The guillotine dropped between you and a friend over coffee and small talk. The first time it dropped it was someone who said

That’s a very big tree and a boy scout could climb it with all the right gear. But it’s a condominium, too. You would disturb families.

You think he’d be more grateful. Neither rich nor poor he’s never wanted for anything. He’s always had what he needs but never had any gratitude

I was out of control, spinning on the whirligig of youth, giddy to be caught in what Kerouac called “the whole mad swirl

In 1961, Newton Minow said television is a vast wasteland. I was reading four papers a day th… and seldom watched television, had no opinion on what he said.

Next to me on the train going home to the suburbs is another guy stuck in a suit reading his paper, a normal-looking guy

Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow in February and says six more weeks of winter. That same day the first moth of spring lands on my storm door

Thirty years ago, long before ISIS started executing Kurds, Muslims and Christians, I hired a Pakistani Muslim as an art director in Chicago. I was an Irish Catholic editor putting out ...

It’s not Clyde who sleeps in a different doorway every night to avoid the cops and it’s not Wayne who sleeps in the

It isn’t a flophouse where Fred lives now but he calls it that a month after moving in and seeing his fellow

I turn the porch light on at 4 a.m… to see if a miracle’s occurred and the paper’s landed somewhere in the snow blanketing our lawn. Instead I see a clump on the mat

The nice thing about crossword puz… as an obsession, Phil tells Bill,… keep you away from other obsession… that might engage your attention a… benefit no one. For example

We write the stories of our lives between the bookends of birth and death They stay on the shelf

She walks the rack of bright frock… as her husband, an Angus aging, paws at the carpet behind her. She wants the right dress to make verdant again the hills

Perhaps there should be a hard rock band called myasthenia gravis. A rare disease for which there is no cure, MG doesn’t kill anyone right away but unmanaged it’s hard to live with. In ...