Old Growth: The Best Writing About Trees
To celebrate the release of "Old Growth," -- an anthology released by Orion Magazine-- of essays and poems about the lives of trees, Robin Wall Kimmerer held a conversation with Robert Macfarlane and David Haskell. The trio of celebrated nature writers discussed the legacy of trees in deep time, that they each detail in their most recent books, Braiding Sweetgrass, Underland, and The Song of Trees... posted on Oct 23, 4637 reads

Making Children's Books Amid Loss
Even as artist and celebrated children's book author Nancy Carlson coped with her husband and best friend's devastating degenerative disease, and navigated bankruptcy, this resilient author continued to produce her captivating children's books. More about her story of courage and creativity here.... posted on Oct 26, 2563 reads

Ecosystems & the Practice of Love
"One of the things that I have tried to do in my work is to understand our reality as a 'commons' -- to see the whole of reality as a shared process of mutual transformation and productivity. This term '"commons" has been coined to express the idea of shared culture and resources being accessible to all members of a community. I use the term because being alive means that we are always participati... posted on Nov 1, 2443 reads

Solitude: The Seedbed of Self-Discovery
"In her Journal of a Solitude (public library), May Sarton records and reflects on her interior life in the course of one year, her sixtieth, with remarkable candor and courage. Out of these twelve private months arises the eternity of the human experience with its varied universal capacities for astonishment and sorrow, hollowing despair and creative vitality."... posted on Nov 4, 5169 reads

Presto
"Early on there was no word for 'groundhog.' Neither were there groundhogs, or grandmothers, or event coordinators. There were events but they were uncoordinated like the Tunguska Event. There was nothing, but no word for it. In some ways it must have been nice, all that wordlessness, because sometimes now you meet somebody and all you can think is, Please stop talking. Our planet has become so mu... posted on Nov 17, 2339 reads

The Nap Ministry: Rest as Resistance
"I think all of these things are working to get us back to our full selves and back to who we are: divine human beings. That's one of the central ideas of the Nap Ministry: you are not a machine, you are a divine human being. If you knew your divinity, you would not be grinding. You would not allow for grind culture. You wouldn't allow yourself to miss sleep. If you saw yourself deeply as who you ... posted on Dec 1, 3905 reads

Tell Them What We Have Learned Here...
"There has been an emerging awareness of a body of work that arose during the Second World War. Fragments of it have been known for some years to disparate groups of academics and their students, but it is as if now, in the 21st century, these writings are forming themselves into a body, steadily enjoining us to give them our attention. The group has become known as the 'Death Cell Philosophers' a... posted on Dec 7, 3293 reads

How Much Is Enough?
"Over the next 20 years, a minimum of $35 trillion, and up to $70 trillion, in wealth will transfer from the post-World War II generation to the next younger generation. Most of that wealth will flow in the upper canopy of the wealth forest, between family members in the world's wealthiest 0.1%...But some beneficiaries of this system are working to disrupt it, with the help of financial advisers w... posted on Apr 26, 4270 reads

Atlas of the Heart
"Researcher, academic and best-selling author Brene Brown has spent the last two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. Her TEDx talk, "the power of vulnerability", is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with more than 50 million views.In her sixth and newest book, Atlas of the Heart, she takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that ... posted on Dec 26, 6142 reads

Desmond Tutu: Father of South Africa's Rainbow Nation
"Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has died at the age of 90. Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as 'The Arch.' When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma's removal of the respected Finance... posted on Jan 7, 3323 reads

Beings Seen and Unseen
"In this wide-ranging conversation, Amitav Ghosh talks about his latest book, "The Nutmeg's Curse," that explores our shared past, the root causes of climate change, and how climate change is intimately linked to colonialism, genocide, and structures of organized violence. He calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: decentering human narratives and re-cente... posted on Jan 10, 3575 reads

On Generosity
"Twice this week I was rendered speechless by the power of unexpected generosity. The first was an actual gift from someone I barely knew, and the second was a story of survival that took such courage to write that I experienced it as a gift. The gift was brought by one of my students, from her mother who I only met once. It was her mother's way of saying thank you to me for loving her daughter so... posted on Feb 2, 4164 reads

On Death and Love
"I met Death in my early twenties. I had already lost loved ones before this time. A friend at school was taken by leukemia in a breathtaking six weeks one strange, hot summer. My grandfather, Eric, and my uncle, Tim, both died before their time. But none of us truly meets Death until we are ready to understand what it means. My first meeting came while sitting in a recording studio with a Holocau... posted on Jan 24, 4913 reads

