Category Archives: Benedictine monastery

Catholic Schools / Public Schools, part 2

Today I was interviewing one of the Sisters who is celebrating her 60th Jubilee next year, S. Ruth Nierengarten. For about a decade she has been curator of the Haehn museum, but she’s retiring now, on the advice of her … Continue reading

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Kennedy School

This year a new elementary school opened in St. Joseph. It is the one thing that breaks our otherwise unobstructed prairie views. The lights at night are like a little shopping center in the distance. It bothers Steve more than … Continue reading

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Jon Hassler, Last Catholic Novelist?

Jon Hassler was a novelist who lived and worked in this area for his whole career, and whose novels are more or less set in this area (fictionalized) and the other places he lived– Brainerd and Bemidji. He died in … Continue reading

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Thomas Carey, OSB

These past two days as communications director at St. Benedict’s monastery I’ve gotten a crash course in Sister Thomas Carey, a painter and Sister of this monastery who died in 1999. Her work is amazing, and I was familiar with … Continue reading

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Sisters not Mothers

Two weeks ago I spent an afternoon at St. Scholastica, the retirement center for the Sisters. It’s something I’ve been wanting to write about, and have been talking about to people since. I went mostly just to see the place– … Continue reading

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Why a Nun?

In response to that last post, someone asked me: “Do you get a sense Rosemary would have done something different with her life if she’d been asked that question earlier? Or that there’s something else she would have liked to … Continue reading

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Sisters’ Birthday Party

Today we had a belated birthday party for Sister Miriam, who turned 74 at the end of September. It was a party, with chocolate cake on china, and also a bit of a team-building exercise. It was held in the … Continue reading

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How I Got Here

I came to Minnesota to spend an academic year at the Collegeville Institue for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, because I had to get out of Southern California, and because I was working on a memoir, and it was the story … Continue reading

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Where I Live

I got married on July 26, 2008 and on July 29th I closed on my house in Cold Spring, Minnesota and moved to a farm in St. Joseph, Minnesota, about 8 miles away. The farm is 80 acres that used … Continue reading

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Time to Start Posting

Where to begin… is that the reason people have trouble beginning blogs? I’ve had an account here for weeks, maybe months, but it sits empty. Which is not to say I haven’t been communicating virtually. I’ve been listserving. I’ve been … Continue reading

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