The Poetry of HTML

I like fiddling with the inner workings of web pages.  Over the years I have created my website, instead of farming it out to a web-page developer.  True, my website is not as spectacular as many I have seen on the Internet.  But I have extensive and ever-changing content, pictures, text, audio, video, podcasts, and now this blog.

There were many reasons why I began to develop my own website years ago.  First, I really like to tinker.  Second, I’m a bit of a control freak, at least as far as my work is concerned.  Third, yes, I’m a cheapskate.  Fourth, I believe a certain amount of my work should be available free, particularly for those who don’t have much money.  Finally, I love to understand by myself how things work.  This gives me a sense of being autarchic, a country under its own rule.  Tinkering is about curiosity, in my mind, whereas independence is about enjoying being alone and working on a problem.  These traits certainly reinforce each other.

It’s a similar feeling I get when I chop my own wood in Connecticut, instead of buying it in neat bundles at the supermarket. When I am finished with a task, and I have done a good job, either by splitting the wood right so that it fits into my woodstoves and fireplaces, or by seeing the effect I wanted on my blog or website after tinkering with HTML, I know I have accomplished this feat.  I’ve learned something new.  I gain enough confidence to try something a bit more complex next time, to expand my expertise.

I’ll give you an example.  Although I have loved the different layout possibilities of Blogger’s blogs and templates, when I created a short video of reading my story, “The Abuelita,” for an anthology in which the story appeared, there was a problem.  I was able to embed the YouTube video at the bottom of my blog’s front page (with the latest three entries), but whenever anyone clicked on individual blog entries the video would remain at the bottom of the blog, out of sight of readers.  An enormous amount of white space was always left between an individual blog entry and the embedded video.  The Blogger template did not adapt to single blog entries, but remained the ‘long layout’ of the three latest entries even when readers clicked on separate entries.

I popped the hood of the template HTML, and began tinkering.  I found, after trial and error, I could override and then simply delete the right HTML instructions that pushed my video to the bottom.  Now as you can see, individual entries as well as the ‘long layout’ of the latest three entries both have the video immediately after the last words of any blog text.  For Garage Band podcasts, iMovie videos, favicons, sitemaps, slideshows, and so on, the story has been the same.  How do you do that?  Let’s try this.  I want to give up!  My head hurts.  Oh, my God.  Yes!  Hey, guys, look at this!  True, it’s not always a happy ending, but so often, as long as I’ve stayed on the case, I have figured it out.

Why am I this tinkering fool?  It really gives me a deep pleasure to figure it out.  There is a certain grammar to HTML, and once you begin to understand this grammar you can manipulate it to your heart’s content.  Strangely, I have begun to read poetry on my iPhone, Emily Dickinson’s collected works, and I have found a kinship between my tinkering with HTML and figuring out the lady of Amherst’s grammar, so to speak.  Invariably, every second and fourth lines in her quatrains rhyme and are trimeter, like a poetic hammer.  I have so much to learn, but in discovery there is an infinite joy.

Anger Magnus

There is so much to comment on, and so little to comment on.  I thought about Obama’s ‘slow-burn’ of political advocacy, as one friend described his style.  I had just criticized our president for not defending, more aggressively, the kind of change many of us voted for last year.  Obama, lay it on the line, and punish those who don’t support you, from the left or the right.  Be practical, be bold, but please don’t be gone.

I thought about the Senate-election debacle in Massachusetts, and how ‘democracy’ is not the great ideal it’s held up to be.  Do right-leaning Democrats truly think going back to George W. Bush’s deregulated, ‘pirate economy,’ as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson aptly described it in last Sunday’s business section, will help this country create jobs, protect consumers, lower the boom on banks, big pharma, or wasteful government?  I don’t like high deficits either; what was Bush’s record on deficits, anybody remember?

It’s incredible to me the myopia, the forgetfulness, the stupidity of much of the populace, as well as the ‘news’ that isn’t news anymore, but loud and ignorant opinions.  I mean, is anybody else with me on this one?  What happened to not being a Democrat or Republican first, to not thinking about just ‘winning,’ or ‘us’ versus ‘them’?  What happened to us?  We’re on this death cruise together, and China’s eating our lunch.  They’re not the only ones.  Anyone want to stand together and fight back?  I am patriotic, and I do love this country.  But our politics are dysfunctional, Congress is a joke, and how we talk to each, the vapid ‘news’ of cable, talk radio, and the like, simply foments the same idiotic behavior that got us into this mess.

