You can’t bring meat into the European Union, but be damned if we were going to deprive David Sedaris and John Berger of elk backstrap from Montana’s Yaak Valley. We froze it, wrapped it in butcher paper, wrote the word “Tuna” on the outside — you can bring fish in — and carried it through security at Heathrow Airport, though it had thawed and was leaving behind a telltale splattering of red from our daypacks, like something from a Cormac McCarthy novel.

Rick Bass 

your vision of what you want your community to be

The future's so random, and so mobile, there's no way you're going to get to your vision of what you want your community to be just by chance alone. I really believe you have to let people know, to use your voice, to say, 'this is what I like about my place, I want to keep it this way, this is what I think can be improved, this is what I disapprove of.' That's the only way you can have a part in shaping the future. 

Rick Bass 

How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden. Rick Bass

"Sycamores grow by running water," he sang, "cottonwoods by still water," and then he died, and I felt a century slip away.”
― Rick Bass, The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness  

 I do believe that clean air, clean water, and wild mountains and old forests are our birthrights; that a wild and healthy landscape is, or should be, a constitutional right, a freedom, to be protected and celebrated. And as with any right, there is an attendant responsibility.
― Rick Bass

A dog creates, transcribes, a new landscape for you. A dog like Colter sharpens your joy of all the seasons, and for a while, sometimes a long while, such a dog seems capable, by himself alone, of holding time in place--of pinning it, and holding it taught. 
― Rick Bass, Colter

 

“I do not concern myself with my inability to feel such comfort amidst humans (other than with very few friends and family), but, rather, am simply thankful that at least dogs exist, and I’m humbly aware of how much less a person I’d be – how less a human – if they did not exist. ”
― Rick Bass, Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had – A Memoir of Raging Genius, Loyal Spirit, and Canine Companionship in Montana  

 If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it's a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (god forbid) your job. It doesn't matter if it's wild to anyone else: if it's what makes your heart sing, if it's what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it's wild, and if it's wild, it'll mean you're still free. No matter where you are.

― Rick Bass

...remember to let your reader breathe

 Rick Bass

I let go of the rope, it was burning my hands, pulling so forcefully in the other direction. 

Belle Burden Strangers a memoir of a marriage (p184)

Love and Safety

Beacause  at the end of the day, blood and marriage shouldn’t be the primary determining factor when building a household that is best for the individuals living in it. Children and the adults who raise them do best in families filled with love and safety. 

 Eugene Scott, a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and a visiting fellow at the Johns Hopkins University SNF Agora Institute, is a contributing Globe Opinion writer.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/11/opinion/nuclear-families-nontraditional-pride-month/

the most powerful collective action you can take.

In just five months, you will be able to do something more than wring your hands, march in your communities, shake your head, call your congressman, or pull your hair out in frustration.

You will be able to vote — the most powerful collective action you can take.

 Dan Rather

The Chase

Last night Lulu saw a bunny as we parked the car on the top of Walnut Hill. When I opened the door she dashed over my shoulder and was gone! I ran calling her name. She had entered a ten inch gap in someone's gate and was sprinting around their backyard circling their one tree, trailing her red leash. I was running after her shouting her name. Luckily I was able to stomp on the leash halting her spin. I was shaking all over grateful that nobody was home and she was okay knowing the outcome could have been worse. I imagine someone seeing a hilarious clip on their security camera of a 65 year old lady wearing a big straw hat chasing her dog around their property.

What you’re trying to do is be faithful to your perceptions and transmit them as faithfully as you can. I say these sentences until they sound right. There’s no objective reason why they’re right. They just sound right to me.

MARTIN AMIS

Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know. The page, the page, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that page will teach you to write.

ANNIE DILLARD

Use the Energy of the Fear

 Understanding Anxiety as Energy

Before diving into techniques, it’s helpful to recognize that anxiety is more than just a mental or emotional experience—it’s a full-body reaction. When you feel anxious, your body prepares for action, flooding you with adrenaline and increasing your alertness. While this reaction was originally designed to keep us safe from physical dangers, today it can be redirected to keep us focused and motivated.

So why does understanding this matter? When you view anxiety as a source of energy rather than a roadblock, you can harness it as a resource to take control of your life. This mindset shift is the first key to transforming anxiety into motivation.

 Reframe Your Fear

Anxiety is often connected to fear—fear of failure, rejection, or uncertainty. To turn anxiety into motivation, the first step is reframing how you think about that fear. Instead of seeing it as a sign of weakness or something to avoid, start thinking of anxiety as a signal that something matters to you. This shift from “fear as failure” to “fear as fuel” can be empowering and even exciting.

When you’re anxious, your body and mind are ready for action. But without an outlet, that energy can spiral into stress or even panic. By taking small, manageable actions, you redirect this energy toward something constructive. 

source

Rebecca Solnit

The object we call a book is not the real book, but its seed or potential, like a music score. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the seed germinates and the symphony resounds. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another. The child I once was read constantly and hardly spoke, because she was ambivalent about the merits of communication, about the risks of being mocked or punished or exposed. The idea of being understood and encouraged, of recognizing herself in another, of affirmation, had hardly occurred to her and neither had the idea that she had something to give others. So she read, taking in words in huge quantities, a children’s and then an adult’s novel a day for many years, seven books a week or so, gorging on books, fasting on speech, carrying piles of books home from the library.

— REBECCA SOLNIT

When your gratitude for world and people around you is in place, no matter what you're going through, you're in a good peaceful place. 

Liza Minnelli memoir Kids, Wait Till you Hear This (page 312)

Pickle Red Onions in Pickle Juice!

Consider throwing in a smashed garlic clove, a few peppercorns, or a dash of hot sauce to give the onions an extra kick!

listen to the language we use

Writing can be a very dramatic pursuit, full of catastrophes and disasters and emotion and attempts that fail. My path as a writer became much more smooth when I learned that, when things aren’t going well, to regard my struggles as curious, not tragic…. We have this very German, romantic idea that if you’re not in pain, and if you’re not causing pain by making your art, then you’re not really doing it right. I’ve always questioned that.… I mean, listen to the language we use to talk about creative process: “Open up your vein and bleed.” “Kill your darlings.” I always want to weep when people speak about a project and say: “I think I finally broke its back.” That is a really fucked-up relationship you have with your work! You’re trying to crack its spine? No wonder you’re so stressed out! You’ve made this into battlefield! We should know enough about the world to realize that anything that you fight fights you back.

ELIZABETH GILBERT