Think Global, Act Local

By Alex Cyusa Photo By Nolan P. Schmidt

A 20-YEAROLD'S MUSINGS On Modern-Day Planet Earth

Mugire Amahoro (Shalom Alekhem in KinyaRwanda)

I hope this article finds you enjoying the sight of the immaculate northern prairies.

As we say our warm farewells to this unprecedented year 2020, I wanted to have a reflective chat with someone radiant, adventurous and community-oriented. This is when I thought of the legendary, joyous and stellar lady LesleyAnne Buegel.

This is a very special opportunity for me to share my platform with Lady LesleyAnne because this fall marks my 10th year in the Fargo-Moorhead area and this wouldn't have been possible without her esteemed father, Sir Buegel, who recruited me to attend college here. He has been a tremendous mentor since the day I landed in the area and his family has been welcoming many international students like myself for decades, allowing us to confidently make this area our home away from home.

Now back to Lady LesleyAnne, I wanted to finish this historical year 2020 in a ceremonial way with someone who has traveled the globe but who was born and raised here. LesleyAnne is a proud Moorhead Spud and under the PSEO program, she went to school at Concordia College. After high school, she boldly chose to attend the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and then came back to make a lasting impact in the community.

Since the Christkindlmarkt 2019, she has been a great addition to our Folkways team and the Red River Valley is fortunate to have her back in our midst because the entire world is her comfort zone. She is fearless and welcomes any new adventures that will make her a better human being and our community friendlier to everyone.

To check out her art visit @lesleydidthat on Instagram To see her travel videos check out her YouTube channel, LesleyAnne Buegel Happy Holidays with your beloved ones & Umwaka Mushya Muhire (Happy New Year in kinyaRwanda)

Until our humble paths cross again:

Keep smiling at life and taking precious care of the beautiful human you see daily in the mirror!

- Cyusa

Where do you call home?

This is often a difficult question for me. The short answer is my parents' lovely and eclectic house in Moorhead, where I was raised and where I currently live. The long answer is inspired by a TED talk I once listened to, that asks the far more philosophical question, “Where are you a local?” I am a local in Moorhead, Minnesota, where I learned to bike and went to prom and first fell in love. I am a local in Fargo, North Dakota, where I got my wisdom teeth taken out and practiced gymnastics every day and waitressed at IHOP every weekend in high school.

I am a local in Dunedin, New Zealand, where I learned how to live on my own and got my first tattoos and graduated university. Although I live in Moorhead now, I don’t think of myself as any less of a local in the other two cities (admittedly, Fargo is only across the bridge, but you know what I’m getting at), and I would call all of them home.

Where did your passion for traveling come from?

My parents have and always will be my biggest inspiration. They met at a carnival celebrating Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, and never once stopped their passion for new experiences and new cultures once they had children. Instead of holding off on travel because they had kids, they worked tirelessly to bring us to new and exciting places, balancing a steady life at home with trips back to Vietnam to visit family with trips all around the states and the world. I always had the coolest souvenirs to pass around at showand-tell, but I wasn’t aware of how rare that actually was.

It just felt like a normal part of life to me. It took a while to realize how lucky I was to have a passport overflowing with stamps before most of my peers had ever left the country. I have never since taken it for granted, and am so thankful that my parents had the opportunities and capacity to take us with them. When I was making my college decision, I knew that my love of travel had finally outgrown its existence as a byproduct of my parents’ interests and plans, and the time had come for me to pick up the baton and climb those mountains by myself.

How was is it transitioning from high school in America to college in New Zealand?

Like many who leave the nest for the first time, my first weeks after moving out were lonely and filled with doubts. The first night I was there I remember feeling surprised too. I think a part of me didn’t actually believe I would make it that far ("that far" being 8,501 miles from Moorhead). Maybe I was surprised at the fact that being in a brand-new country could feel deeply happy and sad, when in my travels before I had only ever felt happiness, awe or wonder. Because I am a very emotional person, I took the absence of my family, friends and first love very hard. I had to reach inward and come to terms with letting go of those ties so I could make room for new experiences.

I started reaching out immediately to make new friends, and they helped me more than anything else to start to make Dunedin become a second (or third?) home. But the substantial distance from home was more than heartache and an inconvenient time difference, it was a blessing too. Knowing that you can’t just drive a few hours to have your dad check your engine light makes you a lot more self-sufficient, and I think the ability to establish yourself in a new place from a clean slate adds a lot of meaning and depth to your life.

Why should people care about places outside the Midwest?

There is so much more than the media’s 10-second highlight reel of a country or city. When I told some people here where I was going for college, they could only conjure images from Lord of the Rings. Some thought New Zealand was a colony of Australia. In Dunedin, many people told me they couldn’t wait to go to America because they wanted to go to a Walmart, Hollywood, a Las Vegas casino or to Disneyland. They often couldn’t conjure any other images of the country. This saddened me a lot. These extremely thin slices of America and New Zealand are representative of the countries only in globalized industries, from blockbuster movies, news headlines and megacorporations, from a made-up and skewed concept of a country that is so much more than a scenic movie set, or a world-class selection of sugar cereal. I worry that people have traded the authenticity and education of experiencing a new world for the easily and quickly consumed Instagram version, even worse, that they are unaware of it happening. There is so much more beyond what a day, a week or even a month in a new place could show you. If you can get out there, get out there. If you can’t, educate yourself as a global citizen, read books about it, watch new sports, follow bloggers and try to digest local and indigenous films in addition to mainstream media platforms. The real lives of people and places are not done justice by the globalized version, the photoshopped pictures or headlines shouting glamorous or grotesque or whatever they say now to get your attention. The genuine experience of a new culture, experienced at your own pace, will help you discover the world we all live in, and the world inside of yourself you may not know yet.

