1. Poetry: Loving In A Broken Time by Frederick Joseph, Untether Yourself and Scientists Say Cats Are Perfect by Julie Barton, Song “A” translated from the Navajo by Washington Matthews, Believing and belief on Poetry Unbound from Pádraig Ó Tuama, Life Lessons in an Uber in Atlanta and How and After Effects from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, If the month of November was your friend from HannahRoWrites, A Sense of Grace by James Crews, What We Wanted by Carol Moldaw, Green Burial Unsonnet by Dante Di Stefano shared by Patti Digh, The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meghan O’Rourke on The Slow Down podcast, and Fourth of July by Rob Arnold.

In related news, Is poetry happening to you? and are you avoiding it? from Alix Klingenberg, and Emerging Form Episode 151: Alison Luterman on Striving.

2. I’m Devastated By America, So I’m Getting Out on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. And when he says, “getting out,” it’s not what you think.

3. ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’: The Sweetness After a Terminal Diagnosis on The New York Times. (gift link) “The film chronicles the poet Andrea Gibson’s final year of living with cancer and trying to make every second count.” It came out on Friday and I haven’t been able to watch it yet.

4. Change One Thing and Everything Changes. “Reflections 11 days after leaving Facebook” from Jena Schwartz.

5. A House of My Own Making from Laurie Wagner.

6. I’m now offering therapeutic journaling workshops! “Two options–and one is free!” from Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

7. There Can Be No Reasoning with MAGA by Robert Jones, Jr. “Like I have said before: Cults cannot be shamed and they cannot be reasoned with. They can only be stopped.”

8. The truth about distraction from Oliver Burkeman, which suggests “a more fundamental solution to distraction, one that’s incredibly simple, but not at all easy: just stop expecting hard, important, meaningful things to feel constantly comfortable and pleasant. Consider the possibility that mild discomfort – butterflies in the stomach, a sense of difficulty, a moment of boredom – might simply be the price of doing things you care about.”

9. Love Immortal: the man devoted to defying death through cryonics from The Guardian Documentary Films. “Alan has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death, and reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan, now 87, falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.”

10. ‘I’m not as fierce as I seem’: Glenn Close on growing up in a cult, marching against Trump – and being unlucky in love. “She’s Hollywood’s biggest character actor who terrified a generation of men with her ‘bunny boiling’ turn in Fatal Attraction. Now, Close alternates the glamour of the red carpet with living in a red state. She talks about the joy of her ‘undefined’ life.”

11. The works of art that changed your life, and why. “We asked readers which book, film, song or art work changed the course of your life. From soul-stirring poems to unforgettable paintings, this is what you said.”

12. Slowly Growing. “A list of noticings…” from Erin Geesaman Rabke.

13. Asking questions leads to more questions by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights.

14. All Praise to the Lunch Ladies on the Bitter Southerner. “Blessed are the women who watch over America’s children.”

15. Guilty pleasures are more than just giving in to temptation. “Psychologists are discovering what’s going on when you do something you enjoy, but also feel weird or embarrassed about.”

16. Freaky Caesars & More Restaurant Trends You’ll See In 2026.

17. How We Do Our Best Work, “three shadows and their bright opposites” by Brad Montague.

18. The Way the World Answers, “why i believe in magic” by Isabel Abbott.

19. A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher. I just finished this and really liked it — before I checked it out from the library, I researched to ensure that nothing bad happens to the dogs in this book. I use this site regularly to do so for movies, TV, and books: Does the dog die?

20. Jeff Hiller in Conversation with Special Guest Murray Hill. (video) “Comedian and Somebody Somewhere actor Jeff Hiller joins us to dive into the grit and grind of climbing the Hollywood ladder and the struggles, triumphs, and humiliations that shaped him into the wonderfully imperfect person he is today.”

1. Poetry: To the Self Who Thinks Faster Is Better and Oh the News from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, To Ashes and We’ll Find It from Julie Barton, Without You from James Crews, and Regret Nothing by January Gill O’Neil shared on Heart Poems.

2. Like, but not entirely the same: On similes by Pádraig Ó Tuama on Poetry Unbound.

3. Only so many mornings to look around and love. “My mother left us last Wednesday” from Elissa Altman. *sigh*

4. In Which I Eat The Food Crime Known As Kraft Apple Pie Mac & Cheese from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.

5. From The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: I’m Not Saying Jesus is Anti-MAGA, Jesus is Saying That and Dear Phobic Christians, Love LGBTQ People Or Leave Them the Hell Alone and Confessions of a Former Christian, which says,

I’ve lived with this delusional idea that my personal faith in Jesus should drive me to the marginalized and the hurting, that it should move me to defend those who are alone and invisible and voiceless, that my Christlikeness alone was the mark of my faithfulness. I’d been led to believe that a life marked by goodness and gentleness and peace was the desired yield; the visible, proving fruit of my deepest spiritual convictions. Boy, did I get duped.

6. A Book That Changed My Life, “& John Green on seeing the unseen—and how one story helped me find my way back to the human story” on
The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

7. Season Change Making You Feel Squirrely? Here’s Some Things To Try from Justine Taormino. I’m so glad Justine is publishing again. I missed her voice.

