Monday

Say, did everyone know that the US Border Patrol used unmanned blimps to watch over the line between the US and México? Sure, they use dogs and cameras and sensors and corrugated steel walls, but it is the blimps I find particularly absurd. How about fourteen year old girls? Heading on through absurd and coming out on the side of creepy in a totalitarian regime kind of a way: it seems the US Border Patrol is turning out a youth organization versed in undocumented people detection and detention. This article makes nimble gravitas over a borderland of children raised with any cultural awareness or interest taught right out of them. But, oh, can they shout arrest instructions into the back of a stifling pitch-dark U-Haul. One the one side of the fence, US school kids wax bored about the nightly line of Mexicans filing through the checkpoints, cool about getting to play police, and put out by the whole idea of it all. On the other side, bright Mexican teens discuss how they will shrivel up and die if they don't flee the increasingly lawless dead-end they were born into. What did I do today? Caught up on all the stuff that built up in just two days of being away on vacation; caught up on Ellie, still in her hospital bed with her daughter and suffering from pressure, and uploaded a lot of old photographs to my new Flickr account, which is nothing much yet, but growing. Maybe tomorrow I will do something more interesting to read about. [Cavin]