That’s right, I’m pissed.  We need practical people.  We need to stop the moronic dog-chasing-its-tale on television and radio.  In fact, if it were up to me, as a dictator, I would destroy all the television sets and radios, and force people to read.  Even the New York Post is thoughtful compared to cable.

The problems with our culture go beyond the national politics and media.  I see what's wrong on the street every day, whether it’s El Paso, New York City, Kansas City or LA.  I am often the strictest parent in their schools, my kids don’t fail to remind me.  What do I do?  I make sure my kids do their homework, every night.  I am there to help them, if they need it, every night.  I encourage my kids to read books, every week.  Friends who are wild, disrespectful, they are not welcomed in my house.  Period.  These are the values of my father and mother, Mexican immigrants.  These values work.  My kids are excellent students.  They work hard and achieve the highest grades.  They are proud of themselves, not for false accomplishments, but for true ones.  Isn’t everybody like that?  What happened to us?  Jeez.

I am angry at the Supreme Court.  What the hell is wrong with them?  The majority just made the little guy feel even smaller than before.  What happened to ‘non-activist conservative judges’?  These hypocrites just overturned decades of precedent, in favor of mega-corporations with billions of dollars.  Wave the flag for ‘free speech.’  Lower the flag for more influence for lobbyists and for rampant political corruption.  The little guy doesn’t matter to these clueless Solomons.  Sotomayor, you matter.  We just need more of you.

Work hard.  Take care of your family.  Save money.  Pay your mortgage religiously.  Love the variety of people you see on the streets of Manhattan every day.  And get kicked in the ass.  What a week.

The Earthquake in Haiti and Charitable Giving

‘Heartbroken and shocked’ are the words to describe my reactions to the news of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  The bloodied children without their parents, running in rubble-filled streets.  A leg sticking out from under tons of concrete, while a young man next to it tries to dig out the teacher, trapped yet alive, under what’s left of a school.

Particulars, photographs and video, humanize this event in far-flung places like New York, London, Tehran, Shanghai.  We are responding, at least some are responding, to help.  I have sent money, which is not much, but it’s what I can do right now.

Some, instead of identifying with the human suffering in Haiti, are reacting in small, mean ways.  Rush Limbaugh cynically notes the catastrophe is to Barack Obama’s advantage: the president will gain cred with the black community.  Limbaugh quips, "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."  How anyone who’s semi-moral can listen to this exemplar of excess and do-nothing claptrap is beyond me.  Yet Limbaugh has made millions, but not from an America that represents its most generous and open-minded citizens.

I hated CNN when Lou Dobbs dominated their spotlight, but last night, one day after the Haitian earthquake, Anderson Cooper was reporting from Port-au-Prince, while Fox News was lovingly focused on Sarah Palin’s musings with Bill O’Reilly.  There is a morality to reporting the news: what you focus on and how you focus on it reveal much about who you are and what you care about.  We’ve entered a Nietzschean moment on the news: the power of the people will decide what’s ‘truth’ and what’s ‘trash,’ and their decision may change (schizophrenically) every few years.

When I give to charity, I am indeed hard-nosed about it.  I want to give to charities which are efficient.  That is, whatever dollars I give I want to make sure the highest percentage, perhaps over 85 percent, goes to the purpose of the charity, not overhead, nor managerial salaries, nor more ads to entice more donors.  I want to give, but I want it to be effective.

So I’ve relied on a few sources, and three important ones are the ratings of the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP), the annual Forbes list of efficient charities, and Charity Navigator.  One of my favorites charities, the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which awards scholarships to educate Latinos, uses about 87 cents out of every dollar for its programs, and garners an ‘A’ rating from AIP.

It’s been a tough couple of years for many people, but after looking at what is happening in Haiti, I want to help.  I want to do something besides watch the unfolding tragedy on television.  Here are a few charities, and their efficiency percentages (i.e. what percentage of donations goes to their programs). They need your support now.  All figures are from Charity Navigator, the letter grades from AIP.

