Madness

"I will do such things,
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be...
The terrors of the earth."
--William Shakespeare, King Lear

“O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

I'm flying to Thailand very early on Sunday.  I have packing and other preparations to complete.  And I seem to be acquiring a cold or some other ailment that makes me sleepy.  So you're not going to get a well-written, well-reasoned final posting to this blog before I fly off to another hemisphere.

But you, like me, have been watching our Great Leader.  Watching him claim with gusto that the disastrous election results were tantamount to a personal victory for himself.  Laughing at those pathetic Republicans who lost, lost only because in his imagination they weren't devoted enough to Trump.  Focusing on the gain of a seat or two in the Senate, and ignoring -- except for those barbs at the losers in his own party -- the losses in the House, the governorships, and the various legislatures.

Seemingly believing himself beloved by the nation, when the raw figures from the Congressional elections (Democrats 56.9 percent to Republicans 41.5 percent in the Senate races)  show an overwhelming majority of the country is hostile to him, and/or his party.

And then there was Europe.  Trump rushes off to France to honor the American war dead from the two world wars, and then doesn't.  He sits in his hotel room and broods and tweets.  There's more, much more, and you've read it in news and opinion reports. He shows up at meetings with other leaders; while they chat and laugh, he stands alone scowling and bitter.

My question is whether he is sane.  I'm not talking about personality disorders -- God knows he clearly has many -- but about whether he is teetering on the brink of sheer madness.  Probably not yet.  We like to apply strict scientific criteria today in diagnosing psychosis.  But in Shakespeare's time, the average citizen felt free to size up the situation, relying on common sense. 

King Donald's court would be buzzing with the question -- is he quite mad?

As far back as February 2017, conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan asked the question:

I keep asking myself this simple question: If you came across someone in your everyday life who repeatedly said fantastically and demonstrably untrue things, what would you think of him? If you showed up at a neighbor’s, say, and your host showed you his newly painted living room, which was a deep blue, and then insisted repeatedly — manically — that it was a lovely shade of scarlet, what would your reaction be? If he then dragged out a member of his family and insisted she repeat this obvious untruth in front of you, how would you respond? If the next time you dropped by, he was still raving about his gorgeous new red walls, what would you think? Here’s what I’d think: This man is off his rocker. He’s deranged; he’s bizarrely living in an alternative universe; he’s delusional. If he kept this up, at some point you’d excuse yourself and edge slowly out of the room and the house and never return.

In the 21 months since those words were written, has Mr. Trump come to appear more rational, more disciplined, more in touch with reality?  I leave the answer as an exercise for the reader.

In the last week, David Remnick wrote a column in the New Yorker, discussing the same issue in often picturesque language.

The President of the United States rages daily on the heath, finding enemies in the shapes of clouds.

Quite.

I shall sit calmly in Chiang Mai, Thailand, contemplating nature, clearing my mind of disturbing thoughts, seeking only the best in the people I meet.  I'll return to America with some trepidation.
 

Placebo effect

Personal injury attorneys know a lot of medicine.  They may not know it well.  They may not understand what they know.  But they grasp it well enough to persuade a jury that they understand medicine as well, if not better, than the physician who is testifying.

Those of us who have spent our careers as defense attorneys -- persuading juries that injured plaintiffs were not really injured, or at least not injured as badly as they say they are -- find our quasi-medical erudition flavored with a healthy dose of cynicism.

"Of course you are suffering from "whiplash"," we sneer, putting sarcastic air quotes around "whiplash.".  "Of course your lung cancer was caused by that rear end accident six years ago."

One aspect of medicine with which we are well familiar is the "placebo effect" -- the known fact that many patients who complain of pain do in fact feel much better if provided totally worthless treatment.  For example, if a physician tells the patient that he's giving him or her a pain reliever, but actually provides sugar pills, the patient will often actually feel much better.  This suggests to a newbie defense attorney that the injury was fake to begin with.  But doctors he trusts will assure him that even a real injury will respond to the patient's belief that he is being given drugs or other treatment that will relieve his pain.

An article by Gary Greenberg in the New York Times Magazine examines recent research into the placebo effect.  As the article notes:

Give people a sugar pill, they have shown, and those patients — especially if they have one of the chronic, stress-related conditions that register the strongest placebo effects and if the treatment is delivered by someone in whom they have confidence — will improve. Tell someone a normal milkshake is a diet beverage, and his gut will respond as if the drink were low fat. Take athletes to the top of the Alps, put them on exercise machines and hook them to an oxygen tank, and they will perform better than when they are breathing room air — even if room air is all that’s in the tank. Wake a patient from surgery and tell him you’ve done an arthroscopic repair, and his knee gets better even if all you did was knock him out and put a couple of incisions in his skin.

The article examines two possible bases for the placebo effect:  One, the more classically "medical," is that certain brain chemicals -- those associated with stress, reward, and good feeling -- are produced in some, but not all, patients in reaction to the interaction that the patient has with a doctor whom he trusts.

This makes sense to me.  If stress can give you a headache or an upset stomach, a caring relationship with a doctor or an acupuncturist or a naturopath could well make your backache feel better.

The second approach, insofar as I understand it, may be completely compatible with the first.  Maybe only the emphasis is different.  Its proponents feel that the placebo effect results almost entirely from the caring interaction between doctor and patient.  These researchers are more interested in the caring relationship than in any chemical or "molecular" basis for the placebo effect.  Their primary proponent, Ted Kaptchuk, has done

a comparative study of conventional medicine, acupuncture and Navajo “chantway rituals,” in which healers lead storytelling ceremonies for the sick. He argued that all three approaches unfold in a space set aside for the purpose and proceed as if according to a script, with prescribed roles for every participant. Each modality, in other words, is its own kind of ritual, and Kaptchuk suggested that the ritual itself is part of what makes the procedure effective, as if the combined experiences of the healer and the patient, reinforced by the special-but-familiar surroundings, evoke a healing response that operates independently of the treatment’s specifics.

"Whoa," I might have exclaimed if I'd taken this fellow's deposition.  "Voodoo medicine."

I'm less skeptical now, partly because the two approaches tend to examine the same phenomenon, merely from different directions.  The more intense the providing of medical care, or the Navajo chanting, or the administering of acupuncture by an empathetic practitioner, the more likely the production of the appropriate brain chemicals under the purely medical model.

Many people, both doctors and laymen, worry that medicine has become too cold and impersonal.  An annual medical exam too often feels like a quick check to see if any expensive drugs or procedures are justified.  If new developments in the understanding of placebo medicine lead to a greater realization that a warm and empathetic relationship between the physician and the patient is therapeutic in itself -- not just as a means to reach a proper diagnosis -- we may be approaching a more effective and satisfying form of medicine.

