The 1973 oil embargo cut American gasoline supplies by about 25 percent in a matter of weeks, and the lines at filling stations stretched so long that drivers brought folding chairs and paperback novels, a small humiliation that quietly changed how a generation thought about thermostats.
The 1973 OAPEC oil embargo cut American gasoline supplies by roughly 25 percent in six weeks, producing hours-long lines at filling stations and a Nixon-era request to lower thermostats to 68 degrees. The habits formed that winter, smaller cars, insulated attics, cooler houses, reshaped American homes for the next fifty years.
Some people in their 60s are quietly building friendships from scratch — and it turns out starting over socially can feel more honest than anything that came before
Two women met at a ceramics class in their early sixties. Neither knew the other. Neither came with shared friends or workplace history or the
Many parents in their 70s quietly describe the same thing: that the visits got longer and the calls got easier around the time they stopped needing their adult children to report that everything was fine
A conversation with an adult child can feel, from the child’s side, a lot like a phone call with a weather check attached. There is
People who grew up in homes where feelings weren’t named but consequences were still felt often spend the first decade of parenting wondering why their reactions seem bigger than the moment
There is a specific experience that many parents describe, usually with some version of the phrase “I don’t know why I reacted like that.” The
Thought of the day from C.S. Lewis: “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly — but it’s still worth it”
A line attributed to C.S. Lewis circulates widely in parenting contexts, usually accompanied by an illustration of some kind and a reference to vulnerability. It
American parents are not unhappier than parents in other rich countries because their children are harder or their love is weaker, they’re unhappier because the country was never structured to make parenthood survivable, and the research now has the numbers to show it.
In a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Sociology, the sociologists Jennifer Glass, Robin Simon, and Matthew Andersson compared the happiness of parents
There’s no common word for the moment you realize the thing you’ve been most afraid of becoming is already running in your family like a quiet current, which may be why so many parents feel it alone
Most languages have gaps where certain experiences should be named. English has no single word for the particular recognition that arrives mid-argument with your child,
People who arrive at their 60s with few close friends aren’t always the ones who pushed people away — sometimes life simply sorted itself differently
Most people with few close friends in their sixties did not get there because of who they are. They got there because of what happened.
The last generation that memorized directions before leaving the house developed something we mistake for a good sense of direction. It was actually a good sense of attention — they had to watch the world go by closely enough to find their way back through it
There used to be a small ritual before any journey to somewhere new. You’d ring the person, pin the phone against your ear, and they’d
I asked ChatGPT what childhood was like in the 1970s. It described a world today’s kids no longer get to experience
A batch of old photos went around our family WhatsApp group recently. Most of them were of me and my siblings — bad haircuts, worse
People who lose touch with friends in midlife often realize too late that the friendship never ended — it just stopped being fed, and a thing you stop feeding doesn’t die dramatically, it just quietly isn’t there one day when you finally reach for it
My uncle Ray is seventy-three and not a sentimental man. He spent forty years as an electrician, says “champion” instead of “thank you,” and treats
Quote by Alan Watts: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.”
Quote of the day, from Alan Watts: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so