Mike’s post last month about using Facebook to mourn for Prince motivated me to ask the writers in the memoir classes I lead to write about a celebrity’s death that made them really sad. “The celebrity can be an author, an artist, an athlete, a musician, an actor, an actress, a political figure, anyone who […]

DJ Mermaid weighs in on the candidates. by DJ Mermaid You have listened to CNN, read the newspaper and watched state primary coverage. You might want to hear someone else’s opinion, though. That is where I come in. Being 9 — almost 10 — I can’t vote in any election. I do, however, have the […]

I’d researched the issues. I’d studied the candidates. It was a primary election, not a general one. Voting yesterday should have been a breeze. And you know what? It was! I voted on my own in the Illinois primary election yesterday! The Help America Vote Act of 2002 mandated that voting systems provide some way […]

I grew up in a household where politics—paying attention to them, thinking about them, and forming reasoned positions—was not sport, it was an obligation as a citizen. My sister volunteered—at the age of 16—for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and after enduring the heartbreak of seeing her candidate murdered, she ended up working for Sen. […]

All four of the memoir-writing classes I lead for Chicago senior citizens are in full swing again. Their first assignment? 1966. 93-year-old Wanda Bridgeforth piped up immediately after hearing the prompt. “That was a great year!” She came back the next week with an essay about her daughter, Wanda, Jr. getting married in 1966. “I […]