My skepticism remains to some degree, but is tending to fade away.  As Shakespeare had Hamlet declaim some five centuries ago:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And that may go for medicine as well.

Sand through the hourglass

We pass through time like someone walking through a swarm of mayflies:  The moments come so thick that we hardly notice them dropping around us, and we can't imagine they will ever be gone.  …
We are contiguous with everything that is gone.  We are history.  This moment is already over.
--Sam Anderson (New York Times Magazine)

It is 11:20 a.m. in Seattle.  The temperature is 47 degrees.  The sun is shining; the air is crisp and cold; people walk by my house wearing warm jackets and gloves.  I see one such person being dragged along by a dog on a leash, a large dog wearing a large, warm sweater.  The temperature is forecast to reach a maximum of 52 degrees by 2 p.m.  By then, I will have gone for a walk under autumn leaves.

It is 2:20 a.m. Monday in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  The temperature is 75 degrees.  It is dark and cloudy, and most people are asleep.  The temperature is forecast to reach 85 degrees by 2 p.m..  Showers are forecast all day; it's the tail-end of the monsoon season.

One week from this moment, I will be almost an hour into a twelve-hour flight to Seoul, where I will change planes for a six hour flight to Chiang Mai.  Drinks will have been offered.  I probably will have declined, puritanically concerned about adjusting my circadian rhythms.  I'll accept wine with dinner.

Eighteen hours after that proffered drink, I will arrive in Chiang Mai.  It will be 10 p.m. Monday evening.  The temperature will be about 76 degrees.  I will be greeted by my sister and her son at the airport, and whisked off to her rental home.

By the time I'm in bed that night, I will be not only physically in Chiang Mai, but mentally as well.  It will be nearly midnight Monday night, and the temperature will be in the mid-70s.  I will no longer be in Seattle.  Supposedly, it will be 9 a.m. Monday morning in Seattle, and the temperature will be somewhere around 40 degrees.  But that will not be my world.  Not my reality.  That will be the world of a different place.  And a different time.

My world will be warm and dark.  I will go happily to sleep, eager to re-explore Chiang Mai in the morning, a morning when I'll be wearing shorts and a t-shirt, not jeans and a sweater.

As Sam Anderson suggests, the "today" in which I'm now writing will be history.  This moment, writing in this blog, is in fact over even as I write.  And Seattle itself will be over, finis, kaput, next week.  Just one portion of the mayflies through which I have swum throughout my life, albeit a large portion.  And a portion of that swarm to which I must return two weeks later. 

I will return to it two weeks later, and feel a slight surprise as my train carries me from Sea-Tac airport to Husky Stadium near my home, a ride during which I'll see how little has changed since I left.  A few minor changes, perhaps, as though the "Seattle" set had been hastily reconstructed for my arrival, so hastily reconstructed that a few inaccuracies had escaped the eyes of the workmen. 

But I'll be back.  As though I had never left.  Chiang Mai will move on, so they try to persuade me, undisturbed by both my coming and my going.  But to me it will have been dismantled and stored, awaiting my hoped-for return. 

And I'll be in Seattle once again.  With only photographs to persuade me that my memory matched reality, that I had in fact, for a short time, dwelt in another world.

Is it blue?

I was in Salem last month, as I noted a few posts ago, checking out the House of the Seven Gables and various witchcraft-related sites.  At the end of the day, sitting at the station waiting for the train back to Boston, the talk between a mother and her young daughter sitting next to me kept me entertained.

The little girl was two years old, three at the most.  Like most kids that age, she was more than keeping up her end of the conversation.  She was asking Mom about colors.  "Is this blue?  What about this, Mama?  But is this blue, too?"  

The mother patiently answered all the questions.  "Yes, that's blue. No, that looks kind  of blue but it's really purple.  That's right, the sky is blue today."

I admired the woman's patience.  Myself being the sort of guy who very soon would have told my little girl that Daddy's had a hard day and needs a little alone time, so why don't you go play on the track?  (Oh, not really, but you know what I mean.)

Then I began thinking about the girl's questions.  Color isn't all that easy a concept for a child's brain to grasp, even though her eyes come with the ability to distinguish between colors.  When Mom tells little Betty that something is "blue," what is she talking about?  Is she talking about shape or size or the object's use?  The child has to keep asking if various things are blue in order to figure out what they all have in common.  The sky is blue, her jeans are blue, Mama's necklace is blue.  Sooner or later, she realizes why these disparate items are all called "blue."

Suppose you're a teacher explaining color to a group of intelligent kids who, for some reason, have never learned the concept of color.  How do you even begin to tell them what they're supposed to be looking for?  You can do it only by showing them objects that have the same color, contrasting those items with other objects of a different color, and hoping the kids catch on.

Even then, how do you explain which color is "blue"?  Once learned, the difference between the various shades of blue and, say, orange seems intuitively obvious.  But it really isn't.  A scientist can give an objective definition of "blue" as light with a wavelength between about 4,500 and 4,900 angstroms.  That doesn't help a child.  Again, once they understand "color," you teach them by contrasting blue objects with non-blue objects.  Just as the mother in Salem was doing with her daughter.

Somehow, virtually all of us learn colors, regardless of how skillful, or not, our parenting may have been.  But I recall even in first grade working on numerous exercises where we colored objects blue where the word "blue" was written. We were learning to read the words, of course, but we were also learning (or reinforcing our ability) to differentiate one color from another.

I thought to myself -- in fact I noted on Facebook -- that the little girl was fortunate to have a mother so patient and so involved in her daughter's learning.  Yes, the child no doubt would learn "blue" eventually, even if her mother totally ignored her.  But how much better to learn it from a loving mother when she was two or three, rather than as a novel concept among scornful classmates when she reached kindergarten.

I remember a girl in high school literature class who -- it finally became obvious to everyone -- had no understanding of the concept of "rhyme."  The teacher had been increasingly irritated that she would pick one word to rhyme with another when their sounds had only the vaguest resemblance.  For example, she might have said that "trick" and "track" rhyme.  Or "paper" and "pavement."   I doubt that the girl -- not the sharpest blade in the drawer, admittedly -- had an organic inability to detect whether two words rhymed.  It was just something she had never thought about, and that no one had ever explained to her.

The concept of rhyming poetry itself was probably a complete novelty to her.  Our tenth grade teacher wasn't inclined to start from scratch with the poor girl.  The teacher just more or less threw up her hands and began talking to someone else.

