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Margaret Renkl

@margaretrenkl.bsky.social
7.5K followers 1.4K following 279 posts

Author, most recently, of "The Weedy Garden" (for children) and "The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year" (for adults).

PostsRepliesMedia
Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It's not too late for that statue.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
And we need them both desperately.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Make it $5 billion, and you'll be getting closer.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
It's revolutionary, sure, but hear me out: Maybe it would be better if we didn't elect any more rapists.
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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
A 41-year-old Maine woman has accused Graham Platner of rape. Her account is corroborated by contemporaneous emails to her therapist, by a boyfriend she confided in about the alleged assault, and by messages she sent to another woman warning her about Platner. www.politico.com/news/2026/07...
politico.com
Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her
The Maine Democrat denied the allegations and said, “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Things they are wildly overrated: fireworks. Things they are not wildly overrated: fireflies.
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Bryn Donovan @bryndonovan.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I’m an writer and I don’t use AI because, as you might recall my mentioning earlier, I’m a writer.
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Lecia Michelle @leciamichelle.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Look at this lil nugget. A fledgling American robin.❤️ #birds #photography #birdsofbluesky
Fledgling American robin with orange and white new feathers on its chest, and black feathers on its head perches on a picnic table.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
"Praise or nothing" seems like the most humane rule possible when most books are ignored and the same eight books get all the ink and all the pixels. Rome is burning, but there are still so many books to praise. If you don't like a book, put it down. Keep looking for one worthy of your praise.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I don't know who I love more: this human? this bee?
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
If we play our cards right, soon we’ll be able to send handguns through the postal service but not birth control or ballots
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
The drive to thwart democracy gets more powerful the more power they have. They're one click away, half a click away, from deciding there's no point in holding elections anymore.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
A mediocre dude condescendingly explaining a core concept to an acknowledged expert who has both embodied and acquired expertise when he has neither? Is the Pope a woman?!!
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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Rewilding farmland, soon after the trees spring up unplanted, a host of wildflowers and other ground flora move in, like this wood sorrel. Then come the insects, followed by birds and other animals. It's all just so beautiful, and so *hopeful*.
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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Muriel Rukeyser, always but especially today. Full text at www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/...
Text of "Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)" by Muriel Rukeyser. Text is online at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars
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Tara Goddard @drtaragoddard.com · 07/04/2026
I have a father and mother in law in Iran. I have a sister in law. A niece. She's 14. She likes silly pink headbands and purses and dresses, just like kids her age all over the world. There are 93 million people like her in Iran. People who do all the normal mundane life things as the rest of us.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Peter Catapano, my beloved longtime editor at the Times, is running a sort of salon on the art of the essay that begins Thursday, 3/19. I'm one of the guest writers he'll be in conversation with. (My session is next week.) 1/2 www.proseplayground.com/c/events-cla...
proseplayground.com
[ALL FOUR SESSIONS] EDITORS AND WRITERS with NYT Editor Peter Catapano and Guests: A Dynamic Conv... | Prose Playground
Join in on four intimate 2-hour conversations and essay writing instruction with Peter Catapano, a veteran New York Times editor and his guests: Margaret Renkl, Darcey Steinke Tim Kreider, and JoAnna ...
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Finally wrote about the miracle of the whooping cranes. I cling to every miracle these days. Holding close every wondrous scrap of unexpected glory is the only way I get through a day in this country anymore. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Glorious Birds We Saved
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
What a beautiful surprise! Im so grateful for this weedy cover story!
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
A few words about the difference between a wildflower and a weed—and why the difference matters: chapter16.org/looking-clos...
chapter16.org
Looking Closely at the Weeds
Whether she’s writing a column for The New York Times or journal entries about the backyard critters she spies from her Nashville home, Margaret Renkl’s na…
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
It's not an exaggeration to say this will result in genocidal-scale death. And I don't mean in the distant, speculative future. Just the tens of thousands of pollution deaths in the relative near-term (Free link.) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/c...
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 12/02/2026
You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.
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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Nest failure due to drone use is a real thing. Please do comment to help birds and other wildlife against an absolutely stupid unnecessary hazard. Honestly, who the fuck needs a drone.
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
This is a wild departure from past practices. All the talk of the “Worst of the Worst” is a lie. Usually between 50-75 percent of ICE deportees have criminal records. We’ve turned ICE from a crime-fighting org into a racial profiling and ethnic cleansing operation.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
This shalt have no other gods before me.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Our power finally came back on late last Thursday, just in time for my fingers to warm up to typing capacity and my brain to warm up to something passing for coherent thought. Tens of thousands of people in Nashville were not nearly so lucky. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Icemageddon, Southern Style
