1. How to Meditate Every Day on Lion’s Roar. “Diana Winston on committing to meditation practice. Featuring her ‘Ten Suggestions for Having a Regular Daily Practice Even if You Would Rather Be Thrown into a Shark-Infested Ocean.'” Honestly, I’m kind of jealous — I wish I’d written this. It’s so good.

2. Inner Alchemy Cards: Build A New World Deck “is an artful exploration of language, learning, inspiration, and collaboration, that delves into important ideas around activism and systems of oppression. This is a way for us to examine and disrupt harmful dominant narratives, tell new stories, and inspire one another to use our creativity and personal power to help build the collective world we all want to live in! In the end you will have a beautiful and meaningful handmade deck of 35 oracle cards to use as unique a tool for guidance and reflection whenever you need it.”

3. First we read, then we write from Austin Kleon.

4. What Happens When Americans Can Finally Exhale, “The pandemic’s mental wounds are still wide open.” In related news, Why Grounding Rituals May Be the Key to Navigating Post-COVID Anxiety, and Can I Just Tell You: With So Much To Mourn, We Must Allow Time To Grieve.

5. Leaving The Bouncy House of Social Media.

6. Good people who could use some help: Help this Family Find a Safe Home and Help Joy out of homelessness.

7. Chalk it up: Alameda artist sets a world record. “Mark Lewis Wagner wanted to create the world’s largest piece of ground chalk art by a single artist. So he did.” Mark is an amazing artist and an even more amazing human.

8. Isabel Allende: ‘Everyone called me crazy for divorcing in my 70s. I’ve never been scared of being alone.’ In this article, she says of writing: “Half the job is to show up,” she says. “You show up and you open your mind and heart, and something will happen. I have learned in years of writing that I have to be patient. I can write about anything except politics and football, so I know that if I give myself time, and I relax, it will happen. If I’m tense and calling the muse desperately, the muse won’t come.”

9. Recipe I want to try: strawberry cornmeal griddle cakes.

10. In Its Final Season, “Shrill” Explores the Fear of Being Seen.

11. True Crime & Makeup YouTuber Bailey Sarian Is Launching A New Podcast On Spotify Called “Dark History.” There’s something so mesmerizing about watching her apply her makeup while she tells a story — I’m not sure how I’d feel about just listening to her.

12. Roxane Gay Starts Publishing Imprint With Grove Atlantic on The New York Times. “Roxane Gay Books will focus on underrepresented fiction, nonfiction and memoir writers, with or without agents.”

13. How Religion, Education, Race And Media Consumption Shape Conspiracy Theory Beliefs.

14. White People’s Fear of Critical Race Theory is Based in Ignorance.

15. Read This Powerful Statement From Darnella Frazier, Who Filmed George Floyd’s Murder.

16. An interview with Alison Bechdel: “I’ve Always Known Physical Exertion and Movement Are Vital Somehow for My Creative Process.”

17. ‘I Wake With Wonder’: A Crowdsourced Poem Of Pandemic Pain And Hope.

18. 45 Things People Said That Were Oddly Specific Yet So Accurate.

19. Hidden Camera Captures So Many Animals Sharing A Backyard Water Fountain.

20. Fantastic Macro Photos Reveal the Microscopic World of Mushrooms and Slime Molds.

“Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here.
Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer: Now.
Say it until you can hear it.”
~ Ram Dass

1. Mindfulness and the Buddha’s Eightfold Path on Lion’s Roar. “To understand how to practice mindfulness in daily life, says Gaylon Ferguson, we have to look at all eight steps of the Buddha’s noble eightfold path.”

2. Gifts from Beyond on Lion’s Roar. “When Holly Stocking finds an unopened gift from her late husband, she contemplates what it really means to be gone — and gone beyond.”

3. HAES Health Sheets. “Health At Every Size®-Based Guides for Blame-Free, Shame-Free Explanations of Common Medical Conditions.” I especially like Why We Don’t Recommend Intentional Weight Loss.

4. Americans Have Learned to Talk About Racial Inequality. But They’ve Done Little to Solve It.

5. The 20 best easy cake recipes. Challenge accepted!

6. Online Therapy During A Pandemic Was Exhausting. Here’s Why I Quit.

7. Dr Jen Gunter’s menopause manifesto.

8. ‘We Always Rise.’ A Black-Owned Bookstore Navigates the Pandemic on The New York Times. “Source of Knowledge has been a Newark mainstay for decades. It survived the past year thanks to the generosity of its customers and an owner who provides more than just books.”

9. Seriously, just tax the rich. “Sometimes, the haggling and hemming and hawing over what to do about the debt overshadow a point that many Americans find obvious: It’s simply a good, fair idea to tax the wealthy. They have disproportionately reaped the benefits of economic growth and the stock market in recent years, contributing to increasing inequality in the United States. The divide has become even more obvious during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which billionaires have managed to add heaps of dollars to their wealth even as millions of people were knocked on their heels.”

10. A beginner’s guide to “But, I’m just not into politics!”

11. Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently on The New York Times. “The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?”

12. Overwork Killed More Than 745,000 People In A Year, WHO Study Finds.

13. These mesmerizing plant moments are a whole mood. (video)

14. Windows on the world: pandemic poems by Simon Armitage, Hollie McNish, Kae Tempest and more.

15. A thoughtful post about grief from Kris Carr, who recently lost her father. It starts, “In our trauma-phobic, mourning-avoidant culture, we don’t have a language for the deep experiences that each of us will face at some point in our lives.”

16. Midcoast Maine gains a new small book publisher and two literary magazines. “A new small press has launched in Maine called Toad Hall Editions and its purpose is to give a platform to writers who don’t get noticed in the more traditional publishing arenas.” Three of my favorite people are doing a really cool thing.

17. Pansexuality 101: 5 Key Facts You Need to Know. Today is #PanVisibilityDay!