Run to the East

Tomorrow, I leave for home, to see Bonnie for the first time since arriving here.

It is still home, though the house has moved and the town is different.

I read an article.

I also ran a bit today. I run most days.  As usual when I go to new places and deal with new people, I become more and less patient. I am more patient to hear a long story with very little useful information. I am less patient to hear lies from the mouths of alcoholics. I bear both with the same demeanor - but one gets my effort because I believe they deserve it, and one gets my effort because that's my job.

There is a lot of weakness here, and less anger than I feel there should be, or less anger than I want there to be.  So much has been taken from the people here, and now America gives back to them the bare minimum to keep them...happy?

And they're so nice.  I have yet to encounter so much as a sidelong glance at my white skin.  Part of me (the part that forgets I am currently trying to live here) wishes they would be furious.  That I would daily encounter someone so righteously angry at the mistreatment his people have endured that he makes it a mission to bring the reputation and pride of the Navajo nation to something above drunk and glass scattered along the side of the road.

There are some that are better.  Some who show the best they have to offer.

I wonder also if I'm not seeing a downtrodden native population, isolated from the rest of the country.  I wonder if maybe instead I'm just seeing poverty.  I don't know which is worse.

Did you know you can get rhabdo from drinking too hard?  Shameful.

Shameful.