Banished to the Far Country

By Angelyn Schmid On May 14 2012, 1:01 am in Captain Fawlkner, Elizabeth Rennie Dundas, James Erskine, Lady Grange, Lord Grange, Lord Henry Dundas, Rachel Chiesley, St. Kilda, Viscountess Melville

Banishment was best for the disposal of unwanted wives.  In the eighteenth century, divorce and separation were scandalous matters for men with ambition in the British Isles.  The next best thing, for the husband who discovered something objectionable in his wife, was banishment.  

Man’s Best Friends

By Terry Irene Blain On May 13 2012, 12:38 am

Man’s best friend  Once our son’s grew up and left home, my husband and I got puppies.  So now we do agility with our dogs, a Scottish terrier named Smokey and a Pembroke Welsh corgi named Bandit. So now I’m thinking about how to incorporate dogs into my stories.  Since I write (mostly) in the American west, there are plenty of opportunity to have a dog as a character.  In one story the cowboy hero brings his new wife a puppy.  Ranches often had dogs, as they were useful in helping drive cattle.  My husband’s family had a dog, Buster,

Catherine de Medici, the queen of French culture

By McKenna Darby On May 12 2012, 3:35 am in ballet, Catherine de Medici, fashion, France, high heels, McKenna Darby, Paris, perfume, queen, Tuileries

Ah, Paris! The city is arguably the world’s epicenter of cuisine, culture, fashion, fragrance. But how did Paris get to be Paris? Many historians would argue that the city owes its tradition of excellence to one woman more than any other—and that woman wasn’t even French. Catherine de Medici was only 14 when she arrived from Italy in 1533 to marry Henri of Orleans, second son to King Francis I of France, but she was already worldly wise. Catherine recognized that the French court would despise her for being Italian and a descendant of merchants, not French and noble. She

Seattle Underground

By J.K. Maze On May 9 2012, 2:49 pm

            Some years ago there was a television series about a newspaper reporter who chased down and wrote about bad guys, usually monsters such as vampires and the like. One of the shows took place in the Seattle Underground. Believe me, this story was creep at its best, or should I say worst?             Now, just what exactly is “Seattle Underground?”             According to Wikipedia:             …The Seattle Underground is a network of underground passageways and basements in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States that was ground level at the city’s origin in the mid-19th century. After the streets were elevated

Train Travel in 19th century America-Luxury or merely efficient?

By Anne Carole On May 7 2012, 3:00 am

I love traveling by train. The summer after 9/11 we had planned to go to Disney World but we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to board an airplane yet so we decided to go by train rather than disappoint our daughter. When we boarded a porter ushered us to the sleeping car we had booked and informed us that he was at our disposal for the remainder of the trip, What a luxury!  He took our meal orders for dining in the dining cars, showed us around our compact but efficient single cell quarters, turned our seats into beds at night,

Born Behind the Veil

By Ruth A. Casie On May 3 2012, 10:35 am in Caulbearers, Ruth A. Casie

Some children are born with a mask, a birth caul, made of a thin membrane that covers their face. While these births are very rare, they do hold special significance. Stories and myths abound about the caul. Many are pure fabrication. The correct name for children born with a caul is Caulbearer. Because the member looks like a thin veil, people born this way are referred to as being ‘born behind the veil.’ Men or women can be Caulbearers. They come from any social class, race or religious group. These births are not indigenous to any geographical boundaries. There is

The Feast of Little Christmas

By Mary McCall On Apr 24 2012, 3:34 am in Blessed Sacrament, Church, Corpus Christi, Eucharist, Feast Day, Liturgical Calendar, Sacrament

One of my favorite time periods is the thirteenth century: the Age of the Scholastics. It was a time when great strides were made in Christian philosophy and theology. Great saints seem to creep out of the woodwork to take the world by storm and holdfast to The Faith through the great Council of Trent. During this period, we also had the introduction to the Liturgical Calendar of one of the greatest feast days: Corpus Christi (or the Feast of the Body of Christ). This feast is often referred to as Little Christmas, because through it, we celebrate the gift

Was Baseball Invented in Russia?

By Ally Broadfield On Apr 21 2012, 12:00 pm in Ally Broadfield, Baseball, Lapta, Russia

In truth, the game evolved over many decades, if not centuries, and its roots are, in reality, a tangled web of bat and ball games brought to this country by immigrants. – Frank Ceresi in The Origins of Baseball (Baseball Almanac, 07-2004)  Yes, baseball is the American pastime, but its origins are difficult to trace. Some believe it was based on the English game of cricket, which can be traced back to Tudor times in the early 16th century. Others believe it was based on the English game of rounders, which can also be traced back to Tudor times. But

Kirkin’ Of the Tartans

By Jody Allen On Apr 20 2012, 11:52 am

After a week long fun at Barbara Vey’s Readers Luncheon and Romantic Times Convention in Chicago, I returned home early on Sunday to participate in a time honored tradition of my local St. Andrew’s Society of the City of Milwaukee … “The Kirkin’ of the Tartans”. If you live in a boating community or maybe a farming community in the spring usually the local church clergyman/woman will come out to bless the fleet or bless the animals. Well for Scots throughout the United States and Canada the “Kirkin of the Tartan” is when our family tartans are blessed by the

The Beau Sancy – Relic of a Vanished Empire

By Angelyn Schmid On Apr 14 2012, 1:01 am in Beau Sancy, Chancellor von Bismarck, Frederick the Great, Frederick Wiliam the Soldier King, Henri IV, Hohenzollern, Marie de Medici, Prince Georg Friedrich, Prince of Orange, Prussia, Treaty of Utrecht

It was inevitable.  Scarcely eight months since the Prince of Hohenzollern married and the new Princess is already cleaning out the attic.  I’m teasing, of course.  However, the Prince did mention that the decision to sell his family’s heirloom was “not his alone.”  Hmmm. The Beau Sancy is also known as the “Little Sancy”  — one of a pair of diamonds named for their procurer who brought them to Western Europe in the sixteenth century out of Constantinople, their origin presumably from the diamond mines of India.  The smaller gem is not the finest of white diamonds, nor does it benefit from