A bucket of mosaic tiles tossed into a tornado. That was July. Plenty of interesting bits but all scattered. Unlike the days, I can at least savor the links. 

I started and finished Sourdough on a 17-hour flight (my review), which led to more reading about yeast, which reminded me of an excellent short-doc about one of my favorite organisms. I also watched this humorous visual take on the history of apples and read an article boosted by a 20-minute doc on the ghosts of bumblebees.

Images remain a language we speak fluently throughout our lives, and that connection -- pictures and illustrations that create meaning -- begins when we learn to read. One image in particular sparked a universe of thoughts for me, with so many stories contained in a picture of soccer fans.

Naturally, I imagined how Degas might render the scene. I smiled when I thought of his pink-clad ballerinas also somehow representing the beginning of Earth, even though the entire internet sums to orange.

In the form of a lava lamp, such colors can protect our digital lives in an astonishing way. But as plastic, such slivers of color might ruin our planet -- ditch the straws, people. I pick up several each week in the alley behind my apartment to prevent them from ending up in our local rivers.

Rivers give us roads to new places, to openness. Yet they also represent obstacles. Borders. Particularly between the United States and Mexico, if I wanted to select a purely American lens.

Ideas of sovereignty and subjugation also inform the poetry of this month. I'm sharing the full text of a snippet most of you know well.