Frank Joseph’s Blog
Frank S. Joseph reported Chicago as it came apart, then spent decades writing it back into shape. These are the memories underneath The Chicago Trilogy, including the things he watched that never made the wire.
Covering Dr. King in Chicago: Inside the 1966 Fair-Housing Marches
I was on the street for the AP during the Chicago Freedom Movement. I remember what the faces at Marquette Park looked like, and the summer that ended my wire-service career.
CHICAGO CIVIL RIGHTSTHE NEWSROOMCHICAGO 1960s
Jesse Jackson, PSP and Me
I met Jesse Jackson in Chicago and never forgot the charisma. It turns out we share a diagnosis too.
CHICAGOCHICAGO CIVIL RIGHTSHEALTH & AGING
Small but mighty
I have given to United Help Ukraine for years. Here is the smaller outfit I am switching to, and why.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
Dick Cheney and me
I booked a knee replacement. My cardiologist had other ideas about which part of me needed fixing first.
HEALTH & AGING
The Best Books About Chicago
Nineteen essential Chicago reads, from gritty realism to neighborhood sagas. I grew up inside the city they describe.
And now for something (a bit) different
My son Sam is directing a play about immigration and deportation in a small New Mexico town.
How to spot a scam?
Fan mail arrives from Amelia Readsforauthor and Harper Collinsworthbookexpert. I read it closely.
SCAMS & SECURITYTHE WRITING LIFE
Hats
Four reasons I wear hats, one of which involves the scaly things on my face that can turn into cancer.
DOMESTIC LIFEHEALTH & AGING
Frank sticks his neck out
I never write about politics. This once, I make an exception, and I insist I am only asking questions.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
I have my head examined.
Six hours of counting backward by sevens and drawing clock faces, and what I was actually there to find out.
HEALTH & AGING
The Loneliness of the Long-Suffering Author
Personal appearances are getting rare, which turns out to be a bigger loss than I expected.
THE WRITING LIFE
It won!
Pinkie arrived unannounced in a snowbound North Side hotel room and started talking. I wrote it down.
THE WRITING LIFECHICAGO
A gift for Thanksgiving
A reader sent me an account of something that happened to her that day. I print it without changing a comma.
It isn't Amazon but ...
That logo looked like Amazon, and I assumed it was. It was not.
SCAMS & SECURITY
Two cheers for Amazon
Forty-three reviews in, Amazon finally noticed I exist and sent a human to say so.
THE WRITING LIFE
"White flight"
At 14, I was moved from Hyde Park to a cookie-cutter suburb 35 miles south. I felt kidnapped, and I knew exactly why it happened.
CHICAGOCHICAGO CIVIL RIGHTS
Commas Save Lives
National Punctuation Day exists, complete with a website. My favorite coffee mug proves my commitment.
LANGUAGE & BOOKS
An informal poll: Which novel gets published next?
To Love Mercy or To Walk Humbly? I cannot decide, so I am asking the list.
THE WRITING LIFE
What it's like inside a riot
I have been in dozens. Here is what a street looks, sounds, smells and feels like when it goes up.
CHICAGOCHICAGO CIVIL RIGHTSTHE NEWSROOM
More FREE stuff!
Amazon is sending our household things we did not order. Again. This time we are keeping them.
SCAMS & SECURITY
A Fairy Godmother in an Uber
I met a stranger in a Chicago Uber who turned out to be the reason I ended up on the radio that afternoon.
CHICAGO
Whatcha doin tonight?
I am in Chicago talking to the Hyde Park Historical Society about the neighborhood of my childhood in 1948.
CHICAGO
It Ain't an Apostrophe
Write five feet four and a half inches without words. If you reached for a curly apostrophe, go to the back of the class.
LANGUAGE & BOOKS
No ID? No problem!
I left my wallet at home. Here is, step by step, what actually happens when you try to fly without any identification.
TRAVEL & PLACE
Down and out in America
We are all living on a knife edge, and America is crueler to the people who slip off it than we like to admit.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
The point of shutting your mouth
An Uber driver guarded the Shah's palace for four years without a night's sleep. All I had to do was listen.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
Become a social media star the easy way
I reposted a map of Chicago's neighborhoods to a Facebook group and accidentally went viral.
