Feelin’ stronger every day

Whew! That Youth Literature Festival put on by the College of Education at the University of Illinois the past few days sure kept us busy. Hanni and I visited four classrooms Thursday, three classrooms Friday, and then attended an oo-la-la reception for guest authors Friday night. To cap off the festival, we gave two presentations at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts yesterday that were open to the entire community.

That's us at Gerber School.

One of the schools we visited Thursday was White Heath Grade School, the only elementary school in town. The school serves 150 kids through the third grade, and After that they’re bussed to schools in nearby Monticello. A plaque in the center of the village boasts that the area was settled by “Mr. White and Mr. Heath.” After one of our presentations there, one girl worried about a dog living in a big city. “Does Hanni like living in Chicago?” she asked.

At Lincoln Trail in nearby Mahomet, a third-grade boy asked what my favorite car was. That question, of course, gave me an opportunity to brag about driving the blue Ford Mustang convertible 80 miles an hour last year. The kids were amazed.

At some school visits, the more courageous (or curious) kids wait to approach Hanni and me with questions until we are gathering up our stuff to leave. After our presentation to middle school kids at Gerber School on Friday, a boy came up and asked if Hanni ever runs away.

Gerber is a school located at the Cunningham Children’s Home in Urbana. Cunningham kids are dealing with a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems, special education needs and learning challenges. The way this boy asked his question, I got the impression he’d tried running away himself once or twice.

I showed him how the Seeing Eye School taught me to loop the leash over my wrist. “That way, if I drop the harness by mistake, the leash is still attached to me, so Hanni can’t get away.” When I’m sitting down or if I know I’ll be standing for a long time, I loop the leash around my ankle. “But even with all those precautions, I still have nightmares where Hanni runs away and I can’t find her.”

I explained to my new pal what a recurring nightmare is, asked him if he ever has those. “Mine’s about a hook,” he said.

”And you know how your heart is racing during the nightmare? You’re really, really scared and then you wake up and look around and figure out it was just a nightmare?” He didn’t say anything. I assumed he was nodding. I went on. It feels so good to know you’re awake,” I said. “You know where you are. You’re safe. Your heart stops racing. You know everything is alright.”

This time, he spoke. “Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean.”

A girl approached us after our second presentation at Krannert, said her name is Serena, and asked me if going blind made me feel stronger. Wow. That is definitely one question I have never, ever been asked before. I told Serena that, then explained why the question came as such a surprise. “I’m afraid most people think that becoming blind — or having any sort of disability — would make you weak.” Serena disagreed.

“I think it would make you feel like, well, if you could do all this stuff and you are blind, well, you could do anything.” Needless to say, Hanni and I left that room with huge smiles on our faces.

Today Hanni and I are both, ahem, dog tired. But anytime I think about all the kids, teachers, parents, community volunteers, hotel staff, University administrators and donors I met these past four days, and the friends and family members who showed up for Community Day yesterday, well, that big smile lights up my face again. You all make me strong.

The Rest of the Stories

This seemed like a good week to tie up loose ends from previous blog posts…

My post about driving a 2010 Ford Mustang got more hits than any other post I’ve published here. Now Roger Keeney, the blind man who won the ‘10 Unleashed contest in the first place, is getting some mainstream press, too.

Roger Keeney did some donuts while driving.

Mike was flipping through his favorite motorcycle magazine the other day and ran across Roger’s photo in a Ford Mustang ad. Others have seen Roger’s photo in print ads, too, and one friend emailed that he’d heard the ads discussed on a late-night radio talk show – apparently there is some controversy involved? This post about Roger’s Mustang ride on a blog called Jalopnik: Obsessed With The Cult Of Cars explains:

It’s either especially noble of Ford to arrange this drive or they’re completely desperate for new customers.

The ad includes the address for a youtube video called Speeding While Blind, which shows footage of Roger’s drive, including an appearance by Tommy Kendall. You might recognize Tommy’s name – he’s the pro race driver who was brave enough to sit in the passenger seat when I was behind the wheel.

The post I wrote about Sonia Sotomayor after she was nominated for the Supreme Court pointed out that she has Type 1 diabetes, just like me. Sotomayor’s nomination was approved by the Senate yesterday, and she’ll be sworn in tomorrow — the first Supreme Court Justice with juvenile diabetes!

In a story in the New York Times, White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote about the methods Judge Sotomayor uses to control her Type 1 diabetes.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor carries a small black travel pouch, not much larger than a wallet. It contains the implements she needs — a blood sugar testing kit,a needle and insulin — to manage diabetes, a disease she has had for 46 years. Friends say she is not shy about using it. “She’ll be eating Chinese dumplings,” said Xavier Romeu Matta, a former law clerk to the judge, “and she’ll say, ‘Excuse me sweetie,’ and pull out the kitand inject her insulin.”

That no-nonsense attitude, combined with the attention to detail that characterizes her legal opinions, has been a hallmark of Judge Sotomayor’s approach to Type 1 diabetes, according to friends, colleagues and her longtime doctor, Andrew Jay Drexler.

While Judge Sotomayor’s hearings were going on, I heard NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg mention they were taking more breaks than usual so that the judge could step out to test her blood sugar. My guess is that everyone at the hearings appreciated the extra breaks. I sure did – they reminded me to test my own blood sugar levels. CONGRATS, Sonia – you’re my hero!

