Start From Scratch Languages Institute

Hill Top, Lake District. Previously the home of Beatrix Potter. 🐇

Some scenes almost look better in Winter, stripped of Summer's green fripperies and light, and I think this collection of old Peak District barns high up on Derwent Edge definitely falls into that category. The gritstone buildings return to being a part of the landscape, blending in amongst the bare trees and mist-covered hills. Oh, and what a bounty of gates!

📍 Peak District, England

© Peaklass, all real, no AI

We are all told to be busy in retirement—travel, volunteer, socialize, take care of the grandchildren. But there’s also joy in doing none of it.

“It is not a timeout—more of a ‘time in’ to a different way of seeing myself,” writes Robbie Shell.

What has brought you joy in retirement?

🔗: https://on.wsj.com/4pjWgrD

From Connecticut to Cairo, these reading spots will seem like paradise to book- and design-lovers alike. https://nyti.ms/4brJBja

How exactly does higher education affect happiness? https://theatln.tc/uYKvJJt8

At first glance, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2025, the relationship between education and happiness appears very positive: Most studies have found “that formal education improves labor-market outcomes, which raises living standards, resulting in higher well-being,” he explains. People also tend to get a happiness boost from the levels of self-confidence and self-esteem that higher education can provide.

But when looking “at happiness in other domains of life, things get a bit more complicated.” In situations where higher education leads to indebtedness, Brooks explains, one’s well-being may be lowered. Scholars have found, for example, that student loans negatively correlate with psychological functioning, and that higher debt-to-income levels predict more symptoms of depression at midlife.

“But formal education is only one way of acquiring knowledge,” Brooks writes. “Many behavioral scientists, myself included, believe that interest is a positive emotion that, when stimulated, makes learning inherently satisfying.”

If you do pursue a path in higher education, there are ways to make the experience a happier one. One method is to find “the sweet spot of overlap between what interests you and what is professionally practical,” Brooks continues. “Do the work that universities don’t: Inform yourself about which majors lead to the best jobs and merge that list with the majors that most appeal to you.”

But if school is not for you, find a different path. Although the intentions behind the “everyone-must-go-to-college mentality” may be “admirable,” Brooks writes, they can also “conceal an unconscious snobbery about class and profession that pushes into higher ed many talented, hardworking young people who would be much happier in occupations that do not require a college degree.” You should also remember that the happiness you derive from education may change: “At 18, I was not ready to study, and doing so gave me no joy. At 29, I thrilled to the glories of differential calculus and the mysteries solved by regression analysis.”

🎨: Jan Buchczik

The Education of Henry Adams

Henry Adams
Author
Edmund Morris
Introduction

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

'I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams,' said Gore Vidal. 'He was remarkably prescient about the coming horrors.'

His political ideals shaped by two presidential ancestors—great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams—Henry Adams was one of the most powerful and original minds to confront the American scene from the Civil War to the First World War.

Printed privately in 1907 and published to wide acclaim shortly after the author&'s death in 1918, The Education of Henry Adams is a brilliant, idiosyncratic blend of autobiography and history that charts the great transformation in American life during the so-called Gilded Age.

With an introduction by renowned historian Edmund Morris.

Fire & Ice
The combination of freezing temperatures and an intense sunset a Lake Chiemsee was a first photographic highlight in 2026. The idea for that shot was up on my mind for some time - glad I could pull it off directly at the beginning of the year.
Bavaria, Germany

It’s tough to go back to school in your 40s. But with layoffs, stagnant pay and inroads by artificial intelligence, many of those nearing midlife are heading back to classrooms and trade schools.

Cindy Woody earned her master’s at 41 and completed her doctorate at 47. “I’m a good investment,” says Woody, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Longevity, she says, runs in her family. Her great grandmother lived to almost 100. Woody worked full time while going to school, quit watching TV and handed off housework to family members while she attended in-person classes at night and on Saturday. She wrote papers between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. or on Sunday afternoons.

Those in their 40s often have to juggle work, family and academics. They take on new debt when peers are entering peak-earning years.

For many, it’s worth it. People are living longer and aren’t retiring at 65.

Read more: https://on.wsj.com/49dYzrN