School teachers are (or can be)  great, but parents are their kids' first and best teachers.  Few children in school will ever find a teacher who can offer them the time and attention that a parent will.  Kids whose curiosity has been ignored or throttled before starting school may find themselves at a disadvantage that they are never able to overcome.

Trump country

Until last night, like everyone else I had mentally divided the country into blue states and red states.  We on the two coasts were blue, as were portions of the industrial mid-West.  Most of the rest of the country was red.  Ghastly red.

What I saw last night, as the election returns were posted by CNN and other networks, was that reality was more complex.  Most states had red sections and blue sections.  When the analysis was fine-tuned, it was apparent that even single Congressional districts had red areas and blue areas.  For example, the district in south central Florida to which the announcer kept returning -- in the southern portion, it was urban and blue, but in the north it was rural and red.  Which section would produce the most votes, and thus determine the winner?

It appears that the most crucial predictor in guessing whether a voter is apt to be be pro-Trump or anti-Trump -- which in today's world means Republican or Democrat -- isn't whether  he is undereducated, or unemployed, or White, or over the age of 60, or fears loss of status.  All of those factors do affect the calculus, but the most critical factor is whether he lives in a city or suburb, as opposed to a rural area or small town.

Last night, sitting before our television sets, we looked for hours at the map of Texas.  A big red state, but with small blue islands representing a disproportionately large number of voters in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso.  Enough voters in those small blue islands to almost give Texas a Democratic senator.  In Kansas and Missouri, the districts including the two parts of Kansas City were two tiny specks in a mass of red.  In the center of Oklahoma -- the epitome of a red state -- was a spot of blue, representing Oklahoma City.  And even in Utah, the district including Salt Lake City is -- as of this writing -- trending blue.

My own Washington has long been a blue state, but on the map you see a large red state with a splash of blue surrounding the shores of Puget Sound.  Those are the most urban portions of the state, joined together with their great suburban areas -- suburbs once pure red that have, like suburbs across America, turned blue in recent years. 

The House went decidedly blue while, at the same time, the Senate has gone a bit redder.  It seems odd.  But it isn't.

Although the national map showing House victories is mostly red, away from the coasts, it is thus sprinkled with blue representing urban areas.  But on the Senate map, those areas are pure red.  Senators are chosen by statewide majorities.

The Great Compromise, at the time the Constitution was written, gave every state equal representation in the Senate.  It was "undemocratic" -- but it was a necessary concession to persuade small states like Delaware and Rhode Island to join in a union with large states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Those colonies had all been equal after independence, and the smaller colonies were understandably nervous about surrendering their total independence without some protection against rule by a nationwide majority in the newly created Republic.

But the unintended consequence is that protection of states with small populations is only of incidental importance in today's politics.  What is being protected -- and greatly magnified -- is the dominance of the interests of rural areas and small towns over the interests of the more populous urban and suburban populations.  Oklahoma and Kansas, for example, may each send a Democratic member to Congress, but their senators will always be Republican.  State after state through the farm states of the prairie Mid-West and the southern cotton-growing regions each sends its two Republican senators off to Washington.  North and South Dakota together send only two representatives to the 435-member House, but they together send four senators to the 100-member Senate.

Quite apart from the question of gerrymandering in House districts, the constitutional arrangement for the Senate's composition virtually assures that for the foreseeable future rural America will have an outsized institutional advantage over the rest of the country.  Only when people with urban interests and background begin living in great numbers in rural states -- as is perhaps beginning to happen in Montana -- will  this bias cease to be so obvious.  (Not many red states, of course, have Montana's scenic and recreational attractions.)

One solution would be for our national population to become increasingly uniform in interests and concerns, regardless of whether they live in cities or farms.  I might have predicted such a confluence of characteristics, because television and the internet interconnect us so radically.  But the opposite appears to be happening -- rural people are digging in their heals and increasing in their disdain of "city folk."  And something analogous is obvious among urban residents.

Solution?  I have none.  I just observe the problem with interest.  And note that Article 5 of the Constitution prohibits any amendment changing the way the Senate is constituted, insofar as that amendment would permit a state,"without its Consent, [to] be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."  

Deracination

I was once part of the flow, never thinking of myself as a presence.  Then I looked in the mirror and decided to be free.  All that my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years.  Then it will be over.

As Americans, we are accustomed to being a magnet for the unhappy, the dissatisfied, and the persecuted from other countries.  Whether we welcome immigrants, or hate them, we take for granted that every migrant who passes our border, documented or not, has essentially hit the jackpot, won the lottery.  He has reached the land of eternal bliss.

We fail to appreciate the sacrifices the migrant has made to reach America.  Not merely the discomfort and dangers of travel, and the risk of arrest and deportation, but also the loss of homeland.  So what, we ask?  Some poor soul from a backward, third world country?  How can he complain of loss when he has reached the land of milk and honey?

Santosh was a domestic worker living in Bombay.  He worked as a cook for a middle class businessman.  He slept on the sidewalks, except during the monsoon when he slept in a small closet under his employer's stairs.  His job earned him a pittance, but his needs were few. 

He lived in squalor, we would say.  He wouldn't agree.

I was so happy in Bombay.  I had a certain position.  I worked for an important man.  The highest in the land came to our bachelor chambers and enjoyed my food and showered compliments on me. I also had my friends.  We met in the evenings on the pavement below the gallery of our chambers.  Some of us, like the tailor's bearer and myself, were domestics who lived in the street.  ... 
In the evenings it was cool.  …  The pavement was swept and sprinkled, bedding brought out from daytime hiding places, little oil-lamps lit.  … [W]e read newspapers, played cards, told stories and smoked. 
[In the morning,] I was free simply to stroll.  I liked walking beside the Arabian Sea, waiting for the sun to come up.  Then the city and the ocean gleamed like gold.  Alas for those morning walks, that sudden ocean dazzle, the moist salt breeze on my face, the flap of my shirt, that first cup of hot sweet tea from a stall, the taste of the first leaf-cigarette.

Alas, indeed.  Santosh's employer was sent by his company to Washington, D.C.  Santosh faced the choice -- go with his employer, or return to his hill village where his wife and children lived.  He had become too much an urbanite.  He chose to travel to America.

V. S. Naipaul's novella "One Out of Many" was published in 1971, as part of a collection entitled In a Free State.  Bombay (now Mumbai) was not the modern city it is today, and Washington was experiencing devastating race riots and arson; entire sections of Washington, including the area in which Santosh and his employer lived, were being blackened with flames.  But I suspect that in much of Mumbai life, beyond the tourist areas, life goes on much as Santosh describes it.  And I suspect that at least some of the racial tensions that prompted the riots in our nation's capital still simmer below the surface.

