By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My grandfather Don O’Brien (1891-1963) was a writer too. For roughly the last decade of his life in the mid-1900s, he wrote a newspaper column several…
Posts published in March 2024
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– A good friend who, for a variety of reasons, left the Catholic Church many years ago, once told me that despite this ecclesiastical estrangement, he had…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Angela’s Ashes—Frank McCourt’s 1996 haunting memoir about growing up in Irish poverty, alcoholism, and dysfunction—appalled and enthralled me. The story is poignant and gut-wrenching, but the…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien If it’s true, as some say, that God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world, then the Good Lord must have carved out…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My grandfather Don O’Brien (1891-1963) was a writer too. For roughly the last decade of his life in the mid-1900s, he wrote a newspaper column several…