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nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

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Hyperallergic: An Artist’s Powerful Letter on Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico

Yasmin Hernández’s mixed media on canvas (18″ x 14″) work created for the Debt Fair/Occupy Museums installation at the 2017 Whitney Biennial in New York, NY. The Puerto Rican archipelago is presented within a nebula. From the main island emerges the face of Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera, held by the US for 35 years on sedition charges. His sentence was commuted by Obama 1 week after I completed this work. (all images courtesy the artist and used with permission)

Yasmín Hernández is a Brooklyn-born and raised artist whose work is rooted in struggles for personal, political, and spiritual liberation. She explores these themes through her paintings and mixed-media works, portraits primarily, that weave storytelling through layered images, text, and calligraphy.

Hernández is also Puerto Rican and she was scheduled to be part of the Debt Fair panel at El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan on Saturday, October 14. She was unable to make it and instead sent a letter that shares her experience and appeals to other to help Puerto Rico. Hyperallergic has agreed to publish her statement in full here with little editing in order to maintain the author’s voice and because of the current realities on the island of Puerto Rico.

Occupy Museums, which organized the panel, has also released a statement in solidarity with Puerto Rico, and it is published below Hernández’s letter.

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Letter from Yasmín Hernández

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, my flight out of Puerto Rico was canceled. As a result, I missed a long anticipated meeting with the legendary bell hooks in Kentucky and lost my place at a healing justice retreat for artists and activists in Tennessee, to which I had received a scholarship. I have now canceled my rescheduled relief flight to NYC where I was to spend time with my mom in Brooklyn, help with hurricane relief and be present at this panel.

Having been born and raised in Brooklyn, in 2014, I answered a soul call to repatriate to my ancestral homeland of Borikén. My Queens-born and raised Colombian husband and I, and our two small boys made our home in Moca in the northwestern part of la Isla Grande. On Wednesday, September 20, 2017, still recovering from loss of power and water from Hurricane Irma, her sister hurricane Maria took an unexpected turn at the point it had been predicted to exit the island. Its center passed right above us, and its eye wall, with wind gusts of over 200 miles per hour, thrashed us twice. Our beloved Moca looks more like winter in Brooklyn. Trees left standing were seemingly punished for weathering the storm, stripped bare of their leaves, flowers, and fruit. They stand brown, broken, and brittle revealing homes, rivers, and roads once hidden within lush tropical landscapes. Our view of the green Jaicoa range of hills bares the brown earth lacerations carved by landslides.

I will spare you the details of our experience during the storm, its effect on our home, our family and community in an effort to focus on the topic at hand and because with limited access to news and communication, there is much we have heard but have not been able to confirm. Infrequent communication with the outside world brings atrocious accounts that might be true, though I haven’t seen any of these first hand. Since we have chosen to stay here through whatever this brings, we prefer to focus on the gestures of solidarity and love that we have witnessed. It seems the human tendency is to speak mostly of the tragedies while acts of heroic survival, including the sharing of resources and community building, go uncelebrated for the most part. For example, the morning after the storm our neighbors provided us with access to their generator which they turn on just a few hours every day. This has allowed us to provide fresh food and cold drinks for our children since the storm. It is the reason that I am able to charge a computer and type this statement, though I must still figure out an internet connection with which to send it. Another neighbor gave us her telephone when Claro was the first and only company with cell signal. She sent us out to an antenna in Aguadilla with her phone and that is how after 10 days I was finally able to call my mother and family in New York. Afterwards she had us drop the phone off at her Moca home where she waited for the municipio to install a tarp since she had lost half of her roof. These are the accounts we must circulate. These are my heroic, generous people whose selflessness fuels our commitment to stay.

Since arriving in Puerto Rico, my work explores nebulae to transcend the abyss of colonialism and oppression, to claim ancestral connection and to affirm our spiritual space in the cosmos. Moreover painting our ancestors in transparent layers of nebulae is how I combat the invisibility imposed by colonialism. In the spirit of the latter, I send this statement in my absence, having been rendered invisible yet again, this time by the (un)natural disaster of hurricanes unheard of, compounded by the complexities and contradictions of colonialism.

The difficult decision to not have boarded my flight this morning is testament to the often impossible intersection in which artists work — the intersection between inspiration, sustainability, struggle, and survival. To have the opportunity to escape to New York City for a few days, unable to secure plane tickets for my family until November, would have meant leaving them behind with no running water, no power, no communication. Eight years ago, I left my teaching artist positions with El Museo del Barrio and the Studio Museum in Harlem after birthing my first son. This fall, I was celebrating my return to a full-time artist practice, having recently resigned from a teaching position and enjoying that both of my sons are in school now. I began the fall with a commission that funded these trips that would mark that return to my full artist self. These two hurricanes have cost me my trips, these opportunities and my studio — dark for three weeks and counting — houses a commission unpainted. Our children attended school four days in the last month and a half. Classes were canceled for hurricane preparations or for lack of water and power in the aftermath of the storms. Semi-rural and rural communities like mine, already accustomed to losing light and water periodically, are threatened with the possibility of living without these services for months.

Yasmin Hernandez’s mural of Oscar Lopez Rivera with the Three Kings in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico

Instead of packing for this trip, I divided and packed six boxes of rations and three cases of water that arrived at our home yesterday from various sources. The boys look forward to packing these in the car and delivering them to folks we know need them. The last two boxes and a gallon of water were delivered by the mayor of Moca himself going door to door. It was a wonderful gesture except it arrived three weeks after the storm, consequently the day after US military planes circled above our home repeatedly before finally landing in el pueblo. What does three weeks mean to those with no access to a car or gas, no access to cash, no water, no food? Especially considering that parts of Puerto Rico had already been without water or light for two weeks after Hurricane Irma.

To say this has been an eventful year for Puerto Rico is an understatement. It opened up with las promesas a los Reyes, much like El Museo del Barrio’s Three Kings Day Parade. Some of these, like in the town of Hormigueros were dedicated to Oscar López Rivera, the Puerto Rican freedom fighter who was held as a political prisoner by the United States for 35 years. On Three Kings Day, which is also Oscar Lopez’ birthday, I received an email from Occupy Museums inviting me to participate in the Puerto Rico bundle of their Debt Fair installation at the 2017 Whitney Biennial. I set out to create a nebula piece in honor of this goddess island, this verde luz as described by Moca’s own Antonio Cabán Vale, el Topo. I included the words “De-Debt/ Decolonize,” along with an image of Oscar Lopez Rivera. The following week, it was announced that Obama had commuted his sentence. His release was scheduled for May 17. It is possible that as the exhibition opened up at the Whitney, no one had any idea who the face floating on the Puerto Rico nebula was. Not until he was listed as an honoree at New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade and corporate parade sponsors began to withdraw from the event was Oscar Lopez Rivera regularly discussed throughout the mainstream media. There had also been US media blackouts in the previous weeks surrounding the paro nacional or national strike fighting the austerity measures of PROMESA as well as a months-long mass student strike protesting obscene budget cuts to the University of Puerto Rico system. Occupy Museums however made sure to include the UPR strike in an action they held around student debt at the Whitney Museum.

In the weeks leading to Oscar’s release, as I finished my final school year teaching at the school his sister founded in Aguadilla, I managed to complete a mural in his hometown of San Sebastian. His image appears alongside a rendering of a Santos de Palo carving of the Three Kings. This is my first outdoor mural since “Soldaderas,” my 2011 East Harlem mural of Frida Kahlo and Julia de Burgos. I call it “el Regalo de los Reyes” after the Julia de Burgos poem of the same title. An excerpt of this poem is included in the mural and is also featured in my Soldaderas mural in the shared red stripe of the Mexican and Puerto Rican flags. With all our two nations share in our cultural and artistic history, and our conflicted political tie to the US, today we share more in the solidarity of struggle, survival, and strength post-earthquake and post-hurricane.

