Punch a wall & hug a stranger
Uh... I don't know, y'all.
It's a lot.
Keep doing what you need to do, but also please get your rest.
As usual, I've rounded up a handful of things to pique your curiosity, offer a microdose of joy, point out a bridge for connection, or some combination therein.
And away we go:
- Let's start things off nice and easy with this little fella who lives on a wildlife preserve in Namibia and loves nothing more than some good old-fashioned belly-scritchin'.
- In Colorado, the people who name newly-classified forms of lichen (which sounds like a super chill job, actually) just named some after The Indigo Girls. I will resist shoehorning a "Closer to Fine" reference into this sentence and you can thank me whenever/however you wish. (But really, if you haven't gone back and listened to their stuff lately, why not? Go get some! It's still great!)
- In Ohio, the Columbus library system just did a very sweet thing in memory of its most avid reader, a by-all-accounts lovely man named Dan Pelzer. If you'd like to dive into Dan's reading list, here it is, and here's a digitized booklet showing you what it looked like in his handwriting, along with a darling intro by way of an old press clipping. Happy reading.
- I'm what you might call a perpetual late bloomer—someone known to take the scenic route and get where she gets when she gets there. Is this good or bad? Not for me to say, but I do kind of enjoy the fine art of getting into books, films, shows, bands, and so on after the buzz dies down and I can just experience it in a vacuum and let it affect me on its own. I'm just now getting into IDLES, a band that's been around for :::checks wikipedia::: around 15 years now. This most excellent pre-Brexit song of theirs has been rattling around in my head lately, and on the off-chance you haven't already heard it (or have and want to hear it again), have a look and a listen. Per a commenter: "How can a band make me want to both punch a wall and then hug a stranger in just two singles?? Amazing." ...and, yeah, that just about sums them up.
- If that wasn't your cup of tea (if not, why not?), maybe this actual cup of tea is.
- The first poet I ever loved was e.e. cummings... actually, no, that's not right: the first poet I ever loved was Shel Silverstein, probably, but the first poet I ever loved who I realized was a poet was e.e. cummings. Shel, I thought, just wrote awesome books that happened to rhyme and be funny when I was eight. Anyway: a lot of people consider this to be a love poem from one person to another, but nowadays, I just think of it as a way of being in the world and looking at all living things. It's probably been eons since you saw it, so here's an invitation to read it again from that angle.
- When in doubt, dance it out. Need a nudge? Here's one, and here, and here.
Hang in there, buds. The sun comes up again tomorrow.
"It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world."
—Mary Oliver
04 August 2025
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