By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The Kentucky Derby—both the annual “Run for the Roses” and its home track Churchill Downs— played a vital role in the establishment of the old Trappist…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The University of Notre Dame is 180 years old in 2022. Father Edward Sorin and his fellow Holy Cross priests started the venerable institution near two…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Perhaps the greatest of my many misunderstandings about the nature of grandparent life is thinking I could not pick my own grand moniker. I can, and…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? You might think it unreal, or perhaps the sole domain of imaginative playwrights or abnormal psychology, but I’ve had…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I often worry about how young folks today will adapt and respond after enduring two very difficult years of COVID-19 existential dread. Then I remember how…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Baseball is a game that is not a mere game. Filmmaker Ken Burns once called it “an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– During a recent walk in Salt Lake City’s lovely Mount Calvary cemetery, I was surprised to stumble upon not one, but two headstones honoring local priests…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– In his 1888 anthology of Irish folklore, Fairy and Folk Tales in the Irish Peasantry, the poet William B. Yeats explained that ghosts “live in a…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Some folks might be annoyed or confused to find 20 lbs. of potatoes piled on their desk. I was delighted, and ate every single one of…
By Gary Topping– Part of the charm of Europe’s great medieval churches is that in most cases, with the primitive technology available, they took several centuries to build. During that…