Doctors Without Borders, (87 percent; A)

CARE (90 percent; A)

Save the Children (92 percent; A)

International Medical Corps (92 percent; A+)

American Red Cross (90 percent; A-)

Dozens of charities and their hyperlinks are listed by AIP, and Charity Navigator is free, with an email registration.  Give now, do it intelligently, and help those who desperately need it.

P.S. On the subway today, I read this poem on my iPhone, from Emily Dickinson's complete works:

Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God's residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.

Harold Hernesh

I am late sending out my holiday cards again, but I did remember to slip one under Harold Hernesh’s door.  Harold lives in our building on the Upper Westside, and our family, including my children Aaron and Isaac, befriended Harold when we rented a one-bedroom across the hall from him.  The following year we bought a co-op in the same building, but on another floor; Isaac was a mere three-weeks-old.  We have lived thirteen years in this building-qua-miniature-city of 350 apartments.

Harold, who is eighty-seven-years-old, always reminded me of my grandmother, Doña Dolores Rivero, a survivor of the Mexican Revolution.  Both were unbelievably tough, gruff and perpetually half-frowning.  Yet if you stopped to talk to them, and got to know them beyond their flinty exterior and garbled retorts, beyond their complaints about dogs or inept store clerks or greedy banks, these viejitos revealed a fearful vulnerability of what they had seen and what they had barely escaped.  Harold was eighteen when he was imprisoned at Dachau by the Nazis in 1941, for being a Jew.

I have given Harold copies of my books.  He doesn’t know it, but I made a version of Harold a hero in my story of violence and redemption, “Remembering Possibilities.”

Yesterday Harold stopped me in the lobby and handed me three lollipops, one for me and each of my children.  He always carries candy in his pockets, and hands it out to children, or their parents, every day.  I have a jar of Harold’s candies in the kitchen.  For years, Harold sat with his sister in the lobby of our building, chatting and introducing her to his friends.  But Harold’s sister died recently.  Harold is now, I think, alone.

So when he uncharacteristically asked me to follow him to his apartment, I said yes.  I had been to his place before, to fix his cable because he had forgotten he needed to have both the cable box on and the TV on channel 3 for the system to work.  Honestly, how do oldsters survive in this complex, idiosyncratic world?  I don’t know.  I battle with these things myself, and I can only imagine what shape I’ll be in when I’m eighty-seven.  Will I be able to manage an apartment by myself at that age?  Laura and I can barely do this now.

“The Lithuanians!  They were worst than the Nazis!” Harold blurted out, as he handed me a book to read, a story of another Holocaust survivor.  When Harold says words like ‘Lithuanians’ it sounds like ‘Lith-punians,’ and he half-spits every other word he says.  It’s possible Harold had a stroke a long time ago, but I’ve never asked him.  His blue-gray eyes wandered into the distance, and he recounted a story I had never heard before.  As he said, “The luk-thpiest daay of mai lifept.”  The luckiest day of his life.

A Nazi soldier and his Lithuanian collaborators had taken him to a field of mass graves, and ordered him to dig.  He would be digging not only his own grave, but the graves of other prisoners who would be shot that day.  His spade hit the ground, but it was frozen solid.  They beat him, and yelled at him to dig.  He smashed the shovel into the ground, but still the ground would not give.  They snatched the shovel away from him, and tried to dig themselves, to no avail.  “The luk-thpiest daay of mai lifept,” Harold repeated.  Bitterly cold and windy days like today, he said, have never bothered him on Broadway.

I don’t talk to Harold, nor did I ever bike fifteen miles as a kid to visit my abuelita on Saturdays, because I feel sorry for old people.  I listened to them, because I loved their stories.  I relished the bittersweet humor that came from hardscrabble or harrowing experiences.  They took me ‘there,’ wherever ‘there’ was, and I was captivated by and transported to another world.  For me, it was their gift.

Christmas Tamales in Ysleta

Laura and I drove through Ysleta in search of masa natural for champurrado.  La Tapatia was packed, they were out of masa, but I did escape with two packets of Licon’s asaderos.  I didn’t want to brave Wal-Mart (a quagmire the day before Christmas), but we still needed a few ingredients for Laura's guacamole.  Yesterday she, Aaron, Isaac, and their cousins, Caleb and Joshua, baked and decorated dozens of gingerbread cookies.  Today we are cooking for the-night-before-Christmas meal, but really it is a day to be with la familia.

