Mary Schmich – Page 21

Tonika Johnson, visual artist/photographer from Chicago's South Side Englewood neighborhood at the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) office in Chicago, May 18, 2018.

Column: ‘Don’t go to the South Side.’ Really? Tonika Johnson has some thoughts about that.

September 18, 2019 at 9:38 a.m.

Don't go to the South Side of Chicago. Have you ever been told that? Tonika Johnson, visual artist/photographer from Chicago's South Side Englewood neighborhood on May 18, 2018. It's a...

Ryan Keegan reads a book in a hammock along Lake Michigan at North Avenue Beach on July 11, 2019. Columnist Mary Schmich doesn't buy into the notion of a summer reading list, but that didn't stop her from reading more first-rate books this summer than she's read in any season in a long time.

Column: 6 great books to read right now — from Toni Morrison to Sally Rooney

September 13, 2019 at 6:51 p.m.

I've never bought the notion of the summer reading list. The idea that summer is made for lounging on the sand with a big fat beach read must have been...

Harrison Turek, 17, and Chloe Starbuck, 17, both of Chicago, hold the bag belonging to baiduhai columnist Mary Schmich that they found along North Bissell Street on Sept. 12, 2019. The pair found the bag that Schmich mistakenly left on the sidewalk on Sept. 4, 2019, and returned it to her that night.

Column: My car broke down. I lost my bag. Three strangers saved me.

September 13, 2019 at 6:44 a.m.

Shortly after 7 p.m. on a pleasant evening last week, I got off the Brown Line and headed toward my car, a 2013 Toyota Prius, which I'd parked nearby so...

A visitor pauses at the National September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan on Sept. 10, 2019, in New York City.

Column: As we remember Sept. 11, let’s not forget the mistakes made in its name

September 11, 2019 at 12:50 p.m.

It's September 11. Again. "Jeez, I keep forgetting tomorrow is September 11," a friend emailed when I mentioned it Tuesday, which was September 10. "Blergh." "Blergh," she explained, is a...

Dominika Tamley, 13, sits outside Agassiz Elementary School, where she is starting eighth grade, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019.

Column: ‘Don’t let anyone bring you down’: Dominika Tamley enters 8th grade with a disability and a philosophy

September 6, 2019 at 7:22 p.m.

Dominika Tamley entered eighth grade the other day, a day she'd been thinking about for a long time. Eighth grade. The last year of elementary school, the doorway to the...

Mary Schmich offers this certificate for those readers who finished "Moby-Dick."

Column: Congratulations! You finished ‘Moby-Dick’! Or not. Yet.

September 6, 2019 at 1:00 a.m.

Call us finished. Or half-finished. Or still procrastinating. Whatever you call us, the meeting of the Moby-Dick Procrastinators Book Club is now adjourned. In late April, I issued a challenge...

Illinois first lady Shirley Stratton shows off a Nixon campaign hat, circa 1960.

Column: Gracious. Proper. Proud to serve. Goodbye to Shirley Stratton, former first lady of Illinois

September 4, 2019 at 1:00 a.m.

Shirley Stratton died peacefully a few days ago, at the age of 96, in her bedroom in her daughter's home, holding her daughter's hand. Her name may not sound familiar,...

It takes patience to work in a coffeehouse, said one barista.

Column: A question for Labor Day: What’s a hard thing about your job that no one understands?

September 1, 2019 at 9:23 p.m.

What's a hard thing about your job that you suspect almost no one understands? I've been asking people this question lately, prompted by the annual return of Labor Day, a...

Column: I never fully appreciated paragraphs — until my computer stopped making them

August 28, 2019 at 1:00 a.m.

Life is a daily obstacle course. (Hang on, dear reader, I have to figure out how to make a paragraph here.) You wake up, brush your teeth, do whatever else...

The Hampton History Museum, in Hampton, Virginia, has created an exhibit, "The 1619 Arrival," that tells the stories of the first enslaved Africans in the British colonies.

Column: Be curious. Be uncomfortable. Let yourself learn the history of slavery.

August 23, 2019 at 7:21 p.m.

Be curious. Be humble. Be patient. Don't be afraid to be uncomfortable. These are notions that can apply to almost everything in life, but I've been thinking about them lately...

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