If you want to know Chicago, you gotta know the grid. If I tell you I live at 6220 North Paulina Street, you know that my two-flat is 62 blocks north of Madison Street, or just under eight miles, the rule of thumb being eight blocks to a...
A conversation with a writer is, almost always, interesting and insightful. During a long career as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, I was paid to talk with many, including Robert Caro, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Russo, Haki Madhubuti...
In his more than four dozen novels, Terry Pratchett was often silly, witty, wacky and goofy. But he was also, always, serious. Pratchett’s delightfully humorous and endlessly readable books weren’t only aimed at getting a laugh. He employed...
Dorothy Day — that radical of 20th century radicals, that voice of conscience in the face of a self-centered, self-indulgent, greedy American culture, that embracer of the neediest, weakest, most damaged of the poor — is identified...
Behind the mask By Patrick T. Reardon (mask) Behind the museum glass, a polished marble scream, frozen, with large round eye openings, pale stone, gray as smoke, worn in ritual by one with sharp edge, honed for soft flesh...
Go By Patrick T. Reardon In remembrance of Maggie Roche, Ben Scheinkopf, George Kresovich and David Reardon Right onto Cermak from Harlem to go west, listening to the dead singer’s song from when she was young, from when I...
The lost tribes, part 3 By Patrick T. Reardon The lost tribes found me alone as she and he stared into each other’s eyes. They found me with drool chafing my chin, a clump of flesh that nervoused her, carried by him like a bag of...
Word By Patrick T. Reardon Declaw the lion King to a plaster saint. Declaw Lincoln to a penny. Declaw Francis to a birdbath. Declaw the man with nails in his wrists. Pull claws from humbly proffered hands. Pull teeth. Pull the skin...
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