My Muslim sister is here with two of her daughters; my Jewish wife and my kids are in the kitchen, munching on tostadas and chopping vegetables for the turkey’s stuffing and trimmings.  My brothers, Oscar and Rudy, who live in El Paso, cut and shaped tree branches and created a nativity scene for my parents in the living room.  Everybody is exhausted from shopping, and later we have to wrap our Secret-Santa gifts to place under el niño Jesus.  At midnight, we will rip the wrapping paper off the presents, the kids will shout and compare their booty, and everybody will sit around the living room catching up and telling more stories.

This is probably a repeat of what happens all across the country.  We don’t really question the different religions anymore, we rarely have anything but humorous, if occasionally pointed exchanges (mainly I love needling everybody while they roll their eyes), and we enjoy each other.  The different branches of our familia are seldom together, so when we do descend on Ysleta, from New York, Washington, D.C. and beyond, we are simply happy to see each other.

This morning, in the breaking news section of the online El Paso Times, I read a report about a traffic jam in front of Lupita’s Tamales in Canutillo.  The Wal-Mart shelves for dried tamale leaves and molasses have been ransacked.  All the masa, natural and preparada, at tortillerias and tamale shops is gone.  A few moments ago, I swiped half a tamale from an abandoned plate next to me: “Dad!  That was mine!  How could you?”

I understand the shocked tone, as if I have committed a sacrilege.  But I gulp down the tamale quickly, and delightfully.  La Tapatia’s tamales are heaven on earth.  Zeke’s chorizo, I could write an entire column about it.  The unique smoky taste, the fresh pork meat.  Zeke’s tostadas are nothing like the facsimiles they peddle in the Northeast to the unknowing multitudes.  Fresh Licon’s asaderos, the mere thought of them, make my mouth water.  Oh, how joyous to be back home, and hungry!

I know it’s not all about the food.  But family togetherness, at the preparation of a feast, is an ancient ritual.  It is a messy, tumultuous, chaotic affair, which probably few outsiders would endure.  I am glad we do it.  I look forward to it all year.  We have grown over time to accept each other, and to accept each other’s choices, even though we probably would have not made the same ones.

This year no severe conflicts punctuate the air.  No old recriminations.  I don’t know why.  A few years ago, during a Christmas vacation, I had a fight with my father that took years to overcome.  But this year is blessed, with our family together, laughter in faraway corners, disparate cousins working and playing together as one, and everybody remembering why it was such a good idea to return to Ysleta for Christmas.

Latinos and Jews on Hanukah

Laura is traveling for work, and tonight Aaron, Isaac, and I lit the candles for the sixth night of Hanukah, the Jewish festival of light. We took turns lighting different candles, sang the prayers. I knew the first part, but hummed the rest. The kids were my guide. In a few more days, we will be in El Paso. If we go to a Christmas posada in Ysleta or midnight mass at Mount Carmel, Laura and the kids will also join me.

How did we become this interfaith, multicultural family? It all began at Harvard, in Economics 10, when I saw this composed, attractive sophomore sitting a few rows in front of me. We chatted a few times that year. She thought I was Greek; I thought she was English. We were both way off. I was a Chicano from El Paso, Texas, and she was a Jew from Chicago and Concord, Massachusetts.

I really became friends with Laura at a Mexico seminar the next year. Laura was majoring in Government, fluent in Spanish, and focusing on Latin America. We jogged together for months along the Charles River, before we began dating. If you want to get a sense of our first kiss, read my short story, “Remembering Possibilities,” in The Last Tortilla and Other Stories. Laura is always embarrassed when I mention this, but it is a moment I wanted to immortalize in my work. That’s one of the hazards of living with a writer: parts of your life may end up in the lives of literary characters.

I can’t tell you it was easy to become one. My parents adored Laura, primarily because she spoke Spanish, but also because she was easygoing, “suavecita” and “muy gente,” as my parents would say, while I was sometimes stubborn and mean, “el terco que no se aguanta.” Laura fit better in semi-rural, small-town Ysleta than I did. Laura’s parents, however, did not like me because I was not a Jew. Sure, this got better over time, after years of their understanding that I loved their daughter and wasn’t going away. I also grew to appreciate their focus on family and the intellectual debates at the kitchen table. Today, our harmony, mutual respect, and yes, even love are achievements, but they were hard-won.