His Back Pocket & Other Poems
Mick Cochrane is a professor of English and a longtime teller of stories. His published works include novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. His work is compelling, candid, and cuts straight to the heart of what it means to be human, what it means to experience love, loss, limitation, and transcendence. Here is a selection of three of his poems.... posted on Jan 27, 5219 reads

The Cloud Appreciation Society
"Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society (CAS), which aims to foster understanding and appreciation of clouds, and has over 50,000 members worldwide from 120 different countries. He has also written several books, among them The Cloudspotter's Guide, The Cloud Collector's Handbook and, most recently, A Cloud A Day." In this interview he discusses his fascination with c... posted on Feb 7, 3150 reads

Robert Lax: A Life Slowly Lived
"Robert Lax was an American writer and poet who developed a unique style of abstract poetry, described by Jack Kerouac as 'one of the great original voices of our time'. He was also a contemplative who, outside of a formal monastic context, adopted a lifestyle based upon simplicity and prayer which was an inspiration to his many friends and visitors. Thomas Merton, his closest friend, immortalised... posted on Feb 14, 6483 reads

We All Have a Brush
"Kazuaki Tanahashi is a Japanese calligrapher, translator of the Zen master Eihei Dogen's Shobogenzo (The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), and a deeply committed peace worker, who is active in the United States. Known also more simply as Kaz, he approaches all of his work with both thoughtfulness and fluid spontaneity. His methods, emphasizing the inherent power of each moment, and of every breat... posted on Jun 26, 1765 reads

Ukraine's Kseniya Simonova: Weaving Stories with Light & Sand
In 2009, 24-year-old Kseniya Simonova stunned judges and audience alike on "Ukraine's Got Talent", by creating mesmerizing pictures on an illuminated sand table. The series of haunting images that bloomed beneath her swift-moving fingers depicted Germany's invasion of Ukraine during World War II, and its impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. Today, as the world prays for the safety and well-be... posted on Feb 25, 18238 reads

Bending the Arc
"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." Paul Farmer, the renowned Harvard physician and medical anthropologist, died this week at age 62. While the world mourns the loss of this towering figure in global health, it recollects his incandescent legacy of profound solidarity, fierce commitment and catalytic friendships across borders in delivering high-... posted on Feb 26, 2089 reads

To Spring from the Hand
At age 4 Paulus Berensohn asked his parents for dance lessons. "Boys in our family don't dance," was their response. That didn't deter him. When his mother complained to a friend about his persistence, her friend exclaimed, "But Edith, to dance is to spring from the hand of God!" Berensohn would go on to study dance at Juilliard, but his life took another unexpected turn when he witnessed Karen Ka... posted on Apr 12, 12519 reads

When Love Breaks Your Heart
When science journalist Florence William's husband of 25 years unexpectedly asked for a divorce, William found herself feeling dazed and ill. ""Physically, I felt like my body had been plugged into a faulty electrical socket," she writes. "In addition to weight loss, I'd stopped sleeping. I was getting sick: My pancreas wasn't working right. It was hard to think straight."To help understand what w... posted on Apr 13, 7826 reads

The Magnitude of All Things
Earth is our mother and when she suffers, we all suffer. Jennifer Abbott's climate change documentary "The Magnitude of All Things" helps us to see grief on a personal and global scale. When her sister died from cancer, Abbott's sorrow opened her up to the grief that is being experienced on a global level by people who are already losing their homes and lives due to climate change. The film is a r... posted on Apr 27, 2119 reads

Small Kindnesses
"Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection," is an anthology that includes poems by Ross Gay, Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye and many others. The poems within it urge readers in these polarized times to "move past the negativity that often fills the airwaves, and to embrace the ordinary moments of kindness and connection that fill our days." What follows is one of the poems from this coll... posted on May 4, 3287 reads

Beyond Polarity
"This animated video offers hope for creating together the world that honors our collective needs by building on what unifies us. To make personal change that scales up to social change requires meeting our most important needs and recognizing that people are different. These differences can add color and richness to life and they can also be polarizing. Knowing another person's needs is a startin... posted on May 13, 1851 reads

Navigating the Mysteries
"The correct response to uncertainty is mythmaking. It always was. Not punditry, allegory, or mandate, but mythmaking. The creation of stories. We are tuned to do so, right down to our bones. The bewilderment, vivacity, and downright slog of life requires it. And such emerging art forms are not to cure or even resolve uncertainty but to deepen into it. There's no solving uncertainty. Mythmaking is... posted on May 15, 2299 reads

Things to Look Forward To
In 2020 when the pandemic tore across our globe, "She [children's bookmaker, Sophie Blackall] coped the way all artists cope, complained the way all makers complain: by making something of beauty and substance, something that begins as a quickening of self-salvation in ones own heart and ripples out to touch, to salve, maybe even to save others -- which might be both the broadest and the most prec... posted on May 17, 7911 reads

