Respite in Portal, Arizona

We had a respite last weekend in the Chiricahua Mountains.  We spend two full days with our friends Barbara and Ron in their home in Portal, Arizona.  Portal sits right on the edge of the Chiricahua Mountains on the far eastern side, just a few miles from the New Mexico border. It is the nearest town to Cave Creek Canyon.  Cave Creek runs through Portal.  I was incredibly surprised by the lush canyon and the resources the small town has in human and social capital and community spirit.  We arrived just at dusk last Friday and settled into dinner and our visit.  One of the things we learned the first night was that the area around Portal and the peaks just outside our friends kitchen windows were common routes for drug smugglers to use.  According to our hosts, it was common knowledge that the narcos post sentries in the mountains to watch the area for safe passage for their mules.  Barbara and Ron have suffered two burglaries in recent years and have taken to improving their security measures.  Mike tried to spot the spotters with his binoculars that weekend but saw no signs.  The Border Patrol was holding a community meeting the day we left to update the residents about recent events and to stay in communication.

Barbara and I visited some of the highlights of the area on Saturday.  I was totally delighted to go to the "town center" of about 3 buildings and to visit the library and the post office.  The library is open 6 mornings a week, usually the same time the post office is open so people can get their mail and visit the library in one errand.  Both were charming.  The library is housed in the former one room school house.

Portal Library

One of the many charming things I found in this library was the mural in the children's area, hand painted by a local artist.  I wanted to share the overall mural and a close-up of the little owl peeping our of a hole in the sycamore tree.

 

What a welcoming space for all ages!  I love libraries and have been driving on this trip with my I Love My Library bumper sticker on my car!  I was so pleased to find this library tucked away in a remote area of Arizona!

Barbara and I also visited the Chiricahua Desert Museum and gift store, a funky consignment store withe great bargains and an artist's cooperative gallery in Rodeo NM, just a whisper away from Portal!  We also drove to the National Forest Service Visitors Center for Cave Creek Canyon and the surrounding areas and had a preview of what we would see the following day.

Pictures do not do justice to the lush canyon lands that make up the North and South Fork of Cave Creek.  I will share a couple but your imagination will have to fill in the gaps.  These canyons are where Cochise and Geronimo, leaders of the bands within the Chiricahua Apache people roamed and sought refuge.  It was easy to see the Apaches finding safety and abundant food in these canyons.

Cathedral Rock

Rocks viewed across the canyon from Cathedral Rock.

Looking up the canyon

Barbara, Mike and I drove up to Rustler Park, a high country campground in the Coronado National Forest.  The area had been devastated by fire in 2012.  Barbara said that it was renowned for its beauty and that many who came every year to relax and enjoy that beauty would not see it recovered in their lifetimes.  The forest takes its time.  We walked around and then hiked up a ridge to look out over the western side of the sky island that the Chiricahua Mountains are.  It was a windy, brisk and sunny day.  We were the only visitors to the campground when we were there.

Mike and Barbara descending through the burn zone.

It was bright!

Looking up near the crest.

Mike's comment:
I wonder what they did up here?

Barbara was an able guide, driving us in her all wheel drive around numerous switchbacks and over creeks up and down the mountainside.  We stopped at the Southwestern Research Station run by the American Museum of Natural History where she and Ron both worked and where Barbara first came from NY as a student and then later to do her PhD research.  It was an amazing place.  Ron and Barbara were married on the grounds of the station.  Clearly, this area is home for them, personally and professionally and we are grateful that they shared it with us.

Our hosts in front of Haystack Heights, their beautiful straw bale home.

I was really pleased that a quilt I made for their house, originally thought to be a table runner, they decided to hang on the wall.

Ron wrote me this week to say the quilt is now hanging on the wall.  Always a compliment to the maker!

We spent Sunday evening watching the penultimate episode of Downton Abbey with our friends and set off the next morning for Tucson, grateful for the time away from the city and rented rooms, refreshed and ready for more great learning experiences.

It is good to start to catch up on my journey.  Next time I will share some of what I learned in Tucson.

Thanks for reading.

