TWENTY SOMETHING Melina Birchem has uploaded 777 images to her Instagram account over the past two years: sushi, Starbucks, her new tattoo, rosary beads, cowboy boots. Sometimes the juxtaposition is jarring. A glowing monstrance, a chilled margarita. A snapshot from waitressing, a prayer journal documenting her consecration to the Blessed Mother. As a freshman at […]

TWENTY SOMETHING Oprah Winfrey has joined Weight Watchers, which means she is not only a card-carrying, point-counting member of the weight-loss club, she is also a part owner. That’s how you do it when you’re Oprah: You go big (“you get a car, you get a car, you get a car”) or you don’t bother. […]

There is no scrapbook of Kathy Webb’s life as a Dominican sister. No picture frames or friendship bracelets, no nun memorabilia perched in a closet or buried in a trunk. The only artifact from her convent days is the long apron she wore to protect her white habit, bearing her former identity on a tiny […]

  I’m reading a book that speaks to me as a journalist, Brian Grazer’s 2015 release “A Curious Mind: The Secret To A Bigger Life.” In it, the 64-year-old Emmy-winning movie producer recounts his practice of conducting “curiosity conversations” twice a month for the past three decades to fill up his knowledge reserve and walk […]

The mention of booze generates a look of horror among many of the non-drinkers living and working alongside Michael P. Foley in Waco, Texas, where the Catholic dad teaches at a dry Baptist college. There’s a “skittishness,” he says. So Michael was prepared to raise eyebrows with his new book, “Drinking with the Saints: The […]

“The only essential equipment for seeing birds is a pair of eyes. Good ears are a help too.” The first edition of “Birds: A Guide to the Most Familiar American Birds” smells like an old missal and reads like a manual for living well — birding as a hobby, a lifestyle and a meditation. Its […]