I asked my grandson, Miles (age 20 months) what he thought lived in this hole on the beach and he informed me that it was an “owl”. He is quite a nature boy and he does know about owls, but this surprised me. Have you ever heard of a sand owl? I believe, in fact, that this hole was made by a nesting turtle.

It is the beginning of sea turtle nesting season on the Space Coast in Florida. There are four kinds of sea turtles that make the annual pilgrimage to nest here: Loggerhead, Leatherback, Green and occasionally Kemps Ridley turtles. The last three are considered endangered. The Loggerhead is now considered threatened in Florida. Hatchlings emerge from their nests and head for the ocean, which causes the little tracks you see.

We once again have made our winter journey South. This time, we are only away for 10 days, so we flew rather than taking our usual meandering five week road trip to explore. Hopefully, we will make a few interesting discoveries to muse about. Stay tuned!

We are now in our secret hideaway in Florida. Soaking up the sunshine after this exceptionally harsh winter in upstate New York.

Did you know that Dearborn Michigan is an Arab majority city? Yesterday we visited the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn. It claims to be the first and only museum of its kind about the Arab American experience.

We learned that “the middle east” is an outdated term that is based on British colonization. The preferred term is “the Arab world”.

We learned about the cradle of civilization and ancient Arab contributions to art, music, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and architecture.

We learned how to write in Arabic.

A very moving exhibit was called “Waiting for Peace“ by Rajie Cook. I will let the exhibit speak for itself:

As we were driving east on Rt. 90 near Gary, Indiana we noticed a sign we had never noticed before for Indiana Dunes National Park. This piqued our curiosity and we decided we had to have a look.

Gary is about 25 miles east of Chicago. You know you are near Gary by the stench of sulphur dioxide spewing from the US steel plant there. Gary is a decaying post- industrial city. A national park here?

We drove through Gary and came to a back road leading into the countryside. We left Gary and its smell in the rearview mirror and came upon sand dunes and a swampy natural area. We could no longer detect that we were just a few miles from Gary.

Indiana Dunes National Park is one of the newest national parks, established in 2019.

Once on the LakeMichigan beach, it is hard to tell you are not on Cape Cod or some other ocean vacation spot, except for the shoreline view of Gary and Chicago to the west and Michigan City to the east.

I’m glad that the good folks of Gary have a place like this to get away and enjoy.

The park was closed due to the government shutdown, but the bathrooms were open and immaculately maintained. The garbage cans were empty. There was no litter anywhere. All was well (and free).

My heroes of the day are the volunteers who have stepped up to maintain this park. In spite of our initial skepticism, we recommend a visit to the Indiana Dunes National Park.

My heroes of the day are all of the Chicago residents who have decided to fight back to protect their neighbors from being kidnapped by ICE agents. ICE agents are now in multiple Chicago neighborhoods- swooping in and taking street vendors, mothers walking their children to school and harassing pretty much anyone with brown skin who is out in public.

ICE agents have shot at least two people, one fatally; put a man in a chokehold after a traffic crash; threw a smoke bomb into the middle of a busy neighborhood street; accosted protesters and journalists; chased and arrested people outside a Bronzeville homeless shelter; and raided a South Shore apartment building, destroying property and detaining dozens of people and children in the middle of the night. (citybureua.org)

But Chicagoans are fighting back. There are now rapid response and mutual aid efforts organized in multiple neighborhoods. These grassroots efforts are organized into a network. There are crowd sourced maps of where ICE agents are spotted and people with orange whistles verifying ICE sightings. When ICE agents are spotted they blow whistles and others blow their car horns. People come running to help. Neighbors are walking to school in groups and doing shopping for their neighbors so they do not have to venture outside.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has signed an executive order declaring public property, such as parks and city garages, off limits for ICE agents. They may not use public property for staging any more. He has encouraged private businesses to join with them.

This is a terrible moment in U.S history that will go down in infamy, but the upside is that people in communities everywhere are uniting. This is inspiring and cause for hope.

We stopped at the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Facility t(outside of Chicago) to participate in the protests there.

My justice hero for the day is Caren, who has been going to the Broadview ICE Detention protests every day in spite of being shot with pepper spray bullets. She is a nurse for the VA who works around the corner and decided she needed to be there.

There were probably only about 50 people at this protest, but it is clear that they have created a community – these dedicated souls, diverse is age and back grounds, are showing up every day. I was inspired.