If you read Sandra Murillo’s guest post here, you know that the 2012 London Paralympic Games had their opening ceremonies last night. The theme for this year’s Paralympic games is scientific discovery, so Stephen Hawking was the obvious choice for narrator. From a story in the London Telegraph: The show began with Prof Hawking’s familiar […]

Charlie Trotter’s, a five-star restaurant here in Chicago, is closing its doors for good this Friday, August 31. Laura Martinez, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, has been working at the iconic restaurant for more than two years, and now she’s having a hard time finding a new job. Most people with a prestigious cooking […]

My brother’s in town, and he brought his trombone! Doug graduated from high school the year I was born, and I grew up listening to the jazz records he left behind when he embarked on his music career. Louis Armstrong, Hot Five and Hot Seven. King Oliver. Lil Hardin. My sisters and I went with […]

Last week I asked my memoir-writing students to pick a song, any song, and use that song title as the topic for their next essay. Take “All Shook Up,” for example. With a title like that, you could write about living through an earthquake. Or about a startling event in your lifetime that really left […]

Whitney and I sure met a lot of motivated athletes last weekend at the Summer Military Sport Camp, and as is so often the case when it comes to volunteering, we got far more out of it than we put in. Out of respect for privacy, I won’t be sharing any specifics here about the […]