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Author: Kevin Donahue
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I was a pretty independent teenager. When I graduated college, I moved away from home — to Delaware, Maine and Pennsylvania. Never all that far away, but out of New Jersey. As a parent, my hopes for my boys meant “launching” them, about making sure they had the skills and mindset to move ably through…
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Our local public radio station, WXPN, is a treasure, and their reader poll to determine the greatest albums of all time was a lot of fun. In the end, it became a bit of a Classic Rock Fest and a little hard to listen to, as the Top 10 albums were played in their entirety.…
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Listened to George Saunders’ first collection of short stories, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, this summer and all the things I enjoy about Saunders’ writing were there. But the real treat was his writer’s note at the end, where he shared his experience as a not-so-young writer who pursued writing as he pursued a middle class…
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Can a couple’s marriage survive a life-changing loss when one of them is responsible for the tragedy? That’s the question off the back cover of Peter Friedrichs’ first novel, And The Stars Kept Watch. Friedrichs, a former lawyer and longtime minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County, delivers a deeply empathetic story about Nathan and…
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I’ve reached 56. Not a milestone. I did 55 last year. Lots of people told me the ol’ double-nickel was a bit of a trap birthday, that the half-decade hit them in a way the odometer turning to a “5” didn’t. Not my experience, but I get it. There is a certain settling into late…
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A therapist friend was making a point about the ability of pets to sense the emotional stance of their human partners and provide support … and it struck me that this is probably the least surprising thing about dogs and cats. I commented on Facebook: Pets, dogs especially, from an evolutionary perspective, owe their existence to their…
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Those are the words of my minister that are consoling me this week. Mia’s godmother Caitlin Yakscoe died Sunday morning at the precious age of 30. She has been seriously ill since we’ve known her and I haven’t seen her since Mia’s baptism more than three years ago. As I get older, I am increasingly…
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There’s a lot going on in the world and it has me wanting to get back to writing for other people. So let’s start with the thing I didn’t expect to resonate with me this week: Nanci Griffith. Griffith, a Texas singer-songwriter who enjoyed her greatest success in the late ‘80s/early ’90s, passed away Friday…
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The people of Haiti have never deserved the hand they’ve been dealt, and that only got worse early this morning, when news broke that the president, Jovenel Moise, known as “the Banana Man,” was assassinated and his wife wounded when an as-yet unidentified team of commandos attacked his home near Port-au-Prince. Moise is a complicated and…
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I am very, very curious what things are going to look like on the other side of this.
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A year ago, the pandemic was upon us, states were declaring lockdowns and church services (along with most everything else) went online. It was a scary moment for anyone who loves their religious community, with lots of questions: Would people find online church services satisfying? Would they attend? Would they take part in church life…
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As we catch a glimmer of the world that will be after COVID-19 goes away or becomes endemic or just stops stopping the world from happening, I’m curious about what might happen in that world. Here is the first in a couple pieces on what I imagine comes next. (Disclaimer: I am not an expert…
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