June | 2017 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Seeing all the animals on our walks. This week we saw a deer, a beaver, a pair of herons, this turtle (Eric wasn’t believing me that the swirly marks on the trail were turtle tracks, until he saw the actual turtle who’d made them), and two of this year’s baby foxes.

2. Wonder Woman at the Drive In. We try to go at least once a year, earlier in the summer rather than later because even then we can only stay up long enough to watch the first movie!

3. SUMMER VACATION! Yesterday I sufficiently bribed the person who’s going to water my plants for me while I’m gone, ate the last of the good chocolate, and put the out of office message on my email. I need this time off so bad.

4. My tiny family. One of the things I need most out of this vacation is more time with them.

5. Peony season. I just consolidated the six jars full I had in the house into a single one because most of them were starting to wilt. With the heat this past week, there’s no more new ones left to cut. They make me so happy, and I’m always so sad to see them go.

Bonus joy: my Siberian irises (they went crazy this year and had multiple blooms per stem which I didn’t even realize was possible; my friend Ann gave them to me, thinned them from her own garden the year she died, so they mean a lot to me), a cool shower after a long walk, sun screen, bug spray, fresh strawberries from our garden, a dream about Dexter, good books, good tv, good movies, good podcasts, clean sheets, a long nap, air conditioning, stretching, yoga.

From my garden, on my meditation shrine

1. Roxane Gay Tells Us About Daring to Be Fat. I can’t wait to read her new book! “I did a lot of research about bodies, fat, fatness, that sort of thing. Even if I wasn’t necessarily going to write about it explicitly, I wanted to be informed. I learned some incredibly interesting things. The measure for Body Mass Index (BMI), for instance, is so fucking arbitrary. They decided on 25 because it’s a nice, round number. A bunch of generally white men are in a room somewhere making decisions about millions of people. That really was informative and infuriating.”

2. Recipes I want to try: Easy Salsa Recipe, and Easy Restaurant Style Blender Salsa, and Strawberry Rhubarb Oatmeal Bake.

3. My road trip through Trump country taught me that staying in the liberal bubble has its advantages.

4. One carry-on bag and one personal item by Camille Dungy. I just finished and highly recommend her new book, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History.

5. Aja Brown, Compton’s Youngest Mayor, Re-Elected For Second Term. “The 35-year-old received about 60 percent of the vote.”

6. Mr. Okra Of New Orleans // 60 Second Docs. (Video)

7. The 20 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week. “Sorry I can’t come to your thing I don’t know how to people.” #same

8. 10+ Women Share The Ways They Were Body-Shamed And It’s Just Too Horrible To Read.

9. 12 truths I learned from life and writing, Anne Lamott’s TED Talk.

10. 23 Body-Positive Women Reminding You to Go Ahead and Wear that Swimsuit.

11. Why I’ve lost faith in Tony Robbins (and most life coaches).

12. There’s One Big Catch With Gap’s New Ad Celebrating Diversity.

13. Don’t Yuck My Yum; My Eating Disorder Story.

14. To the Supporters and Enablers of President Trump: You Will Never Get Your Country Back.

15. 22 Books By Black Authors To Add To Your Beach Bag This Summer. In related news, 17 Books You Should Read in June.

16. Dr Christian Jessen: Clean eating websites like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop ‘indistinguishable from pro anorexia sites.’

17. The Summer Soundtrack that You Need (Trust Me) from Militant Baker.

18. Beware of Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: The Tale of A Progressive Professor Who Forgot To Hide Her Racism And Got Her Ass Fired.

19. Novelist Beautifully Destroys Those Who Don’t Believe in Cultural Appropriation.

20. Danez Smith – “Dinosaurs in the Hood”, a really great poem (Video).

21. This 6-year-old and her mom created a coloring book series to teach kids about black history, (Video). I love that Mom pointed out that Black history did not start with slavery, but rather slavery interrupted Black history.

22. “But What if it Works?”, wisdom from Seth Godin.

23. The American Woman site is live! “AMERICAN WOMAN is a multimedia portrait and documentary series about Black American women.”

24. Let’s Stop Apologizing for These 8 Things from Be More With Less.

25. 12 Signs of an Unhealthy, Underdeveloped INFJ. In related news, How HSPs, Empaths, and INFJs Can Protect Themselves from Toxic People.

26. Why Cookbook Clubs Should Be the New Way We Entertain. I love this idea!

27. Loving Day: The 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. In related news, ‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S. from The New York Times.

28. 27 Pulse survivors, family members and first responders share their stories. In related news, For Those We Lost And Those Who Survived: The Pulse Massacre One Year Later.

29. Nowhere in America can a full-time minimum wage worker afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

30. This is how to get the Pride emoji reaction on Facebook.