1. Some inspiring women: United Bodies Podcast: What Makes an Enjoyable Life with Andrea Gibson, and Why Samin Nosrat Is Now “Fully YOLO” on The New York Times, and Laura Pritchett discusses her new novel, Playing with Wild(fire), and Frida Kahlo, in her own words: A new documentary draws from diaries, letters, and On ‘Tigers Blood,’ Waxahatchee is in her anti-eras era, and Artistry meets science in a prosthetist’s workshop, and Jasmin Paris first woman to complete gruelling Barkley Marathons race and Endometriosis, Sobriety, and Stand-Up: Tiffany Haddish’s Courageous Path to Healing.

2. Wisdom from writers I adore: Claim Your Territory from Jami Attenberg, and Because I’m a Writer from Maggie Smith’s Pep Talk series, and A Few Things I Won’t Be Writing About from Laurie Wagner, and Everyday Use: Of legacies and the objects that embody them from Rita Ott Ramstad, and The Writer from Hugh Hollowell.

3. The Sadness Scale, As Measured by Stars and Whales.

4. Dear Christian, Why Do You Stand Behind Cruelty? “An Open Letter to Jesus MAGAs” from John Pavlovitz. 

5. The World Happiness Report, “a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. The report is produced under the editorial control of the WHR Editorial Board. The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.” In related news, These are the world’s happiest countries in 2024.

6. Out of control from Seth Godin.

7. Podcasts from Upaya Zen Center: Being With Loss (“Join us in this heartwarming conversation with Frank Ostaseski and Tara Brach as they explore the depths of grief, loss, and the human experience. Through personal stories and profound insights, they reveal the transformative power of allowing ourselves to feel the full spectrum of our emotions. Together, they offer wisdom on navigating the wilderness of grief, letting go of control, and finding the path to wholeness”) and Opening to Darkness in Unsettling Times (“Sensei Zenju delves into the profound concept of embracing darkness as an integral part of the human experience. Zenju shares a quote ‘Darkness is asking to be loved,’ which explores themes of inner peace, composure, and the need to confront darkness. The speaker invites the audience to fully engage with their own darkness, acknowledging it as an essential aspect of life”).

8. On with-ness: Navigating normal and reclaiming each other. I typically share one or two links from the CTZNWELL WELLREAD newsletter, but this week’s intro and list of links were so good, I decided to share the whole thing.

9. “The Bloodbath”: Why we should take Donald Trump at his word about coming violence from Frederick Joseph.

10. Something Weird is Happening to Me. “It feels completely terrifying and also very needed.”

11. Mindfulness for Grief and Loss. “Grief is different for everyone, and it can change over time. Mindfulness can support us in healing and self-discovery after loss and change.”

12. 25 Fun (and Even Free!) Spring Activities to Put on Your Warm Weather Bucket List.

13. Lynda! Barry! “This week I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours with Lynda Barry…Below are five things inspired by our conversation, her teaching philosophy and what it means to be creative.”

14. Christian Cooper, the “Extraordinary Birder” on CBS Sunday Morning. “Christian Cooper made national news in May 2020 when, while birdwatching in New York’s Central Park, a white woman called 911 to report that an ‘African American man was threatening her life’ after he’d asked her to put her dog on a leash. His recording of their interaction went viral, just as the country was rocked by the George Floyd murder. Since then, he has hosted a National Geographic Wild series, ‘Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper,’and written a memoir about growing up a closeted gay teenager on Long Island, titled ‘Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World.’ Nancy Giles reports.”

15. 30 Books Critics Think You Should Read Right Now.

16. A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered. on The New York Times. (gift link) “When the author received an impassioned email, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it.” In related news, Indigenous Author Tommy Orange Digs Into Our Past — So We Can Embrace Who We Are Today. “In his new novel, Orange’s characters reveal how intergenerational trauma can manifest.”

17. The 50 Best Lesbian Movies Of All Time.

18. How I Learned to Write the Hard Stuff. “I wanted to write about my traumatic personal experiences, but I was hiding behind walls. This is the moment when I finally broke through and found my voice.”

19. Elyse Myers Deleted All of Her TikToks After Being Targeted by Operation Watermelon. In related news, Let’s talk about Elyse Meyers (Instagram reel).

20. Good Things Vending. (Facebook reel)

21. I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

22. No Oprah, Ozempic alone can’t fix our culture of fat shaming. In related news, Things to Remember if You Watch the Oprah Special.

23. His Novel Sold a Million Copies. James McBride Isn’t Sure How He Feels About That. on The New York Times. (gift link)

24. 1000 Words: Changing Writers’ Lives “by Accident”.

25. M. Emmet Walsh, Character Actor Who Always Stood Out, Dies at 88 on The New York Times. (gift link) In related news, M. Emmet Walsh, unforgettable character actor from ‘Blood Simple,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ dies at 88.

26. Intermittent fasting: Your heart, your health, your waistline.

27. Tom Stuart-Smith’s dos and don’ts of gardening. “The landscape architect and garden designer known for his naturalistic and resilient planting offers advice on good gardening.”

