Veterans Day Tribute: A mother’s letter to her soldier son
In honor of Veterans Day, I’m posting “Words, War, Worry,” an essay I wrote honoring our servicemen and women and the mothers who love them and fret over their safety.
Halloween and “cultural appropriation”
Halloween costumes, when I was a kid in the 1950s, were not store-bought, at least not in my in my family. Halloween was an opportunity to be creative; to bring an idea to life. My dad loved to scope out whatever interesting or unusual items he could find at Goodwill, Salvation Army, and thrift stores.
True love: The first man I’d like to marry…
Reading my Mom's 1941 diary entries of dating my dad is like listening in on a BFF conversation. In my upcoming book, Redlined, I had to streamline my parents' romance–so I could get to the meat of the story of my Chicago neighborhood. But Mom's vivid recollection of her evening with "Fred Gartz" is worth lingering over.
PBS Vietnam and a Chicago history
I hope you've been watching Burns' and Novick's Vietnam War series, because if you haven't, whether you lived through the era or not, it's eye-opening. The division in America was fierce and unrelenting. Division even more visceral than political divisions today. I have vivid memories of this terrifying era...
Animal Tales in Chicago
We were a city family but with the animals one would expect in a rural home. From rats to rabbits, cats to crows, lambs to Lucifer the boa constrictor, we never were without a pet that set my friends' eyes a-goggle. Here's an "outtake" that didn't make it into my book.