When asked what I miss most following my retirement two years ago, I’m reminded that in my two decades as a New York theater critic and arts writer my tickets to shows I reviewed displayed the cost to me: $0.00. That usually gets a laugh from whomever poses the question. But there’s nothing funny about furloughed federal government workers who, starting last week, received pay stubs bearing their value: $0.00.

To what end? The president insists there’s a security crisis at our southern border and that the only remedy is to build Wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. The $5.7 billion for said Wall over which he has shut down much of the government would cover only 200 miles, if that. There are already 700 miles of barriers in strategic places along the border with Mexico, which would leave another 1,000 Wall miles to build. To figure the total cost you might suppose that quintupling would cover it–$25 billion and change. You would be incalculably wrong. The Wall will never be completed in Trump’s lifetime or anyone else’s. Just as we all should have known that Mexico was never going to pay for it. Forget that the president now insists he never said that. Who does he think he’s fooling? There are hundreds, at least, of videos proving what he promised time after time, often leading call-and-responses: “What are we going to build?” “The Wall!” “And who’s going to pay for it?” “Mexico!”

Don’t tell me the president doesn’t lie. “I never said Mexico was going to write a check for the Wall,” he said along the Texas border recently. He wants us to believe he was speaking metaphorically. But read any of his endless streams of mostly mindless Tweets and you’ll see that the president wouldn’t know a metaphor from a meatball.

But what matters right now is all the suffering he’s causing for a stupidly impossible vanity project. A week before Christmas, Trump was ready to sign off on a compromise that would leave the government open. All departments would be funded except the Department of Homeland Security, which would stay open with a continuing resolution until a compromise could be reached on border security, with $1.3 billion already on the table for Trump’s Wall. The compromise now sits on Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk. All he has to do is put it up for a vote. It would pass, perhaps by a veto-proof margin.

But Trump spends much of his “executive time” watching cable news. (If you doubt it, just look at the timing of his Tweets.) Right-wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter derided him as a fake president should he back down from his central campaign pledge. Forget Mexico paying for it. Just build Wall anyway and let middle-class American chumps pick up the tab. The word “fake” must have riled Trump, who’s always throwing it around regarding news dispensed outside of Sean Hannity’s Fox orbit.

Trump shut down the government over comments delivered by a blowhard former prescription drug addict and a wicked-tongued woman who once said of 9/11 widows who questioned George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion that they “reveled” in their husbands’ deaths. These are Trump’s “advisers” now that he’s chased away most of those who have some clue of which they speak.

All of this to build a Wall that can never be realized and would be ineffectual anyway. When Trump visited the border, he was shown pictures of tunnels dug beneath portions of walls, fences or other barriers. And he was asked about photos showing a steel-slat barrier, which he’s favored lately, that had been sliced through using a hacksaw you could buy at Lowe’s or Home Depot. His response? “That wall was built by previous administrations” (translate Obama), ignoring the lineup of other prototypes ordered by Trump clearly visible in the background. He further lies that 4,000 terrorists crossed the southern border in the last year and dispatched his vice president, secretary of homeland security and hapless press secretary to repeat his lie. The figure from the latest year available, 2017-18, from the president’s own Department of Homeland Security, is 6. And these were only suspects, such as people who bore similar names to known terrorists. Other numbers show that illegal immigration at our southern border are lowest they’ve been in this century.

There is a crisis at the border, a humanitarian one as Trump mentioned in his Oval Office address. But the crisis is of his making, starting with separating children, even preverbal babies, from their parents. Many parents who’ve not already been deported are held in internment camps while their children are detained separately in other obscenely for-profit facilities. And we’re all paying for it. Not Mexico.

Trump’s Wall will never be built no matter how loudly he huffs and puffs. Most of the land along the Rio Grande as well as parts of the desert west of Texas is privately owned. The president has threatened to divert FEMA funds meant to help American citizens devastated by wildfires and hurricanes and also the Defense Department budget to pay for Wall. But that’s only part of the bill. To build his Wall, the president has proposed declaring “military eminent domain.” That sounds like martial law—using force to take private land from ranch owners and others. Still, they would have to be compensated at whatever is deemed “fair market value.” One ranch owner said he wouldn’t sell “if they offered me a trillion dollars.” Eminent domain, even with a military threat—does the president propose arresting anyone who doesn’t take his offer?—means litigation. A massive government takeover of thousands of square miles of private land would occupy courts along the southern border for decades at an astronomical cost unimaginable even to Trump.

The best outcome I can foresee is that the president goes through with his threat to declare a national emergency and the courts give him even a partial go-ahead. Before an ounce of concrete is poured after all the court challenges, Trump will be out of office. We’d be left with a precedent for the next president to use for a global emergency—climate change. Maybe we’ll still have time to save the lowlands and islands of our Chesapeake region from being swallowed up by rising sea levels.

May that be your ironic legacy, Mr. President.

Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

I have been mesmerized by the deepest cerulean blue of oxygen-starved icebergs on the Antarctic Circle. I have absorbed the mysticism and spirituality emanating from the temples of Angor Wat. I have been transformed by the serenity of the Buddha in Thailand. I have marveled at the beauty of the Sydney Opera House and Botanical Gardens. I have seen the treasures of America’s cities and America’s national parks; and been entranced by the history of Europe and Rome. Yes, I have been very, very fortunate to have traveled all over the world. From each trip, I returned satisfied and enriched by the experience–but there is one place that calls me back…Africa.

My daughter and I went South Africa last fall. And I must confess that while I am an adventurous traveler, I require comfort. Once I hit my 20’s, tents became an uncomfortable memory. So we chose to stay in places that had individual guest bungalows. Cape Town was lovely, but it wasn’t until we went into Kruger National Park that our world changed.

Our park experience began before dawn, when we blindly put on as many winter clothes as we could (it was in the 50’s) and jumped into an open-air Range Rover accompanied by our driver (an experienced ranger) and a tracker sitting in a jump seat in the front of the vehicle. We began each safari feeling the cold, dry, expansive air and experiencing the African sunrise, silently marveling at the large red sphere climbing over the horizon to welcome us to our homeland. The air is large, the fragrance both complex and indescribable. I asked one of our guides which bush was the source of the scent, but he looked at me puzzled, these are African skies.

We were jostled and bumped to see our quarry, one of the big five (cape buffalo, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant) or our favorites, the giraffes and zebras. We were under strict orders to remain in our vehicle while we watched the animals that warily allowed us into their world. It took all of my willpower not to try to touch them, we were so close. Part of the excitement was the danger, but mostly it was being able to watch the richness of a natural life. We stayed out for 3 hours, and then returned at dusk to experience the red African sunset and spend another 3 hours observing the night show. Most animals emerge at night—the prey under the cover of darkness, the predators using their other senses to conquer their victims. Even the hippopotamuses emerge from their river sanctuary.

We felt at home under these African skies, where our ancestors had trekked over these lands. At night, we dined on food roasted on an open fire in the BOMA, a communal outdoor eating area.

One particularly cold night, the fire was smoking so badly that my asthma kicked in and I had to return to my bungalow to get my inhaler. Since the bungalows were within the park, policy dictated that I had to be accompanied by a ranger to protect me from unexpected encounters with wild predators. However, I had grown weary of this requirement. Our rangers worked on African time and it could take as long as 20 minutes to find an escort. So I started to sneak out on my own, only to be discovered by a very handsome, tall 30-something ranger who insisted on accompanying me. Thirty feet in front of our bungalow, he grabbed me around my waist and moved me to the side. A 30’s version of me would assume that he was putting a move on me, but now in my 60’s I knew better.

“Stop,” he whispered and pointed his flashlight to a crouched leopard glowering at us from 4 feet away. “She is not the one I am worried about, I can’t see her mate,” he commented as he slowly pulled a large knife out of his back pocket.

Our rangers have been trained to slit the throat of an attacking lion or leopard; and are able to kill a charging rhino or elephant with a single shot; so despite my heightened senses, I was not afraid.

“What do I do?” I whispered, exhilarated and grateful that I had allowed him to escort me.

“We remain still until she stops staring at us. That will be the sign that she is no longer interested in us.”

So we waited in frozen silence, my asthma attack vanquished by the adrenaline now flowing inside me. Then at his silent signal, we slowly and calmly walked to my bungalow.

That night I heard the loud, anguished growls of mating leopards. Like the African sky, this growl must be experienced; an unnatural, intense guttural moan. Their cries surrounded and vibrated through my bungalow. I learned later that this pair was using my bungalow grounds as their “love nest”. The female had chosen a new mate, cheating on the dominant male with his virile son. As we have discovered in the human kingdom, this handsome younger guy turned out to be a disappointment. A female leopard, driven by a need to reproduce, mates every two hours, while this particular male was quite content with his single conquest. All night they growled at each other in mutual frustration—he wanting to be left alone and she, singular in her pursuit.

Ignoring caution, I instinctively opened the windows and went outside to replace the heavy wooden doors with screens, oblivious to the cool air and the danger from two angry leopards. I needed to be a part of that African night. I needed to absorb those strangely familiar sounds that had been encoded in my DNA.

Angela Rieck was born and raised on a farm in Caroline County. After receiving her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland, she worked as a scientist at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Throughout her career, she held management jobs at AT&T, HP and Medco, finally retiring as a corporate executive for a large financial services company. Angela is also a wife, mother and an active volunteer serving on the Morris County School Board for 13 years and fostering and rehabilitating over 200 dogs. After the death of her husband, Dr. Rieck returned to the Eastern Shore to be with her siblings. With a daughter living and working in New York City, she and her dogs now split their time between Talbot County and Key West, FL.