For some goofy woodpecker pictures.
For those of you who haven’t seen it
This is what the border fence looks like. From the U.S. side.
From the Mexico side.
Here in Texas, the border fence isn’t exactly on the border. The river is the border. We can’t really put a fence right down the middle of the Rio Grande, so the fence location is a compromise. Since the Mexican government hasn’t actually volunteered to build it or pay for it, the fence is located on U.S. soil and follows a path that approximates our border, but is practical to build on. It leaves a lot of land on the other side. The fence is not continuous. There are gaps. The Border Patrol does what they can to monitor the gaps. It’s not unusual for us to walk and bird along the border fence. It’s not unusual for us to walk or drive through gaps in the fence and bird on the other side. These pictures are from near the town of Hidalgo. One birding park we go to, Sable Palm Sanctuary, is entirely on the other side of the border fence. Sable Palm Sanctuary Map Link Trace the park road north to the next road up. I put a pin there. Zoom in. That’s the border fence. All the farms, fields, and birding spots between there and the river are cut off from the rest of the U.S. except for a few gaps in the fence.
From the Mexico side. Here in Texas, the border fence isn’t exactly on the border. The river is the border. We can’t really put a fence right down the middle of the Rio Grande, so the fence location is a compromise. Since the Mexican government hasn’t actually volunteered to build it or pay for it, the fence is located on U.S. soil and follows a path that approximates our border, but is practical to build on. It leaves a lot of land on the other side. The fence is not continuous. There are gaps. The Border Patrol does what they can to monitor the gaps. It’s not unusual for us to walk and bird along the border fence. It’s not unusual for us to walk or drive through gaps in the fence and bird on the other side. These pictures are from near the town of Hidalgo. One birding park we go to, Sable Palm Sanctuary, is entirely on the other side of the border fence. Sable Palm Sanctuary Map Link Trace the park road north to the next road up. I put a pin there. Zoom in. That’s the border fence. All the farms, fields, and birding spots between there and the river are cut off from the rest of the U.S. except for a few gaps in the fence. It’s Judy’s turn
My attention deficit disorder having been satisfied; I’ve had plenty of attention lately; it’s time for Judy to get something fixed. Her thumbs are bothering her so we went to a hand specialist in Corpus on Thursday. He said the thumb joints are shot; worn out. (This happens to women a lot. We don’t know why it happens to women more than men.) The problem is where the thumb meets the hand. There is supposed to be a nice cartilage cushion there. Judy’s thumbs; no cartilage. Bone to bone. That’s not good. She has been to see a hand specialist here in the Valley. He diagnosed the same problem and tried the cortisone shots that are supposed to help. They did help, but only for a few weeks. The real fix comes with a tendon graft operation. They cut off the end of the thumb bone, take a section of tendon from the forearm, (that I guess we don’t really use all that much), and bind the thumb bone back to the wrist with the extra part wadded up in the joint to act like cartilage, and eliminate the bone to bone. No more pain. Sounds good to us. We’re headed back to Corpus on Tuesday for a Wednesday operation. Day surgery. We should be back home Wednesday night. A few weeks of recovery and we can do it again for her left thumb.
I’m still an Obama Mama
I’m a day late saying it, but I love listening to this man talk. He speaks with care and clarity; an intelligent compassionate human being. I realize he’s not everyone’s cup of tea; some don’t like is message; some don’t like him, but I love what he says and I love the rhythm of his rhetoric. He gets on a riff, the emotion rises, the cadence builds, the audience gets on their feet, they start clapping, and I want to shout hallelujah. It’s the closest I can get to a revival without succumbing to religion. I’m going to miss this guy.
When I was in school
I never actually had a class on how to figure out whether something made sense or not. I was left to figure it out for myself. I guess in school they’re only supposed to tell us stuff that makes sense, so we didn’t have to figure it out then. Out in the real world after school though, sometimes we hear things and it’s up to us to figure out whether to believe them or not; especially in these highly-charged political times. When we hear something that kind of sounds true, but we’re not sure, wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few simple rules one could apply, to determine if the premise made sense; something concrete that would inform us as to whether what we were considering were true, not true, or we needed more information to make that determination? Maybe a school of thought. It could be called “logic”. What if we all had the same underlying perspective and could agree on whether the starting point for each conversation actually had any basis in fact, before we started building arguments on it? Just wondering…