With all the passion and angst and fear and — in some quarters joy — attending the presidential election this year, it’s easy to forget Tip O’Neill’s favorite maxim: All politics is local. Of course presidential elections matter (see Supreme Court), but in my view, real change bubbles up, it doesn’t trickle down. Attention must […]

We get horrified. We get sad. We get voyeuristic—we want the details. We get angry. We want this never to happen again. We blame. It goes away. And it happens again. We’re doing something wrong. That’s what I know for sure. I have opinions about that, but everybody does right about now; it just sort […]

Some people talk about Holocaust fatigue—I’ve felt it myself. And then I found myself in a beautiful apartment, on the 49th floor, with glorious views of Lake Michigan, noshing and celebrating the publication of The House in Prague, by Anna Nessy Perlberg. The event was sponsored by Lincoln Park Village, and the fantastic space was […]

Beth and I bicycled to the White Sox game again yesterday, this time with our neighborhood friends Jim and Janet. The last time I posted about riding our tandem bicycle to a White Sox game, some people commented on how brave we were. I’m not sure if they were referring to traffic or that somehow it’s unsafe down […]

This is totally anecdotal. Subjective. Not data driven. But I’m pretty sure that people are gradually losing the art of conversation. Not that we don’t talk. I think we talk more than ever. But it seems to me that we too often talk at each other, not with. We’re flashing aural bumper stickers at each […]