November | 2024 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. How to Design Your Life Around Collective Care. “And why our personal relationships are the starting grounds for social change.”

2. “Portrait of a person who’s not there”: Documenting the bedrooms of school shooting victims on CBS Sunday morning. “Over the past six years, the parents of school shooting victims opened their doors to CBS News’ Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp, inviting them to see what it’s like to live alongside their children’s bedrooms, just as they left them.”

3. Five For Families from We Have Stories. “For the fifth year in a row, we are dedicated to supporting over 200 families from marginalized, economically disadvantaged backgrounds as we enter the fall holiday season. This year, we’re aiming to raise $20,000 to provide these families with nourishing holiday meals and other essentials to help make their season a little brighter. Each meal package includes fresh produce, pantry staples, and holiday favorites.”

4. On Poetry as Historical Record, the Legacy of Colonialism, and Depicting Disaster in Verse. “Dorsía Silva Smith in Conversation with Poets.org.”

5. Meet the 2024 National Book Award Finalists. “Quick Questions for the Year’s Best Writers, Poets, and Translators.”

6. The Gravity-Defying Land Art by Cornelia Konrads.

7. Emerging Fort Episode 125: Laura Pritchett on Being Kind to Yourself. (podcast) “When we asked prolific novelist Laura Pritchett to speak with us about writing fiction, little did we realize that not only would she offer us a host of practical advice about character, revision and ambition, she would also teach us about meeting our art with great self-compassion. We speak about her two new novels out this year, Playing with Wildfire (Torrey House Press) and Three Keys (Random House Books), writing without a plot outline, and much more, including why joy must be a part of a fiction writer’s practice.”

8. Good stuff from Jamie Attenberg on Craft Talk: Some Questions about Online Boundaries (“Featuring thoughts on OnlyFans, the value of secrets, wisdom from Sam Irby, and more”), and Little Crater Heart, and The One About the Tree.

9. Political Activism as a Spiritual Practice from Omkari Williams. “But really, what is the point of a spiritual life if it doesn’t inspire us to engage with the world and its challenges more fully and with greater compassion for others and ourselves?”

10. How Introverts Can Quiet Negative Thoughts for Greater Peace of Mind.

11. Good stuff from Seth Godin: Take good notes and Catastrophizing toward action.

12. Poetry from Julie Barton: For The Giver and Listening. In related news, Though It’s Messy, a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

13. No One Ever Said You Must Wear Tight Pants…“and 49 other lessons learned during my half-century on earth!”

14. What would love and solidarity do? from Patti Digh. “Beyond the blue bracelet.”

15. Less Moreness. “A meditation on the things we don’t replace, and how buying and owning less might address several big problems at once.”

16. Post-Election Letter To A Friend from Andrea Gibson. “What do we do now?”

17. 25 Simple Ways to Take Care of Yourself Over the Holidays from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

18. No, really–you are here for THIS. “Our species is facing unprecedented challenges. That’s what you, and I, and all of those seeking the light, are doing here now. Let’s use our strength to move beyond our Reactive Brain tyrants’ trance of win/lose, good/bad, Power Over/Under. Our true, evolutionary power comes from connecting deeply with ourselves, with each other, and with all that is. Let’s link arms and step into Power With–together.”

19. I’m Not Here to Be a Vessel for Fear on Lion’s Roar. “Kaira Jewel Lingo encourages us to confront our own fears and assumptions with mindful presence and compassion, inspiring a path toward healing a fractured country.”

20. It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall from Rita on Rootsie. “What happens when the roof fails and the foundation rots (literally).”

21. There Was a Time in My Life When I Knew by Dinty W. Moore on Short Reads. “The soundscape of a childhood.”

22. How We’ll Get Through from Jena Schwartz. “Rested, sharp, fierce & deep.”

23. What Dead Writers Teach us About Resilience, “and how to cry everything holy.”

24. A new wave of movements against Trumpism is coming. “Our job is to translate outrage over his agenda into action toward a truly transformational vision.”

25. Inner Field Trip: 30 Days of Personal Exploration, Collective Liberation, and Generational Healing, a workbook from Leesa Renée Hall.

26. How to get through this, “Coping strategies for the next few days — and the next four years.”

27. We need raw awe. “In this tech-vexed age, our life on screens prevents us from experiencing the mysteries and transformative wonder of life.”

28. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone this week.

1. Morning walks. I don’t like to think about what my life would be like right now without Ringo or some other dog that needed to be walked first thing every morning. I’m pretty sure there are some days it would be almost impossible to get out of bed. But I do have him and those walks are medicine. The naps we take together on the couch later are a close second, but also depend on him being there.

2. Aimee Mann. I’ve loved her since high school, since ‘Til Tuesday, and continue to adore her. Luckily, Eric likes her too, so any time she comes to Colorado, I know he’ll go see her with me. I think we’ve seen her about 6 or 7 times now, maybe more? This week we saw her one night in Boulder and the next night in Fort Collins where we also had the company of some friends. Her opener was also really good, really funny, so not what I expected when he stepped on stage. Both shows were a good reminder that music can be medicine and as hard as it was to be up and out late two weeknights in a row, it was so worth it.

3. Practice. There was a puppy in yoga again this week. My Friday morning writing sangha is one of the things keeping me soft and sane, more than usual, along with my morning meditation practice.

4. Self-care, as in taking care of myself. I was on a roll for a bit but taking a shower was harder this week, (one of the ways my depression shows itself). I was able to keep moving, resting, feeding, and hydrating my body in most of the other ways and was happy for that. That + practice + reading/listening to podcasts/watching TV + good friends + my tiny family are what keep me going, keep me from giving up.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. A home filled with laughter and love and some plants and lots of books and a couple of dogs was all I ever wanted. Now that I have it, I never want to be without it.

Bonus joy: making art with Janice, roasted vegetables, good TV (I watched the limited series Breath of Fire on HBO this week and it was really good), listening to podcasts, keeping the house cool enough I can still wear a hoodie and socks and cuddle up under a blanket (Eric turns it back up as soon as he gets home), videos from The Dodo, the Merlin app which helped me identify a flock of tiny bushtits this week, soft bread, toast, soup, the sound of the owls in the dark of early morning, seeing one of my favorite yoga teachers out “in the wild,” Bluetooth speakers, texting with Chloe’ and Chris, gummies, clean sheets, my weighted blanket, down pillows and blankets and coats, wool hats and sweaters and socks, ink refills, blank pages and a good pen, that one shade of blue, walking through piles of golden leaves, glue stick and scissors, indoor plumbing, electric cars, other people’s kids and dogs and gardens, kindness, grocery shopping, my infrared heating pad, libraries and librarians and books, poetry and poets, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.