A few years ago, an engineer with the same last name wrote to me, and sent me a research paper on our surname, which is unusual in Mexico. He had traveled to obscure archives in Mexico, traced the Troncoso name to the same town of my father’s family, and even traveled to Spain to study the archives of the Catholic Church. His findings? Our surname originates from ‘Trancoso,’ and has Sephardic origins in Toledo, where ‘los judios de Trancoso’ were either cypto-Jews hiding their heritage because of the Spanish Inquisition, or Jews kicked out of Spain to the New World in 1492. I have a book, by Pere Bonnín, Sangre Judía: Españoles de Ascendencia Hebrea y Antisemitismo Cristiano, a bestseller in Spain already in its fourth edition. This book is a compilation of research on Spanish Jewish ancestry. My last name is in this book.

As Laura quipped, once I told her, “Now I now understand the attraction.”

So I may have Sephardic ancestors, but given my mother’s fervent, unyielding Catholicism, I probably have Tomás de Torquemada’s ancestors too. Perhaps we became one big, messy familia long ago. But I believe Laura is my family, and her family is my family, not because of what happened five hundred years ago, but because I love Laura. I know the quality of the person. That’s why I light the Hanukah candles even though Laura is not at home. It is what our family would do. It is what I do.

Support Free Public Libraries

I am sitting inside a cathedral to reading and writing, the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. It is an astonishingly beautiful place to work as a writer. I could not have found anything better at Harvard or Yale, my alma maters. The difference, of course, is that the NYPL’s reading room is free to the public.
You can walk right in off the street, at 42^nd and Fifth Avenue, turn on your laptop, and enjoy peace and quiet while taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi. This reading room and the New York Public Library’s elaborate system of branch libraries are the kind of things that make New York City a great place to live.

The NYPL's main reading room is an inherently democratic place to work. Students from immigrant families study for GMATs or LSATs at long oak tables, expertly refurbished some years ago. Oldsters on their laptops work quietly under brass laps, this morning’s cold rain in Manhattan only a distant memory. Men and women in suits type frantically, glancing at journals or books. Tourists stroll in, mouths agape at the painted clouds on the ornate ceiling.

I wrote my second book in this reading room, and back then no guards checked your laptops or packages when you walked in. Now they do. They check on the way in and on the way out, perhaps a consequence of 9/11. I remember how quiet the reading room was back then, and it is still a serious place to work. No loud disturbances are allowed, and guards make sure you follow the rules.

The outside of the NYPL’s Research Library, as this magnificent Beaux-arts building is known, is also sheathed in white this morning, and perhaps the marble lions and exterior are undergoing yet another renovation. It must be difficult to keep something so precious, yet so old, up-to-date and in fine condition.

In the 1930s, the famed Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named the lions Patience and Fortitude, for what he felt New Yorkers needed to survive the economic depression. Today, as the reading room is again packed with people, I am certain some in this grand room are struggling to find work and survive in our current economic downturn. But haven’t free public libraries always been places to fortify yourself when the world turned for the worse? Hasn’t the free public library always been a refuge?

For years, I have always contributed a modest $100 to the New York Public Library, because I like libraries, I love books, and any place that gives you the space and time to ponder quietly and deeply should be supported. But today, when I return home, I will add to my donation to the NYPL. It’s an invaluable resource for everybody, and I hope many of you will be inspired to support your own local public library.

Imagine a city where you have no place to go to read, write, or think. Imagine a city without an institution promoting the free exchange of ideas, the dissemination of a plurality of ideas, through books, the Internet, newspapers, and journals. Imagine what a bleak place that would be, not just for you, but for your parents and grandparents, for your children. Sometimes we take for granted what we have, and the unique institutions that promote the essence of our democracy. Today I will do my part to help my library. Let’s do it together.

Guadalajara: Feria Internacional del Libro

It has been an astonishing trip to Guadalajara, Mexico to be part of the gigantic book fair, one of the largest (I am told) for the Spanish-speaking world. I have to thank Director Franz Josef Kunz of the Goethe-Institut of Guadalajara for inviting me to be part of the panel on “Literatura y Migración.”

I knew it was a good start when I was wending my way into the American Airlines plane in Dallas to Guadalajara, and seated in first class (!) I find none other than Dagoberto Gilb, a good friend and a great writer. Of course, once the flight left rainy Dallas, I squeezed my way to first class to chat with Dago. I gave him a hard time for the white wine and warm nuts the ‘elite’ of first class enjoyed, while the plebes of coach went hungry. But it was great to see Dago up and about.

