It cannot always be night
On the Winter Solstice, we hold one of our family’s most sacred traditions: the Longest Night.
our house is a very, very fine house
On the Winter Solstice, we hold one of our family’s most sacred traditions: the Longest Night.
I’ve talked about it here before, but because it’s so good it deserves a yearly mention. The rules are simple: candlelight, Christmas lights, and screens are the only acceptable illumination. We open our stockings by the fire and watch a Christmas movie with homemade popcorn and Jeffrey Morganthaler’s famous egg nog.
The Solstice is on Dec. 21, but we observed ours last night because we have other obligations, so I made Carla Lalli Music’s Carla Lalli Music's pasta e fagiole and we did the damn thing. It was the first ~tingle~ of the Christmas spirit I’ve felt this season, horribly late but much needed.
Perhaps this is the nudge you need to host a Longest Night party of your own. In this moment we're living through — somewhere between Genesis and Matrix — I find that any reconnection with the real world (be it through dirt, sweat, oxygen, or light) helps.
The best time to host the Longest Night is on the Solstice; but there's really no bad time to do it, whether it's during the Dead Week between Christmas and New Year's — or even in the dark of January if you just need a post-holiday pick-me-up. If you care to join me in a spontaneous Longest Night party, simply pick a few of the following:
Light candles or string up some Christmas lights (just no big light under any circumstances)
Mix a cocktail, pour yourself a glass of wine, or brew a pot of tea
Put on music
Rummage through the fridge or pantry and cook something from scratch — whatever you've got on hand
Settle in for a movie you've been meaning to watch in the dark
Go to bed early
Let me know how it goes. Send pics.
It's also a nice time to revisit my favorite poem for this time of year, from Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize:
Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
“Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.
Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.
—Speech to the Young (1991)
P.S. For those of you who are Netflix subscribers and, like me, are struggling to relax over the holiday break, I am coming to you with the highest recommendation: Download Monument Valley 3 and enjoy a series of aurally and visually soothing M.C. Escher-inspired puzzles.
away we go.
The Invisible Man: a firsthand account of homelessness in America
Patrick Fealey for Esquire
Best line: It’s my first week out here. I pour an iced coffee from my cooler. I’m walking around the front of the Toyota I’m now living in when a car pulls into the lot, comes toward me. I see only headlights illuminating my fatigue and the red plastic party cup in my hand. Must be a cop. Someone gets out and approaches. It is a cop, young. I’m not afraid, exactly, but I’m also not yet used to being homeless.
A home library can tell your life story
Tim McKeough for The New York Times (🎁)
Best line: A library should feel like an escape within the home, which makes it a great place to play with elements like deep paint colors, wall coverings and wood paneling.
If you lack a spare room to turn into a library, one can be added to a space you might not have considered, like a wide hallway, an alcove or even an unused corner in a larger room.
How to make your home airtight
Kate Jacobs for The Modern House
Best line: Let’s start with the staggeringly simple: just closing internal doors during cold weather will generally reduce the draughts circulating around a house, while in summer, opening them all will improve air flow.
Within most homes, there are common ‘usual suspects’ when it comes to draughts. “It’s crucial to block major sources of draughts, such as chimneys and letterboxes.
Wendell Berry on how to be a complete person
Maria Popova for The Marginalian
Best line:
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. ...
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident
Georgia Rannard for The BBC
Best line: “I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.
It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.
But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.
home tour
The owners of these Newfoundland saltbox homes have to hike or boat in
Grace Bernard for Dwell
Best line: The seasonal residence, accessed only by boat or foot, features prominently in Salvage, a historic fishing village of 108 people. The home is sited on a peninsula between the town center and the North Atlantic Ocean. Because of the houses’ location and history, it was essential to client and architect that the design remain rooted in the local context and minimize impact on townspeople’s views.
Seth Putnam is an editor and writer in Chicago. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in a 1920s home that is the epitome of a work in progress. See more of his work here.
"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." —Mary Oliver