By Michael Patrick O’Brien– One recent Sunday afternoon, while walking in downtown Salt Lake City, I encountered a large group of people marching to the state capitol and protesting the…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Law school makes you see and think about things differently than normal people. I realized this one day in property class, when we studied landlord/tenant law.…

By Gary Topping– As a historian, I have never found the concept of a “generation” particularly useful, for two contradictory reasons.  For one thing, it threatens to lock one into…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Salve is a versatile word.  In Latin (pronounced “sal-vay”), it is a greeting and a welcoming phrase, derived from the verb for wishing someone health and…

By Gary Topping– Any memories I had of my first autumn in Utah—1972—are submerged in my recollection of the horrendous winter that ensued, when temperatures sank to minus fifteen degrees. …

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– If my dearly departed Irish Catholic mother was to haunt a place, she’d choose the old Sisters of Mercy convent and boarding school in her hometown…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– During the last few months, I fell up the stairs four different times.  I now am working at the office almost full-time again, post-pandemic (hopefully). As…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Dorothy Day, perhaps the greatest Catholic women of the twentieth century, came to Utah fifty years ago. Both went to the…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Catholic monasteries are known for many interesting and wonderful things, but probably not for their pumpkins. That all may be about to change, thanks to some…

By Gary Topping– I admit it: I was a pretty weird kid.  I knew it at the time and was unrepentant.  Still am. I rarely listened to popular music.  I…