Welcome. The newsletter you’re reading began as “At Home” in the spring of 2020, with the goal of helping Times readers lead full and educated lives amid the coronavirus pandemic. In the spring of 2021, optimistic about the ways the vaccine was allowing us to leave our nests, we changed the name of the newsletter to “At Home and Away.” Our lives were opening up, we weren’t always in our houses anymore, but we were still figuring out how to live well while staying safe.
When I started writing the newsletter, I expected to be of help. I was hoping to give good advice on how to treat and how to pass the time. I wasn’t prepared for the conversation that followed, for the reams of emails filled with recommendations and commiserations, ideas and arguments and poems and photographs. What began as an effort to provide service has grown into a warm and generous community. If you will allow me a sentimental metaphor, what began as a house has become, for me and I hope for you, a home.
Nearly two years later, we are a group of hundreds of thousands who have exchanged book and stream recommendations. We’ve shared coping strategies and things we miss, our New Year’s resolutions, and our cures for loneliness. We made a log book, a soundscape, a smell museum, and four really cool playlists. We spread our hopes, dreams and hugs.
“At Home and Away” was devised to help navigate a world that was transformed overnight. The world, of course, is not finished transforming. We are still living with the pandemic, and it is becoming increasingly clear that we are not going to magically end it one day. As much as we wish things would return to “normal”, this, this negotiating, adjusting and dealing with lives affected in almost every way by the virus, is just life now. And as uncomfortable as it can be at times, we’re getting used to it, we’re figuring it out.
This is the last At Home and Away newsletter you will receive. But I’m not going to raise bets and leave town. I’m turning to The Morning, the daily newsletter of The Times, where, Monday through Friday, my colleague David Leonhardt reports and analyzes the day’s news. I am bringing my observations, suggestions and thoughts on moose to a new Saturday edition of The Morning, to be released on February 5th.
If you’re already getting The Morning during the week, I’ll be in your inbox early on February 5th. If you are not a subscriber, I would love for you to subscribe at the link below.
I have loved every minute of being home and away with you. Thank you for allowing me to visit you these last two years. You can still write to me (and I hope you will) and I will continue to read every letter sent.
P.S.
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Ping-pong balls must weigh 0.095 ounces. The shoulder height of the common wombat is 24 to 28 inches. I learned these factoids from Dimensions, “a comprehensive reference database of dimensional drawings and models that document the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world.” Check it out.
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“In a sense, all you really need to know about Arthur Miller is that he was 13 years old in 1929, that the Depression hit his Brooklyn family in the face.” From Miller’s profile of Jennifer Allen in New York Magazine from 1983.
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Here’s David Byrne and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus performing Byrne and Brian Eno’s “One Fine Day” in 2019.
More ideas to lead a full and cultured life, wherever you are, appear below. take good care of yourself
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