1. Poetry: Gloria Mundi written by Michael Kleber-Diggs and read by Pádraig Ó Tuama, No Small Thing from The Weekly Pause from James Crews, American Spin and She Wanted To See The Good and Becoming Light and Where I Am from Julie Barton, The Negative by newly appointed U.S. poet laureate Arthur Sze shared by Patti Digh and Back-Lit by Arthur Sze, Because the World Is in Need of Mercy by M.K.Creel, We could say it took me my whole life and At last and Hope from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Thruway by Gretchen Schmelzer, Ode to a Good Pen: Or, How to Write the Book of Love by Maria Popova, Migration by Plane Wings and Migrator, Back Again by Michelle Latvala, and Yes, We Can Talk by Mark Nepo.

2. I’m exhausted but am surviving. How can I heal from burnout without expensive time off? “Lots of us are desperate to come off the watch, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. One strategy might be to cut the corners you can.”

3. How to train your dog – and not lose your mind. “It doesn’t have to be miserable. We asked experts how best to start training your new (or old) best friend.”

4. Field Note: Those Aren’t Pine Siskins They’re House Sparrows by Michael Kleber-Diggs.

5. ‘The Christian Left’ Conversation With Anti-MAGA Comedian Cliff Cash. (video)

6. Wanted: An All-American Family. “I thought I had found the picture-perfect family that I so desperately craved but never had.”

7. I already don’t care by Patti Digh.

8. A Back-to-School Crisis. “Last year we gave book bags, this year the urgent need is food,” a request from Frederick Joseph.

9. California bans most law enforcement officers from wearing masks during operations. I wish more of those in positions of political power would resist in similar ways.

10. From The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: Conservative White Christians Will Worship Anyone But Jesus and The Christians Who Live By The Sword.

11. It will be okay, a doodle from Jenny Lawson.

12. The Brilliant Agony of Almost: Letter One of Falling Gently “6 weeks of creative prompts, seasonal rituals, and warm community” from Alix Klingenberg.

13. Why I Refuse to Panic (and what I’m choosing to do instead) from Gina Luker.

14. The Heart of the Andes and the Invention of Virtual Reality: Frederic Edwin Church’s Immersive 19th-century Paintings of Natural Wonders. The light! *swoon*

15. Stay in It, Always. “On the Elizabeth Catlett show and restoration for my nervous system” from Jami Attenberg.

16. What the season of fall – and science – teaches us about life and death by Samer Zaky.

17. The language of care (and open-faced quesadillas) & Samin Nosrat on recipes, love, and the magic of improvising on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

18. Whatever you can still do, you can still do. “On what despots want you to forget” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages. Also from Garrett, The Internet is killing us, “But the bigger problem isn’t what we (and our kids) are doing on our screens, it’s what we’re not doing off of them.”

19. You Don’t Need Closure, You Need Space from Nikki the Death Doula.

20. Harmen Hoek on YouTube, “an adventurous YouTube filmmaker, known for silent hiking films that transport viewers into nature through stunning visuals, ambient sounds, and evocative music.”

21. Questions to ask yourself this fall, “For a better winter and spring ahead” from Kelton Wright.

22. I Used the 90/90 Rule to Declutter My Sentimental Items, and It Was Surprisingly Liberating.

23. How to Set Boundaries With Your Smartphone. “Excess screen time can negatively impact your mood, memory, and overall health.”

24. A beautiful and annoying thing about being a person, “a true story” from Brad Montague.

25. Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds. And no one who cares, who has been paying attention is surprised.

26. Blowing on the Embers of What Matters, “Deep inside you there is…” from Erin Geesaman Rabke.

27. How I Got Better. “A comic about healing over time” from Connie Sun.

28. It’s Time To Stop Fighting For Your Rights: Individual Rights vs. Collective Liberation from Ijeoma Oluo.

29. A string of beads on The Imperfectionist. “What is within our power is to thread beads, one after the other, and gradually to develop the internal trust that we’ll be able to thread the beads that need adding in the future, too. (The opposite of anxiety, I’ve seen it said, isn’t calm, but trust in your capacity to handle what happens later on.) All you need to do, to paraphrase Carl Jung and also Anna from Frozen, is the next right thing. Indeed, when you think about it, that’s the only thing you ever could do: select the next bead and add it to the string, then choose and add the next, and the next, through apocalyptic times and happier ones, for as many years as you’re lucky to get to do it.”

30. Sort as you go and don’t rush: six steps to clearing out a loved one’s home when they die. “From telling the insurers to accepting you may need to get the experts in, tips on dealing with the deceased’s property.” I am not looking forward to this, at all.

31. Roxane Gay on Memoir as Manifesto. “From the Memoir Nation Podcast, Hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner.” P.S. LitHub, stop asking me to become a supporting member of your publication, to give you money, when you run SO MANY ads.

32. Artisan Apple Bread recipe from I Am Baker. This looks so good. I would destroy a fresh warm loaf of this right about now.

