Matador Network's Blog, page 2217

30 signs you live off-the-grid

Photo: martinak15

1. You’ll pop a squat anywhere. Behind your open car door in a parking lot. In a ditch next to the highway. Next to your neighbor’s garden. (“Oh, hi Helen! Didn’t see you there!”)

2. You don’t always shower, but when you do it’s usually with a pesticide sprayer. Or some other makeshift DIY masterpiece you concocted from six different Home Depot aisles.

3. You’re averaging a book a week. Last summer, you read every Kurt Vonnegut book ever written. Twice.

4. You spend a lot of time getting stoned and sitting in your chicken coop. “They’re just like us, man. They’re just like us.”

5. Your biggest fear is having to take a dump in the middle of the night. And having to walk down a slippery hill in the dark to a caving-in outhouse at two in the morning. Alone.

6. You use the same half liter of water to first wash your face, then wash your dishes, then water your plants. Pushing a wheelbarrow with seven liters of water in it every week from your closest neighbor’s house is a bitch. Conservation is key.

7. You fight with your partner every night over who has to get out of bed and blow out the candle.

8. You can’t remember the last time you washed your hands. You also can’t remember the last time you’ve been sick.

9. When someone asks what you did today, you recount for them in intense detail every interaction you had with another human being.

10. Your refrigerator is a mossy spot under a tree.

11. You have bragging scars on your arms from a broody hen that turned against you.

12. You calculate time by what NPR program is broadcasting on your wind-up radio.

13. You’re writing a novel in your spare time.

14. If someone asked you what your most prized possession was, you’d say “ice.”

15. Your friend once popped in unexpectedly. You were flying a kite in the nude.

16. You know how important it is to “take advantage of the sunlight.”

17. You’ll grill anything. Grilled watermelon. Try it.

18. Your food standards have lowered considerably. When you had access to running water and a fridge, you might not eat a moldy strawberry. Out here, a trip to the grocery store means a half-mile walk to your vehicle followed by a 10-mile drive. You’ll eat any edible or slightly edible thing that crosses your path.

19. Once you were bored, so you built an outdoor kitchen.

20. Your most successful day was when you figured out how to clean the ash out of your wood cookstove. You use the leftover ash to make waste decompose faster in the outhouse.

21. Someone remarks how awesome the sunset is. You’re like: “Meh. Seen it.”

22. Watching a movie consists of driving three towns away to the video store, only renting a movie you’re absolutely sure is good (Inglourious Basterds), driving home, detaching your car battery, transporting said car battery in a wheelbarrow to your home, using a power inverter to connect your car battery to your laptop, OD-ing on the same movie four times in a row because you were stoned and confused the first three and a half times you watched it, then reversing that entire process.

23. You have hours-long conversations based around the suspected health of your tomato plants.

24. You’re merciless with a chainsaw.

25. You’re in bed before the sun goes down.

26. You beg to your closest friends, “Seriously. Please tell me if I smell.”

27. Once you left a beer baking in the sun for an entire week before you remembered where it was. You drank it anyway.

28. You throw a mini-tantrum when you have to leave your home/land.

29. You’re a rock star when it comes to cooking with wood.

30. Your proudest summer purchase was a mail-order garden cart.

Transgender vet fights for rights

Robina Asti is a 92-year-old World War II veteran and pilot who has, since 1976, been openly living as a transgender woman. Her husband recently died, and even though she has served her country, she doesn’t get the same benefits allotted to any other American couple.

Watch her story and then learn more here.

The long slow pull to leave

Photo: Jenna Carver

I do not own a car; I don’t have health insurance, a pantsuit, or a career that necessitates any of the above.

I sling drinks and wait tables in my hometown; stuck in the middle of the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania, it’s a glut of history, period architecture, and WASP wealth. The demographic skews older but has yet to retire from the rigorous pastime of knowing everyone’s business. A heavy percentage of the populace has police scanners so they don’t miss any of the action and can report back to their cohorts over $16 dollar benedicts. My family boasts two stints in rehab, an anarchist patriarch, and a few echoes on the police scanner ourselves, so you can imagine the stories they tell about us.

As a teenager I couldn’t wait for the excuse to leave, the formula being: If you were smart you fled; if you could hack it you stayed away. And if you never left, well, at least you didn’t know what you were missing. Sadly, my trajectory has turned out to be more boomerang than rocket.

My current occupation provides me the cringing displeasure of hearing how well my peers are doing via their proud drunk parents. Stephanie, the mouth-breathing science enthusiast who, when my best friend in high school broke out in brilliant plate-sized hives during third period, narced her out for taking niacin to pass a drug test, is engaged and graduating from med school in the spring. Elliot, the middle son of an Aryan aristocracy that has made its fortune from natural gas and its reputation on humiliating the help, is working for a tech startup in LA; he has a darling Peruvian girlfriend who makes jewelry I could never afford from scrap metal and dried seeds. Judd, the closeted valedictorian of my graduating class and a brilliant and flagrant narcissist (I cannot think of him without picturing the scene from American Psycho where Christian Bale masturbates to his own reflection in the mirror), is getting his masters in Arabic Language and Literature at the College of William and Mary.

And here I am, the one holding the dirty dishes and hearing the secondhand tales of gleaming accomplishment. I kept the blood oath and from the looks of my Facebook albums, like “Kenya Dig It” and “Wigs + Strippers,” I am living a version of the dream, but there’s an alternative reality that pays for it and it’s soul crushing. You can get me another glass of Pinot Grigio and a fresh fork for my salad.

I don’t know how to stay put and still feel like myself. I can’t make myself want the things you’re supposed to want by 28.

