Posts published in January 2017

“OOOOO-eeeeeeeeee!” I shouted, coming down hard on the second syllable and giving it some real verve and brio, the pitch steadily rising into the sensory realm of dogs and bats. It was a full-throated, big-bellied,…

As soon as my wife Judy and I decided to go to Chicago for our vacation I started talking about going to Hammond. Judy understands all too well that some obsessions last a lifetime and…

For someone enamored of success and not inclined to resign himself to his fate, it was a curse to live in a less than aristocratic neighborhood, study in elite colleges through a scholarship, and not be rich but have wealthy classmates and friends. This was the case of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an attractive and very talented young man, doomed to ply his charm among clans whose slick offspring played polo, danced in the Country Club with rich heiresses who were a bit vain and "had a voice full of money". He would see these women get into the cream and tobacco colored convertibles of their boyfriends, their bonnets tied with ribbons of tulle around their luminous chins, in the shade of chestnut trees on the elegant Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota and perhaps in his subconscious, he resolved to hurl his life against that mirror.