By Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune Feb. 24--When your parents reach a certain age, they and you enter a state of chronic emergency. You try not to dwell on the dangers: a fall or a heart attack, a stroke or a disease, a mind that closes its shutters to the world.

By Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune Feb. 10--For the last few weeks Sedef Olcer has lived on the cover of a free magazine called YOGAChicago.

By Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune Jan. 20---- If Chicago's long mass transit soap opera has a hero, it's Julie Hamos, a woman with a unique idea of fun.

By Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune Oct. 7--The Cubs have forced us out into the open this week, us poor, freakish people who don't have cable TV. Call us The Rabbit Ears Underground. We, the bizarrely cable-free, have never watched Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" unless it was in a hotel room.

By Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune Sep. 7--Doug Nishimoto recalls a time a few years ago that the regulars at Montrose Harbor had gathered with their kids for some family smelt fishing only to be confronted by a group of troublemakers. "Like skinheads but more redneck," he recollected Thursday.