1. Usually, I avoid places like Walmart and fast food joints. But even this failed anthropologist can see that these are some of the main social centers of this Southwest town. Pretty much, I feel as if I am doing fieldwork anytime I go to the Burger King, and I stick out about as much as a white researcher would in some remote African village.
2. Our Walmart is the second-grossing in the nation, I've been told. On weekends, our town's population is quadrupled with folks coming in to do their shopping. On the first weekend of the month, it's even more.
3. Speaking of cultural happenings that are just "ethnographically too much" (as one of my dear college professors used to say), Halloween is just nuts here. We got a peek at some of it, but I hear that the real fun stuff takes place in the neighborhood just about a mile or so away from us---where the docs and lawyers and jewelers live. Apparently, full truckloads of kids get bused off the Rez and the streets are packed with folks hauling garbage bags full of loot from house to house. Maybe next year I'll venture up there and check it out. I hear it's like a Walmart on the first Friday of the month times 10.
4. My daughter was mad at my son for some reason. She decided to get back at him and hit him where it hurts. He was going to be John the Baptist for the Saints Day party and she was going to stick with her parrot costume from Halloween. "At least I get to be a cute little creature; you just get to eat bugs."
5. I have several runner-friends and sometimes on Sunday mornings we go a few miles out on some nearby desert trails. I never thought I'd be into trail running but it turns out it's kind of fun (and really challenging). It makes road running seem really boring in comparison so I might have ruined that for myself, oops.
6. My son wandered away while we were out shopping the other day. I was kneeling under clothing racks and calling for him for about ten minutes, thinking he was just hiding. When I finally found him, he was much more shaken up than I was about the whole thing so I didn't even need to lecture at all. He has promised never to do it again and I believe him.
7. In exactly one week, I will be en route to go visit a dear friend in her hometown in the Plains. For three and a half days we'll be staying up way too late sipping tea and/or wine, catching up, snuggling with her cats and seeing the sights. Maybe even catch a play? I can't wait.
more at Jen's
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