Tag: chicago
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Reflection: Oh, no. Not again (2025)
In desperation and anger, people were willing to try something new–like Mussolini’s Blackshirts, who marched into Rome in October of that year.
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Memoir: first experiences with Punk (1976)
Last Saturday, as authoritarians in charge continued steering society over the guardrails and into the ditch of savagery and greed, the 20th annual Riotfest took place in Douglass Park, Chicago. The three-day festival features musical acts inspired by and spawned during the Punk rock era, when I was a youngster. It celebrates an attitude of…
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Memoir: Caught professionally off-guard (1987)
My first year of high school teaching was in the all-boys Fenwick, where I taught English and coached the Speech and Debate teams. I’d brought speakers from the community to my classes –war veterans, businessmen, and controversially, an atheist and a communist–to broaden the boys’ minds about the outside world. While the Fenwick fathers indulged…
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Memoir: a stomach-churning event (1976)
But kids who did “drugs”? I was not them. My preferred stupifiant was respectable. Wasn’t it advertised endlessly with catchy jingles? And didn’t the most popular shows drinking on TV?
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Memoir: Rest in peace, Brenda. You never gave yourself away (1978)
Those lyrics described the way you lived your life–with bold individuality, yet also compassion–revolutionary subversion alongside radical acceptance.
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Fantasy dinner: Hello, grandsires (2024)
Dear Great Grandfathers, It’s been 120 years since you were in the full force of your manhood, yet all I have of you are a few stories and characterizations left to me from your grandkids, who were my parents. Please dine with me (presuming your magical embodiment nourishes itself at my favorite French restaurant on…
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Memoir: Mom’s racist heritage (1990)
When I was 12, Mom had been pretty incapacitated for the last decade. We younger kids didn’t learn her prejudices until she got sober, her personality melting out of a frozen block of vodka. Turns out, she harbored some downright racist ideas. She held un-generous feelings towards African-Americans, sorting them all into two camps–the uneducated,…
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Memoir: Encountering NASCAR (1972)
One day when I was 11, dad asked me, “How would you like to fly to Alabama to see the Talladega 500?” He may as well have asked if I wanted to dance the tarantella on Venus. The question made no sense. I craved dad’s company so much that I readily agreed. Dad ran an…
The Wikiness 