95 Picadilly

Over the weekend, I watched the film Wicked: For Good. It came highly recommended by my friend, Brandon, who said it was the closest he had come to the magic of working The Polar Express. Sadly, much as I tried to like it, I found it just as mind-numbingly boring as the original. Having never…

As we approach Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, I’ve found myself drifting back over the last few years. After all, it is a season of reflection and abstinence. My Confirmation Saint knew this all too well – and spoke of it often. I have long loved St. John Henry Newman, and that affection…

When I was in college, I began experiencing bizarre and seemingly unexplained episodes. Initially, doctors believed them to be blood pressure issues that were causing sudden spikes followed by dramatic drops in my pressure. It ultimately caused me to fall through a glass window. That frightening moment led to a million different tests trying to…

I was recently thinking about a catchphrase – or rather quotes from reviews – that I used on my now-defunct blog, back when the internet felt like a place you voluntarily went rather than a notorious entity that stalks your every move. It lived on MySpace, which dates me immediately, but for a while it…

I’ve felt a little rundown lately, the kind of fatigue you try to ignore because ignoring it seems like a good strategy. For months, friends and family have chastised me for burning my candle at both ends. (Trust me, they’re used to it). On Wednesday, after I attended Mass, I started to feel cold in…

I never really envisioned myself writing for a newspaper, and I say that without a hint of arrogance. It just was never in the career plans, though I was recruited several times by a Kentucky paper before finally relenting. I had first thought I would make a life in broadcasting, not even taking into account…

In the early 2000s, there was a film called “Nine,” of which I was a particular fan. It was a lush, musical tribute to the heyday of Italian cinema, about a time when Europe, not Hollywood, set the world’s cultural trends. While the film itself had nothing to do with her, per se – focusing…

Christmas comes as I continue on my own faith journey in what has undeniably been a rough year. It’s been one that’s tested my faith by literally grinding me down. I’ve often felt adrift, as if I were moving through a never-ending fog, stumbling over obstacles I didn’t see in my path. For me, that’s…

Last year, in a bid to stay ahead of the Christmas rush at church, where my family has typically been charged with decorating for Advent and Christmas, I found myself hunched over a paintbrush and deeply second guessing myself as I worked to paint a large ceramic nativity set. The clock was ticking and time…

Several years ago, I picked up a paintbrush with little more intention than to create something mildly meaningful for family and friends. I’d spent years studying art – from the time I was a small child taking private lessons, knee high to a grasshopper, to exploring it casually post-college, where I had studied History and…