Surrey is not the garden spot of Canada. At least, I hope it isn’t. There were quite a few homeless people on the main road I took from my last sales visit of the day to the hotel. Also, parts of the town remind me of the car you haven’t washed since before winter even though it is now well into spring. This is in contrast to Regina, which I visited earlier in the month, and I genuinely didn’t recognize the same area I had stayed at when I was there in January. It was sparkly clean and picturesque.
I needed to go for a run. We have been working on the new house on weekends, so my running at home has been restricted. I have also done some random travel, in addition to my normal work travel, and I have more scheduled in the near future, which removes more days from the running calendar, so I just got on the nearest sidewalk and ran the direction opposite of the homeless people, and I came across a school track. There was soccer practice going on, and some kind of running practice, but I kept to the outside lane and it was glorious.
The problem with traveling to Canada is the disruption of ritual. I have been rewatching “The West Wing” on HBO Max, and I am currently in Season 4. In the evenings, in the hotel, when I am all caught up for the night on work, I will watch an episode or two. EXCEPT when I am in Canada, where I can finish the partial episode I started in the U.S. the night before, and then I am banned from watching more episodes. It is, after all, a show about the U.S. Capitol. Canada is clearly jealous that they have no corresponding award-winning show, maybe called, “The North Hallway.”
The other problem is not having a safe data plan for my cell phones, so I shut down the data when I cross over, which disables the mapping app. So now I am navigating like we did back in the day, by signage and compass. On one trip I printed out mapquest directions. Now I screenshot detailed map directions ahead of time. That seems to work okay, until you pass a turn or think you did. Occasionally I will turn on the data on my work phone to recalibrate. And finally, I like to listen to podcasts and music, switching back and forth in the car, but without data, no Apple Music, so it’s all podcasts, all the time. No balance. No bueno.
These are all minor inconveniences, and I am Canada-friendly, I swear. Hockey is one of my favorite sports, I like the socialist policies they have, and I want the option to move there if Trump is not put in prison soon. I don’t particularly like the real winter they have, but I could deal with it if I had to. I actually would prefer if there were no countries, if it were just one big world government, no borders, HBO Max the same everywhere, one big global data plan. Imagine there’s no countries. It’s easy if you can.
An unplanned bonus run. I made a 3-day trip to Saskatoon for a trade show. I flew into Minot Friday, drove to Saskatoon, attended the trade show on Saturday, stayed in Regina Saturday night, then drove back to Minot Sunday to fly home. Then my flight home was cancelled.
I drove to Minot, found a hotel within walking distance of the airport, dropped off my rental car, and then went for a run. I first tried to find a trail around the airport – no luck. There was a sport complex with 8 ballfields right next to the airport, so I ran around the perimeter of each field, inside the fence.
It made for a nice run. Very flat, and the grass was cut relatively low. It looked like there have been some teams running laps around the perimeter as well – you could see a defined trail along the inside of each outfield fence. I was a fair distance from any traffic – if you can call what Minot has traffic. It was a sunny, breezy, beautiful North Dakota day.
North Dakota makes for nice driving, at least the part from Minot to the North Portal border crossing. Rolling grasslands, two-lane county roads, some rivers and wetlands, sunflower fields – if all of my trips were through that type of country, at this time of year, I would be content.
I enjoy being around ballfields, especially empty ones with no over-involved parents present. After my run, I went into my Dropbox account and found some documents I wrote for a school district baseball program several years ago. I think I will rework the plan and submit it to the local school district where I now live – see if it catches anyone’s attention.
Parents are by far the worst part of a youth sports program. When I was little, of course my parents came to the baseball games I participated in, and parents coached the teams and ran the leagues. When I went to middle school, however, the school had teams, and parents were nowhere to be found. Our games were right after school – all the parents were at work.
Our coach was a local teacher who did not have a kid playing. The only people at the games were a few cute girls from school. It was a dream. Everyone who went out for the team made the team. We had fun, and we got better at the game, and we did not play year-round baseball. When the season was over, we had summer break and went out to the fields to pick strawberries.
My youngest son played organized baseball from kindergarten to seventh grade. He had no opportunity to play school ball. He gave it up before eighth grade season started – it wasn’t fun for him. It hadn’t been since third grade. I told him about my experience playing school ball. His reaction: “It sounds like a dream!” That was about the saddest thing I every heard him say about baseball. It hadn’t been a dream for me, but it was a dream for him that he would never experience.