The next day I was waiting to have lunch at the Hilton across the street from the book fair, with Mr. Kunz, Carlos López de Alba, and Yuri Herrera, both on our panel, and who did I spot with her Blogger file open, and typing away, just as I’m doing now? Catherine Mayo. Seeing Catherine in Guadalajara was just literary nirvana. She is one of those writers you learn from and whose standards are nothing but excellent. Catherine is here to discuss her book, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, recently selected by Library Journal as one of the top thirty books for 2009.

The highlight of Guadalajara for me has been “Literatura y Migracion.” Carlos, editor of the literary magazine Reverso, moderated the panel, and it included Yuri who wrote the novel Trabajos del Reino, María Cecilia Barbetta, an Argentine who writes in German, and Léda Forgó, who was born in Hungary but also writes in German.

What the free-wheeling discussion focused on was this literature of writers who are writing in languages not necessarily their mother tongues. But the discussion quickly turned philosophical (I brought up Heidegger and the influence of German philosophers on my own writing), or how adopting a new language forced ‘immigrant writers’ to choose words purposely, to take on the roles of outsiders in their adopted cultures, to find their place in words rather than in a ‘home country.’ For us, I believe, language has become our country.

It a funny and often disquieting existence to be neither here nor there, to have your existence, particularly your literary existence, in play, a question rather than a settled home. It certainly forces you to think about what you want to say, to take a step away to consider what and how you write, because that is how you start when you don’t quiet belong as an immigrant. Sometimes this perspective turns political, sometimes reflexive, and at other times it is simply an advantage to write about Hungary or Argentina or the Mexican-American community in a language that already is a step removed from that home. In some, this perspective is a way to work through self-alienation, or even to become a bridge between two worlds.

I came away from this panel with only deep admiration for Carlos, María Cecilia, Yuri, and Léda. Writers from across the globe struggling with similar questions I struggle with everyday. Writers who are intelligent and should be read enthusiastically. Writers who embody why seeking international alliances, when your literary endeavor is unique, will allow you to understand exactly how a community can be formed from the most disparate of individuals.

Know Thyself and Buyer Beware

Know thyself and buyer beware. These are phrases I not only preach but also practice, particularly when I make financial decisions each year. I have been talking about the importance of financial literacy with friends and also leaders in the Latino community. Here are a few thoughts.

I believe in self-honesty and knowing what you don’t know, self-education, and self-reliance. Let me take the last first, and tell you why and how they apply in becoming a financially literate individual.

Self-reliance. When I graduated from Harvard in the mid-1980s, I had no money, I was in debt, and I was about to enter graduate school at Yale, to assume even more debt and continue my education. I watched every penny. My bed for years was cinderblocks I found on the street covered by an old sheet of plywood and topped by a thick piece of foam. I saved money, even while at school, and opened my first money market fund.

Self-reliance and my cost-cutting ways were my methods of increasing the amount of capital even when I was earning small salaries as a teaching assistant. Yet even then, I knew that unless I made my savings grow, I would never go beyond a hand-to-mouth existence. So I also began investing in mutual funds. It was the beginning of one of the greatest bull markets in history, so I was also lucky.

Because I used my own investment money, no committee had to be consulted, no outside investor would ring my phone in the middle of the night to cry about losses, and I could choose out-of-favor or even unknown companies (except to me) and invest in them for the long-term. Self-reliance also meant patient money.

Self-education. As I invested, I also began to read. Benjamin Graham. Peter Lynch. Ralph Wanger. Warren Buffett. Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal. John Bogle. Jeremy Siegel. Philip A. Fisher. I am still reading books about investing, by investors and fund managers, and professors of finance. I also taught myself financial accounting, by reading accounting books. I wanted to be able to read and understand 10-K reports and annual reports, and how companies work to make profits.

But my education was not just book-learning. As I invested and learned on the fly, I saw how the financial press was manipulated by many mutual fund companies that trumpeted ‘stellar funds’ with great short-term records, only to have these same funds explode with assets the next year and the managers produce mediocre returns or leave for more money to other fund firms. These ‘stellar funds’ also carried high costs: win or lose, the fund managers still made money for themselves.