33. I do like dogs, clips from SNL skit. (Facebook reel) Oh, Molly Shannon.

34. You didn’t do anything wrong, this is just too much from AK Przy. (Facebook reel)

35. “Magic” word to stop overthinking from Dan Harris. (Facebook reel)

36. Golden retriever and his dolphin buddies. (Facebook reel)

37. Every elected official is compromised, all of them are to blame. Wisdom from Pete Souvall. (Instagram reel) Also from Pete:

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

1. Poetry: Mary Oliver Says and Found Joy and Here’s To You and On Being Alone by Julie Barton, There Is A Road Inside Me and On the Eve of His 21st Birthday and On the Phone, Far Away and Sitting in a Quiet Room by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Who Am I to You? from Jena Schwartz, Aging Gratefully from The Weekly Pause by James Crews, Yes by William Stafford shared by Patti Digh, Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda, and Go Now. Get Born. Live. “On the poetry of my grief, and saying yes” from Megan Falley.

In related news, this offering from Laurie Wagner at 27 Powers, Writing the Resistance: “Praise as protest. Grief as witness. Words as shelter.” with Alison Luterman.

The world feels overwhelming these days. The news shouts at us louder than our own heartbeats, and often it’s hard to know how to respond. Maybe you’ve felt silenced, unsure of what to say, exhausted or afraid of sounding angry or strident. This writing class is about finding another way in.

My friend, poet and essayist, Alison Luterman, has always written her way through these times by listening closely to what’s right in front of her — her neighborhood, her friends and family, the rawness of children growing up, the Vietnamese elders down the street, the Mexican neighbors next door. She writes from her grief and her praise, lifting up the human moments that stitch life together.

For Alison, resistance is about paying attention. It’s about naming what she loves. It’s about the quiet act of bearing witness. It’s praising the very things we cannot bear to lose. Writing the Resistance isn’t about ranting or preaching. It’s about dropping below the noise into the heart of our lives — where resistance shows up as love, attention, and devotion. Come sit with us, and let’s write our way toward what matters most.

2. From Seth Godin: Kinds of reckless and No time?

3. Bad pencils make for good epiphanies from Jenny Lawson.

4. The Death of Social in Social Media, “The Reality-TVification of Ordinary Life” by Frederick Joseph. “That is the fracture line. For me, social media has always been a form of conversation, an imperfect extension of the ways we keep in touch and build collective thought. For others, Miranda included, it has become a stage. A place where ordinary life is recast as a series of episodes, each post designed as content, each follower reframed as a spectator. It is the difference between living in community and clamoring for stardom, between being a person online and auditioning to be the star of your own reality show.”

5. Let September Be Softer from Meg Josephson.

6. Writing 87 obituaries taught me we are more alike than we think.

7. Heaven Is Right Here. Is It? “What to do when love isn’t reaching out” by Satya Robyn.

8. A Whimsical Rebellion. “What if we fill our lives with the most radical act of all: refusing despair?” by Gina Luker.

9. “The fall of autumn,” In which I wax sentimental about the season at hand by Jonathan Edward Durham.

10. Smartphone Free Childhood: the unstoppable rise of a culture-shifting campaign. “With smartphones a near-constant presence in children’s lives, one grassroots movement is pushing back – with remarkable force. Smartphone Free Childhood began with a conversation between two parents and has exploded into a nationwide campaign that’s captured headlines, inspired school reforms and signed up tens of thousands of families.”

11. Wainwright prize for nature writing awarded to memoir about raising a hare during lockdown. “Debut author Chloe Dalton’s ‘dream-like’ book Raising Hare follows the writer from London to the countryside.”

12. How Japanese ‘tiny forests’ are sweeping Scotland. “Grown using the Miyawaki method, fast-growing miniature forests in the middle of cities can bring surprisingly big benefits for people and the environment.”

13. 6 Qualities to look for in housemates (that go beyond splitting rent). Here’s hoping I won’t ever need this advice again in my lifetime.

14. 12 of the Best Fall Foliage Hikes in the U.S.—From Alaska to Tennessee. “If you want to soak in the best that autumn has to offer, it’s time to hit the trail.”

15. The Permission Workbook: On Revenge Writing (A Bad Idea) by Elissa Altman.

16. How do you respond when a famous person whose ideology you abhor is shot and killed? “The same way you respond to every death in a world too full of it” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

17. Why do we collect things? “Desire, nostalgia, loss, and completeness in the personal collections of Joseph Cornell, Peter Blake, and Vladimir Nabokov” from Elsie Morales.

18. Why wisdom can’t be taught by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries. “So — can wisdom be taught? The sad truth is: no. Not really. It must be lived. And living is rarely a very tidy process.”

19. Stay Informed Without Drowning in Anxiety by Leo Babauta on Zen Habits.

20. If You Want to Simplify Your Life, Stop Doing These 7 Things.

21. Recipe I want to try: Oatmeal Pancakes.

22. 7 signs it’s time to call it quits.

23. Why Everyone—Yes, Everyone—Should Join a Book Club. “Linda-Marie Barrett on the Pleasures of Reading in Community.”

24. Former poet laureate Ada Limón says artists must band together during ‘dangerous times.’

25. Japanese concept “Mottainai” made me rethink the way I eat, shop, and even say goodbye. “Less waste, more flavor.”

26. “The most INSANE Bohemian Rhapsody Flashmob you will ever see…With 30 musicians and singers in the STREETS of Paris.” (Facebook reel)

27. “Why are their five holes in it?!” (Facebook reel) Spoiler Alert: they aren’t able to figure it out, but it’s pretty funny watching them try.

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