Just got back last night from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois — Mike drove Whitney and me down there so I could give a presentation to a lecture hall of 400+undergraduates enrolled in an Animal Sciences class at the University of Illinois. Inspired by the Pick of the Litter documentary Mike posted about on Monday, I spent a […]

A week ago at this time, Whitney and I were answering questions from third-graders who attend Goudy Elementary, a Public school in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The third graders are part of a Friday “reading buddies” program at Admiral At the Lake, a retirement community where I lead weekly memoir-writing classes. Goudy is near The Admiral. […]

Dear Whitney, Remember when Mike read that New York Times story out loud to the two of us earlier this month? Yes. That one. The article about Seeing Eye dogs, and how a trip to New York City is part of the training we do: The school’s training is done in a suburban setting far […]

Earlier on in my life as a writer I wrote a newspaper story about two Chicago women who’d won a trip to the Academy Awards. When I interviewed the two of them they described trying on dresses for the occasion at a Chicago studio on N. Elston that names dresses after old movie stars. “I […]

By now you’ve heard that more women are running in local elections in the upcoming 2018 midterms than we’ve seen in generations before. What you may not have heard is that one of those women running this year is a friend of ours: Lynn LaPlante is running for Chairman of the DuPage County Board in […]