Parenting

What it’s like to be a Patient Navigator for abortion services: “It’s post-Roe, 2022. I’m on a trip from Texas to New Mexico, accompanying 15 people seeking abortion, one a minor. The clinic forgets to tell us to buy her mom a ticket, and the two get separated at the airport. Mother sobbing, daughter stone-faced and angry. I’m exhausted.”

John Fugelsang is in Albuquerque to perform “Unpresidented: The true story of a comedian trying to raise a toddler while his country was electing one” and we were lucky enough to get him into the Pyragraph LIVE studio (a.k.a. my office) to talk about comedy, politics, religion, and how he’s pulled all those elements and more into his unique creative career. 

After last week’s tragedy in Parkland, Florida, I reached out to Maggie Byers and Emilie De Angelis of Moms Demand Action NM to talk about recent developments on the gun control front. Moms Demand Action is a bi-partisan grassroots organization fighting the epidemic of gun violence in the US.

People breed puppies in their backyards and then sell them to pet shops for a couple of hundred dollars so that the pet shop can turn around and sell them for twice that much to fools like your boyfriend.

Guest Blogger Jeff Andersen: “We work with students in local classrooms for an entire year teaching them how to write and perform their own plays. I see the students make the same connections I did. They realize that they can not only participate in the world around them but also, even better, help to shape it.”

Babar the elephant and Curious George are old friends. They were some of the first people we grew to know. They might not be real people, but they were some of our first ideas of people.

If you are getting a “very creepy vibe” off this guy, if other women are saying he makes them “very uncomfortable,” if you are “scared for” your aunt, then what the hell are you waiting for? The Rapture? I would suggest that you immediately intervene.

Ocotillo medicine is used to move stagnation. Thus “thorn-bed” has a double meaning suggesting pain, while acting as a remedy for ending the phenomena of being stuck, blocked, or otherwise suffering.

The intention of my self-imposed residency is to reframe motherhood as a valuable site of inspiration rather than an obstacle for making art. As I am in the midst of parenting two young children, I have found this pedagogical shift incredibly empowering.

Not only did I think rock and roll foolish and immature, but I felt as if somehow I had let my son down by being a wastrel for all of my adult life instead of preparing for proper fatherhood.

With this recent embrace that my work is in fact inspired from my personal experiences, it allows me to take the whole of my experiences as artist, mother, nature enthusiast and Buddhist and make them all one.

Drifting back into memories of my little babies wearing them, I pained over whether I could “sacrifice” the clothing for the sake of art. The first cuts were almost paralyzing.

Peri interviews Collin Troy, a.k.a. Eph Sharpe, known to hip hop fans for his work with 2bers, but who also has a crap-ton of other creative ventures on his plate, including a new solo music project called Factory on Fire.

A Buddhist saying I heard which I hope to hold as my mantra as I navigate this new phase of my life as an artist and parent is, “The perfect place to condition is where you are and the perfect condition is who you are.”

I really love my kids and my husband. But I need long stretches of focused time for my work, and lately I feel I can’t get that without guilt, and often crabbiness. Bobby, how can I be present with my family while also doing my creative work?

Having both my kids in a summer program for the first time ever is a big reason why I’m riding a wave of productivity and plowing ahead with Pyragraph stuff AND new podcast episodes. Whoo, momentum!