Rise

In Which I Don’t Change the Whole World

Posted on October 7, 2013     1 Comment

We climb metal bleachers on Saturday and my second girl wears blue and gold.  The rest of us melt in the stands while she cheers on our city league football team.  We sit alone on one lone bleacher, right behind a sea of women with umbrellas and too many children to count.

The women are dressed to the nines, their hair made into works of art.   The men, sitting among the women, wear pressed t-shirts and gold teeth and I look at my family and I feel less than.

We look like riff raff in jeans and flip-flops, my girl on the field not quite as put together as the other girls.

I look at us and I look at them and I can’t help but feel the color of my skin.

And it’s white.

The football quarters move as slow as molasses and as the clock runs, I find myself longing to sit under one of their umbrellas.

We splure on 6 sno-cones and 1 sports drink and we wipe the sweat from our brows.  We are quiet, at a loss for words, and we are needy.

Needy to laugh.

Needy to be a part of a group of people sharing the same experience.

Needy to know and to be known.

Needy to be wanted and included.

And needy to not be so different.

This morning, I wrestle with God while my house sleeps.  I pose questions to the sky and I listen for God to float down the answers I want to hear.  I pick myself apart and turn inward, trying to figure out how to fix me so that I fit in this place…So that it becomes my home.

I wrestle with race and economic status.  I wrestle with fitting into our neighborhood and figuring out how we function as a white family living in the hood, surrounded by poverty while planting a church full of white privileged people.

I wrestle with feeling like we’re short-changing our kids and worrying that they’ll want to wear dreadlocks and over-sized gym shorts.

And to be honest with you, I wrestle with my own prejudice and privilege and skin color.

I look out to my street called Avent and it’s slowly waking up.  I watch as men pedal their bicycles to work and children gather at the bus stop.  Two mamas push babies in strollers down the sidewalk and my neighbor waves at them from his front yard and I smile to myself before the sun ever reaches across my porch.

I lean into the window and wait for morning to visit street number 554,  and I  remember that I’m not meant to change the whole world-

I’m just meant to change mine.

And so I curl up in my favorite chair, just at the edge of the window, and I invite God to change me.

*This story is a revised and edited post that originally appeared here.

Lori Harris is wife to Thad and mama to six.  She is a reluctant homeschooler, wild JOY seeker, lover of authentic community, and believer in the power of story to change lives.  She is living proof that the right story can eternally change the course of one’s life.  She is planting a church alongside her husband in the heart of Rocky Mount, her hometown, and she is learning to love this place she calls home.  You can find her writing the rest of her story at Lori Harris.me.

If you would like to submit a story to Rise, please send all stories to rockymountstories@yahoo.com.  Everyone has a story to tell- We’d love to hear yours!

On Change and Things That Stay the Same

Posted on September 9, 2013     1 Comment

I wasn’t born in Rocky Mount, but since I moved here before I even turned two; I rightfully claim this as my home town. I grew up here; I went to college here, attending Nash Community College and then North Carolina Wesleyan College; and I got married here to Rocky Mount’s very best Policeman!  Now, I work here and am raising my children here!

Lots has changed about Rocky Mount in 30 years. Old favorite places are gone like the Green Thumb Nursery, where we went weekly to buy plants and fresh produce; Tarrytown Mall, where we ate at the grill after we shopped at Goody’s and the old Children’s museum at Sunset Park,  we visited our favorite alligator and flying squirrel.  New favorite places have arrived such as: The Imperial Center, where we enjoy Lawn Theater and a fantastic new Children’s Museum; the Farmer’s Market, which we walk to every Saturday;  and the Spray Park which we frequent on hot summer afternoons.

My favorite part about Rocky  Mount, however, remains unchanged: the people. Rocky Mount people have made my life what it is and they are helping to shape my children into the amazing people they will become.  People around here often get in heated battles over politics and other such tensions, but deep down at the heart of the people who are proud to be here is a love for this community and its people that cannot be found everywhere.

Rocky  Mount people are just as busy as people in other cities. They have jobs to work, kids to raise and pets to feed; but they take time when they pass you in a store or on the street to stop and speak. They ask about your Mom and how your kids are doing. Rocky Mount people do not see your family member on the obituary page and merely think, “Aww that’s sad;” they show up on your door step with food. If there is a need, people around here do what they can to meet that need.  People around here genuinely care about each other and daily demonstrate it in their actions.