Most of my friends are married, pregnant, or trying to get pregnant, not necessarily in that order. The most expensive thing I own is a pair of boots. The envy they may have felt toward me in our early 20s while I was skinny dipping in Mykonos and they were scraping by in Minneapolis as piss-on advertising interns has now turned to rightful concern. You can’t put fire dancing, curry making, or elephant riding on a resume. Will I ever hold down a normal job, buy a house, accomplish anything of note? They have apartments, dinner parties, and stability. I have an attic, some half-empty Tiger Balm, and a large collection of woven scarves.

In trying to stitch together the threadbare pieces of my last relationship, my inability to be happy in one place for very long being the prosecution’s defense, we decided to try couples counseling. Our therapist, who looks a hell of a lot like Kris Kristofferson, figured the root of this restlessness is my father. A brief history of my old man, who looks and behaves like the unholy offspring of Chevy Chase and the Dos Equis guy: He almost died rafting the Biobio River, has accidentally smuggled Colombian emeralds, intentionally killed a wild boar with his bare hands, and survived a subdural botfly infestation. And that’s just in the past few years.

However, in exchange for all of his well-earned bad-assery, he wasn’t around much when I was small and I quickly understood that it was a lot better to be the one leaving than the one left. You don’t get that kind of material being a housewife. I always expected that along the road I would meet a character from an Allman Brothers song, some kind of Mississippi long hair or bastard son of an unknown British basket weaver that would have a penchant for the third world, distressed motorcycle boots, and hand-rolled cigarettes. Trouble is he never showed up, and I halfway decided if I wasn’t going to be with someone like that I’d become someone like that. Some passport stamps and no direction later, you could reasonably call me the motherfucking breeze Mr. Ronnie Van Zant. Like my storied father with his slide film, Indiana Jones fedora, and canvas bags, I wanted to be missed.

I don’t know how to stay put and still feel like myself. I can’t make myself want the things you’re supposed to want by 28. I can’t imagine ever owning or wanting to own a home. Maybe a turquoise Airstream or a pack-and-play yurt covered in reindeer hides and sea glass, but certainly nothing that can’t roll or collapse if the feeling strikes. The same attitude extends to working in the service industry. I don’t love hearing pretentious blowhards quaff wine and debate the merits of hummus. I do it because I’m terrified of having anything I can’t leave behind.

And so it goes, after a few weeks of monotonous glass pouring — the disapproval of friends and strangers and even the low-hum wrangling of the niece and nephew I love — I start to feel the long slow pull to leave.

What I learned from my Danish roomie

Photo: Sorensiim

1. Stay out of other people’s business.

Maybe my Colombian roommate would want to hear the details of my latest date, and follow up with a personal anecdote, but that’s not what a Danish roommate does. When I was looking for a way to eat more protein, Sven gave his suggestions (always factually based). When I was curious about how he thought developing world debt might be resolved, he had an opinion based on his personal and academic research.

But deeply personal quandaries didn’t pique his curiosity, not because of a lack of compassion, but because it was out of the sphere of where he felt he should be involved.

2. Be healthy 85% of the time.

Most days of the week, a Danish roommate will stick to a very healthy regimen. He will enjoy light beer during the week, and rise and sleep at the same time. My mornings were filled with the cozy aromas of whole wheat toast, and at dinner roast chicken and vegetables. But on the weekend, Sven was happy to join us for double-cheese pizza and help himself to a second beer while watching mindless comedies.

3. Commercials are garbage designed to rot your brain.

A Danish roommate is not into consumerism. My roommate could happily watch hours of Family Guy on Netflix, or Suits on Hulu, but he never sat in front of the TV because American commercials made his skin crawl. A loud commercial that promised to change family life for the better with cheap and unhealthy food irritated him for days.

4. Rest. Do not apologize for it.

A Danish roommate won’t blow off early morning work to get an extra hour of sleep, or ditch work early to watch a game. He works hard, and when he wants to rest, he does. I never saw Sven come home early from work, but on the weekends he camped out in a hammock in the sun for hours. He never came in and lamented a list of things he should have been doing instead, in faux-apology.

5. Be helpful when you can.

A Danish roommate won’t begrudgingly do tasks he doesn’t want to do, and won’t offer favors he doesn’t wish to. He knows how he’s able to help, and when at all possible, he’ll do it. Lightbulbs needed changing? Dog needed a walk? A bit of cheery conversation? Done, done, and done. I knew Sven would turn me down when he couldn’t do something, which made it easier to ask.

6. The best way to know how people feel about you is to examine the way they treat you.

Knowing how they truly feel is better than imagining how you’d like them to feel. Emotional transparency is the order of the day with a Danish roommate. He has a great set of boundaries for his needs and emotions, and shares them with the most intimate of people. No need to fret that he’s secretly mad (or secretly filled with longing). Nine times out of ten, my roommate said he wasn’t thinking about me at all (in equally blunt terms). So when he said he would miss us, I knew he meant it.

7. Leave room for your own idiosyncrasies.

The only person to define the Danish roommate is the Danish roommate himself. Sven watched the first 15 minutes of Frozen one night and declared it ludicrous. The next day he told me Cinderella was one of his favorite movies. And he said it with a smile and tone so manly it would’ve made Ron Swanson proud.

8. Focus on the immediate 24-hour period.

Most fears or desires are irrational, but the moment is clear. No one is better to come to with inflated fears than a Danish roommate. He is fiercely practical. I once told him I didn’t like driving on the Pacific Coast of Peru because of the tsunami evacuation signs. He said I was silly, that I was far more likely to have my taxi run off the road than to ever be swallowed by a wave.

9. Start the day optimistically, end the day optimistically.

A Danish roommate can be like having a cheery zen monk in the house. He may not be too involved with you, but his warm and stable presence fills the space.

