When Circumstances Are Right
My study is dusty and cluttered, a room jammed with all the items that go with being O’Grady: books lining the walls and stacked on the floor, file drawers crammed with manuscripts, storage boxes...
John P. O'Grady Blog
Sticking Together
Late one November afternoon, we stood before the gates of Woodlawn Cemetery on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. We entered and came upon a quaint gatekeeper’s cottage with a uniformed guard inside. He took...
Mud Meadow
The name of our place is Mud Meadow. I’m not sure how that came about, but it’s what my father always called it. I don’t know if he made it up himself or heard...
A Dead Cat
Stories are like weeds—they come up everywhere and unexpectedly. Sometimes when I’m reading, I’ll nod off and find myself in the middle of a story that hasn’t been written yet. In that shadowy territory...
Further Adventures in Commerce
The wine store. I’m waiting at the checkout counter. Three aisles away, a big fellow, sixty-something, dressed in black t-shirt and ill-fitting sweatpants, stands shouting through a star-spangled mask into his phone. His wife...
A Memory Resurrected
They say that memory is a kind of treasure house, but I’ve always thought of it more as a graveyard without monuments. It’s easy to lose track of what’s buried there. Recently I was...
The Whole World Is Medicine
Used to be that I spent a lot of time in the cafeteria of a certain Catholic hospital. It doesn’t matter which one. The circumstances of my life were more demanding in those days....
Emotional Comfort
Late afternoon, Day of the Dead. An election looms. We’re out of dog food so I drive down the mountain to resupply. The radio waves are jammed with polls and pols. It’s getting darker...
Pomegranates
The first pomegranates of the season are on display in the supermarket. The ancient Egyptians had an expression, “Eat a pomegranate and visit a bath—your youth will hasten back.” I don’t know about that,...
Moral Courage
On a long-ago summer morning, I found myself sitting on a bench in Eyre Square in the City of Galway, Ireland. Looking back on it now, I can see my youthful self as the...