Category Archives: Something Good

Something Good

Close up of a pink peony flower

One of the last ones from my garden

1. Notes from the Lower Level an essay from Camille Dungy. Her new book of essays is out now, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood, and History, and is so good. I wrote a short article about it for work, and will write more about it here later because there’s more to say.

2. Bad things keep happening. The acquittal in Philando Castile’s killing makes clear that black lives still do not matter, and Muslim Teen Killed in Virginia After Leaving a Mosque, and Pregnant Seattle Woman Calls Police, Ends Up Dead. As we all know, this is not a complete list.

3. Young Photographer Highlights Every-Day Racism.

4. Little Boxes. This is streaming right now on Netflix, and is really good — the kind of good that is also sad and hard.

5. Diverse Bookish Instagram Accounts to Follow. In related news, Lena Waithe curates her favorite films by LGBTQ+ artists, and How Black Creators Are Breaking Barriers By Using Scripted Podcasts For Storytelling.

6. When my dog died, I didn’t understand why it felt like a human had died. Then I read the research.

7. Father’s day, Juneteenth, & Pride Bail Out Day.

8. Roxane Gay’s deeply personal Hunger explores relationship with her body. I’m reading it now, with all the feels. In related news, Roxane Gay Is The Hardest-Working Woman In Letters.

9. The Complexities Of My White Lady Friendships Post Election. In related news, White People Will Always Let You Down, and Beware of the So-Called “Woke” Allies.

10. 5 things you may have not realized are cultural appropriation. I posted this to Facebook this week, with the additional, “6. Using ‘tribe;’ to refer to your group,” and this clearly is an issue people have strong feelings about. For me, there’s still a lot of confusion about what is and what isn’t, but as I said on Facebook, for me it is a compassion practice. I listen carefully and deeply to native people and people of color, and if they say they feel harmed or oppressed, if they are suffering and I can do something to ease that, I will. Especially if it’s as simple, for example, as saying my community, my friends, or my people instead of “tribe.”

11. Amazon to Buy Whole Foods for $13.4 Billion on The New York Times.

12. Getting Real from Sarah of The Cognitive Canine, a really great post about the highlights and the blooper reels of being a dog person.

13. Facebook Permanently Blacklisted Me From Their Site.

14. Jelanii Kabita’s message to families with LGBTQI kids, (Video). “Dancer Jelanii Kabita’s mother rejected his trans identity. After years of devastation, struggle, and growth, he has a powerful message for the families with LGBTQI kids.”

15. GAYCATION: Orlando (Full Episode). Watch the whole episode online for free.

16. ‘Gwyneth glows like a radioactive swan’ – my day at the Goop festival.

“You can’t honestly address ‘wellness’ – the things people need to be well – without addressing poverty and systemic racism, disability access and affordable healthcare, paid family leave and food insecurity, contraception and abortion, sex work and the war against drugs and mass incarceration. Unless, of course, you are only talking about the wellness of people whose lives are untouched by all of those forces. That is, the wellness of people who are disproportionately well already.”

17. Deported from Trump’s America, (Video). “This family has been split apart as deportations of immigrants without criminal records more than double under Trump.”

18. Tracy K. Smith named new U.S. poet laureate. In related news, Tracy K. Smith Is the New Poet Laureate from The New York Times.

19. Brit scientist could be about to CURE multiple sclerosis and provide hope for millions.

20. Burg’s Place still isn’t fully funded. When Amy made this page and the video, Burg was doing just fine and there was no reason to think that wouldn’t continue. Now that he’s gone, after everything happened so quickly, it seems even more important than ever to fully fund this request.

21. What your days look like from Austin Kleon. In related news, What Makes You Happy? from Kerilyn at Ancora Imparo.

22. How This “Fat Femme” Yoga Instructor Is Reshaping The $3 Trillion Wellness Industry.

23. Being in love and creating with Becky Chappell a new video from the Beyond the Gallery series.

24. Expanding Awareness: How Patterns of Interaction Support White Supremacy.

25. Start With a Flower: Alice Walker & Sharon Salzberg in Conversation.

26. Having a rough go of it? Dukkha, Baby. (Handle With Care.) from Adreanna Limbach.

27. #TheySaid Highlights Our Culture Of Body Shaming.

28. Dog photographer of the year 2017 – in pictures.

Something Good

From my garden, on my meditation shrine

1. Roxane Gay Tells Us About Daring to Be Fat. I can’t wait to read her new book! “I did a lot of research about bodies, fat, fatness, that sort of thing. Even if I wasn’t necessarily going to write about it explicitly, I wanted to be informed. I learned some incredibly interesting things. The measure for Body Mass Index (BMI), for instance, is so fucking arbitrary. They decided on 25 because it’s a nice, round number. A bunch of generally white men are in a room somewhere making decisions about millions of people. That really was informative and infuriating.”

2. Recipes I want to try: Easy Salsa Recipe, and Easy Restaurant Style Blender Salsa, and Strawberry Rhubarb Oatmeal Bake.

3. My road trip through Trump country taught me that staying in the liberal bubble has its advantages.

4. One carry-on bag and one personal item by Camille Dungy. I just finished and highly recommend her new book, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History.

5. Aja Brown, Compton’s Youngest Mayor, Re-Elected For Second Term. “The 35-year-old received about 60 percent of the vote.”

6. Mr. Okra Of New Orleans // 60 Second Docs. (Video)

7. The 20 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week. “Sorry I can’t come to your thing I don’t know how to people.” #same

8. 10+ Women Share The Ways They Were Body-Shamed And It’s Just Too Horrible To Read.

9. 12 truths I learned from life and writing, Anne Lamott’s TED Talk.

10. 23 Body-Positive Women Reminding You to Go Ahead and Wear that Swimsuit.

11. Why I’ve lost faith in Tony Robbins (and most life coaches).

12. There’s One Big Catch With Gap’s New Ad Celebrating Diversity.

13. Don’t Yuck My Yum; My Eating Disorder Story.

14. To the Supporters and Enablers of President Trump: You Will Never Get Your Country Back.

15. 22 Books By Black Authors To Add To Your Beach Bag This Summer. In related news, 17 Books You Should Read in June.

16. Dr Christian Jessen: Clean eating websites like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop ‘indistinguishable from pro anorexia sites.’

17. The Summer Soundtrack that You Need (Trust Me) from Militant Baker.

18. Beware of Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: The Tale of A Progressive Professor Who Forgot To Hide Her Racism And Got Her Ass Fired.

19. Novelist Beautifully Destroys Those Who Don’t Believe in Cultural Appropriation.

20. Danez Smith – “Dinosaurs in the Hood”, a really great poem (Video).

21. This 6-year-old and her mom created a coloring book series to teach kids about black history, (Video). I love that Mom pointed out that Black history did not start with slavery, but rather slavery interrupted Black history.

22. “But What if it Works?”, wisdom from Seth Godin.

23. The American Woman site is live! “AMERICAN WOMAN is a multimedia portrait and documentary series about Black American women.”

24. Let’s Stop Apologizing for These 8 Things from Be More With Less.

25. 12 Signs of an Unhealthy, Underdeveloped INFJ. In related news, How HSPs, Empaths, and INFJs Can Protect Themselves from Toxic People.

26. Why Cookbook Clubs Should Be the New Way We Entertain. I love this idea!

27. Loving Day: The 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. In related news, ‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S. from The New York Times.

28. 27 Pulse survivors, family members and first responders share their stories. In related news, For Those We Lost And Those Who Survived: The Pulse Massacre One Year Later.

29. Nowhere in America can a full-time minimum wage worker afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

30. This is how to get the Pride emoji reaction on Facebook.