The actress I wrote about who had the Audrey Hepburn part in a theatre production of Wait Until Dark here in Chicago contacted me afterwards to give me some good news – she got a part in another play right after Wait Until Dark closed!

Mike and I went to see Emjoy Gavino in The Arabian nights at Lookingglass Theatre last month, and she was

That's Emjoy Gavino on the left; she visited to research her role in "Wait Until Dark."

fabulous. I had to laugh, though – Emjoy was a slave girl in one scene, and hearing her screaming in fear as she runs away from the bad guy made me think the casting director must have seen her in Wait Until Dark! That girl can sure do “fear”! The show was fantastic and has been extended until August 30 – if you’ll be in Chicago this month, I highly recommend you go see it.

A friend mentioned Gus and me in a post she wrote for her blog at Open Salon. The post is about invisible disabilities, and my friend is a bit invisible herself — she chooses to blog anonymously, so I can’t plug her by name. I can vouch for her writing, though – check out her Hells Bells blog and see for yourself!

Remember the guest blog my young friend Sandra Murillo posted here after she voted for the first time last November? I met Sandra when she was still in high school – I interviewed her for a Chicago Tribune story about how kids who are blind are educated in the public schools.

Sandra's now got her own blog!

Sandra lost her sight when she was three years old, and she uses a white cane to zip around between her house in Chicago’s south suburbs and the community college she attends nearby. In a few weeks she’ll be using that cane at University of Illinois in Urbana – she was accepted into the College of Media there!

Sandra must have caught the “blog bug” after posting here, because now she’s starting her own blog. Link to Sandra the Future Journalist to follow Sandra’s lead as she tap, tap, taps her way around the University of Illinois campus this semester.

Hear my Mustang Ride for Yourself

The great comments you left after reading my post about driving a Mustang convertible got me thinking. Maybe Chicago Public radio would be interested in airing a piece about my 80 mph experience.

Most commentators read their public radio essays.

But that doesn’t work for me. I can read Braille, but I’m very slow. So Joe DeCeault, one of my favorite producers, puts me in front of a microphone, asks me what my essay was about, and I retell the story. Joe refers to my printed essay while we record, which was especially helpful for this car-driving piece. Anyone who has been around me in the past month knows how I can go on and on and on about that Mustang I drove –using my written piece as a guide, Joe cut me off when I gushed over race car driver Tommy Kendall too much. He interrupted if he found something I’d forgotten to mention.

“Tell me about your sister’s 1967 Mustang,” he’d say. Or, “What did they tell you during the safety drill before your ride?”

The resulting radio piece is, in my humble opinion, a joy to listen to. The folks I worked with during my drive in Phoenix sent some sound clips from the event– Joe wove them into the piece. He used some priceless rock ‘n’ roll tunes in the background, too.

Joe’s sound-bit magic brought me right back behind the wheel again. In the driver’s seat. The piece aired this morning on Chicago Public Radio’s 848 show. If you missed it, you can take a listen online. Just be sure to buckle your seat belt first.

That's Tommy Kendall behind the wheel before we headed out and switched places. It was over 100 degrees in Arizona, but he was cool as a cucumber. Thanks to Tommy, at 80 mph, so was I. (Photo by Mike Maez, M2 Autophoto)

Click and Clack Clicked Here

The Tappet Brothers knew they had to link to my blog after seeing this groovy picture of my sisters and me in front of Cheryl’s lime green 1967 Mustang.

You’ve heard of an NPR show called Car Talk, right? Tom and Ray Magliozzi? Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers? Well, then you can imagine what fun it was to hear my talking computer sing out Doug Mayer’s name from my in box the other day.

Doug Mayer is the head writer of Car Talk and the producer of the radio show’s website. And as all Car Talk fans know, Doug Mayer is not a slave to fashion. Doug Mayer had emailed me to let me know he liked the post I’d written about driving the 2010 Mustang. He liked that post so much, in fact, that he added it to the “Links We Like” Section of the Car Talk website! This is no small thing – cartalk.com receives more than 400,000 unique visitors per week. You read that right: more than 400,000 unique visitors a week.

Hanni didn’t seem at all excited about the attention we might get from this great news. She did, however, take notice when my talking computer started barking out a bio of Doug Mayer’s dog Chloe from the Car Talk website:

Chloe Mayer is Car Talk’s Assistant Staff Canine.

Chloe commutes to Car Talk Plaza with Doug Mayer, her human companion. At Car Talk, her primary responsibility is to greet visitors, shake her tail so violently that her butt knocks over boxes, and bark menacingly when a visit from weird Bob next door is impending.

When not on duty at Car Talk Plaza, Chloe is responsible for keeping a number of beds at Mayer’s home office warm and fur covered, and staying on guard against the constant threat posed by possible Fed Ex, UPS-guy or Jehovah’s Witness visits.

In her 22 hours of free time each day, Chloe enjoys sleeping, running alongside skiers, sleeping, hiking, trail running, compost-pile excavation and cataloging, mindless retrieving of objects of all kinds and sleeping.

Now, that’s one job any working dog would love. I’m afraid Hanni is envious.