Coming from Chicago, I like a white Christmas.

You know, my first nine years I only played for two teams, Chicago and New York. And the only reason I got traded from New York was the 2010 free agency period, when they had a chance to sign LeBron and D-Wade and that whole class, and I understood that. But from there it's kind of been a roller coaster.

I loved the city of Chicago, and I love the Reinsdorfs. I'm forever grateful for them in taking a chance on me, allowing me to become the player that I am today. It's still incredible to me that I got to hoop in a Bulls jersey.

If 'Chicago Fire' goes for a long run, maybe I'll look for a place, but in my line of work, you can't throw your eggs into one basket because you might have to move. I'm not big on 'things,' though, so I don't own TVs, couches or cars because I wouldn't know where to put them.

It was Chicago with its World's Fair which vivified the national desire for civic beauty.

"Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads.

The Chicago historian Studs Terkel asked Bob Dylan in the sixties about how he went about writing a song and trying to outdo himself, or at least being as good as the last song he wrote, and his response was pretty damn perfect. "I'm content with the same old piece of wood," he said. "I just want to find another place to pound a nail?.?.?. Music, my writing, is something special, not sacred." If the songs Bob Dylan wrote aren't sacred, then nobody's songs are sacred. Nobody's. No one has ever laid on their deathbed thinking, "Thank God I didn't make that song. Thank God I didn't make that piece of art. Thank God I avoided the embarrassment of putting a bad poem into the world." Nobody reaches the end of their life and regrets even a single moment of creating something, no matter how shitty or unappreciated that something might have been. I'm writing this just weeks after returning from Belleville, where I sat next to my dad's bed in my childhood house and watched him die. I can guarantee you that in the final moments of his life, he wasn't kicking himself for all those times when he dared to make a fool of himself by singing too loud.

Our whole family assembles in Chicago at Christmas and usually in Aspen in the summer.

Coming from Chicago I like a white Christmas.

I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater I was in all likelihood not going to find financial success.

Chicago's neighborhoods have always been this city's greatest strength.

I'm a huge fan of Chicago sports and Chicago food and I love going home and my family is still there. I guess it's pretty easy to have a normal life in Chicago.

I was a huge theater geek growing up and that was not the easiest thing in the world especially growing up in Chicago where sports are really the norm. I was always off to the theater at night from 7 years old on. Friends there in the Midwest who could talk to you about the idiosyncrasies of 'Pippin' were few and far between.

I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony which would have been an extremely sad loss.

In most places in the country voting is looked upon as a right and a duty but in Chicago it's a sport.

Since I was a kid I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties Chicago blues of the Fifties West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

It's nice to be able to work I'd love to be able to do another TV show I could do in Chicago so I could live and work in the same place. It's hard being a parent and being in a good marriage and it all takes a lot of work but if you're not there you can't do any of it.

Currently I am overseeing the construction of the new Trump Tower in Chicago. I am involved in meeting with the construction crews architects and sales teams. I am learning a lot and working with some of the best in the business.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for reelection I have never been surprised by his leadership dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago.

However I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

And I come here as a daughter raised on the South Side of Chicago - by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

It's wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.

Eventually I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.