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My First Big Story for HuffPost
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t planning to write today.
I was going to bag it.
In fact, I just went up the hill for a little walk, planning to come down and write a chapter for my novel.
(I got one in yesterday, as it had been a few weeks.)
Little did I know, but my phone dinged, and my son, texting from High School, LMK that my first major story with HuffPost had dropped.
And indeed it had.
I got a screenshot from a 15 year old, because I was using exercise, sunshine, and blue sky to juice my creativity.
From Theo’s school computer. Instead, I had to pivot to promotion-mode, and drop the news on FB, Twitter and IG.
Hopefully, I’ll rally, and still get that chapter in.
But I’ve been working on this story since August, so today is a big day indeed.
One day, I’ll share more details, and images.
Because my time at Wild West City was both fascinating, and dense.
Today, though, is all about the story we told at HuffPost, using photographs and good-old-fashioned writing.
No video or audio.
(Not that I have anything against those media. I love them too.)
It all began when I learned of Wild West City’s existence, randomly, because I clicked on Larry Storch’s obituary in the NYT.
(Then I called my cousin Jordan, b/c I knew he’d remember “F Troop,” from those god-awful reruns. And so he did.)
I guess I chose to write this post because I’m buzzing, finally seeing something that took so much work come to fruition.
Will the world like it?
Will it register as a blip in the Great Internet Content Machine?
Stay tuned.
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Make America Mexico Again
Quick one today.
I was just out walking the dogs, on a sunny-blue-sky morning.
Man, does good weather make a difference.
I got to thinking, and my mind wandered to my trip to Amsterdam, in late February 2020.
Hotel Room View, Feb 2020 I was there to supervise publication of my book, and Covid was making its initial march across the globe.
So little was known.
This was two to three weeks before global lockdowns began.
Each time I came back to my hotel room, I carefully took off my exterior clothing, and left it by the door.
Then, I washed my hands furiously.
Every time.
Yet as I walked the streets and enjoyed myself, I’d stop into crowded coffee shops, and smoke weed in the company of strangers.
Inside a coffee shop. We were pressed together, sharing air in small spaces, which was infinitely more dangerous than anything on my hands or clothing.
Within a month, people were wiping down their mail with bleach, but going into crowded grocery stores without masks on.
Like Rummy once said, it’s the unknown unknowns that get you.
However, when you think about it, every day we live with a fraction of the information available to the world.
Even the smartest of us knows nothing, compared to all there is to know.
Much less all the things that nobody knows?
I was thinking about this the other day too, after Theo and I drove down our dirt road, returning from town.
A huge red-tailed hawk swooped into a neighbor’s field, and then rose with a snake in its mouth.
Like, right in front of us!
We watched the bird land on a tree branch, up above, with the snake dangling down.
Theo said, “Make America Mexico Again,” and I laughed so hard.
It’s a brilliant joke.
As Mexico City’s founding was based on the story that Aztecs, heading down from Northern Mexico, found an Eagle with a snake in its mouth, sitting on a cactus, and thereby founded Tenochtitlan.
Mexico’s Coat of Arms. (Image courtesy of Militarybest.com) We live in a part of America that was Mexico, up until 1846.
Little did my neighbors’ ancestors know a tide was coming, back then, which would change everything about the context of their lives.
Seriously: who the fuck knew the country they lived in would change, based upon the whims of some greedy politicians?
Or that my son and I would be living on the land, nearly 200 years later?
Driving home the other morning, with the light so crazy over the mesa. Let’s end this one here:
Life is big and complicated.
We don’t know how it will turn out.
So don’t be afraid to take a chance, now and again.
Live a little.
Catch you next time.
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The Best Fried Chicken I’ve Ever Had
More food talk today.
I’m currently watching some deer bound through the field, right this second, and hope they all make it through the day alive.
The dogs scavenged some coyote kill yesterday, a deer relative, and then took turns waking up during the night, barking, to eat fresh meat.
