25 naked squirming ten year old boys standing with their toes probing the edge of the Olympic sized swimming pool in the sticky chlorinated warmth on the day before Thanksgiving.

Naked swimming was standard practice for the boys. The girls wore black, shapeless suits. But… Read full post »

They don't know who did it. They don't know why. But sometime between late Friday and early Saturday; someone broke a stained glass window in the church, ran a garden hose inside, turned on the water and let it run.

The church is located in an a well off neighborhood.… Read full post »

Mike Royko was at the far side of the big table in the back of the smoky old tavern on North Avenue in Chicago just a few blocks from the Lake. Head down. Scribbling in a ten cent notebook. He didn’t say anything when I told everybody at the… Read full post »

The doorbell rang. I knew it had to be Oprah.  She always showed up at just the wrong times. Like she had some sort of female radar for knowing when my wife was gone. And I felt like being alone.

Usually I didn’t mind. But tonight I had just settled… Read full post »

You could once smell chocolate shimmering through the air at

the spot they found the body, face down in the river. Otherwise,

at this death scene, you’d be alone. A kind of alone that’s unique

because you’d also be smack in the middle of 8… Read full post »

“For no particular reason this afternoon

I am listening to Johnny Hartman

Whose dark voice can curl around

The concepts of love, beauty and foolishness

Like no one else’s can.

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette

Someone left burning on a baby grand pi… Read full post »

Finding more work. Or any work in 2009 as the true unemployment rate tops 25% in some areas of the country ---is mostly about rejection.

95% of the time you'll get no answer back on any type of inquiry.

That's not you. That's the way the system is structured. The decision… Read full post »

She is a bridge building angel. But that won’t make a headline.

The “cause” will grab the headline. Because there are no gay

women Bishops in the Episcopal Church. Not yet.

But the headline grabbed by the "cause" has nothing to do with her work.

Her work… Read full post »

Looking at each other straight in the eye.

Just like back then.

God holds up a mirror, we share a smile of distance and years.

"Yes. That was us."

Once again.

Shelter from the storm.

They took the kids with them to commit the crime.

Sunday night, just after dark, they piled the three kids in the old Ford van and went out to do a burglary.

Old Irving Park, the Chicago neighborhood they picked, is a wide lawn, double lot, tree shaded… Read full post »

I know there’s been no official announcement. But is it ever really too early to start sucking up?

So let me just say, “We’re glad you’re here.”

I’m sure you have a wonderful pedigree. Titles, experience at another on-l… Read full post »

Where are the giggles in indifference? Is is fun to watch people's pain?

Would William Randolph Hearst be proud? Or at least Orson Wells?

Just how frightened are you? What's a better choice, money or control?

Is it fun to never answer? Or is that just what you do?

Are… Read full post »

Here’s a war story you won’t find anywhere else. Because there is no other Chad.

There are no politics here. Just a person. And his family. He wrote the note to 25 people. I was one of those 25.  Perhaps there is someone you'd like to share this with… Read full post »

Shurlacher spent much of the evening looking for clues.

Or saying things like "Hey Jimmy, my hammies are tight. Would you stretch me out real quick?"

At one point a 4 foot Dracula peeled off from the throng of kids and parents strolling down the darkened sidewalk outside, walked t… Read full post »

When my wife pulled the email off our printer at 5:30 this past Friday, telling her that she had been fired, she had no idea that she was now part of the $56.4 million dollar a week problem of wage theft across the United States.

Those of you who still… Read full post »

Put yourself back a couple hundred years ago on a creaking

schooner tossed by towering walls of terrifying waves that could

crush you and your dank smelling ship as if you were a single

drop of rain.

Huddled below deck, the black eyed brooding man next… Read full post »

Wednesday the phone never rang.

Thursday morning I picked it up and the line was dead. They had turned it off. The internet had been gone for a week or two. And it was getting cold; but the house kept me from the wind.

She… Read full post »

Pizza once sucked people into Chicago like a gigantic red tomato shaped magnet.

Back when everyone had regular jobs and no one had their hand stuck in your pocket grabbing at your health care; Chicago Style Pizza rivaled a trip to the Chicago museums, a walk down Michigan A… Read full post »

Turn this up real loud and start thinking about Cartouche.

Forget what you see on the video. It’s really not important. Camera misses the real story up till the very end anyway. Look at the stars instead.

Or better yet. . . .

Just listen. And think about how… Read full post »

Gertrude Kasebier thought so. In 1897 she was publicly advising women that photography could be a “gratifying and profitable success.”

 This was new. On all sorts of levels. This was new.

The print above, &ldquo… Read full post »

“I always thought, “ I met her eyes directly, “that explosive sex would happen with Betsy Ann.”

Jill never knew Betsy Ann. But she knew the story. “Who says,” she told me the first time I told it, “that corporate Ameri… Read full post »

The day I saw her again was one of those grand days of early autumn. The leaves were just beginning to fade into the burned orange, brown and yellow music of fall. The wind bore just a tinge of sadness from the memories of a lost summer song.

And this. .… Read full post »