Column: Winter’s coming. The secret to surviving it in a pandemic? Pace yourself.
Labor Day in the Pandemic Year of 2020 has come and gone, and by the day after, Tuesday, something had changed. You could feel it and hear it, some shift...
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2020 is winding down, but the drama isn’t: Read these books now to make sense of it
Trainwreck. Demented. A dumpster fire of a year. We've all seen the social media memes, and most of us are ready to be done with 2020. But it isn't over...
Column: Show some love. Be good to each other. A Park Ridge cafe owner inspires us on Labor Day
Last Tuesday, in a move that should inspire bosses everywhere, Ryan Tracy closed his two businesses in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge to give his staff a mental health...
Column: It’s September. Already. Again. This year many wish we could skip ahead as an election and cabin fever loom.
It's September. Already. Again. But not just any September, not just the September of wistful songs and melancholy poems. Not just that familiar kind of September that makes us speak...
Column: The Chicago Botanic Garden, a good chair and a poem called ‘Hope’: 9 things to like right now
Every now and then I make a list of things I like. Here's one for the waning summer of 2020. 1. The Chicago Botanic Garden It's a long drive for...
Column: ‘America, America, God sheds His grace on me’: A convention TrumPoem
This is the latest in my occasional series of TrumPoems chronicling the presidency of Donald Trump, based, as always, on his own words and actions. AMERICA, AMERICA A hurricane named...
Column: We die alone, we Zoom alone. But a Zoom memorial can bring the living together.
One day this April, a week before her 63rd birthday, when the pandemic was still a fresh shock, my sister-in-law Eloise Kinney sent me an email. "Mary," it began. "Headlines...
Column: Is 2020 the worst year ever?
2020. Worst year ever. You've heard that, haven't you? Maybe even said it. I hear it from friends and on social media, from commentators on the news. It's the name...
Column: The thrill of Kamala Harris’ rise comes with a dash of sorrow
We're number 2! We're number 2! There was a lot of cheering the other day when Joe Biden announced that Kamala Harris would be his running mate, the number 2...
Column: USPS postal carriers brave the storm, and not just the political one
The wind was whipping through the trees when Dave Roche glanced out his window Monday afternoon and saw the sight he sees at that hour almost every day, come snow...