But Santosh's problems are far more fundamental than coping with tensions between the whites (which he did not consider himself) and the people he knew as hubshi, blacks who aroused at least as much prejudice in India as they did in America.  The physical city itself he found disorienting, and the behavior of the people of all classes and races was impenetrable.  He spoke virtually no English on arrival.   He had no friends.  He had no status.  He enjoyed cooking for his employer -- and for the restaurant for which he later worked -- but when work hours were over he was at a total loss, despite gradually picking up some English.

His only ventures outside his quarters eventually were limited to visits to the supermarket, excursions that made him uncomfortable.  He watched television, which gave him his only (distorted) insight into the life of white Americans.

Eventually, he married a hubshi woman who had shown some interest in him.  They knew nothing about each other when he asked and she accepted.  He tells us nothing about his marriage, but his account of how he spends his days does not include mention of his wife.

Like many immigrants -- some of whom, unlike Santosh, never learn any English at all -- he has no real life or enjoyments.  As he says in my quotation from the story's conclusion, he merely goes through the motions as he waits for his eventual death.

Santosh's story reminds me of André Aciman's frequent accounts of his childhood life in Alexandria.  Aciman and his family came from an infinitely more sophisticated and cosmopolitan background than did the humble cook from Bombay.  But André, too, continually laments that no matter where he lives or visits, he never feels he is "home."  Home is Alexandria, or more accurately a now-dead Alexandria, to which he can never return.

Permanently leaving the society you grow up in is a radical act. It is an act requiring much bravery, and is usually motivated by intolerable difficulty in living life in one's true "home."  Groups of men, women, and children do not lightly  leave their homes and walk 1,600 miles to a country they know little about.  We can't assure them happiness in our very different society, although -- as the Latinos of our Southwest show -- we can offer them hope for their children's future happiness.

Midterm elections

Four more days until the mid-term elections.  The campaign seems to have lasted forever.  Actually, it pretty much has lasted for two years.  But finally, we're about to get some decisions.

I have no idea who is going to win in any race, or which party will win overall.  Those who are paid to prognosticate seem, for the most part, to predict that the Democrats will regain the House by a small margin, and that the Republicans will slightly improve their position in the Senate.

But then we remember how accurate the polls were two years ago, right?  Let's face it, the decision could go either way, especially in the House.

This midterm election seems far more critical -- apocalyptic, actually -- because Trump has decided not to run on his own program or against the program of the Democrats, but on voter loyalty to himself as The Leader.  Surprise!  To those of us unpersuaded that Trump is the new Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, the election thus becomes a referendum on the extent to which the American voters are willing to confirm in power a government that increasingly seems fascist in its pretensions and its approaches to governing.  

Mr. Trump's swooning over the election of a right wing autocrat in Brazil hasn't given us much cause for comfort.

Trump, and the Republican party itself since at least the Nixon administration, has made polarization of the American voting public a major objective.  This produces what has been called tribalization -- where voters no longer vote based on an analysis of the issues, or -- in voting for Congress -- the personality and character of the candidates, but for Blue or Red -- i.e., liberal or conservative, urban or rural, coastal or "flyover," globalist or nationalist.  All these opposing tendencies have now been aligned, so that all you need to say is "Blue" or "Red," and for most voters their position on all issues is totally predictable.

Trump has taken advantage of this polarization, and has enhanced it.  He prefers to think not in terms of Blue or Red, but of Trumpist or anti-Trumpist.  Being a Republican is not enough, nor is being a conservative.  If you don't toe the Trumpist line -- whatever that line may be as of 3 a.m. this morning as Trump broods over his Twitter feed -- then you are an Enemy.  Ask the Speaker of the House.  It took only a slight suggestion from Paul Ryan that Trump couldn't unilaterally amend the Constitution to bring the full brunt of Trumpist scorn down upon his head.

So, yeah, I'd say the election is important.  Even just gaining control of the House would permit the Democrats to stymie some of the more disastrous ideas that Trump may dream up over the next two years, although the Republicans' retaining control of the Senate would leave Trump free to make crazy appointments at will.

Because of the New Tribalism, there is no longer a large independent swing vote.  Polls show that everyone who loved Trump in 2016 loves him still today, and the same with those opposed.  The problem, therefore, hasn't been to persuade voters on the merits of the issues, but to get them to vote.  Hence the importance of those polls that try to determine which side's voters are the most fired up and eager to vote.

And we don't know, really.  It could go either way.

So -- if you would prefer to retain a traditional democracy in America, get out there and VOTE! And make sure your relatives and friends do so as well.

If you feel more comfortable having Trump run the country via tweet, then relax.  Your man's almost certain to win.  It's cold outside, and I suggest you crack open another six-pack of brewskies, sit back and relax, and watch NASCAR on TV, come Tuesday.

Coffee by app

Within the life span of many of us, buying a cup of coffee was once easy.  "Black or white, Mac?" the guy at the counter asked.  Or maybe you poured your own milk.  He poured the black stuff into a mug, you handed him a nickel, and the deal was done.  (If you wanted a doughnut along with your coffee, that would cost you another nickel.)

Nowadays, getting coffee is a major production.  And, of course, a latte or a cappuccino -- essentially, again, coffee with milk -- will set you back nearly four dollars.

But it's the time waiting that kills me.  First, the time in line.  Watching while each person ahead of you specifies, after some waffling, the precise configuration of the coffee on which he insists.  The kind of milk (soy? almond? cow? cow nonfat? or 2 percent?), and the various flavor additives (mocha?  with a hint of cinnamon?  laced with caramel?).  The discussions become intense, until I want to yell "Are you ordering a coffee or negotiating for purchase of the damn franchise?"

After the purchase has been negotiated, and purchase money agreement signed, you cool your heels for a frustrating length of time while other orders are being slowly filled.  Because espresso drinks aren't just poured out of a machine.  No sir. Not in a decent coffee shop.  Not in a Starbucks.  A lot of human input goes into the preparation of each drink, and it takes time to get that little heart shape to appear just right on top of the beverage.

But yes.  We are a different people today.  We don't order wine in a restaurant by response to "red or white?"  We don't gulp a hot cup of black java, filtering out the grounds with our teeth.  We spend more time at our epicurean pleasures, much more time, but there certainly is a pay-off in quality.

But, as I say, I have retained my sense of being a busy man from pre-retirement days.  I can't stand to dawdle, waiting long minutes to be served.

Now, as many of you know, Starbucks has an app you can load on your phone.  I loaded it, maybe a year ago, intending to try it out.  I just never got around to it.  Probably awfully complicated, I thought.

