That orange, it made me so happy: 50 poems to boost your mood

 Posted on April 23, 2024  |  16 minutes  |  3310 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

PoetryHumour, beauty, solace ... the right poem can bring a ray of sunshine. Andrew Motion, Kayo Chingonyi, Tishani Doshi and other poets recommend the verses that lift their spirits Photograph: MacMillanBrian Bilston Poet and novelist 1) Hope Is the Thing With Feathers, Emily Dickinson 2) Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!], Frank O’Hara 3) Not My Best Side, UA Fanthorpe 4) Aimless Love, Billy Collins 5) Survivor, Roger McGough Poetry refreshes the parts that other words cannot reach and, like the little bird of Emily Dickinson’s Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, contains the strength to sustain us even in the “chillest land / And on the strangest sea”. [Read More]

The perfect storm: the US city where rising sea levels and racism collide

 Posted on April 23, 2024  |  9 minutes  |  1734 words  |  Kary Bruening

South CarolinaCross-currents of denialism, boosterism, broken governance systems and deep-seated racism will meet with rapidly accelerating sea level rise Predictions about how much water is coming vary greatly. Some scientists say we should be planning on three feet of rise by 2050, six feet by 2070 and 10 feet by 2100. Someday, not too long from now, the stories of many current coastal and riverside cities across the US will include sudden plot twists as well as new beginnings, as edges that had seemed solid liquify and become indistinguishable from the seas around them. [Read More]

Was Noah's ark bigger than Oasis of the Seas?

 Posted on April 23, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  677 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

Notes and queriesLife and styleReaders answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsHow big would Noah's ark need to have been? Wouldn't it be possible to get two of every species on a giant cruise ship such as Oasis of the Seas? How does one quantify greatness? Trying to make comparisons of any sort with a mythical Noah's ark are virtually impossible. Not only is the necessary cubic capacity unquantifiable but the logistics of keeping each and every one of the pairs of creatures alive and well seems to have been regarded as a sideline in the equation. [Read More]

Athleisure, barre and kale: the tyranny of the ideal woman | Women

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  22 minutes  |  4593 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

Illustration: Ari Liloan/The GuardianHow we became suckers for the hard labor of self-optimization. by Jia TolentinoThe ideal woman has always been generic. I bet you can picture the version of her that runs the show today. She’s of indeterminate age but resolutely youthful presentation. She’s got glossy hair and the clean, shameless expression of a person who believes she was made to be looked at. She is often luxuriating when you see her – on remote beaches, under stars in the desert, across a carefully styled table, surrounded by beautiful possessions or photogenic friends. [Read More]

Foul is fair: stunning shots of Shakespeare's Macbeth in pictures | Stage

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  824 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

Foul is fair: stunning shots of Shakespeare's Macbeth – in pictures Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email As the RSC’s production starring Christopher Eccleston is broadcast on BBC Four, take a look back at some of the most arresting stagings of the ‘Scottish play’ Main image: Peter Woodward and Nichola McAuliffe in Macbeth in 1991. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Fri 12 Jun 2020 15. [Read More]

Im a 32-year old woman and I have no female friends. Am I missing something?

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  847 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Leading questionsFriendshipIt is worth asking yourself why this is the case, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. It may tell you something about your own relationship to gender I’m a 32-year-old woman and I have no female friends. I feel like everyone around me, and in the media, is obsessed with the power of female friendships at the moment. I’m getting married and I won’t have any bridesmaids, even though my partner will have a fleet of groomsmen. [Read More]

John McCain remembered by his daughter Sidney McCain | John McCain

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  741 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

The Observer's obituaries of 2018John McCainObituaryJohn McCain remembered by his daughter Sidney McCain29 August 1936 – 25 August 2018 The senator’s daughter remembers an energetic father with whom she swam and bodysurfed and shared a love of travel – though she did not share his politics Kofi Annan remembered by Melinda Gates Read the Observer’s obituaries of 2018 in full here My earliest memory of my dad was when I was six years old. [Read More]

Male dolphins form lifelong bonds that help them find mates, research finds | Dolphins

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  758 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Seascape: the state of our oceansDolphins This article is more than 1 year oldMale dolphins form lifelong bonds that help them find mates, research findsThis article is more than 1 year oldIn behaviour only previously seen in humans, ‘social brain’ helps dolphins form complex alliances to see off their rivals for females Dolphins form decade-long social bonds, and cooperate among and between cliques, to help one another find mates and fight off competitors, new research has found – behaviour not previously confirmed among animals. [Read More]

Murder of three teens in Mexico led police to a fugitive US polygamist and his dark world

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  955 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

MexicoOrson Black was arrested after the bodies of three Americans were found near his Mexican ranch – then police and neighbors learned the truth about his life Rancho El Negro is a five-hectare property amid rolling fields of corn and cotton at the foothills of a lonely mountain outside the town of Ciudad Cuauhtémoc in the north Mexican state of Chihuahua. US polygamist detained in Mexico as police investigate deaths of three teensRead moreNeighbours – mostly members of the region’s German-speaking Mennonite community – referred to the farm as “The Company” and had little to do with its owner. [Read More]

Peter Ashley's top 10 railway poems | Books

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  968 words  |  Valentine Belue

Top 10sBooksPeter Ashley's top 10 railway poemsPeter Ashley is the editor of Railway Rhymes, an Everyman collection of poems celebrating the railway and published to coincide with the opening of St Pancras International. Here, Peter Ashley picks his favourite poems from the anthology. 1. The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin"That Whitsun, I was late getting away: Not till about One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out, [Read More]