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  • Marche Jean Talon

    Another trip to our beloved Montreal. We’ve been living in Vermont for less than two years and we’ve been eight times. Each time, our heart swells a little more by how much we love Montreal.

    Casey and I call our last trip our best trip, because we did it all right. We brought guests with us – two people who have never been to Canada. We parked in the right place. We mastered the subway by now and were able to seamlessly ride it to our destination.

    My new favorite place is Marche Jean Talon, which my sister found on a map and turned out to a dream. Like a European market, it’s packed, bustling, so much going on, so much yummy food from around the world. It’s probably one of my favorite places.

    We also went to the infamous spa on the boat of Vieux-Montréal, called Bota-Bota. It was amazing and makes me want to plan more trips to Scandinavian spas in Quebec city, which I’ve heard are more fun and less packed. I hadn’t thought that the spa and market could be topped, but we had dinner at Schwartz.

    It was such a fun and unforgettable day. I’m glad I got to share it with my family.

  • Tucson

    It’s good to be back in Tucson. Tucson is sort of my second home, after all the other places I have lived before.

    We came during February and we couldn’t be happier to get away from the negative temperatures in Vermont. I ate my body weight in Mexican food, which I really missed, especially birria.

    My friend from high school got us into the Tucson Symphony, which they play in. It was a special Valentine’s day treat.

  • Boston

    If you hadn’t caught on to my life yet, I run a literary and art magazine called Canto Cutie that showcases the work of Cantonese diasporic artists and writers. I’ve been creating, printing, and distributing this magazine since 2020, when I was living in an apartment in San Jose. Pretty much day one of the pandemic, when I had a sudden influx of free time, I immediately sprung into action with this idea that’s been cooking on my mind for years. Ever since, it’s been a big part of my life.

    Now I continue working on the magazine in the sticks of Vermont. Sometimes I leave our neck of the woods to table at zine festivals and independent press events, which brings me out to the *big city*.

    Late 2022, I took the magazine on an unofficial tour! First to Boston for the Boston Art Book Fair and then Brooklyn for Zine Fair NYC. In Boston, I stayed in New Bedford, which was an hour away from Boston.

    Every time I’m back in a big city, my first thought is “this is fun but I’m ready to go home.” I think I was meant for rural living because while I enjoy eating out, I’m done in like one day. Obviously there are lots of days where I want to scream because I’m tired of cooking and just want to get margs at happy hour but I’ve surprisingly adjusted well to living without the conveniences I had at my fingertips from when I was 18 to 28 years old.

    The Boston Art Book Fair was three days but it was fun because it was very well organized, in a perfect venue with tons of foot traffic and great tablers. I met some really great people and was able to expand the reach of the project, and sell a lot of magazines.

    While tabling can be exhausting, you use up your social energy really quick, one of the perks is food. They were experimenting with this new brand of seltzers, like an unofficial sponsor, and they were delicious. I probably had about 20 over the course of three days. We were also treated to free perogis, which I wasn’t aware you could crave but months later I wish I was eating perogis.

    I met a lot of people with similar projects – like an AAPI oriented zine and collective in Rhode Island, a Risograph artist in New York, a queer zinester based locally but working on their first comic book.

    These types of events remind you how lucky you are that you can create, and to create amongst other creators that you respect and admire is the ultimate source of fuel. It feeds me, refreshes me, and reminds me we’re all just drawing lil pictures at home and this won’t accomplish much in the big picture of global economic systems, but damn is it fulfilling.

    I went out on a limb and traded a lot of zines, I also bought a lot of art. I bought a lot of Risograph prints and original zines and comics that I can’t wait to share.

  • New Bedford

    In 2022, I took the magazine on an unofficial tour! First to Boston for the Boston Art Book Fair and then Brooklyn for Zine Fair NYC. In Boston, I stayed in New Bedford for three nights.

