I picked up my copy of 180 More, and instead of picking a random poem, I decided to start with the first one:

"First Hour," by Sharon Olds.

This is a lovely, jarring poem that lifts me out of my immediate life into the moment she's describing.

I immediately wanted to know more of her work, and found a large collection at PoetryFoundation.org. I haven't read them all yet - I want to take them slowly - but I'm anticipating more surprising, welcome alien images.

I recently discovered that WikiHow articles are often available in other languages - and now they're my favorite source of dual-language practice.

I can bring up an article in the target language (Spanish, French), and read it to practice comprehension and find new vocabulary words. It's terrific for the specialized vocabulary that goes with a particular hobby or daily activity, like playing the piano or making an omelet.

This is a fantastic biography. It's incredibly well researched (literally: I find it hard to believe how much time and trouble the author took to talk with everyone, read every archived document, chase down every source), and clearly and compellingly told.

I am lucky enough to own a couple of volumes of poetry by the amazing A. E. Stallings.

Randomly picking a few poems to read while sipping my tea, I came across "Pencil."

I love the rhymes, the occasional repetition or additional rhyme on the first and third lines.

She's so masterful, so skilled.

This week I discovered Gabriele Münter; I was looking up famous German women, and her name appeared on one of the lists I found.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts has her Breakfast of the Birds, which is a lovely work that I think I'm going to copy or at least follow for Draw a Bird Day.

I picked this up at the library book sale a few years ago when I was paying extra attention to the travel section.

A few weeks ago, I watched City of Gold, a great documentary about Jonathan Gold, a groundbreaking food critic who wrote about food and music in Los Angeles.

I was fascinated by the footage of the big pizza-like things with the long shreds of what looked like cheese.

I just rediscovered Letterboxd via a post on MetaFilter, and found a delightful take on Pixar movies over the years as a review of Soul.

I love turtles, and I love butterflies.

This 2019 WikiMedia Picture of the Year gives me both.

I subscribe to two daily poetry email lists: the Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation and Poem-a-Day from Poets.org.

A recent Poem of the Day was Tell the Bees by Sarah Lindsay, which intrigued me enough to go look at some of her other works.