Confessions of a Community Supported Agriculture failure
As the growing seasons draws to a close, hear my confession: I am a CSA failure. Oh, how I wanted to love Community Supported Agriculture. What a great idea, I've...
All Stories
Defending the inability to do a severe closet purge
What I am about to suggest may shock you. It runs counter to a near-universal way of thinking. It goes against exhortations in countless books and columns, including some I've...
2 former Cook County Jail inmates become tutors at Literacy Chicago
It could have been a game show, or a variation on Hangman. A word on a whiteboard, a highly vocal studio audience and at the front, with markers in hands,...
Movie version of ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E’ has women recalling old crushes
"The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," which opened this weekend, pays homage to the 1960s TV show — ILLYA!!! "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," a modern-day movie version of the Cold War-era spy...
Chicago activist begins Oreo boycott to protest Mondelez layoff plans
Social activism can require sacrifice. So when veteran Chicago activist Marilyn Katz heard the recent announcement by Mondelez International that it was going to lay off half its 1,200 employees...
A perfect piece of fruit produces memory that lasted years — and frustration
For me, it happened on a rural road in southern Illinois. I stopped at what looked like the smallest farm stand on earth — a lone old man sitting on...
Pedaling a bike, peddling an idea through Chicago’s neighborhoods
A bike ride on this balmy summer evening would have been lovely on the lakefront, delicious in a wooded forest preserve. But this was even better, because we were riding...
Decades later, black homebuyers’ battle for justice back in spotlight
His name, along with his son's, is posted above the front door of his North Lawndale two-flat: C. AND T. ROSS. Clyde Ross owns this building, an elegant graystone decorated...
Archaeologists hunt history in Cook County forest preserves
Indiana Jones can have Egypt. This band of archaeological surveyors has the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. And the other day they were making their swashbuckling way through a...
Fan of SnackWell’s Devil’s Food Cookie Cakes grapples with new version
Change is good, they say. But what if change comes to something you have long treasured — a cherished daily companion, a regular cause for happiness, a reliable antidote to...