Strange Women Lying in Ponds

Brief guide to the commoner butterflies of the northern United States and Canada. 1893. Cover.

Stephen Starr at The Guardian:

When Monsanto Maler walked out of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Blue Ash, Ohio, at 9.15am on Sunday with an ankle monitor freshly attached to his left leg, he put his hand over his face, burst into tears and fell to the ground. He had come to the US in June 2023, fleeing gangs in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, where he had been hit over the right side of his head, leaving a large, visible scar. Grief-stricken and unable to hold himself up, he collapsed on the ground, his dozens of immigration documents, which a moment before had been carefully packed under his arm, strewn across the concrete. His face was full of confusion, his eyes bewildered. His American dream had ended in humiliation and despondency, with a metal box tied around his ankle. “I feel depressed, physically, mentally. I feel dizzy,” he said through an interpreter.

Four hours earlier, 75 miles (120km) to the north in Springfield, Viles Dorsainvil, who heads the Haitian Support Center, and Pastor Carl Ruby loaded into a sedan on a humid, foggy morning at 5.30am. They were about to embark on the drive south to the Blue Ash facility to help Haitians such as Maler in any way they could. On the drive, the pair talked about their efforts to help a family from Ruby’s church in Springfield emigrate to Quebec City, one of the thousands of Haitians forced to leave the US due to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies. “I was helping them pack. The dad had all this patriotic stuff with him,” said Ruby, who knows at least two Haitians from his congregation who have been called to Blue Ash to be fitted with ankle monitors.

“It makes me sad that what he’s going to remember from the United States is that he had to leave.” Dorsainvil talked about a Haitian man who worked at a local Amazon warehouse, had temporary protected status (TPS) until 2029 and had come to his center last Friday seeking help. “When he got that letter [requiring him the come to the Blue Ash facility], he was terrified, he got sick,” Dorsainvil said. Dorsainvil, himself a TPS holder, and Ruby chatted about what was happening in Haiti right now – that a burger there cost $16 and how the absence of opportunity was pushing people into gangs or to flee the country for their lives.

On 5 August, the Washington DC district judge Ana Reyes, whose ruling had previously prevented the Trump administration from lifting TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, was forced to remove her stay, following a decision from the supreme court backing the Trump administration’s efforts. It means that for about 350,000 Haitians in the US on TPS, it’s an end for their lives in the US. Over the last decade, more than 12,000 Haitians moved to the Rust belt town of Springfield, where they worked in labor-intensive jobs in manufacturing and food packaging, jobs that local companies struggled to fill. But in September 2024, then presidential candidate Donald Trump falsely claimed that immigrants in Springfield were eating pets, setting off a firestorm of unrest that fueled neo-Nazi marches, bomb threats and school closures in Springfield, and the national immigration debate centered on the town of 60,000 people.

This is a map of an Island.

Lessons in Geography for Little Learners. 1889.

I am reminded of a jungle fantasy whenever I walk into these fern laden rooms. Some of the most successful also contain aviaries, while the largest include collections of exotic butterflies.

Bad Timing