Category: John Spevak

There is only one place I enjoy visiting more than a library, and that’s a bookstore. It’s all part of my enjoyment of reading, something I hope all my grandchildren and great grandchildren develop, if they haven’t already. One...

Now that Daylight Savings Time has ended, many of us spend more time indoors. There are few indoor activities better than reading, and there are few places better to find good books to read than our local libraries. The Westside...

Friendship is generally undervalued and underappreciated these days. Seldom does anyone write or talk about the value of friendship. That’s too bad, because a good friend is a jewel. And someone who has been a good friend for 63...

Here we are in October and the baseball season is over—at least for Cubs and Giants fans. They were eliminated weeks ago, and each club played its last 2024 game on Sept. 30. In fact, the only thing I got excited about the last...

October days commemorate two European explorers credited with the “finding” of the Americas. Their exploration parties, though, came 500 years apart. After much study and debate, historians give Leif Erikson credit as the first...

Every so often columnists need to write “feel good” columns so their readers feel good about life. Today I’m writing a column, dear reader, that should make you feel good about your life—at least in comparison to mine lately....

I am fortunate that my readers continue to connect with this columnist, so here are some more comments and questions from them. Dear John, I loved your column on “the simple life.” I laughed so hard, and it was so true of me...

I am strongly attracted to “the simple life.” That has been true since I was in high school and read an author who praised the simple life in his book “Walden.” The author, Henry David Thoreau, ...

According to the results of a recent poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation, Americans are losing faith in the value of a college education. Overall, according to that poll as reported by the Associated Press, only 36 percent...

Today’s column is a plea to all owners of dogs, especially big dogs, not to let their dogs run loose—knowingly or unknowingly — especially in residential neighborhoods. Longtime readers of this column may remember my writing...

In a recent column I wrote about Christopher Kerr, a doctor who is the director of a hospice in Buffalo, NY, and the book he wrote about end-of-life dreams. I focused in that column on the hope and meaning he gives to people at...