I might already have an entry for Sioux City, IA. I know I have stayed here before, in the same hotel downtown, and ate at the same hipster restaurant right next door, and I think ordered the same jambalaya both times. I did not run on the Perry Creek Trail the first time I was here – I believe it was late winter and I did not run while in town.
The trail started about four blocks from the hotel, which was just far enough to be asked for help by a homeless couple. I had nothing but my room key, so I was no help. The trail started along railroad tracks – nothing better than the aroma of creosote in your lungs at the start of a long run.
The trail crossed Perry Creek a couple of times, and dove under cross streets at most intersections. I ran along unpaved connecting sections of the dike on either side of the creek to stay off the concrete. This led to unplanned excursions through empty fields and old neighborhoods and fast food parking lots.
When I started running regularly about 5 years ago, I started at 25 minutes and worked my way to longer run times gradually. I had real trouble running in the later afternoons and evenings after work. My late morning weekend runs were always much easier, so I started running longer times on weekends. I can’t remember what the split was – maybe 40-30. Every day that I ran the full time, I would add a few seconds to the next day’s run, but one goal I had was to equalize my weekday and weekend run times. Eventually I settled on adding 4 seconds to my weekday time and 1.5 seconds to my weekend time after a longer weekend run, and adding 3 seconds to my weekday time and 1 second to my weekend time after a weekday run.. Any day that I did not run, I would subtract 0.5 second from both. If I did a run that was less than full time, I would prorate the increase accordingly. If I walked the full run time, I would not subtract the 0.5 second from both times for not running.
I know – complicated. In the week before I left Utah, on my second-to-last run there, my weekday and weekend times coincided. My weekday time caught up with my weekend time. I now have one run time for whatever day it is. If I run my full time, I add 2 seconds to the next day. If I miss a day, I subtract the 0.5 second. The walking and partial run modifications will stay the same. It is still easier for me to run late mornings, but not much more.
I know that adding 2 seconds a day is a very small amount, and that it takes months to increase my run times meaningfully, but hey, I am almost up to an hour, and for me it is quality first, quantity second. I have never thought that running was fun, but it is a ritual for me now. I run the way I want to – no stretching or warm-up. Rest days are good, but I feel restless when I don’t run. When I am outside, it feels strange to walk somewhere and natural to run.
The best part of the run for me is still when I stop, but there are moments when I feel exhilaration at picking up the pace or breathing long, deep breaths. I plan to stick with it as long as my body and brain will let me.
I have been dreading this run for nearly a year – my last run in Santaquin. The blue dot on the photo above was our home for nearly a year. My wife, youngest son, and I moved in with our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter in late September, 2021. We all moved out in August. My son is headed to college in Corvallis, OR. Our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter moved to Rochester, NY. And now my wife and I have a house in Wyoming, MI.
It took me awhile to find my “home” run after we moved to Utah. I ran on the neighborhood sidewalks at first. I tried some trails up on the hill above the neighborhood. In the winter I ran at a local high school track. My home track in Oregon had been the middle school near our home. For some reason they chained the gates at the track I was using in Payson, so I settled on a loop around some wetlands across the railroads tracks from our house.
To get to the loop, I would run through the neighborhood, past the church to the main drive, then cut around the north end of the development on an access road that ran to the railroad tracks. I would cut across the tracks where goats and ATVs crossed, and then up and onto a road that ran north-south along the tracks on top of a dike.
At the south end of the wetlands, a road forked off to the east and ran around the south and east end of the wetlands. This was the easiest part of the run, because the ground was soft and relatively rock-free. The dike road had a lot of large rocks that could turn an ankle or bruise the bottom of your foot. The soft road was lower, so the south end was subject to flooding in the spring as the waters in the small lake rose, and my run would get wider and wider to stay out of the mud.
On the east side, the road snaked around a quarry, and then wound through some wonderful trees and bushes that were aromatic and cool. In the spring and early summer, hundreds of dragonflies would come out of the bushes and fly along with me, new ones joining in as others peeled off and returned to their shelter.
At the north end was a gravel road that was hard and dusty and would take me back to the railroad tracks. The loop was about a mile and a quarter. When my running paced peaked in early spring, I could get to the loop and make it three full times around in my 54-56 minute run + kick. I did some Prefontaine circuits on a few runs, with a first loop around 19 minutes, and second loop around 18 minutes, and a third loop around 17 minutes. I had been working my way back to that pace in August.
