I’m delighted to welcome Ashley D'Arcy, our Senior Editor at The Good Trade, as the author behind today’s edition while I escape to the woods for the weekend.
Ashley is one of the oldest souls I know, always bringing depth and discernment to every piece we publish and every conversation we share about culture, media, and life in general. I’m excited for you to hear from her directly today.
And next weekend brings an especially exciting edition, with more to be announced soon, so stay tuned!
xx, AmyAnn
Views from my Joshua Tree holiday escape
Hi and happy Saturday! Ashley here, Senior Editor at The Good Trade. I’ve just returned home to Brooklyn after a month away in Los Angeles, where I was visiting friends, hiking, venturing out to the desert (there were rainbows and shooting stars!), and spending some quality time with The Good Trade team. (You can check out the beautiful pics of our year-end party here!) So, I wanted to share some things I brought with me to LA, what I brought back spiritually and materially, and what I was most excited to come home to. Spoiler alert: The last one is my pillow.
As a result of a fortuitous apartment swap, my time in LA uncannily resembled the East Coast. Without intending to, I ended up in a small enclave within Echo Park where the streets are lined with Victorian homes. The apartment where I stayed had dark wood wainscoting, green wallpaper above, and was full of antique lamps — the kind that would be impossible to buy and must be handed down to you by a great-uncle. Not exactly the Spanish Revival that you imagine when you think of California, but it was the perfect place to spend the days and days of rain that fell on Los Angeles as we moved into the new year.
In my Uber home from the airport, in more rain in NYC, I remembered the feeling of returning home from vacation as a child. Every summer, we’d drive to the East Coast to visit family friends and family members scattered between Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and New Hampshire. When I was a kid, I didn’t like the feeling of coming back to my life in Ohio. It meant schoolwork, boring evenings in front of the TV, and the end of exciting meals at restaurants and exotic (ha!) out-of-state fast-food chains along the long drive home. Still, sitting in the back of the car as we drove through FiDi, I had a flash of seeing my childhood living room, completely quiet with soft light blanketing it, upon stepping in the door home. There was always some peace and comfort in the return...
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