    New Bedford is a small town before the Cape about an hour outside of Boston. I had a lot of fun staying with my friends that I had met in the year prior. We had done a lot of work together as part of an arts nonprofit that they were an executive director of. It hit me hard when they had to move away from Vermont. I get pretty emotional when people have to leave but I was excited to see them.

    New Bedford seems sleepy on the outside but they have some really cool places like little Portugal which we had amazing food at and Kilburn Mill where there are boutiques and indie clothing shops.

  • Manhattan

    I had a great day in the city with my in-laws. We played mini-golf, got fancy pastries, went to a photography museum, and ended the night with Korean BBQ.

  • Richmond, Vermont

    Richmond is a cute town that some friends have told me that I should move to. Too bad, because we love where we live already! I’ve been there a few times, and each time has been really magical. The first time I really got to hang out here was with my friend Nicole, who we met online! She was also new to Vermont. One sticky summer night we headed to the Bolton Pot Holes, an icy cold swimming hole.

    We shared drinks on a blanket and braved letting the water come past our knees because of how cold it is. The melted snow water from the mountain drips down in waterfalls all spring and the remaining water pools at the bottom, making it stupid cold.

    That night, we had dinner at a cool Asian fusion joint in town and it’s probably to this day, one of the best burgers I’ve ever had in Vermont.

    Another good friend has invited me to Richmond a few times later in the summer. It’s a small town that really like-minded people have flocked to. We spent a fun summer night here, playing music (well, she was playing music, I was enjoying it). We reheated bulk carnitas and I busted out mango-juice vodkas at the only pace acceptable for three ladies on a Friday night. Two vodkas in, I rode my first electric bike here. A mutual friend rolled it out of her garage and let us ride down the the street in it.

    Finally, I was there last night, where I said goodbye to that friend. We had spent many summer mornings swimming in the reservoir, and prior to Vermont she had lived in many other states, from the backwoods of Alaska with only an outhouse for plumbing, to where I met her, in a funky loft above the town’s only gas station. I don’t know why, but I was emotional when I found out she was leaving, and emotional the entire time during her going away party. I know friendships are fleeting, after all, haven’t I left so many places? But it was time for somebody else to leave and that was really sad. We ate pizza made from the house-turned-restaurant next door, and sat around another friend’s living room, at a gathering where there were more dogs than people. The town’s veterinarian was there. A mix of old and young people. I felt lucky to be a part of that room at that time, and strangely empty when my friend and I hugged at the door when it was time to leave.

  • South Hero, Vermont

    South Hero is the southernmost Champlain island and only a thirty minute drive from my home. Summer weekends are where the Islands really shine, with their farmer’s markets and Vermonters going to their dachas.

    Except they don’t call them dachas, they call them “camp” and we’ve always been jealous of our friends who go to camp, because we want one someday.

    One afternoon I stopped by for a Filipino Festival here. It was held at a small farm owned by a Filipino family. Tents with all kinds of foods are set up in their driveway. I don’t eat much pork at home, so I pig out on pig buttocks and pork belly and everything I love about Asian food.

    Something that has been irritating me a lot lately is when people say “oh, I didn’t know there was a __ community in Vermont” and it’ll apply to say, the Filipino community. I’m not irritated in that everyone should know everything about Vermont, but more that your acknowledgement equals their existence. I asked my husband what constitutes a community? Like, I am the only Cantonese person I know in my town, does that mean my town has a Cantonese community? He said with just one other family, it does. Given how big my town is, then that means there’s a Cantonese community. And it’s interesting because in South Hero, I guess there is a community because on this farm, the family and all their friends are able to hold such food-centered events regularly, at least a few times per year so that means “Vermont has a Filipino community”.

