The people I’ve met this trip:

– a tattooed woman behind the bar who recommended the spicy falafel and told me what areas were the tourist traps destroying the local New Mexican culture

– the masseuse that told me to breathe as she applied the pressure

– the recently married woman at the wine bar who lived in 15 cities over the last two years so she could feel confident living here

– the antique map dealer who told me the travails of doing photogrammetry and remote sensing in the 70s and gave the kind of advice that only an older mapmaker could give to a younger (I’m going to open an antique map shop one day!)

– the middle aged father who kept asking me about football until he realized talking about art was more fruitful — how he had a lot of technical insight about Georgia O’Keeffe’s work and then said “and the flowers are all a double entendre for lady parts, too, which isn’t half bad.”

– the grandmother waitress who agreed that the birth of the first child in one’s nuclear family is the most exciting thing and gave me a list of toy shops I needed to check out in advance of my visit to see my niece

#TheGlow