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I've been in the throes of a couple of obsessions lately, so I've done what I most enjoy doing and tried to make connections between my obsessions. It took me a while. After all, my latest project raising Monarch butterflies and the plight of Afghan women/girls don't seem to have anything in common. But one of my assignments in the creative nonfiction class I'm taking is to write a braided essay. A braided essay takes two or three or more threads of meaning (usually which aren't obvious at the outset) and braids them together. It's a form that can be very creative when it works. Unfortunately, one of the examples our instructor provided just left me scratching my head. I understood what connection was intended, but it was so disjointed I got bored and quit reading. I'm hoping to create something a little better with my butterfly-Afghan essay. As I thought more deeply about both obsessions, it occurred to me that what is common to both populations at the moment is migration. Both Afghans (primarily women) and Monarch populations depend on migration at this point in order to survive as a group or as a species. That's the braid I'm working on, and it's both challenging but exciting to see where the threads go and how they interact. I'll likely add some elements of our recent "migration" to Texas as well. I know I'm weird, but this kind of challenge excites me. There's not much better, in my opinion, than transforming ideas from your head into words on paper to see where you end up! --Janice
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January 2022
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