Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Need Peace? 10 Ways to Cultivate Quiet in the Chaos by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less. Who doesn’t want/need this, am I right?

2. So you haven’t caught COVID yet. Does that mean you’re a superdodger? “Hollenbach and her team have found a genetic mutation that doesn’t prevent the virus from infecting cells – that’s what Landau was searching for in his HIV research – but still does something remarkable: It prevents a person from having COVID symptoms.” I know a few people, including me, who have yet to test positive.

3. Impressionistic Embroideries by Cassandra Dias Reflect Movement and Lush Landscapes in Thread.

4. Philadelphia man completes over 400-mile walk along the Underground Railroad in honor of Harriet Tubman.

5. Earth is now our only shareholder. “Despite its immensity, the Earth’s resources are not infinite, and it’s clear we’ve exceeded its limits. But it’s also resilient. We can save our planet if we commit to it.” In related news, Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company on The New York Times and Don’t Rush to Canonize Patagonia.

6. Thomas C. Foster on the Seven Deadly Sins of Writing. “The Deadly Seven prevent writing from occurring in the first place. Or, like overconfidence and dishonesty, they create something that is rotten at its heart, and no amount of surface grace can improve that sort of decadence.”

7. StyleLikeU | I’m Not a Thing to Be Looked At: Abigail Bengson on the Winding Road Her Body Has Taken. (video) “Abigail Bengson’s body holds endless stories. It tells the story of her miscarriages—and of the arrival of both her beautiful babies. There’s the story of her time as a 300-pound person, years filled with comfort, satisfaction, and joy. It also holds the story of her eating disorder—which arrived after she shed the protective pounds. It keeps close the story of a familial legacy of abuse, and her ability to transform that horror into beauty, time and again. Abigail’s body is never truly hers—but it is an endless moment to enjoy.”

8. Quinta Brunson Gets the Last Laugh, Interrupts Jimmy Kimmel’s Opening Monologue on His Show.

9. 8 Books About Coming into Queer Selfhood. In related news, 7 Banned LGBTQ+ Authors on the Books That Changed Their Lives and Book-Banning Attempts in US Have Reached Unprecedented Level, Libraries Report.

10. Stop Procrastinating With This 4-Step Formula from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

11. On the Shortness of Life on Zen Habits. “We could use a daily contemplation on how limited our time is in this life. Most of us avoid thinking about it, or get worked up or sad when we think about it. But it’s a powerful contemplation. Today I’d like to share a series of brief contemplations on the shortness of life, that I find valuable.”

12. A psychologist who has treated women with depression for 15 years shares her 6 most important pieces of advice.

13. Good stuff from Summer Brennan, (the best thing I ever got out of being on Twitter): 5. Invisible Ducks (A Short Craft Essay), and 6. End Art Shame, and 7. Acceptance.

14. How to Work With Anxiety: 3 Techniques For Lasting Change on Lion’s Roar. “Anxiety is a natural response to being human, says Lion’s Roar’s Chris Pacheco. When we try to control our anxious feelings instead of accepting them, we might end up exacerbating fear and worry. Here, he outlines three main strategies for moving through anxiety.”

15. Unselfing Social. I love this idea, although I suppose this weekly list means I’m already doing it: “As an experiment, for one continuous month, make the focus of one in every three things you share on social media — wherever you normally share, however regularly or irregularly you do, however many people you reach — something other than yourself or your own work: a friend’s art project, a stranger’s poem, a record by a musician you love, the tree shimmering with majesty and mystery in the low morning light, someone in your community you admire, a bygone pioneer of something you value, a book that spun you on your axis, the lost cat sign crayoned by a neighbor’s child, the new community garden a few blocks over, news of the dazzling galaxy discovered by the dazzling new space telescope a few million lightyears over.”

16. Frontline: Being Mortal. (video) “FRONTLINE follows renowned New Yorker writer and Boston surgeon Atul Gawande as he explores the relationships doctors have with patients who are nearing the end of life. In conjunction with Gawande’s new book, Being Mortal, the film investigates the practice of caring for the dying, and shows how doctors — himself included — are often remarkably untrained, ill-suited and uncomfortable talking about chronic illness and death with their patients.”

17. Woman’s Last Words Go Viral. This is The Advice We All Need Right Now!

18. What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind on The Atlantic. “Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11.”

