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Coyote Wisdom

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  I was pedaling and panting, the wind whooshing in my ears, deafening, muffling all other sounds. Then I saw the coyotes. I pulled hard on my brakes and skidded to a stop. Suddenly the Bosque was quiet except for the maraca rustle of cottonwood leaves and my heaving breath. The summer sky was dark, a portent of the afternoon monsoon rains that would soon pelt the dry earth.  Four of them, two adults and two adolescents, striding over the bridge spanning the acequia towards me. One of the adults yawned, head low in the heat while the other adult looked back at the teenaged coyotes trailing behind. They came up the bridge and spotted me on the rise not 50 feet away, yellow eyes looking me over as they continued on, unconcerned with my presence.  This was my second encounter with coyotes in as many weeks. As the month dragged on, I would see a coyote every time I traveled through the Bosque.  — “The Bosque” as the locals call it, is the Rio Grande Valley State Park. I ...
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I Spent Six Months Building Community (Without Social Media) and Learned Three Major Lessons.

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I won't bury the lede - building community is at odds with modern life. I don’t mean in the sense that many of us are working multiple jobs, with long commutes, for little pay, raising children without much support, without even the prospect of retirement to comfort us - all of that matters too. I mean in the sense that our beliefs about how we and others should be in and move through this world are not conducive to building community.  Community is how humans survived the past 300,000 years and how we have come to inhabit nearly every corner of the earth.  Yet it’s only taken 75 years for Americans to lose it.  Many of us know little about the people who live next door to us. We don’t attend church, belong to civic groups nor social organizations, nor do we volunteer.  As Marc Dunkleman notes in his book “The Vanishing Neighbor”, Americans today mainly keep in touch with their closest friends and family members, and have very little interaction or relationship with ...
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MADE IN INDIA

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  Source: Voice of Fashion He came home with a second-hand dress, excitedly holding it up like a fresh caught fish. “I thought you might like it!” I thanked him and inspected the dress. The dress’s AI-generated SEO item listing title from Hell would read: “Aztec Southwest Dress Linen Knee Length Sundress Summer Tribal XL”.  Daunted by the thought of cutting down an XL to an M, I thought it would be easier to make the dress into something else entirely.  I plopped down on my couch and began unpicking the stitches to disassemble the dress. The straight stitches, the overlocking, the gathers, the hems, the lining.  Each thread popped gently as it was cut.  I stopped when I came to the garment tag. MADE IN INDIA I sat for a minute with the new knowledge that had just emerged from the depths of my consciousness.  Every stitch that I had just unpicked was put into the fabric by a person.  Who are they? I imagine she’s a young woman, long braid down her back,...
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From Unvaccinated Child to Epidemiologist

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 Through the Looking Glass I remember the day I found out I was unvaccinated.  I was struggling through the digital forms that would allow me to live on campus my freshman year of college, and I had to provide documentation that I was vaccinated appropriately.  I yelled downstairs to ask my mom if she had the documents.  “No” she shouted back.  “What? Where is it? What do you mean” I peppered her, finally leaving my room to come downstairs to the living room. “It doesn’t exist,” she said.  I was stunned.  She walked down the narrow basement stairs to rummage in the filing cabinet that held all my documents, and she returned from the depths of the storage room with a folded yellow card with my name and date of birth on it in her handwriting. Inside, the card was blank except for two lines – a polio vaccination and a tetanus shot at age two.  Living in a state with quite strict rules about vaccine exemptions, I had no choice – I had to get vaccinate...
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What I Learned from Visiting the Yogaville Cult

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 I lost my best friend to a cult.  We met in undergrad, studying similar disciplines in the same department and became close.  Brianna was effortlessly cool – she seemed to really know who she was and was comfortable in her own skin. She had this effortless thrifted style, was always reading about interesting topics, had a large group of fascinating friends. She was funny and smart and creative in ways I could only dream of being. A kind of joyous calm seemed to radiate off her, and as an incredibly depressed person at the time, I craved this energy.  For part of the time we lived in Baltimore City, she rented a room from this woman who lived in the wealthy, bohemian neighborhood of Mount Washington. In that kitchen she taught me vegan recipes, and we’d walk down the rainy autumnal street to a nearby yoga studio for the free community classes.   Back then, yoga felt euphoric. Finishing in corpse pose in the dim lighting of a yoga studio, my entire body had ...
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How One Toxic Manager Changed Everything

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“It sounds like he’s just trying to get rid of you rather than take any corrective action,” said my union steward.  His voice grew distant over the phone I held to my ear, and in my view of my kitchen turned into a long corridor.  Despite months of petty conflict with my teammates, it took an HR complaint from my supervisor alleging “insubordination” for me to realize I was in a toxic work environment and my own supervisor was at the center of it.  Suddenly all the small humiliations and injustices made sense.  Clear displeasure when I disclosed travel plans six months in advance.  An unfair performance evaluation.  Getting shafted in the new office seating arrangement.  Being left out of meetings about my subject area.  The sudden attitude change from teammates with whom I thought I had a good working relationship.  I confided in my coworker who was a higher-up before her own experience with a toxic work environment drove her to take a lower...
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