Today I went to the Kids’ March for Black Lives in my neighborhood, which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to share this incredibly useful list of how to protest while reducing risks of getting and spreading COVID-19.
Here I am holding a sign at the march. Instead of writing words, I drew a heart on my sign because I wanted it to be easy to read, even for little kids who might not read words.
The march today was a powerful experience, made even more beautiful by the fact that I got to march with Devin and his mom, who is not only the mom of a former kid I love very much but also an educator who teaches kids today.
Anne (Devin’s mom), me, and Devin at the end of the Kids’ March for Black Lives
I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to hear children and anti-racist parents and teachers speak about justice and safety and what it means to be in community and divest from unjust systems in order to invest in what we really need: schools, housing, clean water, health care (just to name a few).
Protesting in a pandemic is complicated, and there are lots of ways to contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement that don’t involve going outside and participating in person, but I’m really glad we were able to go and march in a way that felt safe and responsible given our risk factors and responsibilities to others around us. If you’re thinking of going to a protest, I encourage you to read this list and make a plan to participate with COVID protection in mind. Remember: we keep us safe!
P.S. The list I’m sharing here was made by my friends Alison Kopit (she/her) and Elizabeth Harrison (they/them), two of the most intentional, community-minded people I know and admire!
The best part about moving to a new city is discovering your places. There are personal places like your favorite room at home (the living room) or your preferred bus route (the 28), and then there are the notable ones: things you’ve never seen anywhere else, places you can’t wait to share with your friends.
I’m no stranger to hyperbole, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that Community Pharmacy is the most unique pharmacy I’ve ever encountered. Like most U.S. pharmacies, it sells a lot more than prescription drugs. Unlike most pharmacies, it’s owned by the people who work there; half of the store is devoted to natural remedies; and its goal is not to make money but to provide health care at the lowest possible cost. Plus, does your pharmacy stock feminist magazines and vegetarian cookbooks? Mine does!
A few weeks ago, I spoke with Scott Chojnacki to learn more about this Madison institution.
HISTORY
Founded in 1972 with a grant from the Wisconsin Student Association, Community Pharmacy was established to serve students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by providing the most affordable medications available. SERVICES Today Community Pharmacy strives to provide the most affordable health care possible to everyone in Madison. Scott explained how that philosophy shapes the pharmacy: “There’s a segment of customers that get their prescriptions and don’t really explore very much; they see us as your standard pharmacy. A lot of other people don’t even think of us as a pharmacy even though ‘pharmacy’ is in our name. They come in for supplements, herbs, and custom homeopathic formulas. Others come in for natural beauty and skin care products. The idea has always been to offer the biggest range of health options, and that’s what we aspire to do.”
Community Pharmacy is a workers’ cooperative. There is no CEO, no managers, and the store is run without hierarchies. Everyone who works there is part of a team that makes decisions collectively. And they take their role in the community seriously. If the staff believes a cause needs support, they discuss it at their monthly staff meeting and decide on a course of action. That’s how they decided to hang a Black Lives Matter sign in their front window. Because no one is relying on the store to turn a profit, Community Pharmacy answers to its customers––not stockholders. Instead of asking “how much can we charge?,” they ask, “How little?” That approach can have a huge impact. Before this interview, I didn’t realize how much power pharmacies have over the price of medicine, especially if a prescription is not covered by insurance. “We hear it from our customers,” Scott explained, “They’ll say, ‘Oh my God, I called Walgreens and they were going to charge me hundreds of dollars for this drug. You’re selling it for ten percent of that.’”
FAVORITES One of my favorite things to do is ask the workers at different stores and restaurants about their favorite products because I know that nobody knows the stuff better than they do. During our interview, I asked Scott to recommend some of his favorite Community Pharmacy products, and he got so excited that he ran out of the room and came back with his hands full.
1.“Suki exfoliate foaming cleanser is a cleanser and mild exfoliator that you can use every day. It’s my job to sample different products, but I can never get too far from this.” 2. “Veriditas is an essential oils company that only buys ingredients from cooperatives and only sells to cooperatives. Most people are familiar with the aromatherapy uses of lavender, but it’s also a great anti-inflammatory. This is my go-to with mosquito bites or if I give myself a little burn with the oven. It works so well at taking that pain away.” 3. “MegaFood has relationships with farmers that have exactly the kind of growing practices they appreciate, and with food-grown supplements, you’re getting the highest absorbability. Your body is able to process them so much better than synthetic vitamins.” 4. “If you like coconut and chocolate, you have to try Madécasse Toasted Coconut. It’s chocolate that has shaved coconut on the bottom. I buy this as a gift all the time, so people can know what the good life is.”
