1. Poetry: Too many new ones from Rosemerry Wathola Trommer and Julie Barton and James Crews to list individually here so please visit their websites and read, Muscle Memory by Haley DiRenzo on The Poetry Hotline, The Question Ever by Wendy Videlock and Annuals by Rhina P. Espaillat and We Called This “Under the Influence” by Rebecca Evans and Can They Do That? by Ace Boggess and Ghostly Heron by George Bilgere and Why My “T” Sticks by Pam Ward on Rattle, The Good Life by Tracy K. Smith and Maps by Yesenia Montilla and Pluto by Maggie Dietz and Pocket Dial by James Davis May and You’re Supposed to Enjoy Dying by Colin Pope and Northern Flicker Reconsidered by Susan Rich on The Slowdown with Maggie Smith, I inherited a poetic life: A collage-inspired poem I wrote this morning by Alix on Earth & Verse, The Letter by Linda Gregg shared by Patti Digh, The Lottery by Maya Stein, Gemstone by Haley diRenzo and Everything, all at Once by Ellen Rowland and This Morning by Raymond Carver on Heart Poems, A Song [I was want] by Jos Charles and Afterwards by Eva Candelaria Sosa and Quiet by Janani Balasubramanian and Position Paper #53: National Archivist by Andrea Lawlor and Bildungssonnet by Billy-Ray Belcourt on poets.org, and The Message by Julia Fehrenbacher — (P.S. Julia has a new book of poetry coming out, This Too: Words to Walk You Home).

2. The last time: The way meaning reveals itself after the fact by Jasmine on The Tiny Joy Project. This reframing of regret is something I really really really needed to hear. “Maybe the goal is to let regret teach you what deserves your attention while it’s still here. Most moments won’t tell you they’re important. They’ll just happen. Ordinary and unremarkable and easy to overlook. Until one day you look back and realize they were carrying far more meaning than you understood. And when that realization happens, maybe the best thing you can do is thank it. Then turn back toward the life that’s happening now. While it’s still here.”

3. Open the Doors. “The Unity Health Center is forging ahead in establishing a primary care center that prioritizes the uninsured, underinsured, and those utilizing Medicaid. Because of your commitment to the health and well-being of the Greater Lansing community, I hope you will join in supporting our important goal of opening doors of a soon to be renovated clinic within the Nonprofit Hub of Child and Family Charities on Greenlawn Avenue in the heart of Lansing, by the end of the year.” Such good people doing such good work.

4. A Podcast That Made Me Laugh in Trader Joe’s, which shares a list of funny podcast episodes and includes a comment section where readers share their favorites.

5. Good stuff from Elissa Altman on Poor Man’s Feast: what I know (“A List, at Sixty(three)”), my father, my friend (“On Love and Ritual Gone Awry”), I am living; I remember you (“Words on My Sixty-Third Birthday”), A July 4th Mood-Bolstering List for Weary Americans (“This is a hard one”), the sea to heal (“On Memory and Respair”), From the Archives: the things we almost do (“On Yearning and Risk”), my closet had a revolving door (“On Pride, Permission, and the Human Right to Love and Be Loved”), and a round-up for the weekend (“A few good things to share”).

6. Good stuff on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: Things You Think When You Think You’re Dying and Take Heart, America, We’re Going to Outlive Him.

7. Good stuff on Human Stuff from Lisa Olivera: Attention as an offering and the practice of staying, A shattering, a beginning: notes on being with a truer story, and To risk ourselves in the world: on widening into the unknown.

8. A Poet for Everyone, Even Those Who Don’t Read Poetry on The New York Times. (gift link) “The film ‘Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World’ works best when it illuminates her work, whose fans include Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey.”

9. Heart advice from Pema Chödrön: “In the Buddhist teachings, we often come across the analogy of the lotus and the mud. A lotus has its roots in mud. It rises through muddy water until it pierces the surface and blossoms as a gorgeous flower that delights all who see it. The lotus represents the beauty and purity of our fundamental nature — in other words, our basic goodness. And what about that sticky, yucky mud? That symbolizes everything negative within us, everything that we would like to move beyond: our confusion, our self-destructive habits, our tendencies to hide out in a polarized mind and a closed heart. By working through and rising above all these negativities, we discover our basic goodness and achieve our full potential as human beings.” I have two tattoos, one on the inside of my right wrist and one on my lower back, both of them lotus blossoms, to remind me of this, (and because what sort of fool gets a pile of mud tattooed on themselves?).

10. Podcast: Wild Card with Rachel Martin from NPR. “Life’s too short for small talk. Rachel gets right to the questions that matter most. Once a week, famous guests pull questions from a deck of cards and open up about the kind of stuff we all think about but rarely say out loud. Actors, authors, and thinkers are prompted to talk about everything from their insecurities and dreams to grief and God.” I keep seeing short clips of this and finally decided I need to listen to a few full episodes. I also have various decks and books of these sorts of questions and it’s one of my favorite “games” to play.