Sven always started the day with a warm, “Have a good day,” and ended it with a soothing, “Have a good night.” His entrances and exits were filled with statements like, “I believe the weather will be better soon,” or, “I’m ill now, but I expect to feel better soon,” because he really believes in stable optimism.

10. Be modest…most of the time.

A Danish roommate doesn’t brag, he lets his actions speak for him. My roommate had a doctorate in politics, but never proclaimed himself an expert. When he was complimented, he demurred that, “Some people seem to think he’s talented.” Sven was quiet about his workout regime, but had a body fat percentage in the single digits.

And, most modestly, he was surprised when I said I learned a few things from him.

Mary Sojourner on her new novel, 29

Mary Sojourner

Editor’s note: Mary Sojourner, Matador Network contributing editor and writing faculty at MatadorU, has published a new novel, 29 (Torrey House Press). Jo Jackson, one of her students at MatadorU, long-distance interviews Mary about her book below. 29 is available now, and will be officially launched with a benefit reading for Friends of Flagstaff’s Future, a Flagstaff community organization, on September 21 in Flagstaff.

* * *

Jo Jackson: To begin, what are the essentials of the novel 29, and where did the story come from?

Mary Sojourner: At least three threads weave through 29. Nell Walker and Monkey Barnett fall precipitously into something neither of them can name — except to call it Much. Nell finds her way toward a resolution with her mother, who had raised her single-handedly as a Sixties Susie Creamcheese (see Frank Zappa) kind of mom. The Chemehuevi of the Mojave Desert learn that a huge corporate solar invasion is on its way to the desert, near 29 Palms, that will damage their Sacred Salt Song Trail and the desert ecosystems and wildlife — and decide to fight back.

Nell has been fired from her all-consuming job as a marketing director for a global Big Pharma in Los Angeles, in part because of her affair with a higher-up, in part because of her age. She has been supporting her mom in an up-scale Memory / Demenia Unit, and quickly finds herself with her house in foreclosure, most of her possessions gone, and the knowledge that she needs to get the fuck out of Dodge.

She flees to the Mojave Desert town of 29 Palms, with $600 to her name, takes refuge in a women’s shelter, and answers an ad looking for a computer geek. When she first walks into the interview in the one dress-for-success suit she has left, the owner of Monkey Biz — a daily stoner — thinks she’s a narc. They fall in Much, Nell learns that Monkey has been having dope-fueled apocalyptic visions, visions compelling in their consistency and intensity. A few days later, she meets Mariah, a Chemehuevi indigenous woman who has been attacked by solar company goons, and the novel is on its way.

29 grew out of Much. Monkey was real. We slammed into each other and just as abruptly broke apart. Then my Flagstaff life began to fracture along fault lines I hadn’t known existed. I wrote the first draft of 29 in the summer of 2007 as an exorcism. Six months later, I fled to 29 Palms, knowing somehow that the Mojave would incinerate what needed to be ash — not just from the harsh ending of what I believed was the deepest connection possible, but from a long life of unfortunate genes and even more unfortunate choices. While I lived there, I learned that a solar corporation was threatening to build an installation impinging on ancient, sacred Native American desert intaglios near Blythe, California.

I lived in the Mojave for a year. The same fierce heat and glare that did their work on me, were eventually too much for my aging body and eyes. I left in 2009. Four years later, one of the publishers at Torrey House Press asked me if I had a novel I could send. I gutted half the original exorcism, road-tripped to Chemehuevi country and listened to what the people told me — and wrote the final version of 29.

From song titles, to musicians, to the Paiute Salt Songs — tell me about the significance of music in this book.

I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s, with music as one of my three allies — the others were reading and fleeing outdoors. My mother was a fine jazz pianist who never played outside our home. She turned me on to Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Marian McPartland, Gene Krupa — and allowed me to go to jazz clubs when I was underage. I interviewed the brilliant jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan when I was seventeen. I remember thinking how calm he was — didn’t learn till later that he was a heroin addict at that time, and was probably trying to suss out who the fuck this starry-eyed kid with the notebook was.

The Blues and rock ‘n’ roll carried me through those unfortunate genes, and even more unfortunate choices, for sixty years — still do. They have been my own song trail: hearing the Delta blue guitarist Son House in a gloomy coffee house near Lake Ontario, in the late ’50s, and joining the Civil Rights Movement. Playing the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” over and over, and thinking I had found a way to believe that there was the possibility of peace. Pounding The Who’s “Not Gonna Get Fooled Again” into my ears at brain-smashing volume, and knowing there was a way to love fury. Playing Van Morrison after Much was nothing, and keeping an enraged faith in the “Raglan Road.” Finding William Burroughs and Material on that dangerous “Road to the Western Lands.”

At the very beginning of the book we’re introduced to fifty-five-year-old Nell, who lost her high-paying job during the 2008 economic downturn. In the early hours of the morning, just before she leaves LA for good, she considers her prospects and there’s this line: “She was fifty-five. She was a woman (…) In her field (…) she was dead.” Can you unpack this? What are your thoughts on ageism in the United States?

I’m seventy-four. When I was twenty-eight, I was the organizer for an old peoples’ political organization. The women were the driving intelligence and force of the group. One day, we were planning strategy. As we finished, I suggested we all talk about how old we were. These powerful women morphed into giggling and red-faced children. In that instant, I vowed I would always be proud and open about my age.

Ageism is the most prevalent “ism” in the United States, and the most prevalent and unrecognized marginalization. I’ve written about it here.

There’s a quote at the beginning of the book from Monkey: “You should write a book about us.” Is Monkey, the pot-smoking mechanic that Nell works for in 29 Palms, based on someone real?

