You can make history
Remarks at the January 21, 2010 meeting of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning If you look at a satellite view of this part of the globe, you can see [...]
Then I became a writer
It seems now, looking back, that I sleep-walked through much of my time at St. Thomas Aquinas Grade School in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s Far West Side. I know [...]
The lowly alley — shaper of Chicago
All, hail the lowly alley! Shaper of Chicago, home of garbage and gardens, danger and Dumpsters, the arena of kickball, hoops and gossip, of scavengers and shortcuts, of neighbors and [...]
10 reasons why kids at Mass are great preachers
At St. Gertrude Church, my home parish, our pastor emeritus is a brilliant guy who still gives homilies that are both witty and profound, erudite and down-to-earth. His replacement, our [...]
Book Review: A People’s History of the United States — from 1492 to the Present by Howard Zinn
There is much in this book that's infuriating. I'm not referring to the myriad ways in which the people of the United States (and earlier in the American colonies) have [...]
Book Review: A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
If Emily Dickinson had had a sense of humor, she might have written "A Girl Named Zippy." And if she'd been born in 1965 in Indiana. That's when and where [...]
How does God speak to us?
At the mountain of God, Horeb, Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter. Then the LORD said to him, “Go outside and stand on the mountain before [...]
The joy of being out of contact
I was in a hurry. My wife and I were leaving for a vacation in Paris the next day. So I didn't give much thought to the canned email response [...]
Book review: “General Grant by Matthew Arnold, with a Rejoinder by Mark Twain,” edited by John Y. Simon
In 1867, the British poet Matthew Arnold published his 37-line lyric poem "Dover Beach," which concludes with this stanza: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the [...]
Book review: “In Rough Country” by Joyce Carol Oates
I don't usually read books like this, collections of smaller pieces. In this case, six essays and 23 literary reviews. I call them "literary reviews" rather than "book reviews" because, [...]