NOTE: I wrote this essay for The Common Review in 2012. Dear friend Danny Postel commissioned and edited the piece. Books by Robert Coles discussed in this essay:
Read moreMayor's Emanuel's Love for JRW's Team, Not Neighborhoods
Like Chicagoans across the city, Rahm Emanuel loves the plucky and gritty youngsters from the Jackie Robinson West Little League team. He tweeted repeatedly about them.
Read moreIn Champaign, Similarities and a Potential Way Forward for Ferguson
Virtually unknown a little more than a week ago, Ferguson, Missouri has, in part through social media’s ability to bring light to many of the world’s dark corners, come to dominate national, and even global, attention in the days since police officer Darren Wilson ended Michael Brown's life by shooting him six times.
Read moreThe Hidden Concerns Behind Northstar's Firing
Northstar Lottery Group, the company Gov. Pat Quinn chose in 2010 to be the first private entity in the country to administer daily Lottery operations, has been fired. Local media have chronicled the company's failure to meet project revenue targets each of the past three years. (In his article about the events that led up to the "divorce", Crain's Chicago Business reporter Greg Hinz wrote that "the proverbial final straw may have come last spring, when reports came out that the firm was running $716 million short of its revenue target nine months into fiscal 2014.").
Read moreRIP, Jane Ganet-Sigel
This is the season of life in which we find ourselves. The children largely grown and out of the house, not yet fully independent but well on their way.
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