1. Poetry: The First Time by Ted Kooser and Before You Put Your Armor On by Wendy Videlock and Where I Come From by Assemay and Poem Written by AI by Eric Markowsky on Rattle, Belief and wonder: Wondering about belief and Courage and rage: And the call to creativity on Poetry Unbound by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Turning Memory into Material “writing our origin stories” on Earth & Verse, i learn what to do by staying “on slowing down enough to feel where i am” by Isabel Abbott, The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry shared by Patti Digh, i didn’t eat the sun by ire’ne lara silva on poets.org, In Case I Forget to Say It Enough by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on Heart Poems, A Perfectly Good Pitchfork and Half Off on Happy and Writer’s Evening by Julie Barton, Devil’s Advocate: The Ruler Speaks and For What Ails Us and Nothing and For This, I Walk Outside by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, The rules you forgot you wrote by Jasmine on The Tiny Joy Project, Corrective for a Broken Heart by Maria Popova, Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things by Donika Kelly on The Slowdown with Maggie Smith, and In Wartime and A Heart of Any Size by James Crews.

2. The Interview on The New York Times: Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here. (gift link)

3. Something Deeper Than Hope: Terry Tempest Williams on Our Stays Against Despair by Maria Popova. 

4. Palm Sunday 2026, “Remembrance of time past and present” by Jeanette Winterson. Also from Jeanette, Spring Equinox, “The real start of the year.”

5. Why Are Women Doing Their Husband’s Job-Searching? on Culture Study.

6. Northern Kentucky family declines $26 million bid as data center plans advance.

7. Wisdom on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: I’m Not Anti-Trump Supporters, I’m Pro-Humanity and Are Americans Too Lazy to Stop a Dictatorship?

8. This Spanish mountain range has just been named the world’s most beautiful place.

9. On Waiting For Spring. “The Essay In The Age Of AI, Writing After Chat GPT, The Novel, Plus Some Favorite Poems, Stories And Essays” by Alexander Chee.

10. Good stuff on Be More With Less: Feel Happier With Less Effort: 10 Simple Habits That Really Help and Honest Decluttering Advice You Might Not Want to Hear by Courtney Carver.

11. Addicted To Being Busy? How To Overcome Chronic Overwhelm.

12. 11 little ways to fall back in love with reading. I certainly don’t need this, but maybe you do?

13. How to Calm Your Nerves When You’re Freaking Out, According to Experts.

14. Parents at Iranian school bombed by US describe their worst day on The Guardian. “Hours before the world learned that a US missile had hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school, parents were already searching the rubble for their sons and daughters. In this exclusive report, four families describe the events.” WE DID THIS.

15. Kevin James Thornton’s rant about social media. (Instagram reel)

16. The Kinds of Questions We Ask Ourselves, “right as the seasons change” on Craft Talk from Jami Attenberg.

17. On Aging, Dying, Butter Melting, Crafting Legacy and Punching Robots from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds. “AI is soulless — so don’t let it sub in as your soul. And when you write, or make art, or do anything, put yourself into it. As wholly as you can. Without reservation. Be unabashedly yourself. Because that’s what goes out into the world. That’s the song you sing. Those are the echoes in this great cave. You’ll live on in others if you allow yourself to. We’re all just melting butter. Glorious, tasty, melty butter.”

18. I met someone because of a shirt, “when small talk becomes real talk” by Brad Montague on The Enthusiast.

19. The Small Miracles We Almost Miss by Andrea Scher.

20. A Snail’s Pace, “a comic about how my writing is going” by Connie Sun, (although, this could have been written by me).

21. Complicated, Before the Alzheimer’s. “Alzheimer’s doesn’t arrive in a vacuum. It lands inside relationships that were already complicated” by Elizabeth Kleinfeld. *sigh*

22. Into the rabbit hole. “The first of two parts. Or maybe three. Or maybe infinity” by Rita Ott Ramstad on Rootsie.

23. The New 100 Etiquette Rules for Modern Life. “Some old social standards really don’t work anymore… Here’s a guide that we hope will stand the test of at least a bit of time for our socially confusing era — until the next great exciting social upheaval.”

24. Do what you want on The Imperfectionist. “If you’re overwhelmed by the feeling that the world is falling apart – or just overwhelmed by your to-do list, or stuck in any kind of rut – there’s a solid chance you’d benefit from reorienting your life in the direction of what you actually want to be doing with it, instead of how you think you ought to be living it.”

25. Harvested Lives. “How work, time, and exhaustion are shaping what it means to be human” by Frederick Joseph.

26. Typos on Short Reads. “Happy mistakes” by Brenda Miller.

27. Leave room for yourself by Jenny Lawson.

28. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone this week.

1. Poetry: Vermeer by Tomas Tranströmer, Vita Nova by Louise Glück and Moonlight Romantica by Todd Turnidge and Honeycrisp by January Gill O’Neil and 1985 by Vincent Rendoni and Poem Beginning in Berlin, Ending in Boston, and Bookended by Rilke by Tiana Clark on poets.org, from Mosaic by Supritha Rajan and Reverse Requiem by Ina Cariño and If Night You Were a City by Adam Wiedewitsch on The Slowdown with Maggie Smith, When the screen goes black the only thing left glowing by Jasmine on The Tiny Joy Project, Heart Medicine by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Daffodil Teachers and Rough Grace from James Crews, Small Moments by James Crews on Heart Poems, The Pact by Jena Schwartz, and Because, War by Hayden Saunier and The Senior Living Bus Goes to the Churches on Sundays by Fleda Brown on Rattle. 

