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

1. Poetry: How Do You Know it’s Time? from Julia Fehrenbacher, Ode to a Boring Day and Half in the Sky and Muddy Water by Julie Barton, The Opening from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and what will you carry to the sun? and what is a poet? from Christopher Sexton.

2. We are All Los Angeles from The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. In related news, If you need guns, tanks and propaganda to keep us from caring for our neighbors, you’ve already lost, “On love and fear” from Garrett Bucks on The White Pages, and Stop bending the knee to Trump: it’s time for anticipatory noncompliance from David Kirp on The Guardian, “US institutions have been doing Trump’s bidding before he even comes after them. Here’s the counterstrategy.”

3. Write about the Small Things, “sometimes it’s the best way forward” from Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights.

4. To Keep or Not to Keep, “& Barbara Becker on simplifying” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

5. Put Your Hands on the Future, with adrienne maree brown, Hope Portal, Session 2.

6. Getting by with a little help from my friends. “Life feels really weird right now, but also really normal, which is part of why it feels really weird” from Rita Ott Ramstad on Rootsie.

7. I have decided to be water, “It’s all I can do right now” from Patti Digh.

8. The Time I Didn’t Spend from Danny Gregory. “Start late, I tell myself. Start again. Start over. Just start.”

9. My Friends Have So Many Issues, “The healing power of being needed” from Andrea Gibson.

10. Tim Weed: Five Things I Learned Writing The Afterlife Project from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.

11. A vignette in a minor key from Amy Marie Turner, who recently got her cabin in Alaska where she’d lived for nearly two decades ready to sell.

12. Artifact on ShortReads.

13. Reconciling with family and friends, “may be important to the arc of your story” by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights.

14. The Gift of Distance, “Why I don’t regret the twelve-year break I took from my father” from Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

15. Stay with the trouble, “Not solve it. Not fix it. Just stay” from Patti Digh.

16. Secrets of a Great Life (as learned by visiting schools across America this year), “a partial list” from Brad Montague.

17. Owl in Towels. “Wildlife rehabilitators often wrap owls in fabric so they can be weighed, treated, and fed. If not, the owls get in a flap. The result? Loads of pictures.”

18. Jaws at 50: Spielberg’s marine masterpiece transformed the movies – and us.

19. When they chose to die together, my grandparents wrote the final chapter of a love story spanning 70 years. The longer I live, the more suffering and death I see, the more I understand why someone might choose this way to go.

20. Social media star “The Dogist” talks new book, online fame. (video) “The U.S. is dog-obsessed, and social media star The Dogist has tapped into that love, garnering millions of followers for his candid photos of pups around the world. Elias Weiss Friedman, the photographer behind the account, sat down with Dana Jacobson to talk about his new book and how he was catapulted to online fame.”

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

1. Peonies in my garden. It’s strange this year because the dark pink ones usually bloom first, but this year it’s the white and the pale pink with the butter yellow centers.

2. Morning walks. We are having a cooler, wet spring, which means we have to stay on the pavement and skip the dirt trails around the ponds and by the river, so I didn’t take many pictures this week.

3. Mom. We send each other selfies, (Chris helps her). I’m so glad she hasn’t forgotten me yet.

4. #1000wordsofsummer. Jamie said on the first day that there are something like 70,000 people who signed up, so I don’t spend any time on the message boards, but it’s nice to have the container of the 14 days, the 1000 words a day, and the daily letters of encouragement from various authors that Jamie sends. It’s really helping me to work on “The Book.” Here’s hoping I can maintain the momentum once these 14 days are done.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I told Eric when I got in bed last night that even though I don’t ever take it for granted, sometimes I get overwhelmed by how grateful I am to have him, to be able to live my life with my best friend, my favorite person.

Bonus joy: a fish sandwich for lunch, cooking with Eric, leftovers, reading in the morning with a mug of hot green tea, books and those who write them, poetry and poets, libraries and librarians, Dr. Foster, yoga at Red Sage, how green everything is right now, clean sheets, a warm shower, house plants, comedy, true crime, music and musicians, my nutritionist, my acupuncturist, my masseuse, my Pilates teacher, going to bed early, fireflies (even though I’ve never actually seen one), birds at my feeder, my Merlin app, taco salad, a big glass of cold clean water, health insurance, our whole house fan, being able to leave the windows open, how soft and green the grass is in the backyard, having all the laundry put away, prescription glasses, down blankets and pillows, listening to or watching podcasts, other people’s dogs and kids and gardens, being able to start over as many times as necessary, grocery shopping, how much quieter it is living in a college town during summer break, the spicy sesame bowl at Liminal, rice, roasted veggies, citrus, naps, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.