DOJ imposes quotas on judges to speed up deportations.

Oh. So we're being rallied. Do you feel rallied? They speak about us in terms of us being a block. Fine. We speak of them in terms of them being dopes. 

But all this is too distressingly grinding and recurring  for me to dwell upon. Fix it, you miserable dipshits and then shut up.

I thought it was going to be a quota on the number of judges, but it's a quota on the number of cases each judge must process to be considered efficient.

I must think about something else.

My mind goes to the migrant balancing on the railroad tracks and the hundreds of times I did that on different tracks in different cities, different states and different countries. 

Back then, when I could balance.

And the dry desolate atmosphere and sparse vegetation in that brief scene provoked me back to the tracks that ran through Englewood Colorado roughly nearby the Platte river. 

I was walking to an aquarium shop that I learned about from the phone book. To continue a hobby picked up four moves previous. For some kind of continuity. It was a very long walk into the unknown. And I never did see a train.

Along the way I saw small cactus struggling to grow in the dirty ballast between the ties supporting the tracks. The whole track situation was a bit depressing, sunken in dirt, compared with other train tracks but these cactus blew my mind. Cactus! Growing right here under foot. It's like being in a cowboy movie. Whoever would think that cactus grows right here? Right here in a city! Man, oh man, is this ever authentic, or what? I couldn't get over living in the west.

They were very poor specimens. Scraggly. Forlorn. Damaged. Neglected.

As I walked all the way to the store, along the tracks parallel with Santa Fe Drive from Hampden all the way to Mississippi, and back, I vowed to return with a garden digger, a large screwdriver to dig, and a box, and gloves, to remove a few cactus and bring them home. So I did. That same day. 

Back then I was an excellent walker.

I could totally outpace you.

Ping. There he goes.

I learned a very hard and painful lesson about digging up cactus. It's those little hair-like stickers in tiny clumps that really get you. Not the big needles. I learned very quickly what not to do. And learned very quickly how to avoid repeating the same painful mistakes in handling. Cactus cannot be trusted for one single second no matter how beat up they look.

Their roots are long and pathetic. Easily damaged.

I re-planted them next to the front door facing east. 

It was a sick miserable unattractive garden. Unsuitable for the front of any house.

It did very poorly the next year. I realized the house blocks their sun most of the day. So I dug them up again and planted them right next to the heat-storing brick of the house facing west, that also gets a bit of lime runoff from the brick mortar,  and that made all the difference in the world to the cactus. The next spring, each plant doubled in size and bloomed beautiful large fascinating yellow flowers all over. Each spot a flower appeared another Micky Mouse cactus ear grew after the flower dropped off. Some grew weird little cup shapes. The next year each Micky Mouse cactus ear grew multiple flowers and my cactus garden grew exponentially. A very attractive cactus garden grew from these exceedingly poor specimens. I haven't seen anything like it since. It encouraged me to learn about things like Miracle Grow and how not to overwater. It was a wonderful successful experiment and it helped me to appreciate the unique beauty of Colorado.