Occasionally I would have to step aside for a motorcycle or ATV, but I didn’t mind. They kept the loop flat and unfettered by vegetation. There is always room for shared use. A local goat herd sometimes would be feeding, tended by a goatherder in an orange vest. Last fall I saw the same feral cat a few times, with cockleburrs stuck in his fur. I never saw any deer, though I sometimes saw tracks. The geese and ducks were in and around the lake all spring and summer. I saw nests of eggs in spring, followed by families of mother and baby geese. I saw a few snakes, and evidence of more in the dust of the road.
I have been dreading this run because it would be my last, signifying a separation from my daughter and granddaughter. A few nights before this run, my wife and I drove them to the airport, where they embarked on a flight to Rochester, with a connection in Detroit, to meet our son-in-law, who had driven with the dog a few days earlier.
Three generations in one house was not all wine and roses. Some days it was rockier than the dike road. I don’t mind running through the rocks. It teaches you agility and balance. Yes, it can be painful, but you come through it feeling like you just had an adventure, and one with a little bit more variety than a high school track.
I was on the road a lot, and I was never at home for more than two weeks at a time, so I guess I had less opportunity to get on anyone’s nerves, but I loved sharing a house with everyone. I loved seeing my daughter and my granddaughter every day. I knew almost as soon as we moved there that parting from them would be one of the saddest days of my life.
Being away from my kids has been the worst part of being a parent, by far. My older son now lives in North Carolina, and when we moved away from Oregon and our old home, we left him to return to college to finish up his final term, and that was heartbreaking. A few weeks before this last move, we drove the youngest back to Oregon to stay with friends until school starts later this month, and that was heartbreaking. And then watching my girl and her girl go through airport security and disappear into the terminal – well, there aren’t enough wetlands loops in the world to erase that memory.
I feel very lucky to have gotten to spend so much time with our granddaughter this past year. Being with her, playing with her, holding her, watching her, laughing with her, fearing for her safety – all of it has flooded me with memories of our daughter as a one-year-old. I was not the type of guy who held babies. Having kids really changed my perspective on life, in the best ways possible. Taking care of a baby and a toddler is hard work, but man is it rewarding.
When you exercise, you get sore. When you lift weights, your muscles grow. How does that happen? I do not know all of the physiological details, but what I have been told is that small fibers in the muscle break and then heal. That is how the muscle grows bigger and stronger. It is painful, but the result makes it worth it.
Maybe heartbreak works in the same way. Why does my heart hurt right now? Because I have been exercising it. What is that exercise doing? It is breaking little fibers in my heart, so that they can heal and make the muscle bigger and stronger. Well, maybe just stronger – we do not need an enlarged heart.
I know I will see my daughter and my granddaughter again someday, probably someday soon. I know I will see my sons again as well. My wife and I are going to have a blast in our new home, in a new city, in a new chapter of our lives together. I am not going to have all of them together in the same home except for a few holidays and maybe some family vacations. That is heartbreaking to me. But I knew this day was coming. I was dreading it, and for good reason.
I just had no idea how much harder it was going to be after I got to be with my granddaughter, day-in day-out, reviving that protective instinct that I’ve been able to relax a little as our kids grew up and became relatively self-sufficient. I really had come to look forward to that early morning greeting in the kitchen, sharing my food with her, making goofy faces, chasing her around the island counter, sitting by her on the floor to read books or watch TV, helping her terrorize the cats, and all the fun stuff we did together all carefree like it was going to last forever.
What a great year we had, Santaquin! I am always going to remember you as the home where I got to live with my first grandchild and where I got to run with the dragonflies.
One last run on the old home turf before we make the long drive back to Utah, to pack up our worldly belongings to move to Michigan. We stayed the last two nights at our good friends’ Debbie and Dennis, where we enjoyed wonderful food, wine, beer, and spirits, as well as fun and invigorating conversation. My wife has been saying that she does not miss the place where we once lived, but she misses the people.
Jenne Butte is one of the several wooded cinder cones between Mt. Hood and Downtown Portland. It has no maintained trails, which means it has less foot traffic than other local buttes, like nearby Rocky Butte. The locals have their own trails, from one street to another, and they made for excellent running on a warm sunny day. I did have a brush with some stinging nettles, though, which gave me a boost.