Santa Cruz County Part Two

It is gorgeous today in Portal.  We are going up Cave Creek Canyon today with Barbara and will see amazing things - birds, wildlife, views that people come from around the world to see.  I am excited.

I wanted to give a second glimpse into what I saw and heard in Santa Cruz County.  Yesterday I focused on the issue of teens having children and the concerns and norms in the community around these young moms and their children.  Interestingly, no one spoke to the issues of the fathers of these children except Delia who said that the father of her grandchild has now impregnated a second young woman whose parents have delivered her and her belongings to his door.  A different reaction to Delia's.

I want to focus this post on some of the things that are going well in the programs offered by Santa Cruz Cooperative Extension (I do not have the time or space to document all of them).

Family Resource Centers

Darcy Dixon has done a superb job of securing partnerships and funding to support early childhood initiatives.  Arizona funds these programs through a tax on tobacco products.  The First Things First Initiative funds all three Family Resource Centers in Santa Cruz County.  Two of the centers are full centers and the third is a "part-time center" in a remote area of the county.  Each Resource Center is staffed in partnership with the school district and hosts a number of options for families with young children.  I visited the Rio Rico Family Resource Center and the Nogales Family Resource Center.  I saw two programs in action and had an opportunity to interview parents and staff at both centers.

Family Resource Center Logo, so bright and welcoming!

The first program I visited was the Strengthening Families Program for parents and 3-5 year old children.  It was held at night at the Rio Rico Center, just down the hill from where we were staying.  I spend some time interviewing staff and parents earlier in the afternoon and I will share some of those impressions later in this post.  Mike and I both went to the SFP program and were treated to a delicious taco dinner with the families.  We sat with Victor, his mom and baby sister.  Victor, aged 4, was very  happy to have his picture taken eating beans, his favorite food.  He was a pleasure to meet as was his mom and infant sister, Victoria.

Victor eating his beans!

We were part of the parents' program.  Thanks to Vanessa, Yada and the whole team who graciously allowed us to participate with the 13 parents who attended that night.  I added a little piece of parenting education in response to a parent who was concerned because time out did not work with her four year old.  I had the same experience with our son.  I highly recommend the book, Time In, When Time Out Doesn't Work by Jean Illsley Clarke. Sometimes, I just can't help myself.  I guess that is what comes of being involved in the parenting education field for so many years.

Rio Rico families at their SFP class

Some of the other programs the centers offer are Positive Discipline, Kinder Readiness, Play and Learn, Partners in Parent Education (PIPE), Strengthening Families and more.  They have two tracks, a parent support track and a child development track.  I was awed.  And more than a little envious.  I wish there were resources this comprehensive for the families in my community.  I think there are some but not to this extent.

I visited the PIPE class in Nogales the following day where I met with Arlene, Delia, Armida, teacher Maria and Darcy after the class ended.

Maria demonstrating how to be playful with toddlers!  Play and learn!

I spend time with parents and staff in Rio Rico talking about their experiences at the Center and what the successes are.  These are some of my summaries of the comments from that interview.

• It helped my second child have a healthier adjustment to Head Start.  
• My children are socialized and comfortable and he/she is able to separate easily from me when we are here.
• I have taken all the classes and I am waiting for more.

When I asked them about their hopes and dreams for their children they shared:

• I want my children to grow up to respect others, to earn respect and to respect and get an education.
• I want them to be healthy, productive members of society.
• My (older) son has role models in the community.  I want him to have deep roots here in Santa Cruz County and to have hopes and dreams here for his future (even if he leaves for college).  I want them to contribute to the community.

When I asked them to talk about their relationship to the community and the center parents and staff shared the following:

• They hope the programs continue.
• They like being relevant to community needs.
• They hope they are making a difference and will continue to do so.
• They notice the ripple effect - that what they are teaching and learning goes beyond themselves into the community.
• They enjoy having people come back for many of the programs.
• They parents know they can come for different resources. 
• SFP teaches a lot of life skills.

I asked both staff and parents and grandparents during my two days in Santa Cruz County what they would like to see added to the programming they already have.  More sessions, more time, both one on one and in groups, a second SFP (already 14 weeks long), more funds to do all the above were some of the answers that I received.  In addition, there were conversations at almost every stop about the need for sexuality education.

