Beautiful, simple, honest: Multiplicity.

A practical and much-needed-by-me post by Amy, Making A Gentle Return To Healthy Habits

Image: Delivering a dinosaur to the Boston Museum of Science (Arthur Pollock, 1984) 

Loved this from Tara Brach: A Heart That Is Ready for Anything

What Comes After Hope by Rebecca Solnit

My "currently reading" list has gotten out of hand, and is weighing far too heavily on the "thick and serious" side: Bleak House (my first go at Dickens), Parting The Waters (still, and for a while), Gaudy Night, and The Gifts of Imperfection (by the very popular Brené Brown, who I just read a good interview with in O Magazine. (Yes, I occationally read O.))

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them." - Bill Watterson (thanks m.b)

This is fascinating for so many reasons (I wish my clients had access to the internet!): With few other outlets, inmates review prisons on Yelp

More brilliance from Fit & Feminist: My problem with women-only races is not the ‘women-only’ part. Hell yes to all of this! "Surely there has to be a way to organize women-only races that isn’t based upon lowest-common-denominator stereotypes ripped from the pages of Cosmo."

Wonderful. Griner Says She Is Part of Mission to Help All Live in Truth 

Image: source.

Yes, please. NYTimes: The 46 Places to Go in 2013

Interesting: Why Jason Collins’ Faith is Ignored... And Tebow’s Isn’t

A detailed and shocking article about the reality of immigration detention in the US: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses—We Have Private Prisons to Fill : The profits and losses of criminalizing immigrants.

"You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment." - Annie Dillard

OK. Back to it.

Moving, hopeful story: Principal fires security guards to hire art teachers — and transforms elementary school

Awesome: Kim Gordon's Personal Rap Playlist For "Traumatized Times"

I'll definitely be reading the Beastie Boys memoir.

Recently finished Beautiful Ruins, which was highly recommended by both Murder By The Book and the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.
I'm not sure what to make of this book...but I do have things to say! First, while there are some reveals in the plot, I wouldn't really call it a mystery. I got into it quickly, which was great, and really loved being swept up into the book. However, as the book went on, it became less mysterious and lovely and I felt like I could see the plot and structure machinations, and the distracted me. For me, it became more about just watching it unfold as a plot and less of an engrossing, enjoyable piece of writing. Overall, I'd recommend it, especially as a vacation/weekend read, but I wasn't as blown away as some of the reviews had me hoping I would be. (ps: I heard it's becoming a movie, and that makes perfect sense. It could be a great one!)

100 Amazing Trans Americans You Should Know

Rode my bike last week for the first time in months (my mom and stepdad just very kindly sent it to MA from OR) and it filled some hole I didn't even know I had. Something about riding made me feel more like myself, more at peace - even on the loud, bumpy, chaotic streets of Boston (still getting used to city riding).

“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal." - Cheryl Strayed (thanks, Amy!)