May | 2025 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Poetry. These from Julie Barton: In Media Res, You Know You’re Already OK, Right?, Dream Time, The Writers I Know, and Poem for My Dead Dog. This one from Marie Howe, who was recently awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection New and Selected Poems. The Pulitzer Prize committee honored the work as “a collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality, and holiness.”: The Meadow. And this one from Maya Stein, Fast Forward: A poem from the future, about which she says, “This is a stitched poem I composed using lines written by the 40+ students who entered the 2025 Belfast (Maine) Free Library Youth Poetry Contest. I had the honor of serving as the contest judge and emceed yesterday’s reception for the participants and awardees, where I shared this poem with the students and their families. ‘Fast Forward: Poems from the Future’ was the theme of the contest.”

2. Good stuff from Patti Digh: The Day I Forgot How to Play and The Man Underground and Is that line a boundary, or a horizon?

3. Random thoughts about my longest love affair from Danny Gregory. **Spoiler alert**: it’s books. He loves books. Me too.

4. Protecting democracy is not enough: five things Americans must fight for. It seems to me that no matter who you supported in the last election, these are five things we can all agree on.

5. Questions Without Answers, a new book from Sarah Manguso (Author) and Liana Finck (Illustrator). “Why does a ghost wander? Are bubbles in drinks their thoughts? Do dogs have chins? Where does the dark go when the light comes on? How will it feel on the last day I’m a child? What’s the best question a kid ever asked you? When Sarah Manguso opened a Twitter account and posted this single (and only) tweet, she immediately received hundreds of answers. Many, she discovered, were intelligent, intuitive, inventive, and philosophical. For Manguso, these responses seemed to form a ‘choral philosophy’ that she believes disappears from most people’s lives in kindergarten. As she says in her illuminating foreword, ‘These questions are cute by the word’s original definition, swift and piercing. They cut to the quick.’ Gathering more than one hundred of the best questions from this poll and bringing them brilliantly to life with illustrations by New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck, Questions Without Answers ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime—encompassing birth, death, poop, dinosaurs, and everything in between—to show us the wit and wisdom of little people in all their wondrous glory.”

6. why gardening, and why now? “On the Instinct for Beauty and Life” from Elissa Altman. In related news, What Gardening Offered After a Son’s Death, “Deep in mourning, I thought, What if spring never returns?” by Yiyun Li.

7. communal compassion, “it’s time to create a cadence of taking care of each other” from Karen Walrond.

8. What It Feels Like to Be a Caregiver *Right Now*, “Grief and Rage and Gratitude, So Complicated!” on Culture Study.

9. Why PBS still matters. “There’s a lot to lose when we stop caring for ones who care about kids” from Brad Montague.

10. 8 Things To Let Go of Today for a Simpler Life Tomorrow from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less. In related news, 12 Tiny Decluttering Projects, also from Courtney.

11. I cannot save the world (and neither can you), “But we can write about its beauty” on Writing at Red Lights.

12. There is still joy ahead, I promise from Jenny Lawson.

13. Are We Brave Enough to Create? from Sara Saltee.

14. How to Stay Calm when Talking to Someone with Dementia. “It’s the dementia that’s frustrating, not the person” from Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

15. Good stuff on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: 5 Ways to Give Fascism a Middle Finger and No, the Right Doesn’t Hate the New Pope. They Hate His Jesus.

16. Reasons to Commit to It. “Curiosity and tenderness, for starters” on Craft Talk from Jami Attenberg.

17. 20 Lessons on Tyranny: by Timothy Snyder / read by John Lithgow. (video) “Now, more than ever, we need the wisdom of our intellects, the patriotism of our citizens, and the passion and talents of those who still believe in the American experiment. I am deeply grateful to Timothy Snyder for his 20 Lessons On Tyranny and for talents of the brilliant John Lithgow for bringing them to life.”

18. Electric Garden. (video) “When artist Ricky Boscarino bought a dilapidated hunting lodge in the forests of Sussex County, he did not anticipate the journey he and the house would undergo. 36 years later, the house is Luna Parc, a whimsical 5,000 sq. foot museum, atelier, and home resembling something out of the mind of PeeWee Herman or Tim Burton. Meet the madcap artist behind New Jersey’s most iconic home.”

19. Watercolor Mornings & Manifestation Lists. “On Rituals That Remind Me I’m Alive.”

20. Good stuff on Lion’s Roar: How to Create a Meditation Space (“No matter your living situation, you can have a place to practice. Yaotunde Obiora explains”) and A Practice for Letting Your Heart Break (“Kimberly Brown offers a practice for when the weight of the world leaves you angry and overwhelmed”).

21. 10 beautiful images from the 2025 GDT Nature Photographer of the Year awards.

22. The Hardest Winter Of My Life. “Writing from the messy middle” by Andrea Gibson.

23. All This Is Happening on the Farm on Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray.

24. What kind of abundance do you want? from Rita Ott Ramstad on Rootsie. “A small creative life won’t bring you fame or fortune, but there are plenty of other things to be had from not going big.”

25. Pick My Brain, “some answers to your questions” from Maggie Smith.

26. Are You Solarpunk Without Knowing It? on Earth & Verse, “a hopeful vision of the future where nature, technology, and community thrive together.”

27. How I Find Clients As An Introvert from Alexandra Franzen.

28. This is where the battle is being waged by Josie George.

29. Krista Tippett Answers the Orion Questionnaire. “In which we get to know our favorite writers better by exploring the sacred and mundane.”

30. A real recharge. Five ways to get more – and better – rest.

31. Long-lost sisters meet for the first time—wearing the exact same dress.
“We have the exact same taste in everything. Even our houses look the same.”

32. 31 Inspiring May Journal Prompts (+Ideas) for May.

33. An optimal state of consciousness’: is flow the secret to happiness?

34. What Are “Side Quests” And How Can We Use Them for Self-Care?

35. ‘James’ wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

36. I constantly felt tired and unmotivated in life, until I adopted these 7 daily habits.

37. Kandy G. Lopez Embroiders Striking, Life-Size Yarn Portraits Highlighting BIPOC Narratives.

38. Heather Clements Art on Instagram. “Artist • Muralist • Interactive Art-Maker. Creating art from my inner-most weirdo.” Her new interactive “pop up” book Pull Me Apart looks so cool.

39. And finally, this set of random things I saved to my phone this week.

1. Morning walks. I was thinking the other day as Eric and I were talking about geese — I’d seen two pairs on our walk and thought to myself “where are your babies?” because tis the season, and Eric told me about driving by the canal at City Park where the families with babies usually spend a lot of time and seeing five sets of parents and babies — that when you see something a lot, you start to take it for granted. Almost every morning we walk, if we go early enough, we will see deer because there is a small herd of whitetails who live along the river, so when we see them, it’s almost unremarkable, except for when there are babies or a buck with a huge rack. Canadian geese are the same, because there is a significant population who decided the climate and resources here are such that they don’t bother to migrate but rather stay here year round. Even a heron or a beaver is exciting but not that unusual to see. Owls always seem special but even those I see quite a bit. My point is, I feel so lucky to live somewhere that I cross paths with magic on the regular, that wonder and awe is a normal and consistent part of my mornings.

2. Spring. My window feeder was finally replaced and the chickadees and finches are back, the leaves of my maple tree are light green and droopy, my irises are blooming, my lilac blooms are fading but I can still smell them when the wind blows, the backyard is full of the yellow and poofs of dandelions, the grass is so green and soft, and there is a robin nesting in our lilac bushes.

3. Mother’s Day. We lost Eric’s mom early this year and I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I’ll never see her again. My mom is growing more confused and agitated, which has been really hard for my brother to watch. We’d so hoped she could maybe somehow skip the worst parts of dementia, and I still selfishly hope she is able to leave the suffering of her current body before she forgets us. I sent her flowers and a box of See’s candy along with a fidget blanket to see if that can help her with some of her agitation. I am so lucky to have had not one but two moms who loved me so much, even as losing them feels wholly unlucky.

4. Practice. In particular, the way it helps me return home to myself.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I am looking forward to Eric being on summer break, for real. The past few years, he’s had extra work so even when he was technically “on break,” he was still working, even when we were at the coast. We are making a list of things we want to do together this summer and I’m just as excited about the nothing we’ll do together.

Bonus joy: being mostly over that dumb cold I had last week, yoga in the morning, big salads, books from the library on my Kindle and my hack that allows me to keep them as long as I need to (airplane mode!), libraries and librarians, poets and poetry, listening to podcasts, watching TV (home renovation shows on HGTV have always been my comfort TV and I just finished season two of Renovation Aloha and it was so good), comedy, true crime, onions, cabbage, other people’s dogs and kids and gardens, a song so good you play it on repeat (such as this from Teddy Swims, or this one and this one from Goldford, and just about any version of this song, which is one of my favorites), sunshine, sunrise, sunset, that particular limey green of early spring, bloopers and gag reels, the ocean, pine trees, an owl calling out in the dark of morning, down blankets and pillows, naps, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.