The slopes were steep, which made for some great uphill running. I tried a few sidetrails, which did not work out. I came across one local who was sitting in some kind of self-designed sanctuary, partaking of the legal weed you can enjoy in Oregon. I suppose I was just part of the trip.
I will miss our friends in Oregon also, although we have been gone nearly a year and it does not feel like I have seen most of them much less than normal, because I have been back to Oregon three times since we moved to Utah. I will miss some things about Oregon – the beer and the Coast Range, mostly – but not our old house. We picked up some kitchen stuff we left there when we moved, and it definitely did not arouse sentimental memories, at least the garage didn’t. I doubt that we are as attached to our places and our possessions as we think we are.
Oregon is certainly picturesque. Having driven so much of the country, as well as some of Western Canada, the past 15 months, I was struck by the beauty of the Columbia Gorge as we left town Saturday morning on our way back to Utah. The Gorge is truly a special place, and I have driven through it many times, but you get a better sense of how majestic it is when you compare it to other regions.
For the next few weeks, we will be packing and moving, which is sheer turmoil. I would just as soon pay someone to do all of it, but that is beyond our budget. We are better prepared for this move than the last one, and we survived that, so we will get through this one as well. My running rituals will be disrupted, but I will fit it in when I can.
Back in the Hood ‘hood one last (?) time. Stayed at the Quirke’s in the Highland neighborhood. Butler Creek was just a couple of blocks away. I found the trail (non-paved) that snakes along the creek and ran it down to the Springwater Trail and back up. Beautiful run. It was cool, and the terrain was varied. Some good inclines, which were challenging both ways.
I was pleasantly surprised by the green space in this neighborhood, which I was aware of but had never explored. There were a couple of pond/wetlands, and some offshoot trails, and one playground. I saw almost no trash, which is a definite plus. Even down by Springwater, there were no homeless encampments or drug droppings, which I was half-expecting.
It you have been to Portland in the past few years, you know there are a lot of homeless people with tents and camps on public property. It is all through the city. Areas that were once popular walking trails now have old cars and encampments on them. City sidewalks around parks are semi-permanent housing for the homeless. Admittedly, it is still no picnic for the homeless, but I imagine it is somewhat stressful for homeowners and business owners as well.
Interestingly, we watched the new George Carlin documentary with our friends Debbie and Dennis, whose house we stayed at two nights at the end of our visit to Oregon, and homelessness is one of the issues Carlin included in his somewhat searing criticism of American society and culture. In particular, I was struck by his recognition of the NIMBY phenomenon – Not In My Back Yard.
I felt a little sheepish when I heard the NIMBY declaration, because I have had conversations with other middle-class white folks about how awful the homeless problem is, but I think my perspective is that it is awful for all of us who have to drive by, maybe walk by, certainly avoid it, not that it is awful for the homeless. I find myself sympathizing with the homeowner who has human feces in his yard, rather than the person doing the dumping. Isn’t sheepish an interesting word? Am I feeling sheepish because I am lost in the flock?
I actually kind of liked Carlin’s partial solution – let them live on golf courses. I have a set of golf clubs. I was planning to get back into the game after a few years of non-golf, but I would be willing to sacrifice it. At least the public golf courses – they are already owned by the municipality. I doubt that there is one overriding solution that will work permanently to solve the homeless “problem,” but a proper living space is very likely one piece of the puzzle. Why not golf courses?
There are so many adjacent related issues to homelessness in need of creative attention. I imagine there are some worthwhile ideas out there not being given ample support. Will I be the person who picks up a torch and carries it? Other than this blog post, not likely. I do feel, however, that I need to think about it more thoroughly. It is easy to feel hopeless, as Carlin often did, about the shitshow our society/culture has become.
And it is also easy, for me at least, to acknowledge that the planet will be fine in the long run – humans will flame out and take thousands of species with them, and the planet will go on without us. That understanding is really tough, though, when you know you will leave kids and grandkids behind when you go.
Back in our old digs, spent 2 nights at my brother’s house, so I made do with a suburban neighborhood run. The first day I ran down a main street, found a side trail, and did back-and-forths on the trail to stay away from the carbon monoxide. Day 2 I looked more closely at the map and found a nice paved trail that ran through some wetlands and a big wooded park.
