by Mark O'Brien | May 31, 2016
Some 20-plus years ago, I was asked by the company for which I worked to fly from Connecticut to Virginia for a meeting on a Friday afternoon. It turned out to be the most amateurish, unprofessional, and bureaucratically typical exercise in passive-aggressive...
by Mark O'Brien | May 9, 2016
An ‘ideology’ is like a spirit taking up its abode in a body: it makes that body hop around in certain ways; and that same body would have hopped around in different ways had a different ideology happened to inhabit it. (Kenneth Burke, 1897-1993, from Language as...
by Mark O'Brien | Feb 23, 2016
A few years ago, I was boarding a flight from Hartford to Atlanta. The weather was cold. So, as soon as the announcement was made that, in the interest of preserving space in the overhead bins for luggage, no coats should be placed in them, most of the people on the...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 13, 2016
This was quite the morning. First, I read this, from my horoscope: How exactly do you hold onto your ideals in a world where it seems like the whole game is rigged for greed, competition, and conformity? Then I read this — “John Edwards (yes, that one) looks to...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 25, 2015
We’re going to step away for a few days to be with our families, to rest, to reflect, to recall all of the things by which we’re blessed, and to be thankful for every one of them. Here are two short lists: At home, we’re thankful for: The love and...
