6 Compensations for Sleeplessness
"1. The Sky. Trust me when I tell you that the most stunning part of a sunrise comes way before those predictable smears of oranges and reds. In the nights east, watch the blackness for the outline of a cloud to brighten. Thats the signal for what occurs next, a lightening so gentle you might barely notice it until you look up and see that the sky has already paled, is now almost translucent. When... posted on Oct 11 2023, 2,577 reads

Meeting Gojira: A Conversation with Craig Nagasawa
"There's this idea that, as an artist, your job is to put your ego into your painting and push it at everybody else, that a good painting is 'full of you' somehow.But the art I like is made when the artist actually has gotten out of the way. At some point doing a painting, it literally feels like I'm the one stopping it with my decisions, and my aesthetic--and all that stuff about, 'I'm the artist... posted on Oct 10 2023, 825 reads

Coming to Our (Animal) Senses
"The term 'resource' always befuddles me. If we would simply drop the prefix, 're,' whenever we use the term, it would become apparent that we're almost always talking about 'sources', like springs bubbling up from the unseen depths. But when we put that little prefix in front of the word, and speak of things as 'resources', we transform the enigmatic presence of things into a reserve, a stock of ... posted on Oct 09 2023, 1,102 reads

The Radical Act of Savoring Pleasant Moments
Describing her childhood in wartime Iran, Ari Honorvar says, "We were attacked from the outside and from within. There was an actual war, with daily funerals, random bombings, and missile attacks. We were so on the edge that a door would slam too loudly and someone would have a heart attack.Children started getting gray hair. And then there was a war on Joy that hurt in a different way. Our favori... posted on Oct 08 2023, 3,756 reads

The Whisper
"I became a scientist because I wanted to save lives and I wrote poetry to save myself. My book of poems, The Whisper, is a lyrical conversation I had with the tiny voice that I had ignored for years while I climbed the corporate ladder."Fateme Banishoeib shares more about the tiny voice within and the insight it led her to in this beautiful post that includes a poem from her book. ... posted on Oct 07 2023, 3,860 reads

Everyday Icons: Rose B. Simpson
Rose Simpson's sculpture work stems from moments of observation and connections to the past, emphasizing the processes of making and becoming in which we discover new ways of being and of healing. Each of her clay sculptures is embedded with fingerprints and other evidence of the artist's hand, leaving traces of the act of making that produced the work. "I'm trying to reveal our deep truth," says ... posted on Oct 06 2023, 1,221 reads

Welcoming the Gifts of Anxiety
"Your anxiety helps you identify problems and opportunities, and it brings you the energy and focus you need to face them. Anxiety also helps you complete your tasks and projects, and it gives you the push you need to meet your deadlines. Yes, you need skills to work well with your anxiety, but your anxiety is a valuable and brilliant emotion that's essential to pretty much everything you do." Kar... posted on Oct 05 2023, 19,331 reads

Way Finders & Wild Women
"Tiya, your remarkable new book 'Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation' invites readers on a journey of insight and humanity to remind us how each life--whether enslaved or dispossessed, marginalized or privileged--takes place on this Earth. Could you tell us why you wrote Wild Girls? Also, who are the Wild Girls and how did you select the books title?" In this conv... posted on Oct 04 2023, 1,383 reads

I Use My Voice as a Weapon of Mass Connection
"I'd always been doing community sings and gatherings, and people ask me, "What do I have to do in order to be able to sing with you?" And I say, "Are ya breathin'? Good. That's the only qualification." And we need that so much. In my talk, I'll be talking a lot about why we need to share each other's music and how important that really, really is..." Melanie DeMore is a singer/composer, choral co... posted on Oct 03 2023, 2,185 reads

I Want to Be Unproductive & Other Poems
Danielle, Coffyn's poem titled, "I Want to Be Unproductive," opens with these evocative lines:
"to ponder the meaning of yellow. to listen as summer cicadas sing their final symphony of the season. to dine with friends. to savor course after course. to inhale the scent of San Marzano tomatoes bathed in balsamic brine. to taste vanilla bean gelato and espresso marry on my tongue. to study th... posted on Oct 02 2023, 5,461 reads