I know our community isn’t perfect, because I know that not one single person who lives here is perfect. I also know that looking at everything that’s wrong with a town and its people never improved anything. I love Rocky Mount and the people who live here. I’m so proud to look back on my life and see the people who have made a difference in it! Hopefully, I can do the same for others.

Rebecca Parks lives in Rocky Mount with her husband, Ricky Parks; three kids, Octavia (7) Benjamin (4) and Alan (1); and one step-son, Will (15).  She works full-time for Richard E. Overman CPA PA as a Tax Accountant and part-time for NCWC as an adjunct professor of Accounting.  She graduated from NCWC with degrees in Accounting and English and NCSU with a Master’s of Accounting.

Choosing To Be United

Posted on September 5, 2013     1 Comment

 

When he first mentioned us going to the Community Worship Service, I thought it was a great idea.  I mean, our pastor was the one preaching that night; seemed to be a no brainer.  However, when Sunday night rolled around, I wasn’t excited anymore.  Our weekend had been a good one, but a long one and I’d grown used to not having anything but down time on Sunday evenings.  But curiosity alone would get me to walk through the doors; I had never been but always wanted to attend an African-American church.  They don’t market themselves that way, but let’s face it—in our city, we have generally worshipped, separated primarily by our skin color.  Sad, but true.

We walked through the doors and I have never experienced such a warm welcome.  The Sanctuary filled quickly with faces and backgrounds of all types.  I was hugged by folks that I had never even seen before, let alone knew.

“Good evening and welcome to our seventh annual Community Worship Service.”

Seventh annual?!?  Rocky Mount does something this cool every single year??  I’ve been back here for six years and this year’s the first I’ve heard of this “annual” event.  Who knew?

“Our city needs to see us united…”

That’s funny.  I was just thinking that it’s been a really long time that I have felt this at home and amongst family as I feel at this very moment.

We were invited to stand and sing.  I knew the first couple of songs, but then the song “No, Not One” was chosen.  We turned in our hymnals but they were already singing,

“Jesus knows all about our struggles;
He will guide ’til the day is done.
There’s not a Friend like the lowly Jesus:
No, not one! no, not one!”

Their passion and zeal was contagious.  It wasn’t long before we were all belting out the words like we grew up singing it.  And, let me tell you, I grew up in Dortches.  This church was just in Little Easonburg.  How on earth did I grow up believing that we were so different?  We really aren’t!  I laugh and I cry just like they do. Our struggles are the same.  I eat fried chicken as much as they do.  When we hear “bar-b-q”, we all picture the same thing.  I graduated from Northern Nash with their kids (Yes, I was in school before there was a Nash Central High School).  Yet, somehow, I’ve always believed in an “us” and “them”.

Martin Luther King once said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning.”  There is a very good chance that was true of all of us that morning, but not that evening.  We were choosing to be united.  May we learn to live that way in our city, whether it’s 11 o’clock on Sundays or not…

picture credit here 

Front porch swings allow me to do my best writing, thinking, praying, reading, crying, and laughing.  I believe that tea tastes sweeter from a Mason jar and that sunflowers are the friendliest flower.  After failing miserably at finding ways to leave Rocky Mount, I have learned that it takes a lot more energy to run from God than it does to rest in His plan for my life.  I’m a sucker for happy endings, but I know that heartache usually comes before one.  I am staking my whole life on the belief that God is who He says He is; Jesus is really His Son, my Savior.  For some reason that doesn’t make sense to most people.  I long to make Jesus smile, but I know that I have moments when I break His heart…

Dirt, 8 Tracks, and The Jeep

Posted on September 2, 2013     1 Comment

I was very young when my family moved from Buffalo, NY to Rocky Mount.  We are originally from the south, so it was a lot like going home… I was very young and in the second grade.  There is so much I cannot remember about the move and the new place we lived, but the things I do remember left a big impression.

I could tell you about going with my dad to City Lake to go catfishing, or about eating pizza at Mama Jeans and all the jokes my dad would make up about that restaurant (“she has a brother named Blue Jeans” comes to mind).  I could tell you about listening to WEED radio and losing reception every time we drove by the building.  I could tell you about playing with my friends in Ms. Paradise’s second grade class at Benvenue or about going to Englewood UMC.  Things like that are still somewhat fresh in my mind even though more than 3 decades have passed.  Yikes.

