1. Why I Don’t Clean My House from Laurie Wagner. In related news, the next session of Wild Writing is open for registration.
2. Activist Micro Action Dispatch: Dissent and Democracy from Omkari Williams.
3. Why Write Anything from Jami Attenberg.
4. Good stuff from Lion’s Roar: Detox Your Mind: 5 Practices to Purify the 3 Poisons (“Five Buddhist teachers share practices to clear away the poisons that cause suffering and obscure your natural enlightenment. Introduction by Lion’s Roar’s editor-in-chief Melvin Mcleod”), and How to Practice Metta for a Troubled Time (“Mushim Patricia Ikeda teaches us how to generate loving-kindness and good will as an antidote to hatred and fear”), and To Practice Mindfulness Is to Return to Life (“Thich Nhat Hanh on mindfulness, harnessing compassion, and cherishing life”).
5. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön: “The two witnesses of what you do are others and yourself. Of these two, you are the only one who really knows exactly what is going on. So work with seeing yourself with compassion but without any self-deception.”
6. Love Notes From The Chemo Room: A Surprisingly Tender Place from Andrea Gibson.
7. Good stuff from Seth Godin: Getting to no, ChatGPT for you, and Convenience and scams.
8. 11 Things Introverts Secretly Wish You’d Stop Doing.
9. What if we’ve been thinking about health all wrong? from Karen Walrond on Chookooloonks.
10. Wisdom on grief from Abigail Rose Clarke: (who recently lost her dog, her “second heart,” after 17 years) “I am continuing to learn the lesson that sharing the grief is better than trying to continue on as though everything is normal, because grief is a wild thing, and in the midst of it, nothing is normal.”
11. Russell Brand is a familiar story by Rebecca Solnit. “Can we really be surprised when rich and powerful men are accused of sexual abuse?”
12. Slow Factory’s Céline Semaan Gets Real About Sustainability Activism. “Working to ‘Change the World’ is hard. Anyone who ever cared about making the world a better place in any way has learned that change is an uphill battle and resistance can come from unexpected places. Companies don’t want to change. Governments and institutions don’t want to change. Even friends and peers may turn on you and resort to shaming or bullying you for your attempts to create positive change in the world.”
13. Free Your Mind(set). “What if our jobs weren’t who we are, but something we did because our lives were enriched by something more than money? The longing to ‘get rich quick’ has survived thousands of iterations, all of which position wealth as integral to happiness. ‘Think and grow rich’ is one of those concepts, and like all the others, it robs people of the opportunity to build community and drive social progress, two things that can’t be measured by the amount of money in your bank account.”
14. I was sucked into a romantic scam and it broke my heart. “We know romantic scammers swindle thousands of dollars from victims, but the heavy emotional toll receives less attention. Alison Cutler, a recent scamming victim, tells her story.”
15. ‘It’s the great leveller, uniting people across social classes’: Grace Dent on Britain’s love affair with cheese. “From eating cheap cheddar and ‘plastic’ slices at home in Cumbria to mixing with posh owners of ‘cheese caves’ down south, the Guardian’s restaurant critic on the creamy, fatty, salty bliss of her favourite comfort food.”
16. The Ezra Klein Show: America’s Top Librarian on the Rise of Book Bans. “The American Library Association president Emily Drabinski takes stock of why libraries have become epicenters of the culture wars.”
17. 11 reasons not to make art from Danny Gregory. He made a video about the post I shared of his on last week’s list.
18. What color is your cape? from Patti Digh. “On feeling needed, choosing right helpfulness, and stepping back.”
19. Autumn Equinox wisdom from Lucian James: “It’s a transitional time. In Spring and Summer, things move up and out. From today, things move down and in. An equinox is a pivotal moment – an introduction to the flip side of the year. It’s an opportunity to reset things which have got out of whack. It’s a time to reverse what’s not working.”
20. What is silent walking? The latest viral workout trend has some intriguing benefits. We always walk in silence, because we have to be able to hear if a deer is running towards us or a bike is coming down the trail.
21. Bobby Johnson, also known as The RxCK STxR, gives voice and attitude to animals. One of my favorite Instagram accounts.
22. 7 Self-Care Behaviors That Most People Neglect.
23. Interviews with Austin Kleon: Austin Kleon: Creativity, parenting and Don Quixote (video) and (Not) Too Weird To Be Popular | The Body, Brain, & Books: Eleven Questions with Austin Kleon.
24. 24 Questions for the (Jewish) New Year from Jena Schwartz.
25. ‘Symbol of hope’: Lahaina’s beloved banyan shows new growth after fires. “Community rallies to save colossal 150-year-old tree after Maui wildfires badly singed it last month.”
26. The inside story of The Great British Bake Off: ‘We were microphoned up in the toilets!’ “As the show returns, bakers, judges and the creators of the smash hit take us behind the scenes – from the chaos of the early days to its place at TV’s top table.”
27. Planting a meadow and growing a community.
28. Fungi, Feathers, and Insects Spring from Carol Long’s Art Nouveau Vessels.
29. Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing.
30. Poems from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Saving Grace, and Ten-Dollar Bouquet, and Translation.
P.S. Kind and gentle reader: I am making another trip to Oregon, so there will be no new list next week, but there is an archive of 598 something good lists.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 