28. A Musical Based on Prince’s Purple Rain Is Coming.

 

1. Rewilding A Forest | Artist and Poet Maria “Vildhjärta” Westerberg. “Maria was a romantic, animal-loving, dreamy child who, growing up, had a hard time conforming to the demands associated with the trajectory towards ‘a normal life’. As a young adult she became depressed, and was encouraged by her therapist to go for walks in the forest. The myriad of funny-looking twigs and sticks she found along the way immediately put her on a path to recovery. Now, 25 years later, she’s a celebrated ‘twig poet’ whose art is shown in galleries throughout Sweden. When a climate related crisis strikes the forest where she lives and works, she’s forced into a new type of creativity in order to save the place that once upon a time saved her.” This film is part of a series called “Something Beautiful for the World”, which is a collaboration between Reflections of Life, Campfire Stories and Happen Films.”

2. Are You a ‘Floor Person’? Why Lying on the Ground Feels So Good on The New York Times. (gift link) “For some, just a few minutes can quiet the mind.”

3. how to connect with your intuition from A Soul Called Joel. (video) “In this episode, I’ll guide you through a mindfulness practice and meditation to help you detach from your thoughts and access your inner wisdom. Key Points: Our intuition is always speaking to us, but we often miss its messages because we are not present or available. We can cultivate our intuition by being mindful and aware of our thoughts and feelings. A helpful practice is to ask yourself the question, ‘What do I need to know today?'”

4. My Anxiety: Is what’s wrong with me what’s wrong with everyone else? on The New Yorker.

5. 5 Daily Habits That Are Causing 90% Of Your Pain from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

6. What Happened Here? “It was just ice cream” on Short Reads.

7. What I Don’t Want To Write, on Behind the Book by Ijeoma Oluo.

8. The Shortest Path to Creativity from Jami Attenberg.

9. Welcome To Your Colonoscopy…..AGAIN.

10. Good stuff from Seth Godin: In search of incompetence and Willfully uninformed and Later or now?

11. Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. “In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America’s most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams’s original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side allowing viewers to see Adams’s darkroom technique, in particular, how he cropped his prints. Adams’s Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style landscape photography. Although a majority of the more than 200 photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities (see Collection Highlights). When offering the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams said in a letter, ‘The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment….All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.'”

12. Craft Tip from Maggie Smith: Finding the Sequence.

13. Keep making art.

14. Chip’s Wrirting lessons: Interview | Four Questions with Tom Romano.

15. My self-retrieval operation has become a self-becoming operation from Patti Digh, “And becoming never ends.”

16. Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder. “Pathologically busy people clamoring for happiness. Founder of HATCH Monica Parker explains how we can do so much better than that.”

17. The surprising benefits of ‘awe walks’ for your health and well-being.

18. Year-Round Produce: Wyoming Gardener Outsmarts Winter With Underground Greenhouse.

19. ‘American Fiction’ And The Wet Eyes Of The Sentimentalist.

20. The 2024 Election is About the Rich Stealing From the Public.

21. Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers.

22. Wild Failure, Wild Writing, and Wild Business with Laurie Wagner on the For The People podcast on Spotify. “I have the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Wagner who’s an incredible author and writer who influences so many people in the United States to tap into their intuition and subconscious through wild writing. In this Episode we explore the journey of creative business development and success.”

23. “Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda” Brings Brilliant Trans Comics to the Famously Transphobic Netflix.

24. Joe Camp, Filmmaker Behind ‘Benji’ Franchise, Dies at 84 on The New York Times.

25. The Free Soloist Who Fell to Earth. “Austin Howell soloed harder and more often than almost anyone else in the country, documenting his exploits on Instagram and a podcast. But behind the scenes his mental health was faltering.”

26. A Maui chef’s lifeline: his restaurant as the island recovers from Lahaina wildfires.

27. One of the Best Things We Can Do for Ourselves as We Age. “This will help feed your soul and boost your overall health.”

28. My 15-Year-Old Daughter Died. I Recently Found A Box Of Hers — And What Was Inside Left Me Shaken.

29. Why People in Sweden Do Nature Right. “During a monthlong stay in Sweden, I realized that my Americanized relationship with the outdoors was off track. Here’s what I learned.”

30. Animals have overtaken our lives, and we’re having a wonderful time.

31. Faces in Stone: Japan’s Chinsekikan Museum Showcases Over 1700 Natural Rock Formations Resembling Human Faces.

32. 64 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Grief.

33. How one dog and her new owner brought kindness into the lives of many.

34. Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler speak out about battle with MS. (video)

35. Ava DuVernay: ‘I’ve got real big-sister energy’. “The film maker, 51, on her early love of film, why she’s not on social media and the importance of silence.”

36. Recipe I want to try/eat: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

37. Sculpt The World short film, (Instagram reel). “It features many works from over the years in various environments, including never before seen work.”

38. Lessons from Dog School.

39. Oprah Is Harming Black Women by Pushing Weight Loss Drugs and Diet Culture.

40. a remembering: who were we before social media? from Karen Walrond.

41. Wind, Blue Sky, a new poem from Susan Aizenberg.

42. The Unfolding is What is Beautiful from Gretchen Schmelzer. “Unfolding is a tender-hearted process. But the final blossom, while an impressive end goal, is not what holds the radiance. The true wonder –which is hard to stop watching when you watch the film of the sunflower—is in the process of becoming. It isn’t the flower, but the unfolding, that is beautiful.”