A marvel

Sometimes I marvel at my housely competence. Clothes are laundered, folded, and put away. The cat box is cleaned. Dishes loaded into the dishwasher and unloaded into cupboards. Food fills the cupboards and fridge. Garbage bags are dragged out to the curb in a timely manner and replenished for the next load. When did I learn to be such a housekeeping machine?

Which brings me, naturally, to hummingbirds. I'll live forever in California and I will never cease to marvel at hummingbirds. They do exist in British Columbia, but we always seemed to live in a part of Vancouver they didn’t.

Here in California we have our very own hummingbird. It is very industrious and cheeky. Yesterday I was watching it and it buzzed up quite close and inspected me for a while. It seemed to think I was OK. No doubt misguided neighbours think they share in this bird, but it is ours. It loves our back yard the best and feasts on the invisible flowers of the the redwood tree and the lipstick red bush island snap dragon flowers. It also likes the giant pineapple sage that has conquered a large part of the back garden, but does prefer home cooking -- native plants -- over the exotics.

This leads smoothly to the whole immigrant issue raging right now. I feel like sort of a fake immigrant. I speak the language already, I grew watching American TV, I look like the sort of person who was born here, and my immigration experience was pretty bureaucratic in nature. Filling out forms mostly; the occasional fingerprint and photograph to spice things up.

I understand many of the protesters are specifically reacting to the idiot House bill that would turn people in the country without correct documentation into felons. And also those who help them. There is also the issue of turfing out 12 million people, many of whom have families here, including children who are US citizens. Do they have a civil right to parents? I am sure many of the protesters too, are reacting to the exploitation and racism they face. Imagine spending your life working your ass off in someone's garden, or looking after their precious children, only to be rewarded with contempt and the call to criminalize your very existence.

On the other hand, if there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant, then there is no such thing as borders. Should the US eliminate its borders? Should all of the Americas, from North to South, be one big country? What about letting in Asians and Africans? Many of the people protesting yesterday decry globalization and its ill effects, but isn't wiping out national borders around the world just another form of globalization? It sounds like a reasonable idea, but we are dealing with the human species here. We are limited in our ability to tolerate others and share.