The Girl's Guide
Issue 96: How To Have a Cozy Fall
Welcome back to The Girl’s Guide! If you missed the last issue, find it here.
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How To Craft A Cozy Morning Routine For Fall
In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing my latest story for Evie Magazine: How To Craft A Cozy Morning Routine For Fall. I highly recommend the no-coffee turmeric latte recipe I include in the article (see pic below). As a bonus — if you’re looking for a gift for a friend with a fall birthday, I rounded up a shopping list of the cutest stuff at the end of my story.
Interview with Zoe (Schimke) Miller
I’m very excited to introduce you to Zoe Miller, née Schimke. Zoe is a writer and aspiring matriarch. She’s also co-host of the podcast Presbygirls and is happy to discuss the podcast-listener-to-husband pipeline anytime. Connect with Zoe on Twitter and check out one of her recent articles here.
Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?
I grew up overseas in Kampala, Uganda, with my parents and three younger siblings, which is an unconventional hometown, but I'm grateful for it! I moved back to Pueblo, CO, for college, and now I live in McKinney, TX, with my husband Seth. McKinney is clean, comfortable, and always has an entertaining rotation of new little stores populating the strip malls. I especially appreciate living in the state of Texas for its politics — Colorado is a beautiful place but tragically overrun by progressive politics and wars between special interest groups. What I love most about McKinney is my church (Redeemer PCA) — it's five minutes away from our apartment and is the best church I've ever attended.
What does your life look like right now?
Seth and I were married in March of this year, and we are hoping very soon to expand our small family of two as the Lord sees fit. Recently, I graduated from Colorado State University Pueblo with a BS in multimedia journalism and political science. Career-wise, journalism is my first love, and I am continuing to freelance and pursue occasional projects with WORLD Magazine, ByFaith Magazine (the PCA's official publication) and other sites. For now, I work as a call center agent for a pro-life organization whose mission is to provide women seeking abortions with alternatives and encourage them to choose life.
What's the best piece of writing advice you ever received?
The best piece of writing advice I have ever received was during the World Journalism Institute, a training program run by WORLD I attended back in the summer of 2022. Our instructor told us to include details in our writing, but instead of jam-packing your writing with as many random details as possible, you want to make the details you do include significant — pointing to the character or event you're writing about. Details that don't lead you back to the point are just distracting filler words. As the kind of writer who tends to get bogged down in the details, significant or no, that was invaluable advice.
This isn't a piece of advice, but one of my favorite lectures at WJI was from Dr. Les Sillars (a professor at Patrick Henry College), and he taught us about the history of something we know as “journalistic objectivity” and explained to us that the concept of objectivity was constructed by news institutions in the 1920s and 1930s to gain a wider audience throughout the U.S. Of course, journalistic institutions in ages past have been more thoroughly committed to reporting information without the intention or appearance of bias, but the concept of objectivity in journalism as “complete freedom from any bias” is not as airtight a philosophy as public media would have us think.
What have you learned through working on your podcast Presbygirls?
I have learned that the Lord will provide for you in the most surprising ways. Through Presbygirls, I have made no small amount of lifelong friends and fellow dissidents to spend time in the gulag with. However, the best benefit of Presbygirls is that it's how I met Seth (my husband). It's a long story, but the short version is this: one of our shows was very popular, he watched it, and a mutual friend who thought we had quite a lot in common set us up. The rest, as they say, is history.
What's a book you think every woman should read?
As the co-host of a church-focused podcast, I would be remiss if I didn't recommend the Bible for every woman's reading list. However, in addition to that, I would recommend J. Gresham Machen's Christianity & Liberalism. It is the penultimate guide to the difference between Gospel-centered Christianity, and theological liberalism, which Machen argues is not merely a different strain of Christianity but an entirely different religion. This year is the 100th anniversary of the publication of C&L, and although we in the modern world often face seemingly unique problems, Machen and Christian conservatives in the 1930s dealt with many of the same issues with definitions, clarity, and truth that we see today. It sounds dense, but is actually a smooth read.
The Haps
The Golden Bachelor Isn’t Just Glitter
I have really enjoyed the two episodes of The Golden Bachelor that have aired so far. After years of teasing audiences, ABC is finally producing the long-awaited show about senior singles looking for love. Gerry Turner, 72, now has a dozen women competing for his affection, but it’s worth noting that Alexandria native Nancy Hulkower had a touching moment with him in last night’s episode. You can read more about Nancy here.
Here are more links to what I’m reading lately:
How Uber Beat the Metro: How did Uber become Washingtonians’ preferred method of travel?
Surprised by Oxford is not so surprising, and that’s a good thing: Madeline Fry Schultz reviews a new film that C.S. Lewis fans won’t want to miss.
The 11 Most Iconic Oldest Sisters In Movie History: You might be a firstborn if… you click on this article.
The Mystery of "Dark Triad" Men: Patricia Patnode’s latest column at The Conservateur.
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