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A thick fog surrounds California's borders, communication beyond state lines is cut off, and the Mexicans disappear: workers, spouses, and business owners are missing. Cars are abandoned in the street, food is left cooking on the stove. We meet the wife of a musician who's gone, a state Senator whose maid doesn't show up for work, and a farm owner whose produce is ripe and unpicked. A scientist asks any Mexicans who haven't disappeared to volunteer for genetic experiments: a female newscaster and the daughter of the musician may be the only missing links around. Why them? And where have all the Mexicans gone? Even the border guards grieve. The state and its economy grind to a halt.

I don't know if this is an appropriate video or not, but one of my friends mentioned it at Bunco last night so I thought I would share it.

PBS Teachers provides PreK-12 educational resources and activities for educators tied to PBS programming and correlated to local and national standards and professional development opportunities delivered online. As stated in the lesson plan overview: "Through the activities presented in this lesson, students will become familiar with the tenets of the Homestead Act, the shifting borders of the American frontier, and the life faced by homesteaders. After a class discussion and examination of a variety of Web sites, students will complete an written assessment in which they will determine whether or not the land available through the Homestead Act was, in fact, "free." This lesson can be used as an introduction to a unit on American settlement in the latter half of the nineteenth century, or as a pre-viewing activity to the PBS series FRONTIER HOUSE. A basic knowledge of 19th-century United States history is required."

Edna Spalding finds herself alone and broke on a small farm in the midst of the Great Depression when her husband the Sheriff is killed in an accident. A wandering black man, Moses, helps her to plant cotton to try and keep her farm and her kids together. She also takes on a blind border, Mr. Will, who lost his sight in the first World War. She must endure storms and harsh labor to try and make her mortgage payment on time.

TED Talk Dr. Shauna Shaprio