I am so grateful that I was able to travel from my border to another border and see the wealth of programs for families, all of which were delivered in either Spanish or a mix of Spanish and English. I have a new appreciation for family resource centers and for work that is being done through Cooperative Extension in Arizona.

Thanks for reading!

Santa Cruz County Visit - Part One

Greetings from Portal Arizona!  We are staying with friends Barbara and Ron who live in an amazing straw bale home very near Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains.  It is beautiful here.  We are about seven miles from the New Mexico state line.   It is a wonderful respite after a very busy week in Arizona.

After we left Borderlinks we drove to Rio Rico, a town near the Nogales border where we spent three nights at the Esplendor Resort.  The resort had a great pool, comfortable room and really poor internet connection.  I am spoiled and it cost us a pretty penny on extra data from our carrier to create a hotspot.  We moved back to Tucson a day earlier.

I had a wonderful visit with staff and programs of University of Arizona Santa Cruz County Cooperative Extension.  The irony is that I came from the border county of Whatcom in Washington to the border county of Santa Cruz.  Many thanks to Darcy Dixon and her fine staff for hosting me and for inviting me into their programs.  I had really good conversations with Darcy, her staff and some of the parents they serve in their Family Resource Centers.

Darcy and Drew, Border to Border County Directors

The first folks I met with were the nutrition educators, all of whom are deeply connected to the community.

Sonia, Alma and Melody

We had a wonderful conversation and I was able to get their insights into what they perceived as the needs in their community.  They told me that there was a great need for education about domestic and sexual violence.  The border can be very unsafe for women, especially those trapped by being undocumented, whether they are in transit or long term residents.  They told me that many of the undocumented women with whom they are familiar, come in a with a day pass and just do not return.  They have babies here and so qualify for housing and other benefits through their children.   One of the concerns from our parents in Washington is being able to address teen sexuality and prevention of early pregnancy.  I feel like I opened a Pandora's box with that topic on my two days of visits.  I heard many different opinions about teen pregnancy in the Nogales area and what needs to be done to help reduce the rates of 15-16 year olds who are having babies.  (Some of what I heard reminded me of work I had done over 20 years ago in Thurston County.  I was involved in a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition.  The big concern then was that girl from a rural town saw pregnancy as socially desirable and an end goal for the future.)  More than one person stated that no sex education is being taught in the schools and they perceived that the young people do not even understand the simple biology.  Many said that it is not part of the traditional culture to speak of sex, reproduction or sexuality and that parents feel that if they bring the topic up, their youth will want to experiment.  Others reported that there are some folk superstitions that people invoke that make them believe they cannot get pregnant.  I heard from more than one person that it is very socially acceptable to have babies early and that it is viewed as an acceptable aspiration both by the youth peer culture and by some of the parents.  We met a young woman who is a single mom at one of the family resource centers who had two children and one on the way.  She lives at home and her parents are very supportive and involved in raising her children.  It seems very normalized in some of the Latino families.

I also had the opportunity to meet and speak with an Abuela (grandmother) at a Family Resource Center who is helping raise her 16 month old granddaughter.

Arlene, Delia and Armida
Nogales Family Resource Center

Delia had very strong values and expectations for her daughter.  She agreed to have the daughter  and granddaughter live with her as long as her daughter stays in school, works to support her daughter and (I think) does not have any more children until she is through with school.  The daughter is a junior in high school and was just short of her 16th birthday when she gave birth.  Delia reported that she is not happy about the high expectations her mother has because most of her friends who are also young parents are allowed to "be kids" while their parents take over the raising of their children.  Delia was taking a class for parents of toddlers and was taking home the information and teaching her daughter, daughter-in-law and other abuelas she knows.  She is a multiplier of the best kind.  She meets on Wednesdays and Sundays to transmit what she has learned to her family members.  She is very serious about impacting her community and the lives of the parents, grandparents and the young children in their lives.

Arlene in the picture above was raised in Nogales, went to university and earned two degrees.  She is a stay at home mom and comes to the center for intellectual stimulation and companionship.  Armida is a dedicated foster parent who is enhancing her skill set to better serve the high needs and challenging children she has placed in her home and is helping other foster parents develop skills they can use.  All of them spoke of the need for young people to develop a vision for the future.  It was my honor to meet with these women and the staff.

