Read “Marginalia,” creative nonfiction by Naomi Washer in 76 small parts: “7. The stories we tell ourselves when we are very young cannot be undone.”

Photographer Jo takes on us on a photowalk of Silves, Portugal, to see delightfully decorated electrical cable boxes.

Karl Jeffery’s beautiful drawing “Five Dancing Ladies” was created with a single, continuous line.

Danny Gregory reminds us that evaluating our creative efforts requires distance. “The time to judge your work is after the clang of battle has died down, the dust of hooves has settled. Only then can you see what you have done. And if it is good.”

Blogger Cate finds inspiration in Paul Kalanithi’s book, When Breath Becomes Air: “Kalanithi’s story had lifted me from my own, which has recently featured a kind of enervated fretfulness, circular and deadening, a not-quite-worry that breeds insomnia…I read this dead man’s book, and I slept.

At Sesquiotica, James Harbeck revels in the memories of the scents of his books: “The way books smell matters.”

A beautiful poem on aging and and wisdom by Senator Murray Sinclair, former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: As we grow old / the ground we walk on / rises up / so that, / as each of those few moments / left to us / pass by…

Born from irritation and intrusion, luminous and complex, surprisingly durable: pearls are rich with symbolism and saturated with pain.

TwilightBeasts digs into the evolution of armadillos, revealing the existence of the pink fairy armadillo, the screaming hairy armadillo, as well as a species so large it used huge claws to create burrows in rock. Yes, rock.

If I am lost in the blowing grasses, / If I wander from the path, / I am in your hands, time. / And in them there is a stillness, / Where light become animate, / And tactile, / Like little lost pieces of a former self.

In celebration of National Pie Week, the staff of Special Collections at the University of St Andrews used recipes from antique cookbooks to make sweet and savory pies for a potluck pie-off.

Teri Carter recalls her grandmother’s disfigurement and Otto Warmbier’s death as she considers those who abuse their power and the true meaning of liberty.

“My body / is my home, / but I shuttered it / awhile back, / and I’ve hovered nearby / like a tangled kite, / a drunken bird.”

There’s no doubt that Atlantic City is going under. The only question left is: Can an entire city donate its body to science?