Hawkeye
This morning at South Shore Drive and 56th Street I heard the autumn crows cawing in fine form. As I turned onto the sidewalk along the park, something flew up in front of me; my impression was of a mourning dove, although I hadn't picked up the characteristic whrrrr! of its takeoff. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that w

Dream: Halloween vampire
A well-dressed man held a group hostage in an elegant dining room at a mansion. They may not have known it, but I could tell he was a vampire. If they didn't comply with his wishes, which were unknown to me, he would perform unspeakably gruesome acts.He pointed to what looked like an ordinary coffee mug and handed a girl a twig, almost like cinnamon bark. She, under his control, dropped the twig, a drug or poison, into the cup, although part of me wondered how he would force the people to drink it. I knew him to be evil, though, and in my mind I saw all of them tortured and dying if they drank what was in the cup.I don't know if I was the girl, or if I was an opposin

Dream: Stray man and cat
A handsome young man seated at a table with his growing family kept looking up to the stairs to the attic, where his pretty young wife sat with another woman, perhaps her sister. Teasingly, yet meaningfully, the wife would tell him to mind his dinner. Like me, she knew he was interested in the woman. I sensed a playful but real tension. The next time I looked at the women, I realized the companion was just a girl, perhaps even an older teenager. It came to me, too, that the man supported his family through petty crime.The man left to meet another man; together they went in search of a particular cat. But the cat eluded them, and they became transfixed by a different cat, which t

The now and the then
In his answer to the 2005 Edge question, “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” Kai Krause articulates exactly how I think about the past, present, and future. I’m feeling less than philosophical about the “now,” however, because today started less than ideally. A lot less.I had decided to celebrate the end of a difficult week by leaving early and stopping at Argo Tea for a breakfast wrap. At a little past 7 o’clock, I walked out into a driving wind that was scuttering sheets of water northward down the str

Diaper Deck at Argo Tea
The women's room at Argo Tea (Sears) features a Diaper Deck. Here are descriptions of the visuals and the accompanying text:Standing baby is about to set something flat down, presumably on the Diaper Deck.LAY TOWEL DOWN.Baby appears to be suspended in midair by a belt through his und