(Author’s note: This article ran as an Opinion Piece in the Chicago Tribune on November 17th, 2022.) She was a tall, thin, thirty-something who walked into the polling place at 6:50 p.m. on Election Day, 2022. I was standing by the door she entered, fulfilling my role as the Democratic Poll Watcher at Good Shephard […]

(Revised and updated for Veteran’s Day, 2022) “Old soldiers never die, they just fade way”- -Gen. Douglas MacArthur addressing a joint session of Congress upon his retirement. (Author’s note: I wrote this story originally in 2016, and my memorable little encounter with the person featured in it seemed an already distant memory. Six years later, […]

This eulogy was written last year, shortly after my brother passed on July 16th, 2021. Over these last few months, there were a lot of things I wanted to say to my brother, but his injuries and the progression of his illness made communication pretty difficult. As some of you may know, I try to […]

How many “standup guys” have you had the good fortune to know in your life’s journey? That person whose sense of humor, inner strength,  and whose shared bottomless life experiences kept your ship upright, when events and upsets threatened to capsize your spirit. That person whose personal needs never seemed to surface. That person perhaps […]

It was in the late 1970’s and we were married about seven or eight years, when the parish priest asked my wife Maureen and I if we could help out with his weekend “Pre-Cana” conference. Would we, he asked, be the “Married Couple?” Pre-Cana (as in the marriage feast in Cana where Jesus can’t disappoint […]

Day or night, it was an amazing vista, the ever-changing skyline of one of the world’s great cities…Chicago. From 2000 until we sold our condo at 15th and State Street in 2018, it was our view, and it never got old. Our condo started out as a weekend retreat for my wife and I, a […]

I have so many happy memories from my childhood, memories that even after more than a few decades can still bring about an easy smile, or even an outright grin. Memories of Christmas mornings with my brothers and sisters, trying with all our collective might not to descend upon a mountain of gifts in the […]

I have been a dad for so long now, I sometimes forget that I was once a son. That’s seems like a long time ago, and it was, but the memories of being my father’s son are a bit complicated, because in a very real sense I and my siblings had two versions of the […]

Comedian Chris Rock once quipped, “The way to stop the killing is to make bullets cost $5,000 each” I think he was on to something. I published this original article almost two years ago, but after this last week in El Paso and Dayton, I felt the need to add to it and try again, […]

The glass suddenly shattered outward in the big window of the General Post Office, known to the locals as the GPO. Armed men, many wearing the yellow armband of Irish Volunteers, others in various military uniforms, had used their rifle butts to announce their arrival. It was the first warlike sound made, the first of […]