Sometimes Your Song Can’t Start Until You Go Some Place To Reflect.

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@12daysofswanqueenchristmas

A vintage Joe with lifelike hair. He's wearing his Artic gear and his fatigue hat. He lost a foot in a parachuting accident, but never lets it slow him down. Yo Joe! #vintagedolls #vintagegijoe #gijoe

Steve’s butt is very disappointed in someone.

[From Avengers #23, 1999.]

Sportscaster Dale Hansen defends student wrestler Mack Beggs and takes a stand against transphobia

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Ben is getting so tall!

I HAVE SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO SAY ABOUT READING

Which is why I'm yelling 😆 But seriously, this is very important:

#1 Reading should be enjoyable.

#2 The original intent of fiction books was entertainment.

#3 You don't have to finish a book if it isn't enjoyable.

I have a degree in English. I used to be an English teacher. And I still firmly stand by all of the above. Yes, in school you have to read what you're assigned, but guess what?

Outside of school you can read what you want. No one can tell you what to read. No one can force you to finish something you're not enjoying.

I am a member of a Facebook group about fiction reading. Actually, I'm in two. One is specifically for romance novels, and it's a blast. The other one I feel is a little bit snobby. They read "literature." The other day, someone posted about a book and asked, "This book is depressing me so much. Does anything hopeful happen? I don't know if I can finish it unless there's some light ahead."

Last I checked, there were 64 comments. Some simply answered her question. "No, it's dark and sad." Everyone else lectured her on how it was "so accurate to the time period, what do you expect?" and "not every book is light and happy you know" "the best books challenge us to think."

Oh boy. You better believe I chimed in. I said, "Just know that if this book is too much for you emotionally, there is nothing wrong with ditching it and reading something lighter."

I could not believe people were acting all high and mighty to this woman like it was SO SHALLOW of her not wanting to be depressed while reading FOR FUN. In the year 2021. After a year of a pandemic, murder hornets, and rioting, she didn't want to read a depressing book? YA THINK?????

So, here I am, a certified English teacher giving everyone permission to not finish books. For whatever reason. It's depressing. It's boring. It's scary. Whatever. If anyone makes you feel bad for it, screw them. They have a giant stick up their pretentious ass.

Now excuse me while I go read this romance novel with a sexy man in a cowboy hat on the cover

(Seriously, that's what I'm reading right now.)

The Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku—literally translated as “forest bathing”—is based on a simple premise: immerse yourself in the forest, absorb its sights, sounds, and smells, and you will reap numerous psychological and physiological benefits. “Nature heals me with a mysterious power,” the photographer Yoshinori Mizutani recently said. Born in the countryside, surrounded by mountains, Mizutani told me that shinrin-yoku has always been a part of his daily life. In Tokyo, where he now lives and works, he takes his camera to the city’s parks and engages in a kind of photographic forest-bathing practice. In a new series of kaleidoscopic images created for us, his communion with nature starts at an almost cellular level.

See more. 

- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden