With baseball season coming to a close, I asked writers in the class I lead via Zoom to choose a baseball term to use as a title for (and the subject of) an essay. A retired school teacher who was active in her union chose “Strike,” a writer who shoplifted as a kid chose “Caught […]

I am pleased to Welcome Bill Gordon back as a guest blogger today. Born and raised in Kansas, Bill lived all over the country during his nearly 50-year career in library and association management. When he retired in 2002, he was the Executive Director of The American Library Association, located here in Chicago, and has called […]

A few days ago, three bottles of wine arrived from Oregon. We haven’t sampled them yet—they deserve a special occasion, equal to the story of how we got them. It all started at a White Sox game a few weeks ago … no, that’s not true. It all started at Hackney’s, a local bar/restaurant that […]

This week I learned that one of the 16 identified victims of the Surfside collapse was only 26 years old. From the Miami Herald: Luis Bermúdez, a 26-year-old man from Puerto Rico and 7th floor resident of Champlain Towers South, was killed in the collapse, according to family members who announced his death on social […]

You can live in a big city for years and miss some of its gems. We’ve been in Chicago since 2003 and somehow, we’d never been to the Japanese Garden—The Garden of the Phoenix. Until this past Sunday, that is, when we climbed in the back seat of our friend’s sedan for a little urban […]