(an email from Mary in Bisbee, Arizona)
What a glorious moon! It was so bright that my varmint cats
stayed inside, fearing the coyotes who were roaming about in
the ditch out front, tracking the javalinas. At 4am the
hummingbirds were already up (thinking it was dawn?)
In the light of the setting moon, the neighbor’s little female
Arctic wolf jumped her fences and was taking a leisurely stroll.
Later, my best friend Nelson and I went down to Douglas to
shop at the Border Walmart. We grabbed some shopping
carts from the parking lot, because so many of them are
left at the entrance to Mexico. The store was filled as usual
with Anglo’s, Mexicans and a mixture of various other
ethnicities. There was no descernable tension because of
the election. It was the same as always. Voices talking in
both English and Spanish. As we left, we joined a group
admiring the a beautiful 2 week old Mexican baby boy.
We then went to The Border Dennny;s so that Nelson could
indulge in his favorite pancakes. This place was also filled
with a variety of the human species. All this was happening
a stone’s throw from the big ole double fence where people
were crossing freely back and forth with no hassle.
The politicians up North and in Middle America are all
yammering about the Border "crisis", but nobody comes
down here to look around or talk with us. There are so few
of us right at the Border compared to the rest of the state
and country – what does it matter what we think? As one
man put it, ‘The bad part is nobody cares what we think.
The good part is nobody cares what we think. We pay taxes
so that they will leave us alone.”
The Tohono O’odham nation has announced that they will
not allow a wall to be built on their land at the Border.
Meanwhile, life goes on in these sparsely populated mountains.
It’s a mixed bag down here and we are for the most part a
pretty polite, yet sometimes, guarded, group of high desert
dwellers.
A bumper sticker I saw recently on a pickup truck is indicative
of the complexity of life down here:
ARMED LIBERAL.
I wish peace under that great big ole momentous Moon shining
blessings on us all, man and beast.
Mary
