Category Archives: Something Good

Something Good

1. The middle of everywhere from Seth Godin. This is kind of blowing my mind.

2. Wisdom from Alexandra Franzen,

Your words, your actions, your art projects, your efforts, every small, tender, beautiful thing that you put forth into the world matters so much. So much more than you may realize. Every single day, as you go about your work, you have no idea whose life you could be impacting for the better—often, in ways you can’t even imagine.

3. It only takes a moment to make someone’s day, the story behind the Daymaker (“A person who performs intentional acts of kindness with the intention of making the world a better place”) project.

4. 18 Ways to Start the First Page of a New Notebook.

5. Women Behaving Badly from the wicked smart Rachel Cole. “When we are in an allied relationship with ourselves we trust our hungers and seek to feed them. When we are in an oppositional relationship to ourselves we mistrust our hungers and seek to numb, deny or minimize them.”

6. Feast On Your Life: A New Group for Not Doing, good stuff from Jena Schwartz.

7. The 20 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week.

8. Recipes I want to try: Curried Carrot Salad and Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Mini Blender Muffins. In related news, How to Make Salad: a Guide by Julia Moskin on New York Times. P.S. If you have any tasty vegetable recipes, send them my way!

9. To Stay Married, Embrace Change on The New York Times. After close to 25 years with the same person, this sounds about right to me.

10. These Southern Black Women Turned Old Rags into Masterpieces. “The people of Gee’s Bend, Alabama faced slavery, share-cropping, the Great Depression, flood, and a racist sheriff who cut off essential ferry access to the community. Nevertheless, the community persisted.”

11. Two good causes, Burg related: A Burgfectly Lived Life and Burg’s Place.

12. Maria Bamford’s New Special Is a Kind of Inspired Gibberish on The New York Times.

13. Japanese patience and precision By Kutani Choemon.

14. 20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You. This is an older post I’ve shared before, but it’s worth another visit.

15. Wyoming Passes “Indian Education for All” Legislation. This is a great idea.

16. This Twitter Thread Perfectly Breaks Down How White Pop Stars Use Black Artists.

17. Dear straight allies, please don’t come to pride until you’ve understood these 6 things.

18. On Being Black, ‘Woke,’ And Dating White People.

19. The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy.

20. I Know a Woman from Jena Schwartz.

21. Lia Kim Choreography. #movementgoals

22. Our Lady of Complicity, “The first daughter fails the Turing test with her self-help book.”

23. 20 slimdown diet tips! Lena Dunham on Instagram. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about her, because she does some pretty dumb stuff sometimes, but then she does something like this.

24. 6 Ways My Parents Unintentionally Taught Me Disordered Eating.

25. Dear White Progressives…

26. The psychological importance of wasting time. And in related news, Happiness research shows the biggest obstacle to creativity is being too busy.

27. Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? I’ve always wondered, and this post gives some pretty good answers.

28. A Responsibility to Light: An Illustrated Manifesto for Creative Resilience and the Artist’s Duty in Dark Times.

29. Debunking the ‘Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps’ Myth.

30. Cary Grant: how 100 acid trips in Tinseltown ‘changed my life.’ “At the height of his fame, Cary Grant turned to LSD therapy for help. He later claimed the drug saved him, but did it also spell the end of his career?” I had no idea.

31. These rare color photos of Paris were shot 100 years ago, and they’re amazing.

32. Fresh Air’s 10 Favorite Terry Gross Interviews. “This week marks 30 years since WHYY first took Fresh Air With Terry Gross national in the form we know today: a daily, hour-long interview show featuring an array of artists and newsmakers…To commemorate the occasion, I asked Gross for a list of her personal favorite interviews.”

33. Under Trump, inconvenient data is being sidelined.

Something Good

This is happening in my garden right now

1. 23 ‘Small’ Signs That You’re A Highly Sensitive Person, alternatively titled “Everything You Need to Know About Me.”

2. Recipes I want to try: Bob Armstrong Chile Con Queso Dip and Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches. Also, I need to go buy some tortillas here, Stop at this Fort Collins bakery for authentic Mexican food.

3. Salon talk. A mom and her wee one are impossibly cute.

4. Sarah Silverman breaks down why she stopped calling things “gay.”

5. The Borrowed Words of Ivanka Trump. “The ‘inspirational quotes’ of her new book, Women Who Work, function as their own, tidy versions of the alternative fact.”