(No fun for the human sleepers, I assure you.)
Not two minutes ago, I was stretching in the sun.
Yes, the sun is finally back! Though it was 13 degrees F when I took Theo to school this morning, so the longest Winter ever hasn’t given up the ghost quite yet.
Like I said, I was stretching, and realized that part of the deal with a blog is, you write. Even if you don’t exactly feel like writing, you have to keep up the habit.
“What would I like to write about,” I asked myself?
“What won’t feel like work, and can be brief?”
I realized: The Chicken.
I’ll have more to say about Oklahoma in the future, as I did see things in my time in Tulsa.
They eat a lot of meat there, as you might imagine.
And people are large.
So I was excited to notice a burger joint, right off the highway, South of the city, that had a VERY full parking lot.
And JUST the right look.
Established 1975.
This place, I thought to myself, will have great food.
I was met by a nice waitress, with black hair, who assured me I’d found a great spot.
I sat down, and she walked me through their specialties.
The best burgers in OK, with a mix of beef and pork sausage. Those could be covered with all sorts of things, like cheese, but especially chili.
They were known for their chili, and even did it Cincinnati style, over pasta.
(Or over burgers, as I said.)
Their chicken was also legendary, she told me.
I would not be making any mistakes if I ordered fried chicken.
Then she left me to my thoughts.
Having already partaken in biscuits and gravy, both mornings, at the Holiday Inn Express buffet, (not a lot, but still,) my body rebelled against the idea of beef, pork, and cheese.
In any combination.
Chicken sounded possible.
I noticed their basket, with house-cut, bite-sized, fried chicken nuggets and fries.
One option included jalapeños, which was confusing.
The nice waitress confirmed it meant fried jalapeño slices, along with the chicken and fries.
All together.
Tutto insieme.
She said she liked to order it that way.
Good enough for me.
And to save you suspense, it was easily the best fried chicken basket I’ve ever eaten.
Perfect food.
The chicken was so well seasoned, the fries the best you’ll get, but the heat of the jalapeños, enough to cut the richness of each bite of chicken… sublime.
They offered an array of sauce choices, and the BBQ they gave me was dope.
That sweetness, in with the heat, saltiness, umami, fried goodness…
Probably some of the best food I’ve eaten in a while.
Period.
That I packed up half and ate it at the airport, for dinner, made it the perfect travel-day food too.
If you are ever in Oklahoma, check it out.
Ron’s Hamburgers & Chili
Four Stars out of Four
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How to Make Great Pizza
It’s healthy to express our creativity in different ways.
Frankly, that’s one of my favorite parts of the creative process: it only gets stale if you let it.
Today, for example, it was a bit harder to push myself to write, as I’ve been in photographer-mode since my big trip last week.
All of the logistics, and planning that go into making a shoot successful, plus the travel, and then the actual photography, it’s quite energy intensive.
Didn’t leave a lot of spare room to think about blogging.
I guess all those intense feelings had outlets, so I’m mostly left with tired.
That said, I’ve got a family to feed, and cooking is one of my favorite forms of creative expression.
I hinted on IG a few weeks ago this post might be coming, so I’m going to share with you the basic precepts of how to make great pizza.
(B/c I busted it out last night.)
Heads up: it does require certain equipment, and lots of trial and error.
I can’t help you with amounts, (much,) because my recipe is all about eyeballing things.
But I can share ingredients, steps, and know-how.
The pizza can be broken down into four main categories: The dough, the sauce, the cheese, and the tech.
I didn’t plan to make pizza, so no fresh basil in the house. The Dough
To start on the dough, pour what is probably something like 3 cups of very warm water into a mixing bowl.
Add 1.5 Tb of yeast, and 1.5 Tb of sugar, stir them, and leave them to sit for a few minutes.
Then keep adding flour until the entire mix gets tacky, and then dry to the touch.
I like to use a mixture of AP flour, bread flour, and a bit of whole wheat flour.
