Your Nightmares Follow You Like A Shadow,

We Dreamt Of Light, But Hoped For Darkness.

Chicago Is Not A Bad Place To Live. But The Usual Story Of Immigration Is The Happy Fulfillment Of Human Potential In America That Is Not Available Anywhere Else - It's Propaganda, Really. It's More Complicated Than That.

You Can See The Diversity That Pieces In The Anthology Represent, And Then The Interconnections-obvious And Less Obvious-between Various Stories Or Between Various Modes Of Storytelling. Diversity Generates Need For Conversation, Conversation Generates Common Interests, As Well As Differences. Literature, As A Human Project, Is All About That.

The Hopeless Hope Is One Of The Early Harbingers Of Spring, Bespeaking An Innocent Belief That The World Might Right Its Wrongs And Reverse Its Curses Simply Because The Trees Are Coming Into Leaf.

Our Daughter Was Born In Chicago, And She's Already Showing It. The Temperature Has To Be Approaching Zero For Her To Wear A Hat.