6. This Emotional Wedding Photo Is Bringing The Internet To Tears. So beautiful.

7. Wisdom from Elizabeth J. Andrew, “The ‘Who cares?’ question assumes writing to be a product, valuable inasmuch as others are willing to consume it. But writing is a product only at the tail end of a long and arduous process. The writing process, like any spiritual journey, is worthwhile for its own sake. The only answer to the ‘Who cares?’ question that really matters is whether or not you care.”

8. What you need to know about the House vote to repeal Obamacare. In related news, Republicans Celebrate Taking Healthcare Away from Millions, and In Rare Unity, Hospitals, Doctors and Insurers Criticize Health Bill, and See the full clip of Jimmy Kimmel’s powerful opening from last night, where he wasn’t just a TV host, but a father and a citizen.

9. Artist Creates Giant Wood Sculptures and Hides Them in Copenhagen Forests.

10. Powerful Comic Perfectly Captures the Hypocrisy of White Feminism.

11. Save the Holiday Twin Drive-In. “Re-new the drive in infrastructure to preserve this Fort Collins treasure for generations to come.”

12. Illustrator Draws Queer People of Color Doing Everyday Things.

13. Help save Everyday Feminism. It’s such a great resource.

14. W. Kamau Bell Unmasks Industry Racism in This Excerpt From His New Book. “In this excerpt from his new book, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell, the comedian describes a White show business figure’s duplicitious and patronizing treatment.”

15. Trump supporters forced this man out of a rally — after mistaking him for a protester. In related news, A Woman Is On Trial For Laughing During A Congressional Hearing, (but also this I’m facing jail time after laughing at Jeff Sessions. I regret nothing.) And, something else you might need, How to Stay Sane if Trump is Driving You Insane: Advice From a Therapist.

16. The Eating Disorder Community Has A Fat Phobia Problem. Because this, “A thin-obsessed world perpetuates eating disorders and fat phobia. A world that acknowledges and celebrates the diversity of body sizes, and that focuses on access to weight-neutral mental and physical healthcare for people of all sizes (rather than focusing on trying to make everyone the same size) is better for everyone’s health.”

17. Bodhi Hanna Kistner (88): “Only After Sixty My True Life Began.” Stories like this are such a relief to me, to know that there is still time, as long as I get to stick around for awhile.

18. These Los Angeles dancers are changing the way people protest.

19. We Belong to a Planet That Bends Towards Healing from Adreanna Limbach.

20. What is Cultural Appropriation? In related news, What’s Wrong with Cultural Appropriation? These 9 Answers Reveal Its Harm.

21. In one powerful tweetstorm, this woman demolishes the hypocrisy of fat shaming.

22. Maria Bamford Wants You to Know You’re Doing Great.

23. Pink’s IG Picture is Not Body Positive from Dances with Fat.

24. Wisdom from Tulku Thondup, “Every mother-being wants to be happy, just as a thirst-tormented person wants water. Most beings, however, have no idea how to secure happiness. Confused, they grasp at anything that they think will be rewarding. But they go about it in the wrong way—through grasping, attachment, obsession, or aggression. At best, they are chasing rainbows. At worst, they end up hurting themselves, like someone who tries to lick honey off the sharp edge of a knife.”

25. A New Map on Allowing Myself. Justine is writing some really amazing stuff about being a new mom, when she gets the time and space to write, cause you know — new mom.

26. There’s No Such Thing as “Good Police.”

27. Outdoor Recreation Isn’t Free – Why We Need to Stop Pretending It Is.

28. One Strike, You’re Out: Fucking It Up With Your Friend of Color.

29. Neil deGrasse Tyson Warns: America ‘Is Already Kind Of Fading.’ “The famed astrophysicist says “there’s no future” for a country that ignores science.”

30. Why White Lady Sisterhood Needs to Evolve.

31. Advice for the recent graduate from Austin Kleon. I would argue that this is good advice for anyone, at any time.

32. 100 questions to spark conversation & connection, an oldie but a goody from Alexandra Franzen.

33. Avoiding Activism Burnout from Dances with Fat.

34. (It’s Great to) Suck at Something.

35. Guardians of the Planet:12 Women Environmentalists You Should Know.

36. Aimee Mann Tiny Desk Concert.

37. Guy Hides Camera In Bucket Of Water To See Who Comes To Drink, And Result Doesn’t Disappoint.