Bill Maxwell

River Forest residents have been trying since Dec. 5 to save a cat stuck about 40 feet up in a tree in the forest preserves at Thatcher Avenue and Hawthorne Avenue.

Lou Anne Johannesson has joined Deputy Clerk Christina Waters in the race to become the next village clerk of Oak Park.

It took three months, June 22 to Sept. 29, for a majority of the Oak Park Village Board to articulate that its confusing and scattered “decision” of early summer to hire an outside consultant to evaluate the police department was ill considered.

‘The Diving Board’ was later described by Elton John himself as the most piano-oriented album of his career.

Clerical, technical and professional employees along with mid-managers in various departments at Triton College, 2000 Fifth Ave. in River Grove, are threatening to strike if administrators don’t grant them a 4-percent pay raise.

I was 10 years old, in 1955, when I had my first violent racial encounter.I had gone with my grandfather to a three-day all-black tent revival in Lake City. On the second day, six boys and I walked to a nearby convenience store. A pickup appeared suddenly, its horn blasting, the white boys in the ca…

The color photograph is said to have come from an estate sale. Richard Soto, founder of the Chicano Research Center laughs at the notion. “Mexicans

Alex Kotlowitz certainly looks the part of the mild-mannered reporter from a great metropolitan news organization, but while his manner may be mild, his writing is anything but. He’s not a muckraker or an investigative journalist. He doesn’t “break” news. And he goes to great lengths to disabuse peo…

Many Americans are stunned by the recent pipe bombs mailed to President Donald Trump’s critics and by the 11 murders of Jews at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. The hateful social media posts by the accused men have caused no small amount of introspection for many Americans.Many elected officials have o…

Cornell’s College of Engineering presented David A. Duffield ’62, MBA ’64, with the inaugural Cornell Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award – its highest alumni honor.

As a journalist, I spend a lot of time traveling Florida’s blue highways and back roads. I am a native Floridian, and I always have been keenly aware of the racism and general intolerance in the state, especially in our rural interior and the Panhandle.As migrant farm laborers, my parents, my siblin…

A funnel cloud swept through the 3700 block of East Gemini Drive in Moonsville, leveling a barn and scattering debris across several yards.

BELLE GLADEThis town’s motto is “Her Soil is Her Fortune.” The soil, called “muck,” is the moist, dark earth where sugarcane thrives. Also called “black gold,” the soil does indeed provide a financial fortune for the growers who have powerful influence on lawmakers and other important leaders.The bi…

Twenty-one Americans have won the Nobel Peace Prize. The first was President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, and the last was Barack Obama in 2009. All but one of the American laureates received the prize for efforts that had an international focus.Martin Luther King Jr., who won the prize in 1964, was…

In 2003, I was in Memphis doing research for an article about the militia movement when I learned that the Orpheum Theatre was showing Gone with the Wind . I had seen the 1939 Oscar-winning film a few times on television but never on the big screen.I remember being struck for the first time by sele…

In 2011, Barbara Rhode went to a neighborhood estate sale of a woman who had committed suicide following a divorce. Before leaving, she decided to walk through the dead woman’s bedroom to send her “good thoughts and perhaps get a better understanding of what had gone wrong.“On the nightstand was a c…

Art has never had it easy. It never will.Art is always personal and public at the same time. No art is ever a thing unto itself because we view it, study it and judge it. We can love it or hate it.Some of us wish that some art had not been made and should be destroyed, its creator pilloried. Such is…

During a May 1962 news conference, President John F. Kennedy was asked to comment on the media’s treatment of his administration after 16 months in office.“Well,” he said, “I’m reading more and enjoying it less.“That response, while reflecting quintessential JFK wit, showed that he had difficult tim…

Few acts are more loathsome than intentional misrepresentation of an inconvenient or unpopular truth. In this instance, most Americans have witnessed Republicans intentionally misrepresenting Black Lives Matter, both as a movement and as a slogan.Honest and knowledgeable people know what Black Lives…

MIAMIThe Cuban Embassy in Washington reopened last month, little more than a year after President Barack Obama announced he would normalize diplomatic relations with the communist country.As relations thaw, the next move should be opening a Cuban consulate in Miami-Dade County, where nearly 1 millio…