1. Poetry: Rage Letting and These Powerful Men Need Bird Lessons and The Artist at Work and Lift from Julie Barton, Trying to Understand from Julia Fehrenbacher, What we notice from Pádraig Ó Tuama, and Self-Talk from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and I Wrote A New Poem. It Opened A Door from Andrea Gibson.

2. Good advice from Jenny Lawson: Just don’t be a dick.

3. The Wisdom of Pulling Back from the News from Krista Tippett. “I can’t count the number of people I’ve encountered across the last weeks who have reported that they are deleting apps, limiting their consumption of news, boycotting or disrupting the barrage of information overwhelm. I’m beginning to see this as a spiritual discipline for being alive in this time. It is not to be confused with disengagement or passivity. It may be an essential tool for sanity, and a key to discerning and sustaining a sense of agency for the time ahead.”

4. What Would Your Simple Contented Life Look Like? from Satya Robyn on Going Gently.

5. Edward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die: Immortal Wisdom from the Park Ranger Who Inspired Generations.

6. This is How We Fall Out of Love with the World: The Twilight of the American Passion Job from Culture Study.

7. Good stuff on writing as practice from Lion’s Roar: Nothing Is Wasted, (“If you use your difficulties to create art, says Ruth Ozeki, it will give them meaning”), and Zen Mind, Writer’s Mind, (“Author Natalie Goldberg discusses Zen and the writer’s practice”), and 5 Tips for Mindful Journaling — which mentions my beloved friend Laurie Wagner, (“James C. Hopkins on how—through writing—you can find the flow of awareness, free of judgment”).

8. KNOW WORRIES #13 – “For All the Dogs I’ve Loved, and There Have Been Many” on Jonathan Edward Durham’s Substack. Because, this:

“I still consider dogs to be the mankind’s greatest achievement. Sure, you could make an argument for science or philosophy or coffee, I guess. But when’s the last time any of those loved you unconditionally besides coffee? And I want to be very clear that I’m not throwing any shade at cats by leaving them out of this conversation. I just don’t really consider them an ‘achievement,’ necessarily, because I’m pretty sure we had nothing to do with the whole cat ‘situation.'”

AND

“…many years ago, one of us saw a wolf and was like, ‘omg I would love a cute scruffy little version of that,’ and then we, as a species, got together and knocked that wish clean out of the fucking park.

And it’s a good thing we did too, because have you seen things? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve watched or heard or read or seen or experienced or felt or thought about anything lately, but it’s rough out there. And I love cats (most of the time), but we’re just not gonna survive this on cats alone. We need more. So lucky for us, we adopted a machine that eats stress and shits love and thinks we’re some combination of god and spouse and best friend and soulmate. And by the way, it’s adorable. Oh, and also it will protect you with its life. Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but if you rub its ears, that’s how you get the serotonin out.” YES.

9. Becoming a High Agency Person, “A means of community worldbuilding” on Group Hug. I especially love these two links Elise shared: Fake Fliers and Requiem for a Tree.

10. Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting, a Google doc with a lot of great resources.

11. If the despots can engage in magical thinking, then so can we on The White Pages. “On telling ourselves a story (about our strength, about our capacity for love, about how we’re going to win) and then making that story come true.” Also on The White Pages, Soon, there will be a spark, because this: “The thing about gathering kindling is that you can only do so before long before a spark is lit and a flame starts burning. And because the current emergent movement is rooted in love and protection for all, the flame I anticipate will not be a destructive one. Trump and his allies have already been setting plenty of those. It will be a source of light, a bonfire that sends the signal to many more of us that there is safety and warmth, that we are not alone.”

12. How Do You Handle Your Books? from Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk.

13. I Have Slept in Many Places, “Writing as a side door” from Jena Schwartz.

14. I’m writing from Hugh Hollowell.

15. ‘Our community deserves beauty’: one man’s mission to green a UK tree desert. “In Grimsby, locals have created a society focused on the environmental and health benefits more trees provide, planting thousands in schools, parks and hedgerows.”

16. Lessons for the resistance 2.0 on how to fight back against Trump. “Defeatism and demoralisation are rampant in Trump’s second term. But we cannot give up.”

17. What can I do to fight this coup? from Choose Democracy. “We can’t put everything you could do in here — including ways to ground yourself in these times — but here are some starting points on how to orient and help fight the coup.”

18. The 16 Best Travel Movies for Inspiring Wanderlust. In related news, 50 Years of Travel Tips.

19. 14 Little Things We Stopped Worrying About. “Here are the little things successful authors, CEOs, astrologers, and others have stopped worrying about in 2025 and beyond” on Bustle.