Monkey was once real. His visions were real. Our instant Much was real. Our story was only a little different from Monkey’s and Nell’s. The surreal power was the same.

There seems to be a lot of yourself in this story. Is the distinction between fiction and life writing a valuable one to you?

Most of my writing — novels, short stories, essays (political and otherwise) — emerged and emerges from my life. As a child, I was to quickly learn to be my own world, which is another way of saying I had to become self-centered or go mad. I write about that in the memoir Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire. It is also true that, once I start writing, the words take over so that what may have begun as a story of self becomes much larger. I am continually surprised by who and what appears.

I wrote Nell as a wealthy and driven Big Pharm executive, because I wanted to write a character very different from myself. As the novel continued to take shape, I realized she and I had much more in common than not, but of course, life slams her on the butt –- and she not so much changes, as she evolves into a woman much closer to who she and her mother were when she was a child.

As the story unfolds, Nell befriends Mariah, a local Chemehuevi Native American, and discovers that a solar energy conglomerate, FreegreenGlobal is planning to build on a sacred Paiute trail. Why did you choose for the “bad guy” to be a renewable energy company?

Before I answer this, I’d love our readers to go to this video about the Salt Song Trail. It is important to understand the significance of the trail in Chemehuevi life.

I have learned that the best way to implement solar power is with localized rooftop installations. At the time I lived in the Mojave, a grassroots enviro group, the Wildlands Conservancy, fought and defeated the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s plan to build 85 miles of power-transmission towers and lines carrying geothermal, solar, and wind power from the Salton Sea area of the Imperial Valley, to a substation near Hesperia. The lines would have cut a nearly mile-wide swath through the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve in Morongo Valley, a critical water source for migratory birds and wildlife, and through parts of the privately-owned Pipes Canyon Wilderness near Pioneertown. The Conservancy taught me. I understood that corporate solar power in the desert was anything but green.

As I worked with the final version of the novel, I realized that I could link Monkey’s visions of the future apocalypse with the new information I was learning about the devastation caused by corporate solar power farms. Solar arrays burn birds alive. The desert tortoise have been yanked from their homes and dumped in alien lands. And, both in 29 and real life, old sacred Native American desert intaglios near Blythe have been irreparably damaged.

When I learned that the indigenous keepers of the Salt Song Trail believe that to damage the trail is to destroy the songs and their spiritual life, the threads in 29 untangled and became the book.

We cannot have all the electrical energy we believe we need. It is more than clear to me that we cannot continue to consume everything we want — and I have been writing that for at least thirty years.

What makes Nell different from the “well-meaning white people” that Mariah despairs about?

I’ll let Nell answer: “Not much. Maybe one of my few saving graces is that I got involved. I didn’t just click on Like.”

I love the way you manage to subtly render the gap between the male and female experience visible. For example, there’s this interaction between Nell and an LA taxi driver at the beginning of the book:

“I got many cousins up there and not one of them ever had a prostitute live with them for free, much less—excuse me, in my country boys are taught not to say crude things to a lady like yourself.”

“Suck their dicks,” Nell thought. Out loud, she said, “Turn here. It’s a short cut.”

There’s an idea being bandied about these days that fiction has become a “woman’s thing.” How would you respond to someone if they told you this was “a woman’s book?”

I’d say, “Hey, you got that right.” And yet, I love the way Monkey, Keno, Danny, Leonard, and the other men came through. I went to my first consciousness-raising group when I was thirty. Consciousness-raising groups were the foundation of the feminism of the ’70s. A bunch of women sat around and talked about their lives as women. There were usually brownies. Sometimes there was wine. There was no whining. We were there to understand what we had in common and what had kept us from uniting with other women.

I remember leaving the first meeting and thinking that the men I knew (radical and otherwise) needed to do exactly the same thing. Over the years, I saw how much damage men did because they didn’t do just that — connect with each other. One of my favorite chapters in the book is when Leonard, the Chemehuevi leader, reaches out to Monkey after the self-thrown shit has hit the fan in Monkey’s life. In many ways, this is a woman’s book for guys.

What are your thoughts on the future of the Native American struggle in the United States?

(Puts head down on desk.) It continues to feel insane to me that Europeans invaded a land filled with intact cultures and decimated them — and that most “white” people don’t get it. I don’t know how any Native American can look at a white person without puking. Given our recent experience in Northern Arizona, in which ten years of legal, political, and boots-on-the-ground activism to stop a local ski resort from making snow with dirty water on the sacred mountains here (sacred to thirteen Southwestern tribes) was thrown in the trash by the Forest Service and three white judges in San Francisco, I can only feel heart-sick. I’m astonished at the perseverance with which indigenous activists fight for the land — of course, they have been doing it far longer than we colonizers have.

You’re involved in environmental activism. Do you share your character’s sense of impending environmental apocalypse? Is it too late? If so, what keeps you fighting?

We have, as Monkey might once have said, screwed the pooch. As he envisions and I write in 29, if we’d started fifty years ago to do what we should have, maybe, maybe the future would be — ah, fuck, I don’t even believe that.

What keeps me fighting is whatever keeps me writing and whatever I feel part of when I’m in the Mojave and in the shadow of the sacred mountains.

In your interview with Superstition Review, you gave some advice to aspiring writers and artists: “Make beauty. Make change. Make trouble for the settled and secure.” Would you say that’s your life mission? Is that what you set out to do with this book?

Bottom-line, I’m an old-time Wobbly (International Workers of the World). I often think that our demos and actions need to be held not at government offices, but on the lawns of the homes of the wealthy. Of course, we’d have to storm their gates to get in.

