What a week for news. I’m still reeling from it. Make sure you didn’t miss any of the biggest stories: Here’s the New York Times‘ Saturday roundup, aptly titled, Having Trouble Keeping Up With All the Trump News? Here Are the Must-Reads.
Farmer’s market season opened today, and I was there, not particularly because I needed any produce but just on principle. Our local farmer’s market is a community gathering place, a neighborhood pub for summer Saturday mornings. It’s not summer yet, of course, but being there on opening day is a gesture of faith that someday it will be.
Several months ago, my husband and I began opening up our house on Sunday mornings to friends who want to join us for newspaper reading. I consider knowing what’s going on in the world a civic responsibility, an obligation I owe to myself, my community and my country. Setting aside time to read the Sunday papers is important to me, and encouraging my friends to do the same feels right as well.
Which, apparently, is to say I need a poetry challenge. Because I most definitely cannot get enough of these wedding llamas and alpacas.
As social media editor for Escape into Life, I’m celebrating an entire month of May flowers on EIL’s Twitter feed. Today, after reading and sharing poetry editor Kathleen Kirk’s spellbinding second installment of a multi-part essay she is writing as she listens to Lincoln in the Bardo on CD (yes, another book now on my must-read list—definitely not what I needed), I was reminded of the lilacs in her first installment – both in her own poem and her link to Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
May is Mental Health Month and a good time to look for new ways to revitalize ourselves. Or just be mindful to make use of the old ways. As good a time as any, is what I really mean; this shouldn’t be a once-a-year special occasion.
Still, we all get caught up in the day-to-day and forget sometimes (many times) to nurture our souls. Continue reading