Jen Tota McGivney

1 week ago | charlottemagazine.com | Jen Tota McGivney

The upside of inconvenience My search for positivity during ominous times has grown desperate and almost comical. My latest theory: Knitting will help. Knitters seem so serene as they transform balls of yarn into works of art. When I heard about a knitting 101 class at VisArt Video in Eastway Crossing, I decided to knit something other than my brow. I, too, would become one of the serene yarn people. I didn’t, of course. Not quite, anyway.

2 weeks ago | charlottemagazine.com | Jen Tota McGivney

Jen Tota McGivney reexamines Thoreau in her new book, Finding Your Walden Books are best read at the right moment, and rarely is a high school English class the right moment to read Walden. Revisit Henry David Thoreau’s book as an adult, however, and some lines—“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”—hit harder. When I studied Thoreau in graduate school at Winthrop University, I was his age at Walden Pond: 30.

2 months ago | charlottemagazine.com | Jen Tota McGivney

The organization provides an extended family to young LGBTQ people It’s been awhile since I’ve been to church, but I know communion when I see it. To me, it looks like this: Last November, about 70 young people, ages 13 to 24, arrived for Friendsgiving dinner at Time Out Youth, a center for LGBTQ youth in East Charlotte. Tables were filled with all the essentials: turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, mac and cheese, homemade rolls, and big floral centerpieces.

Feb 17, 2025 | charlottemagazine.com | Jen Tota McGivney

“I thought I’d cry this morning, but there’s too much joy in this room to cry.” A 29-year-old woman watches her kids play with new toys as torn Christmas gift wrap blankets the floor. One girl swaddles a baby doll while her sister sets up a tablet. Their toddler brother insists on wearing his new Spiderman bike helmet. It’s 30 degrees on this early December morning—a cold that sneaks through gaps around the door of their mobile home near Monroe. The kids seem too excited to notice.

Jan 20, 2025 | charlottemagazine.com | Jen Tota McGivney

A call for less screen time and more “big round hours” This statistic stopped me cold: Americans, on average, spend four and a half hours a day on their phones. That adds up to two months a year staring at a little screen. Yikes. The real world is scary, sure, but things aren’t much better in there. Do people really scroll through a quarter of their waking hours? Then doubt kicked in: Oh, no … do I? My phone suddenly looked ominous.