I recently learned of a true story — I live in a single-wide trailer in Kachina Village, a rural neighborhood south of Flagstaff. The homes here range from beat-up converted travel trailers (caravans) to 5,000-square-foot houses. We adjoin a gated golf mansion fortress called Forest Highlands. A good friend and his wife also live in Kachina Village. Their beloved cat disappeared two months ago. Recently, the cat was found. A woman in Forest Highlands had the cat living in her garage. My friend went to pick up the cat. She insisted on meeting him at the vets and wouldn’t give her name or address. My friend has also noted that she had bleached blonde trophy wife hair and inch-long fingernails. As he was leaving, the woman said to him, “So, she went from the outhouse to the penthouse, I guess.”

From the moment I heard the story, I have not stopped thinking of how to shatter that woman’s illusion that she is safe and secure. The only explosive I can use is my writing.

My missions in writing 29 were two-fold. 1. To write Monkey’s visions. When we were together, I believed — and still believe — that he was the antenna and receiver. I am the scribe. We were — are — both cynical people. That made the visions even more compelling. He was the last person in the world I could have imagined receiving the messages. 2. I wanted to tell the story of the Salt Song Trail and the potential solar farm threat. We are watching too many indigenous cultures be subsumed into the Big Colony. I suspect the fact that my mother’s people had fled religious persecution centuries ago runs deep in my blood. And, as a girl I watched the farm country I lived in be taken over by suburbs — creeks drained, hills leveled, wildlife driven out.

My intentions were only as strong as the story that came through. That’s always the case with the writing. I love this line by Antonio Machado: “Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.”

What are “desert eyes?”

I raised three children by myself. No alimony. No child support. In 1984, when I was almost 45 and my kids were young adults, I drove away from Rochester, NY, to live in Flagstaff, Arizona. I’d been in the Southwest desert twenty years earlier, and been terrified by its hugeness, how the horizon and the earth seemed to be nothing but a void stretching everywhere. A friend had persuaded me to visit the Grand Canyon in 1982. He walked me to the edge with my eyes closed and said, “Open your eyes.” I did. Here is what came next (from my memoir, Solace):

In a heart-jolt of vast aurora rock, I was taken. Amazed. Knowing I knew nothing, and nothing was exactly enough.

I cried every day of the drive back East. It seemed unbearable to return to a world without huge light and mountains rising from hard desert.

From that moment on, I began to write not only from my own life, but from Place. Twenty-three years later, my best friend and I road-tripped on the back roads of the Mojave Desert, and my desert eyes saw everything — saw that not only was there NOT “Nothing out there,” there was everything.

You are a writer for Matador Network and a teacher for MatadorU. I wonder if you have any thoughts for your readers who write?

Read. Read every chance you get — real books, magazines, the backs of ketchup bottles — most essentially, read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.

Write. Write every chance you get — in a battered notebook, on a computer, on a handful of beer coasters. Do not go to college. Do not buy the American Dream. Live out of a bag — not on your parents’ or partner’s dole. Be scared. Be furious. Be unsettled and insecure. Be your own burning wo/man.

* * *

Note: Mary will read and sign at independent bookstores throughout the Southwest in September, October, and November, including at Changing Hands in Tempe, Antigone’s in Tucson, Sundance in Reno, and Peregrine Books in Prescott, AZ. She will also give readings at the Southern Nevada Community College in Vegas, Silver City, New Mexico, and at King’s English in Salt Lake City.

Contact her at Breakthrough Writing for schedule info. You can also purchase her novel here, or contact Martha Shideler (flagcelt@aol.com) at Aradia Bookstore for more information.

30 years as a bike messenger [vid]

At best, a bike messenger is going to be in your life for a grand total of 30 seconds. And that’s only if they’re delivering something directly to you. If you pass them on the street, it’s likelier to be two to five seconds of contact, and at best, the contact will be unremarkable.

In New York City, bike messengers can have a reputation for being slightly insane. And to be fair, you would have to be slightly insane to be a bike messenger in New York City. Bill Meier certainly seems to have that shred of insanity: “If you look at me,” he says, “you are definitely rolling the dice. It’s a 50-50 chance that you’re gonna get me, or I’m gonna fucking kill you. And definitely one of the two is going to happen.”

Meier is 52 years old and has been a bike messenger for 30 years — first in San Francisco, now in New York, where he works for a pizza company. He started biking when he dropped out of the San Francisco Conservatory and hasn’t stopped since. A thin, gaunt man with a bushy beard, Meier has seen some shit, and he tells the filmmakers at No Weather about some of that shit in this 10-minute documentary.

He talks about attacks and tips and divorces and “houselessness” with both a weariness and a sense that he has no plans on ever giving up. “The day I can no longer ride a bike,” he says, “better be the day I’m fucking dead.”

5 lesser-known Thailand adventures

1. Being a faux-pirate / learning to dive with The Junk

The Junk was once a haggard sailboat lugging cargo across the Indian Ocean. Now she’s a luxury liveaboard that cruises the sparkly waters of Southern Thailand. The Junk has even been featured in a number of movies because of its pirate-y appearance and excellent restoration work.

The thing with The Junk is it carries a maximum of 18 people on any given excursion — usually fewer. So you get this massive, authentically renovated sailboat pretty much to yourself and a dozen other like-minded (and therefore awesome) people.

Watch the sunrise from the bow of the boat, spend the day diving in remote and picture-perfect locations, explore reefs and canyons and shipwrecks with just the small team from your boat — no more day-tripping snorkelers choking on water, stomping on coral, or leaving behind cans of Tiger beer. Just you, the group, and the wide Indian Ocean. The crew of The Junk have even perfected a quiet dropoff via a dingy, so as not to scare away fish and sea creatures by pulling the boat up too close to reef sites.

Photo: Author

Finish the day chowing down on the “5-star” Thai and Western cooking, and then watch the sunset as you sip a bev on the sundeck and wonder if life can get any better. It probably can’t.