Bad mistake. The app is not difficult to use.  It takes you through the modern complexities of ordering a cup of coffee (and whatever sweets you require to go with your coffee) step by step.  I know, because I finally gave it a try a week ago. 

I was out walking, about ten minutes from a Starbucks in University Village that I occasionally visit, and decided that this would be a good time to try the app.  The only real problem, not serious, was making sure that I told the app which Starbucks outlet I planned to visit.  (I'm a guy who once used his phone to order tickets to a movie showing at AMC's theater in Dallas.)   But once I located the correct franchise, ordering was easy.  The app asked me a couple of times if I really wanted to do what I said I did, giving me confidence that the app understood the frailties of mortal men. 

I clicked the "Order" button, and was assured that in 7 to 12 minutes my order would be ready.  I arrived at Starbucks, walked in, and there it was -- my tall, non-fat latte!  Just as ordered.  With my name on it.  I picked it up, unchallenged, and found myself a seat.

As I posted jubilantly on Facebook, I was blown away.  No waiting.  No shuffling my feet.  Just walk in and pick it up!  I felt that a whole new way of living life had opened up to me.  My Facebook post received a number of good-humored approvals from young secretaries who had been ordering coffee on their phones for most of their short lives.

My only problem is how fun it was.  I've ordered a Starbucks coffee virtually every day since that first glorious try.  It's not just the time saved.  There is something amazingly fun about ordering on my phone, and finding my order ready.  The same sort of pleasure I had as a ten-year-old, playing with the levers and buttons on the transformer of my new electric train, and watching my powerful little locomotive respond to my directions.

Sure, I feel silly.  And juvenile.  But I don't mind telling you that, until the novelty hopefully wears off, my only problem will be avoiding ordering coffee several times a day. 

Sit on the floor

If you were a good singer, you were a "canary."  Mediocre singer?  A "bluebird."  If you couldn't carry a tune, you were a pitiful "crow."  Canaries sat near the back of our circle of chairs, bluebirds up closer where the teacher could keep an eye on them.  The crows sat on the floor.

These were the rules in first grade,  during our half-hour music period.  A meritocracy, preparing us for the horrors of college applications, I suppose. 

But there was a twist.  If a canary or bluebird misbehaved, he was temporarily demoted to a crow.  He sat on the floor among the riffraff.  We learned the lesson well.  Being a bad singer and a bad person were equivalent.  Some of us were born to endless night, but others sometimes descended to those same Stygian depths through their own misbehavior.

I often think of this little parable when I observe the quirks of American society.  I think of it now as I watch our national debate on immigration.

I don't view immigration, documented or undocumented, from an absolutist point of view.  I understand why it may be impossible, or at least undesirable, to simply open our borders -- to open them as we did in the nineteenth century, back when we were a land that was still, in part, an unpopulated wilderness.

But I see the other side as well.

We are a wealthy country.  Yes, we have poverty, but anyone who has visited the third world understands that even the poorest American would be a man of wealth in many societies.  And studies show that those of us who are most bitterly opposed to immigration are not among our poorest citizens.  Our poorest citizens are too busy just living from day to day to sit around writing diatribes on internet news sites.

We are wealthy, but our wealth is like the singing ability of my classroom's "canaries."  It comes to us by luck -- or, if you are so inclined, by grace.  We are Americans -- moreover, middle class Americans -- by birth or by a combination of luck and certain efforts by our ancestors.  Almost all of us are little versions of Donald Trump -- yes, we've worked to make ourselves middle class, but we started out with unearned capital  -- social background, education, and family wealth that we perhaps multiplied by our efforts.  If we aren't, like some, just living off the capital that we've received.

Our nation, too, enjoyed incredible luck by being formed in an empty and fertile land, a land our people occupied for many decades without worries of defense or economic competition -- simply because we were so geographically isolated during a time when travel and communication were slow and undependable.

We should be exceedingly thankful for the luck -- or grace -- that provided such great advantages to both our nation and to ourselves as individuals.  And many of us are.

But that thankfulness should include an ability to see that nothing differentiates us as a human being from a resident of the Congo or El Salvador or Bangladesh -- nothing other than good luck.  Those people have similar hopes and dreams of their own, modified only by their local experiences.  Each of them, like Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, could ask us his version of that unfortunate Jew's speech:

 Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

When we see a caravan of Central Americans heading toward our border -- filled not with bandits, murderers, and other desperadoes as President Trump pretends to believe, but with impoverished and persecuted men, women, and children -- how can we avoid imagining ourselves in their place?  How can we treat them -- people so much like ourselves -- as vermin to be eradicated lest they infect our own precious country.  How can we fail to appreciate that wave after wave of similarly impoverished peoples, including our own ancestors, once came to this country, themselves looking for relief from misery, both economic and political, and are now our fellow citizens?

Maybe we can't let them all in.  Maybe if we're too welcoming to the first wave, we'll soon be facing a clamor from the entire world for admission.  But if we turn any back, we should see them as they are, and feel compassion for their pain.  And even if  convinced that we cannot at this time receive them, we should feel guilt.

Because we were born to sweet delight, through no merit of our own.  And they were born to endless night, through no fault of theirs.  And we've done little or nothing to earn the right to judge their merits as future citizens, and we've done relatively little or nothing to help improve their lot in their own countries.

Because in real life, as opposed to first grade music classes, no one is born a crow.  We are all canaries.   But most canaries spend their lives sitting on the floor like crows, because certain privileged canaries insist there aren't enough chairs for them. Or pretend that they are treated like crows because they deserve to be crows. 

If we are short of chairs, we might build some more chairs, rather than walls.

And President Trump should be ashamed, deeply ashamed, at begging us to think otherwise, and for building his career on the prejudice of those of us who have been given so much, whether we realize it or not.

Daytime parahypnagogia

The summer I was 19, I worked in the laboratory of an aluminum plant, running various analyses required during various stages of aluminum production.   One of the analyses (for CaF₂) required me to wash a long row of filter papers -- maybe 15 to 20 -- where each filter was filled with a sample, and each filter was embedded in a funnel.  I washed each with a squeeze bottle.  After I finished, I waited until all the filters had drained, then washed them again.  I might repeat this process five to ten times.

It was not an exciting part of my day.  But at least one time, during a long stretch of washing filters in the middle of a tedious afternoon, something curious occurred.  I found myself listening to a conversation going on in my own mind.  Two people -- as I recall, a man and a woman -- were talking to each other.  I didn't know the speakers, and their conversation had nothing to do, so far as I could tell,  with any event or even thought from my own life. 

