TWENTY SOMETHING Oprah Winfrey looks regal in a purple pleated skirt and matching sweater, beaming on the cover of the magazine that delivers her much-anticipated Favorite Things — “112 crowd-pleasing gifts for everyone on your list.” Now in her ninth year partnering with Amazon, Oprah vouches for each product with her trademark hype: a […]
Christina Capecchi: Rescued by a pig: A Titanic story
TWENTY SOMETHING A mother understands. From the outside, Edith Rosenbaum was bursting with beauty and promise, 32 and a rising star in fashion. Her job was glamorous, working as a Paris correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily, an American fashion publication. She covered couture openings and penned a column that appeared on the front page, […]
Christina Capecchi: The great de-clutter
TWENTY SOMETHING My next-door neighbors have been packing up to move for the last month. The empty nesters are downsizing, and I’ve watched their weeks-long purge with a mix of horror and admiration. High-school letter jacket? Give. Handmade desk? Give. Barbie clothes sewn by Grandma? Give. Almost everything had to go. There was no […]
Christina Capecchi: Learning to listen in a noisy world
TWENTY SOMETHING I have loved photography for years. And I think I finally found my niche: snow photography. Every time it snows — which is frequent here in Minnesota — I grab my phone, slip into my boots and start snapping. Some prefer their trees laced with pink apple blossoms or blazing with red maple […]
Christina Capecchi: How to participate with the Holy Spirit
TWENTY SOMETHING Sometimes gold flakes surface along the periphery. The first or last picture in a photo shoot is the winner. The opening or final page of a book delivers the line that you hold to your heart. Or the wind-down of an interview — right after the formal conversation has wrapped up — produces […]
Christina Capecchi: The Catholic creative
TWENTY SOMETHING The idea came in a dream. It was just like the movies, the fantasy of every writer who has slogged away at a keyboard, awaiting inspiration. Haley Stewart’s came. “I woke up, and I was like: ‘I have to write this story! It was just given to me!’” Over the years the 36-year-old […]
Christina Capecchi: Bread, wine and a Norway spruce
TWENTY SOMETHING Before there were any buildings in Rockefeller Center, there was a Christmas tree. At the peak of the Great Depression, construction workers hungering for holiday cheer pooled their money to buy a 20-foot balsam fir and placed it in the center of the construction site. They decorated the tree with whatever they could […]
Christina Capecchi: The hidden power of play
TWENTY SOMETHING Every fall the push to do more intensifies. Sharpen your pencil and dig in. Produce more, study more, socialize more, exercise more, volunteer more. The calendar becomes the battlefield, its squares squeezed ever tighter. If summer is for vacation, fall is for achievement. But we are forgetting something. The very thing we consider […]
Christina Capecchi: Largo: In praise of a slower pace
TWENTY SOMETHING There is an art and a science to slow living. This summer I’m trying to learn both. In music you can measure it. The tempo called largo — Italian for slow and broad — clocks in at 40 to 60 beats per minute. (Allegro, by contrast, doubles that pace, while presto races up […]
Christina Capecchi: History and humility
TWENTY SOMETHING The old man with the typewriter would like a word with us texters and tweeters: Don’t be a blockhead. David McCullough’s bestselling new book, “The American Spirit,” takes up a cause he has long championed, lends it added urgency and aims it squarely at young adults. “We are raising a generation of young […]