This is also the part where you add a nice bit of salt, and a healthy few glugs of extra virgin olive oil.
Knead it a bit, cover the bowl with a kitchen towel, and leave it for an hour.
Then, punch it down, and repeat the process as many times as you’d like, before cooking. (Meaning, leave it for an hour, punch it down, and then re-knead, adding extra flour as necessary.)
The Sauce
Basic rule of thumb here is that the dough always robs the sauce of some flavor, so make your pizza sauce flavorful as fuck.
I use Cento crushed tomatoes, and throw them in the pan, (with half a can of water,) after I caramelize garlic.
My regular ingredients are sugar, fresh squeezed lime juice, Mexican oregano, chopped fresh tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and chile oil. Plus fresh basil, if you have it. And lately, I’ve taken to adding some tomato paste, and occasionally Kalamata olives.
Go for big flavor, and balance.
The Cheese
I like a mix of Galbani dry mozzarella, which I shred, and packaged fresh mozzarella, which I slice/chop.
If you have Reggiano Parmesan, or Pecorino Romano, go for it. Good ricotta makes a nice topping too.
But if you have the combination of high-end dry and fresh mozzarella, you’re good to go.
The Tech
I have a convection oven that goes up to 550, and this helps. As does a pizza stone, on which I place my pizza pan.
It’s stainless steel, but with air holes, so the heat permeates the pan more easily.
Spray-on olive oil is great for coating the bottom of the pan, and I use a huge, wooden pizza paddle to hold and serve the pizza, once it’s out of the oven.
Bringing it all together
Last night, I tried rolling the dough extra thin, having added more olive oil, and it worked well.
But the process is kind of intuitive.
Roll out the dough, (and throw it around, if you can,) then spoon on the sauce, add the cheese, and chuck it in the oven.
I like to spin it in the oven once, (with tongs,) to help cook evenly.
Then remove from the oven, let it sit for at least 5 minutes, for the cheese to congeal, and slice it up.
Enjoy!
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Stay Open, and Good Things Can Happen
Hi, everyone.
I haven’t forgotten you.
I know it’s the biggest gap between weekday posts, (since I launched the blog,) but there’s a good reason for it.
Finally, some good news!
I’m currently in Tulsa, OK, for the biggest photo assignment of my career.
Something I’d been working on for months finally came to fruition!
While I’ve obviously used Sunshine and Olly to help process my pain, and understand the world, I don’t want to suggest I see the world through gray-colored glasses.
Quite the opposite!
I’m a hopeful, optimistic, positive person.
Which is why I’ve been fighting so hard to overcome trauma, and find more joy for my family.
I can’t share details about the shoot, but the subject that brought me to Tulsa is about as positive as it gets.
The best of the best.
So of course I (randomly) end up staying in the heart of Greenwood, the historic Black Wall Street district that was attacked in the worse Race Massacre this country has seen.
(Beyond what America did to its indigenous population, obviously.)
There are a heap of fancy lofts across the street from the Black Wall St History Center
I don’t want to turn a positive piece into a downer.
Really, I don’t.
The message today is that good things CAN happen, if you persist, stay open, and keep spreading the positive energy.
Look for ways to support others, as you seek support yourself.
There is still one block left, featuring Wanda J’s Soul Food restaurant, and some merch shops. 
That’s why I’m here.
But since I can also report that a baseball/soccer stadium sponsored by a casino, and a host of fancy lofts, were built upon stolen Black land, because I’ve now seen it with my own eyes?
Gotta share that too.
Catch you next week, when I’ll be back home and settled again.
Stay cool out there!
These days, the neighborhood is bordered by highways, and a freight train line.
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Expectations Are The Worst
Expectations are a killer.
I’m not the first to theorize this, but I do want to talk about it briefly today.
It’s a concept most of us take for granted, yet in my experience, is often a major driver of misery and suffering.
To expect something is to believe it will or should be so.
Therefore, an expectation exists as a projection of our imagination.
Our wants, needs, and desires.
