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Author: Kevin Donahue
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50 days in. It’s only when you silence your own thoughts that you can hear the grief for what was and what, in my heart, I know isn’t coming back anytime soon: the casualness of friendship; the intimacy of the chance meeting; the mindlessness of getting lost in a crowd; the pleasure of a good…
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OK, so it’s been a while (4 months), but I changed jobs, got busy and looked up to realize the year was nearly over. So I hope your holidays have been joyful and maybe even occasionally restful. Here’s where we are in the story of us: I am four months into my job at Universal…
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First off, an announcement: I’ve changed jobs — again. I started today at Universal Health Services as Director of Content and Publications. The job is good, plus I get to ditch the Philly wage tax (saving 3.5%) and the hour-and-a-half commute for one that’s less than 30 minutes (and as little as 15 on a…
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Editor’s note: I tweaked my back last week and couldn’t sit for very long, throwing a wrench in my weekly newsletter schedule. So we’ll call this Week 3-4, and pick up on the regular schedule around Friday, Feb. 22. Also, this week’s is a little different, mostly a personal essay (And sorry about the subject line…
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(Editor’s note: My second newsletter, send on Feb. 2, 2019.) Welcome back! Hoping wherever you are, that you are safe and warm. What I’m Reading As a high school senior, my younger son Kelly started to suffer increasingly violent migraine headaches, first in conjunction with the ulcerative colitis that was diagnosed a decade ago, then…
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(Editor’s note: this is the text from my first newsletter, sent on Jan. 28, 2019.) Thanks for signing up to receive this newsletter. As I’ve become more uncomfortable about Facebook, and more guarded about whose stories I share and where I share them, I’ve thought about how to communicate with others without feeding the algorithmic…
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My favorite is a bit unconventional, and I explain why it spoke to me.
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When Greg Boyle, S.J., spoke Wednesday at the Chapel of Saint Joseph, most of the attendees knew the Jesuit priest and his ministry Homeboy Industries, the largest rehabilitation and re-entry program for gang members in the world, from his TED Talk or a report on 60 Minutes. Many members of the Saint Joseph’s community have…
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I’ve started and stopped writing something about the mass shooting in Annapolis a few times now. It hits close to home for me. I worked in several small newsrooms as I started my journalism career. Working at a local, non-metro paper is a lot of things: it’s a rite of passage for young journalists; it’s…
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I’ve been equivocal about Facebook for a while now, and the news of the last week has me re-considering even my reduced activity on the world’s largest social network. What’s surprising to me is that a lot of other people apparently are too. Social networks are notoriously fragile—remember MySpace? Friendster?—but Facebook was thought to be…
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My friend John Gilpatrick was recently asking me about my favorite movies of last year. Thankfully, I had given it some thought. And I’ve caught a few contenders in the past few weeks. So here goes: 1. Shape of Water. “Lyrical” is the best word I can use for director Guillermo del Torro’s creation. This…
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(Editor’s note: Published June 5, 1998, in the Philadelphia Daily News. Re-reading the part about Lance Armstrong’s reckoning and decision to commit to being a great cyclist again in the spring of 1996 feels more ominous than it did when I wrote it. That said, even with all the guy did to hurt the integrity…
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