The Sounds of Silence
"When I was a sixteen-year-old naturalist in training, we were instructed to sit in the forest and wait for the return of something called the baseline symphony. The baseline symphony was the music of a landscape at easethe confluence of insect, bird, and animal song, underscored by wind and water. The dynamics of that symphony shifted as day progressed into night. There were brief caesuras, but i... posted on May 20, 2044 reads

Anna Breytenbach: The Animal Communicator
Anna Breytenbach is a professional interspecies communicator and the subject of a documentary titled, 'The Animal Communicator.' Breytenbach's lifework is dedicated to interspecies communication. Over the last couple of decades she has worked with baboons, great white sharks, big cats, and other creatures across multiple continents, astounding people with her capacity to connect with animals in al... posted on May 30, 3077 reads

Black Joy in Pursuit of Racial Justice
"I've been longing to talk about all the ways in which these last couple of years have been so much of a gift for me. And yet I struggle with holding that fact in the same space with all the ways these last couple of years have challenged the very core of who I am as a human being and the way I navigate this world as a Black woman. And yet, in writing my book Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resi... posted on Jun 8, 2785 reads

Listening and the Crisis of Attention
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee talks with biologist and author David G. Haskell about his latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken: a journey through deep time that traces the evolution of sound. Their conversation touches on the legacies of kinship that are present when we listen, and how deep experiences of beauty can serve as a moral guide for the future.... posted on Jun 20, 1747 reads

Grieving Beneath the Stars: Mourners as Spiritual Teachers
"When I heard my dad was dead, there was a breaking--a shattering inside of me that felt so violent I could almost hear it. I woke up to a knock on my front door in the middle of the night, and sat up in bed, sure something was wrong. It was my older brother. He said he had bad news. "Really bad." And then the words left his mouth: "Dad had a heart attack, and unfortunately, he passed away." Like ... posted on Jun 22, 4418 reads

Scaling We: A Journey of Heart-Centered Deliberation
"Traci Ruble is a psychotherapist and the founder of an extremely successful community listening project Sidewalk Talk. One day, in the fall of 2015, Traci and 27 other listeners took their therapists chairs out into the streets of San Francisco, offering the gift of listening to anyone who wanted it. There seems to have been a huge need for that offering of sympathetic, non-judgmental attention,... posted on Jun 28, 1795 reads

Timefulness: A Geologist's Story
"Geologist Marcia Bjornerud's latest book, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, can easily capture your inner philosopher, scientist, activist, and writer. When I received this book from Princeton University Press, I was immediately intrigued by the books cover. Ive always been fascinated by ideas that necessarily mix up life's ingredients into creative nature storie... posted on Jul 19, 1687 reads

Botanical Animation: A Story of Flowers
There are nearly half a million flowering plants growing beautifully and strongly in this world, spreading their roots in the earth, sprouting, blooming, pollinated by birds and insects, living on through rain, wind and storms. They pass on the baton of life, rebirth and decay. Everything is so in a continuous cycle, stunningly animated by Azuma Makoto.... posted on Jul 29, 2906 reads

Learning to Learn: You, Too, Can Rewire Your Brain
"The studio for what is arguably the world's most successful online course is tucked into a corner of Barb and Phil Oakley's basement, a converted TV room that smells faintly of cat urine. (At the end of every video session, the Oakleys pin up the green fabric that serves as the backdrop so Fluffy doesn't ruin it.) This is where they put together "Learning How to Learn," taken by more than 1.8 mil... posted on Jul 31, 3136 reads

How to Be a Citizen of Earth
"One small country, in which 0.0002% of the worlds population lives in one of the planets most biodiverse habitats, has taken it upon itself to model for the rest of humanity an inspired step along the path forward. In 1981, just after a dazzling new species of nautilus was discovered in its turquoise waters, the Republic of Palau -- a tiny, vast-spirited Pacific island nation midway between Austr... posted on Aug 6, 3241 reads

WoodSwimmer
This short film by engineer and stop-motion animator Brett Foxwell, in collaboration with musician and animator bedtimes, offers a mesmerizing look into cross sections of a piece of raw wood as it goes through a milling machine. The imagery produced captures the wood's unique growth rings, knots and weathered spots. Due to the speed with which the images are animated, the grains begin to flow in a... posted on Aug 7, 3042 reads

Gold is the Deepest Love
"'Gold,' the title of my book, is a word that recurs throughout Rumi's poetry. Rumi's gold is not the precious metal but a feeling-state arrived at through the alchemical process of altering consciousness, of burning through ego, greed, pettiness, and calculation, to arrive at a more relaxed and compassionate state of being. In sum, the prayer of Sufism is 'teach me to love more deeply.' Gold is t... posted on Aug 12, 4323 reads

