With our stores closed and the future of social gatherings uncertain, our booksellers have been talking a lot about what it means to be a Third Place in the time of quarantine.
With our stores closed and the future of social gatherings uncertain, our booksellers have been talking a lot about what it means to be a Third Place in the time of quarantine.
Ready for a new read but not sure what it should be? Don't take our word for it. Check out what your neighbors are reading lately. They've got good taste!
Shopping for Mom is not always easy. And as we are all stuck at home, even harder. Here are 10 titles for all different kinds of Moms that are well suited to our present moment.
In this age of quarantine, we all have something in common. Until a few weeks ago, most of us had three separate and distinct “places” in our lives: our homes, our workplaces, and our third places – those places for, well, just about everything else. These third places are where we engage in essential social experiences, where we come together, where we meet friends, practice our hobbies, and express ourselves.
Three different activities, three different identities, built on a lifetime of habit. And for the last few weeks, they have all been reduced to one place: Our homes.
I have dabbled in reading the Tarot for the last 8 years or so. I was attracted to the images long before someone first gave me a reading, but I was afraid that my very practical community would ridicule me for believing in the unseen. It took a couple bad relationships for me to get to know myself and accept my witchy tendencies. It took a growing emptiness inside of me to realize that I needed to go deeper than "face value" with the cards.
As I process these internet orders for you, I miss the interactions that might have been. I miss my coworkers, all of them. I understand how privileged I am to be working from home at this juncture. And it's hard to grapple with the guilt of being one of the lucky ones, when we are on different sides of the same coin and nothing is perfect.
April is National Poetry Month, and it fell this year on a historic moment both for having time to read and a need for the consolation and guidance of politically engaged verse. We live in interesting times: with a pandemic threatening and taking the lives of people all across the world, when our leaders and institutions have never seemed less adequate or less legitimate, the future of society itself seems to be in doubt. Now is not the time for light, or gentle, or confessional poetry of individual feelings, but for witnesses to history.
I thought there were few things as isolating as the the first days of recovery. And then I found myself living alone during a pandemic lockdown.
The anxiety, fear, and boredom of early recovery feels a lot like what we're all dealing with today.
It's getting tough out there, or in there. While being stuck at home, it seems like we're busier than ever. Working. Baking bread. Watching all of Ozark. Zoom happy hours. Training our dogs to jump over stacked rows of toliet paper.
And then there are those of you with bored kids and cats on your hands. Kids can't go to school. Cats can't go outside. And you don't want to overload them on screen time. Plus cats don't really use phones.
These days have begun to feel elastic: even the most banal social practice upended, oceans of time in front of us that feel by and large destined to be filled by anxiety. Oh, the new normal. The importance of maintaining routine are stressed upon us, the vague semblance of normality holding us together with tape and string. I myself never thought I could abide shoes in the house but am now cheered by the simple act of lacing them each morning, even if only to tread the same exact square footage as yesterday.