Spring is awesome.

In early March I got a message from a reader in Calgary, Canada, who was like, “I’m really struggling to love my city right now.”

I said, “Girl, everybody hates their city in winter.”

It’s weird because some data from Robert Putnam suggests that levels of social capital are higher the farther north you go. The theory is that in the kinds of places that are periodically afflicted with polar vortexes, community members rely on each other more for emotional and physical support...