COLUMN: Michael Hand – The Swan Story


I NEVER expected to be on the dating scene in my fifties but after 22 years my marriage ended and I wasn’t cut out for being on my own. I have heard it said that women grieve and men replace, so after a short period of grief I went looking for love. Dances and pubs […]


COLUMN: A dark secret


THE first man I ever hugged was Tony Esposito. In a black-and-white world, he was an explosion of Technicolor. But he had a dark secret. I had been accepted by the Diocese of Youngstown to work as a deacon in my final summer before ordination. I was assigned to this rather backward parish called East Liverpool […]


COLUMN: An accidental meeting


I WAS responsible for him losing his eyelash and gaining a wife yet I only met the man once and I don’t even know his name. It all came about because my first car as a newly ordained priest was a clapped out ten-year-old Austin Allegro that was held together by rust. The reason I came […]