In 1956, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock released one of his masterpieces, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” It was a film full of suspense, intrigue and not knowing what was really going on. Seventy years after Hitchcock’s movie, we’re now “The People Who Know Too Much.” Our lives are ...
About 150 miles south and a tad east of Normal, Illinois, sits the village of Oblong. I know this because once upon a time, I wrote for a newspaper in Decatur, Illinois, which was a little closer to Normal than Oblong. One day, the society page of our newspaper carried this headline: ...
You can’t hide from The Joke Lady. I met Marcie “The Joke Lady” Danyi of Niles by U.S. Postal Service back in 2020, shortly after some annoying virus was making its rounds in the news — and the world. Marcie was 78 back then (“My mind still thinks I’m 25,” she told me. “My ...
My brother Tim told anyone who would listen that he obviously was the best of us four kids. “Perfect,” I believe was the word he used. Tim would look to Mom to confirm that he never caused a lick of worry, concern or trouble like his three siblings. Mom has yet to corroborate that ...
Back in my college days, my roommate, Brent, and I each had what appeared to the uneducated eye to be stacks of random chaos on our desks. “How can you work like that?” the uneducated interlopers demanded in disgust. They usually wrinkled their noses, too, which neither of us understood. ...
Valentine’s Day was easier to navigate 55 or so years ago. We carted shoeboxes to elementary school. Armed with blunt-nosed scissors, stacks of construction paper and Elmer’s glue, we cut out red hearts and purple flowers and pasted them onto our boxes. Well, the girls did hearts and ...
