By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Almost 50 years ago, on October 19, 1972, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now Saint Teresa of Kolkata) visited the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville. Fortunately, I…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Almost 50 years ago, on October 19, 1972, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (aka Saint Teresa of Kolkata) visited the now-closed Trappist monastery in Huntsville. She was…

By Gary Topping– For most couples, their wedding night is one of the happiest events of their life, but it rarely makes the newspaper.  My parents’ wedded bliss lasted less…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– For our 50th birthday gifts, my wife Vicki and I each chose a dream destination trip. For my golden birth anniversary we flew over the Atlantic…

By Gary Topping– Keith Topping, my brother, was three years younger than I, but a generation older.  We never got along well as kids, and when the cultural revolution of…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– There was only one place in Utah, perhaps only one in the whole world, where you could sit on an old church bench, drink a beer,…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– In late September 2020, three years after the Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah closed, my family enjoyed an early evening picnic on the old Abbey grounds.…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– (Editor’s note: today marks the three year anniversary of this blog. This was the original post from September 25, 2017.) On a late September morning in…

By Gary Topping– Like Mike O’Brien (oops, I should be calling him “Michael”), I have fond memories of Monsignors Mannion and Mayo. (See Alpha days and Omega times–a Tale of Two…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– One of the advantages of getting old is you get to see how things turn out. So it is with the two Catholic priests I met…