Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Mid-April is always when I start to feel like I have a handle on things again. The AAS Annual Conference takes place in the middle of March, and then for various reasons I inevitably have some sort of travel a week or two after that. My schedule takes weeks to calm down to the point where I can count on time for cooking, going to yoga or the gym, and making other plans. Happily, I always seem to emerge from this post-conference chaos just as the spring weather really starts to make itself know in Southeast Michigan.

Mid-April is also the annual date for the “Martian Invasion of Races,” a space-themed running festival in Dearborn (especially appropriate this year, coming just after the Artemis II mission!). Back in 2019, the Martian Invasion was my introduction to Michigan’s racing scene, the 5K race that I signed up for hoping that it really was “walker-friendly.” I found that the race, and the people who run it, are actually all-around friendly. Michigan’s race culture is wonderfully inclusive, with generous cutoff times and lots of encouragement from onlookers on the course.

Since 2019, I’ve made the Martian Invasion a standing date on my April calendar, progressing from the 5K to 10K and then this year, I planned, to the half-marathon.

Except—remember how all my routines always fall apart leading up to and in the wake of the AAS conference? An event I have now worked at for nine consecutive years, thus giving me a lot of data on the effect it has on my life? Why on Earth (or Mars) did I think I could thoroughly train for a half-marathon during the winter … in Michigan … while in the midst of conference season??

Luckily, I [mentally] came back to Earth last week and recognized that I was in no condition to attempt a half-marathon. I adjusted my registration to the 10K and showed up at Ford Field Park in Dearborn yesterday morning ready to go.

And it was great: sunny and warm weather, people as friendly as ever, my joints a little stiff at the start but soon loose and comfortable. I can’t remember the last time six miles went by so fast, even though the results page tells me that my race time was on the slower side for me.

Although I’m sure that winter will come back to Michigan for at least one more brief visit, the Martian Invasion is, for me, the annual sign that spring has arrived and my schedule has calmed.

Thanks for joining me this week.

Recommendations

China Stories

David Bandurski, “Sweeping the Ancestors Aside”

Keith Bradsher, “How China Built Its Vast Natural Gas Stockpile”

Brent Crane, “Michael Luo on the Story of Chinese Immigrants in the U.S.” and Emily Wilson, “Michael Luo Grapples with Chinese American History”

China has stockpiled increasingly large amounts of oil. It has pursued renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and hydropower so aggressively that its demand for refined oil, diesel and gasoline is falling. And it has harnessed technology to reduce its reliance on the foreign-sourced raw materials that go into the massive output of its factories. — Alexandra Stevenson and Murphy Zhao, “This Is Not China’s War, but Beijing Started Preparing for It Years Ago”

Chun Han Wong, “Xi Ousts Politburo Member in Deepening Purge of China’s Top Ranks”

Wanderings Around the World

I want Hezbollah gone. I want it said plainly, because the rest of this argument can be misread. I want them gone because they hollowed out a state and called it resistance. Because they turned their weapons inward. Because they made sovereignty conditional. Because 4,000 Lebanese died in the last war. Because a young man, not much older than my son, who grew up in the south and had no other language handed to him, joined them. Because my house sits 5 miles from the border and I have not been able to go. — Nada Bakri, “Far From the Land of Good News”

Surbhi Gupta, “A New Generation Is Redefining Pakistani Cuisine in the US”

Ivan Nechepurenko, “Her Museum Was Surviving in Russia. Then the Threats Became Too Much.”

Featured photo: The Martian Invasion of Races at Ford Field Park, Dearborn, MI, April 13, 2019.