Marfa for Beginners

You can donate to Marfa Public Radio on our website at marfapublicradio.org/donate.

Living in a small town in West Texas can feel magical. And part of that magic is how isolated we are: hours and hours down a desert highway from everything else. But when it comes to accessing reproductive healthcare, that remoteness can also be terrifying. In the Big Bend, the idea of “choice” was complicated long before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Out here, you can't legally get an abortion — but as recently as last year, depending on the day of the week, you also couldn't have a baby in a delivery room. So Far From Care is a new podcast from Marfa Public Radio about those contradictions. It's about how people decide when, how, or if to become parents — close to the border and far from the hospital, where you have a literal village to help you raise a child but daycare can be impossible to find. These are stories about isolation that's not just physical — all the challenges we deal with in silence. But also, about how a place without options can become the site of community and care. New episodes weekly starting November 1.

To close out this podcast, there's someone we think you should meet– West Texas's unofficial ambassador, Liz Rogers. Marfa can be a place that seems cool and aloof, a place that kind of feels like one of those crushes where the allure is that they don't like you back. But Liz is the exact opposite. In a place known for minimalism, Liz is maximalist, as epitomized by her annual birthday party. Every year, it seems like she invites everyone she's ever known to congregate down in West Texas and dance and laugh under the big sky. So for this episode, we're throwing a party to celebrate Liz. And everyone's invited.

Imagine if there was a community Facebook group for your entire city, where everyone posted all the time. Now imagine if your city was small enough to have no traffic lights, just a few busy intersections with stop and yield signs. Welcome to Marfa Group, a place where these realities collide - into one memorable Facebook thread. Produced by Sally Beauvais, Zoe Kurland and Elise Pepple.

You can donate to Grand Companions online, at grandcompanions.org.

Small towns come with a lot of drama. When you live in a place like Marfa, there are certain psychological realities specific to having zero degrees of separation between you and your neighbors. People know what's going on in your life, and you know what's going on in theirs. Even if they didn't tell you. This proximity creates a unique reality of deep connection and insane paranoia. In this episode, Elise Pepple conducts an experiment. One that takes small town closeness and uses it as a tool to address someone's problem. This episode was produced by Elise Pepple, Zoe Kurland, and Sally Beauvais. Music: Selections from W. Creeves, and Leftover Fog and Bright White, by Podington Bear, sourced from the Free Music Archive. License: CC BY-NC.

This week we're featuring another podcast from another Marfan — one who beat us to the punch. David Gomez was Marfa's first podcaster. His show What's wrong with people? is an unfiltered look at daily life in Marfa. In this episode, we chat with David and hear a couple minutes of an episode that investigates whether a certain pair of celebrity sisters visited Marfa. Listen to David's podcast What's wrong with people? here. Produced by Sally Beauvais, Zoe Kurland, and Elise Pepple.

You can donate to the Marfa Food Pantry online, at marfafoodpantry.com.

As a visitor to Marfa, your days might fly by, but when you live here, time passes differently. Marfa is in the middle of the desert. If you stand anywhere and just look out, the land and enormous sky stretch out in every direction as far as the eye can see. The remoteness of it all can make time feel like it's not passing here. It's a palpable feeling that's also so abstract, it's indescribable – like there must be some German word for it. Producer Zoe Kurland had an existential crisis because of this phenomenon. You know how when you think about breathing, it gets harder to breathe? For her, it was like that, but with time. In this episode, Zoe brings you inside the longest shortest West Texas day. This episode was produced by Zoe Kurland, Sally Beauvais, and Elise Pepple. Music from W. Creeves and The Internet Archive.

You can make a donation to the Marfa Nutrition Center in person, at 101 N. Mesa Street.

As a tourist coming to Marfa, you might have certain romantic notions about this place, ideas about the magic of a small desert town. Sunsets, sound baths, epiphanies and photos in front of Prada Marfa. But what if you live inside of that fantasy every day? What if you've spent your entire life watching people take selfies in front of your firehouse, your clinic, your courthouse, witnessing them having magical experiences over and over and over again while yours…is not that. That's the reality for Sam Salazar. Sam grew up in Marfa, and year after year, she's watched the town she grew up in change into something unrecognizable. So she went out to talk to other people who grew up here to find out if they were feeling it too. Produced by Zoe Kurland, Sally Beauvais, and Elise Pepple, in collaboration with Sam Salazar. Music: Refraction, Pulsars, and Encounter by Podington Bear. Source: Free Music Archive. License: CC BY-NC

You can make a donation to Marfa's Volunteer Fire Department in person, at 110 E. Lincoln St., or mail it to PO Box 846 Marfa, TX, 79843.

This episode is about finding love in Marfa. Or trying to. People wonder what it's like to date here. The truth is finding love in the middle of nowhere can feel like waiting for the rapture - impossible. Even having a crush on someone is a thrill when you live in a town of 2,000 people. Some people do find love out here– like magical, drive off into the sunset kind of love. But for the rest of us, Marfa can feel like a dating wasteland. A nightmare as vast and sprawling as the desert itself, where no place is safe. Not even the grocery store.  Produced by Sally Beauvais, Zoe Kurland, and Elise Pepple. Music by Jockimo.

You can donate to the Marfa Public Library online, at marfapubliclibrary.org.

A lot of people call the journey to Marfa a pilgrimage. Tourists come from all over the world, driving hours through the desert to see places like Prada Marfa and Ballroom. Most notoriously, they come to see Donald Judd's artwork at the Chinati Foundation. On their way to the foundation, visitors pass right by a lesser known pilgrimage site, in the backyard of Ester Sanchez. An apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared on Ester's pecan tree in 1997. And people came from around the world to see it. In this episode, you'll hear the story of the Virgin's arrival, and what happens when two pilgrimages, two Marfa worlds, collide. Produced by Zoe Kurland, Sally Beauvais, and Elise Pepple. Music: Refraction, Pulsars, and Encounter by Podington Bear. Source: Free Music Archive. License: CC BY-NC

What do you know about Marfa, Texas? Whether it's Vogue magazine, The Simpsons, or I Love Dick, there's a certain narrative about Marfa: the romantic art town in the middle of nowhere. But there's more to Marfa than that. Marfa for Beginners is the audio guide to the Marfa you may not know: Virgin of Guadalupe sightings and limited Tinder options. A place where you can feel like a stranger in your own hometown while also feeling like there are zero degrees of separation between you and…anyone else. Marfa For Beginners is an expansion of the narrative, a trip down a different road, a tourism podcast for locals…and what does that mean? To find out, listen weekly, starting September 13th.