By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Forty-plus years after graduating from the University of Notre Dame, I now see that the professor/student relationships of my college years really were rather transactional—a rapidly…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– A recent New Yorker article examining how the pandemic changed all of us made me wonder…what’s different in my life compared to four years ago?  Defining…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– “You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by, and so become yourself, because the past is just a goodbye.”…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– “Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us, only sky.” – John Lennon Even a casual reader can discern…

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…

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…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The Sonoran Desert—the hottest in North America—is home to sky islands, to thriving agave, palm, and cacti plants, and to the only jaguar population living in…