2. Living in a treehouse

Head to Chiang Mai, but skip the ziplines and fancy cafes and go straight to Doi Saket, outside of the city. Here, you’ll find a world that speaks to your inner child: real, live treehouses in the dense, lush jungle.

It’s called Rabeang Pasak, and it’s a family-run company. The owner, Lee, is an architect, so don’t expect some little makeshift platform; this is a full-on village built on and around the trees.

More than that, the structures are made from gorgeous cuts of wood, with porches, windows, staircases, showers, and ladders, and each is different.

They’re all as beautiful to look at as they are to live in. Some have rooftop patios, others have private pools, while still others overlook waterfalls.

So hike, swim, stroll, and take in the soaring teak forest around you. At the end of the day, crack a cold one on the porch of your tree palace, channel your inner 6-year-old, and proclaim yourself king (or queen) of this jungle.

3. Moto-trekking the highways of Northern Thailand

Photo: KamrenB Photography

One of the highways up in the north of Thailand is known as the “road of 10,000 turns.” If you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle, that line probably just made you drool on your shirt a little bit.

Not only do the highways weave, dip, and carve through mountainous jungles dotted with temples, and slice through valleys full of rice and soy fields, but they also happen to be some of the smoothest roads in the country (not only newer, but with less traffic than those in the south). For anyone with a passion for two wheels and the wind in their face, this is the place to be.

There are a ton of operators that will take you on tours up here, so you never have to worry which way to go at that fork in the road. Tours vary from one to several days, to as much as two weeks — and costs rise accordingly. Multi-day tours include accommodation, and some throw in activities like bungee jumping, massages, elephant visits, and pretty much any other add-on you might want. Two recommended guide companies are Big Bike Tours and Thai Motorcycle Tours. A smaller outfit, but one with a lot of personality, is Smiling Albino.

If you’re not comfortable on a motorcycle and would prefer the saddle of an old-fashioned, human-powered bicycle, check out Tiger Trail Outdoor Adventures, who specialize in responsible tourism and offer one-day bike tours out of Chiang Mai. Or, for a longer cycle tour, try Grasshopper Adventures, who run trips ranging from one to 15 days and cover four categories: road, pioneering (off the beaten bath), family, and photo.

4. Arranging a homestay on a rural tropical island

Photo: Janne Hellsten

The farthest you can get from yolo-ing Millennial tourists is inside the home of a local family. Here you’ll find a whole other world, so far removed from the scenes of Bangkok’s Khao San Road and Ko Pha Ngan’s full moon parties you might wonder if it’s the same country. It is. Get off the Lonely Planet trail and into small rural towns with one road, home-cooked meals like red curry with fresh local crab, and the honor of being welcomed into someone’s home.

There are a lot of companies offering this service — not all are legit. The last thing you want is to sign up for an “authentic” homestay experience only to find out the family is being gypped. Not so authentic. Research is key here.

Andaman Discoveries is a company specializing in community-based tourism on the islands of Southern Thailand — meaning the tours benefit the local communities. They have a strict policy about the fair rotation of families as guests come to stay — no playing favorites, and visitors don’t get to pick their home. This translates to all participating families receiving equal treatment, and the majority of fees go to the families — which means a lot to a household that lives on roughly $6 a day.

Once you’re all set up in your homestay, Andaman Discoveries can facilitate dozens of local excursions and experiences — from cooking classes, to handicraft lessons, to spending a day with the local fishermen. Of course, you also can visit the innumerable beaches, cliffs, parks, and mosques and temples, and go swimming, snorkeling, hiking, and sailing — whatever’s on offer in your new home.

It might not be the craziest adventure you’ve ever heard of, but it’s practically guaranteed you’ll have stories to tell till the day you die about this amazing Thai family who took you in, treated you like a relative, taught you to cook, sew, fish, invited you to their cousin’s huge wedding, and showed you the nooks and crannies of their rural island that would never be found in a guidebook.

5. Going on a photojournalistic jungle trek to a hill tribe village, led by a man who rescues young girls from the sex trade

Photo: Author

Yup, you read that right. Let me introduce a man for the ages: Mickey Choothesa.

Some backstory: Mickey was a photojournalist who covered all sorts of dangerous situations and conflicts around the world. He’s been to over 70 countries and spent time in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia, to name a few hot spots. Then, one day in 1998, Mickey was assigned a story in his home country, Thailand. What Mickey didn’t expect was to see young girls being trafficked and smuggled. While Mickey went on to cover some post-9/11 conflicts, Thailand was on his mind. In 2005, he moved back to his homeland permanently, gave up his still-thriving career as a journalist, and founded an organization called COSA.

Mickey has spent the intervening ten years rescuing young girls from the sex trade, not only through long talks with anyone who’ll listen — from tribal leaders, to local families, to criminals — but also going in undercover and rescuing girls with his bare hands. Mickey has since built two homes for the girls, and while he still goes on rescue missions, the focus has shifted to long-term mental and emotional care, combined with education and safe housing.

Why this story? Well, Mickey’s love for photography never died. So once or twice a year, he leads an epic photography expedition into the hills outside of Chiang Mai, taking teams on foot up to remote hill tribes where many of the girls are trafficked from. You get to document your journey — not only amazing vistas and landscapes but dense jungle, rivers, waterfalls, and hill-tribe life. This trek combines Mickey’s passion for photography with the need to generate income for COSA. It’s win-win. What are you waiting for?

Also — I’m 100% positive Mickey is Rambo. So there’s that.

This post is proudly produced in partnership with the Tourism Authority of Thailand and STA Travel, working together to tell stories of the peoples, places, and cultures that make Thailand special.

