1. Poetry: My Body Knows Its Limits by Page Hill Starzinger and At Last the New Arriving by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (I love the ending lines of this one: “What a prize / you are. What a lucky sack of stars”) and Do You Consider Writing to be Therapeutic? by Andrew Grace on The Slow Down with Maggie Smith, Drought and I Want Beauty by Julie Barton, Your callings will keep calling: Listening to what returns, Letter Four {Falling Gently} from Alix Klingenberg on Earth & Verse, You, the Light by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Saying Yes by James Crews shared on Heart Poems, Helper by James Crews, Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda shared by Patti Digh, How to See the Milky Way by Sarah Williams shared on The Marginalian, and blessings, like by Maya Stein. In related news, The Most Romantic Poem on Cup of Jo, (don’t miss the comments section), and Joy Harjo Answers the Orion Questionnaire, “In which we get to know our favorite writers better by exploring the sacred and mundane.”
2. We Are Asking the Wrong Questions About Belonging from Mindy Tsonas Choi. “How do we be and belong with one another in all of our differences? This, is the question of our time.” Amen.
3. 27 Things That Feel Better Than Scrolling Social Media by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.
4. Good stuff from Patti Digh: What the heart makes in the dark — The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography and What are your hinges? The snow that saved my life. She also shared these links to some other cool stuff: An Existential Guide to Making Friends, and Where writers write — 12 Booker Prize 2025 nominees share their writing spots, and Kazuaki Koseki’s Dreamy Photos Capture Japan’s Forests Shimmering with Fireflies.
5. Wisdom from Danny Gregory: “The quest for the perfect studio, the perfect atmosphere, the perfect sketchbook — those are just forms of procrastination. They can get in the way of making things, not making them easier.”
6. Good stuff from Jamie Attenberg on Craft Talk: What if I Told You Perfection Was Impossible, and Coffee and Water and Bigger Truths, and Strike While the Iron is Hot, which includes this lovely pep talk:
“You must type while you can type, you must handwrite while you can handwrite. If you are waking up in the morning thinking about something specific related to your writing, then you must honor it. Honor your creativity, spirit, inspiration, artistic self. Always make the time to write. Make the time to make your shit. Do not get in your own way, make room for yourself instead. It’s not just your head you’re tending to here. It’s your heart, it’s your belief system, it’s your whole self when you write.”
7. Good stuff on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: Our Town’s PRIDE Festival Was a Beautiful, Joyful Celebration of Community. Then, The “Christians” Showed Up, and Yeah, It’s Hell Here, But Heaven is Still Within Reach, and We’re all ANTIFA, Donald.
8. Conscious Change Collective. “A project of the Garrison Institute’s Spirituality and Social Change Program and Circles for Conscious Change, the Collective is a collaborative field of actors applying inner work and spirituality towards social change. We aim to support a more conscious and cohesive field of action by bringing together organizations and communities to share wisdom, practices, and strategies — strengthening connection, visibility, and momentum for transformative impact.”
9. Let’s Talk About AI Art on The Oatmeal.
10. Nature Gets a One-Star Yelp: The Funniest National Park Complaints.
11. What’s Really Going on With Those Elaborate (Parent-Decorated) College Dorm Rooms? by Anne Helen Petersen on Culture Study.
12. Four Places to Rest. “How our Buddhist refuges can work for non-Buddhists too” by Satya Robyn.
13. Poet Kim Stafford on Instagram.
14. Two Years After Cormac McCarthy’s Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library Reveals the Man Behind the Myth on Smithsonian Magazine. “The famously reclusive novelist amassed a collection of thousands of books ranging in topics from philosophical treatises to advanced mathematics to the naked mole-rat.”
15. 50 (Short) Rules For Life From The Stoics.
16. A Day in the Life of a 102-Year-Old French Yogi. (video) “For decades, Charlotte Chopin has been teaching yoga in Léré, a village in France. At 102 years old, she maintains a simple approach to aging well.” AND, she didn’t even start doing yoga until she was 50 years old.
17. Wisdom from Kari on A Grace Full Life, in response to the question “what is the most important lesson life has taught to you?”:
to stop waiting for life to get easier and instead find meaning right in the middle of the hard parts.
Amen.
18. Monarch butterfly gets a life-saving wing transplant on Long Island: “It was so intricate.”
19. Notes from The Middle of Nowhere by Laurie Wagner. For 12 years, we wrote together almost every week. I joined her Wild Writing Family after she stopped teaching regular classes but have to confess I haven’t taken an active part yet, because every time I see a video of her reading a poem or hear her voice, I want to cry. I miss her. The same thing happened with Susan Piver, when her community grew beyond the capacity for personal relationships and she stopped leading retreats at what is now Drala Mountain Center. Then the same thing happened with my mom, her still there but also not, at least not as she was before.
20. Our Brains Evolved to Socialize—but Max Out at About 150 Friends.
21. The Permission Workbook: The Perfection Problem. “Overcome it, or you’ll get stuck in creative quicksand forever” by Elissa Altman.
22. Why everyone is lifting weights – and how to get started (whatever your size). “Are reps or weights more important? Is it good if it hurts? How should I structure my workouts? Everything you need to know about resistance training, from the experts.”
23. “It’s Okay But It’s Also Really Not.” When Dystopian Fiction is No Longer a Thought Experiment. “Yume Kitasei Explores the Different Forms Dystopias Can Take, On and Off the Page.”
24. The art of moving on when you don’t get closure: 7 truths you’ll learn the hard way.
25. Sorry, dad! Colin Hanks says John Candy was the ‘nicest guy in Hollywood’ on NPR Morning Edition.
26. And finally this collection of random things I saved to my phone this week.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 