Issue No.2 September 2019
What does it mean to fall in love with a sofa, a painting, a kitchen table or a vase? And how did we value the contents of our homes two hundred years ago? Valerie Andrews shows how the world grows a little kinder when we enter the society of things.
Christian McEwen talks about the guilty pleasures of a new mattress, why women do more housework than men, and the path from hoarding to forgiveness.
Companies use the Myers-Briggs test for team building. Sally Keil explains how Jung’s typology plays out at home, shedding light on family relationships.
Frank Beck considers how our songs of youthful wandering give way to the poetry of marriage and belonging.
Advice from a Regency novelist: When choosing a partner, look carefully at how he keeps his rooms.
“I’ve had many kinds of jobs, but have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself (or) placed the security of a job above the value of home.”
Merwin writes about being alone in that empty house, conversations with his parents that were never-ending, and his fondness for the things they left behind.
Melville wrote about sperm whales and harpoons when he was landlocked in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and living in a house of strong-willed women. How can a writer’s desk serve as a creative island?
Wendell Berry says, “Part of manners used to be to say to somebody you just met, Where are you from? I quit asking because so many people say… everywhere and nowhere.”