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How to Fix a Hole in the Heart

Matthew Hennessey

The doctor turned to face us. He was a tall man, athletic and thin, put-together and with a quiet, intellectual air. He wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but he...

Magdalena

Matthew Hennessey

M agdalena loves potatoes. Doesn’t matter what kind. Red, yellow, Idaho, Irish, boiled, baked, or mashed. French-fried is best, but she’ll eat potatoes any way you make them and...

St. Michael, Pray for Us

Matthew Hennessey

I’m a student of pubs. Maybe it’s because my dad owned one. Maybe it’s because they smell so good, especially that front-door bouquet of stale beer, hamburger, air-conditioning, and...

Rambling Shambling Brian Doyle

Matthew Hennessey

Eight Whopping Liesby brian doylefranciscan media, 192 pages, $18.99 The biographical note at the back of Eight Whopping Lies, Brian Doyle’s latest and last collection of parcel-sized personal essays...

Everything in Its Place

Matthew Hennessey

A place for everything; everything in its place—that’s what crossed my mind as I listened to the surgeon talk. He was explaining the medical mystery of the appendix vermiformis, the...

Pack Your Bags

Matthew Hennessey

When you’re sick and know you’re going to die you do what’s called putting your affairs in order. The phrase calls to mind matters financial. More often, however, the...

​Love Among the Artifacts

Matthew Hennessey

There’s nothing like a good flyleaf inscription. Salutations from an ancient friend inside the cover of a long-forgotten book are a rich thing. But time-travelers beware. You might just...

Pro-Life or Pro-Information?

Matthew Hennessey

Amy Julia Becker is a writer and mother of a child with Down syndrome. For several years she has sought to debunk the frequently reported claim that 90 percent...

Don’t Make Down Syndrome A Death Sentence

Matthew Hennessey

In her Yahoo! Parenting article “I Terminated My Baby with Down Syndrome,” Sophie Horan is not shy about painting her abortion as choice made with her baby’s interests in mind....

That Our Children May Be Born

Matthew Hennessey

A bill before the Indiana state legislature has revived what is becoming a perennial debate: what information should be provided to pregnant women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of...

The Down Syndrome Community’s Death Debate

Matthew Hennessey

Let’s try an experiment: Imagine you are a high school junior just starting to think about college. You have your heart set on The Big Catholic Football School with...

Editing Each Other

Matthew Hennessey

I am an editor. My job is to improve manuscripts submitted by authors and prepare them for publication. I approach every new piece sceptically. I probe. I attack. I...

A Loving Place, Inside Me

Matthew Hennessey

I was not at all interested in reading Judy Nicastro’s New York Times op-ed. Not at first, anyway. A piece in any newspaper titled “My Abortion, at 23 Weeks”...

People-First Language

Matthew Hennessey

There is a movement gaining steam among advocates for the disabled to spread awareness of so-called “people-first language,” that is, usage that puts a little distance between an individual...

Guns, Glee, and Down Syndrome

Matthew Hennessey

Last week, Glee aired a “ripped from the headlines” episode meant to capitalize on the debate over gun control. According to the Washington Post , the program featured “long,...