And as figments of our mind, they serve to reassure us how things will, or should, turn out.
I expect the Xi-Putin friendship will not go well for anyone. (Image courtesy of NPR) Like my article about Hollywood’s obsession with the Deus ex machina, we’re talking about a narrative that we’re sold, absorb, and then base our behavior accordingly.
(Though far too often, exceptions hit us on a subconscious level.)
For example, after 18 years of living in Taos, I came to expect a certain amount of good weather.
We’re talking about day after day of deep blue skies, and lots of gorgeous sun.
As did most of the long-time residents here.
So this 5-month-winter, with dismal light, and day after day of flat, gray skies, has not just cut back the weather people use for “happiness,” but it’s also hit people in the Climate Change wound.
Proving such things are SO FAR out of a person’s control is distressing.
Pivoting to politics, we could talk about the anger people feel, because they expected to have good jobs, a social safety net, or a government that would protect them from things like artificial intelligence, monopolistic corporations, and deadly fentanyl.
The monopoly guy from Ace Ventura 2 says, “Hello!” Hard times lead people to get extra-upset, not just because life is tough, but because they’re super-disappointed things didn’t work out like they were supposed to.
Like we expected they would.
Certainly, Trumpers are always furious that things are not the way “they used to be.”
Don’t forget: the first word of MAGA is make.
To make is to compel. To dominate.
America expects to dominate the world, because we did for the past (not quite) 100 years.
China expects to dominate the world, because they’re a mega-populous, ancient, successful nation, with the world’s biggest economy.
Russia expects to dominate the world, because they’re an aggressive, powerful Empire, and the biggest country on Earth.
Great power battles always create collateral damage.
Didn’t mean to drift into Geopolitics.
Maybe I’ll just land the plane here.
If you’re stressed about having your expectations met, in 2023, it might be time to question the expectations.
If we change what we think should happen, or change our plans so something different might happen, it tends to lead to better outcomes.
Rather than doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.
Morning dog walk. The light was (almost) luminous for a minute, before it became flat again.
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Need to Make a Career Change?
I just had a friend reach out with a story to share.
This person is dealing with some real difficulty, (as many of us are,) but also grappling with the question of perhaps not being in the right profession/field, at the moment.
Obviously, I’ll share no details, but when I was asked if I had thoughts on career changes, I took a moment to consider how best to answer the question?
As writing for Sunshine and Olly is one of my primary stress-relief techniques, but also a form of art I truly love, this seemed like the way to go.
Especially as I was able to get a proper hill walk with the dogs this morning, given that the sun finally came back!
Sunshine, Olly and Billy on the hill. 
Driving into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class with Amelie yesterday afternoon, I was officially convinced I might never see the sun again.
So of course the clouds broke, around 5pm, and it was glorious.
Just long enough for me to remember that when we’re trapped in unhealthy systems, or environments, it is really hard to solve problems, and figure out big picture ideas.
Just like people in Russia, Scandinavia, and Canada know their winters fuck with their sanity, we just lived through that, in a place that’s supposed to be one of the sunniest in the world.
The sun came back, and I want to use that positive energy to give an answer to my (anonymous) friend.
The first deep blue sky I’ve seen in months.
Artists are permanent shape-shifters.
Certainly when we’re {foolish?} enough to try to make a living out of being creative.
I’ve blogged enough over the years about that subject, so we’ll leave it alone.
If the specific question is how to make a career move, either laterally, or vertically, I think there are questions we can ask ourselves, and moves we can make, to enable decisions from a clear-sky perspective.
First of all, if a person knows they’ve been dealing with an inordinate amount of stress and difficulty, due to work/family/health problems, having kindness and compassion for oneself is a great first step.
If you’ve been eating a lot of shit lately, or have life-changing situations going on, accept that those things can and do change your life.
And often they suck!
So step one, figure out how to be kind to yourself, and get even the tiniest break to clear your head.
