WestSide Press

12/03/2025

“I am better off leaving the memories where they are.”

At least this is the lie I tell myself. That it is better to let memories lie in storage, like old clothes, somewhere in a basement bin, safely tucked away. Like clothes too special to discard but no longer practical to keep in your daily closet.

'As Thanksgiving has come and gone, I don’t “feel” grateful. I just feel numb.'

11/26/2025

https://open.substack.com/pub/johnwfountain/p/whats-in-a-cake-caramel-coconut-time

11/26/2025

But nothing—nothing—compares to German chocolate cake made the way my Aunt Mary, my mother’s eldest sister, made it when I was a kid. Not from a box but from scratch—her heart and hands baking our family’s cakes for years and filling our lives with goodness.

No knock against Betty Crocker. But some ingredients can’t be boxed.

I came to accept that I might never encounter a peach cobbler as perfect as Grandmother’s or a German chocolate cake as glorious as Aunt Mary’s. But perhaps I did not account for the virtues of time.

09/27/2025

The cemetery is filled with untold stories. Don't wait. Learn to tell your own story with John W. Fountain.

The cemetery is filled with untold stories. Don't wait. Learn to tell your own story with John W. Fountain.

09/25/2025

Ever thought about writing a book?

Want to preserve your family's history for generations to come?

Do you have a story to tell?

Want to share your story and receive priceless feedback from seasoned professionals and a community of writers?

Want to learn about digital storytelling, how to find your voice and how to publish your book?

Then this FREE workshop by award-winning author/publisher/journalist/professor John W. Fountain is for you. You only need register to attend. Register today!

John W. Fountain
Governors State University

07/31/2025

Miss Cartwright, a broad-shouldered coffee bean-brown woman, saw us as precious cargo and believed that what she might impart to us at the very foundation of our institutional education might stick throughout life, steer us, inspire us, lift us, help sustain us through the years, tears and toil to come.

This much is also clear: Miss Cartwright always saw us as precious diamonds rather than as potential menaces or delinquents.

For Maxine Cartwright Ballard, No Secret Formula: The Three Rs + Love = An Everlasting Impact

07/01/2025

"I say: 'When will it end?” Where do we begin?

What good is it even to raise my damn pen or voice in a land of a gazillion opinions and podcasts, blaring in echo chambers and when the willingness to engage in civil discourse is long gone. All around the world same song.'"

'I scratch my head and wonder if this isn’t all a part of some grand masterplan to destroy the Black family at its core . A “feminist agenda” seed now full bloom, sentencing us to doom.'

06/04/2025

“Dreams” is a love song to life itself, emanating from the heart and pen of a gifted master musical storyteller. A ballad in instrumentation and in lyrics, it highlights the landscape of unlimited possibilities that exists on the winds of dreams.

“Dreams” rises like a golden morning sun against a cloudless blue sky, and shines, inspires, soothes, touches the soul. It is a precious gift to us all.

05/24/2025

And it is way past time for us to reunite. To remember that which even in our deepest poverty of stuff and worldly possessions could never compare to the rich substance that was never lacking in our lives in North Lawndale and that uplifted our souls even in those times when we stumbled or fell: love, spirit, family, community, hope.

It is way past time for us to reunite. To remember that which even in our deepest poverty of stuff and worldly possessions could never compare to the rich substance that was never lacking in our lives

05/06/2025

WE ARE NOT YOUR “Millstone.” Not your class of societal misfits. Not your jaded “ghetto” misinterpretation of life beyond the ivory tower. Never have been. Never will be.

And yet, that is how the Chicago Tribune portrayed us and our beloved neighborhood in a 1985 series it dubbed, “American Millstone,” because it deemed us to be America’s albatross. We were, in the eyes of the Tribune, the unbearable weight draped around America’s neck—a “permanent underclass.”

We call BS.

We are not societal misfits. Not your jaded “ghetto” misinterpretation of life beyond the ivory tower. Never have been. Never will be. It is a story we must now tell for ourselves, for history’s sake.

04/27/2025

The NFL ‘castrated’ Kaepernick
And "we" abandoned him

Kap knelt down for us
But we failed to stand by him

Nine years later,
They sully Shedeur
Besmirch his name
In four rounds
Undrafted
Different sound
Same game

Amid Shedeur Sanders draft controversy, 'I wonder what brother Kaepernick has to say...'

04/24/2025

I did not understand most of the words they sang: An occasional “hallelujah” “Gloria… Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Glory to God in the highest.)

And yet, the spirit evident in their melody and song was familiar. It rose to the high ceiling and descended, resounding with divine clarity, purpose and an irrepressible consuming power. It touched my soul.

'I did not understand most of the words they sang. And yet, the spirit evident in their melody and song was familiar. It rose to the high ceiling and descended. It touched my soul.'