7 things small-town life taught me

Photo: Paul Falardeau

I was born and raised in Clarksville, Michigan, a 300-person farm village that felt stuck somewhere between the “golden years” and a leisurely extinction. When I was 19 years old, I packed up my giraffe-print suitcase, boarded a plane with a one-way ticket, and exchanged my small-town life for Los Angeles, California. These are seven things I learned growing up that have helped me survive in the big city.

1. Take what you have and get creative with it.

Growing up, my friends and I constructed epic backyard fortresses. These forts were the talk of the town. “You’re so creative!” was a compliment we often heard, but it wasn’t something I understood or appreciated until years later when I moved to Los Angeles.

To survive in LA, the ability to see the simple things and creatively envision the bigger picture is key. Instead of being discontent with my surroundings, I’ve survived and thrived with city life because I’ve learned how to use the sticks I’ve been dealt to create the reality I want.

2. Gardens don’t grow overnight.

One day my mom got it into her head that she wanted a garden. She constructed, tilled, and planted a behemoth four-acre plot. Gardening in a small town taught me a lot — most notably, that I have an incredible loathing for weeds, but also that anything I want to achieve in life won’t and shouldn’t come instantaneously. Instead of having unrealistic expectations about my career or goals, I know all good things take hard work, dedication, and an immense amount of patience.

3. It pays to keep your nose clean.

Your reputation in a small town is the most important thing you could ever own; it’s very hard to change people’s perceptions of you. In a big city it’s tempting to become a number, to blend into the crowd, to no longer feel the weight of your responsibility to self and others. However, reputation in a big city, I’ve found, is just as important as it is in a small town. You never know who you’ll meet, what they’ll know about you, and how that connection could play out in the future.

4. When it’s time to batten down the hatches, you have to be able to rely on your neighbors.

When I was 10 years old, a record-breaking winter storm hit our town. Our neighbors lost their electricity and heat for weeks, and we even hauled our pet goats into our basement so they wouldn’t freeze to death. Luckily, my family owned a powerful generator, and our house became something of a home base for people in need. At night our living room was lined with sleeping bags, snuggled friends, and the sound of bleating goats from below.

We relied on one another to get through that storm, and I look back on what could’ve been a horrible experience, only to have fond memories of a laughter-filled adventure. When a ‘storm’ hits me in LA, I know I’ll have friends who’ll help me through.

5. It’s better to spend time walking the lawn and picking up rocks than it is to repair your tractor.

As a kid, my favorite chore was mowing the lawn. We had 11 acres, and I could spend hours sitting on our tractor, daydreaming, chopping grass blades and watching them spit across the horizon. In contrast, I despised the work it took to get the lawn ready to mow. Groundhogs would burrow into our lawn, causing dirt and rocks to be displaced onto the surface of our grass. To protect the mower blades from damage, I was instructed to walk around and inspect the lawn before mowing.

To me, this extra step seemed like a waste of time, something my father was telling me to do because he hated me and enjoyed watching me sweat. Instead of complying, I’d simply convince myself to be extra careful — and, inevitably, my daydreams would be interrupted by a boulder collision. This lesson on the importance of diligence has stuck with me through my years of living in the big city.

6. If you’re not taking time to slow down, you’re not really living.

Our bodies, minds, and spirits were never made to work 24/7, and denying ourselves the rest we desperately need in a restless city is a dangerous thing. Small-town folks know what it means to rest. In LA I have to remember to take time to breathe, slow down, and look at the stars — or, at the very least, look out my window and imagine the nearby city lights are stars.

7. If you never allow yourself to find contentment in the moment, you’ll never be able to find joy.

When I decided to move to LA, I was jaded, pompous, and felt unfulfilled by the small town I grew up in. I had an intense drive to see what was beyond the cows, cornfields, and small-town folk. It’s now embarrassing to admit, but my decision to leave — and the few successes I felt following — were enough to give me an arrogance towards the simple life I’d been accustomed to. It was impossible for me to understand why anyone would willingly desire a life that I’d worked so hard to escape.

To me, the opportunities and excitement beyond the small-town lifestyle were limitless, and anyone who voluntarily passed them up was foolish. As I’ve spent more time in the big city, this thought process has radically changed, and, in turn, the further I drift from living the small-town life, the more I see the beauty that life brings.

How to ruin your trip to Italy

Photo: Luca Sartoni

Pay for a group tour.

Whether it’s a day, a week, or more, traveling through Italy in an organized group tour — while certainly with its advantages — is a complete waste of money. Groups are large, lumbering hordes led by frazzled guides rushing through impersonal lectures punctuated by tired tour-guide jokes. Tour groups arrive at major attractions at the busiest times. I know I’ve hit an attraction right if I’m leaving as the tour buses are arriving.

Preferable alternatives to the dreaded group tour include:

Private tour with a local – Your day will be more of a conversation about history, politics, religion, and culture rather than a lecture. Plan the tour together, personalizing sights, eateries, activities, and pace.
Audioguides – Available online (often for free) or at the attraction for a nominal fee. In my experience, audioguides offer great value especially for solo travelers, but can be hit or miss in terms of entertainment value and are not conducive to small-group or family travel.
My personal favorite, “sidling” – First, find a tour group whose leader speaks your language. Second, sidle on up to the group — I recommend an oblique flanking maneuver near the guide — for a quick dose of knowledge as you eavesdrop. Listen discreetly for as long as you’d like, then move on at your own pace. Never worry, another tour group is usually nearby. Pro tip: Excessive sidling can generate a stern look from frazzled tour guides, so spread your sidling out amongst the groups. And don’t ask questions.

Rent a car without GPS.

