Not long after I moved from Austin, Texas, to Blacksburg, Virginia, I met this beautiful blonde woman named Melissa at church. We started chatting, and eventually she mentioned that she ran her own blog. “Oh yeah?” I said, “What’s your blog called?” “320 Sycamore,” she told me. Friends, it was like realizing that Julia Roberts had been sitting in the … Read More
Issue 14: Summer Beach Reads
Reading is delightful year round, but the phrase “summer beach read” always fills me with a giddy anticipatory pleasure. I’m not sure why. During a two-week New England vacation that landed me on more beaches than I’ve seen in five years, I read approximately 1/3 of one book and 1/2 of another. That’s it. And yet I cling to the … Read More
Stuff I’m Reading: Three Authors on Belonging
My lazy summer is abruptly coming to an end, with revision deadlines and intense back-to-school shopping with my daughters. Here’s your back-to-school assignment: Go to Musing, the blog of Parnassus Books, in Nashville. Put it in your RSS feed. Wait with baited breath till a post by Ann Patchett pops up. Enjoy. I’ve never been to this bookstore physically—never even … Read More
Stuff I Love: Stately Type t-shirts
I’ve been following Stately Type on Instagram for a while now, because it’s awesome. Every week or so, husband-and-wife team David and Holly Lesué pick a place, usually a city or a state, but sometimes a country or a destination, and debut designs for three different t-shirts for it. Their fans, all 13,000 of them, get to vote for their … Read More
Stuff I love: Geography art
Right before we moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, my husband gave me a little piece of Virginia to put on my wall: Typography is big in our house, so I was a sucker for this CAPow print (a scant $18 at Society 6), with its hand-drawn lettering spelling out the names of Virginia’s 95 counties. Now framed and hanging in the living … Read More