Every goddamn day: 04/30/25

Metropolitan Museum of Art      Chicago murders spiked in August 1991, the deadliest month in city history: 120 killings. Almost four a day....

      Are we a community? I must admit, I don't think of the blog's readership as such. They're not a group, but a collection of...

    The oak at left keeps its leaves through marcescence. The maple at right, not so much.       Hasn’t it been a lovely fall? Weather-wise,...

     Maybe the problem is I had just plowed through The Economist's cover story "Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect,...

       Be careful, readers. You never know where these newspaper columns might lead you. For instance, David Roeder’s Chicago Enterprise col...

       O ver a year ago, Rotary Magazine asked me to write something about suicide and handguns. I found a club member affected by this trag...

      Friday's column  ends with a quick gloss on a scene at Grant Park, 15 years ago tonight. A number of readers mentioned it, and I t...