Category Archives: Something Good

Something Good

1. Judy Clement Wall: Artist, illustrator, author, love warrior. J posted the above picture this weekend on Instagram and Facebook, and you know I LOVE IT. I’ve been following J’s journey ever since she started sharing her “doodles” and to see her become so fully embodied as an artist gives me all the joy I can stand, and reminds me that I have to trust myself and keep trying.

2. Wisdom from Kelly Diels, “Sometimes you don’t even realize the burden you’ve been carrying until you put it down.”

3. White Denial is an American Tradition: It’s Time to Bury It. Amen. In related news, 7 things black people want their well-meaning white friends to know.

4. 10 ways to keep doing the work when you’re in it for the long haul from Jena Schwartz. Thank you so much for this, Jena, and for sticking with it, doing this work with me, helping me to keep from giving up. Also from Jena, Five Deep Breaths.

5. Harold Ramis didn’t intend “Groundhog Day” to be Buddhist, but it’s a dharma classic. This is the first movie Eric and I went out to see together, at a $2 theater here in Fort Collins which is now a sticky floored music venue. We rewatch it at least once a year, and I think about the metaphors of the movie, the message a lot. In related news, from Austin Kleon, Want to be an artist? Watch Groundhog Day.

6. Good stuff from Everyday Feminism: When You ‘Don’t See Color,’ You’re Contributing to the Everyday Racism Around You, and 5 Things Your Activist Friend Wants You to Stop Doing (Because You’re Wearing Us Out), and I Had Cancer – And Medical Fat-Shaming Could Have Killed Me.

7. Party in my Plants Episode #72: Health at Every Size, Diet Culture & BURNING THE WAGON! with Isabel Foxen Duke.

8. Collaborative Lamps That Weave Traditional Fibers With PET Plastic Waste.

9. Primer: When You Have Too Much to Do from Zen Habits.

10. Onym, a naming site with a ton of free resources. I’m trying to come up with a better name for my business (I’m just not feeling Life Wholehearted anymore, with the events of the past couple of years I feel like I need something with teeth), so I’m hoping this site can help.

11. attention is the beginning of devotion from Karen Walrond on Chookooloonks.

12. Panda eating carrot. (video) In related news, Pandas Gone Wild, a photo collection.

13. #MeToo, Now What? from PBS. Executive editor and host Zainab Salbi goes beyond the headlines about sexual harassment to ask how we got here and how we move forward.

14. New Mexico’s Teacher Of The Year Might Be Deported. (video) “This woman was Teacher of the Year in her state — but until there’s a clean DREAM Act, her future is in jeopardy.”

15. A Man Who Could Finally Afford To See A Doctor After Winning The Lottery Died Three Weeks Later. “Donald Savastano was excited to finally see a doctor after winning $1 million. Then he found out he had stage 4 cancer.” Tell me again how we are “making America great again.” I dare you.

16. Baby dances to dad’s beatboxing. (video)

17. The Term ‘Marijuana’ Is Rooted In Racism. (video)

18. Reminder: Black labor built this country for free. (video)

19. Recipe I want to try: Potato Chip Cookies. Sweet and salty, chewy with some crunch is my jam.

20. Someone edited Ram’s Martin Luther King commercial with what King actually said about car ads. In related news, Yes, the MLK Estate Did Approve That Trash Dodge Super Bowl Ad, and America Will Not Stop Until Martin Luther King Jr. Is Completely Rebranded as a Slice of Avocado Toast, and White Supremacy Murdered Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King & Now Uses Him as a Capitalist Prop, and Dodge’s Super Bowl ad used a Martin Luther King Jr. speech … to sell pickup trucks, (video).

21. Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Was a Total Disaster.

22. White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before.’

23. 3D collages in layers of glass: By Dustin Yellin. (video)

24. A Photographer Captures a Decade in the Life of a Single Ukrainian Park Bench.

25. Black Beekeepers Are Transforming Detroit’s Vacant Lots Into Bee Farms.

26. Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson Save It for the Stage from The New York Times.

27. Why Schools Fail To Teach Slavery’s ‘Hard History.’

28. The Women Behind White Power from The New York Times.

Something Good

The contents of my grocery cart this week, made fancy by Prisma and Eric

1. this is a love song, not an apology: in praise of quitting from Isabel Abbott. I’ve shared it before, but I needed to revisit it this week and thought maybe you might too.

2. Why Are Magazines Still Not Letting Plus Women Actively Participate In Fashion? In related news, This Fitness Brand Had the Perfect Response to Their Plus-size Model Getting Fat-shamed.

3. On Mo’Nique: Being Nice is Not A Requirement for Fair Pay. In related news, Fear of an Angry Black Woman: Why Mo’Nique Was Right.

4. List: Things That Begin a Sentence That Indicate You May Need to Refrain From Finishing That Sentence from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

5. Why our current political issues have everything to do with body positivity from The Militant Baker.

6. The Great Rat Rescue. “We are lucky to live and work in such a pet-friendly and compassionate community.”

7. A goat and a coyote play. (video) In related news, Cow who escaped in November found living with a herd of bison. (video)

8. Black Girl Booklist! 10 Must-Read Books by Black Women.

9. Deaf Dancer Finds His Way to Feel The Beat. (video)

10. Facebook Apologizes for Banning Paragraph From Black Woman’s Book. This is an ongoing issue, happens constantly to the WOC I follow on Facebook.

11. Margaret Atwood’s Books Taught Me to Listen to Women—Now She Needs to Learn the Same Thing.

Really listening requires full body presence. It requires you to soften and let go of the fear, the urge to argue, and the instinct to control the narrative. It takes a comfort with silence and a willingness to accept that your turn to talk may never come, that what’s happening might not be about you at all. This doesn’t mean internalizing every call-out on social media, but rather acknowledging how your voice carries and reaching out to those who have less power with compassion, respect, and openness. It requires you see them first as individual human beings with names, lives, and experiences you might not have imagined. We’ve assumed for too long that the onus for reaching out is on the less powerful. We must work to upend that imbalance and make space for women of color, Indigenous women, trans women, and others who have been left out of feminism in the past.

12. The Life Thief. “How diet culture steals your time, your energy, and your health—and how you can take them back.”

13. Dog Loves His Automatic Ball Launcher. (video)

14. Relaxing Into the Feeling of Being Alive from Zen Habits.

15. Do you feel a yearning for something you can’t explain? There’s a word for that.

16. 8 Contradictions you might experience if you’re an INFJ.

17. Ursula K. Le Guin On Writing:”Alas, There Are No Recipe” from Chuck Wendig.

18. Anthony Bourdain was a 44 year old cook who was slinging french fries and having little hope to ever get out of debt, or even pay his taxes. (video)

19. Company Hilariously Mocks Stupid Client Requests, Shows What Happens When You Do Everything They Ask.

20. Lucas the spider. (video) Reminds me of Marcel the Shell.