Costs matter. Costs are permanent. Invest in index funds, which are the lowest cost funds, particularly at a place like Vanguard. Index funds also have no prima donna fund managers. Buy three or four index funds that represent the stock and bond categories you want to be in, and that should be the plan for the majority of investors who are passive. Passive simply means you are not buying and selling individual stocks, you don’t have the time and inclination, and it’s better to know what you don’t know and invest in index funds. Investing is Socratic: those who don’t know who they are as investors will soon be ripped off by manipulators who appeal to the greed and vanity of the hapless.

Self-honesty. I made many investing mistakes. In my early years, I invested with ‘stellar stock funds,’ which soon tanked. Taco Cabana, another mistake. Stay away from restaurants and airlines. I know certain industries pretty well, but others are too difficult for me to understand, or too unpredictable as businesses. I stay away from what I don’t know, and if I want to know I do hours, even years, of homework.

I have not made many mistakes selling; I don’t know why. I do have a sense of when to get out when I have followed and invested in a company for years. But I have made mistakes buying early, a bit too high, for example. Over-enthusiasm. In a market rout, I don’t panic. I have thick skin, and I don’t report to anybody on my investments. Last March, the nadir of recent stock market valuations, I was indeed worried, yet I stuck to my individual stocks and index funds. I did nothing, which was the smartest thing I did all year.

Investing is about being efficient with the extra capital you have. Invest it well, learn who you are as an investor, and make saving money your constant priority. Then investing will be your path to independence.

A Week To Remember

Last week was quite a week for me. I read with Reyna Grande at the famed El Museo Del Barrio, and loved meeting Reyna for the first time. Aurora Anaya-Cerda of La Casa Azul Bookstore arranged the East-meets-West reading of Latino writers.

I hope the readers of Chico Lingo enthusiastically support Aurora’s online bookstore: independent bookstores like hers offer a much-needed perspective in literature, a multicultural voice for variety and quality. Aurora is also one of those people who simply lights up a room with her enthusiasm for books, authors, events for the people, la comunidad. She’s a treasure, and I think of her as mi hermana.

Also last week I read at La Junta, an event presented by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and La Menta Collective. Let me just tell you, I was blown away. I had been invited by Glendaliz Camacho, who knew Aurora. The place was packed, the walls were covered with the eye-catching artwork of Alta Berri and Adrian Roman, poets Mundo Rivera and J. F. Seary mesmerized the crowd, and Glendaliz and I read our stories. At the end, the band Mona Passage rocked the roof off the joint.

The La Junta evening was one of those nights you keep replaying in your head. I loved the people I met there, into literature, music, and art. I marveled at the setting, a beautiful brownstone dedicated for decades, behind the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, to promoting the cultures of people of African descent. It was a place where I knew the people “get it,” that is, they understand that literature and art should be not for a self-selected elite but for la gente.

I also received an invitation to the Guadalajara Book Fair (all expenses paid) for a panel entitled, "Literatura y Migracion." So I’ll drag my bones to Guadalajara on December 2, and force myself to have the time of my life in Mexico. Finally, Literary El Paso came out, and the Texas Observer gave it a great review in which they featured my story, “The Abuelita,” the first story I ever wrote.

I know, I know, I’m bragging a bit. But weeks like these are few and far between. It’s usually struggling alone to write, and failing. Or cursing yourself for being no good. Or nursing another rejection. Or simply not measuring up, in my eyes, as a father or as a husband. You might be surprised, if you possessed a kind of moral or psychological vision, to see the hundreds of invisible, but permanent scars on me. Many self-inflicted.

So forgive me, dear reader, if I rejoice in this good week. I just don’t try to hide anymore behind a façade that always advertises all-is-ill or all-is-well. That’s one of the reasons I started writing Chico Lingo a year ago. I didn’t care anymore what people thought, what imagined or real restrictions constrained this writer’s life, or whether ‘this’ or ‘that’ would be best for my career. I wanted to tell it like it is. I wanted to write about it. Period.

So I had a helluva week. It will keep me going for a while, during the tough, 51-other weeks in the year. I will never stop trying to capture that astonishing presence of life, and that’s what I can do to honor each day.

(The La Junta picture, with the Puerto Rican and Dominican flags behind me, was taken by Vivien I. Perez, VIPhotos.)