A few years ago I was sitting in a cafe in Santa Barbara and felt an overwhelming urge to write to David James Duncan. I had just read a piece by him in The Best American Essays 2009 about birds and extinction and disintegrating marriage, which left me weeping at my table.
Thinking About Clothing
I have an uneasy relationship with clothes and style: I don't really care about fashion and I don't enjoy shopping, but I do like to look nice. I like the confidence that can come from wearing a well put-together outfit--I just can't be bothered to put one together! Keeping up with fashion feels expensive and futile and energy-draining, but...
Starting a happiness project
Have you heard of The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin? I stumbled across the book, and then Rubin's website, a few years ago. I was really taken by how clear and, well, smart her writing was. I tend to shy away from anything overly self-help-y and anything that relies on positive thinking to make life changes, but I felt that...
Found in the Forest | Lily of the Valley
Spring takes its time arriving to our part of Sweden. We still have wide swaths of lily of the valley in the forest near our home, which I love to stoop down to smell. I just learned that it's highly poisonous (which I should have remembered from Breaking Bad!), so don't let your little ones eat it. Its...
A Close-up of Tree Rings
I found this stunning photo of a Russian tree while reading a Swedish magazine called Research & Progress (Forskning & Framsteg in Swedish) and was blown away. Isn't it amazing? Each column is one year in the tree's life, and the thin column with the aberrations is from the year 536, when a severe frost hit in the summer....
Why We Moved to Sweden
When James asked his previous boss, who has professional ties in Sweden, what Stockholm was like, he expected some comments about the weather, the food, and some of the glowing remarks about life in Sweden (and across Scandinavia) that we've all been hearing recently. What he got, several weeks later, was a job offer.