Margaret Renkl

Opinion | What Ann Patchett Knows About Saving Book Festivals

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.

Opinion | How to Count Butterflies

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

I wouldn’t call it ignorance so much as ecosystem-specific awareness. Purple martins in the western US don’t use the martin houses we have in the east.

Opinion | One Way the Earthbound Can Take Flight

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.

Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.

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

Opinion | Making Do in the Dog Days (and the Frog Days, Too)

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. 🪶

Really, though, if you absolutely had to, couldn’t you trim it down to one?

Opinion | The Heart-Lifting Magic of a Pop-up Concert

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...

Opinion | For Once, Some Good News About a Fragile Ecosystem

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

Opinion | For Once, Some Good News About a Fragile Ecosystem

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

How does anyone even know what they really think if they don’t struggle to put what they think into words?

If You Use AI in Your Writing YOU Are the Literary Asshole Well, hello there! Welcome back! I think we all know what time it is: Am I the Literary Asshole O’Clock! That’s right, the world’s drunkest advice column that also would like to give you a book rec…

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

To linger in love over what we haven’t yet lost helps me remember to keep fighting for them.

♥️♥️♥️

What an incredibly kind thing to say!

Opinion | The Questions Started With the Wren

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...

Bill to delay N.C. climate law would slow energy buildout as demand… North Carolina’s governor faces pressure to veto legislation that would cause Duke Energy to build less of almost every form of energy, from solar to…

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.

Look at those tiny saddlebags filled with pollen! The bees thank you, and I thank you.

Pre-order Signed/Personalized Copies of The Weedy Garden by Margaret Renkl and Billy Renkl

You can preorder signed copies from my beloved indie, @parnassusbooks.bsky.social, here: parnassusbooks.net/weedygarden

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.

Happy birthday Jaws! How the movie changed shark science Half a century after its cinematic release, Jaws is still shaping how we view — and protect — the ocean’s top predators.

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... 🧪

Oh, one more: Be sure to change the hummingbird feeder every day in heat like this.

Also, make sure to add some sticks so anyone who falls in has a way to get out again. 2/2