Apr 112012
 

Nanci Koschman, hope, power, my foolish heart, bill evans

Apr 012012
 
After The Gun Shot

Trayvon Little brother strolls North from shimmering sun kissed palms To a new Jerusalem of icy prairie winds. Anchored by a tower built tall From the dusty bricks of time. Trayvon Little brother strolls inside. Starts to climb Then stops fast. His view His window spilling out grand on to A sweeping golden sunrise Streaks […]

Mar 122012
 

On a warm, windy March afternoon, Keisha is wrestling an overstuffed laundry bag almost as big as she is down to the bus stop on Chicago Avenue. It’s Sunday. Reduced bus service. So she has a 15-20 minute wait. And Sunday is the only day free to make the ¾ mile trip west across the […]

Feb 182012
 

Measuring public corruption is useful. But so is looking out your window. And if the Mayor of Chicago were to look out the window of his home at around 7:30 on any even given morning. Or perhaps walk one block west to Ravenswood Avenue. He’d see Cassie. She walks by my house too. The connection […]

Feb 092012
 
Easy Racism

Racism you can see. VS Racism you can’t see.

Jan 062012
 

There was talk of a movie, starring Humphrey Bogart, after the “Ball Bearing” mission to Sweden was completed and Hitler’s war machine was dealt a crippling blow. Bogart was the name mentioned, in a Washington Times piece, as a likely candidate to play Stanton Griffis. A 57-year-old investment banker who was the central figure in […]

Dec 202011
 

he Selig Polyscope Company was one of the very first movie studios in the country. Located on a 200 acre parcel in what is now a residential area of Chicago, Selig produced the first version of Chicago native L. Frank Baum’s ‘Wizard of Oz.” In the flickering candlelight, she sat rocking the baby at the […]

Dec 082011
 

Test the actual soil underlying Chicago City Hall. No one would be surprised if trace elements of ethical lapses were somehow ingrained in the earth. It’s been that way since the first Indian standing watch one dark night on the shores of the Big Lake watched the first smiling white man jump from the canoe, […]

Nov 232011
 
Thanksgiving Spirits

Just before she snapped this picture, I had brushed some dirt off your gravestone. We were in Asheville, North Carolina. Breathing in that pure mountain air like it was a cool, cleansing tonic that really could clear tubercular lungs. I wondered if that air could make me write like you. As I knelt at your […]