The Snail with the Right Heart — a love story, a science story, a story about the poetry of existence, about time and chance, genetics and gender, life and death, evolution and infinity, about not mistaking difference for defect, about recognizing diversity as nature’s wellspring of resilience and beauty.

“Where is my cyanometer,” Thoreau exclaimed in his journal on a blue-skied spring day, referring to the curious device invented by the Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure a century earlier to measure the blueness of the sky. 

Here are some of the most beautiful meditations on blue from 200 years of literature, including Thoreau, Goethe, Toni Morrison, Rachel Carson, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca Solnit, Georgia O'Keeffe, and other titans of the world in words.

On Bloomsday, rare and stunning illustrations for Ulysses by Italian artist Mimmo Paladino. 

Singularity – poet Marie Howe’s stirring ode to our cosmic belonging and the meaning of home, inspired by Stephen Hawking and composed for The Universe in Verse, in an animated short film by Salt Project. Poem text, context, and related wonders here. 

Favorite books of 2019  – from from Patti Smith’s gloriously uncategorizable masterpiece to the bittersweet posthumous collection of Toni Morrison’s speeches, by way of poet Ross Gay’s manifesto for delight as an act of resistance, Robert Macfarlane’s journey into the hidden universe beneath our feet, Rebecca Solnit’s empowered retelling of Cinderella, and other treasures at the crossroads of existential truth and elemental beauty.

Layla’s Happiness – a serenade to the many meanings of happiness, its quiet everyday sources, and delight as a daily practice, from poet Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie and artist Ashleigh Corrin.