Notre Dame Magazine | Summer 2013
Ryan Doherty went from being a minor-league pitcher to a couchsurfing beach bum to a legit beach volleyball star. Along the way, he became a comedy blogger.
Category Archives: Notre Dame Magazine
My work for Notre Dame Magazine, one of the premiere university magazines in the U.S.
I took a flying leap
Notre Dame Magazine | Autumn 2013
I jumped out of a plane. Then I wrote about it. The beginning:
Way up there, in the first weightless moments of free fall at 10,500 feet, the cold atmosphere is silent.
There are only wisps of sound: of thudding heartbeat, of nylon jumpsuit against parachute container, of clinking metal fasteners, of the plane’s droning engine fading into nothingness above. An island of whispers through a vast stillness.
Gravity vanishes. It is still there, of course, tugging downward, but its apparent absence is palpable in sudden weightlessness. Stomach flutters upward. Nerves spark with energy. Brain struggles — and fails — to comprehend it. To process it. Total free fall.
Un-suck the Band
Notre Dame Magazine | Spring 2012
When I was in high school, I played keyboards in a rock band. After a few years of playing, we were good enough play at the Stone Pony, a dive famous (at least in New Jersey) as the bar where Bruce Springsteen got his start.
We clearly had no idea what the hell we were doing.
Click here to read “Rockin’ the Pony” at Notre Dame Magazine
Illustration by Daniel Fishel for Notre Dame Magazine
Prodigy on the Grand Stage
Notre Dame Magazine | Autumn 2013
At only 30, Paul Appleby is rapidly ascending the ranks of the opera world as one of the finest lyric tenors of his generation.
And he is so unassuming, such a decidedly regular guy, that one could be tempted to dismiss his meteoric rise as a product of luck.
It’s not.