Burnt Out But I Have Good News

"No Ordinary Word" went to Kenyon Review early this morning.

I have been working on the blog today - and it took longer than I expected. I did take time out to attend the demonstration down at the Freedom Bridge. Not quite the turn-out as with the last one, but I think there was more media.

Anyway, I worked on the blog because I want to get rid of as much paper as I can before I move. I did some research on the Commerce Clause while at Fort Dix, and I thought it would be easy - cutting and pasting citations. Yeah, well, tell that to my shoulders. That is the burnout.

The good news? I pulled an old story out of a box. It is a sequel to the long detained "One Dead Blonde". Larry Sweazy gave me the idea long ago - he promised me a story based on me, where I died on the first page. He never did it, so I did. It is typewritten with handwritten corrections. I wondered what I might get if I scanned the thing to PDF and then converted to text. Not bad. So, I have something to work with that I do not need to type all of from scratch.

I got through some email, and news when I got back this afternoon. Now, I have a place to eat when I am no longer broke: Little Snack Stop Brings Authentic Asian Flavors to Muncie (The Daily News):

Rachel Longsang did not have any business or entrepreneurial experience upon graduating from college in 2016. The Ball State University educational psychology alumna was, instead, keenly aware of her surroundings as a member of the Muncie community: bars, vape shops, “not a lot of fun stuff to do, especially as a freshman,” she recalled. Longstang sought to change that, now owning Little Snack Stop in The Village since March.

The shop offers a variety of Asian candies, beverages and salty snacks. While her personal favorite in-store treat varies from week to week, Longsang said the shop’s ice cream is a continued favorite among customers like Claire Seal, a second-year urban planning student at Ball State, who said she usually visits the shop twice a month, specifically for its fruit-flavored ice cream.

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Accessibility and authenticity have remained fundamentally important factors to Longsang since the beginning, when her business was nothing more than a blueprint.

 “In Muncie, you can't really get a lot of Asian stuff, especially if you don't have a car. A lot of the food here is pretty whitewashed,” she said.

The snack shop’s location along University Avenue — about 12 minutes from Ball State’s campus on foot — is what keeps customers like Seal coming back. 

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Longsang recommends the ramen to all first-timers looking to get a taste of Asian authenticity, as she believes it’s what “differentiates” the shop from other ethnic food places in the area and even in Indianapolis.

“I always tell people to try the ramen first, because you can make your ramen here, and you can decide what you like and what you don't like. We have a variety [of flavors] and individual packs—if you don’t want to buy a whole pack,” Longsang said.

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In spite of financial hardships, her love for her family is what pushed her to see the endeavor to its fruitful end.

“I have to retire my parents,” Longsang said. “My parents are getting old, so I [made] this [store] as an investment for my parents to retire. They worked so hard raising me; they came [to the United States] from Myanmar without anything, and they were really supportive of the store,” Longsang said.  

 And MAGA would have us think immigrants take our jobs, that we would be better without them.

I think I will finish watching "Pride of the Yankees". I should take another walk, but I did make one trip to the convenience store besides the walk to the bridge and back.

Listening to WXPN made for a pleasant day.

Forgot I listened to this: Episode 12: James Marcus on Emerson and Melville (Lapham’s Quarterly)

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