I’ve lived in Charleston since 1985, and it used to be commonplace to run into people I knew on the street or in shops and restaurants. Due to a combination of rapid population growth and a year of Covid caution, it’s been a while since that has happened to me on a regular basis. Yesterday, I ran into some friends in Trader Joe’s, and it reminded me of what David Griesing called “bumpability” in a recent newsletter. He was using the term in the context of what can be lost by working at home versus going into an office, but I realized how much I miss bumpability in my daily life. Unexpected encounters and surprise interactions provided juice and joy to the fabric of an ordinary day, so I loved coming across my friend in the frozen food aisle and then later having an engaging conversation about our tattoos with the girl bagging my groceries. Those little punctuations in my afternoon left me with a happy fizz. I’m a deep introvert by nature, so sheltering in place during the pandemic didn’t drive me as crazy as it did my more outgoing friends. But I probably need bumpability even more than extroverts because it helps keep me connected and committed to the world. It makes me civilized and social and curious. It simply makes me more human. I hope we bump into each other someday soon.

 

As I’ve noted before, I’m a big fan of Alison Roman’s food videos called Home Movies, but I’m mostly a voyeur cook. I love watching her rule her tiny kitchen, but I recognize that I'm usually too impatient to give a recipe its due. One of my daughters subscribes to her YouTube channel (and actually cooks), and after making Roman’s Frizzled Green Beans for Thanksgiving, she called to rave about them. If you're looking for something new to add to Christmas dinner, this might be the answer.

The novelist Teju Cole has been curating playlists for years and has posted 112 of them so far to Spotify. His lists are both deep and wide and filled with an eclectic range of music I might never have discovered otherwise. One even includes Louise Gluck reciting one of her poems. I originally found them by listening to Teju Cole’s best (which seems to have been collated by someone else) and then moved on to what he calls the hundred greatest songs of all time. All of his lists don’t come up on a Spotify search, so the best way to access them is to explore here and then click through to the individual ones. I'm working my way through them all.

Every year about this time I head to World Market to roam the aisles on a crazed search for stocking stuffers like bacon-flavored lip balm and Sasquatch air fresheners (and for me, Hobnobs and British candy). A few years ago, my family all drew names and then we each filled a stocking for the person we chose, and honestly, it was the best Christmas ever in my opinion. It was so much fun to see how inventive everyone got with their stockings.