This is a blog for humans, about humans, discussing the messy business of being humans, and it is written by a human…on a porch.

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Meghan McFarland is a writer, an editor, a non-profit consultant, and a sucker for a great porch. She grew up in Lawrenceville, Illinois on a small lake on the Allison Prairie countryside. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in English from the University of Evansville and a Master of Arts in English from Morehead State University. She doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up.

Today, she lives in downtown Indianapolis with her husband, Jamin, and their two beloved rescue dogs, Frankie and Leo. She is the mother to a grown child, Taylor, whom she adores. She is a human lover, an animal lover, a nature lover, and a life lover. She hates the winter, and if she could find a way to live in the ocean, she would. She also loves punch dancing when no one is home, swimming, shark tooth hunting, reading, writing, meditating, kayaking, mowing the lawn, singing, and going for long walks outdoors.

Meg’s Faves

Songs

  • “Harmony Hall” by Vampire Weekend

  • “7” by Prince

  • “Soul to Squeeze” by Red Hot Chili Peppers

  • “Still Remains” by Stone Temple Pilots

  • “Baby, I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney

  • “Warm Love” by Van Morrison

  • “Ants Marching” by Dave Matthews Band

  • “Avril 14th” by Aphex Twin

  • “River Flows in You” by Yiruma

  • “On Eagle’s Wings” by the St. John’s Folk Band

Poems

  • “Somewhere I Have Never Traveled” by EE Cummings

  • “She Being Brand New” by EE Cummings

  • “Wodwo” by Ted Hughes

  • “The World I Live In” by Mary Oliver

  • “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  • “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

  • Psalm 46

  • “How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best” by Andrea Gibson

  • “The You Pronoun” by Rumi

  • “Dance” & “The Way You Make Love” by Rumi—2 way tie

Fiction Novels

  • “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville

  • “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon

  • “Le Morte d’Arthur” by Thomas Malory

  • “The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende

  • “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt

  • “Almanac of the Dead” by Leslie Marmon Silko

  • “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders

  • “North and South” by Elizabeth Gaskell

  • “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead” by James Kirkwood, Jr.

  • “Wellness” by Nathan Hill

Short Stories

  • “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

  • “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

  • The Story of the Baal Shem Tov

  • “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates

  • “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin

  • “To Build a Fire” by Jack London

  • “The Swimmer” by John Cheever

  • “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

  • “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  • “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

Life Changing Non-Fiction

  • “Traveling Mercies” by Anne Lamott

  • “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle

  • “The Vagina Monologues” by Eve Ensler

  • “A People’s History of the United States of America” by Howard Zinn

  • “The Language of Letting Go” by Melody Beatty

  • “When the Trees Say Nothing” by Thomas Merton

  • “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne

  • “Be Still—A Treatment Against Fear” by Emmet Fox

  • “A Man Without a Country” by Kurt Vonnegut

  • “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay

Places

  • South Jax Beach—37th Ave South entrance (Jacksonville Beach, Florida)

  • Matanzas Inlet/Washington Oaks and Gardens State Park (northeastern Florida)

  • Jacksonville Arts and Music School (JAMS—Jacksonville, Florida)

  • Peterson’s Cay (Freeport, Bahamas)

  • Camp Ondessonk/Packentuck Falls (Shawnee National Forest, Illinois)

  • Playground on the northside of Bryan Park (Bloomington, Indiana)

  • Lake Lawrence (Lawrenceville, Illinois)

  • a small hidden garden I don’t know if I could even find again in the Chelsea neighborhood of NYC, down the block from the sweetest little Unitarian Universalist Church I’ve ever been to (New York, New York)

  • My grandma Ruth’s living room (Mt. Carmel, Illinois)

  • My sister Emily’s house (Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida)