I’m off today. (How to contact me)

Using vacation time at home, I spent much of the past three days closed off from the world, finishing drafts of two giant reports based on fieldwork done at the Mexico-Guatemala border in August and in Colombia in October. And I mean “giant”: a combined 37,000 words (which will need to be cut back).

I know, I’m not very clear on the concept of “vacation,” but I had a lot of unused vacation time and desperately needed a polite way to shut down the daily torrent of meetings, calls, emails, and chats. I don’t recommend doing this, but I feel much less stressed now, with two giant projects behind me.

While I hope to slow the pace of work here at home today, I still need to continue preparing for a visit to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in three weeks, and to prepare my talk for a public panel discussion this evening at George Mason University. I’ll also have an eye on the massive national protests planned for today in Colombia.