Be a Rebel. Love yourself loudly.
– Briana Buckmaster for the Supernatual If I Could Tell You Calendar, 2018
Briana Buckmaster photographed by Farrah Aviva. Their copyright, (c)2018
July is hot. Too hot. I’ve been trying to write this little blurb for July, one of my least favorite months, and all I’ve got is July is hot. Too hot. Despite rising to 100° today, with climate change, July is just the introductory offer to August. Try it for 30 days and whether you like it or not, August will be hotter. July will tease us with a couple of thunderstorms, cooling off the nights for sleeping, but it knows; it knows, and we know, the worst is still to come.
July is melting ice cream, camping in the backyard, popsicles, malling, visiting the library – free books, free wifi, and free A/C! July is school supply shopping – the best sales are in July, right after july 4th. July is a calendar full of birthdays including my husband’s 50th at the end of the week.
Do one thing in July.
Some Twitter resources for today as well as throughout this election year. None of these accounts are affiliated with the federal government or official accounts of the departments they talk about.
Jacob Soboroff (journalist covering the border crisis)
RAICESTEXAS (helping reunite families)
Alternative Dept. Homeland Security
Ireallydocare.com (not a Twitter, but a list of non-profits helping (also listed below))
Al Otro Lado – serves indigent deportees, migrants, and refugees in Tijuana & Los Angeles
The Florence Project – providing legal & social services to detained immigrants in Arizona
Neta – a Latinx-run progressive media platform telling the stories of what’s happening on the border
Innovation Law Lab – working in immigrant detention centers and hostile judicial districts; keeping the definitive list of kids being held
https://www.innovationlawlab.org
Fuerza Del Valle – organizing workers & immigrant communities in the Rio Grande Valley
http://www.fuerzadelvalle.org/
The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights – promoting the best interests of unaccompanied immigrant children
https://www.theyoungcenter.org/
We Belong Together – women for common sense immigration policies
https://www.webelongtogether.org/
United We Dream – the largest immigrant youth-led network in the country
Womens Refugee Commission – advocating for the rights and protection of women, children, and youth fleeing violence and persecution
https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/
ACLU – fighting attacks through the legal system
Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) – protecting unaccompanied children who enter the US immigration system alone to ensure that no child appears in court without an attorney.
Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project – providing asylum seekers with legal aid and community support across the country
Human Rights First – helping refugees obtain asylum in the U.S.
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/
La Union del Pueblo Entero – founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, a community union that works in the Rio Grande Valley from the grassroots up
Committee for the Protection of Journalists
Alternative National Parks Service
Curiosity and Creativity
“Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
– Samuel Johnson
“Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.”– James Russell Lowell
[Note: As I began to write this, I thought it would be an emotional look back at an important pilgrimage that I undertook last summer. However, as I began to write, it seemed that before I got to the actual pilgrimage and the feelings that it conjured, I had to wade through the logistics of discovering the well, and finding that it was important for me to visit it. The coincidences that have crossed my life’s path and Wales astound me every time I discover them.]
I wished I’d discovered this a week ago (or more) so I could have prepared properly, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t put a few thoughts out there to encourage writing, yours as well as mine.
Everything is a prompt. Everything is connected.
Example: How did I find out about National Writing Day?
Scrolling through Facebook, saw a post about Wales – three places to write in Wales on NWD. Google NWD 2018, find their website. It’s today! Go to the website. See offer to follow on instagram. Follow. Link in bio to download Write Away activity for today.
I share that with you here:
Click here to download Write Away! activity.
Enjoy!
And Write Away!
The photo on the right randomly happened when putting spaghetti into the pot to boil for dinner. It struck me as an interesting compostion so I photographed it.
Weeks later, I thought it would make an interesting coloring array, so I repeated the composition in six different colors using Sharpie markers and then coloring over it with matching colored pencils.
It made me think of Warhol, without the obvious talent.
It was enjoyable and relaxing, and I’m thinking about doing it again with a different subject.
Abstract Art. I’m calling it Spaghetti-Warhol. (c)2018
I wanted to write an update before my next post.
My intention last week was to return with more information about the border crisis, and that is what it is – a crisis, and then continue writing and sharing.
I was a bit overwhelmed with the horrifying news that children were being taken from their parents and detained. I was horrified that asylum seekers were being lied to, and sent, instead of to legal entry points, to illegal entry points, where they are then arrested, separated from their children, and detained.
Some of these children have been taken to New York and Michigan, not to detainment centers, but to foster care, and in the case of MI, a Betsy DeVos affiliated Christian adoption agency. Many of these children are pre-verbal.
This is beyond horrifying. I can’t find the adequate words for how bad and inhumane, and diabolical this is. This is a catastrophe.
With the executive order signed by President Trump, nothing has changed. Families will not be separated for twenty days, but then are subject to separation and detainment. Parents are being blackmailed into immediate deportation by being promised reunification with their children.
These people are not entitled to lawyers, and many of them do not speak English.
There is so much more to say and to more, and I sadly admit that I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t wade into the research of what’s happening there to explain it to you. I’m still trying to explain it to myself.
There is one group helping who I can reliably recommend: RAICES. Please contact your Congress-people and your Senators, no matter what state you are in, to voice your outrage at this racist and inhumane policy.
You can also go to ireallydocare.com for a list of other organizations helping the kids at the border.
My family decided to take a spontaneous road trip to Destiny USA, and that also contributed to my absence. I’ll tell you more about that in a subsequent post. It gave me a tiny respite of no television, no news, I kept thinking I’d write, but we just went, and it was fun; taking a couple of days away.
But those parents at the border…they don’t get a day off; they don’t get respite.
Source: http://www.eponis.tumblr.com (c)2018
Theme: Place
Prompt: What is your place in the world? How do you define your place? Your impact on family, community, workplace?
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 