On Monday morning, my body hurt.Not in a concerning way. More in the way your body hurts after you’ve spent an entire weekend convinced you’re twenty-five and capable of moving mountains.I stood in the kitchen holding my coffee and looking out at the backyard. The new flowers were planted. The bird bath was in place.

Can you find the missing headphones in this picture? Hint: Yellow AirPod case.I didn’t say no much as a kid.Honestly, most of us weren’t really encouraged to.Back then the gold standard for children — especially girls — was agreeable. Helpful. Easygoing. Respectful.Say yes.Be polite.Do what you’re told.Don’t talk back.Don’t be selfish.And I became exceptionally good

Molly Booker May 2026Last night at PPG Paints Arena, I wasn’t sure if I belonged there.Bruce Springsteen is a privileged white man. This is his crowd, right?Lots of older white guys in denim. Beer. Arena rock mythology. America.As a queer lesbian raising a mixed-race, nonbinary child in this political moment, I’ve grown used to quietly

Meet Shelly.We picked her up on Friday—a 2025 Coachmen Leprechaun, twenty-eight feet of “are we really doing this?” energy—and within an hour, I was driving her solo down winding Pennsylvania roads like a woman who absolutely has her life together. Kelly followed behind me in Penny, the Subaru, dogs in tow, probably watching me like,

What Does Success Even Mean?Robert Holden once asked me a question that stopped me cold:How do you define success?Molly and Kelly in Costa RicaI was completely caught off guard.Had I ever actually slowed down long enough to answer that for myself? It felt like one of those questions that should be easy—like Who are you?—and

Birding taught me something this week: you don’t rush. You move from perch to perch. You stop. You wait. You notice. This essay does the same.Perch: PaperThis week, for Environmental Imagination, we read The Conference of the Birds. This is a must-read. Check it out from the library. Buy it if you can. It’s worth

Prized Archie Comic Book CollectionThis week for Environmental Imagination we have the theme of Flora, Fungi, and Fauna: Encountering a “Cabinet of Curiosities.” In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald introduces the idea of the Wunderkammer—a cabinet of curiosities, or more directly translated from German, a cabinet of wonders. Macdonald collects essays about bird nests, ants, mushrooms,

(I wonder what Otis is dreaming about….turn sound on for the full wonderment!)I just started Vesper Flights for my Environmental Imagination course, and honestly — don’t you already love that title?Environmental. Imagination.As if the world is inviting us back into relationship.Early on, Helen Macdonald introduces the idea of the Wunderkammer — a cabinet of wonders.

For a long time, I thought home was a place you could point to on a map.Colorado felt like home.Then Nashville did.Now Pittsburgh does too.But somewhere along the way, I realized that none of those places ever fully answered the question.John Denver has been singing in my head lately—“Comin’ home to a place he’d never

Intentions. Prepare a story about the best-laid plans. As I sit at my desk, laptop open, blank screen, my coffee nearly finished, I’m faced with it. Writing. Funny, not funny. I started an MFA in creative writing program at Chatham University in the fall. And guess what happened to my writing? It stopped. I’ve struggled