MADISON As for his favorite places in Madison, Scott recommends the botanic gardens: “I love Olbrich Gardens, which is a free garden for anybody to go to. Pick a day and spend an hour getting lost there. I am surprised every time with some plant that I missed before.” Thank you, Scott, and thank you, Community Pharmacy! Sign up for the Community Pharmacy e-mail newsletter to receive 10% off your next purchase.
I went to Portland last week, and when I got back to Madison, I noticed that everyone was talking about gifts for their dead.
Devin was at his parents’ house, so I made a mental note to ask him later in the week. And I kept overhearing the phrase: “Gift for my dead” … “Gift for my dead” … “Gift for my dead.”
Wisconsin has a large Catholic population so I started to wonder if it was a tradition similar to Día de los Muertos.
I imagined little altars topped with cheese curds and Green Bay Packers memorabilia, rhubarb-scented veladoras, a polka band instead of mariachis, and calaveritas made of maple syrup instead of sugar cane. I’ve passed a few cemeteries in Madison, and I wondered if I’d get to see some of the celebrations.
It wasn’t until I overheard someone say “I’ve really got to get a gift for my dead. Father’s Day is on Sunday!” that I realized they weren’t preparing to accept the reality of death by participating in a collective mourning ritual commemorating loved ones lost. They were buying gifts for their dads!
And that’s when I had my big epiphany: the Upper Midwest accent is really just a game of musical chairs for short vowels.
The “a” in “dad” sounds like the “e” in “dead.”
The “o” in “Wisconsin” sounds like the “a” in “apple.”
“About” sounds like “a boat,” and round and round.
Now I know to run through all the vowels before I imagine another elaborate scenario (though I’m not ready to give up my daydream of a Midwestern Día de Muertos quite yet).
* The ceramic skull pictured above was a souvenir from Puerto Peñasco, where I guess they also know about Wisconsin’s Day of the Dead. ; )
I’m a big fan of other blogs’ link lists, and I’ve seen really cool stuff recently, so I decided to try making one myself. Here are a few things I think you might also like.
Spring in Madison means the lakes are back to their liquid state. This is Lake Mendota, the lake Devin, our friend Makeba, and I traversed on foot for my birthday!
Maria sat in the backseat with the plastic bag on her lap. Maria could recognize her mother’s voice anywhere, the narrator of all those bedtime books in childhood, the one that pronounced library liberry and share instead of chair. Maria had developed a habit of correcting the way her mother talked, but now, as she watched the landscape go by from the backseat, the voice was soothing, more soothing than rain, and Maria said nothing. She closed her eyes.
CULTURE
Just in time for summer vacation, New York Magazine enlisted psychologist and travel-guide author Michael Brein for tips on traveling with other people. Brein calls this his “three-point scale of compatibility,” but I think it can also be a good tool for tempering expectations and finding ways to compromise. After reading this, my mom and I talked about what kind of travelers we are and came up with some ideas for our next trip together. (Suddenly all our silly vacation arguments made sense!)
ACTIVITY LEVEL. Are they high- or low-energy? If you plan to see a city by foot, for instance, you want people who can keep up.
DIURNAL-NOCTURNAL DISPOSITION. Do they prefer daytime activities or rowdy nightlife?
TIME-URGENCY. Some people want to schedule every moment, while others prefer to be totally spontaneous.
FOOD The big farmers’ market in Madison is back on the Square, and I’m excited to eat more spring produce. This What’s in Season? post is a great resource if you like to make a shopping list before going out or if you need recipe ideas for food you haven’t had in a year…or if you want a list of food that might be cheaper than usual at the grocery store!
This weekend I had my first birthday in Madison. My friend Makeba flew in from New York, like the life-size present she is! She is a seasoned traveler, and this was her first trip to the Midwest, so you know I had show off all the good spots.
We were also able to rescue some chairs that had been abandoned in the middle of the lake (but not before taking some cool pics).
Last year Anda sent me the most beautiful gold sparkler candles in the shape of the numbers “2” and “6” and I rushed to use them on my birthday eve, before turning 27. (Numerous people later told me I could have waited until I turned 62. I hadn’t thought of that; otherwise, I might have!) By coincidence, our friend Kate gave me two chocolate pastries that were a perfect match.
After the birthday eve blowing-out-of-candles (a new tradition I highly recommend), we went to Gib’s and saw almost everyone I know in Madison in one place. This might be the uncoolest thing to admit in writing, but I realized I have more friends here than I thought (when did that happen?), and it was super nice to see them all in one place! Then, we went to a ‘90s vs. ‘00s music video dance party, and I learned that I am the only person I know who prefers the noughties to the nineties, at least musically. This is shocking to me. Doesn’t anyone remember Hey Ya? Paper Planes? The genesis of Young Money? Without which there would be no Nicki Minaj or Drake, and then where would we be??? I don’t even want to think about it. One bright side of living far away from most people I know is that I got more phone calls, FaceTimes, and birthday packages than ever before. I just finished making a list of all the people I still need to thank or call back, and it is the nicest to-do list. In conclusion, I like my birthday and I like you.
In 2015 I got a valentine named Leila (born February 14th)
…and a little firework named Nolan Antonio (born July 4th).
Devin and I finally went to Mexico City to visit my cousin Carol’s family. Carlos Manuel and Devin became fast friends and spent hours playing rockets. I wish I had a video!
Victoria told me her favorite hobby was “helping,” so we spent time folding clothes and writing letters. She also learned to whisper and told me secrets like “I love baby Leila” and “Will you please come visit me again?” (I’m positive this information has been declassified by now.)
All four of my sobrin@s finally got to hang out together in November, and I realized just how little babies care about each other. Victoria was excited, but the rest of them were preoccupied with things like sleep, milk, and their mothers. I suppose the real lesson is that I know almost nothing about babies because I expected them to have so much fun and become BFFs, but I guess those types of interactions don’t happen until after you’ve mastered things like holding your head up and feeding yourself? IDK.
This summer Devin and I said goodbye to New York and hello to a little city between two lakes. In between, we decided to see as many of our friends and family as possible. Our goal was to attend every wedding we were invited to and meet all the babies we hadn’t yet met, and somehow we were able to do it. Highlights from this summer vacation included
• going to Jill and Eric’s wedding in Portland (the first Portland wedding I went to was my own, and Jill and Eric came to our wedding, so it was like déjà vu + role reversal + our friend Tasha!)
• sightseeing in San Francisco with my mom
• sharing Chihuahua with the world via Enormous Eye
• falling in love with Mexico City
• packing up our apartment and saying goodbye to our friends in New York (that part was actually so hard and sad and why can’t you make everyone you love go everywhere you go?)
• being welcomed to our new neighborhood in Madison by this incredible octopus sculpture (it’s gone now, but I will never forget it)
Sometime in 2015 I decided I’d like to be the Ambassador for Mexican Snacks. I blogged about burritos and junk food, and at Christmas I got my very American suegra hooked on Valentina, Mexico’s top hot sauce. Though I’m not yet receiving a paycheck for my ambassadorial services, I am certain that my career is on track and look forward to living in a mansion with a giant chamoy fountain in the center where I can entertain dignitaries and elevate Mexican snacks to the level of fame they deserve. I expect all of this to happen within the next year, and you are all invited to the housewarming party. ; )
Although I’ve lived in Madison for quite a few months, I still manage to embarrass myself at least daily. For example, the other day I took a taxi to meet a friend at a bookstore and stayed in the car an extra five minutes because I thought we were stuck in traffic. In fact, we had arrived, and I was just sitting there making the cab driver feel awkward. (There is no traffic in Madison.) Finally, he asked me if I’d ever “been here before,” and I was like, “Oh, I moved here in September. It’s been really nice!” “Cool, but um, I meant the bookstore.” “Oh! We’re here?! So fast?!” and then I mumbled something about traffic as I tried to exit gracefully. I’m still ready to strategize and compete for everything, so I end up arriving way too early to events to “make sure I get a seat.” (There are always plenty of seats.) I didn’t think I was that accustomed to public anonymity, but I jump every time I hear someone yell out my name in public despite the fact that I know there is a 0% chance I won’t run into someone I know anytime I leave my house. This one’s particularly embarrassing because I’m trying to make new friends, and I’d rather not be known as the paranoid jumpy one. (I am definitely the paranoid jumpy one.) The weirdest thing is that sometimes I don’t understand people’s Midwestern accents. There is no good reason for this because Devin is from Wisconsin. I know lots of people from Wisconsin. I have been to Wisconsin like a hundred times. Still, I end up overpaying for things at coffee shops and stuff because I don’t understand what the cashiers are saying when they tell me the total. Related: I still carry cash everywhere because I expect places to be CASH ONLY. (Nowhere is cash-only.) If all of this sounds ridiculous to you, imagine how you’d feel if it were you! I moved a fourteen-hour drive away from my last home, in the same country, to a state I’m very familiar with, to a small city that is very easy to navigate, but I still get lost and feel supremely dumb on the regular. It’s peak pathetic, and I am ashamed. Still, I remember how much I hated living in New York for the first six months. Everything was so hard! We couldn’t find a couch that would fit through our front door! There was so much litter! Once, on a particularly rough day, I remember saying to Devin, “It’s like Earth Day never happened here.” I may have been crying while I said it? Then, on my six-month anniversary, it was like a switch flipped. Suddenly, I understood New York, and I started to like it more and more until I felt like I belonged. Devin and I went back to visit earlier this month, and on our way to the best Thai restaurant in North America (SriPraPhai, go now if you’re lucky enough to be close to it!), we passed the sign that most symbolizes the city for me. (I even blogged about it once.)