How has COVID affected your career plans?

Like millions of people around the world, I was caught off guard by the pandemic that hit at the beginning of the year and had no idea the extent to which it would last and impact my life. I am very lucky to have my personal support network of family and friends, and my professional support network at Folkways and in the FM community that made starting full-time mid-pandemic so enjoyable and educational. With their unwavering support and opportunities for growth, I have found that wonderful and amazing friendships and careers can be forged even in the darkest of years.

What is your vision 2030? Where will you be and why?

In 2030, I’ll be on an expedition in Antarctica with my marine biologist friends studying the behavior of penguins, an English teacher in Japan fulfilling my childhood dream of living in a real-life Studio Ghibli movie, a traveling street artist using the Canadian railroad to go from coast to coast, selling pie in a mug from a cute little food truck I run with my best friend, a museum curator at MoMA hoping to get one of her own pieces in an exhibition one day, a simple olive farmer in Greece with crow’s feet permanently etched in my face, skydiving with my fearless sister. Your guess is as good as mine.

'Tis The Season!

BY Dr. Sue Mathison Catalyst Medical Center and Clinical Spa Founder PHOTO BY Hillary Ehlen is the season for so many things! From Christmas cookies and eggnog to The Elf and Secret Santa, to carols of faith and hope as we remember Jesus' birth, and to the brightness of a menorah in the dark of winter, we scramble to figure out a safe way to celebrate traditions and create new ones. Stress and overwhelm seem expected traditions as well.

Maybe this is the year to distill even further the essence of the season. For me, the truths that define these days are giving, love and light. These truths can also be a verb: Giving love and light. Gift-giving can be a way to bring these truths to life if done within our means. And the accompanying card might be the most important facet of the gift if you are able to share a bit about why you chose the gift for that special person and their significance in your life.

These are my favorite gifts:

Books: Browse through Zandbroz downtown and marvel at the gorgeous window displays and vast array of gifts and books. Some of my favorite authors to give are Danielle LaPorte (White Hot Truth, Desire Map,) Bob Goff (Love Does, Everybody Always, Dream Big,) Bob Burg (The Go-Giver) and Ann

Dr. Sue Mathison is the founder of Catalyst Medical Center and Clinical Spa. She is a Stanford educated, triple-board certified physician who has received numerous accolades for leadership and Top Doctor for her clinical skills. Dedicated to the community, she is involved in the Dakota Medical Foundation, TedXFargo, The Choice Financial Board and more!

Voskamp (One Thousand Gifts, The Broken Way, Be The Gift). Barnes and Noble is also a haven for book lovers, and even though it's not a local company, we can support our friends who work there.

I like to give books that I've already read. Sometimes it's a new copy, sometimes a re-gift. The ultimate gift would be to meet for tea sometime down the road and use the book as a springboard for conversation.

Cookbooks: Recipe collections are often accompanied by great stories, with each dish serving up a special memory. When we cook together, food becomes part of our own story. As I write, I'm looking at a stack of cookbooks destined as Christmas gifts for my outdoorsmen brothers: The Meat Eater and Buck, Duck, Moose. I gifted a copy of Josh Hanson's Spanky's Stone Hearth Cookbook to my parents this summer. We had many special meals there over the years they owned a cabin nearby on East Spirit Lake. My sisters are getting Molly Yeh's Molly on the Range cookbook for Christmas.

I've gifted Cal Peternell's Twelve Recipes to recent high school and college grads. Peternell is Chef of the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in California and wrote this book for his children as they grew up and became independent. His hope was that they would nourish themselves and others through good simple food. I've also gifted books on making snack platters and cheese boards, though none could be as beautiful as ones created by Megan Lewis of MilkMade! And I am wondering when our local food heroes Eric and Sarah Watson will publish a cookbook? If I'm feeling particularly flush, I sometimes add a cool kitchen item from Stabo Scandinavian or Zandbroz or Creative Kitchen at West Acres Mall.

Candles: I love giving and receiving candles. I spent seven years in Seattle for residency training and locally made hand blown glass candle holders called GlassyBabies were the rage. They are filled with tea lights, so the glass holders can be used indefinitely. The colors were gorgeous and had a special name and intention, such as Soul, Courage, Celebrate, Gratitude and Silver Lining. There are hundreds of colors now. The company donates about five percent of each GlassyBaby sold, and they have donated over $10 million dollars over the past 20 years.

Locally, you can find great candles at Unglued, Do Good Adventures, Grateful Cratefuls and SCHEELS, where I discovered my first WoodWick candles, that crackle as they burn.

Going along with the candlelight theme, I love to give gifts for lakeside bonfires and cozy wood-burning hearths. It seems that conversation and closeness are enhanced by the flames.

Experiences: I love giving experiences, such as a Wine and Paint night, a floral class, a picnic, a joint pedicure or a play. My friend Hope and I have a tradition of going to the Plains Art and Architecture tour together. We were able to do this safely distanced this fall, but so many other experiences are out of the question. I'm praying for lots more togetherness by this time in 2021!

These gifts of knowledge and food and flames exemplify love and light, literally and figuratively.

I love how previously mentioned author Ann Voskamp tells us how we can salvage 2020:

"Love the people who don’t like you. Be wildly kind to the people who aren’t your kind of people. Be love so the world learns to love each other again. Be a light so lovely that all are drawn to the flame of such love. Be a light so lovely that injustice withers away."