Category Archives: Something Good

Something Good

1. This social faux pas prompted a rush of similar confessions and they’re brilliant.

2. The Other Side Of Paradise: How I Left A Buddhist Retreat In Handcuffs. Meditation is not for everyone.

3. Be an organ donor. (video)

4. Is Orthorexia the Eating Disorder for the Digital Age?

5. Roxane Gay: “I’m not an opinion vending machine.” “Yomi Adegoke talks to Roxane Gay about the importance of boundaries, the complexities of ‘body positivity’ and what it’s like working with Channing Tatum.”

6. Runaway Cow Gives Birth 2 Days After Fleeing Slaughterhouse-Bound Truck.

7. Sometimes you just need a cuddle. (video) In related news, Cutest puppy ever. (video)

8. Rejected By Italy, Thousands Of Migrants From Africa Risk The Alps To Reach France.

9. Last Year, The Flu Put Him In A Coma. This Year He’s Getting The Shot. Yikes!

10. Barack Obama Issues Battle Cry With First Twitter Post Of 2019.

11. The bee population in Amsterdam is now growing! Here’s how the city is helping bees. (video) We could do this too.

12. UMass Says You Can’t Say ‘Fuck Nazis’ Because It’s Not Inclusive. Disagree.

13. The Exhausted Introvert’s Guide To Saying No.

14. The Broccoli Tree: A Parable. (video)

15. Cyntoia Brown Is Granted Clemency in Case That Drew National Spotlight on The New York Times. “Cyntoia Brown, a sex trafficking victim who was serving a life sentence for killing a man when she was 16, during her clemency hearing in Nashville last year. She was granted clemency on Monday and will be released to supervised parole in August.”

16. What Happens When Professional Artists Recreate Kids’ Monster Doodles In Their Own Unique Style.

17. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says There’s ‘No Question’ About Trump’s Racism.

18. Floral Designer is Turning NYC Trash Cans into Giant Vases Overflowing with Flowers.

19. Detox Diets Aren’t Real or Healthy — and Body “Toxins” Don’t Exist.

20. These houses in India are built entirely from plastic waste in order to provide low-cost housing for underprivileged communities. (video)

21. Thoughts of Dog, my new favorite Twitter account. I found them because of their latest tweet, which goes like this: “sometimes. the human presses their noggin against mine. to figure out what i’m thinking. so i just think really hard. about how much i love them. and hope they figure it out.” *sigh*

22. This wild fox just found a dog toy and look how happy it made him. (video)

23. Guy Becomes Best Friends With A Butterfly. (video)

24. This airline worker danced on the tarmac to cheer up a crying kid. (video)

25. When you use your phone way too much. (video)

26. Black Women Changing The Game Business fund. “Here’s the reality: our culture — and our banking and business institutions — excludes and marginalizes Black women entrepreneurs. And entrepreneurship is a critical path, and sometimes the only path, for Black women to develop thriving livelihoods.”

27. This week in People Behaving Badly: New Study Finds Emergency Personnel Less Likely to Treat Pain for Black Patients Than White Ones, and Americans may love their national parks, but they can’t be trusted to enjoy them unsupervised, and National Parks Getting Trashed During Government Shutdown, and Louis C.K. Mocks Parkland Kids, Nonbinary People in Leaked Stand-up Set, and 7-Year-Old Killed in Senseless Shooting Attack on Black Family, and California Monarch Butterfly Population Down 86 Percent in One Year, and A Day in the Life of A Homeless College Student At California’s Humboldt State (video), and Pediatricians Voice Concerns About Care Following Two ‘Needless’ Migrant Deaths, and A guest at a hotel in Portland says he was harassed by staff when he was asked to leave the property after taking a phone call in the hotel lobby (video), and Migrant Baby Contracted Pneumonia After Five Days in a ‘Freezing’ Holding Cell, and A Macy’s customer berated an employee for speaking Arabic to a co-worker (video), and Atlanta Ended Its ICE Contract. But a Nearby Facility Quietly Started Jailing Immigrants, and Kansas Man Arrested For Kicking 1-Year-Old Black Child In The Back, Hurling Racial Slurs At Family, and Shutdown Leaves Food, Medicine and Pay in Doubt in Indian Country.

