Trump will never be another Lincoln

The photo op at the White House yesterday was perhaps the most absurd and unsettling moment I can imagine. Peaceful citizens standing in front of the White House, doing nothing more than peacefully assembling as the First Amendment allows, were tear gassed and shot at with projectiles, so that the national disgrace that is Donald

It’s all hands on deck

On the first day of this new year, I met up with a cousin I hadn’t seen in a very long time. He was in Chicago with his family, and we met up to see a few sights and–in true Chicago fashion–have some deep dish pizza. It was a great day, and I was happy

Pick up a pen, start writing

My heroes are writers. I’ve come to realize this in recent years, probably in some small part because of my experiences with this blog. It will be five years next month that I took the plunge and started collecting my thoughts and stories in one place. And I wish I had started it earlier than

Beauty with a side of thought

Last night, I was watching my older daughter’s play at an outdoor venue in the suburbs. The previous two shows had been cancelled because of rain (such are the perils of outdoor performance), and it looked questionable whether last night’s show would meet with the same fate. But the huge puffy clouds in the sky

Paying the price

Over the weekend, my young daughter had a swimming lesson at a park district pool here in Chicago. As she was in the water, I had a chance to do a bit of wandering, and before I knew it I found myself in a used bookstore that I hadn’t known about before. My love for

Trophybox

My daughter had a swim lesson at a swimming pool this afternoon. The heat seems to have broken, for now, and it was actually nice to have a summer day without all the sweat. As my daughter was in the pool, kicking and stroking and generally having fun, I went to the fieldhouse of the

My favorite founder, and a place that shares his name

Friday morning, Paine Hollow, Wellfleet, Mass. No American ever had a better year than Thomas Paine did in 1776. That’s a pretty presumptuous thing to say, but I believe it, all the same. And since I’m the jury on this one, nobody’s going to change my mind about it, either. Paine was plucked out of