20. The Hidden Cost of Your To-Do List (And How to Take Your Life Back) | Courtney Carver on The Good Life Project. (podcast)

21. Is America Great, Yet? I’ve Been Asking Around on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. Also from John, No, Christians, God is Not in Control, because this: “God works through the hands and words of the people who aspire to this love and goodness, and choose to exercise the individual power they have been entrusted with right where they’re standing. Jesus is not beamed down from Heaven, he is incarnated in the flesh and blood of those who believe that other people are worth sacrificing for, that mercy is the greatest gift, that love is revolutionary.”

22. Times 13 Women of The Year. “These extraordinary leaders are working toward a better, more equal world.”

23. Fleeing your past may be the beginning of your story… on Writing at Red Lights. “As we grow into the person we are meant to become, at one with the soul inside our body, we recognize the truth when it is spoken or written. Writing story is a way to set those truths free.”

24. America’s Last Best Thing: On Trump’s National Park Layoffs and the Erosion of America’s Public Land from Frederick Joseph. “I don’t know whether I have ever truly believed in America as a promise, but I have believed in its rivers and canyons, its mountains and forests—because the land, at least, keeps faith with those who keep faith with it.”

25. Keep Calling from Patti Digh. “I hope you are informed enough to be nauseous and cared for enough to be able to function in the face of all this.”

26. Showering with Spiders on Short Reads.

27. Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle. I was reminded of this essay this week, and it’s just too gorgeous not to share, again.

28. Finding “C” in a world of A vs. B from Patti Digh.

29. Make life possible on A Working Library, a blog about work, reading & technology by Mandy Brown. Because this: “It’s a long-held maxim in movement circles that the people who work for liberation and freedom will always be outgunned and out monied by those who fight for precarity, oppression, and exploitation. Our power is not measured in weapons or cash but in humans; our power is with and through each other. Making life possible in uncertainty is to make room for more life, your own and many others. It is, as ever, to practice solidarity and reciprocity, to show up and to be present. To recognize that what happens next is—not now, not ever—written in stone.”

30. Kate McKinnon: Embrace your ‘weirdness.’ (Facebook reel)

31. Bad wellness advice is all over social media. These creators are pushing back.

32. Tony Horwitz’s widow Geraldine Brooks writes a beautiful memoir of grief.

33. Andrew McMillan: ‘As an atheist, the poetry of Mary Oliver is the closest I come to prayer.’ “The poet on his early love of horror and the transformative power of Thom Gunn.”

34. How Introverts Can Stop Overthinking and Finally Find Closure.

35. Recipes I’d like to try: Ruffles Krispy Treats and 2 Ingredient Onion Ring Chips.

36. And finally, this collection of things I saved on my phone.

~This week’s list of things worth reading, watching, listening to, contemplating, and sharing.

1. Poetry: Somehow Inside This Day and Even in a Time of Intolerance and The Turning from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Ways to Survive the Coup and Let It Change and Considering the Hearts of Mammals from Julie Barton, Eavan Boland’s poem “The Famine Road” shared by Pádraig Ó Tuama on Poetry Unbound, Behind-the-Scenes Look: “A Suit or a Suitcase”: Annotation & Author’s Note from Maggie Smith, and Bent to the Earth By Blas Manuel De Luna shared by Patti Digh.

2. She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death on The New York Times. (gift link) “In the Netherlands, doctors and dementia patients must negotiate a fine line: Assisted death for those without capacity is legal, but doctors won’t do it.”

3. Conversations @ the Salt Line Ep. 26: Robert Jones Jr. (video). “In this episode of Conversations @ the Salt Line host Wesley Dixon chats with author Robert Jones Jr. about his debut novel ‘The Prophets,’ which served as the first-year common reading for the students in the Vassar Class of 2028. With ‘The Prophets’ as the backdrop, Wesley and Robert discussed themes of humanizing complex individuals, navigating marginalized identities, and experiencing deep love.”

4. Recipes I want to try: Monster Cookies and Baked Cottage Cheese Eggs.

5. Nourishing Collective Resonance on The Wonder + The Haunting. “For many of us, the chronic ‘off’ feeling we experience in our modern culture is a collective experience that no formula, strategy, or intellectual reasoning can resolve. The ‘off’ feeling that haunts us is a sense-ual knowing that our lives are wonder-deficient. The ‘off’ feeling is our bodies sending us a message of discord rather than harmony—the further we get from our animal nature, the further we drift from a life of resonance.

6. Fatigue: The Modern Mind’s Silent Battle on The Gurdeep Magazine. “In our contemporary world, a new form of fatigue has emerged, specifically related to our interaction with digital technology—particularly phones, social media, internet browsing, and what’s commonly known as ‘doom scrolling.’ From my personal observations, I’ve noticed a distinct pattern: even when beginning with a clear, energized mind and an active body, engaging in prolonged scrolling sessions can rapidly lead to feelings of exhaustion. Even brief periods of 10 to 15 minutes can induce a noticeable sense of tiredness, suggesting that excessive screen time has become one of the primary contributors to modern-day fatigue.”

