Two Seeing Eye Dogs Take Manhattan

Just heard of a great book by author Lloyd Burlingame called "Two Seeing Eye Dogs Take Manhattan...a love story ". It is a must read book.

To their owners all Seeing Eye dogs are miracle workers. However, there are the rare few, like the two exceptionally stalwart heroes of this book, who triumph brilliantly over the obstacles of a huge city.

They are the canine equivalents of the intrepid “Navy Seals.” Undaunted, they meet the challenges of the “Big Apple.” Dodging cars, crowds, and one emergency situation after another, they guide their visually challenged partners safely to any destination.

Two Seeing Eye Dogs Take Manhattan: A Love Story is a funny, fast-paced account of the true adventures -- and misadventures -- of one blind New Yorker and his two amazing Seeing Eye dogs. Readers of all ages will be fascinated by these pooches who lavish the gifts of independence, dignity, and freedom on their human partners. Take in city life with them: Be there in Carnegie Hall when Hickory woofs his unscheduled duet with the world-famous diva Renee Fleming. Fly with Kemp, his intrepid successor, to Austria where he out-charms the Viennese.

As his dogs tell their stories, author Lloyd Burlingame takes you behind the scenes at The Seeing Eye in Morristown, New Jersey, where Hickory and Kemp were bred and trained. Back in New York, the author resumes his active lifestyle and passionate attendance at opera and Broadway, as both dogs soon become regulars in the show business milieu. Burlingame’s career as a prominent stage designer led to Chairing the Design Department of NYU’s famed Tisch School of the Arts. He cheers that his guide dogs have “transformed life from a grainy black-and-white film, into a vivid Technicolor, 3-D spectacular!”

 

LLOYD BURLINGAME (Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design).  A scenery, lighting and costume designer and educator, Mr. Burlingame designed his first summer stock set at age 12 and at age 25 designed first Broadway musical (scenic and lighting design), an out of town flop, Lionel Bart’s Lock Up Your Daughters.  His first show Off Broadway, Leave it to Jane, a Jerome Kern musical (scenic design), was a hit and ran two plus years.  His favorite Off Broadway production, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (scenic design), was designed simultaneously with a season of plays for APA, Association of Producing Artists, the brain child of director/actor Ellis Rabb.  Burlingame designed scenery, lighting and costumes for five productions for them. He then provided all three design functions on Broadway for Philadelphia, Here I Come! For producer David Merrick, he designed a total of 13 plays on Broadway, not to mention serving as chief scenic and lighting assistant on three major musicals for that same producer.

Mozart operas were the true love of his life, and he designed eight productions of that genius’s works, the bulk of them for Maestro George Schick at the Manhattan School of Music’s John Brownlee Opera Theatre.  He also had the privilege of designing a combination of scenery, lights and/or costumes for major opera companies: new productions for divas Joan  Sutherland in Boston, Leontyne Price in San Francisco, Beverly Sills, also in Boston and Martina Arroyo in Cincinnati.

Ten years into his New York career, opportunity knocked, offering the chance to redesign the NYU School of the Arts fledgling Design Department.  With colleagues Oliver Smith and Fred Voelpel he created a school to nourish the individual talents of young designers by exposing them to a wide variety of design teachers -- all working professionals.

After more than twenty years of busily designing on Broadway, Off Broadway, regionally and in opera, he turned all the design skills he had learned into coping with the gradual loss of almost all of his vision.  As his sight went ‘down on dimmer’, he turned to painting very large canvases and designing huge fabric collages, which had a major one man show at the Wadsworth Athaeneum in Hartford. It was ‘touchable art’ and the show was called “Once More with Feeling.”  He has written two books, a theatre memoir: Sets, Lights and Lunacy: A Stage Designer’s Adventures on Broadway and in Opera and Two Seeing Eye Dogs Take Manhattan...a love story . He has been the recipient of two Fulbright research grants for study abroad and has been awarded emeritus status as well as the “Distinguished Teaching Medal” by New York University.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[North London hearing home visits]

These dogs are more than worth praising words, they're effort to mankind is priceless. They guide their blind owners without expecting big rewards in exchange.