Adios romaine and rice. Hello solar and concertina wire.

The biggest surprise as I drove along a rolling backroad across the desert toward Calexico were the miles of farmland where romaine, radishes, and rice once grew that have been converted into solar farms. Vast wind power farms had lined the interstate highway from San Diego but they were in open desert land that had never been farmed. These solar arrays were clearly on former farmland where the dikes had been eliminated. I guess it is another example of capitalism at work: land being repurposed to generate more income.

My plan had been to go to the border to take photos of the infamous Southern border wall. I had decided against taking pictures at the San Diego/Tijuana port of entry. It’s too chaotic. Too jammed with people. Calexico and Mexicali–one smallish city spanning the border–seemed a better place for photography. And later I went to Nogales, near Tucson, to take photos of the wall from the Mexican side.

LATER: On April 1st the White House announced that on April 5th Trump would visit this border crossing in Calexico. A very odd choice since nothing much seemed to be going on in this small farming town at the southern end of the Imperial Valley.

The Airbnb home I stayed at was one long block from the border and one half block from a field that had just been harvested. The home, by the way, was a very nice middle class house that could have been found in Las Vegas or Indio.

So here is a bit of what I saw starting with the wall with its rows and rows of razor-sharp concertina wire installed by the military. It’s a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. If someone wants to cross the border, the entry for people on foot and in cars is about 3 blocks to the west. The commercial truck border crossing is 7 miles to the east.

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