I get a lot of books for Christmas or my birthday, but the writings I've most treasured have been the autobiographies that my wife, Cathy, and our kids David and Sarah have written for me at my request.
For instance, when Sarah was 9, she gave me a three-page memoir that began:
"Hi, my name is Sarah…
Striding purposely around a bend of a park path recently in Washington, D.C., Jim Chianakas suddenly saw before him the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"There it is," he said. "Wow!"
Beside Chianakas, 85, of Princeville, Ill., was his brother George, 86, of Crystal Lake.
The Chianakas brothers were among a group of 100 World War II veterans who had…
This essay will be a chapter in a book about Comiskey Park, edited by Floyd Sullivan, to be published probably in 2013
It's a frigid weekend in March, and I've taken my kids to play in the park – Comiskey Park.
On the infield grass, where Nellie Fox used to scoop up grounders, Sarah is running and…
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 I didn’t do poorly. If I had, there would have been hell to pay from my parents. But I don’t have any…
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 rodents.
Chicago's alleys are older than the city itself. They were laid out as part of a 58-block grid in 1830, three years before Chicago…
Photo by Frank CampAt 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 LORD; the LORD will be passing by.” A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the LORD…
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 I left for anyone who tried to reach me during the 11 days we would be gone.
"Out of contact" was what…