8. Creative gift ideas that won’t break the bank or the planet, “shop indie, shop early” on Earth & Verse by Alix Klingenberg.

9. The Love Poem Andrea Gibson Wrote for Their Widow … and for You on the Modern Love Podcast from The New York Times. (gift link) “Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley were two poets in love. In the wake of Gibson’s death, Falley is figuring out what that love looks like now.”

10. One Four Two Five Old Sunset Trail: On the last days of Gene Hackman, which included this (*sigh*):

What is normal in the state of dementia, where connections are not being made, where tangle is all, objects take on a curious aspect, and where there is an unpleasant flavor to the hours? And where so much, so very much, seems impossible . . . It is difficult to speak with those who have dementia, to reason or remember with them, to reassure them, for of what could they be reassured. . . ? Our love cannot redeem them, it might even pain or confuse them. Mind can no longer guide or assist them, not theirs or yours, not anyone’s. They cannot be found anymore. Dementia is not a disease but a condition, a condition not exclusive to the human animal, though that is its preferred stage, upon which it can display its specialty, the inelegant final act. The curated self, and whatever reputations it affected, vanishes.

11. From Patti Digh: The circumference of the unspoken (“silence has a shape”) and The noise I mistook for meaning (“Not chasing, but receiving. Not making, but noticing”).

12. 8 Gentle Ways to Find Peace When You’re Stressed or Overwhelmed from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

13. Going Dark by Isabel Abbott.

There are seasons when nothing seems to move forward, when projects stall, momentum hits pause, energy evaporates, when leaving my apartment can feel like an ordeal of epic proportions. I can push against it if you want. And this is what I know best. How to push, resist, fight, force. So I can force yourself to stay lit. But there’s a point where that insistence starts to feel like violence against myself.

This year, I’ve decided to stop pushing.

To stop performing aliveness and simply live.
To stop talking when I have nothing to say.
To stop mistaking productivity for proof of worth.
To stop making big plans to alleviate the dread and let the falling happen.

I am learning to trust the dark.

14. I Really Wanted My Grandmother to Die, “And I’m no longer ashamed about it” on Open Secrets Magazine.

I could no longer see a person when I looked at my grandma. I say now without shame for myself or judgment for others who have thought the same, that I wanted her to die. Because what I really wanted, and what I believe the majority of people who have had similar thoughts really want, is to wish them peace.

When death did come, it wasn’t really a relief, though I was suddenly free to remember her as she was without being confronted by who she had become.

15. It’s not Monday, but isn’t that nice? from Jenny Lawson on her Substack Let’s Art Together. “I am not lost. Simply making my own maps.”

16. Denmark passes social media ban for users under 15. “The Danes join a growing list of nations that ban or restrict social media for minors.”

17. Come See Me in the Good Light is a love letter from the afterlife. “A film about her wife’s terminal cancer diagnosis has helped Megan Falley find a joy for living in the face of death.”

18. Am I Being Ghosted? “What to do when the signs stop” by Megan Falley.

19. Journey Announces Plan to Finally Go Separate Ways, With Farewell Tour Set to Begin in 2026. Which reminds me of one of the best music documentaries of all time (and I’ve watched a LOT), Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey. *sigh* I love Journey.

20. The Medicine of Surrender, Poetry, and Metaphor With Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on Wise Effort podcast.

21. ‘I enter a room and people say: “God just walked in”’: Morgan Freeman on voicing the divine, meeting Mandela – and his six decades on screen. “The 88-year-old actor has appeared in more than 100 films, playing everyone from presidents to prisoners. Here, he reflects on AI’s ‘robbing’ of his voice, not believing in Black History Month – and why he’s nowhere near retirement.”

22. The Soccer Mom Who Strikes Fear Into the Heart of ICE. “Meet Angelica Vargas, one of the most prominent of a new kind of activist: the ICE chaser.”

23. How Men and Women Spend Their Days from Flowing Data. “Estimates are based on data from the American Community Survey, which asks participants to log what they do during a 24-hour period. The survey runs throughout the year and data is released annually. This is data for 2022 through 2024.”

24. ‘Au 8ème Jour,’ an Award-Winning Animated Short Film, Weaves a Cautionary Tale.

“It took seven days to create the world; it only took one to disrupt its balance,” says the tagline for an award-winning animation by a team of students in France. “Au 8ème Jour,” which translates to “On the 8th Day” in French, uses CG, or computer-generated animation techniques to create a three-dimensional world in a stop-motion style.

A multitude of vibrant animals and landscapes appear sewn from fabric in the film’s otherworldly realm, each tethered to a single piece of yarn that connects it to a kind of central energy force—a vibrant, tightly-wrapped skein in the sky. But when mysteriously dark tendrils of black fiber begin to leech into this idyllic world, families and herds must run for their lives.

25. The problem with self-help gurus from Matt Davella. (video) Here’s another great video from Matt, Why everyone is quitting social media.

26. 13 Unexpected Health Benefits of Walking and How to Make a Habit of It.