MSI Press Blog

  Today's publisher's pride is Travels with Elly by Larry MacDonald, which reached #145 in travel with pets books. Book description: Discover Canada like never before -- from a personal perspective, similar to John Steinbeck's view of America in his 1960 book Travels with Charley . The author travels from coast to coast in a trailer with his wife and pets, including their Standard Poodle, Elly, in order to gain a better understanding of his adopted country. Interspersed between descriptions of history, cultures, places, and icons are the author's reflections on various things such as Elly's antics, signage, ferries, political injustice, environmental issues, and animal instincts. To provide a canine's perspective, Elly reflects on things of interest to her, including cats, cows, and other critters...but especially cats! Where was Canada's first settlement? What is its prettiest town? When and where was its most devastating shipwreck? And who was its greatest ...

  Tuscany isn’t just a region; it’s a living archive. Every stone, every vineyard, every piazza carries the echo of centuries. You don’t have to look for history here — it finds you. These five places capture the spirit of Tuscany’s past and the quiet continuity that makes it feel eternal. 1. Florence — The Heart That Still Beats Florence isn’t a museum; it’s a pulse. The Duomo rises like a promise, and the Arno glimmers beneath bridges that have seen empires rise and fall. Walk through the Uffizi or stand before Michelangelo’s David , and you feel the Renaissance not as history but as presence — art still breathing in the same air. 2. Siena — The City of Pride and Pageantry Siena’s medieval streets spiral toward the Piazza del Campo, where the Palio horse race still thunders twice a year. The city’s neighborhoods, or contrade , guard their banners and traditions with fierce affection. It’s a place where civic identity feels sacred — where competition became culture, and culture be...

  The Glory Be (“Glory to the Father…”) is one of the oldest Christian doxologies, dating to the 2nd–3rd century; it appears constantly in Morning Prayer because it “seals” every psalm with a Trinitarian lens; and the sign of the cross is used with it because it is the most compact, bodily confession of the Trinity. 1. Where the Glory Be came from The prayer is ancient—older than the Nicene Creed, older than most formal liturgical texts, and probably rooted in the earliest Christian house‑church worship. Its origins The earliest form appears in the Apostolic Constitutions (late 200s). It was used as a doxology—a short burst of praise—whenever Scripture was proclaimed. The original form was simply: “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.” By the 4th century, during the Arian controversies, Christians expanded it to emphasize the eternity of the Son and Spirit: “…as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.” This was a theological line in the sand: Chr...