Hey there, big spender, I see you rented a car in Italy. That must’ve cost a pretty penny, huh? Well, you made the right call. Getting away from the crowds in Italy is best done by car. While a great train system links the major mainland cities, much of sleepy, small-town Italy remains off the rail grid. Even if it’s just for a couple days, rent a car in Italy and go for the places furthest from an autostrada.

But the further you explore, the narrower the roads become, the less frequent the road signs appear, and the faster the drivers go. Be prepared with a GPS system that will suss out the best route, notify you of delays, and be an ever-present, British-accented companion.

Rent that car in a major city.

Well, crap, did I just say the roads were hectic and poorly marked in the countryside? Could they be worse in the city? Save money and a traffic-induced migraine by riding the train to a secondary city like Arezzo rather than Florence, or Viterbo rather than Rome, to pick up your car. Rates will be about the same, but your pickup and dropoff will be easier and faster. More time for sightseeing / wine drinking!

Stick to the major cities.

Italy’s major cities — Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice, etc — are cultural heavyweights and should be on your list. But plan a couple of days for venturing into the countryside. The most tourist-free locales and authentic encounters will happen away from the main event in places like rural Tuscany or Calabria.

Pick a country road or minor town, and go check it out. You’ll encounter cultural sights and rustic restaurants the guidebooks and guided tours can’t / won’t / don’t cover. In a country as densely populated and saturated with tourism as Italy is, it’s surprisingly easy to leave all that behind for a quiet glass of wine in an empty restaurant looking out over a sheep pasture.

Wake up after 6am.

Italy is ruthless to those who sleep in. Wake up early, grab a quick breakfast (you can make up for it at lunch — a far more satisfying meal in Italy), and get to your first sight before it opens. Finish your cappuccino and brioche while admiring the exterior of that amazing church / ruin / museum, then head inside just as the doors open.

Even if it’s only 15 minutes before the hordes invade, those precious minutes in a nearly empty Colosseum or Accademia or Duomo are what make a thoughtfully planned European trip so worthwhile. These early mornings — when security guards are still shuffling to their posts — are the moments you’ll recall long after you’ve returned home, not the afternoon spent sweating your way through throngs of tourists in the Sistine Chapel.

Buy expensive wine.

Everything’s expensive in Italy — hotels, restaurants, transportation. That is, everything except wine, glorious wine. The nectar of the gods can be had readily (it even comes in juice boxes) and affordably. Italy produces expensive wine, the qualities about which I’m sure some wine snob can erudiate, but five euros buys a damn fine bottle.

As price rises, quality does not necessarily correlate. Many higher-priced wines are trading on a brand, label, or — worst of all — a “tasting experience.” At restaurants, do it right by simply asking for the “vino della casa” in red or white. You’ll enjoy a lovely wine, and have plenty of money left over for an after-dinner gelato.

Fail to buy museum passes in advance.

Go ahead, play it fast and loose with the itinerary. You don’t want a reservation or expiration date dictating your travels, right? Well, I hope you like waiting in lines. And when it comes to long, hot, glacially advancing lines, nowhere does it better than Italy.

Most major attractions sell tickets online — do it! Some, like the Uffizi in Florence, even require it. A little foresight goes a long way in an overcrowded Italy. Case in point: After exiting St. Peter’s Basilica (where a monstrous line had developed — we arrived early to an empty St. Peter’s Square and strolled through security sans line) in Vatican City en route to the Vatican Museum, we slammed into a line snaking around the city wall for three blocks. We skipped the whole thing, going straight for the empty reservations entrance where a cheery security guard scanned the ticket I had printed at home weeks earlier, let us in, and informed us with a diabolical laugh that the wait was approaching four hours in the no-reservations line. Ouch.

Neglect the citywide museum passes.

Whether it’s Rome, Milan, Venice, or Florence, Italy’s all about the museum pass. Often good for free or discounted entrance to a plethora of local attractions as well as unlimited public transportation, Italy’s museum passes are a great value and time saver. Even if you don’t visit enough attractions to make it financially worthwhile, you’ll more than make up for it with ticket-less subway travel, line-skipping at major sights, and the ability to quickly pop into museums you’d otherwise bypass.

City passes can be purchased online and at tourist offices (TI) or tobacco outlets (tabacchi). Italy can be crowded and hectic, but a little planning ahead — like buying a museum pass — reduces stress and frees up more time for the important things, like lingering over a cheap bottle of wine.

The paper route is not dead

Photo via Noah Adams for NPR

I REMEMBER GETTING WOKEN UP by the paper route deliverers in my neighborhood; the slam of the heavy newspaper on our stoop was accompanied by the sounds of Metallica, and the revving engine of their Pontiac Grand Am, at four o’clock in the morning. I also remember the day my father canceled his newspaper subscription, after receiving a Kindle for his birthday. The rise of paperless technology, along with Recession cutbacks, led me to believe that the paper route business was pretty much obsolete.

That’s not the case for the town of Carroll, Iowa, where “Eighty percent of The Daily Times Herald‘s papers are delivered by young people, most between the ages 9 and 17.” They receive the same salary as adult deliverers (ten cents per paper), and they take pride in their work. Many of the kids are able to make $100 a month, for a routes that take less than a half hour to complete.

This particular paper is run by a local family, and while their main competition comes from larger, more regional dailies, supporting their community is important to them, as is offering young people the chance to learn about financial independence. Many of the stories are about things that happen to friends and family members of the delivery employees, including school achievements, community events, and announcements.

Maybe I’m nostalgic, but I admire The Daily Times Herald‘s business structure. They aren’t exploiting the kids they employ, they are helping them to learn about earning money, and best practices for working at a business. It’s an excellent example of community sustainability, something which many neighborhoods are sadly losing sight of.

Read more about this cool story at NPR, which includes an audio component.