Some el stops in Chicago make it easy to cross busy streets. I regularly use the underground blue line stop near our apartment this way — Whitney guides me down the steps on the south side, we walk underneath Congress to get to the exit that feeds out on the north side, and, bingo! We’ve […]

Over 50 is where it’s at, man. This excerpt from a Chicago Sun Times review of the Soul Train concert I went to Monday night explains why: Slightly-more-than-middle-aged women swooned to Marshall Thompson and the Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl” and “Have You Seen Her,” no doubt knocked out by the trio’s sartorial splendor of pumpkin-colored suits […]

Sound the trumpets! The doc says I can retire the clodhoppers!! No restrictions! I can walk long distances, swim, ride the tandem, even hop on the train to Elmhurst to visit Flo. How to celebrate my healing? That’s easy. I’m gonna strap on my dancin’ shoes, strut down to Millennium Park and shake my groove […]

The writers in the memoir class I teach grew up on Chicago’s south side, in the Philippines, on farms, as military brats, in plush Chicago suburbs. They are Catholic, Jewish, agnostic. One thing these seniors all have in common? They are resourceful. Take Myrna. She lives in a Chicago neighborhood called Lincoln Park, and When […]

A few weeks ago I got an email from a photographer who said he takes portraits of people who can’t see. “I am emailing you to enquire if you would be interested in participating in the project,” he wrote. “It would be an honor to take your picture!” Uh-oh, I thought. Another nutjob who heard […]