I have more stories to tell about my visit to Santa Cruz County but will stop for today.  It is Saturday evening and I am ready for rest.

Thanks for reading.

A Short Debrief on our Borderlinks Experience

We finished our time with the Borderlinks delegation.  Since I last posted, we did a great deal of processing with the group and within ourselves about what we really learned from the experience.   Yesterday I wrote about the harsh reality of the border for the undocumented men, women and children and about heroic deeds of women and men in Tucson who are keeping the faith with the folks who attempt this perilous journey.

Today I want to share some of the takeaways for myself and others.  We did a reflection activity today that really made it easy for each of us to think about our time and experiences these past few days.  We were asked to imagine the experience was an animal and to relate pieces of our journey to parts of the animal.  HEAD- What we learned.  HEART- What we felt.  EYES - What images will we remember. NOSE- Smells that caught our attention.  EARS - What we continue to hear - the stories or words that stuck. HANDS- What individual action will be take? FEET - What will we do with others?  TAIL - What do we leave behind?

Here are some of my responses and a bit of what I remember shared by others.

HEAD - Reality of the horrors of the current immigration system for those coming from Mexico and Central America.  Good, courageous and faithful people and groups who live near the border, at least in the Tucson and Nogales sectors on both sides of the border, are working to save lives by any means possible. The system is broken.

EARS - The stories from helpers, migrants, lawyers, priests, community activists.

EYES - The faces of the people we met along the way. The artifacts found in the desert, abandoned in an attempt to survive or with death. Bullet holes shot into a wall in Nogales, Mexico that were part of an incident in which a boy was killed with 26 bullets.  He was on his way to pick up his sister at school.  The Nogales community is trying to get justice for the death of Jose Antonio, aged 16 at his death.  The WALL on the border.  Steel in sand.

Street memorial where Jose Antonio was killed.  Notice the bullet holes.

HEART- Shocked, compassion, sadness, deep concern, hope, outrage, hopeless, stunned.

NOSE - The posole at the Kino Center.

HAND - Blogging, my sabbatical work, finding others in the community who are concerned, volunteering, vigils at detention centers.

FEET - Mike and I will collaborate on a service at our church, Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, on May 3, about our experience on this journey.  We will gather others in our area who have done work with groups like No Mas Muertes to plan a forum.  We will see if we can get interest in showing some of the documentaries at the annual "Doctober Film Festival" at the Pickford Cinema in Bellingham.  I like the idea of a Border to Border Solidarity theme.

TAIL - Ignorance about what our government policies are destroying the lives of families and impacting children for their whole lives.  We left our presence as a sign that others care and are paying attention.

There were many other wonderful things said by my group members that I have not captured in today's post.  In our closing ceremony we were asked to take a stone and share with the group what it represents that we will be taking home.  I have my stone in my pocket.  It represents a new piece of the foundation of my sabbatical learning and how I will view the impact of the immigration experience on the families we have the privilege of serving in our state and region.

Thanks for reading.

Borders and Heroes

 Dear Readers,

We are in the third day of Borderlinks experience and have more to come.  I am quite overcome with feelings and had a difficult time getting to sleep last night.  We have been witness to the following.  I will likely write more later about each of these pieces but I wanted to write something while my images are fresh.  In the past three days we have -

*Witnessed people whose only crime was entering the country without documents for the purpose of working and surviving brought before a judge in a Federal immigration court in leg and hand shackles to be sentenced in groups of 8-10 to time in one of our private prisons, aka Detention Centers, some for up to 6 months.  All were plea bargains.  No pictures were allowed.

*Spend time with recent deportees in a community kitchens run by the Jesuits in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.  We have seen radical hospitality in the setting and people with very little hope and much determination treated to a Valentine's Day meal of posole, tortillas and more with balloons all around and brought to tears with the gift of music and love.

Outside the Kino Center where the meal was served.  

Pre-meal agreements and fun!

Valentine's Day Breakfast: Posole and torillas.  Horchata to drink!

