Wanda Bridgeforth has been coming to my writing class for so long that she’s working on the third volume of her self-published memoir. On the Move includes essays about her years at DuSable High School in Chicago: coming down from the ceiling in swings at a high school dance, schoolmates in tuxes tap dancing at […]
Today, November 22, is the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered back in 1963. You have to be at least 55 years old to sign up for the memoir classes I lead in Chicago, so I knew all my students would remember that day. I couldn’t be sure that all of them would want […]
Every semester Janie Isackson shepherds the DePaul students enrolled in her Explore Chicago: From Halsted to Diversity class onto the Red line in Lincoln Park so they can all come visit me down here in Printers Row. Long Time, No See is required reading for the course, which involves trips to neighborhoods all over Chicago to […]
Back in 2003, the commissioner of Chicago’s Department on Aging showed up at a bookstore event to have me sign a copy of Long Time, No See. Joyce Gallagher must have liked what she read – she phoned me later to invite me to lunch, and in-between bites of egg salad sandwiches at Maxim’s, she […]
Before I left for Denver I had to get some posts ready for the Easter Seals blog to publish while I was away. I used the writers from my downtown Chicago memoir class as an example in a post I wrote for the Easter Seals blog about how important public transportation can be to senior […]