Earlier this summer I spoke at a memorial service for a writer in one of the memoir writing classes I lead at Lincoln Park Village. This week a thank-you note arrived from her daughter, and along with the note she included a copy of an essay her mother had written when I assigned “I Have […]

The newfangled treadmills at the gym I go to have TVs attached, and usually, I try to match my appointment with the treadmill with a baseball game. This past Friday, though, there was no baseball while I was working up a sweat. So as I channel surfed, I bumped into coverage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. […]

Back in college, I took a course called “The History of Communications.” Taught by a Teaching Assistant in the Ph.D. program named Carolyn Marvin (now on the faculty at the Annenberg School at Penn), it was one of those courses that changed the way I looked at things. Forever. The course looked at advances in communications […]

Here in Chicago, the past week started with elation over the Blackhawks winning their third Stanley Cup in six years. But the elation was later  tempered by the news out of South Carolina. I have lots to say about it, too much really, and I’ve found over the past few days that others have said these […]

Beth and I went to a White Sox game last Wednesday courtesy of their opponent that night, the Houston Astros. More specifically, courtesy of the kindness of Kevin Goldstein, and old friend who happens to be a bigwig in the Astros front office. (Beth posted about Kevin’s story a couple years ago.) The seats were […]