11. Looking for the Magic: A Nature Almanac. “July 2026 / The Magical Sea Creatures.” Also from Looking for the Magic, It’s the Tiny Things – The Duck Mama. “The brutal beauty of the nature world.”

12. The Ground Kept Widening Beneath Me. “On certainty, reality, and turning fifty” by Isabel Abbott.

13. Good stuff from Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights: The beautiful song of loneliness by Ed Ishmael, Fuácata: rhythm of soulful eyes by Ann Duvall, and Paying better attention and writing our Hundred Acre Heart stories in our next workshop.

14. How to Be Present with Grief on Lion’s Roar. “Through painting, photography, and meditation, Erin Eberle explores how creative practice can help us be present with our grief, reconnect with the world, and find our way back to ourselves.”

15. Good stuff from Jenny Lawson (the bloggess): Even in the dark we can bloom and It’s okay to rest, friend.

16. Good stuff from Elizabeth Kleinfeld: Caregiving Is Always Happening (“On anticipatory vigilance, Band-Aid solutions, and showing up imperfectly”), The Hardest Part of Being Generous (“Learning (again) that saying yes to help is its own kind of generosity”), and What the Dogs Know (“On grief, joy, and the year Tom and I learned what our dogs already knew”). I am looking forward to finding some time to do her Journaling for Grief self-paced course.

17. Good stuff from Britchida on Play is the Opposite of Survival Mode: hot and obvious about it and Aging up and realizing I was wrong.

18. Good stuff from Alix Klingenberg on Earth & Verse: Moonlight Dance Party (“Litha: Poems, prompts, and a ritual to celebrate the longest day”) and If you feel like you’re not writing enough (“how my writing practice changed after publishing four books”).

19. Menage a Moi by Jeanette Winterson. “Living the way that’s right for you… if you can.”

20. Good stuff from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less: 10 Little Tips to Help You Own Less Clutter and I Stopped Reaching for My Phone and Started Reaching for This.

21. Good stuff from Patti Digh: It was Painted Yellow Before the Fire (“An experiment in point of view”), It Clashed with My Hair (“Fifty years ago this summer, I was sixteen and living in Sri Lanka”), Losing The Thing Itself (“On wanting to create something for no reason you can screenshot”), I love filling out forms and other things you don’t know about me (“Rituals come in all forms. So do endings”), How To Operate a Book (“Third in a series of ‘how to’ posts”), and They Burned Brightly Anyway: Andrea Gibson (“June 16: A Pride Month Celebration and Recognition”).

22. Good stuff from Kari on A Grace Full Life: What I Kept – June 2026 and Things That Make Life Nicer | Summer 2026.

23. Good stuff from Open Secrets Magazine: I Tried AI for “Writing” and the Results Were Disastrous (“It stole much more than my ideas”), Pinch More Than an Inch (“The fat-phobic lessons I took away from a Kellogg’s Special K ad when I was twelve taught me to hate my body”), The Jacket That Did Not Belong to My Father (“Thoughts on what doesn’t matter after the loss of a parent”), The Threads My Family Touches Last for Generations (“I never thought I’d string words together like this”), Begin Again (“Lessons from knitting”), and What Do I Owe a Father Who Betrayed My Trust? (“He stole millions from investors. What he took from me is harder to replace”).

24. Nü Tennis by Seth Godin. Also from Seth, Facts and Feelings.

25. Good stuff from Satya Robyn: A Three-Legged Bunny & The Monster Under The Bed (“Why the unknown can be so terrifying, and what we can do about it”), The Treasure of the Present Moment (“Why we sometimes need a jolt to remind us”), and What If The Present Moment Sucks? (“How to ‘rest in the now’ when you really don’t want to”).

26. Stay Human, a cartoon from Connie Sun.

27. Good stuff from Danny Gregory: Life in the late 1900s (“Things I remember being a thing that are now just a memory”), Breaking My Own Rules (“Confessions of an outlaw”), and Give me a break! (“I suck at vacations”).

28. What Timing Knows That I Don’t by Sara Kuburic on Notes From My Phone. “On timing, surrender, and the seasons that looked like nothing.” Also from Sarah, Happiness: Six Things That Work For Me.

29. Good stuff from Brad Montague on The Enthusiast: the enthusiasm equation (“why some things leave us more alive than when we started”) and You should’ve seen the sky today (“Looking in a new direction”).

30. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood has an official YouTube channel. “For more than 30 years, Mister Rogers created a relationship with millions of children, each of whom felt like they were visiting with a trusted friend. The program continues to help children and parents navigate complex emotions through kindness and curiosity. This channel aims to spark wonder and imagination through full episodes, classic Mister Rogers songs and moments, factory visits, musical performances, and much more. It’s a caring place where you are respected, where your feelings matter, where you can laugh and play, and where you are reminded every day that you are special just by being you.”

31. Expansion by Josie George. “From this fixed place, I can stretch and stretch and stretch.”

32. I Asked 2 Award-Winning Pastry Chefs How to Upgrade Boxed Cake Mix, and Their Answers Surprised Me.

33. ‘I’m having fun’: 93-year-old Pittsfield poet reflects on self-published collection. In related news, Inside a 92-year-old Painter’s NYC Loft. (YouTube short)

34. “I felt the space opening up around me”: Author Ann Patchett on what she learned from a radical declutter. In other Ann Patchett news, Ann Patchett shares the best contemporary novel she’s ever read and 3 other standout books.

35. Ask a Sober Oldster #35: Anne Lamott. “When I first got sober, there was somebody, an oldster, who said to me that at the end he was deteriorating faster than he could lower his standards. And that was the point I got to.”

36. What Nobody Tells You Before You Delete Social Media.

37. NPR staffers share their favorite fiction reads of 2026 so far.

38. Good stuff from Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk: The Container of Your Books (“Back home + some thought exercises”), To Share or Not to Share (“Do we want to be left alone or not?”), and When It’s Time To Hit The Road (“What I learned from two months away from home”).

39. ‘Genuinely changed my life’: why Groundhog Day is my feelgood movie. “The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their favourite comfort films is a pick for a comedy that demands countless rewatching.” This is one of my favorite movies and I rewatch it once a year. Eric and I saw it in the theater when it was originally released, on one of our first official dates, so it also has a lot of sentimental value.

40. A Dream About Libraries. “What if you could live in one?” by Alexander Chee.

41. Writers Predate the Internet by 5,000+ Years by Jena Schwartz.

42. Small Thoughts on the Big Life Things from Stacy Morrison. “We age, we grow, we learn, we fail, and yes, we die. How is this reassuring? Somehow, it is. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t all poignant AF.”

43. Flight of the Mothman by Gyasi Hall on Orion Magazine. “Reflections on survival and queer iconography.”

44. The secret to being happy in 2026? It’s far, far simpler than you think on The Guardian. “Stop stressing about self‑improvement or waiting until you’re on top of everything. This year give yourself permission to prioritise pleasure.”

45. ‘Smaller doses of exercise are a miracle cure’: 14 expert tips to protect your joints on The Guardian. “Life is much easier if you look after your hips, knees, elbows and shoulders – especially as you get older. Rheumatologists and orthopaedic surgeons explain how to work out, what to eat and how to talk to your doctor.”

46. Good stuff from Maggie Smith: Pep Talk (“On Getting Unstuck…Again”) and The Good Stuff (“Beginning of summer edition”).

47. No One Told Me Healing From Trauma Would Feel Like This on Introvert, Dear.

48. Why Hosting Isn’t Cute, It’s Urgent from The Double Shift. “We need to work our hosting and organizing muscles for the long haul.”

49. Ireland is now paying artists a basic income. Will the idea catch on? “Ireland’s basic income for artists has been made permanent after research showed that it boosted the economy. Other nations have similar schemes. With more homegrown artists now coming from privileged backgrounds and AI disrupting the creative industries, there are calls for the UK to follow suit.”

50. Necessary Losses: the Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go by Maria Popova.

51. 3,000 Unreasonable Little Arguments on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “Chaos gardening, escaped cows, and why easier isn’t always better.”

52. The best book on writing I’ve ever read by Mason Currey. “Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story.” I have this book but I don’t think I’ve read it yet.

53. Earth, Wind & Fire | Official Trailer | HBO. This is finally available to watch on HBO. “Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson tells the story of the Grammy-award winning band chronicling their evolution, highs and lows, spiritual meaning, and lasting legacy.”

54. how to stay married by Samantha Irby, “very serious and accurate advice.”

55. You Have Yet to Meet All the People You Will Love by Amanda Sandlin. “Or: how to lose a dog, a relationship, and an entire town in one year, and come out bigger anyway.”

56. When Friends Move, Part 2 by Elise Granata, “a primal scream about it.”

57. Unpublished Andrea Gibson Speech: Do Not Rule Out What Scares You, “from one of the proudest moments of Andrea’s life.”

58. Are We Good? | Official Trailer | Utopia. “Comic and podcast pioneer Marc Maron reflects on loss and growth after the death of his partner, Lynn Shelton. As he processes grief and crafts comedy, he revisits his career, family struggles, and the evolving comedy world at 60.”

59. The end isn’t nigh on The Imperfectionist from Oliver Burkeman. I really really really needed to hear this.