When you’re a pharmacist you don’t ask customers how they’re doing. You know from the meds they pick up

In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A soc...

It’s Monday not Sunday and the frail lady in black is the only person in the pews. She walked in with

It’s an old clock hanging on a wall in a small room on the third floor. We go up there

A homeless man hangs himself from a tree at night in the city to close out the year. At dawn a passerby uses

Tattoos were anathema in ‘52 on any man who got one after an all-night drunk or to impress a girlfriend. But not a word was spoken to

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

Joe went to the mall yesterday and found a big tent pitched at the head of the drive. Someone selling fireworks. The sign said discounts

A minister’s son married a deacon’s daughter after a long courtship. It was difficult at times doing everything right

When Molly and Tim got married they spent hours talking about everything they had to get done. And indeed they got a lot done. Now their kids have families

A bright winter day and not a leaf left on this skeleton tree teeming with sparrows

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...

Bill’s a conservative upset that Meals on Wheels and Medicaid face possible cuts in America’s budget. He yells to colleagues

Red, yellow, brown work well together in a portrait of society. Add black, no problem. But if we remove the red,