7. Earthlings and Broken Hearts on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “This layering of loves and losses and more loves has been a great teacher for me. It has taught me to accept the rhythm of our lives, which is all loves and all losses, all of the time. It has taught me to be proud of the intensity of my heartbreaks, because what is grief but a measure of love? The more deeply you love, the more deeply you grieve. I have come to believe our capacity for love is infinite, and like love, I believe our capacity for grief is infinite, if we accept it for what it is — as part of the rhythm of life.”

8. 100 Days of Creative Resistance, “a free email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration — a reminder of why we write and create — from 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices on each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime. The program begins January 20th, 2025, Inauguration Day. As the emails post, they are archived here.”

9. Re: The Super Bowl and Whiteness from Hugh Hollowell. “You have a choice: You can see this as an opportunity to learn new things, to see art outside your gaze, to develop in understanding of the world around you, or you can complain, whine, and whither into hatred.”

10. Please Promote Your Work In The Face Of Uninvited Nightmare from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds. “So, instead of some big thing about how writing is resistance and art is an act of optimism, blah blah blah, let’s just scrape away all that stuff and go right for the heart of the matter: We need the art. Shit is bad, and we need books, and music, and paintings. That’s it, it’s as simple as that. The times are hard, and art helps us through hard times.”

11. Hazy shade of winter snow day, “A missive from the fourth week of the regime” from Rita Ott Ramstad on Rootsie.

12. Five ways to be calm – and why it matters. “Is being calm about passivity and numbness, or is it a superpower that makes us strong? Lindsay Baker explores the ideas behind serenity, and ways that we can achieve it.”

13. This Artist Immortalizes Your Pets With Custom Embroidered Animal Portraits.

14. The One Who Got Away on The New York Times. (gift link) “Lasting relationships require a particular kind of alchemy. There’s chemistry and commitment, sure, but also timing and luck. So this Valentine’s Day, The New York Times asked readers to share stories about ‘the one who got away.’ More than 1,000 people wrote in about the electric chance encounters and deep love that slipped through their fingers. Here are 20 of our favorites, which have been edited for length and clarity.”

15. ‘Cancel culture? We should stop it. End of story’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on backlash, writer’s block – and her new baby twins. “It’s been 11 years since she published a novel. In that time, the author has lost both parents, seen Trump become president twice – and finally returned to fiction after a bruising reaction to her comments on gender.”

16. The White Lotus: the TV phenomenon is back – and it’s still next-level viewing. “Exquisitely awful guests and drama it’s impossible to look away from: it can only be the third, Thailand-based season of Mike White’s luxury resort drama. Bring on the memes!”

17. Words of love, “Some favorite poems and quotes” from Austin Kleon.

18. To Savor Your Next Vacation, Ditch Your Phone and Grab a Colored Pencil on The New York Times. (gift article) “Some travelers are picking up a creative pastime, sketching, in order to slow down and fully appreciate their destinations.”

19. Are You Never Doing Enough? on Peace of Mind by Meg Josephson.

20. Out of the night that covers me…Writing into the chaos on Writing at Red Lights.

21. Good stuff from Be More With Less: 10 Heavy Things You Don’t Have to Carry Anymore by Courtney Carver and 12 Daily Habits That Will Help You Simplify Your Life by Tammy Strobel.

22. Tuesday Tools: Join the resistance, “Another look at activism in the Musk era” from Patti Digh.

23. How I Fight Back by Josie George on bimblings. “Long ago, I discovered that the antidote to despair and fear isn’t hope — no, not that unsteady thing, heartbreaking in its fragility — it’s gratitude. It’s saying thank you thank you thank you over and over again, to everything and everything, until the world becomes bathed in light again.”

24. The Crucial Differences Between Community and Friendship, Explained on Double Shift. “I want you to find your people. But first, you have to know what you are looking for.”

25. Thirty lonely but beautiful actions you can take right now which probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Trump but that are still wildly important on The White Pages. “Why? Because others will see you do them, and it will make it easier for them to take their own (slightly less lonely but equally beautiful) action by your side.”

26. Teenagers turning to AI companions are redefining love as easy, unconditional and always there. “The question to ask, then, is not simply how to protect children from AI’s seductive influence, but how much you are willing to invest, emotionally and culturally, in the messy, challenging and profoundly human art of love.”

27. We Only Have Ourselves: The How-Tos and DOs and DON’Ts of Mutual Aid. “Kim Kelly Offers Advice and Reading Suggestions for How We Might Survive the Depredations to Come.”

28. A Few Eggs of Advice in These Trying Times on Librarian Shipwreck.

29. Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? “Yes. And You Can Too.”

30. And finally, a few images I saved this week.