’s a really big picture, too!” The photo in the Chicago Tribune accompanied a story about the success of some independent bookstores, and it opened describing the store where my longtime friend Jenny works: The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn, Ill.

The store is one of about 50 independent retail booksellers in the Chicago area. Not too long ago, all of them and the other roughly 4,000 independents across the U.S. were supposed to vaporize. By some estimates, more than 2,000 did.

But about 1,500 survived. And through a mix of obsessive attention to detail, lean inventory, an embrace of technology and resourceful salesmanship, they hang in there.

The photo shows Jenny helping a customer with a book selection, something she has enjoyed doing for years. Long before she even started at The Bookstore, I always knew to go to Jenny for a book recommendation. We met when I was 13 years old. I tagged along with a friend to a slumber party at Jenny’s. She was Jenny Foucre than, and I’ll never forget walking into their house. Her father was a handsome man with an exotic first name: Jacques. Her mother, Suzanne, was a stand-out blonde. I was mesmerized. Books were everywhere. The shelves went from floor to ceiling, packed with so many titles that the books spilled out onto end tables and countertops. “My mom loves to read,” Jenny shrugged.

As years went by I got to know Jenny’s mother and father and all the other colorful members of her family. I became especially close to Jenny’s sister Jill. The two of them stuck with me when I lost my sight. They took a 150-mile drive with their kids to visit after Gus was born – they were worried about me, and with good reason. Over the years they’ve invited me to parties, welcomed me at their kitchen tables for late night talks, and best of all: they’ve always treated me the same way they did before I lost my sight. Our children are all grown now, and when we meet these days we share a bottle of wine, catch up and talk…about books.

That's Jenny with Hanni and me at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn.

The Tribune article quoted some expert saying bookstores are still the most powerful way to connect a reader with a book. He also predicted that the independent bookstores that have survived the recession will continue to thrive. From the story:

That’s pretty much how Shannon Stevens perceived it one afternoon this week at The Bookstore. She and her daughter, Katherine, 4, were hanging out waiting for Dad to arrive on the train from work.

“They’ve survived because they’re responsive to their customers and the staff knows their books,” Stevens said.

Jenny arranged a book signing at The Bookstore when my memoir, Long Time, No See came out. The line was out the door. Her review of my memoir for Book Sense helped put Long Time, No See on the map. She has lugged books to countless events in Chicago and the suburbs for me to sell and sign. She drove me to Springfield to the Illinois Library Association conference when Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound debuted. She flew with me to New York City and guided me through the 2007 Book Expo at Javits.

Jenny and her sister Jill have been wonderful friends to me over the years, and I have their parents Suzanne and Jacques to thank for that. Suzanne died unexpectedly in 2009. We all miss her, but her spirit lives on through her daughters — and through their love of books. These days when people ask me if my friend Jenny still works at that little independent bookstore in Glen Ellyn, I just shrug my shoulders and say of course she does. “Jenny loves to read.”