Making Good

 

The Good List: A weekly inventory of ideas, rituals and cultural artifacts to add joy to your days. Hosted by Melissa Kirsch, via the NYT.

Panel Advances Trump’s Triumphal Arch, Even as Key Member Suggests Changes

 

Read the article here.

Al Jazeera's Europe News Today

 

War in the Middle East

 

President vs. Pope

 

Orban Concedes Defeat

 

You Are a Crew

 

“Jeremy Hansen said that if people liked how the Artemis II astronauts worked together, that joy was something everyone can share.” Via Kenneth Chang’s NYT article “Artemis II Crew Reunites With Families and Fellow NASA Astronauts.”

National Poetry Month

 

Jane Hirschfield on poetry’s enduring potency:

“Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace. / Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder.”

News Fatigue

 

My heart needed protection in order to read Evan Gorelick’s lead article

(“A.I. Lockdown”) in today’s NYT newsletter “The Morning.”

Sam Sifton calls them “...some frightening

developments in the world of artificial intelligence.”

Frightening, indeed.

July 5, 1978

 

Breaking News From Paleontology

 

From an NPR article about the discovery that a half-billion year old

spider fossil has pincers, which means “the ancestors of spiders

actually existed 20 million years earlier than previously thought.”

Bright Spot

 

Paying Attention, Then Looking Away

After reading as much of the 4/6 NYT article “Trump Revels in Threats to Commit War Crimes in Iran” as I could stand, following a lovely day with the niblings.

Nostalgia

 

Based on the 4/5/26 NYT Magazine article “They Grew Up With Smartphones, This is How They Live Without Them” (interviews by Amy X. Wang)

Perspective

 

I just couldn't bring myself to write a poem about a $1.5 trillion budget ask that will slash "domestic programs such as disaster relief and teacher training."

Finally, Some Good News

 

From a 4/2 NYT article “Hershey’s Promises to Use Only Real Chocolate After Backlash” by Alice Callahan

Making a Difference in a Distracted and Divided World

 

From the 3/31/26 NYT article “They’re Going to the Moon and They Know Not Everyone Is With Them: Can the four astronauts of the NASA mission Artemis II make a difference in a distracted and divided world?”

Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship Case

 

“As the justices prepared to hear this landmark case today, reporters for The Times took a close look at their family histories. In each, the reporters found newcomers to America — colonists, enslaved people and immigrants alike — who paved the way for a descendant to ascend to the highest court in the land.” NYT, 4/1/26

Unlocked link to an in-depth look at the immigration ancestry of the nine Supreme Court justices who will decide this case.

"That's a Bridge Too Far"

 

“That’s a bridge too far” is a borrowed line from the summary of the situation in Cuba as it struggles with fuel blockades, found in the 3/31/26 NYT newsletter “The Morning” by Sam Sifton.

Sedoka

 

Favorite Things

 

Fourth of July, 2025

 

After the Workmen Leave

 

They Aren't All Gone. Yet.

 

Chant of the June Garden

 

Chant of the June Garden

Boneset
hummingbird
Bowman’s Root
bee

zinnia sprout
hollyhocks
Cardinal Flower
weeds

coral bells
baby dill
fennel fronds
tree

clematis
foxglove
primrose
me

(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025

We Do Not Care

 

Letter to an Awkward Sixteen Year-Old Dragging Main

 

A golden shovel using a line from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Letter to NY” 

Hello!

 

Fuel

Counter

 In typography, the small space inside letters is called a counter.

A Count. Account. Counter.

I’m
mapping
all the words
for what I’ll say
twenty years from now.
I consider their shapes,
their volume, their urgency,
even the nearly hidden space
in each letter, known as the counter.

(c)Mary Lee Hahn, draft 2025