The clear view perspective If you can’t take a break, double/triple down on investing in yourself.
If you like Yoga, take more classes. Or martial arts. Travel. Eating great food. Making art.
Just pour everything you have into trying to feel good about yourself.
Because we need that self-confidence to embrace change, when it’s heaped upon us.
Step two, once you’re feeling grounded, is to start asking questions.
What do I love to do?
What am I really good at?
How can I imagine spending my time to make money, but when I think about it, I get excited, and energized? (Not depleted, and depressed.)
What communities, when I see them out there on social media, or the mainstream media, seem like they’re offering things that I want and need in my life?
What skills am I doing, in my current job, that have a direct cross-over with other aspects of my industry, or another industry?
Do I like being around a certain type of person, (or a certain type of energy,) and where can I find people like that?
Am I living in the right city/community, for my personal wants and needs?
It’s a lot of questions, I know.
And I could keep going.
But this feels like the perfect way to get moving.
Knowing something is not working is the first step.
I wrote on Monday that I’d gone to Duke University, among the most prestigious and famous in the world.
I hated it.
And I was so miserable.
But it wasn’t until I figured out I was miserable, (as there was not a support system in place to help me sort it,) that I bumped into a person who had the answer.
He too, was miserable, and had found out he could take a semester off, because he had enough credits to still graduate on time.
Immediately, I knew that was for me, and I moved towards making it happen.
I skipped the first semester of my senior year, and moved to Taos for 9 months, because my parents had recently relocated here.
That decision changed the course of my life.
I believe if you’re a kind, compassionate, empathetic, warm-hearted, intelligent, self-aware, open-minded person: you deserve to be happy.
Nobody gets to be happy all the time, mind you, but if you realize that despite being a genuinely good person, you feel stuck, unappreciated, or worse…
It’s time to get unstuck.
Step one, take care of yourself, and get in the frame of mind to tackle the problem.
Step two, ask all the hard questions, and be willing to see yourself in a more positive light than the situation seems to be rewarding.
Step three, take a big leap, believing you can do it, and that your support system will help you as you try.
Catch you next week!
Sunshine and Olly yesterday, before the sun came back.
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What Does Woke Mean?
Quick post today.
I wanted to tackle a massive issue that’s been in the news lately.
Not only is the term “Woke” everywhere, used both as a compliment and a pejorative, but few people actually understand what it means.
I’m going to give it a shot, right off the top of my head.
“Woke” is a philosophy that acknowledges the reality of historical power dynamics, and seeks to change the inherent unfairness of centuries of dominance, based upon power imbalances.
Power dynamics are the key here.
Power means you can make a person do something. And you don’t have to behave in a way that respects their basic human dignity.
It can be a boss that yells at you, and never faces accountability.
Often, (and most famously,) it means that systemic behaviors like misogyny and racism, which permanently ensconced women and minorities as an underclass, need to be upended.
Unfortunately, “Woke” has gotten a bad name, because like the Israelis, and the French peasants during their Revolution, often times, when people get power, the first thing they want to do is enact revenge against the people that mistreated them.
(Or in the case of the Israelis, kicking a disempowered culture while they’re down, via Apartheid and Occupation.)
It’s not “Woke” to treat people badly on purpose.
(Even if you think they deserve it, because they represent a gender, or race/culture that typically held sway.)
Meaning, it’s not “Woke” to use your power to knowingly disrespect someone, just because you can.
Traditional power structures used gaslighting, as it meant they never had to challenge the message.
Just dismiss the messenger.
You’re crazy!
You’re hysterical!
You’re so angry all the time, it must be you!
The first image on Google for female hysteria, courtesy of Wikipedia It happens every day.
In other words, if you want to be “Woke,” be cool. Treat people well, and understand that if you have a historically privileged position, try to use it to help others with less power.
If you fuck up, just say you’re sorry.
And if occasionally, you have to see someone else succeed, (instead of you,) don’t go crazy about it.
Take the L, realize it wasn’t your turn, and move on with grace.
