For the January 2025 The State of Home: Year Three, click here. And if you’re a subscriber who joined this year, don’t forget to check out my introductory essay, Welcome Home, here. Otherwise, there’s no particular order in which these need to be read (or listened to), so go for it!

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What is home to a monster, to anyone? There exists for each of us a geographical fulcrum, a place so saturated with memory, that within its precinct the past is always present.

—Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors (Book 3 in The Passage Trilogy)

Happy New Year. My wish for 2026 is the same as it was for 2025: Times are weird and awful, but life is still beautiful. Find the things that make you happy and do them. Your joy will absolutely make the world better.

Image: Front door view, stunning sunset, May 2025. No filter necessary.

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