To people who think there's no such thing as snow in the Sonoran desert, I'm here to tell you that is not true. We woke up on Wednesday to a nice powdering of snow on all surfaces. I'm sure the cacti were just as surprised as we were. It was all gone by noon but still, snow on the ground! Thursday morning I drove to the office at 6:45 am to meet a coworker and carpool to the Eloy Detention Center for another Know Your Rights presentation. But when I went out to the van I had to wait about 10 minutes for the engine to warm up and the windows to defrost. Another winter experience I didn't expect to have in Tucson.
This week's visit to the detention center went much quicker than last week's. I was still able to do several in-person intakes and speak to a couple of detainees. Their stories were still challenging to hear but it's important for them to have someone listening and trying to help them find ways to represent themselves in a multilayered and confusing system. I most likely won't be going back to the detention centers for a few months due to some staffing changes at the Florence Project. Instead, I'll be able to best support the Direct Action Response Team (DART) by answering calls on the hotline two shifts a week instead of one.
Published by the American Bar Association on December 28, 2022, this primer outlines the situation at the border better than I can. The whole report is 28 pages long but there are a lot of footnotes and graphics that take up quite a bit of space so not all of that is reading. You can also find an overview at the beginning of the PDF.
This weekend, our house is taking a break from Tucson and are relaxing in a cabin in Pinetop/Lakeside, AZ. There's snow outside, a fire in the fireplace, puzzles on the table, and movies on the TV. We're getting some of our winter fix in and reconnecting as a unit halfway through year.
When I went to upload photos for this blog post I learned that I had reached my data limit and have no more space to store photos on my website! So, to work around this, I'll be deleting some of my old pictures (which I think means they'll come down from the site) and sharing a link to a Google photo album in every post. The photo album will have all of the pictures I already posted (and maybe a few more). This will allow me to continue sharing a few pictures per post without paying a monthly subscription to upgrade my website account. https://photos.app.goo.gl/rFXtPMJf9GjWMsFd9
Since 2016 I've had a practice of trying to construct a giant snow person every year (although I have missed a few years between now and then) but here is the latest installment.
And of course, another puzzle update.
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