Pay your friends to mend your clothes, recommends Sam Schultz, from Boston. (Presumably these friends are handy with a needle and thread.)
Described by one reader as “the best transformative experience” and another as “the best midlife crisis”: walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Carol Brand, from Boulder, Colo., was advised in preparation for the journey, “If you pack it, you have to carry it,” wisdom she’s extended to her life, as a lesson in nonattachment.
The best thing Kathy Gray, in Cosby, Tenn., gave and received this year came from bringing meals to her local firehouse. “They were so grateful and welcoming, and always thrilled to see my car pull up,” she wrote.
The best thing Amy Hopper Swan, from Little Rock, Ark., did to improve her marriage was buy her husband his own separate laundry hamper. And, after a trip to Germany, Michelle Wagner, of Jamestown, R.I., decided to adopt a new bedding schema: she bought individual twin blankets and duvets for herself and her husband. “Life changing,” she reports.
Your best in culture
While most submissions were delightfully idiosyncratic, there were some common themes. Readers were mad for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour (the live show, the film, the fandom experience), as well as Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Depeche Mode’s “Memento Mori.” You loved the TV shows “Slow Horses,” “Lessons in Chemistry,” “The Bear,” “Ted Lasso,” “Gilmore Girls” and “Reservation Dogs.” The film that received the most love was “Past Lives.” You loved reading “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese, and listening to the Meryl Streep audiobook of Ann Patchett’s “Tom Lake.”