2. The news ≠ your life from Oliver Burkeman on The Imperfectionist. “But if it really has become a privilege to retain one’s sanity, I think it’s one the privileged need to exercise, not disavow. In an era when the news leaves half your friends paralysed by misery, it’s no indulgence to make time for whatever’s pleasurable or engrossing in your life. On the contrary, the world needs sane people more than ever.”

3. Hachette pulls horror novel Shy Girl after suspected AI use on The Guardian. In related news, Shy Girl, AI In Writing, And A New Perniciousness from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.

4. Good stuff from The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: How Will This End for MAGA Americans? The Same Way It Did for NAZI Germans: Feigned Ignorance, and Trump Supporters, Is This Really What You Voted For?, and MAGAs Are Destroying America For Spite, and Confronting the Mental Health Crisis of Trump’s America.

5. Transparent Toilets Take Tokyo’s Culture of Hygiene to the Next Level. “Don’t worry—once their doors are locked, smart glass technology ensures the exteriors become opaque.”

6. Not Missing Your Life. “In 1979, Jon [Kabat-Zinn] started MBSR in the basement of a medical facility at the University of Massachusetts. The patients referred to him were the ones nobody else knew what to do with. Chronic pain. Chronic anxiety. Chronic depression. They had an average of eight years of symptoms with no improvement.”

7. Thank you, Darkness/Welcome, Light! “a turn of the wheel, a new beginning {Letter One: Spring Dreaming}” from Alix on Earth & Verse.

8. Mental Declutter: 8 Gentle Ways to Spring Clean Your Mind by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

9. in the closets of my mother-the-model. “From Dior to The Gap, my mother was defined by her clothes until the end” by Elissa Altman on Poor Man’s Feast.

10. Haunted by Waters by Amy Marie Turner. “What will this summer look like when there isn’t melt water or precipitation to recharge our vital rivers? How do we get to the other side of the environmental damage that we are witnessing in our lifetime?” *sigh*

11. The Best Things I’ve Done to Cope With Anxiety. Be sure to take a look at the comments section too.

12. We asked experts about the most responsible ways to use AI tools – here’s what they said on The Guardian.

13. Books of Love, “A conversation about poetry, community, and being Black in America” with Camille T. Dungy and Sean Hill on Orion Magazine.

14. The Plan. “How much of the pleasure of making a garden is in the plan?” by Eula Biss on Orion Magazine.

15. How a Film About Andrea Gibson Became an Oscar-Nominated Love Story. “Director Ryan White talks about making Come See Me in the Good Light, the acclaimed documentary about Colorado’s late poet laureate Andrea Gibson that captures their final years—and the relationship that sustained them.”

16. Please Don’t Tell Me How to Feel About My Breast Cancer. “Or any other loss I’ll inevitably face” by Giulia Rozzi on Open Secrets Magazine.

17. Recipe I want to try: Gochujang Chicken Burgers with Kimchi Bacon Jam.

18. Paula Doress-Worters, an Author of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’ Dies at 87 on The New York Times. (gift link) “She wrote about postpartum depression when it was an unmentionable like abortion or birth control, and her research on her own suffering helped countless women.”

19. The Funniest Conversation You’ll Ever Hear About Achieving Inner Peace, Pete Holmes with Dan Harris on 10% Happier. (video) “You were taught that spiritual growth takes effort. Comedian and writer Pete Holmes thinks that might be exactly backwards — and he’s got the mushroom trip, the divorce, and the Richard Rohr quotes to back it up. Pete Holmes is a comedian, actor, writer, and host of the long-running podcast *You Made It Weird*. He is the author of *Comedy Sex God*, a memoir about faith, comedy, and the search for meaning…This is a live conversation recorded in front of an audience — and one of the most joyful, wide-ranging spiritual discussions Dan has ever had on stage.”

20. A Reason to Send You a Letter from Jamie Attenberg on Craft Talk.

21. Lowering the Volume. “On attunement, erasure, and what reveals itself in the quiet” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

22. The Queen of Three Beautiful Things. An interview with Clare Law and Satya Robyn.

23. An Existential Guide to: Regret. “Regret is a bruise that never ripens” on The Shadowed Archive.

24. We need you, hopepunks. “You are the antidote to apathy and cynicism” from Brad Montague on The Enthusiast.

25. Why My Father Wants His Workbench. “On familiar spaces, Alzheimer’s, and what we grieve when we lose home” by Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

26. What We Write About When We Write About The Self. “Some thoughts on the recent memoir discourse” from Summer Brennan on A Writer’s Notebook.

27. Why Sucking at Your Hobby Could Be a Secret Weapon.

28. Lou Reed’s Nephew: The Collages. “How they came to be” by Jim Hanas.

29. The Bigness of Small Talk, a guest opinion essay on The New York Times. (gift link)

30. Monarch butterfly population increases by 64%.

31. 5 Beautiful Articles About Creativity.

32. And finally, a few random things I saved to my phone this week.