By Michael Patrick O’Brien– There is a statue of James Joyce in Dublin, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize, and Frank McCourt got the Pulitzer. None of those great Irish…
Posts published in “Uncategorized”
By Don O’Brien (*Blog Editor’s note: this article was first published in the Burlington Free Press on 3/17/1950.) ’Tis a curious tale the White Thatch has for you this day…
By Gary Topping– Like many Americans, I was transfixed recently by Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee. I didn’t listen to the live testimony as my wife and…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Lent, at least as I always have understood it, is the season of penance and forgiveness. During Lent 2018, Pope Francis reminded us, “God’s forgiveness is…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien Growing up in a divorced family, without a father, I still had many father-like figures. Two of them died before I was born, a poet and…
By Gary Topping– My friend and fellow blogger George Pence recently turned me on to Bishop Robert Barron, whose “Word on Fire” ministry has made him an apostle of social…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I shook hands with Gerald Ford after he left office and with Ronald Reagan before he took it. I’ve seen Bill Clinton’s cat, chatted with John…
By Gary Topping– Bobby Jones, the great American golfer of the 1920s, was as much a founder of the sport in this country as Babe Ruth was to baseball and…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The snowy frozen January and February weather each year brings me fond memories of…Chicken Fat. When the cold winter conditions limited our access to the outdoor…
By Gary Topping– My wife and I are in the midst of our umpteenth annual re-watching of Rome, the magnificent HBO series, the two seasons of which first aired in…