What more is there to say?

Rebuilding is coming right along at CoolFont in Berkeley Springs, W Va., the hotel complex where my son worked before a devastating fire demolished it some months ago. The lodge that burned down is being rebuilt now, but in a slightly different style. The target date for reopening the new complex is Oct. 2025. Several construction workers who had previously been bartenders and waiters there soon plan to return to those jobs once again 

My son Jon now works out of a desk at a nearby auxiliary building that did not burn down which dispenses pool passes and oversees cabin rentals. 

Here below is my son with a visitor from DC checking out the pool adjacent to where he has been working now. 

Whenever I used to visit my son in W Va. before the CoolFont fire, I often ate lunch in the dining room of the now-demolished building.

A new message just came in from my friend Sonam in tiny,

remote Bhutan, a place that I have never actually visited. However, because of visitors to my home from there, I feel that I know that country. 

Sonam Yangchen
to me

hi aunty, 

 how are you doing? 

 i am in the village with my parents; i have taken two years of extraordinary leave from the office to be with them. so henceforth i will get ample time to chat with you and keep engaged. 

hope you are doing well.

                                                    Can readers find Bhutan on a map? 

Any mention of Bhutan to folks living here in W Va.usually brings forth puzzled looks. Sometimes, living now in this small rural community, I feel like a fish out of water.

Wash. Post, 

More storms threaten Central Texas as death toll nears 80, including 28 children

And the toll may continue to rise.

    This 8-year-old girl was lost in the Texas floods. 

Wash. Post, U.S. measles cases reach 33-year record high as outbreaks spread

Johns Hopkins University data reflects the public health reversal in defeating the vaccine-preventable disease since measles was officially eliminated from the U.S. in 2000.

The resurgence of measles has been an unfortunate legacy of the Trump administration's Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Elon Musk has announced that he's now formed the 'America Party.' Tesla stock continues to fall, but he doesn't seem to care.

Mark Cuban and Anthony Scaramucci have expressed interest in joining the new party. Many voters say they are fed up with both Republicans and Democrats. Will Trump now try to deport Musk, as he has threatened to do?  

        Wash. Post, Tesla stock price drops as Musk leaps back into politics

Mr. Trump wants to show that he really means business on halting immigration by threatening would-be border crossers with either prison or deportation back to their home country.  

Those threats may actually be working as there have not been any crossings recently. Shelters on the Mexican side have now been left strangely empty. 

  YourArlington, How 'Alligator Alcatraz' echoes Dachau​

The main problem with locking up--or threatening to summarily deport--border crossers is that our country actually needs those immigrants and they really need our jobs. There is an acute labor shortage in this country so we need them to keep coming in, right here, right now. 

Going through the legal immigration process is way too complicated and can take too many years; it is not a workable system. Our immigration system has never developed an efficient way to screen and process would-be arrivals. Most folks from elsewhere have come here illegally. That has been true for the last several decades.

            A Cuban-American sent me this recent photo of a street in Havana.

I haven't been to Cuba for more than 25 years, not after being 

ejected by the govenrment and warned to never come back. Probably it would be safe for me to return now, though I have no plans to do so. 

 

Temporary status to be removed from roughly 80,000 Hondurans, Nicaraguans after 25 years in US

Based on my own extensive experience in both Honduras and Nicaragua, I would seriously object to the Trump administration's efforts to deport people there, especially to Nicaragua which has become a dictatorship once again. 

U.S. deports men from Asia and Latin America to South Sudan after legal saga

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport eight men to South Sudan. They were being detained in a shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti after a legal battle had ensued between the White House and a federal judge in Boston.

Not much notable activity goes on in South Sudan, as I have said before, at least in my own experience there: some barter, the tending of goats and sheep, a scanty spreadout population, extremes of weather, wide open spaces--it's not really a very hospitable place for new arrivals, though many locals do speak English. Now eight men have been deported there. 

What is South Sudan expected to do with these deportees, if anything? Will they be locked up or be set free? Where will they live? How can they make a living? And what is the South Sudanese government getting in return? No answers to these questions have been forthcoming.   

Here is a tent marketplace in South Sudan. I've often seen such informal marketplaces being set up just for the day. Economic activity there is quite rudimentary. 

As mentioned before, belongings are quite safe in South Sudan in my experience. 

Because of the recent loss of a long blog posting, I am inclined to post right now.