How’s your week looking? How was your weekend? We’ve gathered some links for you to consider while you go forward or linger a little closer the week that was.

For a wonderful proof of magic and music being there if you look for it, check out how some birds resting on a power line became a wordless song.

If looking for your first pioneer is further back than yourself or grandparents, as in a pioneer ancestor who crossed the plains, this website may give you insights and information you never knew about them.

Looking at the women in the scriptures, we have two links this week.  First, this quick list of 5 women called prophetesses in the Bible. A good list to think about, seeing as The Exponent is holding a Midrash short story contest – which is calling for short stories about the lives and back stories of women in scripture.

Depression changes what is seen and felt, even what we know we know. This post links eleven posts, podcasts or talks from people of faith about holding faith close in the dark.

Looking at google images for decades hoping to find her birth mother’s face, read how a DNA test and Facebook lead to success.

Do you watch what you say? How’s your “vocal fry” or “upspeak”? This podcast discusses linguistic tics and habits (such as apologising in general conversation and other quirks found mostly in women) and the effect it may be having on individuals and the wider community.

Our first draft poetry is by Lara, inspired by the previous podcast.

Google was that number we talked
about in math class, the word texting
did not exist, and now they’ve
decided the way women speak is weak—
too unlike the push and shove of a
man’s moving linguistics so it is

us who must change, taking the
curl of our sympathy, the whisk
of our peacemaking and smooth of
our comfort
out like the stain
of oppression is all in the way we say

I love you
the way we build or decompose,
but butter and Crisco are not the same
thing, sweet creates a different kind of
potato, and there is a reason Granny Smith
is best for pies—

I’m good with repentance, with changing
hearts, with adding nuts to your mother’s
mother’s recipe,
or taking them out, I just can’t get my head
around the need for me to speak and think

and breathe like a man, in a man’s world, in a
shirt too big for me,
in suspenders to keep up his pants,
when I’m a woman and my skin
and my words—even when I tell you
you’re beautiful on the outside

and your dress is cute—
those words fit me just fine,
taste good without
substitution or correction.