Migrated my newsletter to Substack
I finally got fed up with Mailchimp and it’s evil parent company, Intuit. I have now fully migrated my free, episodic newsletter to Substack. Please click below to subscribe.
https://kristenghodsee.substack.com
A new newsletter just posted...
Reclaiming the word “kith”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “kith” is considered “archaic” or “obsolete.” Originating in Old English and in continuous use until 1848, we sometimes still hear this word in the phrase “kith and kin,” as in: “She relied on her kith and kin for emotional and material support.” In this context, “kith” means: “The persons who are known or familiar, taken collectively; one's friends, fellow-countrymen, or neighbours.”
If our blood relations are our kinfolk, then our circle of connections constitute our “kithfolk,” another term we lost somewhere in the evolution of the English language. In many ways, I’ve spent the last two years trying to reclaim the word, the idea, and the reality of kithfolk in our everyday lives–finding new and creative ways to forge community and connection in societies that pull us apart. In this historic moment of overlapping and compounding crises, I’ve been arguing for the importance of utopian dreaming. But I also believe that we must expand our definition of kin, and to nurture and strength our connections to kith.
Since Everyday Utopia came out on May 16, almost six months ago, I’ve had the privilege of doing virtual and in person events around the United States. I've also traveled to speak with readers in Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. Continue reading…
A winter solstice newsletter →
Today is the official end of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.
The sun hangs low in the sky and casts long shadows across a nearby church parking lot. On these shortest of days and longest of nights around the winter solstice, the faithful seem to congregate more frequently. In their crisp suits and colorful dresses, the parishioners exchange smiles and call out greetings over the slamming of car doors and the bleeping of key fobs.
I survey the automobiles: the newest models of Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and Lexus sedans. This is an affluent community of believers. Soon, they will sit and stand and kneel together to celebrate the birth of a baby boy, a baby born among beasts over two thousand years ago, who would grow up to champion of the poor and downtrodden. His followers would live as communards, dwelling together and sharing their property. Continue reading…
A new newsletter posted
It’s Thanksgiving weekend, an annual American festival of absurd overindulgences and hyper-concentrated family time.
This late Autumn finds me back in Maine where I lived for fifteen years between 2002 and 2017. The crispness of the salty morning fog transports me back twenty years. I recall myself as a new mother and a freshly minted Ph.D. arriving on campus as a young assistant professor, suddenly transported from California to what seemed back then like the northernmost tundra of the contiguous United States.
I grew up in San Diego. Snow was only something you saw on TV or visited for a few hours around the winter holidays, either up in the nearby Julian mountains or at Sea World where they hauled it in refrigerated trucks and refreshed it with artificial precipitation machines. My parents, like the other locals with season passes, brought their kids to experience the sorry simulacra of sledding and snowball fights. I was one of those tweens wearing a bikini under my winter clothes so we could head straight to the beach after drinking our overpriced hot cocoa with little marshmallows in the faux Christmas village. Continue reading…
A new newsletter for the Autumnal Equinox! →
September brings new beginnings.
It’s harvest season and the start of a new school year. Where I used to live in Maine, it’s when the “leaf peeping” tourists flood the state to spy the spectacular fall foliage. In Germany, Oktoberfest actually begins in this month, and in Japan the major national breweries (Kirin, Asahi, Suntory, and Sapporo) replace the light, effervescent beers of summer with their darker and heavier autumn ales. In Bulgaria, the 9th of September is either celebrated as the glorious launch of the country’s post-WWII socialist era or mourned as the commencement of its ignominious descent into totalitarian hell. It depends whom you ask and how drunk they are when you ask them. Read more here
My latest newsletter from Paris →
Daylight in Paris
I’m writing this newsletter on a bright Autumn day in front of the fountain at the Jardin du Luxembourg. The park is filled with people lounging in the metal green chairs, soaking in the soft rays of an early October afternoon. Sunglasses and berets, artfully wrapped scarves, puffer vests under sport coats, Converse high-tops, and the occasional striped bateau, which the French wear unironically. I watch people with their feet up, their eyes closed, their AirPods in, and their faces turned up to the brilliant blue sky. Some eat baguette sandwiches. Others converse with animated hands. The tech addicted stare down at their phones, cupping their hands above their screens to block the glare. In front of me, four schoolgirls sit together on the sand beside the fountain. Behind me loom two large potted palm trees, their wide fronds swaying with the breeze on these last balmy days before they are rolled indoors for the winter. The bell of the clock on the palace chimes every fifteen minutes punctuating the steady crunch of footsteps on the pathways. The soundscape is completed by symphony of chattering voices, bicycle wheels, children’s squeals, cawing crows, and stray digital ringtones. Continue reading…
A new newsletter...
Travel is like a muscle; if you don’t flex it often enough, it atrophies
Because of COVID-19, I’ve been grounded since March 15, 2020, but I finally managed to haul myself onto a plane last week for a much-needed trip to Eastern Europe. As an ethnographer, my research requires fieldwork, which means talking to people in their own language and in their own country, trying to understand their dynamic worldviews from inside that amorphous and elusive thing that anthropologists used to call “culture.” While some of my more technologically savvy colleagues moved their scholarly research into digital realms during the pandemic, I’m old fashioned. For me there is no replacement for walking the streets of the city, eavesdropping on bits of dialogue as people go about their daily lives, or chatting for hours over coffee, wine, or rakija.
After a delayed flight forced a missed connection, I spent nine hours in Munich airport delirious with sleeplessness before boarding the plane to Bulgaria. Read more…
A newsletter for the 4th of July
Independence Day
Today is the 4th of July and the skies around Philadelphia will light up with fireworks to celebrate what has largely become a midsummer holiday about barbeque and beer. Where I grew up in San Diego, I used to love to watch the pyrotechnics at Mission Bay or over the ocean on Pacific Beach. Now that I’m older I find myself less excited about the sometimes-overzealous displays of patriotism associated with this day, especially when the United States feels more like the Divided States of America.
A new newsletter is out!
I’m having fun with my newsletter and sent out the most recent update today, inspired as I was by the cherry blossoms at Chanticleer.
Now is only once...
The Chanticleer Pleasure Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania opened for its 2021 season on March 31st. I’ve already gone four times in the last two weeks to experience the fleeting beauty of the cherry blossoms. Between 1993 and 1996, I lived for three years in Japan teaching English in middle and high schools through a special program organized and funded by the Ministry of Education, and I have fond memories of the Japanese cultural traditions surrounding the blooming of the sakura trees.
Because they blossom only for a few days each year, families, friends, and colleagues carefully plan special Hanami celebrations to mark the coming of spring. In late March or early April (depending where you live in the archipelago) millions of people share picnic blankets under the riotous explosions of pink, drinking sake or specially brewed cherry blossom season beer while reveling each other’s company. Even the gentlest of breezes produce flurries of petals that drift listlessly through the air and catch in your hair life fairy dust. Parks and public spaces burble with joyous voices.
To read more, please subscribe to the newsletter here
I finally wrote my first newsletter →
I created this Mailchimp account over a year ago but never got around to using it. This morning I felt inspired and finally sent a little missive out. You can read it here.
