Amazon is a bully. Not news, I know. They’ve gone to war against Hachette Book Group, which publishes some big hitters including JK Rowling (whose forthcoming book is not currently available for pre-order on amazon, as it normally would be–see “bully,” above) as well as making it harder to amazon-order books which unveil the backstage workings of amazon itself, like those by Stephen Colbert, and Brad Stone.

A little refresher on race and American history, courtesy of The Atlantic.

Is it taboo to say I am not enjoying Bel Canto nearly as much as I liked State of Wonder? And it’s not because the latter has one of the most luscious paperback book designs.

Sometimes I break my own rules. Then I wonder if I’ve just made a foolish mistake with my time/money/energy. But sometimes you have to do good things for other people just because you can. Even if it hurts a little.

We’re wrangling an invasive species on our small new property in Massachusetts. It’s highly educational. An invasive species dominates competitor species, and it also deprives cohabiting species of habitat. All of which reminds me what is the most destructive invasive species on the planet.

Neil Swidey’s new book, Trapped Under the Sea, thrums with sand-hogs and commercial divers who do the grunt work of building our gargantuan underwater infrastructures, and the backstage politics of how we build, told from intersecting perspectives with edge-of-seat suspense, even though he suggests the tragic outcome right from the start. Last night at the Nature Conservancy program at the Boston Center for the Arts, Weathering the Storm: Boston’s Future Climate one of the speakers referenced the cleanup of Boston Harbor which is the context for Swidey’s book, and noted that the Deer Island sewage treatment plant there is state of the art for global warming resilience, sporting not only an adequate elevation and build but multiple green energy sources including solar and wind, right there on site.

The sun was so warm approaching Memorial Day weekend. The birds sounded happy. There was a little breeze. The plumber finally arrived and he was nice, and smart–a little too smart, finding more stuff to do. The leak was fixed. It was another long weekend, so my tooth was acting up, just as we headed out of town.

What do bones know about our lives, about our world, that they seem at times almost independently sentient?

I’m a little fractured at the moment by grief. Sometimes it makes me write backwards in time. I should have posted this blog a week or more past. After a major loss it seems odd that life churns on. There is this sense of being stuck at the point of departure, feet not quite able to lift back into the next thing. Some of the time, instead of wanting to feel better we hug the hurt, fearing that when it goes, our loved one will recede with it.

“The worst thing about street art is having to make your mistakes in public. The best thing about street art is having to make your mistakes in public.” – Banksy