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

1. Morning walks. I got to do all of them except for one this week, as Eric was gone for a conference. Because he and Ringo get up at 4 am, I adjusted my schedule, or rather adhered to theirs, and because we were up so much earlier and I was so tired, I was afraid if I sat down for a bit before we walked, I wouldn’t want to get back up again, so we walked early enough that we only saw the very beginnings of the sunrise and walked mostly in the dark. And yet, the sky was clear most of the week, so we got to see tons of stars.

2. Celebrating birthdays. This week, I turned 58 and Ringo turned 12. His birthday in particular made me super happy — I’ve never had a truly old dog, and every year he gets closer. He’s doing so well right now that I think it might take him a few more years to seem like he’s anything close to “old.” My last two birthdays have made me sad, with my dad and Eric’s mom being gone and my mom not here in the same way, with all the cards and calls that don’t come. And one thing I forgot about being off Facebook is all those birthday wishes wouldn’t come either. “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to…” And yet, it made me that much more grateful for the wishes that did come, and each one seemed so much sweeter.

Birthday portrait he didn’t want me to take

3. Funny women. Last night, I got to see Jackie Kashin and Maria Bamford along with my funny friends Barb and Chloe’ and Laura and Jen. We laughed so hard, our faces hurt. I’ve seen both of them perform a couple of times before and they never disappoint. Making people laugh is a type of magic and laughing together is medicine.

4. Ringo. I was worried that without Eric here to “beat him down” (it’s all in good fun and Ringo loves it, I swear) and his afternoon walks, he’d be restless, but he was so good for me, so sweet, and it was kind of nice to have him all to myself, although I missed Eric like crazy and would always rather have him here too.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I’m so glad Eric is back home now and we are going to all be together in the same place for a week of rest and relaxation over Thanksgiving break. I’m so grateful for my life!

Bonus joy: birthday cake, Hendrix’s school picture, a hot cup of coffee and warm mug of tea, taking care of myself, canceling things I don’t have the capacity for, how when you are reading multiple books they start being in conversation with each other in ways you couldn’t have predicted, flower seeds from Chloe’, the way people swap and share plants like how I have four different kinds of irises and they were all gifts from someone else’s garden, stickers, picking out a sticker to go on a new blank notebook and how sometime when I’m looking for a particular notebook from a specific time I recognize it because of the sticker on the front, down blankets and pillows, leftovers, grocery shopping, $.70 off per gallon of gas because of grocery rewards points that pile up because my car is a hybrid (and Eric’s an electric) and I don’t drive that many miles because I would almost always rather stay home and when I do go somewhere it’s usually only a few miles away, having so many trails close by I can walk Ringo every day and each walk is in a different location, how we always have the radio on playing music or episodes of Dateline or old radio shows from the “Golden Age of Radio” in the 30s and 40s, other people’s dogs and kids, Reddit (where I’m spending way too much time now that I’m not on Facebook or Instagram), The Lincoln Center, Zoom, grapefruit Bubly, naps, libraries and librarians, poetry and poets, first responders, texting with my brother, good TV (which is sometime bad TV too), streaming content, listening to podcasts, mood lighting, twinkle lights, all the Christmas lights going up, that one house that decorates their yard for Christmas with nothing but dog decorations, watercolor, glue stick, talking to Mom on the phone for a few minutes on my birthday, the voice note Jessamy sent of the kids saying “Happy Birthday, Auntie Jill,” what Chris wrote on the card he sent me, his tender heart, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep (which I get to do tonight after four nights without the Eric half).

1. Poetry: Loving In A Broken Time by Frederick Joseph, Untether Yourself and Scientists Say Cats Are Perfect by Julie Barton, Song “A” translated from the Navajo by Washington Matthews, Believing and belief on Poetry Unbound from Pádraig Ó Tuama, Life Lessons in an Uber in Atlanta and How and After Effects from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, If the month of November was your friend from HannahRoWrites, A Sense of Grace by James Crews, What We Wanted by Carol Moldaw, Green Burial Unsonnet by Dante Di Stefano shared by Patti Digh, The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meghan O’Rourke on The Slow Down podcast, and Fourth of July by Rob Arnold.

In related news, Is poetry happening to you? and are you avoiding it? from Alix Klingenberg, and Emerging Form Episode 151: Alison Luterman on Striving.

2. I’m Devastated By America, So I’m Getting Out on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. And when he says, “getting out,” it’s not what you think.

3. ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’: The Sweetness After a Terminal Diagnosis on The New York Times. (gift link) “The film chronicles the poet Andrea Gibson’s final year of living with cancer and trying to make every second count.” It came out on Friday and I haven’t been able to watch it yet.

4. Change One Thing and Everything Changes. “Reflections 11 days after leaving Facebook” from Jena Schwartz.

5. A House of My Own Making from Laurie Wagner.

6. I’m now offering therapeutic journaling workshops! “Two options–and one is free!” from Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

7. There Can Be No Reasoning with MAGA by Robert Jones, Jr. “Like I have said before: Cults cannot be shamed and they cannot be reasoned with. They can only be stopped.”

8. The truth about distraction from Oliver Burkeman, which suggests “a more fundamental solution to distraction, one that’s incredibly simple, but not at all easy: just stop expecting hard, important, meaningful things to feel constantly comfortable and pleasant. Consider the possibility that mild discomfort – butterflies in the stomach, a sense of difficulty, a moment of boredom – might simply be the price of doing things you care about.”

9. Love Immortal: the man devoted to defying death through cryonics from The Guardian Documentary Films. “Alan has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death, and reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan, now 87, falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.”

10. ‘I’m not as fierce as I seem’: Glenn Close on growing up in a cult, marching against Trump – and being unlucky in love. “She’s Hollywood’s biggest character actor who terrified a generation of men with her ‘bunny boiling’ turn in Fatal Attraction. Now, Close alternates the glamour of the red carpet with living in a red state. She talks about the joy of her ‘undefined’ life.”

11. The works of art that changed your life, and why. “We asked readers which book, film, song or art work changed the course of your life. From soul-stirring poems to unforgettable paintings, this is what you said.”

12. Slowly Growing. “A list of noticings…” from Erin Geesaman Rabke.

13. Asking questions leads to more questions by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights.

14. All Praise to the Lunch Ladies on the Bitter Southerner. “Blessed are the women who watch over America’s children.”

15. Guilty pleasures are more than just giving in to temptation. “Psychologists are discovering what’s going on when you do something you enjoy, but also feel weird or embarrassed about.”

16. Freaky Caesars & More Restaurant Trends You’ll See In 2026.

17. How We Do Our Best Work, “three shadows and their bright opposites” by Brad Montague.

18. The Way the World Answers, “why i believe in magic” by Isabel Abbott.

19. A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher. I just finished this and really liked it — before I checked it out from the library, I researched to ensure that nothing bad happens to the dogs in this book. I use this site regularly to do so for movies, TV, and books: Does the dog die?

20. Jeff Hiller in Conversation with Special Guest Murray Hill. (video) “Comedian and Somebody Somewhere actor Jeff Hiller joins us to dive into the grit and grind of climbing the Hollywood ladder and the struggles, triumphs, and humiliations that shaped him into the wonderfully imperfect person he is today.”