I read with interest all the stories this week about the late Studs Terkel and his FBI file. To my dismay, they pretended to discover the ironic revelation that Terkel actually applied to work for the FBI in the early 1930s.

I scratched my head, waiting for someone to...

Next Saturday, Nov. 21, the Chicago Force women's football team is holding the first of two tryouts. "NO FOOTBALL EXPERIENCE NECESSARY! We are looking for dedicated, competitive athletes who want to play football."

I've got this intern working for me, he's a nice smart kid. (That's how bad things are for college grads these days. They intern for freelance writers.)

Anyway, the kid grew up in San Francisco. He moved here a few years ago to go to college at DePaul. The other...

My golf buddy Bill is having both hips replaced this fall, and all I can think of is one unforgettable day in the early spring of 2006.

It was cold and wet and cloudy and Bill and I were the only two people on the golf course. Our only company...

David Murray is editor of Vital Speeches of the Day.

Whenever one pundit frets about a loss of civility in the public dialogue, another cherry-picks some violent quotation from a long-ago political fight and says, "See? It was worse in 1840!"

So it was with particular interest that...

This essay was written in 2003; the opening scene took place in the summer of 2000. --DM

Terrible insults had been shouted as loud as we could shout, until our vocal chords gave out. I had thrown a burrito into the fireplace. The bedroom and guestroom doors had been slammed...

The in-flight magazines carry those "24 hours" pieces, suggesting you can get a flavor for Paris or London or Chicago in a day -- a tantalizing notion for just the type of imbecile who reads airline magazines.

But Ottawa, Ill. is not Hong Kong, and a few weeks ago...

Well, why wouldn't we rename Labor Day after Studs?

He wrote Working, which gave workers the dignity of their own eloquence, he defended workers his whole life and never stopped working himself until his death last fall at 96.

He also narrated this film, "Can't Take No...

Toward the end of last week the Chicago Tribune ran a couple of stories on Bolingbrook--one on its politically profligate mayor Roger Claar and the other on Claar's massive, money-losing municipal golf course and adjacent stalled housing development.

It just hit me that it's two years this month since my friend Ed Reardon died. A lot has changed since then. I haven't smoked since the day of his wake, which would please Eddie; but I've been working out a lot, which would deepen his suspicion that I'm...

If you gravitate to old guys like I do -- my dad used to say old guys are interesting even when they're being quiet -- you hear a lot about how Chicago used to be. Enough, sometimes, to feel a little sorry you didn't live back then.

I live on...

Last week I returned from a trip that took me through Cleveland, where a widespread corruption investigation threatens to ensnare many public officials in Cuyahoga County. Pol pals there appealed to their Chicago visitor for some perspective.

I found myself feeling uncharacteristically weary at the prospect of describing to them...

Summer's here, which means Chicago is filling up with young Midwestern college grads, looking for work and adventure.

I hope the lads and lasses aren't reading the Huffington Post for advice, but just in case they are, I have a cautionary tale to tell about the city as...

I insisted to my wife that we watch the Drew Peterson indictment coverage Thursday night on Larry King, and then I talked her into watching Greta for awhile. But I found I kept looking at my magazine instead, and when my wife noticed this, she switched over to "House Hunters"...

When I go on about the social consequences of the death of newspapers, I sound a little disingenuous even to myself.

First of all, as a professional writer I'm mostly upset about having to compete for my daily bread with a horde of talented, hungry, unemployed journalist jackals.

And...

I didn't lose my journalistic objectivity toward the end of my gonzo stint as the "paper lioness" of Chicago's professional women's football team, the Force.

I forgot that I was working on a story at all.

Many hours of practices, game-film sessions and telephone coaching were about to...

As Chicago's memory of Nelson Algren dims, he and his vision of this place seem to be taking over my mind.

I'm not entirely pleased about this development.

My first connection with Algren was a sad story my mother told me when I was old enough, about an important...

For years this titanic rust bucket has been parked around the corner from where I live, in West Town.

You'd think I'd get used to it, but I always crack up when I see it, because it's parked in front of the neatest little pin of a condo building,...

The economy started going bad just as we felt the first fall nips in Chicago, and for many consecutive months our troubles have multiplied with the potholes.

So it came to me as a pleasant surprise that Wednesday was the first official day of the golf season at the Chicago...

Honestly, I've never felt so sheepish in my life. In my notes from my initial tryout with the Chicago Force women's tackle football team, it says in all caps: "WHAT AM I DOING????"

For a story for ESPN the Magazine, I'm pulling a George Plimpton and practicing...