Our visit was many-fold. Our youngest is starting college at Oregon State next month, so we came back for orientation, and to move him temporarily in with a family in our hometown. Our middle child left his car here last year when we moved to Utah and gave him a newer car, so the old car now belongs to the young one, so he can move himself to school from his temporary abode. I showed him how to check the oil, how to add oil, and how to replace a head lamp. I also showed him where the power steering fluid reservoir is. He found the windshield wiper fluid reservoir all on his own.
We also helped clean out my mom’s house. She moved into assisted living last month, and we are renting out her house to help pay for that. My four siblings and various next generationers were on-hand for the separation of belongings into take-it-it’s-yours/garage sale/dumpster. We also visited my mom in her new fancy apartment, which she likes in spite of the fact that 6 weeks ago she said she’d rather die than go into assisted living.
And, finally, we gathered some belongings from our old house to take back with us. Our Suburban is full to the ceiling right now with kitchenware and various sundries. When we get back to Utah, we will be packing for our move to Grand Rapids.
We did not want to move to Grand Rapids. We have been living with our daughter, her husband, and our granddaughter. They are selling their house and moving to Rochester, NY. Our plan was to find a house near to them – our first choice was Canandaigua. Then my work said I couldn’t live there because my sales region does not include NY. What a fun day that was when I found out!
We looked at Minnesota, Wisconsin, and MIchigan, and finally settled on Grand Rapids. We looked for houses for about 3 weeks before we found one. Compared to Oregon and Utah, this house is a bargain. It is much roomier than our old house in Oregon, which we are renting to friends (which is why we still have stuff there). And, as it turns out, our nephew is starting college next month in Grand Rapids. So we will not really be empty-nesters.
I hope this is the last time we will move, at least for awhile. Our kids will be spread out – one in Oregon, one in North Carolina, one in New York, with us in the “middle.” My wife has been philosophically opposed to living in the “middle,” but now we will try to enrich the middle with our liberal ways.
Turns out I don’t miss Oregon, other than elk hunting. Our old neighborhood is less-than-desirable, and we are contributing to that by making our house a rental. The homeless problem is worse here than anywhere else I have seen, and I have seen many places in the last 15 months. The saving grace is the beer, but other parts of the country are catching up on that. There is a small brewery less than a mile from our new house. That will be one of my first visits when we get there, before our containers of stuff arrive.
I actually wandered onto the blue, orange, yellow, and pink trails, not just the red, though I spent most of my time on the red trail. There were some switches and road stretches that confused me at first, as well as some muddy spots that I avoided and circumnavigated. Once I got a little off-track, the overall distance of the red trail was not feasible, so that contributed as well.
Some of these trails were not ideal for running. There were tree roots and embankments and slippery old wood stairs, and it was shaded enough that I ran without my sunglasses on most of the way to avoid disaster. Again, though, the tree canopy was a godsend, as it cut about 10 degrees off the hot and muggy temperature.
The park was less than 3 miles from the hotel I was staying at, which was ideal, and there was no one at the gate to collect the daily fee, which was more ideal, because I brought only my license and hotel room key with me. I smiled at the honor box on my way past – isn’t a smile priceless?
The map makes it look like the trail has you running through the middle of the lake. I made sure to get to this section, and it did not disappoint. There was a strip of land just wider than the trail running all the way across the lake. Spectacular. There were a few people out there fishing or just enjoying the day – it was a hike to get that far, so not many people.
Indianapolis, in general, does not impress me. The focus on car racing is just one example – I drove by the Speedway Baptist Church between sales calls. I just don’t see Jesus spending a lot of time at the track when he returns. A sign at the city limits proclaimed that the city was the “Home of the 2021 NCAA Basketball Tournament.” Is that really sign-worthy?
Although I had a lot of starts and stops, I had a good run. I perspired more than normal. I hung up my running clothes to dry, and in the morning my t-shirt was still damp. All of the running obstacles and elevation gains was good balance work. I felt my brain working with my body, which is the beauty of trail-running. Cast of the asphalt. Follow the trail.
Hot and muggy, but this was a great trail. A little too long to make the full loop, so I ran out-and-back to the west about a third of the way. Maybe 8 hikers on the loop trail total. No pavement other than an occasional stream bridge. Tree canopy cooled it down several degrees. Elevation changes made it more challenging and varied.
There were a bunch of people walking stairs up to a pagoda from the parking lot. It looked like some sort of ritual ceremony that involved extensive perspiration. There are not many hills in Illinois, so I suppose you have the ornament the steep ones with a pagoda, even if they are only a couple hundred feet.