It was like overhearing a conversation between strangers on a bus.  Or listening to a radio program.  It lasted no more than a minute.  I wasn't asleep.  I was standing, watching the draining filters, water bottle in hand.  There was no visual component.  I wasn't dreaming or hallucinating.   If asked, I would never have claimed that I had been listening to a real conversation.

That afternoon in the laboratory was the first time I recall that odd experience, but it's happened many times since then.  Right up until the present.  It's never traumatic or upsetting.  I'm not dizzy or confused when it's over.  The closest I can come to describing the experience is that it's a bit like daydreaming, except that I do not intentionally produce or direct the "conversation," and the subject being discussed might as well be from outer space.  What the "speakers" are talking about seems to have no relationship to any experiences of my own.

I learned today that this experience has a name.  It's a form of hypnagogia.  It's sometimes called "daytime parahypnagogia" to differentiate it from other forms of hypnagogia, which usually are associated with stages of the sleep process.  It's been described as

the spontaneous intrusion of a flash image or dreamlike thought or insight into one's waking consciousness. DPH is typically encountered when one is "tired, bored, suffering from attention fatigue, and/or engaged in a passive activity." The exact nature of the waking dream may be forgotten even though the individual remembers having had such an experience.   Gustelle and Oliveira define DPH as "dissociative, trance-like, [...] but, unlike a daydream, [...] not self-directed ….

--Wikipedia

Wikipedia describes the experience as a "waking dream," but I'm always fully aware of my surroundings -- for example, I know I'm running a calcium fluoride analysis -- and I never believe, as one does in a genuine dream, that the conversation is real -- except insofar as one feels that a radio drama (back when such existed) really existed, even knowing it was performed in a studio.  I've compared it to daydreaming, because you can daydream in depth about tomorrow's activities while performing an activity that doesn't require much concentration.

Being the person I am, I of course like to assume that my susceptibility to daytime parahypnagogia suggests great creativity on my part.  Obviously, I suspect, I have untouched talents for writing fiction, because my mind is constructing fictional conversations about unusual (for me) topics almost against my will.  There is genius in that skull of mine, just dying to burst out and amaze the world with Tolstoy-esque literary expression.

Alas, there are no studies that suggest that my little plays in one act represent such talent any more than do a boy's dreams of baseball heroics mark a future World Series star.   But it does show that in even the dullest of us there are hidden activities going on inside our minds that leak out only on rare occasions.

I've never heard anyone else brag or complain about having similar "intrusions" into their waking consciousness, so it may well be fairly uncommon.  Since I've already bragged -- if that's the proper term -- back in November 2014 of having numeral synesthesia, there are cynics who may now choose to take my claim of daytime parahypnagogias with a grain of salt.  Yeah, right, you're "exceptional," as so many have pointed out to me.

Based on a teenage experience -- which I'll save for some future time -- I firmly believed for most of my life that I was a latent epileptic.  I therefore carefully avoided looking at  flashing strobe lights.  Then, one of a number of medical tests performed nine years ago firmly established that I had no susceptibility whatsoever to epilepsy.

This was quite a blow, as you can imagine, to my quest for uniqueness.  It would be too bad if my pretensions to both synesthesia and parahynagogia should be similarly stripped from me.  But I feel confident they will not.

Frost is on the pumpkin

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

 September is always a pleasant time in the Northwest Corner.  Sometimes, even early October.  But the transition from the warmth of summer to the rains of autumn generally is fairly rapid.  Lines scribbled by an Indiana poet -- and rapturous descriptions of New England  -- give us the impression that Autumn with a "Capital A" is a bigger deal in other parts of our country.

Folks come to the Northwest for many reasons, but not generally to take tours admiring the changing colors of our autumn foliage.

Seattle Prep runners

But this year's been different.  We've had very little rain for weeks -- just enough to turn our lawns green once more.  Day after day we have had sunny days and chilly nights.  In the last week or two, each day has begun overcast or foggy, but with the sun appearing and blue sky emerging after noon.

University of Washington campus

With the recent improvements in the neighboring Arboretum, I've walked far more often in that park this year than in the past.  And how shall I put it?  I've been ravished by the splendor of the colors in the trees and shrubbery of the Arboretum this year.  Has it been this way every year?  Have I just not been observant?

Reflections and lily pads

I don't think so.  I think this has been an unusual year, with respect to our weather, and it has brought out unusually brilliant colors -- which of course look all the better against a background of atypically (for Seattle) blue sky.

In fact, nothing I saw in the Boston area a couple of weeks ago could compare.  Admittedly, however, they were still enjoying hot weather, and their autumn changes were only beginning.

But nothing lasts forever.  Overcast skies are predicted all day tomorrow and Wednesday, with the seasonal rains beginning on Thursday.  Just enough precip to drive any lingering Californians back home to their beaches, palm trees, and cactuses.

Return to paradise

Denny's house in Chiang Mai
October 2017 

My sister Kathy has been in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for the past week -- part of a two-month stay, visiting her son Denny and granddaughter Maury.  I will be flying out of Seattle to join them, just thirty days from today.

When Americans think of Thailand, I suspect they either think of fascinating but chaotic Bangkok, or -- perhaps if young -- they dream of joining hedonistic pleasures and wild parties on one of the Thai isles.  But Chiang Mai is in the north of the country, the largest city in the north. 

If Bangkok is thought of as Los Angeles, Chiang Mai would be Spokane.  But a Spokane with a long history, for many years the capital of a powerful kingdom totally separate from Siam to the south.  The city is modern, but the modernity is merely a convenient logistical overlay over the historical monuments, religious sites, and continuing traditional life.

This will be my fourth visit to Chiang Mai.  I visited it in 2003 and 2007, when the city was a base for organized hiking trips in northern Thailand in 2003, and in Laos and Cambodia, in 2007.  I enjoyed those visits, but they were brief and my attention was focused on the adventures that lay ahead.

I had no idea that my nephew Denny -- who accompanied me on the 2007 trip -- would ever end up, not only as a resident of Chiang Mai, but as a sixth grade teacher at a Chiang Mai international school.  But so he did, and so he is.  So my third visit -- exactly a year ago -- combined a gathering with Denny and other relatives visiting from California, with family side trips to Bali and to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

This year's visit will be less frenetic (although last year's didn't seem particularly "frenetic" either).  Denny still rents the same very pleasant house on the semi-rural outskirts of Chiang Mai.  My sister is renting a house, one she located on-line, in the same area, a 30-minute bike ride from her son.  Last year, both Kathy and I, as well as a cousin, stayed at a mini-"resort" -- note the quotes, it was pretty primitive -- just a half-mile walk down a dirt road from Denny's house.  I probably will stay with Kathy, but may also spend a short time at that more convenient "resort."

