It's good to have a source of heat in the middle of the room, a place to gravitate towards when you come in from outside to warm your hands, to pull up a chair, pull off your boots, put up your feet, and stare at the fire. A woodstove really is central. There's a bar near my home, in my favorite small city in the world, Portland, Maine. It's called Gritty McDuffs. They brew their own beer there.
People gravitate to the bar, the central point, especially when it's cold outside.
The bar, like my woodstove, brings people together. Less than a week after we brought our new son home, in those first days of 1998, the region was hit with an ice storm the likes of which hadn't been seen for a hundred years or so. My son was one week old. It was like a war zone. Nearby, television, radio, and cell phone towers crumpled under the weight of accumulated ice.