No one is ever prepared for a natural disaster, but a natural disaster within an economy crippled by colonialism, an odious debt, and weak infrastructure is beyond disastrous. Employees already threatened with furloughs, days of no work to compensate for a failing economy, were left homeless by the storm. The Jones Act or la ley de cabotaje regulating all imported goods to arrive through US ports on US ships, reveals now more than ever the economic strangulation suffered by a colony. My abuelo used to say, no hay mal que por bien no venga (there is no misfortune that does not come with good reason). It seems like the warrior winds of change of the Yoruba orisha Oya, these sister hurricanes came to turn, change, and reveal things that no longer serve us, things kept hidden that must be overturned. Folks who cared not about Puerto Rico, its people or its political status are being made aware of what is happening. They are outraged and are demanding justice. The colonial theater crumbles under its own absurdity.

De-Debt: Decolonize. We cannot speak of art and debt in Puerto Rico without addressing colonialism. We cannot speak of what Puerto Rico owes and who they owe it to without considering the paralyzing changes imposed on Puerto Rico’s economy and unfolding since the US occupation in 1898. The introduction of an industrial economy is a moot point when it entirely replaces an agricultural economy, denying Puerto Rico its own capacity for self-sustenance, imposing the importation of 80% of its food products at inflated prices. Colonialism constructs failing economies because its existence relies on the dependency of its subjects. Colonies are designed to build wealth for the colonizers while maintaining the colonial order among the colonized. To speak of healthy economies and self-sufficiency in a colony is a contradiction unless it is tied to a dialogue on political self-determination and self-rule. Our approach must be a decolonial one that also extends to post-colonial and neo-colonial structures. That said, we cannot address these recent hurricanes’ crippling of the Caribbean without addressing the US militarism and business interests that have meddled in Caribbean affairs for over a century and the US consumerism that has rendered this region a mere playground for the privileged. We must eradicate the ignorant, pompous gaze that so many direct at the Caribbean, especially by those incapable of naming the islands, the languages they speak, or locating them on a map.

We cannot address the creative capabilities of artists in debt without addressing the lack of basic amenities available to enable inspiration to flow and manifest. We must first address an artist’s means of daily survival. Access to a roof over their heads literally as these storms turn the common, corrugated metal roof into flying shreds of aluminum foil. Despite the abundant rains of this season’s skies providing ample water for bathing, laundry, and bathroom needs, drinking water remains scarce. Access to power, a cold fridge to keep food fresh, the internet, telephone service, light to work with in the absence of daylight, to power tools and equipment are all basic necessities for an artist’s daily studio practice. These are also important to the survival and functionality of any person in today’s world. Access to childcare when schools have literally been closed for almost a month is another issue standing in the way of a person’s ability to work and earn a living. I remember how a snowstorm and a one-day shut down of the NYC subway system could paralyze the city, now imagine the sustained, perpetual reality of life without power or water. Consider this next time you flush the toilet, send a text or email, flip on the light switch, or grab a cold drink out the fridge. Consider driving one hour through rush hour with no traffic lights.

It becomes necessary to reverse the gaze, turning an eye away from Puerto Rico and the Caribbean and back at the US, even to Puerto Ricans and other communities of color based in the US. As participants of a US privileged economy, built on the exploitation of less privileged, marginalized communities, how might one be complicit in the current situation? How much effort is being invested daily in challenging for example la ley de cabotaje which catastrophically impacts the Puerto Rican economy, prices, and access to food daily beyond the storm. How are funds earned from working in the US being funneled back into Puerto Rico beyond an annual vacation? How can dollars of the American dream, some of that wealth built on tax free incentives for US corporations and the US wealthy in Puerto Rico be invested in Puerto Rico-based businesses, organizations, real estate? How is the Puerto Rican community participating in the art market, supporting their artists, purchasing their work? Are Puerto Rican and allied professionals and academics based in privileged institutions providing ample opportunities to Puerto Rican entrepreneurs and artists to provide talks, presentations, and residencies? How do we fight the commodification of water from Detroit to Standing Rock to Puerto Rico? How do we restore its status back to that of sacred survival versus a a political weapon in a bottle? Prior to the hurricanes there were two other disasters in Puerto Rico, the repeated dumping of tons of toxic ashes in Peñuelas, as well as the infrastructure disaster that resulted in Puerto Rico’s island-wide power outage last year.

