In case you missed it...
Stories from a year ago are free for everyone to read. Did you catch these posts from The Invisible Thread archive?
Happy Friday, friends.
We are celebrating three years of The Invisible Thread on Substack this spring, and I wanted to send out a reminder that after posts have been up for a year, they become free for anyone to read, even if you don’t have a paid subscription.
I wanted to share these stories from a year ago, just in case you missed them the first time around or if you’re a friend of the newsletter who hasn’t yet upgraded. As I start work on the third Feminist Kitchen zine, now is a good time to remind folks that a yearlong subscription to this newsletter costs $45. That includes two issues of a scrappy little print zine that I write, design, and mail to readers each winter and summer.
To my paid subscribers, your support covers the cost of producing an independent column, delivered straight from my inbox to yours, featuring stories that you won’t find anywhere else. Thank you so much for the great honor of getting to write and share them with you.
I just heard from a reader today that my loquat column made him think about the loquat tree in his grandmother’s yard in Houston. This morning, he picked a whole bucketful with his daughter and told her about his boyhood memories.
That’s the best reward I could hope for.
Addie
Maybe that wasn't the last letter home
Just when I thought my Sweden story was coming to an end, a new chapter began. I’ve been retelling this ancestral origin story this week as I rest and recoup after our wedding, which included the family bible that my great-great grandmother, Karolina, brought over with her from Sweden
There's always enough time for the right work
Last week, I shifted gears from sharing travel stories about Nashville to writing newsletter ruminations about “Small is all,” one of the principles from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy. With the Nashville school shooting and political trouble in the capitol there, I’ve decided to continue with the Emergent Strategy theme because, let’s be hon…
Buttermilk and Crackers: Catching Riders in the Sky and Ricky Skaggs at the Grand Ole Opry
Last week, I found myself in the audience of the Grand Ole Opry’s 5,079th radio broadcast. Every Saturday night since 1925, the country’s foremost singers, fiddlers, and steel guitar players have gathered to perform a live countr…
They traffic in delight: Meet Mel and Dave
Melissa Joulwan and Dave Humphreys are living a book lovers’ dream. At least that’s how I imagine the life of this creative couple, these former Austinites who are now cozied up in a tiny apartment in Prague with their cat Smudge, reading books all day so they can talk about them on their literary travel podcast,
I'll never forget this shade of Pretty Punch pink
A short delay to our previously scheduled Nashville content. (You can read Part 1 about seeing country music legends at the Grand Old Opry here.) But I couldn’t wait to bring you a delightful little eBay discovery I made last week.
Taking the architect’s view
Last week, I watched a spectacular sunset through the window of a building where people spend their days designing our future. This was at a lovely little open house for the new offices of Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, a local firm that has had…