1. Morning walks. We went to Reservoir Ridge one day, where the bridge is exactly one mile from the parking lot, so perfect for Ringo’s current light duty of two miles in the morning. We saw a coyote, but it was so fast and far enough away that I didn’t get a good picture of it.
2. Practice. Without that anchor, that routine, that center, I can really spin out.
3. Rain. We had a storm last night and the way it cools everything down, softens things, slows them down, can be a nice break during the heat of summer. I’m also so glad that Ringo isn’t afraid of the thunder or lightening or wind.
4. Late summer garden. We are starting to get tomatoes, the zucchini and cucumbers show no sign of stopping, I made pesto with our basil this week, and some of the pumpkins are already turning orange.
5. My tiny family. This is Eric’s last real weekend of summer break. He’s got two weeks of workshops and such before classes start and he’s already been working a lot of half days. It’s going to be a very different experience this fall, with him no longer working from home and me still not teaching yoga or anything else, trying to write a book when I have no idea how. I realized this summer that even though I’m not in school anymore, not at CSU working, fall will always be the start of a new year. Not January, but August.
Bonus joy: coffee with cocoa and mini marshmallows, running the whole house fan in the evening, the birds singing happily in the front garden, sunflowers, clean sheets, good TV, listening to podcasts, reading, texting with Chloe’ and Mom and Chris and Chelsey, hanging out with Calyx, aqua aerobics, training with Shelby, yoga, peaches, vaccinations and masks and all the people working to help and support those who get sick or hurt, unscented laundry detergent, quiet neighbors, all the dogs, things that flower, making each other laugh, sitting in the sauna with Eric, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.
2. These Are The Most Common Symptoms Of COVID-19 If You Are Vaccinated. “If you’ve been vaccinated and start sneezing a lot without an explanation, you should get a COVID test, especially if you are living or working around people who are at greater risk from the disease.”
4. The Costly Quest for Superhuman Strength. “As fitness culture has reoriented itself around ‘wellness,’ it has become less fashionable to discuss how exercise remains stubbornly linked to rigid and sometimes absurd beauty standards for both men and women.”
7. Health update, show cancellations, and a lot of love, a video message from Andrea Gibson. I’m not sure exactly how someone you love so much announcing they have cancer can make me feel more hopeful, but they did it.
14. The Dharma of Distraction on Lion’s Roar. “It goes a lot deeper than how many times a day you check your phone. According to Buddhist teacher Judy Lief, distraction is the very foundation of ego, the way we protect ourselves against both the pain of life and the open space of awakened mind. You could even say that letting go of all distraction is the path to enlightenment.”
15. Progress is a trade from Seth Godin. “The truth is pretty simple: All we do, all we ever do, is trade one set of problems for another.”
18. It’s Never Too Late, on The New York Times, “a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.”
19. No, you’re not entitled to your opinion. “The problem with ‘I’m entitled to my opinion’ is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for ‘I can say or think whatever I like’ – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.”
20. The Solving Plastic Issue from Yes!. “In this issue we explore the history of plastic, its global impacts, and some of the most inspiring solutions we’ve come across.”
21. How Big Beverage poured empty promises down our throats. “Beverages have become just another way for people to signal allegiance to a certain lifestyle or to tell ourselves that we are working toward something better. But our faith in the beverage industry has mostly survived so long because we are in denial about what gives us pleasure. Instead of collectively admitting that we love drinks — on a social and emotional level that is hard to compare to anything else — we would rather fool ourselves into believing that drinks can fix us.”
23. In ‘Goldenrod,’ A Poet Finds Lessons In The Good, The Bad And The Unexpected. “In times of distress, many of us tend to search for a universal truth. Knowing that there’s a way out, a way through can help us make sense of the world when it seems completely out of our control. And for more than a year now, the distress of social distancing, lockdown, and a rapidly mutating virus has overshadowed our public lives. In her new collection Goldenrod, Pushcart-Prize winning poet Maggie Smith responds to this destabilization by turning inward and asking — is the universal truth what we think it is?”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 