Glacier Peak, image by Eric
1. The Workhorse and the Butterfly: Ann Patchett on Writing and Why Self-Forgiveness Is the Most Important Ingredient of Great Art on Brain Pickings. This book is on my summer reading list.
If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.
2. 10 Things to Remember About Toxic Family Members from Marc and Angel Hack Life.
3. A’driane on Chookooloonks. When I get some time, I really want to dig around A’driane’s blog. She’s talking about things that are really important. Really important and heartbreaking on Chookooloonks is Karen’s post Enough. And finally, this from Karen posted on Medium is fucking brilliant, To My White Friends Who Struggle With What To Say.
4. Good stuff from Dances with Fat: Colorado Preschool Takes Candy From a Baby and I’m Too Sexy For This Prom?
5. Are you certain that you’re trapped? from Seth Godin. Oh, snap!
6. The “After” Myth.
7. Wisdom from Mandeq Ahmed, (shared by Meg),
There are two
types of tired,
I suppose one is a dire need of sleep
the other is a dire need of peace.
8. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Fashion (HBO).
9. Good stuff on Bored Panda: Love Is In Small Things and Photographer Arranges Foods In Beautiful Color Gradients That Will Soothe Your Soul.
10. Obama on the Baltimore Riots: It’s About Decades of Inequality.
This is not new. This has been going on for decades. And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities, we also know if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty, they’ve got parents, often because of substance abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education, and themselves can’t do right by their kids, if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead than that they go to college, and communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men, communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing’s been stripped away, and drugs have flooded the community and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a lot of folks, in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without, as a nation, and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem, and we’ll go through this same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities, and the occasional riots in the streets and everybody will feign concern until it goes away and we just go about our business as usual.
11. Wisdom from René Descartes,
If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
12. ‘Ain’t no way you can sit here and be silent.’
13. Wisdom from “The Other America,” a speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Grosse Pointe High School – March 14, 1968, (which except for a few of the details reads like it could have been written this March 14th),
I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
…we must still face the fact that our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nations winters of delay. As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption. The question now, is whether America is prepared to do something massively, affirmatively and forthrightly about the great problem we face in the area of race and the problem which can bring the curtain of doom down on American civilization if it is not solved…
The first thing I would like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is…And we’ve got to see that this still exists in American society. And until it is removed, there will be people walking the streets of live and living in their humble dwellings feeling that they are nobody, feeling that they have no dignity and feeling that they are not respected. The first thing that must be on the agenda of our nation is to get rid of racism.
14. He shows how the news talks about black people by talking about white people instead.
16. Louis C.K. On Life And Stand-Up: ‘I Live In Service For My Kids,’ a Fresh Air interview.
17. Welcome Everybody, “a grassroots, nationwide project to demonstrate our collective strength against the continued attacks on civil liberties around the nation.”
18. Racism is Real, a short film.
19. Bud Light Withdraws Slogan After It Draws Ire Online.
20. I don’t know shit about Baltimore on Renegade Mothering.
21. What If I Discover I’m Horrible at What I Want To Do? from Laura Simms.
22. Swarming Hummingbirds. I want this in my front yard.
23. Baby pulled from Nepal earthquake rubble after 22 hours.
24. when all else fails* from Karen Maezen Miller.
25. Our Witnessing Must Be Sustained.
It’s one of the most complex, urgent American stories being told. The cameras might stop rolling, but it won’t end anytime soon. Don’t let it. Keep reading. Keep watching. Keep listening. Keep looking for a way to be a part of the crowd with its hands on the moral arc, bending, bending, bending. However long it takes.
26. ‘Getting old ain’t for sissies’: Cartoonist Jack Ohman draws his dad’s final years.
27. Maybe Gluten is Not the Devil after all.
28. David Whyte Recites “The Journey.”
29. Reality check: ALL eating is “emotional” from Isabel Foxen Duke.
30. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,
When things fall apart and we can’t get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when the whole thing is just not working and we don’t know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world.
31. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Struggles With Suicides Among Its Young.
32. SLyme Disease: How A Speck Changed My Life Forever by Amy Tan.
33. One year of emptiness at the Krach Leadership Center.
34. Shared on Rowdy Kittens Happy Links list: go to the woods, find your original medicine and How to Write a Memoir: 6 Creative Ways to Tell a Powerful Story.
35. Shared in this week’s edition of Austin Kleon’s newsletter: Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, and
The Referendum, and David Letterman Reflects on 33 Years in Late-Night Television.
36. Freddie Gray’s death ruled a homicide and 6 Baltimore Police Officers Charged in Freddie Gray Death.
37. Bothered by Baltimore’s riots? Where have you been — for decades? and I’m white. I flew to Baltimore to protest. Here’s why.
38. Proof of Hope, “An honest depiction of the positive actions taking place in Baltimore, which have not yet been widely acknowledged.”
39. For the one who… from Isabel Faith Abbott.
40. Good stuff from Allowing Myself, a blog you should be reading: Energy All Over and On My Walk and On Being A Badass and, one of the most beautiful things ever written, Have Love, Will Travel.
41. Kristen Wiig plays Daenerys Targaryen—and it’s all we ever wanted, which made me laugh even though I’ve never watched Game of Thrones.
42. Yes, Unsubscribe From Netflix: These Small Steps Matter for Native Self-Esteem.
43. Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up, (shared on Positively Present Picks).
44. Good stuff from Susannah Conway’s Something for the Weekend list: Emotional Intelligence: The Social Skills You Weren’t Taught in School, and How to find time to read, and Things That Scare Me.
45. A University Is Not Walmart.
46. Carol and Flora Bowley. What cancer looks like. What love looks like.
47. Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back. Funny, because it’s true.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 