19. Dear Photograph, “a website that invites readers to submit photos of photos — images from the past, set in the present.” In related news, Dear Photograph: New-Age Nostalgia.

20. Decide how to decide from Patti Digh. In related news, How to figure out what you want out of life. “What society expects of you and what you actually want in life can be different things.”

21. Our Bodies Remember the Bodies from Jena Schwartz.

22. Choosing ease. “Sometimes the more easeful thing is exactly enough.”

23. 3 common thinking traps and how to avoid them, according to a Yale psychologist.

24. Joe Biden says the COVID-19 pandemic is over. This is what the data tells us.

25. Most of Puerto Rico is still without power as Fiona reaches the Dominican Republic. In related news, on The New York Times, Live Updates: Rescue Operations Underway as Hurricane Fiona Batters Puerto Rico and In Recovery After Storm, Alaska Faces Hard Days Ahead. Maybe Trump could go throw rolls of paper towels at people?

26. This Australian Artist Crafts Visually Stunning, Healthy Masterpieces Out of Food.

27. Willow the blue heeler and my Ringo have a lot in common. (Instagram reel) The song they chose for this reel is so perfect.

1. Morning walks. I’m there, I take the pictures, and yet sometimes when I get home and look back at what I captured, I can’t even believe it’s real. This week the light and how everything was turning golden was epic. On the morning pictured above, a dad and his about nine year old daughter were both out with their cameras attempting to capture the glorious sky. His camera was super fancy and complicated and she had a small digital point and shoot. At one point, they were both crouched down taking a picture of the way the light was hitting a foggy field full of grazing cows when she looked at her preview screen, leaned towards him holding out her camera so he could see too, and said, “I got a pretty good one.” It was so sweet! On that same morning, we met up with a dog we’ve seen a lot on that particular trail. He’s a bit older and bigger than Ringo with a big blocky wrinkly head (my favorite). He’s always off-lead (it’s on technically private property so that’s “allowed” or rather not regulated) but so sweet and Ringo likes him, so we always stop, say hello and play a bit. This time his person was on the phone, but once she got off the call, I asked her, “do you realized how awesome your dog is or do you just think he’s normal?” She responded, “oh, I know exactly how great he is.” His name is Diego and I love him.

2. Wild writing with Laurie. Our fall session started this week. It was so good to be back with the group, even as I missed those who weren’t there and the one who isn’t joining this time around. I love that practice so much, love doing it with a small group of the same good people. It’s magic and medicine.

3. Texting, family and friends, books. That may seem like an unrelated list of things, but as a highly sensitive introvert who leans towards agoraphobia, they are all the things that keep me connected in a gentle but constant way.

4. Ringo. This bed used to be under my writing desk and both Dexter and Sam would use it when I was writing or on the computer but Ringo was never interested. I took it to a friend’s recently to see if her dogs would want it but they didn’t so it rode around in the back of my car for a bit. When I finally remembered to bring it back in the house, I dropped it on the floor in a random spot while I unloaded groceries and just never got around to moving it. Ringo has added it to his living room lounging rotation so it may live here now. Even though it can drive me crazy, I love how he is never anyone but himself, doing things his own way in his own time. He has a sort of confidence in who he is and what he wants and what he won’t tolerate that I’m jealous of, even though I sometimes think the very same makes him a real jerk.

5. My tiny family, tiny house, tiny life. Everything I need and want is right here. It feels way more full, much more spacious than “tiny” implies.

Bonus joy: peaches and vanilla ice cream, grapefruit bubbly water, dinner and then leftovers for dinner the next night from Mt. Everest Cafe, vaccines (got my bivalent booster last week, the first day they were available), true crime (although I may be watching and listening to too much of it, as I explained to my brother after he finally texted me back after the text I sent him this morning that I needed to know he was still there, still alive because he hadn’t texted me back yesterday and he usually texts right back), reading, writing in the morning with a cup of hot coffee (+cocoa and tiny marshmallows), my weighted blanket, down pillows and blankets, my Oovoo slides which are my “house shoes, ” good neighbors, hanging out with Mikalina, other people’s kids and dogs, clean sheets, dog rescues and fosters and adopters, sunshine, the meadowlarks and chickadees feeding on our fading sunflowers, the seed pods on my golden raintrees that look like tiny lanterns, twinkle lights, origami cranes, that picture of me in my straw cowboy hat holding baby Dexter in our backyard with Obi photobombing us, listening to podcasts, watching good TV, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.