By Michael Patrick O’Brien– A vacation at the beach is not always, well, a vacation at the beach. In March 2023, I attended a continuing legal education (CLE) employment law…
Posts published by “Mike O'Brien”
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The recurring motif in the Harry Potter books about the cursed Defense of the Dark Arts professor job at Hogwarts always fascinated me. The English teacher…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I love all the portraits of my two daughters, but one rises above the rest as my favorite. I took the photo a decade ago at…
By Susie Headlee (Guest Contributor)– We live in divided times, when people self-select themselves into siloes and seem uninterested in reaching out to others who may think differently. My friendship…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The old Huntsville Trappist monastery gave the surrounding community a number of unique and special gifts. One gift was the many interesting persons who visited the…
By Gary Topping– Many years ago my son gave me, as a birthday present or something, a copy of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, his diary of his five-year…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Spring training is the perfect time to pitch my nominee for best story about George Herman “Babe” Ruth. Almost a century ago, the baseball legend visited…
By Gary Topping– I’ve been a lifelong baseball fan. As a little kid in the late 1940s I used to listen to the World Series on the radio with my…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The start of spring training always reminds me that I was not a very good baseball player. In one season as a little league shortstop, balls…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Although reasonably romantic by nature, I missed what should have been an important landmark in our marriage—our thirty-three and one-third years anniversary. My wife Vicki and…