In and among and between the chaos of December, I gave myself over to “Hamnet.”Obligations and headlines and every virus in Nashville swirled in my head, but my heart was deep in the words of Shakespeare and Maggie O’Farrell, and in the images of Chloe Zhao. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/o...

Wish we had some Republicans like this in Tennessee. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/u...

If you ever wondered what GOP gerrymandering looks like in red states with blue cities, I present:

Remember the orbweaver I loved last year? The one who built herself a little house out of oak flowers? I have a new arachnid neighbor this year, and she is a delightful mystery. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...

After 13 years, Mississippi Democrats have broken the Republican Party’s supermajority in the Mississippi Senate. Democrats flipped two GOP-held Senate seats and one House seat in the special elections. buff.ly/nTvLlFI

A few words about childhood and loneliness and the fragile, glimmering world. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/o...

The price tag is becoming clear for the Trump administration’s effort to keep coal power alive. The Campbell coal plant in Michigan, which was supposed to retire in May, is running under a federal order at a cost of $80 million for Midwestern consumers.

Hoping more people will see this Washington Post illustration by replying with it here. As usual, nobody who can is stopping nor even overseeing this.

I’ll take “Objective Correlatives” for $500, Ken.

A few words about my mother, my writers’ group, how I came to write Late Migrations, and how a robot tried to steal it all. And then how Andrea Bartz, tilting at windmills, managed to achieve the unthinkable. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o...

This is the sign that moved me most today. The simple message. The homemade lettering. She seemed tired, but resolute. Saw so many people from that generation today. People whose parents lived through WWII, who know what fascism looks like, and who may not be around to see us get out of this.

We did this. Turns out we ALL know how to save a book festival. And we just have to keep saving them, and saving everything else, for as long as it takes. For every single minute it takes. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

JUST IN: A U.S. citizen from Alabama who has been detained twice by ICE while working at a construction site, has filed a class action suit claiming ICE's broad warrantless arrest powers violate the constitution. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

A shameful fact which tells its own story.

We can help. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/o...

A few words about purple martins—how to help them, how to help all migratory birds, how to help birds that don’t migrate—in this week’s essay. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

I put this on every single elected official that continues to offer thoughts and prayers while human beings bleed to death from gunshot wounds in churches, schools, concerts, night clubs, community parades, and the list goes on.

You can add up all the enjoyable pursuits of LLMs and the work productivity hacks and none of them, separately or together, will be more important than AI’s ecological costs or political disruption. “We” is more important here.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

A few words about rain. And extravagant vines. And the undeserved protection of trees. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o...

Once again, I am ded. 🪶

Sometimes you get lucky, even in a time when it’s hard to believe in luck anymore. I got lucky last week and saw Tyler Childers playing in the shadow of a giant T-Rex on the side of a highway. I was so happy on the way home I didn’t even think about my bitin’ list. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

Finally. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/o...

“It’s a plague. It’s everywhere.” @kristenarnett.bsky.social speaks the truth. lithub.com/if-you-use-a...

The avian drama is off the charts this year. (Gift link via The New York Times Opinion Section.) www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/o...

North Carolina senators are pushing a bill they say will save Duke Energy customers billions of dollars by letting the utility build new gas and nuclear plants. A new analysis shows the opposite is true.

Just in case you aren’t disheartened enough by this horror show.

A small bit of news on this hot summer morning: My first picture book, THE WEEDY GARDEN, will be out next February. I hope it will be a reminder that how we manage the bits of soil under our care can be a crucial way to help our wild neighbors thrive.

Just a reminder that one lesson of JAWS is that you should listen to scientists when they warn you about a danger www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

"A powerful resistance finds a way to reach at least some of the disinterested and convince them that their very souls are on the line." @margaretrenkl.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/o...

When DOGE included the Freedom Rides Museum in its list of “underutilized” federal buildings targeted for potential sale, I just about lost my mind. The Freedom Riders' moral conviction in the face of hideous injustice is exactly the model we need right now. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/o...

Every elected Republican should be asked if they think the president has the power to send in military in to “liberate” a state or city from its elected government.

If people take the trouble to tell you you don’t matter, you do. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother.

A few words about fences and climbing vines, and about my late neighbor, and about Robert Frost and HIS neighbor. Mostly this piece is a meditation on time and the way it works on the human heart. And the way wildness finds every nook and cranny we leave for it. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/o...

In case you are wondering exactly which mechanism, of the many options available to it, the federal government will use to wipe us out. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/h...

“As the ICE arrests in Nashville continued over the following week, it became increasingly clear that neither justice nor public safety is what these roundups were primarily designed to deliver,” @margaretrenkl.bsky.social writes.

Not my usual essay, but sometimes the world gives a writer no choice of subjects. When terror comes for your neighbors, you stand witness. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/o...

"What baffles and infuriates me is how the leadership figures of these major institutions refuse to recognize the harm they are doing, including to the places they are supposed to be stewarding — and to their own reputations." open.substack.com/pub/margaret...

The “but we love immigrants who came here legally” refrain is demonstrably untrue. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

These cuts were never about saving money.

I’ve always said I could not love Bruce Springsteen more. Since the ‘70s I’ve said it. But these days I keep finding reasons to love Bruce Springsteen even more.

Tell me there’s a prettier planet. I won’t believe you.

Don’t Look… how does it go again? Don’t look at the escalating cost of disasters caused by burning fossil fuels that could easily be replaced by clean energy and that oil companies want to keep making you pay for instead of them? Yeah, something like that.

Nashville didn’t commit this moral crime, but it happened on our watch. It’s up to us to do everything we can in recompense.

applying for jobs again

It is a great honor to have a new essay at the literary publication Chapter 16 today. This site, which is not locked behind any paywall, is one of many programs we stand to lose if cuts to the NEH cannot be reversed. So many precious things are so precarious right now. chapter16.org/praise-song-...

We aren’t entirely powerless in the face of this destruction, but until we find the political will to fight for what we love, and to hold our elected officials to account, the very least we can do is to protect the nearby wildlife we have the power to protect. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/o...

In case you could use a puddle of baby bluebirds today.

If you thought this could never happen, you were wrong. And by “you” I mean me. I was wrong in thinking this could never happen.