Margaret Renkl
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margaretrenkl.bsky.social
Margaret Renkl
@margaretrenkl.bsky.social
Author, most recently, of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year. Contributing opinion writer for The New York Times (appearing on the first and third Mondays of each month.)
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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
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.
www.mississippifreepress.org
November 5, 2025 at 7:33 AM
A few words about childhood and loneliness and the fragile, glimmering world. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/o...
Opinion | The Lovely Loneliness of Sunday Afternoons in Autumn
www.nytimes.com
November 3, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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.
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.
insideclimatenews.org
November 1, 2025 at 12:14 AM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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.
October 25, 2025 at 10:27 PM
I’ll take “Objective Correlatives” for $500, Ken.
October 23, 2025 at 12:29 AM
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...
Opinion | My Trouble With Robots, Part 2
www.nytimes.com
October 20, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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.
October 18, 2025 at 9:56 PM
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...
Opinion | What Ann Patchett Knows About Saving Book Festivals
www.nytimes.com
October 6, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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...
October 1, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
A shameful fact which tells its own story.
September 28, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Opinion | How to Count Butterflies
www.nytimes.com
September 15, 2025 at 2:03 PM
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...
Opinion | One Way the Earthbound Can Take Flight
www.nytimes.com
September 1, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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.
It’s Republicans that blocked the laws. Don’t put this on Democrats.
August 27, 2025 at 7:14 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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.
August 23, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
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
August 22, 2025 at 2:20 PM
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...
Opinion | Making Do in the Dog Days (and the Frog Days, Too)
www.nytimes.com
August 18, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
Once again, I am ded. 🪶
August 17, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Sometimes you get lucky, even in a time when it’s hard to believe in luck anymore. I got lucky last week and saw Tyler Childers playing in the shadow of a giant T-Rex on the side of a highway. I was so happy on the way home I didn’t even think about my bitin’ list. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...
Opinion | The Heart-Lifting Magic of a Pop-up Concert
www.nytimes.com
August 4, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Opinion | For Once, Some Good News About a Fragile Ecosystem
www.nytimes.com
July 21, 2025 at 2:08 PM
The avian drama is off the charts this year. (Gift link via The New York Times Opinion Section.) www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/o...
Opinion | The Questions Started With the Wren
www.nytimes.com
July 7, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Reposted by Margaret Renkl
North Carolina senators are pushing a bill they say will save Duke Energy customers billions of dollars by letting the utility build new gas and nuclear plants.

A new analysis shows the opposite is true.
Bill to delay N.C. climate law would slow energy buildout as demand…
North Carolina’s governor faces pressure to veto legislation that would cause Duke Energy to build less of almost every form of energy, from solar to…
www.canarymedia.com
July 2, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Just in case you aren’t disheartened enough by this horror show.
From @anitawadhwani.bsky.social: About 85,000 acres of backcountry in Tennessee could be opened for road construction, mining and logging under a Trump administration plan to remove protections from the most remote and untouched portions of U.S. national forests. #FederalFallout
85,000 acres of Tennessee's national forests open for logging under Trump administration plan • Tennessee Lookout
About 85,000 acres of backcountry in Tennessee could be opened for road construction, mining and logging under a Trump administration plan.
tennesseelookout.com
June 30, 2025 at 3:22 PM
A small bit of news on this hot summer morning: My first picture book, THE WEEDY GARDEN, will be out next February. I hope it will be a reminder that how we manage the bits of soil under our care can be a crucial way to help our wild neighbors thrive.
June 23, 2025 at 4:43 PM