No, my fondest memories about Rocky Mount involve mounds of dirt, 8 tracks, and a big yellow CJ-5.

We lived in a house on Homestead Rd. in a subdivision that was still being built up.  There was a cul de sac right behind us that was filled with giant mounds of dirt, ready for construction crews to come in and shift and flatten.  It was the perfect playground for this eight year old girl and her neighborhood friends.  We would ride our bikes like they were rocketships hurtling us through space.  We would play war, jumping in and out of the fox holes and trenches.  We would take our Star Wars figures and pretend we were on Tattooine (and if you happen to find some storm troopers buried in your yard, I would appreciate those back… they are back in style!).  We even shot off rockets with our dad, all of us kids running like mad to catch the capsule when it returned to the ground by parachute.

Those mounds of dirt were not my favorite playground, however… they were just the one most convenient to my house.  The other was down the road and around the corner.  The other was at the future site of Golden East Crossing.

At the time, the only mall around was Tarrytown.  Golden East Crossing was just a big dirt mound with tons of possibilities.  Any kid would be ecstatic to get a chance to play in that dirt heaven!  Not just any kid… there was me, my brother, and my DAD!

My dad owned a yellow Jeep CJ-5 with black stripes.  It was the coolest.  He would take us everywhere in it.  We’d have the top down and our hair flying.  The stereo system included an 8 track player… and even then in the early 80s they were becoming harder and harder to find.  Dad only had a few artists: Bread, Billy Joel, Bee Gees, John Denver.  The music blared in the open air for all passers-by to hear.  Oh yeah.  We rocked!  This was the soundtrack of my youth (and probably the reason why I am such a lame adult).

My dad would take my brother and me to the construction site on Saturdays and drive us up and down the giant mounds of dirt.  It was thrilling!  At times it was even scary, as the mounds would get steeper with the passing of time as the crews would use the dirt.  I remember fearing that we would flip (I think even my mom was worried about that… she stopped coming with us!). My dad was a speed demon, revving his engine, spinning wheels and slinging dirt everywhere.  It was especially fun after a good soaking rain (until we got stuck and had to be pulled out… but even that was fun!).

And then the mounds were gone.  The fences came up and the construction began.  I remember being angry with the city about building another mall.  I mean, wasn’t Tarrytown enough?!  They were destroying our playground!  Our dirt mounds of fun and excitement!  Can’t you people go to Wilson or Raleigh like the rest of us?!

But alas, the fun was over.  And soon after we moved south to Goldsboro.  I never even saw the mall completed… and maybe that was best.  I prefer to remember that spot as a big playground of dirt mounds… with a bright yellow jeep… and two little kids yelling at the top of lungs for daddy to do it again.  It makes me happy.

Amy lives in the south in a state where nothing could be finer.  She and her wonderful Hubby were high school sweethearts and have been together more than 22 years.  Together, they are the parents to two awesome kids, Big Girl and Little Man.  Amy is a teacher, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and a God Follower. You can follow her journey from sin to forgiveness through grace on her blog Walk Humbly with God.  http://walkhumblywithgod.wordpress.com/

On Green & Gold and Being A Brown

Posted on August 26, 2013     10 Comments

I grew up in Dortches, a small rural town on the outskirts of Rocky Mount, in a home with a wraparound porch and enough acreage to house goats, chickens, litters of kittens, 1 rabbit, 1 dog, and 1, one-eyed turtle.

Nearly all of my relatives lived within a 5 mile radius of my home and I grew up with more cousins than I could count.

We were the Browns of Browntown road.  The Browns who owned almost everything green in Dortches.  The Browns who went to the Baptist church down the street.  The Browns who didn’t smoke or drink or date boys (or girls) who did.

But some of us, well… Some of us chewed or dipped snuff or smoked the occasional pipe of tobacco.  But all in the name of keeping the bills paid by way of the all mighty tobacco leaf, so help us God.

The Brown name was a good name and I knew it.  I loved being able to give my name anywhere in town and have someone recall, with fond affection, the name of one of my relatives.  To say I was proud of my name would have been an understatement.

But this story is not about my good name, for that would bore you to tears.

