Book review: “Everest 1953” by Nick Conefrey
The scribbled telegram text, sent by messenger from the top of Mount Everest, was bleak — but also a bit odd. Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop [...]
Poem: Lamentation
Lamentation By Patrick T. Reardon Let Israel now say, let Aaron now say, give thanks, mercy endures, mystery forever his majesty. Bulleted chaste gazelle, backyard cement, [...]
Chicago history: Seven Chicago Books by Non-Chicago Authors
When you’re looking for a good novel about Chicago, you’re most likely to turn to those writers identified as Chicago writers, such as Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March) [...]
Chicago history: The ten best books about Chicago — and a clunker
There are many very good and even great books about Chicago, and, based on my half century of writing about Chicago, here are the ten that, at the moment, I [...]
Poem: Blessed, a poem for a pandemic
Blessed, a poem for a pandemic By Patrick T. Reardon Blessed are the dead and the dying. Blessed, the mourn-filled good-byes to loves behind glass, behind [...]
Book review: “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger
Kristina Gehrmann’s graphic novel version of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle is suitably gritty and oppressive, but probably not ugly enough. I’m not sure it would be possible [...]
Book review: “Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper” by Leo Steinberg
Here is the sad reality at the center of Leo Steinberg’s 2001 book Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper: Of Leonardo’s Last Supper we have only an after-image….[O]f the original surface — [...]
Essay: Lighting a candle of sweet kindness
My friend Mark and his wife Cathy were coming home on a mid-March Saturday from the sad burden of the funeral of their 42-year-old daughter Margaret. Margaret, a wife and [...]
Essay: Haircuts, prison, love and sheltering in place
Cathy gave me a haircut today on the back porch. In our 37 years of marriage, that hasn’t happened before, but we’re not leaving the house for haircuts or [...]
Photos: Calvary Cemetery — 4.25.20
The afternoon was cold, dark and rainy at Calvary Cemetery. Maybe that’s why I ended up in my short walk there, focusing on the textures of things, such as [...]