OPEN MIKE
reflections
ARTICLES AND PERSONAL REFLECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS, AND ON BLOGS
Playing Against Type
Last week I reconnected with an old college friend, Kevin Savage, who recently published a blog post that got me to thinking about the things that are really important in life. It also reminded me of some conversations I had with three strangers who reminded me how...
A Leap of Faith
When I was a kid, sometimes TV shows would have the very special episode, which would deal with a difficult or controversial subject. Do you remember these? Topics dealt with things such as AIDS, teen pregnancy, or drug use. Memorable ones include The Bicycle Man on...
Accepting others for who they are and not for who we want them to be
This morning I laughed harder than I have in a very long time. I also cried a bit too. My brother Jimmy came over to help me pick up some furniture that we were giving him. I opened the bilco doors in my basement and a family of spiders scampered around and mamma...
Paddy GoGo
He may have been born at just under three pounds, but you'd never know it. Even when he was in the NICU, Patrick was always on the go, squirming away in his incubator. It earned him the nickname Squirm Worm from one of his nurses, Krista (also a golfer). Ever since...
And then there was one
Something strange happens when you go from a house bustling with energy and noise to a quiet one. It feels weird, as if something is wrong. Even the dogs are picking up on it because they have been extra mopey lately. This past Thursday, we moved Gracie "G-Money"...
A New Chapter
It's fitting that the first of our triplets to come home from the hospital after being born 9 weeks early is the first to exit the nest and head to college. Today we moved Maggie in to her dorm at the University of Connecticut, which holds a special place in my heart...
School Boy Heart
In their haste to go swimming at a friend’s house today, my three favorite children left the kitchen a complete mess; apparently there’s nothing as scary to my kids than a clean dishwasher. I have a lot of work to do today but, since I have a Ph.D. in procrastination,...
Fatman and the Boy Blunder
CHalloween was one of my favorite holidays as a kid. I loved the fact that, for one day out of the year, I could pretend to be someone else. It's not that I didn't like who I was, but the idea that you could put on a mask and a cape and turn yourself into your...
The Daily Smile Day 7—Holy Thursday
If we were in ordinary time (my fellow Catholics will see what I did there), tonight we'd be gathering as a community and celebrating mass for Holy Thursday, in which we recount The Last Supper. I know, it's a pretty heavy topic for something called The Daily Smile,...