A long time ago you bothered him somehow. Since then he has bothered you back. You don’t know how or

“Damn the vernal equinox! Full speed ahead!” is all that Cootie Murphy would ever say when he sat on the last stool at the end of the bar in The Stag & Doe Inn. He wouldn’t say it very ...

Some emails are more difficult to receive from a child long out of college

The two weeks I spent in that small town on assignment, I saw no blacks except for two older women regal in every way,

Melanie was waiting for the light… at 12th and Broadway when a large… a big truck and 10 gallon hat roar… right beside her. His truck cab lo… above her old Buick. His stereo b…

In a storefront laundry on North Clark Street brown draperies release this quiet man who has my shirts.

Paul’s not a veteran of Vietnam but he goes there in his dreams to watch his brother Tim walk in hazy streams sprayed with Agent Orange before he

Wally Anderson, father of three daughters, was not pleased after reading an email from Shelly, his eldest, a week before Father’s Day. He thought she might be coming to visit for the ho...

Jimmy and Billy, two young men in kindergarten, went home from school every day just before noon. They lived in a small town in Nebraska, in the middle of farm country. It was the 1950s...

Every four years I vote and every four years for the last 40 years the same lady has signed me in

Two people so different can view the poor through different lenses and offer a solution but not the same solution

When Homer stubs his toe or bumps his elbow, the pain is always piercing but Homer’s a pious man so swearing isn’t for him.

The uncommon is common in America today. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Seinfeld

Standing in line behind a father and his little boy waiting to reach the register

He doesn’t understand distressed j… Designer jeans with rents and tear… look like the rags he grew up in wearing other people’s discards. His mother got his jeans from a ch…