No red kettles and bells this December outside the stores at the mall in our suburbs this year. They irritate shoppers,

It’s a matter of beans, says Rosie, 79, legally blind, her fingers dancing across a Bible in braille, when a reporter asks her about

I bring a milkshake every other we… to an old man in a nursing home, a refugee from Germany who paid me 50 cents to cut his grass when I w… a kid in Chicago after WWII.

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

I will never forget him but I can’t remember his name it’s been so long ago. Maybe I never knew it. But I think of him on days

He remembers loving her lost in an orchard peaches, pears, apricots falling on his head every day

From my stool in the diner I watc… the old woman with elm tree arms command the big booth in back and roar for a menu, take a half hour to read it

I turn on the news to see who won the game last night but first the scores from hot spots in the city. Two people are killed

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

When he was just a boy, they took him to the dump to scavenge, bits of metal, any food that might be eaten. When he became a man,

Took the wife to a pancake house the other day. National franchise good food

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

It’s almost time for the Academy… Theaters are showing their best mo… and someone I know wants to go. I used to pay 15 cents to see Roy… in black and white cowboy up on Tr…

Jack, age 6, loves the iPad he uses in kindergarten. He already navigates the net to some degree. But when he accompanied his father to the Post Office, he sat quietly on a bench and re...