No, this story is about the day I desecrated that good family name.

And received, in my young mind, my moment of crowning glory.

My heart pitter-patters at the thought of it, even now, 18 years later.

I remember the day like it was last week and in my mind, I am still 17.

It was late August, 1995, only weeks before my Senior year at Northern Nash High School.  I had not yet spray painted my senior year t-shirt with green and gold or posed for my Senior portraits.  I had never had a sip of a beer or let a boy get to second base or puffed on a cigarette.  I had been a good girl.

I had lived up to my name.  Until the night I didn’t.

It was hot and sultry and ripe for mischief and so I did what any good Brown girl would do.  I asked my parents for permission to go make a memory.

“You mind if the girls and I go paint the roads tonight?  And maybe the rock?  We want to be the first ones to paint before school starts.”  I asked.  “We won’t get caught.  I promise.”

I remember standing at the bar in the kitchen while my mother made dinner and my dad reclined in his chair.   I remember waiting for the No but hearing the Yes and I remember feeling faint.

My parents never said yes to anything.

And never to anything done in the dark, in the middle of the road or on the side of a hill, or anything involving spray paint.  (Or spring break at the beach, but we’ve not going there today as I would become bitter.   I digress…)

So I planned the event, picked the night, and we all bought spray paint.  Lots of spray paint.  We met at my house and we all wore denim cutoffs and light-colored t-shirts and I remember the way we laughed until our bellies hurt.

We tried to wait until the late night hours, but we were young and so we escaped into the dark, somewhere around 9 pm.  We shook our first cans of green and gold at around 9:14, covering the road in front of Green Hills with not only our first names, but our last names, too.

We were in spray paint nirvana, rolling into the nearby ditches every time we saw headlights.  As the minutes ticked by, we got braver and braver, and we began spraying street signs and stop signs with our school letters.  We hit random patches of asphalt with smiley faces and our initials.  We wrote our names on most every clear space available until around 9:36.

At 9:36, with fresh paint running down the stop sign in front of our high school, we froze at the sight of blue lights.  We stood on the side of the road, our hands covered in fresh paint, and we waited for the officer to climb out of his patrol car.

“You ladies been doing some painting tonight?” he asked.  “Whatcha been painting?  Just the roads?”

“Yes, sir.  Just the roads,” we all said.  I remember the way we watched, in horror, as he ran his index finger down the center of the stop sign, fresh paint, covering his finger.

“Just the roads?” he asked again.

We all nodded, like idiots.   Except for me…I remember smiling…like an idiot.

“Well, you ladies are gonna have to follow me downtown.  You ain’t all gonna fit in my patrol car,” he said.

I climbed in the back seat with my best friend and it was all I could do to hold in a fit of laughter.  I knew that this day in August would be a first in my family’s history.

It would be the first time a Brown had ever been hauled into town by the Law.

Tonight, I sit in a house next to the railroad tracks, far away from Browntown Road.  The windows of this house rattle under the weight of suped up base and rimmed out rides and I couldn’t hear a cricket if I tried.  There are no fields of tobacco or cousins around the corner and my kids will never go to my rural high school, Northern Nash.

They’ll attend high school at the city school, Rocky Mount Senior High, and they’ll be Gryphons.  Their senior t-shirts will be painted blue and gold and they’ll probably never paint the roads or street signs in front of their school.

Kids don’t paint the roads anymore.

Or have a Senior year parade.

Truth be told, my kids aren’t going to have the same sort of life I had growing up.

On a good day, I think that’s OK.  But on a day when I recall the memories of my youth, I wonder if I’m messing them, sending them into the world as blue and gold Gryphons instead of green and gold fighting Knights.

And then I smile, because it’s not the place, or school, that gives a person a name.

It’s a family.

* I share this story in honor of the first day of school around these parts.  May our kids wear their colors with pride and may they honor their families in all they do and say…and maybe paint.

And for those who are wondering, I had to serve 40 hours of community service for my 20 minutes of fame.  It was worth it.

Lori Harris is wife to Thad and mama to six.  She is a reluctant homeschooler, wild JOY seeker, lover of authentic community, and believer in the power of story to change lives.  She is living proof that the right story can eternally change the course of one’s life.  She is planting a church alongside her husband in the heart of Rocky Mount, her hometown, and she is learning to love this place she calls home.  You can find her writing the rest of her story at http://loriharris.me

Can’t Go Home Again

Posted on August 23, 2013     6 Comments

I can’t go home again?

