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Author: Kevin Donahue
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After 15 years working on the Web end of journalism, I’m starting to get the game. Google, Apple, and Facebook are committed to a campaign to position themselves between you and your customer (and to soak up all the genius engineers who could possibly enable you to outmaneuver them). The more you let that happen,…
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Note: I have a pregnant friend who is overdue and, unless something happened over the weekend, will go to the hospital on Monday to induce childbirth. I was running today and tried to remember the excitement and emotions of waiting to meet the person who has been veiled for these 40 nervous weeks. I wrote this. It’s…
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I took a monthlong “vacation” from alcohol recently and am writing about it. I haven’t spoken to experts yet to help me frame my experience, but I’m working on it. What follows are my initial thoughts. ============= Maybe you’re like me. You like beer and wine. Sometimes you really like them. And you wonder, is this a…
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One of the wonders of the Web is when you find an amazing person. Sometimes it feels as if the person has evaded your attention, as if they lived right under your nose, and you wonder how you missed him or her for all these years. Sometimes there’s just the arrival of something that makes you…
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We recently pulled together a bunch of mini-essays about port-a-potties, of all things. I had fun writing the intro (following): I’m not sure how we did it. Somehow humanity built things for 10,000 years before George Harding received a patent for a plastic portable restroom in the 1960s—which ruins my vision of the Egyptians building the pyramids…
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We had our annual dinner along the Jersey Shore to celebrate Kevin’s mom’s birthday. As usual, the weather was perfect—all sunshine and a crisp breeze. Here are some photos:
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I was driving to my office last Monday when I had one of those weird ideas I couldn’t quite shake, so I called a sports business prof from Penn’s Wharton School and, when he didn’t laugh me off the line, wrote it up. In short, it says the NFL has a lot of problems, between…
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Last year, I was part of a relay team that tackled the Men’s Health Urbanathlon. I completed the anchor leg, 3-odd miles with a set of obstacles including running up and down CitiField and scaling an 8-foot wall, and thought, I should do the entire thing next year. Well, it’s about nine weeks from next year…
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I hate August most when it’s pleasant. That sounds weird, but when it’s hot and humid as hell, it feels like summer will go on forever. The days shorten, Labor Day threatens, but summer prevails. But when August breaks cool and comfortable, I feel the fall crowding in—not in the atmosphere, but in my head,…
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Virginia and I had a wonderful, wonderful time in Vermont, visiting our friends Ken Rainey and Betsy Plume at their little bit of paradise that goes by the name of Trail’s End, on the shores of Lake Willoughby, in northeast Vermont. Beautiful days, gorgeous nights, the company of Ken and Betsy, their families, and…
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We were at a nephew’s college graduation party this weekend. He finished up classes in the winter and has been working most of 2014. It’s great to see these Once Little Ones becoming Big Ones, and even Self-Sufficient Big Ones. Still, it’s a sign of the times, I think, that my nephew is still living…
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We were in New Jersey this weekend to celebrate Jamie Roberts’ graduation from the University of Delaware. Jamie finished up his studies over the winter, and has been working for months now (for Pepsi, in northern Jersey). He’s a good kid, with an impish grin and a stated desire to corrupt my two sons.…
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