Something Good

Note: I’m skipping the “People Behaving Badly” segment of this list this week again. There are still bad, awful, horrible things, but as I say good-bye to 2018 and look to the new year, watching the snow we’d hoped to have for Christmas start to fall, I feel like skipping it once more. I’m not denying or ignoring it. I’m not “focusing on the positive.” I’m just leaving it alone for another week, letting it rest for now. Happy New Year, kind and gentle reader!

1. Burning the Old Year a poem from Naomi Shihab Nye.

2. Saying Goodbye to 2018’s Seesaw of Outrage and Numbness. This post includes some really great prompts, “guiding questions to use the image above to reflect on your own social change journey for 2019,” that can help us distinguish the specific roles we play “in pursuit of equity, liberation, inclusion, and justice.”

3. UN panel says the U.S. owes reparations to African-Americans. Similar steps should be taken for indigenous people. We owe so much to so many.

4. Complete Guide to 2019 Artist Grants & Opportunities.

5. Mary Oliver on On Being. “Often quoted, but rarely interviewed, Mary Oliver is one of our greatest and most beloved poets. She’s just released a new volume, Felicity, at the age of 80. And so we’re revisiting the interview she granted us earlier this year on the wisdom of the world, the salvation of poetry, and the life behind her writing.”

6. An Introvert’s Road Map To Mindfully Controlling Stress And Anxiety.

7. What I learned from losing my dog by Jennifer Louden.

8. In 2019: Persist, Persist, Persist, wisdom from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.

9. A Daily Journal Ritual to Jump-Start 2019. In related news, 19 Questions that Will Open Your Mind in 2019, and for writers, Writing Inventory, Intentions, and Reminders for the New Year.

10. Thank you for not trying to fix this from Andrea Scher. “Sometimes we are afraid that if we move toward our difficult feelings they will devour us, drag us under and engulf us. What’s more true is that allowing ourselves to have them, while shining a light of loving attention on them (either from ourselves or another) is a very miraculous kind of medicine.”

11. This Is The Kind Of Work That Excites An INFJ Personality. Alternate title, “Why I’m Quitting my CSU Job.”

12. Wisdom from Zen teacher Cheri Huber, “Self-hatred uses self-improvement as self-maintenance.”

13. Authoritarianism Thrives on Demoralization: How to Fight Trump and Stay Psychologically Healthy.

14. What Health at Every Size ISN’T. In related news, Why Eating Disorder Treatment is Failing Us All.

15. This Japanese pub is made out of 100% recycled materials. And it’s gorgeous.

16. This duck’s story is heart-wrenching but his new yellow boots are the cutest thing we’ve ever seen. (video)

17. Abused Wolves And Troubled Teens Find Solace In Each Other.

18. Cloth wrapping, known as furoshiki in Japan and bojagi in Korea, is a traditional and waste-free way of wrapping gifts, packing lunchboxes, and much more. (video)

19. The weight of being fat and black in America is worth more consideration than goes into a cheap joke. “A trio of new books lays bare the struggle of being large, African-American and considered too smart for the authors’ own good.”

20. 50 Times People Found The Most Unexpected Things.

21. Bandersnatch Stole 3 Hours of My Life Last Night, and Will Get Even More of My Time Over the Weekend.

22. Researchers Double Down on Claim Yoga Changes the Expression of Your Genes. “Over the last decade or so, we’ve been hearing that mind-body practices like yoga and meditation may affect our genes. A new review of the research solidifies it.”

23. This Russian artist is creating stunning intricate 3D landscapes with embroidery. (video)

24. This elementary school surprised their ‘superhero’ janitor with an appreciation party — and his reaction will have you ugly crying. (video)

25. Blackness Redefined: The 10 Best Films Of 2018. In related news, The Beautiful Clutter Of Black Film In 2018.

26. Forgiveness Repairs the World from Jack Kornfield.

27. Poet Andrea Gibson on Feeling Everything Everywhere.

28. Grandmothers bring food and comfort to asylum seekers at bus stations.

29. The 28 Most Amazingly Wholesome Things That Happened In 2018.