“I know they say, you can’t go home again

But I just had to come back one last time…”

You’ve probably heard the song by Miranda Lambert, in which she returns to her childhood home.  She gets permission from the new owner to walk through the house, a re-run of memories playing through her mind as she visits each room.

Unlike the singer, I CAN go back home. It’s about an hour east of here in a small place called Rocky Mount.  My husband calls it a hick town and he has since he went home with me for the first time.  I know that’s what some people think of it, but for me – having spent my entire life there until college – it’s so much more than where I was born.

In 1976, my parents were renters in a small community called West Mount. They built the house where I was raised and moved into it when I was 3.  They still live there today and that house is HOME, partially because of who lives there, but equally because of where it is located.

Home is Rocky Mount.  No matter where I live now, no matter where I live in the future, that fact cannot be changed.

No matter what happens in {or to} Rocky Mount tomorrow or 10 years from now, it will be home, regardless.

Rocky Mount is where I started school in kindergarten and where I graduated high school.  It’s where I participated in choir, band, drama club, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (although I was never an athlete), Air Force JROTC, and who knows how many other programs.

It’s where I got my first job.  A job I held for under a year before the restaurant “went under.” It was my first personal experience with economic hardship and the resulting fall-out.  Unlike me {17}, most other employees couldn’t just go to the next restaurant and get a job.  Some of them had worked there for many years; had “regulars” who came to dine in their section.  They were old enough to retire, but not financially sound enough to stop working {and maybe not competitive enough to land another job}.

Rocky Mount is where I got my second job too. Where I babysat between “real” jobs.  Where I worked locally, and across state lines, with my church youth group helping the elderly and those who couldn’t do for themselves.  Where I helped conduct Vacation Bible Schools and Backyard Bible Clubs.  Where I kept “nursery” at the church during weddings.

Rocky Mount is where I would sneak off with a boyfriend after work and go to City Lake, walk along the railroad tracks, or go parking at Stonewall Manor.  Insisting, when questioned,  that I’d been at work all that time!

It’s where getting the BEST cheeseburger meant Central Café – the original location-because I’m old enough to remember that! The same Central Café where my Dad told me he went for burgers and sat on a barstool at the counter drinking his Dr. Pepper in a glass bottle.

It’s where the BEST eastern NC Barbeque could only be found at Bob Melton’s by the river!

It’s also where in 1996, my parents lost 13 of the trees in their yard to Hurricane Fran.  A large sycamore that fell left a hole so big, a pickup truck would fit in it!

It’s where in September of ‘99, my Aunt and cousin {that same aunt’s oldest daughter} lost their homes and almost everything they owned when Hurricane Floyd came through.  My Dad helped my cousin get a few things from her apartment, located too close to the Tar River, and afterwards his words floored me – the water was almost to the ceiling.  Many appliances like lamps were still flickering though their connections were under water – scary! I remember how devastated my Aunt was to lose irreplaceable items like photos of her childhood and her daughters. I remember how she thought I just didn’t get it because it hadn’t happened to me and I didn’t even live there anymore.  And truly? I couldn’t get it and didn’t get it {sort of hope I never have to}.

Rocky Mount is where I got married.  Where wedding guests {and even my groom} got lost in downtown Rocky Mount on the way to the rehearsal Friday night. Where I was able to have the wedding I wanted with a budget of $5000.

Rocky Mount made me who I am today.

Rocky Mount {HOME} is so many things and so many memories – too many to list.  At times I wonder if I made a mistake not returning there.

Maybe.

Maybe Not.

It used to be that I couldn’t get out of there fast enough and now I find myself looking for ways to get back there.

It wasn’t really a house or a HOME that “built me”- made me who I am.  Just like a church isn’t about the building; it’s the people and the spirit inside that make it matter.  The people living in the house are what make me matter.

The people of Rocky Mount are what make it home. And not just the relatives that still live there – EVERYONE who lives there.  And HOME makes me matter too.

And, unlike the ending of the song where she says she can’t take anything but memories from “the house that built me,” I take memories and so much more with me everyday.

Looking back, life just seemed simpler in Rocky Mount.  I realize some of that is in my mind, but I don’t think all of it is.

