Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. She is a columnist for High Country News and formerly Indian Country Today. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Brooklyn Rail, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019) and the poetry collection Horns. Midge aspires to be the Distinguished Writer in Residence for Seattle’s Space Needle and considers her contribution to humanity to be her sparkly personality. Her latest book The Dreamcatcher in the Wry (Bison Books, 2024) was published in December.

The Dreamcatcher in the Wry brims with insight, considering pig heart transplants, wedding-crashing grizzly bears, truffle-snuffling dogs, bison-petting tourists—and a plethora of other animal and wildlife hijinks—not to mention wienermobiles, the controversial Mount Rushmore, meeting Iron Eyes Cody in a parade, Elizabeth Warren’s quaint family lore, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Midge brilliantly unpacks her observations and day-to-day concerns through the lens of an urban-raised Lakota living in the West, a writer of poetry, op-eds, church bulletins, fridge magnets, and Twitter posts who is allergic to horses and most outdoor recreation—except for berry picking and the occasional romp through a dewy meadow.

Turning over the colonizer’s society and culture for some good old Native American roasting, Midge informs as she entertains, gleaning wisdom from the incongruities of daily life with a much-needed dose of Indigenous common sense.

Get Out of the Rut and Into the Groove

A couple of weeks ago I described to Jon a DIY (Do It Yourself) workout that consists of bending down and flipping a big tire over. I’d been watching demos on TikTok, a social media platform aptly named for the reminder that one is wasting time—tick-tock, tick-tock—watching repetitive videos on social media. Which implies one’s time might be better used by going outside and, oh, I don’t know . . . flipping big tires? I mentioned the muscle groups involved in the flipping over of big tires: core, back, glutes. Sounds better than a wheelbarrow of rocks.

I piqued Jon’s interest immediately: “I got tires! We can roll them across the street and flip them over in the park!”

It’s true. We literally have a pile of snow tires in a corner of our living room; Jon covered them with a sheet, and a handmade sign and his ancestor shrine sit atop the pile, along with a sculpture of his ancestor’s head that he made in pottery class.

Despite having such impressive pottery, our living space is not something one might see within the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog—more like Sanford and Son. In all earnestness, I would like to roll the tires far, far away, beyond the park, and flip them over forever to the inside of a storage unit.

Flipping over snow tires in the park fits into our lifestyle, which is the opposite of Marie Kondo’s streamline, does-it-spark-joy? lifestyle philosophy. Remember her? She is the lifestyle guru who popularized “revolutionary” concepts such as less is more. From what I’ve observed, she had a lot of momentum going until she started telling people they should keep only thirty books; then it was all damage control from there.

What kind of monster would suggest such a thing? I have thirty books shoved inside the oven alone, along with a pile of magazines, not counting the multiple leaning-tower-of-Pisa book collections in every other nook, cranny, and available space inside our apartment.

Jon has another DIY workout routine: he lifts gallon milk jugs filled with water. They work pretty well and are certainly practical, that is until there are literally seven of them spread out on the floor for me to trip over. I don’t think Marie Kondo would approve of upcycling. But she might approve of bicep reps, so it evens out.

I’m not actually interested in rolling Jon’s snow tires across the street to the park and bending down and flipping them over. Maybe if they were giant tortoises, it would be entertaining. Cow tipping as a sport also seems like it would be fun. But one needs to draw the line, since I doubt very much the animals would appreciate it. I haven’t been particularly interested in exercise in the last year—traditional or otherwise. I like to joke and tell people “I feel so great since I stopped working out.” However, I wouldn’t mind working out with pandas, those super cute, roly-poly ones I see on TikTok videos. And I would probably really enjoy yoga with baby koalas, or baby pigs even. I see ads for yoga combined with a variety of animals and settings. Salsa dancing with velociraptors would interest me. Not actual velociraptors, of course, but dance partners dressed up in those velociraptor costumes.

Whatever kind of exercise I choose, I know I will benefit. It is time to get moving again. But I’ve been in a winter/COVID-19/social distancing rut. So, I’ll need to take baby steps to start, until I get back in the groove.