Summer in the mideast is a strange affair. Hot and muggy can be followed by very scary thunderstorms. I will have to adjust to this, plus the absence of mountains like the one I look at every day from our home in Utah, when we move to Grand Rapids in a month. I worry, because so much of Wisconsin/Illinois/Indiana/Michigan feels like it is below the groundwater level even when it is not raining. I wonder if that is why this place was called Sag Valley.
I am looking forward to less flying. This past year, I have flown into either Chicago or Detroit 10 times. No more. The 4 states around Lake Michigan will all be driving trips now. I will fly to Minneapolis for Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota/Iowa. I will fly to Denver for Wyoming/Montana/Idaho/Utah. I can fly direct from Grand Rapids to both. Flying is bad for everyone.
I will miss the beauty of Utah. I will miss sharing a home with my granddaughter and my daughter (and even my son-in-law). I will miss my waterlands trail across the railroad tracks with the hundreds of dragonflies that hatch in the early summer. I will miss the big clear night sky.
I am looking forward to living back in a city, with quick access to the airport and to other points of interest. I am looking forward to learning where the best brewpubs and coffee joints are. I am looking forward to finding a new trail for my home trail, or maybe returning to a junior high track, like I ran in Oregon for 5+ years. I am looking forward to exploring the eastern half of the country, and venturing up to Ontario and Quebec. I am looking forward to visiting my granddaughter and my daughter (and even my son-in-law) in their new home in NY, and to visiting my son in his new home in NC, and to checking up on our other son back in Oregon when I can.
We learned a lot when we moved from Oregon to Utah last year, like the work of moving sucks. We will do better this time. We found a great house for much less than we would have found in Utah or Oregon. It was tough to find a house remotely, but we did it efficiently and effectively. My better half, of course, deserves the credit for driving that project.
I will come back to this trail as my running times get longer, and I will do the full loop. I might even run up to the pagoda, raise my fists, and run in place in slow motion.
Morsches Park Trails; Running Time 56:06 + 8:20 bonus time
This trail system turned out to be not ideal. There was the gnarled network of dirt trails, but they are mountain bike trails, so running is a hazard. I did see one mountain biker, but he was on an adjacent circuit, and we did not meet. There were also some paved trails, but the whole complex straddles an interstate, so there is the pollution factor.
I ran as far as I could north of the interstate, and then there was a gate, with a grassy old road running along a canal, so I just kept going. It turned out to be the Blue River, not a canal, and it is suspiciously straight. I ran mile or so out, then turned around. I took a nice photo of a cornfield at the turnaround spot.
I got back to the park, jumped onto one of the mountain bike trails, and I was winding my way through the forest when I checked my fitbelt to make sure I had my hotel room card key, which I did not. Had it fallen out when I took out my phone for a photo? Had I left it on the carseat? I checked where I took a photo of a fountain in the park. Then I ran back out to my river trail and checked where I took photos of the trail and the river – no card. Where else had I taken a photo? Oh, yes, at the cornfield turnaround point. So I ran all the way out there – no card. It was lost.
The cornfield turnaround was my furthest point away from the vehicle – hence the 8:20 bonus time on my run. Of course, they just gave me a new card at the front desk, though I first asked for room 207 when I was in 217. I checked my phone – I had taken a photo of the room number when I left. Memory is fallible. Photos are evidence.
When the Russians invaded Ukraine, it seemed to me that the outcry here in the U.S. was more pronounced than one might have expected. Maybe it was the media I see that accentuated it. I kept hearing references to it on various podcasts I subscribe to. Yes, it was a terrible thing. But was it more terrible than other acts of war that have happened in recent years? Was it that much worse?
I ask the questions because I genuinely do not know. Then I heard a podcast about how Ukrainian refugees were initially channeled through Tijuana to enter the U.S. I am not sure if this happened organically, or if it was orchestrated, but initially they could not enter the U.S. directly. The surprising part was that the U.S. set up a special, separate processing point just for these refugees, and the average processing time was one day. Now, there are Mexican citizens seeking asylum due to death threats from cartels who have been waiting to get in for more than a year. Somehow, when the European refugees needed in, we activated a peculiar urgency.
I do not begrudge the Ukrainians refugees the favoritism they were shown, but here is an idea: let’s make them all favorites. That’s our new favorite – everyone who needs help – a place to live and work and share their stories.
Don't Make It a Habit. Make It a Ritual. 