Dinner in the Field and other stories
I find you can discover your strengths at any age. For example, I find I’m a better writer than I am an editor. I have a full-length draft of a memoir that I’ve devoted countless hours to, and it’s finally finished. I’m anxious to move on to new material. But finishing the book is not the same as completing the project. Doing it right, I’m told, entails a less than...
No Justice No Peace
As Sam and I walked past the Federal Building in Chicago I couldn’t help but think of the drama that took place inside during the Hastert sentencing hearing just weeks ago. The hearings, much anticipated, grabbed the headlines. Our country’s longest standing Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives was exposed as a sex offender. His victims, then teen age students at Yorkville High School, now adults, testified after all...
Bathrooms
This is a touchy subject. I’ve noticed throughout a lifetime of reading, and now with an eye on writing, that what we do in toilets, eliminating bodily waste, is not represented particularly well, if at all, in literature or its contemporary new cousin blogging. I think I know why. You can write about how well you’ve slept, go into great details about meals you’ve eaten, gain readers by your ability...
A Musical Conversation with my Dad
* May 8th was choir appreciation Sunday at our church. Our pastor was out of town at her son’s college graduation and choir members were asked in her absence to deliver responses to one of three questions: Why Church? Why Music? Why Worship? When I saw that simple question: Why Music? in connection with church, I immediately remembered a talk I once had with my Dad on that very subject. ...
The Principals are Wounded. Bring in the Seconds.
So when was the challenge thrown down on this duel that is dominating Illinois politics? I’m not sure. Neither am I sure why it started in the first place. I’ve not shared with you everything I learned about dueling but the dark side of this testosterone charged deadly contest was to sucker an opponent into a contest he was sure to lose. Duels became in that case a legal and...
Dueling: I'm not Talking Banjos.
I think Americans have an abbreviated sense of history and time. It is as if nothing of any real consequence happened before 1776, or at the very earliest 1492. We, and especially our kids (though they tend to think more globally than us) are increasingly rooted in the present moment and the very recent past. So when you say “not so long ago” you almost always get an argument to...
The Real Cost of Gamesmanship
In 2012 at a tax policy conference in Chicago, sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute, moderator Margaret Spellings, former U.S. Secretary of Education, asked Bruce Rauner how people could build a “political constituency for change.” This was his response. “We will crush our economy if we try to spend money on both high-cost, inefficient, bureaucratic, heavily unionized government and a social safety net to help the disadvantaged,” Rauner said....
Illinois is Drowning
I last wrote about Illinois’ finances in January before I left for Florida. I tend to write before out of state trips thinking that while I’m out of the Illinois, away from the bad news, those running the state will come to their senses, find a compromise, pass a budget, and move forward. But when I come back I find the same old stuff going on. There’s only two and...
Such is Life (the French say it better)
The fire burning season inside the shack is drawing to a close. Soon I’ll just turn on the electric space heater for twenty minutes or so and the chill in my small room will be gone. But beginning in early fall until well into spring I build a fire most every day. I have a wood burning stove, the Sardine model, built by Marine Stove Works out on Orcas Island,...
April is Poetry Month
April is poetry month. You may not have been aware of that fact, given the relatively low status of poetry these days. Poets and books of poems are rarely published, and poetry itself seems to be at low ebb, save for the slams of energetic young poets reviving the genre as performance poets, delivering their work orally into microphones for eager crowds of listeners. But kick back with a good...
Road Trip 2016-The End
I can’t figure out Florida. It confuses me somehow. My hotel was on the Interstate, which I wanted to leave, but I had gotten a late start. I felt tired so I slept in, had a banana and a cup of coffee for breakfast at a gas station, filled up and drove onto the on ramp towards Orlando. It was the path of least resistance. I’d strike out into rural...