The Curious Columnist
Who I am. By Joey Kennedy In the mid-1980s, I had the pleasure to work with Jo Ellen O’Hara, the longtime food writer and editor at The Birmingham News. Jo Ellen recounted recently that when I first...
View ArticleDriving with Birmingcabbie
A different way to see our city. By Joey Kennedy Photography by Beau Gustafson My neighbor Rod Walker drives a taxi for Yellow Cab, and he showed me a cross-section of Birmingham that few of us ever...
View ArticleHappy Father’s Day?
A hard reminder. By Joey Kennedy Straight up, I’m not crazy about June. Too many bad memories. My late mother’s birthday is June 12, and I miss her terribly. She died much too young, at age 63, a...
View ArticleWhat We Lost
UAB football is coming back, but will they be able to recover? By Joey Kennedy UAB football is coming back, but the team will have to start all over. President Gerald R. Ford, in 1974,...
View ArticleWhat Do You Care About?
Johnny Norris, attorney The things that drive us. By Joey Kennedy I’m curious. What do you care about? I’m not talking about family and friends. We all care about our family and friends, and if...
View ArticleThe Buses Roll By
Photo Credit: Elzbieta Sekowska / Shutterstock.com Lessons from a student—and teacher. By Joey Kennedy The buses roar. At about 3 p.m. every day, they pass by our house, leaving Glen Iris...
View ArticleIn the Pursuit of Candy
The best trick-or-treating spots in the Magic City. By Joey Kennedy I was a ghost. I may have been 10 or 11 years old. I was young, just a kid. And my mother, not wanting to spend too much time...
View ArticleDriving Miss O’Hara
Adventures of the curious. By Joey Kennedy Photography by Beau Gustafson I have a play date every Friday with two older women. Get your mind out of the gutter. This play date is with my wife and a...
View ArticleThe Christmas Blahs
And those optimistic twinkling lights. By Joey Kennedy December is here, so it’s time for a Christmas column. I know, it’s cliché, but c’mon, Christmas dominates December. Heck, it dominates most...
View ArticleUncertain Times
A photo taken by Virginia Jones of the Palais Royal at night after the Paris attacks. A few thoughts on the terrorism hysteria. By Joey Kennedy Happy New Year. We do start 2016 in uncertain times....
View ArticleSpotlight
Journalism in Birmingham. By Joey Kennedy The movie Spotlight focuses on an investigative reporter team from The Boston Globe that exposed the Catholic Church’s priests who preyed on young children,...
View Article60 is Super
Yes, it is. By Joey Kennedy Sixty. I turn 60 years old this month. On March 28, I will have survived six decades. I have spent nearly four of those decades in Alabama and nearly three-and-a-half of...
View ArticlePut Your Paws Together
It’s a Magic City for companion animals, too. By Joey Kennedy I love Birmingham for many reasons. The city is small enough to get around in, but large enough to provide plenty of activities for...
View ArticleMother’s Day Confessions
I have a confession: I tried to smother my mother-in-law. By Joey Kennedy Be patient, curious reader, I’ll get to that. First, this being the month we honor our moms, I want to talk about mothers in...
View ArticleA Bucket Filled with Life
Joey Kennedy free falls from 14,000 feet above Vinemont as Skydive Alabama trainer Kevin Hicks directs the jump.(photo courtesy of Skydive Alabama) My legs are dangling outside an airplane at 14,000...
View ArticleOh, Birmingham. You Could Have Been Orlando.
By Joey Kennedy Like most people in the world, Orlando messed with me. That 49 people and many others could be killed and wounded by a madman with a military weapon he bought legally messes with me....
View ArticleAmazing Grace: We Might Not See it in Politicians, But We All Need It
As a child, I attended a Baptist church in deep southern Louisiana. The preacher there was all fire and brimstone. A yeller, Brother Emmit Wren worked to put the fear of God into his small...
View Article9/11/2001: It’s Been 15 Years, or Yesterday
It’s been 15 years. It could have been yesterday. A decade and a half since the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took down the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers (and other buildings nearby), that damaged...
View ArticleThe Mentors Who Changed My Life
Our new baby pug is Casey. Named after Ron Casey, my mentor and editor at The Birmingham News, back when it was a newspaper. Casey is fearless. At 12 weeks, he’ll jump off our couch. He’ll engage dogs...
View ArticleBeing Thankful, and Not So Thankful
It’s November. Thanksgiving month. We know this is the month of Thanksgiving. But should it also be the month when we think about what we don’t want to give thanks for? I’m thankful for many things:...
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