By Michael Patrick O’Brien– As a boy, my friends the Utah Trappist monks often told me about wonderful quiet weekends at their hillside retreat called the “Hermitage.” It took almost…
Posts published by “Mike O'Brien”
By Gary Topping– A Catholic friend of ours at Our Lady of the Lake parish in Seattle sent the following document which the parish is circulating among its members and…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The fall business retreat was a corporate office staple when I started my legal career in the waning years of the twentieth century. The formula was…
By Gary Topping– During my career as a historian, I have conducted a number of oral history interviews. We do these interviews when we can find a participant in an…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– In the busy Salt Lake City law firm where I have worked for the last third of a century, lunch often is just one more item…
By Gary Topping– I grew up on the southern Oregon coast, and while I enjoyed living there, its drizzly humid climate did not always agree with me. During the first…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My first Boy Monk blog post, two years ago this week, recalled the September 2015 speech by Pope Francis to Congress. The Pope described how American…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– September, perhaps the Rodney Dangerfield of months, has not always enjoyed the full measure of my respect. Yes, there is an abundance of peach pie and…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– A recent news headline reported that a priest at a Catholic elementary in Nashville, Tennessee has banned J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books from the school library. This ban…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– In the late 1800s, tuberculosis killed 1 of every 7 people on earth. This terrible bacterial plague—called the Captain of Death—claimed four of my own family…