Essays

The other day, I was talking with some friends about movies, and somehow the conversation got onto the film "Elf." There was a point I wanted to make about the [...]

"Orare est laborare." That's the motto of the Benedictine order. It means: Working is praying. By most accounts, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t terribly interested in organized religion. But that’s not to [...]

I grew up in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. I am the oldest of 14 children, and one of my jobs, growing up, was to watch [...]

At 62, I know the creakiness of my body. My knees ache. My back tightens up. Still, I'm in pretty good health. But my baby brother John, who is 57, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]