While I was attending New College during my freshman year, I took a political science course taught by President Carter’s former speechwriter. This was only a couple of years after the Carter Administration, and many Democrats were handwringing over What Went Wrong. The speechwriter told…
I’ve got everything I need! That was my neighbor in late December after I asked him if he had a building permit for the apartments he was adding to the back of his house. We bought our house in 2005 a few months before Katrina…
I grew up on a small block in the quiet northwest suburb of Mount Prospect. It was an idyllic place growing up in the 1970s. With the school right down the block, there was a network of families with children of similar ages; I hung…
I gave up a long time ago trying to be friendly to the neighbors. From the front window I can see the guy with the new black GMC, wiping the sides of it down with a soft chamois towel. He stops every once in a…
Editor’s Note: go here for Parts 1-3. 4 And, now, we return to our regularly scheduled programming So, when I picked up Steve Harvey’s book I did so because I needed some ammo to fight off the onslaught of Neanderthals that show up at the house….
If you didn’t catch my earlier post, entitled “Lockdown on Campus,” you can find it here. In a nutshell, Tuesday, Feb. 12, we received reports of a “man with a weapon on campus” and were informed to “seek shelter.” While we faculty and students shit our pants…
Well, finally happened: we got taste of what is probably everyone’s worst fear. Tuesday afternoon a report came across the early-warning system on campus, telling us that a man had been seen with a weapon. I was sitting in my office getting ready for…
In “Get Shorty,” Gene Hackman asks John Travolta’s wise-guy persona, Chili Palmer, whether he’s packing heat. Chili’s reply is quick, and in character. ‘Not really,” he says. Not really. The line is pointed in its brevity, accuracy and ambiguity. Not so the debate over guns…
How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity they crave? — Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President, National Rifle Association (12/21/2012) The aftermath of…
The first chapter of John L. Sheppard’s latest novel Alpha Mike Foxtrot (Paragraph Line Books) drops us into the world of Joe Dugan, who, at 24, has been in the U.S. Army “a while” and is sick of talking about it: “At Walter Reed, that’s…
1 While I was cleaning my apartment recently, I picked my grandfather’s accordion up and played it for a while. I have no idea what I’m doing—I’m not musical—but it makes wonderful sounds. It’s a pleasant way to spend an hour. My grandfather’s family came…