    We are in the US, so there’s every kind of community – everyone the world over knows this country is a melting pot of cultures and immigrants. Since living here and working as an ESL teacher, most of my friends are people of color, but I know that’s not everyone’s experience. I know that being a minority in Vermont, I can have a fundamentally different experience than many other Vermonters. People are surprised we have truck to haul hay, straw, and more for our mini-orchard, but then some people are not surprised and are curious to know what we grow and what animals we raise. Some people are disgusted to know we have guns, but some people are like, of course you have guns, it’s Vermont after all, you’re a minority if you don’t have a gun. I’ve met people who don’t know a single Vermonter with a gun, so they have staunch opinions about gun ownership, which is a little bizarre in my opinion because Burlington can surely be a bubble.

    Every week I drive a neighbor’s kid to field hockey practice and take her to art class sometimes. People in Vermont will make statements about there being no people of color in Vermont, and here we are, two people of color existing and seeing each other weekly, and can be utterly confused by that statement. I eat mostly at the Nepali and Vietnamese restaurant down the street, so when people say there isn’t ethnic food in Vermont I’m also confused because that’s most of my diet here – the Asian food I make at home and the Asian takeout from our most visited places.

    I guess all this to say that I’m irritated when people remark that there isn’t such a community in Vermont, my immediate eye-roll, because I exist, and we exist, and we don’t need to be something you can visit like a Little Italy or Chinatown or something in order to exist.

  • Shelburne Museum

    We’ve had over twelve guests come stay at our guest room this summer. It’s partly due to my urging of everyone come visit us, but also because Vermont is the perfect vacation destination in the summer. There’s no place like it. Californians can’t get enough of the green, New Yorkers can’t get enough of the peaceful, untouched wilderness. A friend told me my Instagram page acts as the Vermont tourism board and I couldn’t agree more. My excitement radiates off of social media, and it’s not a curated selection of what I want people to see; it truly is that wonderful. I’ve only been here one year, but my heart swells with how much I truly love the home we’ve made here.

    My favorite guest of all this summer was Mike. Mike is Casey’s dad and I lived with him for a short period of time when Casey and I were first dating. When I had to leave to go live in Russia, we got drunk and I told him he’s like a second dad to me and he is a handful of older people that I cherish because they always have my back.

    We all met up in Long Island for my brother-in-law’s wonderful engagement party. A weekend of fun and festivities, and so much good eating. We returned home with Mike and while we all had to work the week away in our home in the woods, we took time to have a lot of fun. We took Mike to Nepali and Vietnamese food. Whenever we visit Mike, we always get Asian buffet and Korean bonchon so it’s always a lot of fun.

    My friend and I just started a small business holding paint-and-sip classes and he got to come to our first one ever. It’s been a lot of hard work and I was proud of how much fun he and other people were having at the event we put together, that I facilitated. One thing Casey and I noticed was that Vermonters loved Mike, because he’s friendly, and fun, and knows a lot about old stuff, which is basically what all of Vermont is.

    Casey gave Mike a book of Vermont’s civil war history just a few months prior so he was excited to visit museums and see old forts. So many friends recommended that we take Mike to Shelburne Museum, and I was so glad that my first trip to this outdoor theme park (let’s be honest, it’s hardly a museum in how special it is). Shelburne Museum is a campus of oddities, from a huge steam ship in the middle of a field, to fancy homes they carted from other parts of Vermont to be a part of the museum. We saw weapons, laughed it up with fun docents who told us secrets of the exhibits, and loved looking at old barns with preserved machinery. We saw an old certificate with Abraham Lincoln’s signature, really the highlight of the museum.

    I found some giant puffball mushrooms in a field, honestly a mark of a really spectacular day. Shelburne is about 45 minutes from home, so on the ride back we stopped for ice cream, picked up local coffee for Mike to take home, and walked a little in a part of Lake Champlain’s embankment that I had never been.

    Summer is over now, with the leaves falling, but I had an amazing time when Mike came. Going to the Shelburne Museum was a blast and I’m glad we got to experience that together.

  • Watertown, Massachusetts

    Watertown is a city west of Boston that I had a great time selling zines at. I met a lot of great people there.