India and the greater subcontinent have enthralled me since I first landed there as a student in 1985. Researching nonviolent action organized by Hindu and Muslim communities was my main occupation at the time, but after many more trips to India and living there from 2009-2014, India became my second home. It is changing, as everything does, yet on a morning garden walk in Delhi, sitting in an Irani cafe in Mumbai, or hiking the cliff sides around Ajanta, India feels somehow resistant to the flatness of the modern world. I spend a lot of time in old forts and courtyards.

I grew up on a farm in the Ozarks, and I spend my summers wrangling honeybees, creating pollinator meadows, and helping my father manage our woodlands there. A sprinkling of the famous and infamous came from this part of the world--Jesse James, George Washington Carver, Sheryl Crow, Dick Van Dyke, Chappell Roan. It is a hilly, rocky, rough region full of caves and beautiful streams as well as struggling communities and poverty. The people are hardworking, resilient, creative and generally suspicious. It is not a place for the timid or those who lack imagination. For good or ill, Missouri shaped me. Go Tigers!