Listen. Pete Seeger is singing a song for Mom’s Birthday that’s bigger than all of us. Starts out—“ Come and take a walk with me, thru this green and growing land” Mom at any age is listening, She hears Seeger sing Phil Ochs’ lyrics,“Here is a land full of power and glory”Beauty that words cannot […]
WORLDS BEST ACTRESS? (Sorry Meryl. It was close.) Years ago. Walking past the upscale Italian restaurant on Halsted Street in Chicago. Rain coming soon. And in the window of this place, sitting by herself at a table for one, was the most ferocious looking, raggedly dressed street woman I’d ever seen. Crossing Halsted I couldn’t […]
Just west of Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Around the corner from Diner Grill. There is a tent that looks like it could have been Ulysses S. Grant’s battlefield headquarters. Or maybe someplace Hemingway would stay on a hunting trip to the green fields of Africa. Through the screens you can see what looks like another […]
I hear Jackson Browne sing, “The road is filled with homeless souls.” How breathtakingly horrific it must be to grab your kids and just start walking. I think how their feet must hurt. The choice is death or blisters on your feet. The stunning loss of human dignity in the hopes of survival. I […]
It’s just her now. The two of them built the retail business together over 35 years. Now she counts the days since one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals could not help him and he died. She counts the days since he’s been gone and when the store is empty she cries. He was the […]
It was hot in Chicago on the day Aretha Franklin died. Probably hot in Detroit as well. And I wondered if maybe on her way to go sing for the angels, Aretha stopped to sit for a moment, and took a rest, at Buckingham Fountain. One of her favorite places in Chicago. Sometimes she’d go […]
It’s so much more than the first voice you hear every workday morning over the past forty some years. This Gift. Carl Grapentine, morning guy on Chicago’s WFMT is calling it a career. Friday is his last show. Last meeting of the “5:58 Club” called to order with his warm and cheery voice biding […]
Where did he get the broom? Take a few steps off our front porch and walk ½ a block west on Grace Street and you’ll see him. Sprawled out on blankets in a pool of light underneath the viaduct that carries the roaring Metra commuter train up to the northern suburbs where I grew up […]
The Chicago hospital is gone. Battered by the dangling iron wrecking ball, crushed and carted gone. Till all that remains are the shimmering waves of dirty gray heat, like a south Texas sun beating down right this moment on a converted Walmart store where America now stores children in aisles of shame and empty boxes […]
Here’s Grand Nephew James! His Mom and Great Grandmother–my Mom. And some music that lives on. Honoring peace worldwide. https://youtu.be/43F8-xMkAS4