Reproductions of murals and balloons decorate the wall.  Every effort is made to create hospitality and dignity in this setting.  I sensed that the memory of this  meal would help these folks at least for this day.  

*Met with women in a shelter who were all separated from their children, several had just completed 75 days in a cruel detention center before being returned from the detention center to Mexico and being dropped off to find that their money was stolen from someone within the system.  While in prison they suffered sexual abuse from prisoners and horrible treatment.  As one of the women said, "we are not criminals, we want to return to our children who are citizens and to work honestly."  There were so many tears from these beautiful young women and those of us who were privileged to hear their stories.  I lay awake last night thinking about them and hoping they will live to see their children and not be either incarcerated again, sexually exploited by narco terrorists or killed or neglected by coyotes, drug cartels or even our own border patrol or left to die in the desert.  We did not take pictures of the women but we listened and the stories and their faces live in my memory.

Some of the artifacts she shared with us. 

Shura with children's clothing.

*Heard stories from heroic Tucson area residents.  I do not think any of these folks would identify themselves as heroes but in my mind they are.  We heard from Emrys Staton who is a minister in training and one of the founders of the No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes organization that began leaving water in the desert 10 years ago to help save lives.  I hope to interview him in more depth next week.

Emrys, No More Deaths or No Mas Muertes

This morning we visited the co-organizer of the Green Valley Sahuarita Arizona Samaritans.  She is an amazing woman who moved to Green Valley from Berkeley CA and found that people were dying in the desert near her home.  She has organized a group of over 200 Samaritans in her area to help stop deaths in the desert.  Our group gathered in her hope around a table of artifacts that she had found in the desert near Green Valley.  She told the stories of what happens through the artifacts.  It was sobering.  She would not consider herself a heroine.  She told us that she is burdened every day with this work and she never gets away from it.  She is a powerful advocate for change.  She shared with us a powerful book of images by photographer Michael Hyatt: Migrant Artifacts; Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert published by Great Circle Books, Los Angeles.

This afternoon we spent time hearing stories of the sanctuary movement from Central American refugees that began in Tucson in the 1980's.  Rev. John Fife, one of the principals of the movement who was arrested with 15 others on a number of charges and later given 5 years probation, told the story of the movement from his experience.  He summarized the current US policy on the border of excluding the poorest of the poor from entering our country through a safe border as a gross violation of human rights and international law.  Strong words and strong convictions backed up by a deep faith in what should be done to protect all people and for the children who are now suffering as they are separated from their parents for a number of reasons.  He urged that our country develop a much broader view of what being a refugee means and how we can broaden the new sanctuary movement to protect children and their families.

I have been riding a roller coaster of despair, worry and hope over these last few days.  I think this experience will influence the rest of my sabbatical and my life for sometime to come.  I will not forget.

We finish here tomorrow and move a bit south where will be visiting agencies that serve families in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, including some in Nogales, Arizona.

Thanks for reading.

Tucson Safe and Sound

We made it safely to Tucson.  The journey was really long.  We drove from Davis to Desert Hot Springs on the 3rd day of our journey and had a very interesting drive through the Central Valley of California on Hwy 99 and then up and over the mountains on a lovely trip on state highway 56 down into San Bernardino and on into the Palm Springs area.  We had a lovely short visit with our friends Marilyn and Dale.  We drove to Tucson by driving around the Salton Sea (amazingly large body of water in an arid region.  We stopped in downtown Imperial for gas.  What a slice of Americana!  We then zoomed across Interstate 8 into Arizona.  I was surprised by the lush valley of Yuma and the miles of straight road going across the state.  We dragged into Tucson last night.

Our car packed and ready to go from Healing Waters to Tucson.  Lovely desert oasis!

We started our Border Links experience today.  There are 18 of us from all over the country who are here for our Delegation.  We spent our time this afternoon on getting to know each other, creating a covenant for group behavior and reviewing our journey.  We will be visiting Operation Streamline court tomorrow.  Up to 75 people are processed at a time to be deported.  I expect it to be a heart-breaking experience.  We will also be meeting with the Public Defender whose job it is to help the people who are facing deportation.  Our morning session will focus on the impact of NAFTA on immigration.  We will go to Mexico on Saturday and visit the border wall and a shelter for people caught in the web of either being deported or waiting for a chance to come to this country.