Last year, several of us also stayed in the Old City for three nights, which provided some urban contrast to our pastoral life in the exurbs.  The Old City is, of course, the old city.  Fortified with a wall, and exactly square in configuration.  I walked the circuit of the walls last year, which is something I'd like to do again.  I may stay in the Old City for a few nights again this year -- last year, we found a great hotel, located across the street from one of the major temples.  It had nice rooms, and a front terrace where you could order drinks while watching the foot traffic.  The rates this year are about $60 per night, full breakfast included.  Look for a deal like that in Honolulu!

Kathy, Clinton, and I will spend my last four nights in Thailand at a location far to the south, at a  beach resort in Phuket -- this will also be my fourth visit to this particular resort, a series which began again with the same 2003 group hiking trip that took me to Chiang Mai.  Denny and his daughter will join us in Phuket for one night over the weekend -- I'm afraid work duties take priority over fun with relatives, even in Paradise!

Kathy and Clinton will fly back to Chiang Mai after the Phuket stay, but I'll, sadly, fly to Bangkok where I'll connect with a flight home.  From beautiful Thailand, I'll land some 28 hours later (including a long airport layover in Seoul) in Seattle on December 5, just in time to confront the onset of winter in the Northwest Corner.

Seeking our neighbors

Perhaps the priests are right: human beings were put on Earth by some creator God for His own inscrutable purposes, and the rest of the universe is merely background scenery.

--The Economist

For scientists, that is one possible solution -- the most unsatisfying solution from a scientific point of view -- for the answer to the Big Question.  Where Is Everybody?

The Milky Way galaxy, of which we are a part, consists of approximately 250 billion stars.  Those stars we see in the sky at night are a small fraction of the Milky Way's bounty.  But the Milky Way isn't the entire universe.  The entire observable universe is estimated to contain from 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies. 

The physical laws of nature, so far as we know, apply to all these stars, all these galaxies, in the same way as they apply to Earth.  Through natural processes, life evolved on Earth.  Earth no doubt was fortunate to have certain environmental qualities that helped life to evolve.  What are the odds that none of the billions of other galaxies, or the billions of stars within those galaxies, or the multitude of planets circling many of those stars had equally favorable qualities? 

Exactly.

As the famous physicist Enrico Fermi pointed out in 1950, the night sky must be filled with other civilizations.  And so, he asked, why don't we have any visitors?  Or, as The Economist points out, today we could ask with even greater incredulity, why don't our instruments pick up any signals indicating that someone's trying to communicate with us?  Or even random signals, like our own radio and TV stations emit, produced for the alien civilization's own internal purposes?

The Economist article suggests other solutions besides the "unique creation" hypothesis of Genesis.  Maybe alien civilizations have taken a look at us and decided they prefer to leave us alone.  Or, as someone hypothesized not too long ago, maybe billions of civilizations have evolved, but each one, having reached approximately our level of technical advancement, committed unintentional suicide -- nuclear war, global warming, etc.

It's certainly unlikely that the third planet from our medium sized star is somehow the most advanced of all civilizations in the universe, and that we're just waiting for our little brothers to learn how to use radio waves.

The point of The Economist's article is  to publicize the conclusion of some astronomers at Penn State.  They say we just haven't looked hard enough, and that it's too early to say that we won't discover those little green men later. 

Maybe.  Or maybe "intelligent life" may be far more diverse than we expect -- a state of affairs that science fiction has explored for generations.  Maybe aliens are fairy-like creatures who become visible or invisible at will.  Maybe they have developed telepathy and teleportation, and have no need for the electronic signals our scanners are seeking.  In 1930, Olaf Stapledon wrote his sci fi masterpiece Last and First Men, presenting the various forms into which our own humanity might morph over the millennia. 

Maybe species, once they reach about our level, do not destroy themselves, but cease being interested in technological development, including space travel.  They control their populations and live simple but affluent lives filled with the joy of raising their own gardens and meeting friends at night at the pub for drinks.

When I was young, I would have had hopes that by now we would have either encountered friendly aliens, or we would have discovered why we hadn't or, perhaps, why we never would.  As the years pass, I've now become resigned to the heavy probability that within my lifetime we'll never know more about "Fermi's Paradox" than we do at present.  And I've become increasingly accepting of the realization that any such solution -- be it "unique creation" or "civilizations advanced to the level of telepathy" --  may still be fully consistent with the traditional Genesis account.

But I enjoy mulling over the possibilities, be they exciting or frightening, that may confront future generations.  Which, I guess, is why we find science fiction so alluring.

Gonna read it tomorrow!

I own far more books than I could possibly read over the course of my remaining life, yet every month I add a few dozen more to my shelves.
--Kevin Mims, NYT Book Review

My nephew Denny dropped by my house during the summer.  He's a high school English teacher, temporarily teaching sixth grade in Thailand where his daughter attends school.  He and his daughter were back in the States to receive the adoration of adoring relatives.

Naturally, his attention was drawn to my bookcases.  He had lived with me for a year or two, long ago, as a student, so he was hardly surprised that I had a lot of books.  But now, as a professional, he eyed the titles with a trained eye.  He kept asking me, with a gleam in his eye, "Well, have you read this one?"

I all too frequently admitted that I had not yet read it, but was saving it to read in my old age.  Denny and his mother glanced meaningfully at each other.

I was pleased to read Mr. Mims's essay in this morning's New York Times, an essay devoted to the proposition that a bookcase full of unread books "isn't a sign of failure or ignorance, [but rather] a badge of honor."  A book collection, Mims continues, is a representation of a person's mind.  When you stop buying new books, it indicates that you have become satisfied that anything you don't know now isn't worth knowing.  It suggests a person so old that he couldn't care less about further intellectual growth.

 Over a life time, I've bought a large number of books -- perhaps not the three thousand that Mims claims for himself, but many.  I've also belonged to a British "fine edition" club which has tempted me for the past 38 years to buy regularly beautifully bound books at reasonable prices -- classics, histories, obscure travel writings, and even more obscure diaries by eighteenth and nineteenth century English country folk discussing the progress of their gardens and the despicable behavior of their neighbors down the road. 

Many of these books I've read in their entirety, I hasten to assure you.  Some I've read in part -- either because they're the sort of book you only expect to read parts of, or because works such as  Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Churchill's biography of his ancestor Marlborough, Macauley's History of England, and Hume's "ditto," are all beautifully bound sets and well worth dabbling in but -- a big "but" -- life is short and these multi-volume sets are long.