Theo with the new horse. His official name is Listo, but Theo renamed him Kevin, as an act of rebellion against my domineering sister-in-law.
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Make Society Livable Again
It’s normal to want friends.
To need connection.
Even introverts require some social contact.
(So a big Fuck You to Caity Weaver for encouraging people to be ashamed of such needs in the NYT Magazine this weekend.)
It’s why solitary confinement is considered torture, and therefore is used as extreme punishment.
Yet hundreds of millions, if not billions of people lived through that torture in pandemic lockdown, in the recent past, and it’s rarely discussed.
In the US these days, (and probably elsewhere,) people are struggling, angry, and have lost the ability to calmly communicate with each other. Yet many people are trying to figure out why they’re having such a hard time in a rigged system, right after the world lived through conditions that aged some brains by 10 years.
These are hard times, (in my therapist’s words,) as America has succumbed to Oligarchy, yet it is poorly understood beyond the cultural fringe.
When I was a Freshman at Duke University, (where I double-majored in History and Economics,) I took Intro to American History, with Dean Gerald Wilson.
Image courtesy of Duke Athletics My first paper was the assigned subject: “Was the Progressive Era Actually Progressive?”
At 18, I didn’t know even what progressive meant, (back in 1992,) and most certainly didn’t have an informed opinion.
Ever the good student, though, I just needed to read the text book, stake out a position, pull evidence with quotes, and I was good to go.
As such, I got an “A” on the paper.
Not much knowledge was acquired, but in my second semester, I took another History class, from Professor John D. French, which opened my eyes to the “real” US history of conquest and territorial acquisition, which undergirded America’s success as a country.
(This History is becoming “banned” more and more each day.)
I might not have learned if America was actually progressive back then, but I did learn that the concentration of wealth and power, during the Gilded Age, was so bad, it almost broke society.
Miraculously, trust busting, anti-monopolistic practices, and increased unionization, approx 100 years ago, allowed the US to build a middle class, which was (once) the envy of the world.
These days, we know that for one group to have resources, most of the time, another group has to have less.
Which leads to all sorts of conflict.
In an Oligarchical society, the most powerful people are always a super-minority.
Dozens of people, in a nation of more than 330 million.
It’s why they work so hard to keep everyone distracted, squabbling and desperate.
And the Oligarchs fight tooth and nail to maintain the power and control they’ve established.
We’re reading about this reality piecemeal, whether it’s an article about Getty heirs dodging taxes in The New Yorker, or Robert Reich dropping knowledge bombs on Twitter.
The overall narrative, though, never penetrates the minds and hearts of all those angry people.
Don’t be angry at your neighbor, your Mom, or the “other.”
Instead, be angry at the super-rich people who think they should be worth $1 trillion, so you have to decide whether you can afford to buy vegetables for your kids.
I’m telling you: this is officially a time in history when things are fucked up.
A century ago, such conditions led to WWII, and the Holocaust, in which my race/culture was almost wiped out.
Nobody likes a know-it-all, (I get it,) but we artists are the canaries in the coal-mine.
Time for some collective energy to make society livable again.
Brooklyn, NY, 2018
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No One is Coming to Save You
No one is coming to save you.
It’s hard to hear, but eventually, you’ll thank me. Because it’s one of the most difficult life lessons to learn.
In this case, we can blame Hollywood.
Thousands and thousands of stories told over the years, and so many of them still use a plot device ripped from the Ancient Greeks: the Deus ex machina.
Most normies won’t know that term, but I’m aware that most of you aren’t normies.
So as not be a pretentious asshole, let me explain: Deus ex machina means the part of the story where someone, or something, shows up, improbably, just in the nick of time.
(The first image in a Google search for Deus ex machina, courtesy of Wikipedia) It happens so often that most people don’t even notice anymore. And one can’t fault the ancient storytellers for wanting to preserve tension for as long as humanly possible.
