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Author Archives: Mr. Dan Kelly

Chicago writer interested in many things.

What’s the Mission? Or: Bearded Men Tell Me What to Do.

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

My first mentor was plastic. At age eight, I received a Talking Adventure Team Commander GI Joe, complete with life-like hair and kung-fu grip. Note his thousand-yard stare. He has seen things. If you pulled his dog tag, the Commander said one of eight phrases. One is imprinted on my brain: “I’ve got a tough assignment […]

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Confederacy of Dumbsh*ts

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Every time Trump returns to his 2016 policy of picking idiots, sycophants, brutes, and all of the above to run things, I gain a tiny bit of hope that, once again, they will eat through each other like rats in a barrel. Oh, there will be horrors and pain, but they are terrible at governance […]

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Joan R. Kelly (née Quinn)—Eulogy

Friday, May 17, 2024

I asked my wife Michael to share her earliest memory of meeting my Mom. She remembered the first Kelly family gathering she ever attended. Likely, there were 25 or more of us, celebrating a birthday or holiday or both in the house on Maple Drive. Mike comes from a smaller family, and was amazed at […]

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Bernard J. Kelly—Eulogy

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

The first time I ever spoke up here I was 12 years old and a student at St. Damian. I recited a reading for that week’s mass. As a quiet kid it was a big deal, and an attempt to break out of the shell everyone told me I was in. I did it without […]

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I Stopped Blogging…

Thursday, January 19, 2023

And nobody noticed. I stopped writing, and nobody noticed but me. Definitely at the “why bother?” stage of my career.

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The Lack of the New

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

One of the drawbacks of this “blog a day” business is that I work at home. Subsequently, I lack my former pre-pandemic benefit of working downtown. The commute was a pain in the ass, but at least I was guaranteed to see something new and different every day. On my 25-minute stroll from the train […]

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Mortality

Sunday, January 8, 2023

One of the dumber fictional ideas humans have had is that immortality, or more “realistically” a very, very long and healthy life measured in millennia, would be unbearable. Given that extra-long lifespan, only an unimaginative soul wouldn’t find multiple worthwhile somethings to do along the way. We have the notion that losing people would be […]

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St. Vivian the Obscure

Saturday, January 7, 2023

Today’s blog addresses the piece of writing I worked on today. A well-overdue review of a book about Chicago’s Vivian Maier. Vivian, if you don’t know about her, worked as a nanny for most of her life and semi-secretly made a vocation of photography. Through the middle of the 20th century, Vivian snapped pictures of […]

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Bloggity Blog Blog Blog

Friday, January 6, 2023

Coming up with a topic for a quick paragraph here every day is already a challenge. I know there are people who can sit down and regale you with tales of their dental appointment, baking escapades, and foot care regimen, but… Well, I could probably do that too. Babbling in print has been my day […]

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Third Coast Review

Thursday, January 5, 2023

I have a fellow writer friend who shares the things he’s grateful for everyday, without fail. I’m far too much of an ingrate to do that, but it might be worth it to mention the things I do to keep busy and push this wobbly-wheeled wagon I call a writing career further along. For instance, […]

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