chicago

Here's some good news: despite our short collective attention span, despite the fiscal-cliff debacle dominating the headlines shortly after the Newtown shooting, the U.S. scourge of gun violence is still part of the national conversation.

Now, every time I hear a public official mention Newtown and Aurora but not Chicago—which experienced a startling spike in gun homicides in 2012, mostly in poor, black neighborhoods—I'm ashamed at the implication that some killings deserve more shock and outrage than others. Still, whatever it takes to motivate people to take on the pro-gun lobby, I'm grateful to see it happening.

In the wake of the Newtown shooting, political will is growing to do something about guns. People are moved to act—and we must act.

Those of us in violence-plagued neighborhoods look forward to winter's reprieve. Our teenagers understand Advent waiting all too well.

I got up before dawn today. (My farmer wife does this every day; I try, with mixed results, to keep her hours.) We got to the polls just as they were opening.

For the first time in the eight or nine times I’ve voted in Chicago, my name wasn’t on the list. I had my voter registration card with me, so nobody challenged my eligibility. But I did have to cast a provisional ballot, which might or might not eventually be counted.

Scholars traveling to Chicago for the joint AAR–SBL meeting will have to make hard decisions—beginning with where to lay their heads.

Staring down the barrel of another Chicago winter at age 40, I was a little freaked. Then I started to serve soup.

"More than ever, people are building interfaith marriages," says Joyce Shin of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. "Too often, religion is seen as an impediment to this instead of as a resource."

I'm tired of seeing public education set up to fail and then blamed for its own failure, with special blame always reserved for teachers.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel says that the Chicago Police Department "did a tremendous job” keeping the peace during the NATO summit this week. President Obama agrees.

Chicago Indymedia offers another perspective, posting videos of protestors surrounded by police and brutally beaten.

Documentarian Steve James has a journalist's nose for a great story. His beat is the
challenges faced by low-income city kids, in this case young Chicagoans whose lives are blighted by the cycle of violence.

The New York Times has never been exactly hesitant to publish articles that look cluelessly down on the cultural life of U.S. cities with fewer than 8 million residents. So I'm not sure I'd blame nepotism alone for the A. G. Sulzberger clunker the paper published this week.