The Puerto Rican left and their allies who have always spoken out against colonialism and injustice cannot be the only ones to carry the torch of peace, justice, and humanity. By turning a blind eye to the dehumanization and exploitation of our community in order to buy into the financial gains, we become complicit in said dehumanization and exploitation and sell our souls in the process. Holistically we can learn to refocus all of our organizing, our programming, our activism, our art, our thinking to be decolonial, to reject the supremacy of one group over another and to reject the internalizing of inferiority complexes that plagues many of our people even long after political independence has been secured.

In closing, I offer the words of James Baldwin, “We cannot be free until they are free.” Anyone’s enslavement, or oppression, equals the enslavement and oppression of us all.

In solidarity, love, light and liberation,

Yasmin Hernandez October 12, 2017 Moca, Puerto Rico

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In Solidarity with Puerto Rico: Cancel Colonial Debts Now!

September 2017. It was a month of sequential natural disasters that left multiple American cities underwater and in various states of crisis. Reflecting on the contrasting recovery outlook for two of them: Houston, and 1800 miles to the Southeast, San Juan Puerto Rico, we are brought to face with something extremely ugly: an American colonial legacy that is alive and well.

“Vulnerability is not simply a product of natural conditions; it is a political state and a colonial condition.”[i]

In today’s world this condition can be summarized by a single word: debt. Puerto Rico owes 74 billion dollars to a consortium of vulture investors, hedge funds and bond holders.[ii] Like most colonies, the island has a long history of financial disempowerment wielded through the mechanisms of extractive loan terms, snowballing interest payments and tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy. Colonial debt is a thread that winds through history, connecting Puerto Rico’s past slavery-based sugar economy to the extractive financial economy of the present neoliberalism. Colonial debt is structural, concrete racism. It’s high time all colonial debt is considered odious.

Recently the US Congress enacted the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) Bill. It ceded widespread powers of governance to an undemocratically appointed group. Since the Promesa bill was enacted in June 2016, draconian decisions have been made that hold the public accountable for the irresponsible actions of the financial class, including, “cutting spending on public health by 30 percent, closing schools, and lowering the minimum wage for young people to a little over $4 an hour.”[iii] Since Promesa has been enacted,more than 150 schools have closed on the island.

As we know from the 2008 housing crisis, debt is primarily a tool of power; a game in which the financial elites win every time. 2008 taught us that financial giants like Goldman Sachs who take on risk stand to lose little in the end; in fact the inevitable crisis helps them by killing off competitors and socializing loss. On the other side of the equation, historically disempowered people like Puerto Rican children see their schools and hospitals concretely shut down. It’s not surprising that a hedge fund that has been deeply involved in Puerto Rico, Stone Lion, was founded by the equity chiefs at Bear Stearns: players at the epicenter of the 2008 collapse in which no one was held accountable except millions of individual citizens – a pattern set to play out again with Promesa.[iv]

Meanwhile, the biggest players of the financial markets such as shadow bank Blackrock Inc is a heavy investor. This is the mega-firm that Occupy Museums focused on in our Debtfair project at the Whitney Biennial. Blackrock has ballooned to 4.7 trillion of managed assets since 2008 mirroring the exponential enrichment of elites during economic crisis worldwide. So we must be clear: Puerto Rico is next.

“I think tomorrow the island will develop into the Singapore of the Caribbean.”[iii]

‘“One reason I came here is I thought it hit bottom. In a democracy, you really need a crisis to bring about change,’ says Tennebaum, a former Bear Stearns executive. He is in the process of building a home on the island and starting a merchant bank.” – Michael Tennenbaum

But this all reads like old news now. Then came Irma and Maria, knocking out much of the island’s infrastructure setting it back “nearly 20 to 30 years.”[v] The climate change-fueled super-storm means massive capital is needed to rescue and rebuild the island – capital attached to austerity and privatization. In New Orleans following Katrina, this rush of capital with ideological strings attached ultimately left the city without public schools and incentivized displacement of its own citizens, remaking the city in a whiter image.

We are witnessing the pairing of debt and crisis to serve the neoliberal goal of extreme privatization around the world: from the selling off of public land in Greece to water in Detroit. It’s time to call this what it is: colonial extraction. To echo the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz “you don’t put debt above people, you put people above debt.”

Occupy Museums joins the many voices calling for a complete cancellation of colonial debts and the anti-democratic agenda of Promesa. Our group is inspired by activists who have long connected politics and culture such as the Young Lords in New York. We join this call in solidarity with the long struggles of the Puerto Rican people and especially the artists we have collaborated with in Debtfair for the last year.

For too long, the arts and culture industry has become a civic front for the violence and extraction of the finance industry. The same sharks destroying entire economies are shamelessly heralded for their ‘stewardship’ as a blind eye is turned toward the havoc they wreak on millions around the world. If cultural institutions want to face in the direction of greater equality and decolonial and anti-racist justice they must divest themselves from the financial colonists of Puerto Rico: MassMutual, Oppenheimer Funds, Goldman Sachs, Franklin Resources, and UBS, the financial sponsors of the Basel Art Fairs and the third largest mutual fund holder of Puerto Rican debt. MoMA’s feted board member Larry Fink is CEO of Blackrock, the world’s greatest single engine of debt extraction. Until he is kicked off the board, the museum stands on the wrong side of Puerto Rico’s crisis and the programmed crises to come.

Cancel Puerto Rico’s colonial debts now!

Fire the Promesa oversight board – Real democracy now!

Viva Puerto Rico! Occupy Museums October 14, 2017

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[i] Professor Yarimar Bonilla

[ii] http://ift.tt/2x6TAYi

[iii] http://ift.tt/2fhbIEm

[iv] http://ift.tt/1lWlWuR

[v] according to Resident Commissioner Jennifer Gonzalez http://ift.tt/2hu6euF

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fadingfartconnoisseur · 8 years ago

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AK Monthly Recap: May 2017

This month I returned to my roots — I took a nice juicy solo trip to some countries I hadn’t visited before. Man, that always feels great. I took long walks. I photographed everything in sight. I drank lots of coffees in lots of cool cafes. Absolute bliss.

Since settling down in New York last year, I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve struggled with my identity. When you earn your salary based on your personality and then you make a major shift in lifestyle, on top of going from a moderate cost of living to a high cost of living, it can be quite disorienting. But after a year and a few months, I’m finding myself more relaxed.

Now, I think I’m getting pretty close to where I want to be — one week away per month, or two weeks away every two months, plus an occasional weekend trip thrown in. And the rest of the time I get to hang out in fabulous New York City. That feels right to me now.

Destinations Visited

New York, NY

Bucharest, Romania

Chisinau, Moldova

Odessa, Kiev, Chernobyl, and Pripyat, Ukraine

Favorite Destination

Odessa. Far and away. I’ve been dreaming of visiting Odessa for so long, and it didn’t disappoint me in the slightest.

Highlights

Bucharest was a lot of fun. I visited for the #ExperienceBucharest campaign, designed by volunteer tourism professionals to promote Bucharest to an international audience. Everyone was so passionate about sharing their hometown with us!

And I discovered a fabulous city. It felt a lot like Berlin in that the strangest little cafes and restaurants were hiding behind innocuous looking doors, but it also had a grandeur reminiscent of Paris. I loved getting to know the people of Bucharest, from formerly homeless tour guides to artists and entrepreneurs to the expats who had made Bucharest their home. It’s a special city. And while many Romania tourists skip Bucharest, you really shouldn’t.

At the conference portion of the event, I spoke on a panel about visual storytelling and didn’t mince words: “I am so sick of travel bloggers posting a million acro-yoga photos.” (Seriously, bloggers…no offense to my friends who are really into acro, but I hate looking at tons of photos of you balanced on the hairy legs of some random dude in short-shorts. Plus, doesn’t taking tons of photos of yourself doing yoga kind of defeat the mental benefits of doing yoga in the first place?)

Ukraine was awesome. Man, did I love that country! I had plans to visit Odessa, Kiev, and Chernobyl, and I partnered last-minute with JayWay Travel, a boutique Central and Eastern European travel company, for a custom itinerary they built for me with hotels, transfers, and tours throughout the country.

There is so much beauty and pride in Ukraine — a sharp contrast from Moldova. And it is by far the cheapest European country I’ve visited. Much cheaper than Albania and Macedonia! Think 95-cent lattes in fancy cafes and two-course meals with both wine and water for $8.

Odessa was my favorite spot, with its elegant streets and pastel colors, but I also really liked Kiev (especially the parts without Soviet architecture).

Chernobyl was unforgettable. It’s so hard to find the words to describe visiting the location of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. (Yes, it’s safe to visit today. It’s the equivalent of staying in Kiev plus eating two and a half bananas. There’s radiation in everything.) It’s a site of great tragedy, but it’s also moving to see a town left frozen in time, as well as the effect of nature reclaiming a whole settlement.

Learning Cyrillic. I did learn a bit when I traveled to Macedonia and Bulgaria back in 2013, but I had forgotten most of it. This time in Ukraine, I jumped in and worked hard — and it paid off. There’s nothing more rewarding than sounding out a word and recognizing it. Once, I yelled out, “Oh! Sushi Bar!”

Some strange and lovely New York adventures. Like finally making it to Punderdrome, a monthly pun competition in Brooklyn. About a dozen people, some of them professional comedians, get up on stage and out-pun each other until there’s only one winner remaining. I loved it!

And, um, I ventured to HUMP!, Dan Savage’s independent sex-positive pornographic short film festival. If you ever feel like you’ve seen everything…that festival will assure you that nope, you haven’t.

I also made an appearance at Smorgasburg, a weekend food festival in Brooklyn, for the first time in forever. If you visit New York on a weekend, you should try to attend — they have tons of delicious and unique food offerings. It’s not a cheap outing, but it’s lots of fun!

Making lots of new friends — and connecting with two people in particular. I usually keep to myself when traveling solo, so that’s a bit of a novelty for me. And on this trip I met two different people — one in Bucharest, one in Kiev — with whom I connected in a deep, unfiltered way. The kind of connection you can only have with a stranger. It’s crazy to feel like someone can hold your soul in their hand for a few minutes.

Challenges

Moldova was a bit of a bust. After a few hours of walking around Chisinau, I felt like I had made a huge mistake choosing to spend three nights there. Over time, I found a few cool businesses and developed a bit of affection for the city, but I feel no need to return to Moldova and wouldn’t recommend Chisinau to the vast majority of travelers.

I wanted to see more of Moldova — Cricova Winery and Orhei Vechei — but Cricova wasn’t doing wine tastings (and what’s the point of visiting a winery without tastings? The visit is the boring part!) and the minibuses ran on a schedule that would have left me in the middle of nowhere for hours. I would have hired a driver, but I couldn’t find a professional and as a solo woman, I would only hire a professional, not some random dude wanting to make a few bucks.

By that time, I was just exhausted and didn’t even feel like venturing to Transnistria.

Illness in Bucharest. Conferences are a hotbed of germs to begin with, particularly when you combine it with party nights and lack of sleep. I usually get sick a few days after a conference, but this time it hit me earlier. Probably because everyone was sick. When it’s that bad, you know it’s a matter of time before you get sick, too.

Yet another far-longer-than-necessary journey home. It wasn’t quite as bad as my 48-hour Broome-Perth-overnight-Singapore-London-long layover-Boston journey last fall (which I am NEVER REPEATING), but my Kiev-Bucharest-overnight-Amsterdam-New York journey was 24 hours long. It pained me when I realized that I could have flown nonstop from Kiev to New York in just 10 hours, but alas, circumstances brought me elsewhere.

The older I get, the less I can tolerate those long journeys. I need to keep that in mind.

The Raindrop Cake is a lie! New York’s Raindrop Cake, a clear gelatinous half-sphere became an Instagram star a few months ago, and when I saw it at Smorgasburg, I wanted to give it a try. Well, it wasn’t anything great. It didn’t look THAT good, and it tasted like plain sugar-flavored gelatin.

Honestly, this was the most “the emperor has no clothes” trend I’ve found since moving to New York. And the fact that it cost $8 added insult to injury. Skip this one and walk to Ample Hills for ice cream instead.

And I dealt with a stye. I don’t get styes very often, but if you’ve had one, you know how unpleasant they are. They hurt, your face looks like you’re having a stroke, and you may need to throw your eye makeup away. A few days of tea bag compresses and baby shampoo washings got rid of it. Though several people told me that the best cure for a stye is URINE!

Most Popular Instagram Photo

Want likes? Post the Eiffel Tower. Pretty simple. I actually posted this photo to celebrate the election of Emmanuel Macron in France.

For more live updates in real time, you can follow me on Instagram (@adventurouskate) and Snapchat (also @adventurouskate).

Fitness Update

I’m officially in the worst fitness rut I’ve been in since the beginning of the year. I’ve just gotten lazy and I need to pick things up again.

I was so determined to work out throughout my Eastern Europe trip, but it didn’t happen. As a result, when I had my first zumba/training combo day after my trip, I was PAINFULLY sore for the next three days.

The good news? My trainer asked if I could keep my weight steady while away, and I actually kept it exactly the same, despite consuming tons of dumplings and wine. That’s something.

This month I also took the “Dance!” class at Equinox. The description said it could be from any genre of dance and I hoped it would be hip-hop…no. It was jazz. A jazz routine. I felt like I was back in high school drama class. Yeah, that one I won’t be repeating. I didn’t even break a sweat!

I’ll get back in there. I need to.

I’m also thinking about expanding to a global Equinox membership. It doesn’t make the most sense, since I live in Harlem and all the gyms are south of me, but it might be worth it to take classes with my favorite instructors on a more regular basis…

What I Read This Month

I’m up to 28 books read so far this year — I’m now officially more than halfway through the 52-book 2017 PopSugar Book Challenge! I had actually hoped to have read six to eight books this month rather than just five, but I’m working on a few others and will get there.

Also, I keep meaning to read literature from the country I’m visiting, but of course I spent two weeks in Eastern Europe and only read books set in Oklahoma, Florida, and Kansas. Go figure.

Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson (updated 2011 edition) — I knew “a book that’s mentioned in another book” would be a challenging category — somehow, I could only think of the books that were mentioned throughout the Baby-Sitters Club series (Little Women and Baby Island?). But when I read You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero earlier this year, she had a list of recommended books and said that while you should always read books by people you admire, Richard Branson’s memoir was her absolute favorite. I was sold!

And what a thrilling ride this book was! It’s an in-depth account of Branson’s wild journey as an entrepreneur, as well as his adventures through love, life, and record-breaking. And I found it fascinating to see how he sees the world and makes decisions. He is just so optimistic and willing to jump into anything that seems fun, without even putting that much thought into it. I was also surprised to hear that Virgin had very little cash on hand until the mid-1990s, when they won a huge settlement from British Airways. (Consequently, I never want to fly BA again. They spied on Richard Branson and his family!!)

The best memoirs are ones that either show a major transformation or bare the soul of the writer. This book falls more into the latter category, and it’s absolutely worth it. Category: a book that’s mentioned in another book.

Nyssa Glass and the House of Mirrors by H.L. Burke (2016) — You know, I’ve made an effort to read a good book in every category, even the ones that aren’t really my thing, but when it came time to read a steampunk novel, I just wanted to get through one quickly. So I found the Nyssa Glass series: a set of mysteries about a teenage girl who solves mysteries in Victorian times while aided by cutting-edge steam technology. Steampunk has always made me roll my eyes a bit, but I’m sure it can be done well in the hands of a skilled author.

And this book? Just a quickie Young Adult book that wasn’t that compelling. I think younger readers might get more out of it. Category: a steampunk novel.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (2017) — I chose this book from Book of the Month because it’s one of the hottest nonfiction releases of the year and it tells a fascinating story forgotten by history. In the 1920s, the Osage Indians of Oklahoma were the richest people per capita in the world because there was oil on their land and the rights couldn’t be sold, only inherited through family. Then dozens of Osage began dying unexpectedly — some from illness, some from gunshots. Eventually the newly formed FBI discovered a mass conspiracy to murder as many Osage as possible.

