Anjulie Rao


WEATHERED

WEATHERED is a newsletter about cities and places in the wintertime. Launched in 2021, the publication commissioned original reporting, essays, and criticism—and original works by illustrators—and published weekly between December 21, 2021, and March 30, 2022. Anjulie served as founder and editor; all articles below were commissioned works by authors, academics, journalists, and more.

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Mardi Gras, Crawfish, Festival, and Saints: On Recovery Season in the Gulf Coast

Time is marked by seasonal cultural cadence in South Louisiana including, but not limited to Mardi Gras season, crawfish season, festival season, and Saints season. However, when it comes to actual weather, there are only two distinct times of year: when it’s hurricane season and when it’s not. I drove to Grand Isle from New Orleans at the beginning of March, over six months since Hurricane Ida’s eye made landfall not far from the shore of this inhabited barrier island. It was sunny and warm an

Cold Snap

Editor’s note: We’re welcoming Spring 2022 this week. Though the new season has arrived, we still have two stories left to share. This week, writer/producer Aubrey Calaway shares a very special audio story about Houston’s 2021 deep freeze. We recommend listening to the full story linked above, as it’s a story about silence. The transcript and epigraph are also below. The power went out while we were sleeping. Maybe it was gone by the time the wind tore the hurricane shutter off my bedroom windo

The Joy and Existential Dread of Living with Radiators

As the afternoon sky turns gold and the sunlight shining through the windows dims, a gentle pssss sound fills the air of my early-1900s home. The radiators are turning on, bringing heat and a tactile warmth with them. Admittedly when I brought my home six years ago, I overlooked the radiators. Their existence didn't even register during my initial tours of the house. In the years since, I've become caught in a tumultuous, love-hate relationship with them. There's something charmingly nostalgic

Shelter (n.)

Change happens slowly in the Pacific Northwest. After Oregon’s blazing summer cools into a colder, kinder fall, it takes several months for Portland to slump into its vague, monotone winter. First, the leaves’ blazing yellows, reds, and oranges hush into a melancholic gray and collect in piles, just off the street. Next, those piles decompose into a mushy brown pulp, which sticks to white shoes and slithers into storm drains. These changes happen quietly, in slow motion. All the while, the sky

The Window

Editor’s Note: “Weathered” will be published weekly through March 30. Today’s edition is a crossover with reporter Colleen Hagerty’s newsletter, “My World’s on Fire.” If you’re interested in disasters (who isn’t these days), please consider subscribing. After years of trying to avoid exactly this scene—bright flames swallowing his grass and seedlings, smoke plumes curling above the tops of his trees—Richard Batha’s front yard is on fire. He surveys it from behind sunglasses, taking a few steps

Digging Ourselves Out: Shoveling the Public Way

It’s snowing in Chicago, the most we’ve gotten all year, and my landlord has sent out an email titled, “Snow removal–we’re trying!” The snowblower is broken and could we please pitch in if possible? I did my part to hack out a path early in the morning, but the accumulation soon recoated my work in a new layer of puffy white frosting. “Thank you!” I holler out from the porch to Scott, my neighbor, as he huffs down the sidewalk with an inadequate shovel. “Just getting my cardio in!” he calls ba

Forgotten Wounds: Caring for Milwaukee’s Urban Orchards

In winter, the trees sleep. Beneath Milwaukee’s thin sun, branches rattle in the hard wind and wait for the call of spring. Together, the branches form a blip of an apple orchard on a bus stop corner; across the way is the scream of the interstate. Unlike the trees, there’s no rest for Jan Carroll: A retired nurse-turned-arborist who, every February, grabs her shears, dons winter gear, and tends to Milwaukee’s urban orchards. Scattered across the city’s vacant lots, the patchwork of fruit trees

Hyggemania: The Second Wave

In a dissertation chapter whose joke title was “Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Coziness,” I examined Copenhagen’s city-wide conversion to LED street lighting underway between 2015-2018. Drawing from an ethnographic study of green infrastructure design and experience, I consider how ideologies of hygge seep into everything from ground floor apartments to racially coded constructions of ‘Danishness.’ Some years later, I’m compelled to revisit that theory with a look at what I have come to regard

The Coat

Deep in the belly of every not-yet-expatriot is the longing for a quality of being found elsewhere which eludes one’s country of origin. My longing for Slovenia begins with being chastised multiple times for bringing the wrong coat. I actually brought two coats with me on my six-day visit – a fleece-lined corduroy jacket suitable for the lower fifties and a down Patagonia parka whose removal from the closet has always been, to me, the first harbinger of winter, regardless of the sun’s position i

Living Room

Lately when I get on the subway there are usually people living in it. By that, I mean that there is someone taking their shoes off. Or someone lying down across a few seats. Someone taking a swig from a blue Bud Light tallboy. Someone is unpacking and repacking their backpack. The long blue seat of the F train turns into a sofa, the train car into a living room. The other day I got on a very full Q, saw that five seats were conspicuously empty, then noticed that they happened to be across from

Chicago Architect Magazine

As the editor of Chicago Architect, I have written and co-produced more than 30 issues of the bi-monthly magazine, collaborating with Innovative Publishing on the magazine's production since 2015. 

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OPACITY

As the guest editor of global architecture firm HDR's Opacity initiative, I have worked with the firm to produce an annual journal of built and unbuilt architecture/design/urban planning projects. The projects featured are the result of an annual jury process that invites reviewers from outside firms and institutions to review and evaluate projects designed at any of HDR's global offices. 

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