That desire, to keep the audiences rapt, required that salvation only happen at the Very. Last. Second.
By the gods. (Most of the time, anyway.)
And Hollywood has leaned on that time and again, to the point it became a part of American mythology.
A nation of individuals, but somehow, we always win in the end, and the good guy always wins, and he always has tons of friends, who have his back, and he is the best shot, and the best fighter, and the best lover.
Americans have been trained (especially by Trump) to believe that only winning matters. And they deserve to win, all the time, no matter how they behave.
That is what it all comes down to.
Do you win friends and influence people by being a good enough person that there are people who care enough about you to “have your back,” or do you use power, intimidation, and control to force people to be nice to you? (Otherwise known as kissing your ass.)
In fairness, this rant is not random.
I’ve been writing about friendship, mental health, and the attempted pursuit of happiness since I began Sunshine and Olly six weeks ago.
And this weekend, I read three things that blew my mind, for how tightly they tied together the philosophy I’ve been unpacking, (in real time,) here on the blog.
First, this brilliant, long-form piece in ESPN, about the absolute limits of good friendship.
Courtesy of ESPN.com Two wrestlers, new but really great friends, were hunting for shed antlers in Wyoming. They stumbled into a Grizzly Bear’s home, and when she attacked one friend, the other had the chance to get away.
Instead, he charged the bear, trying to execute a takedown, because she was about to kill his buddy. As a result, the hero took the worst brunt of the attack, but they miraculously both survived.
This is the dream scenario, and it worked out.
An actual fucking Deus ex machina.
But these were two dudes who cared about each other, had spent (probably) more than 100 hours as wrestling training partners, and who believed in the values they were taught in sports.
On a deep level.
That is what most people want, but don’t know how to get.
As to the second article, (in the NYT,) it provided some science to something I’ve noticed anecdotally, and begun to write about.
Americans are literally anti-social right now, as many people’s brains aged 10 years during the pandemic.
People are scientifically different, and have lost skills on how to relate to each other, how to connect, and how to offer the kind of friendship they’d like to have in return.
(If you can’t give, you can’t receive.)
The last article is the bleakest.
Consider yourself warned.
It was another long-read, this time in the NYT, about a family-owned sandwich shop in Phoenix, which is located in a neighborhood taken over by a tent city.
The writing is terrific, the photos are great, and overall, the story manages to empathize a bit with the sub-makers, and the people living in hell outside the door.
In this case, it’s LITERAL HELL, as more than 1250 unhoused people have died on those burning, Phoenix streets in the last two years.
1250!
Many of them cooked to death on the concrete.
Elsewhere, it describes the way human civilization works, when only might makes right.
Protection rackets have developed organically in the tent city, and people are killing each other over patches of sidewalk.
They were left to die.
Alone.
In the worst of circumstances.
And nobody came to save them.
If you’ve read this far, I’ll do a nice pivot, and turn my tone around.
This is not (only) a bleak story.
Because once people realize they will have to save themselves, it opens a big door to things like growth mentality, personal empowerment, and the quest for better mental health.
What most people want is to be safe, feel good, to be appreciated for who they are, and to be seen.
If/when a person grows up in a family that undermines that, rather than supporting it, or if they work in the wrong company, or go to the wrong school, it can be functionally impossible to live at one’s optimum.
It’s why sports teams talk about culture all the time.
And why so much of mental health Twitter is always discussing the impact of other people’s negative energy.
From Deion Sanders’ Twitter feed today If you can’t buffer it, or avoid it, you best expect it will affect you for the worse.
So that’s where we’ll land today.
If you love yourself, (and if you have a partner and/or children, love them properly,) you’ll figure out what is actually wrong in your life.
Who is dragging you down?
Who doesn’t see you in the positive way you (hopefully) see yourself?
What makes you happy?
Who makes you happy?
Sunshine and Olly make me happy! It’s a great way to start down the path to being the engine of your own happiness.
Hasta luego!
Olly says hello!
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Sunshine and Olly 