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Author: Kevin Donahue
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Our family recently had a great surprise. My mom was having a bathroom in her home refurbished. The workman pulled out the medicine cabinet and pointed out to my mom that there was something written, in pencil, on the wallboard behind the cabinet. It said, in my dad’s distinctive handwriting: To Maureen, With Love Tom…
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This week, I’ve started in earnest on getting in shape for the Seagull Century bike ride in October. My brother-in-law Chris asked me to do it last year and I agreed, but now it’s July and between the wedding and covid, I’m behind schedule. So it’s time to get it in gear. Today was the…
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We’re coming up on a week since my son Pete and Marissa got married and, I have to say, it was a damn good wedding. Now, I don’t have the depth of experience of the average 27-year-old, who has been to 19 weddings in the past 8 months, but even so, trust me, it was…
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Attended Rev. Ken Beldon’s final message as a minister for WellSprings Congregation, and walked out with all the emotions. Ken shared his greatest hits. A mixture of messages and stories he has shared previously. Closed with The Waterboys’ song Angels and Saints. This is a wide world we travel And our paths rarely cross And…
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This is a crazy week end, with two of my favorite UU ministers delivering their final messages to their congregations today. Another favorite is retiring as well. And I’m aware of another who I don’t know as well but respect greatly who is hanging up her robes. There’s a larger question — Why now? —…
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I get why dogs are man’s best friend. Back 30,000 years ago, when we were a shaggy but sharp biped with an uncertain future, dogs saw something in us and made a bet on our promise. They’d be our biggest boosters, slavishly drooling at our side, and ride our coattails to a better life. It…
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I’ve seen most of the Best Picture nominees this year (no Nightmare Alley, Drive My Car or West Side Story) and wanted to drop a quick post on who I think should win this Sunday. Best Picture Power of the Dog There’s a point early in the movie, where Montana simply swallows you as a…
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My family moved one town over, from Hazlet to Matawan, in 1973, when I was in first grade. It was a move up — from a modest home, where the dormer walls of my room slanted inward, to the model home in a newly built neighborhood. We had a sliver of woods behind our house.…
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With omicron burning through Americans, vaccinated and unvaccinated (though, sadly, with very different outcomes), it feels like a total vertigo moment. It’s as if we’re either: In a Chutes and Ladders moment, in which we slide back to April 2020 and start all over again. Or … On one of those people movers at the airport, and…
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Virginia and I continued on a torrid pace of movie-watching, this time watching Jerry Maguire with friends on New Year’s Night. One couple had never seen it. I hadn’t seen it in more than a decade, maybe closer to two. Anyway, I reacted to it a little differently than I did back in 1996. Some…
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We continued our movie-watching last night and caught Don’t Look Up, directed by Adam McKay. It is ostensibly about what happens when two scientists (Leo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence) discover a comet heading straight at earth. The movie starts out playing it for laughs, then downshifts into an increasingly frustrated, incredulous satire and pretty dispiriting critique…
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Virginia and I kicked off our quarantine (a nephew we saw over the Christmas weekend tested positive Sunday for covid, so we’re sitting and waiting to see what arises, like so many others) by watching an actual movie, The Power of the Dog, on Netflix. It’s set in mid-1920s Montana, where two brothers (Benedict Cumberbatch,…
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