The story you’re about to read is true–none of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, though they’re all spelled correctly. I hope... After a grueling day of podcasting, I take a walk to clear my head and think great…
Around here everyone’s making a big deal out of the fact that the new pope comes from Chicago. Or Dolton–a suburb just south of Chicago. So, close enough... But I have my own personal big deal to make out of Cardinal Robert Francis Prev…
Gotta give The New York Times credit for devoting a healthy chunk of space to the life and work of Leonard Zeskind, who died the other day of cancer. At age 75--too damn young, as far as I’m concerned. Zeskind’s expertise was the right…
To take a break from the political madness of our time, I was reading Maximum Bob, an old Elmore Leonard novel I found in a baby library not far from my home. Classic Leonard. About a bunch of lowlifes in Florida, where lowlifes flourish, who're co…
My dear friend Keith Kelleher is a vintage radical, who’s been on the front lines of just about every cause worth fighting for since I can remember. So I wasn’t surprised to see he’d joined this weekend's march outside of Tesla&rs…
As a kid growing up in the `60s and `70s, I listened to all the hits on my transistor radio as I sat in my bedroom, daydreaming about this, that and the other thing. And of all the voices that came through that radio, the one who sounded the most l…
When President Donnie punished the Associated Press for not obeying his orders, it brought back ancient memories from the `70s, when I began my journalism career at a small newspaper in the suburbs of Connecticut. I was young and naive. My first e…