By Michael Patrick O’Brien– During a recent funeral, as I took in the icons of St. Michael the Archangel and the Twelve Apostles painted inside a domed Greek Orthodox Church…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Catholic monasteries are not known, let alone acclaimed, for their Halloween pumpkins. That may be changing, thanks to some enterprising Northern Utah Latter-day Saint family farmers.…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Good historians often are good storytellers, and my friend Utah historian Gary Topping knows many good tales about Utah’s past. He’s worked a lifetime to collect…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Although sometimes I think visiting graves is a strange custom, I still do it. In fact, I recently visited the final resting place for my dear…

By Gary Topping– Like our blogger-in chief, Mike O’Brien, I have lots of memories of Las Vegas.  Unlike his, most of mine are negative: the noise, the lights, the water-wasting…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– In the blistering heat of a recent summer day, I sat in a large, air-conditioned, packed-to-the-rafters Las Vegas venue. I heard something few Vegas visitors get…

By Gary Topping– Looking back over my career as a historian, I am struck by how much of it has involved the work of the great Utah and Mormon historian,…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– To be an O’Brien does not mean you are ugly, but it does mean you are not an icon of classic physical beauty either. Generally, we…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I have a strange and nostalgic affection for Quonset huts.  My odd architectural ardor for the prefab semi-circular metal structures that housed World War II airplanes…

 By Michael Patrick O’Brien– As a kid, Daniel Shanahan loved to visit his uncle, a Trappist monk at New Melleray Abbey in Iowa. Shanahan considered joining a monastery too, but…