Hi friends! How are you on this lovely rainy Tuesday?

In all honesty, I'm kinda draggin' post-Treefort. Sooo I don't have a new story for you today. Instead, I chose five favorite stories from this past year. I think they are my favorites because I got to meet really cool and interesting people while writing, but you guys seemed to enjoy them a lot too.

Next week, we will be back to our regular schedule of a new story on Tuesday and a bunch of fun things to do on Thursday.

Also, sometimes y'all ask me how you can share these newsletter stories on Facebook or with other people. The best way to find past stories or the link to each story is at fromboise.com/posts.

Enjoy <3

Meet the Boise band making music to bring people together

Go to an Afrosonics show, and you’ll experience an unforgettable fusion of talent, cultures from across the globe, and genuine human connection. It surges through each person on stage and spills out into the audience. That mostly looks like people dancing, swaying their hips, tapping a foot, with an uncontrollable smile spreading across their lips. It’s impossible to not move, laugh, smile, dance, and feel the love along with Afrosonics.

Afrosonics are more than just a band. They are Boise locals, artists, friends. It's a collective of musicians with a simple yet serious mission: create music that brings people together.

And if you’ve ever been to an Afrosonics show, you know they have fun while doing so.

The inception of Afrosonics dates back to 2013, though it’s gone through several iterations since then, as bands do. Today, Afrosonics is made up of seven Boise artists and continues to conscientiously integrate New American musicians (former refugees from war-torn areas of the world) and Idaho musicians, creating the band’s one-of-a-kind, genre-bending sound.

“Yeah, what we do is pretty unique,” said Dayo Ayodele, laughing.

Ayodele is the force behind Afrosonics, though he’s usually the guy near the front of the stage with a contagious smile, singing vocals with a cowbell in hand.

​Read the full story here.

Voir la place boisée

Once upon a time, French fur trappers supposedly looked out over the Treasure Valley from Bonneville Point and shouted, “see the trees!” After many miles in the hot high desert, legend says they were delighted by the sylvan beauty of the Boise River flood plain.

Unfortunately, in French “the trees” is “des arbres” and, as much as I would like to live in a city named Arbie, the legendary trappers must have been saying, “see the woods” or, “see the wooded place” or, “voir la place boisée.”

​As Boise grew up, it adopted the nickname “City of Trees,” one that it shares with more than a dozen other cities around the US. Placing a high value on this moniker, Boise has an entire chapter of the city code devoted to privileging trees in development and growth.

Together, the trees of Boise are a rich tapestry. Individually, they are avatars of the history of Boise.

​Read the full story.

Boise was the America I was thinking of

The lovely, lyrical memoir, Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams tells the story of wetlands on the edge of the Great Salt Lake. Marshy, salty, and home to unique plants and wildlife, this bit of landscape is endangered by natural processes and anthropocene causes. When I first read her book in a Western American Literature class I found the idea of a shifting ecosystem profoundly interesting. Change, of some type or speed or born of some cause, is inevitable. Of course it is. And yet, what Williams shows is how change can be both a loss and a gain. As one species retreats, another may advance. As one adapts, another may not.

As with fish and birds and bugs and grasses, so with individual humans. If home is untenable, a new place of refuge must be found but a new culture, a new language, a new climate is stressful mentally, physically, and emotionally.

A refuge is supposed to be a place of shelter, safety, security and a refugee is one who seeks the same. The modern technical definition of a refugee is one who has “fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and [has] crossed an international border to find safety in another country.”

Boise seems an unlikely place for displaced persons to end up, and yet Boise is the home of former refugees from Iraq, Syria, Bosnia, Rwanda, and a myriad of other places. Like a number of other small cities – large enough to offer services and small enough to be comfortable for newcomers – Boise was certified as a Welcoming City in 2019 by the organization Welcoming America. Unfortunately, that certification came just as Boise and the US were resettling fewer refugees than in the previous decades.

In 1980, the US welcomed more than 200,000 refugees. By the early 2000s that number had declined to under 100,000 and in 2019, it was under 30,000. Worse, that decline corresponds to an increasing global need as the number of displaced persons has steadily grown.

Among the thousands of formerly displaced persons that call our city home are Steve and Yvette. A middle aged couple, Steve from Congo and Yvette from Rwanda, have lived here for twenty years, raised their children here and gone from needing the help and assistance of refugee organizations and volunteers, to being Community Health Advocates who help newer arrivals navigate the complexities of hospitals and insurance forms.

When I talked with Steve, I was delighted to hear his enthusiasm for Boise and his sense of settledness in living here. When he arrived, two years after his wife and children did, he said, “Boise was the America I was thinking of. It was what I had imagined.” And, while it has changed considerably in the last few decades, Steve says, “Idaho is a great place to be. No complaints!”

​Read the full story here.​

Keep moving, people

There is an art installation in downtown Boise, tucked away off Main Street. It’s behind two sets of automatic doors leading to the bus terminal, looming above stairs that descend and disappear below the city.

A white tiled background has three words etched onto its surface, each letter formed and textured with tiny white objects — an airplane, a boat, tiny cars and trucks. Like an inverted I Spy, the objects form three simple yet significant words.

I don’t know the artist or what they had in mind, but I’ve always been struck with how it captures an ineffable element of our human nature: our ability to keep going.

At some point in life, every one of us has or will experience something that changes everything. Something that rocks you to your core, changes who you are. Someone close to you will die. Something will turn the way you live your life upside down. You will lose something, someone, some part of yourself.

In the aftermath of such an experience, there are days, weeks, months, even years, where it seems that you are suspended in time while everything and everyone around you continues on; moving, working, living. And there you are, dangling between a moment that has already passed and a world that is continuing on.

The earth keeps spinning, despite what happened to you.

Keep moving, people.

Those three words are at the crux of the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF). Established in 1994, CAF creates opportunities for people with physical challenges to pursue active lifestyles.

Simply put, CAF keeps people moving.

​Read the full story here.​

Meet Chicana Foods

In the fall of last year, Allison Corona felt the tug of the universe calling her in a new direction.

“I was kind of just feeling like I needed to do something. I ended up taking a Venture College class at Boise State and I was just like okay; this is my idea and I’m just going to see where it goes,” said Corona.

That idea is now Chicana Foods, a new Boise-based salsa company that is nothing like you've ever tried before.

Chicana Foods’ flagship product is Salsa Macha, and it’s not your typical salsa. First and foremost because it’s not tomato based, as most salsas are. It starts with a homemade chili oil base, then adds pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, garlic, spices, dried fruit, and dried chilis.

“Even in Mexico I feel like not a lot of people know about Salsa Macha. It’s very regional,” said Corona. “So, I knew that it would be something new here in Boise.”

​Read the full story here.​

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a new story next week. It's gonna be a good one ;)

With love from Boise,

Marissa