Hey, if you missed hearing Red Sox organist Josh Kantor on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me quiz show yesterday, don’t despair. You can hear him every day at 2 p.m. central time when he live streams “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and takes requests from baseball fans listening in. This all happens at 7th-Inning […]

A week ago today I had a short one-on-one conversation with George R.R. Martin. He’s the guy who wrote the book Game of Thrones. And yes, the conversation was quite short. But still…. The back story: last Thursday the Chicago Public Library and Chicago Public Library Foundation honored George R.R. Martin with their Carl Sandburg […]

Y’all have to know by now how I feel about Chicago’s North Side baseball team. Attending a game at Wrigley a couple weekends ago didn’t change anything. For all the improvements that have been made at Wrigley Field, one remains undone: Getting rid of that hideous chain link fence at the top of the outfield […]

There’s a lot of construction going on around our neighborhood, and most of it I’d be happy to do without. Apart from the noise (pile driving, anyone?), the end products are indistinct glassy vertical slab apartment buildings. But, our little stretch of Dearborn remains unchanged, Sandmeyer’s Book Store is still here, we can still walk […]

Has it only been a week since last Monday? Well, yes, of course. But it feels like a lot’s happened. For one, here in Chicago we’re going to have a new mayor. Lori Lightfoot, who was a long shot of a long shot when she announced her candidacy—won the election hands down. It was a […]