This account has gone dark. I hope I see you again in one of the other places.

“The natural world needs us fired up and furious and fighting like hell to save it.”

Margaret Renkl's 'The Comfort of Crows' is both praise song and elegy — for this world, for time passing, and for the unique chance to experience both.
nashvillescene.com/arts_culture/b… Nashville Scene

“There’s no way for me to know why my garden was so bereft of butterflies all summer, and even for most of September, and yet entered October aflutter,” writes Margaret Renkl. “I’m just glad the butterflies came back.” Read: nyti.ms/3Q6r1Ce

Suddenly October means butterflies. nytimes.com/2023/10/09/opi…

“Imaginative literature does not survive by merely communicating information,” writes Margaret Renkl. “A truly great book tells a story that allows readers to place themselves, safely, into the larger world.” nyti.ms/468hsZ3

I will never cease being grateful to booksellers. Never.

Thanks so much, y'all!

“Imaginative literature does not survive by merely communicating information,” writes Margaret Renkl. “A truly great book tells a story that allows readers to place themselves, safely, into the larger world.” nyti.ms/3Q0Z3YG

“Conservatives who presume to understand how a particular book will affect a particular child profoundly misunderstand how children actually read, how anyone reads,” writes Margaret Renkl. nyti.ms/3PYM4pd

It’s Banned Books Week, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the bargain my mother made with the bookmobile driver. Gift link via New York Times Opinion: nytimes.com/2023/10/02/opi…

Chortling crows. Sign me up.

Two of these 10 represent Tennessee, which totally tracks. But one of them represents Nashville, which is about as far from representation as it is possible to get. Gerrymandering is a massive travesty of justice. nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/…

“I like to think of the squirrel-planted pumpkins in my flower bed as an example writ small of how the natural world once worked before we interrupted it with our poisons and our machines,” writes Margaret Renkl. nyti.ms/3RzfqfV

Alabama Booksmith is an absolutely one-of-kind bookstore!

“I have taken great joy from watching squirrels return the neighborhood porchscape pumpkins to their original purpose,” writes Margaret Renkl. nyti.ms/3RQCMy7

On the chance that these squirrel-planted pumpkins might give you as much joy as they’ve given me for an entire year, here’s a gift link via New York Times Opinion: tinyurl.com/586tcyu8

Because stories matter. washingtonpost.com/style/of-inter…

“The raised scars in that photograph were undeniable in a way that other accounts of slavery’s brutality, however powerful, had not been,” writes Margaret Renkl of the image “Whipped Peter,” in a new exhibition in Atlanta focused on the South. nyti.ms/3rleEsr

“What a camera records, of course, is only what the human being who wields it wants it to record,” writes Margaret Renkl about 'A Long Arc,' a new photography exhibit in Atlanta, focused on the history of the U.S. South. nyti.ms/3LtPVcm

There’s a magnificent new exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta—and a companion volume of photographs from Aperture Books, on which this essay is based—that will take your breath away. Cover image by RaMell Ross. Gift link via New York Times Opinion: nytimes.com/2023/09/18/opi…