My first job out of school was as a counselor, a

“Mental Health Worker” on the adolescent inpatient

ward of a major Chicago hospital. We took care of the

kids the other 23 hours a day when they weren’t

seeing their shrinks. 

Located on… Read full post »

5 minutes ago, the IOC slammed Chicago to the mat with a first round elimination from the bid to host the 2016 Olympics.

We lost.

The sputtering, half baked, shoddy journalistic shreiks of "Why?" will come. America is still fighting 2 wars. We've yet to make back all the fri… Read full post »

 The Charlie Manson look alike on the right? He was my first.

The guy on the left with the happening ripped jeans---that's me. Long before kids in New York were paying top dollar for that look

When the picture was taken; it hadn't started yet.

He likes to tell the… Read full post »

(Update: The 18.00 charge was officially approved this morning.) 

Just before the people who run the Art Institute of Chicago announced that they were really sorry; but they were thinking about raising the admission price to $18.00 a day; we also heard an estimate that there… Read full post »

 LONG PAST SNOWY NIGHTS

First Dream.

It’s coming. Like a train through the snow. I don’t know what it is: but it’s coming.

In the first dream, you were gone from even memories of home.  Couldn’t feel your feet crunch the snow. Just the stin… Read full post »

“And you are?  . . . . .” asked the first of what looked like many receptionists standing guard on the outer reaches of the Oval Office of President Barack Obama.

It was raining hard in Washington DC. I didn’t have a power broker raincoat, so my only… Read full post »

When do the last really get to go first? When do those most vulnerable get to feel safe? What time does that happen? Here in Chicago, will it be marked in central standard time?

There is a moment, driving a cab all night, around 4:15- 4:30 in the morning, when… Read full post »

When Rep Joe Wilson, America’s new poster child for impotent rage, called the White House last night to apologize for his outburst; the President was busy.

I’m guessing there was a game on. Or he was reading to one of the kids. Or he and Michelle had snuck… Read full post »

He had to have been cold. Bitter cold. He was from Lubbock Texas. And there he was chartering this tiny 4 seat Beech Craft plane in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, outside of Clear… Read full post »

Her glass eye never bothered me. But killing me off with a heart attack? 

That was a problem.

This is a true love story because I was looking for true love. Or, like the previous marriage, some reasonable facsimile.

But the bright sunlight of truth fades… Read full post »

Can you really teach an artist to do this?

Is this really teachable?

 Baseball? 

Baseball trickles slowly into your bloodstream from listening.

 Every year the music of baseball becomes fain… Read full post »

Dear Mom,

If one single soul reads this, nods their heads and says Yes: it’s in honor of you.

Because your kid wrote it.

You know we can’t be there for your 80^th.  And you know why. So may this message, dug from way down deep,  … Read full post »

(Repost from October 2008) 

Malia Obama probably wasn’t sure if her Dad would make it home from work to watch her soccer game this past Friday night. 

He’s been pretty busy lately.

But her Mom and her little sister would be there.  

The flow of… Read full post »

She lays a yellow daffodil on the blue plastic dashboard of the old green Honda.

Pillows, blankets, towels in the back seat.

What’s left of their clothes in the trunk.

“See?” she says.

Just like home.

Not homeless. Just houseless.

I might think like a 20 year old boy sometimes but. . . .

 Is it money?  

The stomach churning gulp down the economic roller coaster.

Plummeting from a flimsy superstructure of a 401k stock filled future to a hard… Read full post »

Just before the sun rose over the Lake I heard,”Roger, you better come downstairs. You've got to see this."

I figured it would… Read full post »

That golden teenage smile when she looked up from the bench on the sideline of the soccer field into the stands and yelled to me “Hey, you’re not gonna die on me or anything, are you?”

The true music of spring.

Spring usually stumbles into Chicago and… Read full post »

It started with the tiny bubbling pops and smell of coffee percolating. An old silver coffee pot. In the Novak’s kitchen.

Who owns a coffee percolator in 2009?   Much less one that l… Read full post »

One tiny snippet of a phrase. It did not make FOX, CNN, Huffington Post or any of the coverage of yesterday’s speech by the President at Notre Dame. I didn’t catch it till I read the transcript afterwards.

Yet the echoes of this phrase have a legacy that… Read full post »

Now that it’s done; I can’t keep it secret. Not something this big.

Perhaps it was even a crime. Or maybe just a sin. I’m just not sure.

Only thing I’m sure of is that I suck at keeping secrets. I can keep a confidence. Tell me not to… Read full post »

Round about the time Meryl Streep left high school; my parents left Chicago for New Jersey, letting  me stay put to finish my high school; and moved, with my younger siblings, into a home perched on the same tree shaded road that gently circled the site where an old fort… Read full post »

The dinner at the White House had been that that blend of silver candlestick elegance and nourishing simplicity that always graced Mary Todd Lincoln’s table.

News from back home in Illinois, delivered so gently by Gary’s Mom, had even sparked a tiny smile and slight p… Read full post »