A 79-year-old writer learned a lot about his fears when I gave “What are you afraid of?” as a writing prompt over Halloween. Loyal blog readers might remember a post I published here last year featuring excerpts from an essay Bob Eisenberg wrote then about his best job ever, when he was 11 years old, […]

I’ve learned a lot about baseball from my husband Mike Knezovich over the years, but one aspect of the game that still confounds me is pitching. Which direction do curve balls curve? What’s the difference between a slider and a cutter? Thanks to our generous friends Don Horvath and Juli Crabtree, we were able to […]

A deadly heat wave hit Chicago twenty years ago. WBEZ (Chicago Public Media) aired stories about the 1995 heatwave all this week, and when I heard they were looking for personal stories from listeners who’d survived the heat wave I encouraged my niece Janet to send one in. “If WBEZ doesn’t use it, I’ll publish […]

Maybe I’m being too harsh? I can’t see? So it’s possible I rely too heavily on the way things sound? I’m walking down the street? Or sitting at our local tavern? Hackneys? And people around me talk? As if they aren’t sure what they’re saying? They ask questions? But never pause for an answer? By […]

Twenty-five short years ago, the United States Capitol had no wheelchair ramps. You read that right. The monument that pretty much defines American equality and justice was inaccessible to people using wheelchairs. In 1990, activists in Washington, D.C. struggled out of their wheelchairs and crawled up the Capitol steps to urge lawmakers to pass the […]