Here in Chicago it’s beginning, at last, to feel like January. Yesterday, a sunny Sunday, the temperature only hit 18 at its peak here near the lake, and it was more in the 10 range out in the suburbs. But we dodged what looked like a bad storm—we got rain and not snow and ice […]

We had a mostly wonderful week—we celebrated Christmas with Beth’s family, we celebrated Beth’s birthday, and we traveled to Wisconsin to see our son Gus at his group home, where we found him in terrific spirits. And then I read about this. A 19 year-old college student and a 55-year-old mother of five shot dead […]

As Beth wrote in her Sunday post, we spent a wonderful weekend with our friend Lydia, who moved to Cambridge to take a job with Harvard Magazine. Lydia’s a gifted writer and a solid reporter to boot—she just won an award for this article on the human biome that she wrote for the University of […]

Just got back from a trip to North Carolina, where we attended our first LEGAL gay marriage ceremony on Saturday. You didn’t have to be able to see to know that Patricia and Lori were glowing. The attendees were glowing, too  —  you could feel it in the air. The recent Supreme Court decision was […]

This past week I asked the memoir-writers in my classes to write about “someone special” in honor of the 25th anniversary of The Americans with Disabilities Act. Mary Rigdon wrote about an athlete who uses a wheelchair and said his determination was the impetus for ensuring the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta were open to […]