Odd fellow who does odd jobs in the neighborhood four seasons of the year has disappeared in high summer and his customers are nervous.

I’m amazed at the difference between my friend and me. His response to life is so different from mine. I live deep in the city

Thirty years ago, long before ISIS started executing Kurds, Muslims and Christians, I hired a Pakistani Muslim as an art director in Chicago. I was an Irish Catholic editor putting out ...

In a life with many valleys and a few mountaintops Alvin has met many people he thought were normal and others he thought not.

Fifty years ago Jane got on a plane and flew away without saying good-bye. Her parents took her, I know.

We write the stories of our lives between the bookends of birth and death They stay on the shelf

Loud preacher bellows on Sunday what a silent praying mantis knows Donal Mahoney

Around his navel this morning a halo, a red stipple Hopkins would love: “Glory be to God for dappled thin… It’s a gift from this woman

Miyuki is old enough to have been a child during World War II. Indeed, some of her students are that old as well but they are eager to learn and listen to her carefully. She is a teache...

Fred visits Bill every month at the facility he’s been in for year… Age and booze brought Bill there. He’s still strapped to his bed so he can’t go wandering again

My wife’s upset because I won’t answer the phone in the middle of the night even though the phone’s on my side of the bed.

Where I live the press says teen use of heroin is epidemic. I thought an epidemic was a widespread disease afflicting thousands caught in

After the TV mavens had their say the gnomes crept out of their cave… spoke and returned to their caves. Thunder struck, hell broke loose and the mavens came back on TV

Blooming for one day a lily welcomes the sun. Bumblebees drop in. Donal Mahoney

The two weeks I spent in that small town on assignment, I saw no blacks except for two older women regal in every way,