CHICAGOAI & TECHNOLOGY
Do Not Succumb
A survey asks how you feel in one word. My answer, and what I decided to do about it.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
Getting hacked and loving it?
Two mystery Amazon parcels and two hacked credit cards, then a letter from Johns Hopkins about my Social Security number.
SCAMS & SECURITY
ChatAI learns fast.
The chatbot emails to say it has improved. I give it the identical assignment, and this time the result unsettles me.
AI & TECHNOLOGYTHE WRITING LIFE
Dilbert and Me
I love Dilbert. My wife thinks it is mean. Then the papers drop it, and the question gets harder.
LANGUAGE & BOOKSPOLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
I ask a chatbot to write a novel.
I handed an AI a one-paragraph synopsis and asked for 80,000 words. What came back was not a novel.
AI & TECHNOLOGYTHE WRITING LIFE
It's beginning to look a lot like ... what?
The Christmas cards arrive, and I work out what a secular Jewish man actually feels about them.
DOMESTIC LIFE
Plastic Explosives and Almond Croissants
A haircut, a coffee, a good almond croissant, and the stranger at the only free table.
TRAVEL & PLACE
Nowhere, Texas
A throwaway question about a dud gas well opens onto the whole strange story of my patch of the Permian Basin.
TRAVEL & PLACE
Yo Voté (Provisionalmente)
I misplaced my mail-in ballot and walked to the school to vote the old way. The system, it turned out, already had opinions about me.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
Conchita the Mystery Woman
For years my wife has been getting texts meant for a stranger. This week I decided to find out who she is.
SCAMS & SECURITY
Thoughts on Amazon
Amazon closes every one of its physical bookstores. I shopped in two of them, and I think I know why they never made sense.
THE WRITING LIFE
Notes from Lockdown
I put on a necktie for the first time in two years and found I had missed it.
DOMESTIC LIFE
Elijah Muhammad, Aunt Clara ... and me
My great-aunt's house on South Woodlawn may become a landmark, but for the man who lived there after her.
CHICAGOCHICAGO CIVIL RIGHTS
Are Editors Evil? Part II
I have been the editor too, starting as a high-school proofreader and ending as Night City Editor for the AP in Chicago.
THE WRITING LIFETHE NEWSROOM
Are Editors Evil? Part I
A friend warns that editors exist to kill you. About to meet mine, I am not entirely reassured.
THE WRITING LIFE
"The Millionaire"
MacKenzie Scott cannot give money away fast enough, which sends me back to a 1950s TV show about a stranger handing out checks.
POLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
The 17-Year Itch
A periodical cicada went down the back of my T-shirt, and the neighbors got a show.
DOMESTIC LIFE
Lightning Strikes, at Last
After years of looking, a publisher said yes to all three of my novels at once.
THE WRITING LIFE
The Disappearing Dr. Seuss
Six Dr. Seuss books get withdrawn. I dislike censorship and I dislike caricature, so I try to hold both thoughts at once.
LANGUAGE & BOOKS
Bread baking: A correction and a tip
One cup of oatmeal, not two, plus a better way to get steam into the oven.
DOMESTIC LIFE
Shut in? Still gotta eat.
Searching for a lockdown topic that was serious but not grave, I gave up and shared my bread recipe.
DOMESTIC LIFE
Everything I Know About Puerto Rico in 966 Words
Why you cannot get a bad cup of coffee in Puerto Rico, and why you can barely buy it anywhere else.
TRAVEL & PLACE
Goodbye to Paradise
An earthquake caught me mid-toothbrush in a Puerto Rican beach resort, and I learned what uncertainty actually feels like.
TRAVEL & PLACE
Son of Herbie The Love Bug
I fell for a used Kia Soul in a shade called Alien Pearl, then imagined exactly how the romance ends.
CHEVY CHASETHE WRITING LIFE
My Poor Home Town, Part II: Send in the Feds?
Readers write back with their own Chicago bribery stories, and I weigh whether the city can ever clean itself up.
CHICAGOPOLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
My Poor Home Town, Part I: The Good Old Days?
Richard Morrison was a crook, and the Chicago cops who helped him rob stores were the reason I grew up thinking graft was just the weather.
CHICAGOPOLITICS & CIVIC LIFE
A scintillating start
I went quiet for five years. A contest win for the opening pages of To Do Justice broke the silence.
THE WRITING LIFE