Throughout my childhood in a small town outside Chicago, I idolized just three larger-than-life figures: Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley and Leadbelly, aka “Huddie Ledbetter”. Everything and everyone else in popular culture washed over me. I worshipped each god in this trinity, so to speak, in equal strength and measure. Elvis was the problematic idol—he had […]
A hot topic recently was the First Pooch. The media roiled with speculation: what kind of dog would the President-elect’s family choose? The President-to-be told the press that the family dog would likely come from an animal shelter, adding, “It will probably be a mutt—like me.” To some, calling oneself a “mutt” smacks of self-deprecation. […]
Thanks one and all for the thoughtful feedback about Space Genie. It was meant to be light-hearted. Please understand I shall not post readers’ mean-spirited attacks or dyspeptic rants. Sorry if I slightly missed the mark. I appreciate “true believers” and understand your passions. Maybe I’m a bit the same way. I was attempting humor, […]
Many years ago, as a result of library research on the great German poet Else Lasker-Schuler, I came across many essays about her and her colleagues. What struck me most was their unshakeable love of Germany. Even after the Holocaust, despite their Jewish identity and living in exile with the memories of dead friends and […]
May Theilgaard Watts Reading The Landscape Of America — Botanical observation and nature writing combined in a stylish book with charming illustrations, perhaps the best of its kind. A legend in Chicago and long associated with the Morton Arboretum, May Watts was a Julia Child of botany. Sometime in the sixties when my mother took […]