Thousand-Mile Walk Home
"Eight years ago this spring, I blew out a lumbar disc while running a jackhammer in the desert near my housean accident that was the result of simple bad luck, with the odds skewed by the fact that a jackhammer was the wrong tool for the job and that alcohol may have been involved. After a long, miserable recovery period during which I was as ornery as a walleyed mule, I finally mended enough tha... posted on Aug 14, 2741 reads

Living/Dying Man
"After he was diagnosed, we had a lot of conversation about how we were going to face the harsh reality that ALS is always fatal. We didn't want to waste our precious time trying to chase down miracle cures or doing things that might extend his life for a few days or weeks. What was the point of a few more days if he was suffering? We decided to live 'hope-free,' which isn't the same thing as hope... posted on Aug 16, 6612 reads

The Nettle Dress
Over the course of seven years Allan Brown makes a dress by hand from foraged nettles. In the process, as he experiences the loss of two loved ones, he weaves his love into the fabric that he is creating. He spends seven summers harvesting the nettle and seven winters spinning it into fabric to make a dress for his daughter. The thread he creates carries his grief and his love, so that the cloth r... posted on Aug 26, 3046 reads

Listening to the Thoughts of the Forest
"To speak of intelligence in a forest is, on its face, an anthropomorphism, a violation of the creed of ecologists and science writers alike: Don/t treat other species like charming little humanoids! Trees are not leafy people and forests are not woody brains. But just as dangerous as projecting human fairytales onto forests is the overzealous rejection of all analogy between human minds and the n... posted on Aug 29, 1858 reads

Paul Salopek: The Out of Eden Walk
"The auditorium was hot and the acoustics were poor, but [Paul] Salopek's words were captivating. He explained that he had become dissatisfied with the standard method of international reporting, for which correspondents helicoptered into countries with little notice, reported, filed, and helicoptered out. Storytelling, he said, requires the writer to come in at ground level with the subject. His ... posted on Sep 3, 1812 reads

The Politics of Play
"Indigenous philosophies of childhood overwhelmingly agree on one thing: that a child should not be forced into obedience but should have liberty of body, mind, and will. Inuit children have traditionally experienced extraordinary freedom and would become 'self-reliant, caring, and self-controlled individuals,' an Inuit person I met in Nunavut told me. By the age of ten, their self-control is 'alm... posted on Sep 11, 1735 reads

How to Be in Awe
"Trees, writes Aimee Nezhukumatathil in her debut book of nonfiction 'World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments,' have been known to form alliances and send signals to one another. "And what a magnificent telegraph we might send back," she says, "especially if other humans have ever made you feel alone on this earth." With wry, warm-hearted, bizarre, and beaut... posted on Sep 12, 1634 reads

Mary Reynolds: The Garden Awakening
Mary Reynolds has designed award-winning gardens and landscapes across the globe. She is a nature activist and reformed landscape designer, because, in her words, "Everything must change. Including me." Her book, The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Lands and Ourselves, is"a step-by-step manual to creating a garden in harmony with the life force in the earth, addressing not only what the p... posted on Sep 18, 0 reads

Mary Reynolds: The Garden Awakening
Mary Reynolds has designed award-winning gardens and landscapes across the globe. She is a nature activist and reformed landscape designer, because, in her words, "Everything must change. Including me." Her book, The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Lands and Ourselves, is"a step-by-step manual to creating a garden in harmony with the life force in the earth, addressing not only what the p... posted on Sep 19, 6794 reads

The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life
"In his first two bestsellers, 'Care of the Soul' and 'Soul Mates,' author Thomas Moore dished out a large dose of preventative medicine for the preservation of our individual and collective souls. Moore's later book, 'The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, leads the tentatively restored soul along the magical path of a charming, gently revisioned everyday reality. His book asks us to view the event... posted on Oct 23, 2020 reads

A Culture of Simplicity
"Wabi sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. Wabi-sabi is a nature-based aesthetic paradigm that restores a measure of sanity and proportion to the art of living. Wabi-sabi -- deep, multi-dimensional, elusive -- is the perfect antidote to the pervasively slick, saccharine, corporate style of beauty." More in this short excerpt ... posted on Sep 22, 2256 reads

We the People
Through hopeful lyrics and joyous dance, Nimo Patel and Ellie Walton's "We the People" video is a call to unity, togetherness and equality. It reminds us that if we learn to love, if we learn to listen, the good will indeed come someday. Sing along and let your spirit be lifted.... posted on Sep 23, 1804 reads