The email came just before Father’s Day last year. A young woman wanted to know how to sign her dad up for my memoir-writing class. The request made me a little nervous. What if her dad didn’t like to write? Didn’t want to write? Couldn’t write? It’d be a gift, she said. A gift for […]

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 […]

If you know Michael Knezovich — or you read his blog posts — you know he has been connected with the passive house movement  for a long time now. He met German-born architect Katrin Klingenberg back in 2001. After Katrin and her partner Mike Kernagis, a builder from America, founded the non-profit PHIUS (Passive House […]

On this Memorial Day, let’s do our very best to honor those who’ve died while serving in the armed forces—let’s stay the hell out of stupid wars from here on out. We’ve been in one war or another for most of my lifetime. All but maybe one (Desert Storm, and even that was probably avoidable) […]

 Just another conversation at the CCAC. This morning, Beth attended the inauguration of new Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. To register for the event, she used an online form that was very intentionally and seamlessly accessible to her computer’s screen reading software. In advance of the event, Beth and everyone with disabilities planning to attend […]