Widow in a rocker pets her calico cat long strokes slowly. With the cat purring and the widow humming

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...

The police have announced the arrest of an ecumenical fellow who in less than two weeks in the middle of the night set fir… to seven churches in St. Louis.

Departures from the norm we are. Not just you and me but

Walking very slowly, ancient Wall… right behind his ancient Molly who… stepping down the garden path, her first time out in weeks, wobbly still on her new knee.

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

When you were a boy in 1948 living on a block of bungalows in Chicago right after WWII you had a red wagon you pulled behind your mother

The Sixties almost killed Will, a wasted man who sobered up long enough to vote for JFK. And he’d have voted for RFK if he hadn’t been killed as well.

You think it’s easy, embalming bodies in these nightmares I have every night, bodies a vulture

Handsome is as handsome does, Jeanie always said, when Donald was away on business.

The Nazis call her Hilda, this ancient woman who makes a simple living in a bathroom in Berlin giving high colonics

The soup kitchen opens an hour late. The rain finally stops and the hungry file in. They’ve had a long wait.

For years Willie has saved his mo… investing it in stocks and bonds, waiting to sit in his recliner each quarter with a martini reviewing his profits.

Last night my recliner broke. I used the lever to lean back and I went way back, almost heels over head. A shock. I hate going to the recliner store

When Bernie wakes at 6 a.m. there’s a piano on his chest and Erroll Garner’s playing “Mist… Sinatra’s on the headboard improvising lyrics