It has almost been six months since I moved to Madison. I wonder what my sign will be here.
My immigration story starts with children’s TV commercials from the ‘90s.
I was a little girl in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, when my mom got cable television for our house. To me, it was pure magic. I would watch Cartoon Network as often and as long as I could. The cartoons were dubbed in Spanish, but all the commercials were in English. And I was hooked.
Before I could speak any English at all, I knew how to say, “Live and learn and then get Luvs,” and I dreamed of going to Long John Silver’s. My favorite commercials were the infomercials for kids’ toys—the ones with bright blue screens and 1-800 numbers at the end. I thought about pretending to be a grown-up so I could order something, but I didn’t know how to make international calls.
As a middle-class kid in Northern Mexico, the United States was where I went shopping. My mom and I would go to El Paso and spend a few days buying the clothes and toys that were ten times as expensive in Chihuahua. The whole country seemed like an amusement park.
In the summer of 1996 my mom asked me if I’d like to live in the States. I jumped at the chance.
I couldn’t wait to live in those perfect commercials, to see movies—like The Hunchback of Notre Dame—as soon as they came out instead of waiting months for movies to come to Mexico, and to eat fast food all day every day. My life was going to change. I was going to be a short drive away from a Toys R Us!
Of course, I quickly learned that life in the States is not all fun and games. Sadly, one of the first things I learned when I moved to the States was to describe myself as “from Mexico” rather than “Mexican” because I heard “Mexican” used as an insult so often. My identity went from being something celebrated to being a bad word.
In Mexico, I’d heard about pochos, people of Mexican ancestry who couldn’t speak Spanish (or spoke it incorrectly). When my mom and I moved to Texas, we met many people who fit that description. The common perception of them in Mexico was that they were ashamed to be Mexican (malinchistas al máximo) and that’s why they didn’t speak Spanish. But soon we learned that Spanish used to be banned in Texas schools. One of my mom’s friends told us about how she would be hit with a ruler if her teachers heard her speaking Spanish. After seeing their daughter come home with red knuckles day after day, her parents encouraged her not to speak Spanish anywhere, not even at home, so she could avoid punishment.
Some of the Mexican-Americans we met might have been ashamed of their roots, but that shame was systematically taught.
I learned that shame, too. Overhearing racist jokes—so many racist jokes—seeing the way people looked at me differently when I spoke Spanish, and being told I was “not really from Mexico” when I defied people’s stereotypes are just a few of the ways my surroundings taught me that being Mexican was categorically A Bad Thing.
Luckily, I had an antidote for this poison. I would learn shame from a culture that positioned itself as the best and deemed my home inferior, but then I got to go home. And I saw how wrong that view was.
My home isn’t a place where chickens run around the yard and people ride donkeys (although now that I’m a grown-up environmentalist, that sounds rad). My home is Chihuahua, Chihuahua, and it’s where I got to go the theater, take painting classes, and learn modern dance from a Cuban teacher (who was visiting Mexico from Cuba for a summer). Chihuahua is the place where my little cousins took Japanese classes just for fun, and I was surrounded by people who prided themselves on speaking at least two languages. The world seemed bigger there.
I worry about the diaspora kids who don’t get to have this, the Mexican families physically torn apart by that arbitrary line called the border/la frontera.
On one of my first days in Madison, I sat in a park watching monarch butterflies and thought about their migration from Madison, Wisconsin to Morelia, Michoacán and back again. Can you imagine how wrong and unnatural it would be to build a wall to keep butterflies out of a country? Is it any less so to do this to human beings?
There are many reasons why I believe having national borders that people cannot cross freely is wrong, but the most personal is that I don’t know who I would be if I hadn’t been able to go back to Mexico to relearn how to love myself.
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