Online addiction worse when game brings “a sense of community.” And while WoW differs from these social-farming games, in Van Cleave’s opinion, they’re not all that different. “In my mind, these games pose a bigger problem, because of that sense of community and belonging that they bring. Those are the games that are the most [...]

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As I write a book I describe as a tale of two villages, Camberwell and Great Barrington, I am glad to have yet a third village to use as another point of reference. And this one is actually called a village, though it’s even more urban than Camberwell, my London neighborhood. Over the past few [...]

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I came to Great Barrington because I wanted my two children “to be from somewhere.” There are many times I have told myself what a mistake that was, that I chose the wrong place, that I should have stayed in London, or moved on when I realized how alien I felt here, knowing that that [...]

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I’m not sure quite how I came across this. Was it a link from another China blog, or was I searching for uses of the phrase “this world of ours,” the title of our new series at Berkshire Publishing? In any case, it’s another example of the kind of questioning that inspires A Smaller Circle. [...]

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Thanks to another blogger for this link to an article in New York Magazine: Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb: New York Times’ Political columnist David Brooks changes his mind on suburbs.

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Fascinating to consider how we became so capable of being alone together. The quiet and solitude of a modern Western coffee shop is more like libraries used to be.

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At the office we’ve been editing some TV interviews I did 20 years ago, when I was a young mum in London, and new author of one of the first books about green living. My daughter Rachel, who is graduating from college, was then a chubbynewborn who modeled cloth nappies for my interviews and photo [...]

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T. S. Eliot wasn’t the only 20th-century poet fond of cheese, it seems. W. H. Auden wrote: A poet’s hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere. This reminded me of a passage from the Bible, from which the common phrase, “a prophet without honor” comes (misquoted, as you can see): Now [...]

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In my London neighborhood, I frequently stopped by friends’ houses if I was walking past, and ended up, quite often, staying for a cup of tea or a drink. It didn’t surprise me if someone stopped by, either. It was neighborly, and relaxed. But we’re now living in a way that assumes no one will [...]

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