Finishing Bent Dead in Beloit is like finishing a slice of pizza that makes you first think you are in oregano and tomato sauce heaven. Then something happens. With eyes closed and smiles of sausage and mushroom dreams, you remember why you are so full. You didn’t have a slice. There was a whole pizza […]
On the first cold, gray November day between the up and the down escalators in the Food Court of the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, there is an empty space where the sign to enroll in the Affordable Care Act used to hang. Beneath the sign, behind the table sat two people. Navigators. They helped […]
You think it’s just about a baseball game? A moment ago the Cubs journey to win it all just got stopped cold. And I remember back when we were young guys, my friend Larry and I in a late September, near empty Wrigley Field watching Andre Dawson throw a man out at the plate from […]
Port Arthur Texas? They had giant oil rigs. And it was her hometown. That’s all I knew about the place back then I was a kid, sneaking through the lush, dark snapping bushes that surrounded an outdoor concert venue north of Chicago because she’d be singing that night. And I’d heard things about the way […]
That red dirt, green woods, wet summer smell. As if Wolfe’s soft, stone smile of an angel had come back to offer up a friendly nod and say “Good morning. Got a story here for you.” Again that red dirt smell. And I’m no longer trudging, shoulders slumped, down my city street to work. That […]
In tribute to Jean Wright Haider.
Spiderman’s bright eyes and blonde crew cut just above the tables. Mom and Dad right behind him. When it’s breakfast at S&G’s, the smell of bacon and coffee and skillet meals like art and you’re hungry because everything is good. It’s after the rush, a quiet summer holiday morning, Spiderman drawing smiles from every table. […]
A Tribute to Actor Michael Parks Maybe it’s the rain in Chicago tonight that makes it so easy to wash away the years since I rode that gloriously empty Pacific shoreline. Felt the power, heard the roar of that bike as we sailed across the sand of salt spray dreams. Maybe it’s the rain that […]
“23 million people. That’s like three Chicago’s! All of them loosing health care. “Oh no,” said the guy in the grey raincoat, blending into the Friday morning windy drizzle rush hour throng walking east on Randolph in downtown Chicago. “That 23 million. That’s just the libs counting. And you know how they count. George Soros […]
From the last time Chuck Berry played Chicago. Five, six years ago. . . . ———————————————– When Chuck Berry, 84, collapsed from unknown causes on stage Saturday night in Chicago, the concert venue was not some glitzy down town tourist trap. Berry slumped over his keyboards at the Congress Theater. A 2,900 seat, faded architectural […]