And then there are the many books that one starts in on -- for example, anything by Thackeray -- and finally decides with disappointment that he just isn't that sort of reader.  Nope, not a Thackeray kind of guy.

But finally, there is a large group of books that you bought with enthusiasm, fully intend to read, but just haven't got around to yet.  Some of these I've actually read, long after their purchase, and reviewed in this blog.  Mims also points to this kind of book, and notes that the Japanese have a word for it -- tsundoku, meaning a stack of books you've bought but haven't yet read.  I love the word, and would use it often if I knew how to pronounce it.  For years I've had a tsundoku piled on a table in my living room, the titles occasionally changing.  But slowly.

Mims concludes his essay with the smug observation that,

The sight of a book you haven't read can remind you that there are many things you've yet to learn.  And the sight of a partially read book can remind you that reading is an activity that you hope never to come to the end of.

Smug or not, I fully agree.
   

Dreams dying in Las Cruces

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a Mexican-American novelist, poet, and author of books for young children.  He is best known to the general public as a writer of Young Adult fiction.  I've read five of his books, and reviewed two of them on this blog.  One of those I've read was marketed as adult fiction, and the other four as YA.  I conclude that the publisher arbitrarily decides the category -- the author, at least Sáenz, doesn't sit down to write a "YA novel" or an "adult novel" in the same way he decides to write a children's book.

In August, I spent a couple of days in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for a relative's wedding.  I liked the town.  I liked the mixture of Anglo and Mexican-American cultures, and the sense I had that assimilation had gone as far as it had.  In my vaguely oblivious way, I felt as comfortable surrounded by Las Cruces Hispanics as I do in Seattle in a room full of Asians. 

Sáenz was born near Las Cruces and graduated from Las Cruces high school in 1972.  He received his B.A. from a Catholic seminary in Denver, studied philosophy and theology in Belgium, and was ordained a priest.  For reasons unknown to me, he left the priesthood after several years, and has since focused on writing.  He attended Stanford on a Stegner fellowship, entered the Stanford Ph.D. program for a couple of years, and then accepted a teaching position in the Bilingual Creative Writing program at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he has taught ever since.

Every writer to some degree writes about his own experiences, but those books by Sáenz that I've read have all seemed unusually autobiographical.  Their stories are told from the point of view of a Mexican-American teenaged boy who is smart and sensitive, but lacks self-confidence.  He is street-wise.  Although usually bookish, he isn't afraid to fight with his fists -- in some stories he is bewildered and upset by his propensity to fight.  Although not "religious," the protagonist is strongly affected by his Catholic background and admires those of his older relatives who are devout.  The books themselves subtly encourage a system of Christian values, as opposed to devotion to any form of orthodoxy.

I just finished reading one of his earlier YA novels, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood, published in 2004.  "Hollywood" isn't the downtown Las Cruces that I saw in August.  It is -- or at least was in 1968 when the story takes place -- an impoverished barrio on the east side of town.  Unlike the middle class Mexican-American teenagers whose stories were told in some of his other books, the Hollywood kids come from families that are just getting by.  They speak English, but with a lot of Spanish phrases and slang thrown in.

The segregation of Hispanic from Anglo students is marked in this story, as it is in most of Sáenz's other novels.  The segregation results less from Anglo hostility, at least overt and intentional, than from the feelings of inferiority felt by the Mexican-Americans.  (Why are Anglo kids considered brilliant when they learn to speak Spanish well, Sammy wonders?  But we get no credit at all for speaking both English and Spanish well.)

In the early chapters, Sammy is in love with Juliana, a bright but tough-minded young woman.  They eventually make love in a defining moment of Sammy's life.  Shortly thereafter, Juliana's father kills her and her six siblings as a way of showing his wife who's boss.  For the rest of the book, Juliana is not a living character but a center of longing and sorrow, an unattainable ideal of happiness, in Sammy's soul.

At least two appealing girls Sammy's age are in love with him, but he considers them friends, even sisters.  They aren't Juliana.

This book is marketed to young people in grades 9 to 12.  Kids today must be a lot tougher-minded than we were at that age.  The story of Sammy and his friends is a story of wasted time and wasted lives.  It's a story about all the dangers and temptations -- sex, drugs, drinking, fighting -- of the barrio.

As high school graduation approaches, and passes, the little band of Sammy's friends begins breaking up.  Two boys are drafted and sent to Vietnam, where one is quickly killed.  One boy's family moves to California, after a local scandal, where he ends up attending UCLA.  One of the girls who loved Sammy leaves town with a Jewish boy who had been accepted by their clique.   Everyone promises to write, to keep in touch.  No one does.

An elderly neighborhood woman who had offered Sammy tough (very tough) love as he grew up, and whom he had learned to love in return, dies.

All through high school, Sammy has been obsessed with the idea of going away to college -- a rare dream in his milieu -- and of escaping the dead-end lives of Hollywood.  He works like crazy to get the grades necessary, despite the mocking of his friends (they name him "the Librarian") and the contempt and dislike of his Anglo teachers.  (If anyone who taught in Las Cruces high school in 1968 reads this book, he should feel ashamed.)  He applies to eight colleges.  He is accepted at all of them, including his dream school of Berkeley.

Near the end of that summer following high school graduation, his dad is involved in a serious auto accident and loses his leg.  He is unable to work.  There's no one to look after Sammy's younger sister, who he loves and who worships him.  He sends Berkeley his regrets, and enrolls in the local community college.

When I hung up the phone, I cried too. I cried for René and for Pifas.  I cried for my dad's leg.  I cried for never having gotten to go to a school I worked my damned Mexican ass off to get into.  I cried for my mother.  I cried for Juliana.

His dad died soon afterward of a stroke. 

Throughout high school, Sammy had been the only kid in his group of friends who had the ambition to escape Hollywood, to achieve something in the Anglo world, to graduate from a university.  Instead, he ends up the only one who remains in Hollywood after all his friends have either died or left town.

Sáenz seems to remind us, without being explicit, that although Sammy's life seems tragic, he has been true to himself and to his values throughout.  He still has a full life ahead of him.  Starting out in a community college isn't the end of the world.

But still.  Don't read the last half of the book while on an airline flight.  The flight attendants will look at you strangely when they see tears running down your cheeks.

If I could be anybody just for a day, I'd be Jesus Christ, that's who I'd be. I'd go to all the graves. I would stand there. I would close my eyes and lift my arms. I'd be Jesus Christ -- I'd stand in front of the graves of all the people I loved. And I'd raise them back to life.

All of them.

And after they were all alive again, I'd hug them and kiss them and never let them go.  And I would be happy.  I would be the happiest man in all the world.