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 […]

Hava Hegenbarth volunteers as a puppy-raiser for Leader Dogs, and she’s been following my Safe & Sound blog for years. Hava is retired after a career in the diplomatic service, and after reading a recent post here about a Holocaust survivor, she commented that she, too, had survived a genocide — it happened when she’d […]

After publishing that post about 1968 last week, I have to make a confession: I was a square in the 1960s. While the hippies and peaceniks of that generation were worshipping Jim Morrison and grooving to Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, I was busy at the piano figuring out the arpeggio in […]

A few radio stories I’ve heard lately oughta give NPR listeners an idea of what a powerful – and positive — effect men who are blind can have on their offspring. Let’s start with Bob Ringwald. My brother Doug introduced me to Bob years ago — they’re both jazz musicians, and they play together from […]