A few years ago I read a book about the Danish concept of hygge, which roughly translates to coziness or charm or, I don’t know, specialness. Hard to pin down and harder to say—aim for a Viking horn–like “HYOO-guh”—the concept nevertheless stayed with me for putting a name to a kind of cozy contentment I’d experienced before and kept trying … Read More
Issue 32: Let’s Eat
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 31: The #1 Thing I Learned in England
I wanted England, where my family and I went in May on a long-obsessed-over trip, to overwhelm me with its Britishness. And it did, it totally did. We’re not exactly world travelers over here. There was a thrilling amount of novelty in BBC-style accents and a pocket full of foreign coins. Each strange new thing filled me with a giddy … 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