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Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
I keep thinking again, in light of the latest Epstein files dump, about how MeToo “went too far.”
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me." --Homan in February "Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely." -- Tom Homan in March "I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room" -- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
It’s cold comfort right now but, if past is prologue, spectacles of violence committed by the state against sympathetic civilians—especially when captured on camera—were the beginning of the end for Bull Connor and Jim Crow, too.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
When Renee Good said "I'm not mad at you" what the ICE goon heard was "I'm not scared of you." That's what enraged him. The populace wasn't fully terrorized and cowed into submission yet, so he acted to make that happen.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
In and among and between the chaos of December, I gave myself over to “Hamnet.”Obligations and headlines and every virus in Nashville swirled in my head, but my heart was deep in the words of Shakespeare and Maggie O’Farrell, and in the images of Chloe Zhao. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A Case for Beauty in a Fleeting World
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Wish we had some Republicans like this in Tennessee. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/u...
nytimes.com
Indiana Lawmakers Reject Trump’s New Political Map
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Kristen Chapman @kristenchapman.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
If you ever wondered what GOP gerrymandering looks like in red states with blue cities, I present:
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Remember the orbweaver I loved last year? The one who built herself a little house out of oak flowers? I have a new arachnid neighbor this year, and she is a delightful mystery. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Farewell to the Beloved Friend in My Window
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Mississippi Free Press @mississippifreepress.org · 05/11/2025
After 13 years, Mississippi Democrats have broken the Republican Party’s supermajority in the Mississippi Senate. Democrats flipped two GOP-held Senate seats and one House seat in the special elections. buff.ly/nTvLlFI
mississippifreepress.org
Mississippi Democrats Break Republican Senate Supermajority, Flipping 3 Legislative Seats
After 13 years, Mississippi Democrats broke the Republican Party's supermajority in the Mississippi Senate, flipping 3 legislative seats.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
A few words about childhood and loneliness and the fragile, glimmering world. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Lovely Loneliness of Sunday Afternoons in Autumn
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Inside Climate News @insideclimatenews.org · 01/11/2025
The price tag is becoming clear for the Trump administration’s effort to keep coal power alive. The Campbell coal plant in Michigan, which was supposed to retire in May, is running under a federal order at a cost of $80 million for Midwestern consumers.
insideclimatenews.org
Trump’s Order to Keep Michigan Coal Plant Running Has Cost $80 Million So Far - Inside Climate News
Midwestern electricity ratepayers will pay the still-mounting tab under a plan Consumers Energy reported to regulators and investors.
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Judith Taylor @earther.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Hoping more people will see this Washington Post illustration by replying with it here. As usual, nobody who can is stopping nor even overseeing this.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
I’ll take “Objective Correlatives” for $500, Ken.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
A few words about my mother, my writers’ group, how I came to write Late Migrations, and how a robot tried to steal it all. And then how Andrea Bartz, tilting at windmills, managed to achieve the unthinkable. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | My Trouble With Robots, Part 2
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
This is the sign that moved me most today. The simple message. The homemade lettering. She seemed tired, but resolute. Saw so many people from that generation today. People whose parents lived through WWII, who know what fascism looks like, and who may not be around to see us get out of this.
Badass senior lady sitting while holding a simple sign that says “Due Process”
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
We did this. Turns out we ALL know how to save a book festival. And we just have to keep saving them, and saving everything else, for as long as it takes. For every single minute it takes. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | What Ann Patchett Knows About Saving Book Festivals
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
JUST IN: A U.S. citizen from Alabama who has been detained twice by ICE while working at a construction site, has filed a class action suit claiming ICE's broad warrantless arrest powers violate the constitution. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
A shameful fact which tells its own story.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
We can help. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | How to Count Butterflies
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
A few words about purple martins—how to help them, how to help all migratory birds, how to help birds that don’t migrate—in this week’s essay. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | One Way the Earthbound Can Take Flight
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
I put this on every single elected official that continues to offer thoughts and prayers while human beings bleed to death from gunshot wounds in churches, schools, concerts, night clubs, community parades, and the list goes on.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
You can add up all the enjoyable pursuits of LLMs and the work productivity hacks and none of them, separately or together, will be more important than AI’s ecological costs or political disruption. “We” is more important here.
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amy brown 👻 @amybrown.xyz · 22/08/2025
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me?
Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.
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Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
A few words about rain. And extravagant vines. And the undeserved protection of trees. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Making Do in the Dog Days (and the Frog Days, Too)
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