By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I trained, before my 2018 trip to France, about how not to be just another ugly American in Paris. For example, I tried to learn more…
Posts published in “Uncategorized”
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I have a love/hate relationship with the name Kevin. My father was called Kevin. I knew little about him, and understood even less. He skipped out…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– You’ll have a deep, and maybe unwanted, insight into the odd workings of my mind knowing that the two most vivid memories of my boyhood home…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Dear sixth-grade-girl-whose-name-I-don’t-remember: Our last year of elementary school was heavenly for me. I now realize, many years later, that it may have been hellish for you.…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I attended a lecture last week in my hometown Salt Lake City about the Irish workers who helped build the transcontinental rail. The nation recently observed…
By Gary Topping– No doubt many of our readers have seen the short film clip of the actor and activist Martin Sheen, who claims to have been arrested more than…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– For many years, a mysterious painting of the French city where I was born had haunted me. The art work is not frightening; it’s quite lovely.…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My fate, it seems, is that about every fifty years, someone will up and yell at me in church. The second to last time was when…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Easter is delightful but mystifying. It celebrates a wonderful event, resurrection, that I’ve never seen. With no personal knowledge of resurrection, each Easter season I try…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– As devoted lifelong Catholics, my family and I had witnessed all the events of Holy Week and Easter, but never anything like an actual funeral procession…