Links: Bears, Bees, Magical Realism, and Kindness

Live-cam: Brooks Falls - Katmai National Park, Alaska. Bears! Catching salmon! Up to their bellies in what I assume is an icy snow-melt river. I don't know if I feel sorrier for the bears standing in that river to catch breakfast, or the salmon swimming upstream through that gauntlet. The bears at least look well able to handle it.

Story: Women Making Bees in Public by Alexandra Erin. Full of delightful sensory details and women supporting each other, less delightful men interrupting women, and an ending that feels warmly right.
Via Sumana Harihareswara.

Art: Rob Gonsalves' magical optical illusion paintings. I love these, especially the ones where it takes me a moment to find the discontinuity. There are places in my life that feel like that, blurring from one interpretation to another as I follow the threads from different directions.

Poem: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye. Someone reminded me about this recently.

Relatedly, Taming the steamroller: how to communicate compassionately with non-native English speakers by Molly Clare Wilson. "Dear fellow native English speaker: you’re a very lucky person."