Bill would come every Sunday to his mother’s house after a tough divorce. He’d bring his laundry for his mother to do and then he’d devour the roast beef dinner she always made for him....

Little Nora and Grandpa Bill sit on swings in Grandma’s garden. A hummingbird arrives to sample the brilliant flowers at this buff… Grandpa Bill sees a teaching mome…

The poor are hungry in America. Their numbers would fill stadiums throughout this prosperous land. And feral cats are running wild, eating songbirds in our yards,

Simply because anchors have little to say means they’ll keep saying it till others believe. This is America.

In a long marriage couples communicate in so many ways, often in silence. In recent years I rise very early and now leave post-it notes

A drunk on the subway tells another drunk something a bartender told him. He says if the rich guy wins, it will be the first time

Yes, fifty years ago today it happened. Quite a story. He was your favorite uncle and he liked you a lot too. You were all torn up.

When you have an hour to live what matters then is Christ in a pyx in the vest pocket

I have a friend, old and retired, who keeps busy helping the poor. Let’s call him Ted because he wants to remain anonymous. Some of his ideas, he says, wouldn’t make many of his neighbo...

twenty-four houses on the same block everyone inside milling about one lost a job

The alarm clock screams at 5 a.m. and I get up to attend a funeral 50 miles away, a long drive back to a corner of Chicago once rife with corned beef and cabbage but

When Martha gets home from cooking class this afternoon, Martin will be gone after 30 years of marriage. Martha won’t know why

Yours is the first email I opened… I appreciate your suggested revisi… to send the work back once I’ve ma… I can tell you spent a lot of time… I’m afraid, however, that I can’t…

Old Sol hires young Abdul, a refugee, to cut his grass and we… Saul tells his neighbor Old Paddy young Abdul does a good job and has a wife and three kids