Column: Where do we find relief in a relentlessly jangling world?
It's relentless, isn't it? When you read the sentence above, what popped to mind? What is the "it" that just won't stop, that won't give you a break, that makes...
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Column: 6 thoughts to brighten Chicago’s gray, gray, gray winter days
Let's take a moment to appreciate grey days. But before we get to all the reasons to savor this soul-sucking, brain-numbing, energy-sapping procession of dreariness in the Midwest, a brief...
Column: The impeachment trial, in true Trump style: A new TrumPoem
This is the latest in my occasional TrumPoems chronicling the rule of President Donald J. Trump, based, as always, on his acts and words. I'm sitting on my throne alone...
Column: From the man who brought you the @MayorEmanuel Twitter parody, a newsletter on Trump’s impeachment
One Friday morning last September, as the Democrats prepared to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Dan Sinker had a thought. As he rode the train to see...
Column: As doomsday looms and impeachment progresses, departed PBS newsman Jim Lehrer’s rules remind us how to be better
Here are three things that happened on Thursday, January 23, 2020. In the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., an impeachment trial was going on. It was aimed at determining whether...
Column: Call it ‘lake-ache,’ the sadness we feel as Chicago’s lakefront vanishes
There's a new form of sadness going around Chicago these days, a grief for our lakefront. You know which lake. In Chicago, it doesn't need a name. We call it...
Column: Goodbye to CityGrounds, a coffeehouse that created a community
For the past nine years, I've spent a shocking amount of my life, mornings mostly, in a little coffeehouse in my neighborhood. It's called CityGrounds. Parked at one of the...
Column: Hey, stop telling us which Democratic candidate is ‘electable’
Stop telling me who's electable and who's not. Tell me why you like the presidential candidate you like or why you hate the one you loathe. Tell me why you...
Column: Your Lyft or Uber driver is vaping weed? What to do? This and other driving questions from the legal weed frontier
On Jan. 1, the day recreational cannabis became legal in Illinois, Michael Halberstam and his partner got in a Lyft headed for O'Hare and immediately noticed that the car reeked...
Column: In the season of purging, think twice before you get rid of those old earrings
It's early January, which means that even as we trudge through the chaos of the daily news half of all Americans are also taking a trip into the past. Many...