Author Archives: Roger Wright

Garrison Keillor does his last Prairie Home Companion tonight. And across the great American landscape, circled around the 3.5 million radios in homes and cars, you just might sense a fading of the light as Keillor’s Lake Woebegone, the town … Continue reading →

Look hard at Van Gogh’s painting of the boots and you begin to breathe in his weary leather sadness from across the centuries. Boots on a walk through time. The boots are pausing for a moment in the dimly lit … Continue reading →

It’s in history books now. And my Mom was there. A young preacher from South Carolina named Jesse Jackson arrived in Chicago, to see blocks and blocks of brutally burned out buildings on the west and south sides of the … Continue reading →

Streetlight spilling down through the basement window, splayed out on the polished wooden bar and framing the forearm stamped with the faded boxy lettering that marked the ancient man forever a 13-year-old boy out of Auschwitz Birkenau. He’d been dead … Continue reading →

My entire adult life, they’ve been “stealing” cars across Chicago and then ransoming them back to the owners. Legally. Or you could see it as “providing a towing service.” A few years back, they slipped into the lot behind the … Continue reading →

Did this really happen? Or is it just a moment in celebrating the Studs Terkel Archive opening its digital doors to all today. Celebrating 45 years of Studs Terkel in conversation with the world. Did this really happen? Alongside the … Continue reading →

It’s been eight years now. But. . . around the time Brenda died, an entire section of a street collapsed just north of church. An underground water main burst, the concrete crumbled, the trees and cars and fire hydrants started … Continue reading →

“Hey, look! Something tiny and green is growing in the tar!” Popping my head through the open trap door to the roof. Pausing just for a moment before hoisting myself up. You, sprawled on your stomach in cutoffs and an … Continue reading →

Renee Fleming and Yo Yo Ma drop by a neighborhood high school in Chicago. Originally published in 2012 on “Open Salon.” Continue reading →

A tribute to Paris Continue reading →