Category: History
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I Never Met An English Country Church I Didn’t Like
[St. John the Baptist, Buckthorn Weston, Dorset] It’s been said by many travelers that if one wants to know what’s happening in any small English village, just go to the pub and listen for an hour. I think the same is true, to a degree, of social life provided by the Church in these towns…
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68 Steps Along The Nave Of Wells Cathedral
Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, I was climbing the endless steps of Sacre Coeur in Paris. My wife was at my side. We paused on the 67th step, and, in the warm Parisian sun, we turned and looked back at the City of Lights. We kissed on that 67th step. It was my 67th…
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The Haunted Well Of Avebury
I heard about the haunted pub and the cursed well of Avebury while touring a church in Gloucestershire. I was purchasing a CD of Traditional Country Songs (sung by a small chorus) at the gift shop of St. John the Baptist in Cirencester. I recognized many of the titles from my collection of Irish songs…
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Oxford Of My Dreams
I was drifting off to sleep. My dreams began. I felt disoriented. Where was I? I was in Oxford, England to accept an award for “Best Blogger in the World.” I was waiting in a room in one of the 38 colleges that make up the University. I had walked here from the hotel, but…
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From My Cradle To Her Grave
The first woman to see me naked is lying six feet down in the silt of the Susquehanna River. It’s a small cemetery in a small community…not even a town or village…just a cluster of houses several miles down river from the town where I grew up. On the last day of May, I will…
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The Old Schoolmaster
You throw a pebble, a small boulder that you can barely pick up, or a grain of sand into a pool of water. If there is no wind, you can watch the ripples move out in perfect concentric circles, ever-widening. The tiny waves keep going until they reach an obstacle and they bounce off into…
patrickjegan 