And simple?

Doesn’t seem so bad these days!

*I wrote on this topic originally in 2011 {read the original post here (http://gleaninggrace.blogspot.com/2011/03/house-that-built-me-for-mamakats.html)}.

Leslie Armstrong Mills was born and raised in Rocky Mount, counting down the days to college and her exit from small town oblivion.  She graduated from NCSU in 1998, got married and moved to another small town outside Raleigh.  She lives in a subdivision and now yearns to return to the farm fields, cow pastures, and wide-open country spaces of Rocky Mount.

These days she spends her time chasing two wild kids and a dog during the day and running away from it all once or twice a week to do home cooking classes.  Her least favorite things to do are the dishes and the laundry; hence, they both pile up.  She blogs about all the crazy at http://gleaninggrace.blogspot.com/

On Choosing To Be Friends {And the R-Word}

Posted on August 21, 2013     3 Comments

Thirty years ago, I was a kindergarten student in Mrs. Collier’s class at Englewood Elementary.   I have several vivid memories from that time, from learning about The Letter People to peeling dried glue from my hands. I remember some of the other students, too, but no one stands out in my memory quite like Jasmine. During nap time, we would lie next to each other and play with one another’s hair.  She liked mine because it felt silky.  I liked hers because she wore it in fun shapes that were held by sparkly colorful balls, and it felt slick.  We were different, and that was interesting.

And then one day in the play-kitchen station, some of the other white kids in the class cornered me and asked why I had a black girl as a friend.  I honestly didn’t know who they meant at first. I had overheard some disturbing conversations about black people, but Jasmine didn’t act anything like them.  Besides, her skin was brown, not black.  I defiantly replied, “Jasmine isn’t black!  She’s tan!”  I believed it for about half a second, until I saw the scorn on their faces and realized I did, in fact, have a black friend, and that must have been a bad thing.

I wish I could say that I turned my back on those kids and marched over to play with my friend, but instead I shut my mouth, pretended nothing had ever been said, and never played with Jasmine’s hair again.

I try to give myself a little grace by remembering that I was only five, but even then I knew I was wrong. And as I grew up and continued to encounter racism in Rocky Mount, I still took the same approach:  Pretend it doesn’t exist.  Pretend you never heard that joke. Pretend you’re not part of this conversation. Change the subject.  Walk away.

 

That was my strategy until I moved away from Rocky Mount after high school, and I changed a lot during my time away. Two years ago, I took a teaching position in a high school here. My students were almost all black, and I got to experience being part of the minority. And in a position of authority, I could no longer ignore racism when I encountered it from the white students. Actually, I encountered it from many of the black students, too.  I was shocked to hear how often they berated one another for being dark-skinned, or how they chastised others for misbehaving by saying they were “acting black” even as they mocked those who tried to excel academically for “acting white.”  It seemed clear to me that some of my black students had internalized the racist messages they witnessed all around them, while I and others like me had desperately, and futilely, tried to feign ignorance.  It broke my heart.

I was able to build relationships with many of those students, and we had several great conversations about race, prejudice, and stereotypes.  I hope I was able to undo at least a small part of the damage that had been done in some of their lives.  But mostly, I was just encouraged by observing small but significant signs of change.

I had two pairs of interracial best friends on my yearbook staff last year.  They ate lunch in my room sometimes while we worked, and I watched them as they giggled over inside jokes and gossiped about boys and made plans for their lives. They had real, solid friendships in which they knew and loved one another completely. Those friendships were not always easy. They talked openly with me about being accused of going against their respective races or being shunned by former friends.  But unlike my own cowardly rejection of Jasmine, these girls courageously stood up for each other. That’s what ultimately gives me hope for our city. Racism runs rampant here, and real change is painfully slow in coming, but there are a few people who fight back with friendship. And when I get really discouraged about the way the people of Rocky Mount interact — or, worse, fail to interact altogether — I’ll think about the beauty of those girls in my classroom as they played with each other’s hair.

Paula Hardy never expected to be back in her hometown, but she loves being close to her family again. She’s currently a graduate student at ECU, where she studies Multicultural and Transnational Literature. Lately she has spent her free time training her sweet rescue dog, attempting to master recipes from around the world, and binge-watching Breaking Bad on Netflix.