I'm up in Portland this week, visiting Debbie and hanging out at the Bitch office. I haven't been here in about a year, and it's amazing to see how bustling the office is—with interns and volunteers and new staffers (hi, Brian!)—while maintaining a relatively unfrenzied vibe, even though it's the middle of production on a new issue. This kind of calm, um, was never really achieved when I was working here. I'm going to try not to read anything into that.
When I moved to Madison to go to school several years ago, all I knew about the city was that people often referred to it as the "Berkeley of the Midwest" because of its history of radical politics. And while – like Berkeley itself – that intense thread of resistance is not nearly as palpable as it must've been back then, the vibe of the city is still very progressive. As one example, I don't know of any other city in the United States with as many worker collectives/cooperatives.
I knew I was close to home when I started hearing corn crop fungicide commercials on the radio.
I got into Minnesota a day early, because I took a wrong turn leaving Chicago and by the time I called the folks I was supposed to meet up with, they laughed (kindly) and told me to keep heading West, as it would've taken another two hours of backtracking to get there.