In addition to learning about this heartbreaking and forgotten chapter of history, I found it fascinating to see how Native Americans were treated by white people and how it differed from other races. It was common for Native Americans and white people to marry, and rather than being segregated, the attitude was more, “They need to assimilate and start doing things our way.” Like other forms of racism, it never ended — it just changed form. Also, I was very interested in the FBI parts and think I might want to read a biography of J. Edgar Hoover next. Category: a book recommended by a librarian. (PS — Library Reads is a great resource to find books recommended by librarians.)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) — I had been meaning to read this book forever, along with more Harlem Renaissance authors, and when I saw it in a used bookstore near my gym, I snapped it up. In this novel, taking place in Florida not too long after Emancipation, a teenage girl named Janie yearns to fall in love — but she feels nothing for her first husband and runs off with a second, controlling husband. Then finally, as a 40-year-old widow, she meets a handsome 25-year-old and falls in love for the first time.

I love a good romance, and this delivered. But more than that, this book was about Florida, its stickiness and humidity, and its fledgling all-black communities created in the years post-slavery. And the only thing I love more than a good romance is a good ending — not necessarily a happy or sad ending, but an ending you’ll never forget. This falls into that category. Category: a book you got at a used bookstore.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965) — This was my book club’s pick for the month, and I was glad to read a book that I’ve always heard about. Truman Capote invented the nonfiction novel! It’s because of him that one of my favorite books, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, exists today! At the time of publication, it was unheard of for a nonfiction book to be written in the literary style of fiction.

In 1959, four members of a family were murdered on their farm in Kansas. There were no clues and no motive — but eventually an unlikely source led to the case cracking open. Capote tells the story of the murder from the points of view of the victims, the perpetrators, and the local community.

The writing is captivating but something felt wrong to me — it felt so voyeuristic. These people died, and there was no reason for their deaths. (It’s the same reason why I don’t listen to murder podcasts, despite their popularity — it feels cruel to me to geek out over the deaths of people.) But I appreciated it as a piece of literature. I also enjoyed that my hometown of Reading, Massachusetts, made a most unexpected appearance near the end of the book. Category: a book with an eccentric character.

What I Watched This Month

Master of None, Season Two. This show means so much to me and I’m glad it’s finally back after a year and a half. Not only is it the show I relate to the most, it somehow hits me straight in the feels and brings me nearly to tears, even when it’s not that sad. HOW DOES IT DO THAT? Do they have a blueprint of my brain?!

And then it was like Season Two was even more precisely tailored to me:

–They had a performance by my favorite singer, John Legend.

–They cast my favorite celebrity crush, Bobby Cannavale (yeah, I say it’s The Rock, but it’s really Bobby Cannavale) playing an Anthony Bourdain-like role and it’s the hottest he’s ever looked onscreen.

–They filmed in two of my favorite small towns in Italy: Modena in Emilia-Romagna and Pienza in Tuscany.

–They had a discussion about the Italian word allora that was pretty much lifted from my time living in Italy — I had no idea what it meant, but somehow I always knew when to say it!

–There was an homage to my favorite American quirk: giant pharmacies. Which is one thing I talk about all the time — I always LOVE returning to giant American pharmacies when I come home from my travels! They have everything you could possibly need!

At any rate, it was such a lovely season and I highly recommend you watch. It’s tough, though — Netflix hit us hard this month with new seasons of House of Cards, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Bloodline simultaneously…

Image: Jon Roberts

Coming Up in June 2017

After having a big trip in May, I’m taking it easier in June with only two short trips scheduled. First, I’m heading home to Massachusetts for my dad’s (milestone!) birthday at the beginning of the month.

And later in the month, I’m visiting Asheville, North Carolina, for the first time ever! I’ve wanted to visit this mountainside city for so long, but I was hesitant to visit North Carolina while HB2 (a.k.a. the bathroom law) was in place. The law has since been repealed by the new Democratic governor, so I feel comfortable going now. (Many LGBT advocates think that the repeal doesn’t go far enough. I agree with them. But I also know that political progress is most effective when it’s incremental and the repeal is a necessary step in gaining full equality for LGBT citizens in North Carolina.)

North Carolina is actually a new state for me — my final state to visit on the East Coast! And I’ve been working with Asheville to create a responsible and ethical itinerary that’s heavy on outdoorsy pursuits and features small local businesses. I’m really excited about it.

Any suggestions for Asheville? Let me know!

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