We have marveled at Susan Simard since we realized she was the model for the fearless, hermetic tree botanist in Richard Price’s wondrous tree-centric novel The Overstory. Her new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Ancient Wisdom of the Forest about the intricate underground communication network trees create and depend upon got us thinking about the perfect gift, for Mother’s day or otherwise.
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“Languishing” perfectly describes the unsettling emotional state so many of us find ourselves in a solid year into the pandemic. We looked deeper into its meaning, and found insight in art, music, poetry…
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One morning, I found myself listening to poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge reading Wonder from her book A Treatise on Stars. I was transfixed, calmed, transported by her voice and the story it told. It proved a surprising lesson in seeing stars, and the connection between wonder and not knowing.
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The chart of data sourced from HowSecureIsMyPassword.net shows just how quickly a hacker can brute-force various kinds of passwords, especially the weak grandkid’s-names-type that many people think up. Then there’s THIS solution for making unhackable, easy-to-remember passwords.
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After an extended pause from Improvised Life seeing my friend through open heart surgery, all is well. The surgery was successful, and my friend is slowly recovering. Through weeks of ICU and the unpredictable processes of healing, we have felt the powerful effect of the simplest of things: Kindness.
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This week, my dearest friend will have open-heart surgery, a territory whose outcomes and demands defy prediction. So I will be taking time off from writing Improvised Life. But I will be carrying its lessons with me as I navigate waiting, hospital, ICU…
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Since we discovered the remarkable effects of reading a poem every morning several years ago, we’ve looked for ways to weave poetry more widely into our life. We found a trove of dazzlers to listen to anywhere.
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Twenty-two year-old National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s reading of her poem The Hill We Climb at President Biden’s Inauguration was like big bright sun rising on the day. Her remarkable TedEx talk is full of fierce wisdom, and poetry unto itself…
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This interesting, badly-edited little film left us with a powerful feeling that we’ve been enjoying, so we’re glad we watched enough to get the gist. It yielded a nice big lesson, with a poem to boot!
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The past week working at our desk, we listened to soundscapes of forests in Malaysia, Estonia, Portugal, China and France… Through a remarkable website, we found ourselves transported into tranquil environments AND quickly able to gift trees to friends…
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As soon as we read “Dial-a-Poem: The Groundbreaking Phone Service That Let People Hear Poems Read by Patti Smith, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg & More” at the great Open Culture, we picked up our phone and dialed. We were surprised by a curiously intimate experience, to add to our arsenal of ways to weave poetry into our life.
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As always, we are taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. It’s a time to slow way down and reflect on the rough year that’s passed and on the new one we are about to begin, starting with this question from Yoko Ono…
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Many months after coronavirus radically changed our world, we don’t know anybody that is not having a difficult time. We turn to the greatest balancing mechanism we’ve found to find out way back to fullness, “enough”, clarity, joy.
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As I’ve gotten older, the grim reality-sandwich of falling OFF a ladder has become something I don’t want to experience. I’m loving this light, sturdy low-profile step ladder that looks good enough to leave out.
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There is a big message in this little film, way bigger than its title, Reframe the Familiar. The visuals seem somehow of another time and act, with the words and odd voice, like hunks of poetry.
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We take a walk daily because it never fails to refresh our thinking, change our view of things, calm us. Especially, in these most stressful times. It is perhaps our most powerful medicine. Walking, we find our mind shifting, ideas sparking, problems beginning to yield in ways we never expect. Rilke nailed it in A Walk:…
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Yi-Young Lee’s astonishly beautiful poem Persimmons tells a number of tiny stories, and lovely very precise instruction about choosing and eating persimmons, which are in season now. What could be better: stories, poetry, something exquisite to eat..?
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For over a week, the work of a poet and an artist seemed to be in conversation,
helping us understand a fearsome part of living.
Some remarkable writings and images describing intimate encounters with trees got us thinking about what really happens when we sit inside one, climb one, sit in its embrace…
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I came to loving poetry late in life when I realized what was happening when I read a great one. It was just as Emily Dickinson described… subversive words with the power of a drug…
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