More coming soon!

Thanks for reading.

En Route

The journey has begun!  Mike and I drove to Portland on Sunday and spent a lovely evening with our friends Debbie and Rick and sweet dog Zoe at their home west of Portland.  We had a great time eating pizza and watching Downton Abbey together.  We left Monday morning and drove through a torrential rain and wind storm in central Oregon to sunny Davis, California.  I am writing from Davis this morning before we head to Desert Hot Springs tonight and then onto Tucson tomorrow.  I am glad to be in Davis.  This is my first time to be in the city of the major California Land Grant University and I will return for visits to see UC faculty and Cooperative Extension advisors in March.
On our way south, we saw many flocks of sheep in Oregon, standing in the rain and wind, protected by their wool.  There were many baby lambs to be seen.  As a knitter and lover of wool and eater of lamb I was thrilled to see the many flocks along the way.  We were also privileged to see Mt. Shasta in all her glory.  We saw Jupiter lighting up the early evening sky.  We also saw Venus and Mars.  I have a new program for my iPhone, Starglobe, that works incredibly well.  You simply point the phone to the sky where you want to identify the star or planet and it tells you what you are seeing.

Thanks for reading!!

Almost Ready to Migrate South

First things first.  I was as disappointed as the rest of Seahawks nation with the loss.  I was stunned and could not even face the post game analysis at first. A couple of days later I started to listen in to what Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson and others had to say and how they are framing this loss.  The question is What's Next?  Let's acknowledge the grief and then move to the next place.  What can we learn and how can this make us a stronger team for next year?  Great advice.  And the reality is - the Super Bowl is a game and there has to be a winner and a loser.  I think what I see from the Seahawks and from Seahawks nation is how losers can be winners.

Mike and I have been in a flurry of preparation to leave our beloved home and pets for 6 weeks.  It is the longest we have ever left the gang.  We have Daisy and Chewie, the dogs.  Daisy is an almost 12 year old German Shepherd mix and Chewie is an 8.5 year old Australian Shepherd/Lab cross.  They are the "girls" and we are devoted to them.  We also have a very old cat, Celeste (almost 19) and a young cat, Polly (2ish) who also travel the journey of life with us.  Our house sitter knows the pets and will take good care of them.  I have considered using Face Time to see the dogs at least once while we are away.

Daisy and Chewie at the beach.

We have been de-cluttering our 1903 home (read that as short on closets) and it has been a good process for me.  I think it fits with the sabbatical process well.

I went to a Clearing the Clutter workshop recently given my Carrie Koehnline, Clutter Therapist and friend.  It was really helpful.  I came back with extra energy for giving away clothes that I no longer use and also thinking about what else I can let go of in order to make space in my life for What's Next (reminds me of something the wise Coach Carroll had to say this week).  My list might surprise you. I would recommend doing this kind of work for anyone.   One of the resources I picked up as a result of the workshop is a book by Angeles Arrien, PhD., : The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom.  Sounds True Press, Boulder, 2007 edition.   The late Dr. Arrien passed away in April of 2014.  I was familiar with her work on the Four-Fold Way.  I am taking the book with me as my inspiration read for the trip.  I love having something that gives me insight into my own life course.

We journey by car to Tucson.  Our workshop begins Thursday.  I finished reading Undocumented by Aviva Chomsky this week and have as many questions as answers to the immigration dilemma.  I loved it that she sees the future in the youth advocates who are willing to speak out.  Mike and I also watched Juan Gonzales's documentary, Harvest of Empire, that came out last year.  Juan is also co-host of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.  His voice is a familiar one in our household.  The film embellished the information in Chomsky's book and really presented the issue in the frame of imperialism.  Not something I am particularly proud to part of and yet I am a part.

So, as we get ready to leave, one more fanciful picture:

This a mural in the Old Town district of Bellingham where I shared a birthday breakfast with a friend this week. (Her birthday not mine).  I like to think of the migrating butterflies and birds and hope that my journey is as safe as can be and that there will be light and beauty to counterbalance what I see as I study up close some of the barriers to immigration.

Thanks for reading!