Nuns and Why I Wanted to be One!

Nuns and Why I Wanted to be One!

For most of my childhood, I wanted to be a nun. I went to Catholic school for 12 years, first at St. Amelia’s, then 4 years at Cardinal O’Hara High School. In the heavily Polish and Italian suburb of Tonawanda where I grew up, nuns formed a huge part of my...
Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, Ireland

Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, Ireland

Clonmacnoise was a monastery founded about 454 AD by St. Ciaran. He chose the site for its ideal location at the junction of river and road travel in Celtic Ireland. Ciaran didn’t live to see the growth of the monastery. He died of plague at the age of 33, only...
St. Ninian’s Cave, Scotland

St. Ninian’s Cave, Scotland

In my second novel, Eleri’s Tale, my character Eleri spends time at “Candida Casa”, the “white house” on the hill at the very southwestern tip of Scotland. The time period is 432 AD. Candida Casa was a monastery built by St. Ninian. St....
Ancient Perfumes

Ancient Perfumes

Perfume has an ancient history. Incense was the first perfume. The ancients burned many types of resins, woods, and herbs for their religious rituals. A few posts back I mentioned that red grains of incense were found in the recently discovered in the tomb of the...
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