Dear everyone, you are cordially invited to come to my house for dinner. For a while now I’ve been pondering how I can get more engaged here in my town, a subject that TBH I talk and write about far more than I actually do. I wanted to take action. At just the right moment, I stumbled across The Lovable … Read More
Issue 30: In Praise of the Standing Date
For the past few months, the women at my church have been joining small interest groups—you know, like Meetups, but slightly more old-fashioned. Book club is an old standby, but now there’s a knitting group, a play group, a quilting group, a family history group, and so on. I was put in charge of the lunch group, because eating at … Read More
Issue 29: Spring Will Heal You
In early March I got a message from a reader in Calgary, Canada, who was like, “I’m really struggling to love my city right now.” I said, “Girl, everybody hates their city in winter.” It’s weird because some data from Robert Putnam suggests that levels of social capital are higher the farther north you go. The theory is that in … Read More
Issue 28: How to Live to Be 92
The other morning, as I drove home from a ridiculously early-morning class that I teach, I caught my neighbor, June, crossing the street in her robe and slippers. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Oh, I’m just going to put Betty’s newspaper on her porch.” I knew the answer already, because I see it from my window sometimes. June scoops … Read More
Issue 27: The Joy of #Goals
As lovely as Christmas was this year—and believe me, eating cookies and bingeing The Final Table on Netflix satisfied the soul—I was like “BRING IT” to New Year’s. Fresh starts! Clean slates! Hooray! That I sing this particular hallelujah chorus won’t surprise anyone who’s read This Is Where You Belong—but it may surprise you that I still, despite all the … Read More