The #1 Thing You Can Do to Help Your Town Thrive

Melody WarnickCool projects, Place love, Placemaking

Add this to the list of things you probably already know: Volunteering is good for you. Like, seriously good for you. Various studies have shown that spending as little as an hour a week volunteering can: Increase your well-being, making you more satisfied with everything about your life: your finances, your health, your accomplishments, your relationships. Basically it gives you … Read More

Does Everyone Hate Your City?

Melody WarnickMoving, Place love

Here’s a startling truth: No matter how much you adore your city, there are people who hate it. Like, really can’t stand it. It’s strange, isn’t it, how two people who live in the same place can experience it in such vastly different ways? And yet 99% of the time, the city into whose soil you’ve dropped deep and happy … Read More

Doing These 3 Things After a Vacation Will Make You Happier

Melody WarnickLove Where You Live experiment, Place love

Why does everyone hate tourists? Because we gawk. We rhapsodize about boring stuff like buildings (“Oh my gosh, the architecture!”). We snap pictures of subway entrances and sandwiches. In short, we pay attention in a way we usually don’t in our owns hometowns, and that focus and excitement reawakens us to the thrilling power of place. In fact, a really … Read More

What Your Dream Vacation Says About You

Melody WarnickPlace love

Where you go on vacation is usually curtailed by annoying practicalities like bank accounts and work obligations—two reasons why my spring break trip took me on a three-hour road trip to Richmond instead of, say, the UK or a Hawaiian island (check out here the list of the best tours on Maui). But if money and time were no object, … Read More

So You’re Thinking of Moving to Canada…

Melody WarnickI would live there, Moving

Trust me. I feel your pain. When you say that a Trump presidency will make you leave the country, I’m right there with you, pondering the fact that an entire branch of my family tree hails from Nova Scotia. That means Canada kind of has to take me in, right? We’re not alone in considering a move to the north. … Read More