When things go right
Years ago, when I was maybe 14, I ended up in a 16-inch softball game on a big field behind Austin High School on the Far West Side. It was [...]
An Easter meditation
Aunt Julia lived a counter-cultural life. That’s her in the 1985 photo above, walking on a wood plank over a small stream far up north in Minnesota. Hard to believe [...]
Book review: “V.” by Thomas Pynchon
Oh, this was a frustrating book for me — V. by Thomas Pynchon. Frustrating because I couldn’t take it all in. I got — understood — enough of V. to [...]
A meditation on Sunday’s readings
In the first reading at mass on Sunday (Isaiah 43: 16-21), Isaiah says: Remember not the events of the past. The things of long ago consider not. See, I am [...]
Book review: “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” by William Cronon
Chicago exploded onto the world in the mid-19th century, rising in a few decades from a lonely frontier outpost to an economic behemoth that, except for New York, exerted more [...]
Book review: “The Judgment of Eve” by Edgar Pangborn
There were more than a few moments when I was reading Edgar Pangborn’s The Judgment of Eve that I feared the 1966 book was heading to a lame conclusion. I [...]
Book Review: “City Spaces: Photographs of Chicago Alleys” by Bob Thall
There are many photo books, such as Bob Thall’s City Spaces: Photographs of Chicago Alleys, that are akin to collections of found poems. A poet creates a found poem using [...]
Book review: “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go can be read on three levels. It can be approached as a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of science. It can [...]
“Lincoln” and me
The movie Lincoln is a strong contender for the Oscar for Best Picture Sunday night, and Daniel Day-Lewis has to be considered the front-runner for Best Actor after portraying the [...]
Book review: “Illinois: Mapping the Prairie State Through History” by Vincent Virga and Scotti McAuliff Cohn
I’m a sucker for map books. Words are a miraculous means developed by humans to communicate what’s inside our heads. Maps are a similarly wonder-full invention. They take landscapes and [...]