228 Miles

Tonight I drove 228 miles, from Lawrence, MA to New York City, through a monsoon for the first 194 miles, and after Greenwich, CT through a snow hurricane that still roars outside my apartment window at midnight.

It was the most treacherous driving I have done for a while; I witnessed the aftermath of at least six accidents.  On the Merritt Parkway, where on a normal night most ignore the 55-mph speed limit and cruise at 70-plus, every inch of the road surface glistened, the lane lines were invisible, and cars were sliding and hydroplaning even at 40 mph.  It was tense, let’s just say, for four and a half hours.

I was in Lawrence this morning to give the Daniel Appleton White Fund Lecture, created in 1852 by Judge White, who was a contemporary of Hawthorne and Emerson.  Judge White, whose memoir I discovered through Google Books, was the first president of the Salem Lyceum, and an advocate of democratizing knowledge through public lectures and discussions.

In the memoir, I noticed how open-minded he was, and truly, far-sighted: he believed deeply in his Protestant faith, yet castigated fellow Protestants who instead of possessing a culture of openness and inquiry were of an “opposite spirit” who “judging, censuring, avoiding, and reviling one another” undermined the right of others to be more, or even less devout, than them.  He admired the Puritan immigrants and their search for religious freedom in the new world.  Of course, in the spirit of Judge White, I talked about how Latinos can develop their voice and become full-fledged participants with cultural and political power in our American experiment.

The trip was worth every treacherous mile.  Before the lecture, I conducted a workshop with ESL students at Northern Essex Community College.  The stories the students told me about their lives as Dominicanos in Massachusetts, or immigrants from China and Bangladesh, were hilarious and poignant.  We talked about how we have often been put down for having accents, or why even family members or neighbors might make fun of our dreams to educate ourselves.

We exchanged stories about how to find the right mentors, how to focus on yourself even when the world is hostile, and how to build that sense of self-esteem that keeps you focused on your goals.  I took apart their oral stories, and showed them how naturally they were already excellent storytellers who could make an entire room break down with laughter.  I pointed out the plot climax they so easily crafted and the true-to-life dialogue they inserted into their stories about encounters with police and immigration officials.  The lecture was a great experience, but talking to these students, from twenty- to sixty-years-old, was the highlight of my trip.  They have so much to say, and they do indeed have great teachers in Lawrence helping them say it.

I like an exchange with the audience as much as I like giving a speech to focus on complex points about culture, philosophy, or how I survived throughout the years.  I learn as much from my audience as I feel they learn from me.  These trips, like the trip to Lawrence, energize you and make you believe again that storytelling can make an essential difference in creating a better self, inspiring group self-reflection, and building a community out of individuals.

Camino del Sol

This week a pleasant surprise was dropped into my mailbox: my contributor’s copy of the new anthology, Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing, edited by Rigoberto González and published by the University of Arizona Press.  This is a masterful collection of contemporary writing, and I hope it will be used widely in schools.  I have two stories in this book, “Punching Chickens” and “The Snake.”

But what thrills me whenever I appear in an anthology is to read other writers I admire, or to discover new work I am not familiar with.  This collection includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published over fifteen years by the award-winning Camino del Sol series, which has been at the forefront of publishing quality American literature written by Latinos.

Virgil Suárez’s “Animalia,” the first poem in front of my eyes as I randomly opened the book, was nothing short of enthralling.  The animals, the casual violence of children against animals, humans killing, eating, pleading with animals- the words and images spurred my memory and arrested the present like a poetic cinema.  Diana Garcia’s “When living was a labor camp called Montgomery” took me back not to Califas, but to Socorro, Texas, to working on a chicken farm, to the dreams of workers amid an awful stench, to muscles that quivered in spasms with the sun, to the choices and accidents that led to an escape.

The personal essay “A Different Border” by Ray Gonzalez, the founder and first editor of the Camino del Sol series, brought me home to contemporary El Paso.  The sleepy, isolated town has a growing military presence, anti-immigrant groups like the Minutemen lurk along the Texas-New Mexico border, and young, educated Chicanos buy into an often vapid, ahistorical existence.  And still, this country uses, abuses, underpays, profits from, and then attempts to deport and even destroy human beings from Mexico.  Not human beings, really.  But ‘cheap labor.’  Or worse, ‘illegal aliens.’  It’s a borderlands’ movie epic: “Be Blind, Rewind.”

But the most intriguing work in Camino del Sol was the introductory essay by Rigoberto González.  If you want to know, in a short read, about the history of Latino publishing in the United States, the authors, trends, sub-trends, categories, and publishers, the obscure as well as the well-known, the distant past as well as the future, then this is the essay for you.  It is a survey in the best sense of the word, which is to say it records, examines, and appraises the state of American literature written by Latinos.  You get the sense of a movement, perhaps gaining speed as of late, a flourishing through hard times and obscurity, that will not be denied anymore, that has become its own validation.

I became a writer to tell stories I had not before heard.  I became a writer not to aggrandize myself or my family, nor to provide a false, perhaps romanticized version of Ysleta or El Paso.  I became a writer because these stories, from my community, deserved to be heard.  They deserved to be heard after I read stories in German in Vienna.  They deserved to be heard after I studied Faulkner, O’Connor, Hemingway, and Conrad at Widener Library.

The panoply of stories and poems from the Latino community still deserve to be heard, and read.  I suspect many, if not most, of the writers in this anthology began with a similar motivation: a sense of pride mixed with a sense of strangulation, a belief that I am someone, that we are the people, that time is short, that our voices are just as often clear as faint, that today is the time to release a world.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

As I hunker down for this epic snowstorm that may or may not arrive tomorrow in the City, I have been working on my finances.  I do a few things at the beginning of the year, which I believe should help any investor remain disciplined and focused.

I would call myself an investor who is comfortable with risk, but over the years as I have amassed more capital I have shifted to preserving what I have as much as growing it.  The other issue is that I have always ignored Wall Street research, simply because much of it is momentum-based: if the stock goes up, then it’s a good stock, and if it goes down then it’s a bad one.

Of course, almost no one can tell the direction of a stock before-the-fact (unless you’re cheating).  You can be a lucky investor, but I want to be an intelligent one.  Moreover, not enough attention is paid to the business of a company and the trustworthiness of its management.  You want a company relentlessly focused on building shareholder value, cutting costs and overhead, deploying capital for the benefit of shareholders, not for fat-cat CEOs.  All in a marvelous business where the profit margins are high.  So the ethos of Wall Street, which seems to be “fleece the individual investor and even the taxpayer, if you can get away with it,” is what you want to avoid.

First, I re-balance my portfolios.  That is, if I want 40 percent in bonds, and 60 percent in stocks, if those are my targets, I check at the beginning of the year and move money to regain those targets.  What you are doing is moving money from your successes (say stocks, which climbed to 65 percent of your portfolio) to your failures (say bonds, which declined in relative value to your stocks, to 35 percent of your portfolio).  It’s systematic contrarian investing.  I recently read an article in the New York Times that showed how steadily saving for and re-balancing a diversified portfolio every year would have turned this past decade into an investing success, rather than the dismal failure it was for those who did nothing.

Second, I have been increasing my exposure to international stocks over the years, particularly emerging markets.  It’s simple.  The United States is a mature economy, with a dysfunctional political system which shows no sign of tackling our major problems.  The American share of worldwide stock-market wealth has relentlessly declined: in 1970, the U.S. stock market was 66 percent of world market capitalizations, in 2007 our share was 42 percent, in 2008, 29.9 percent.  It’s no secret that China, Brazil, India, South Korea, and so on are growing faster than we are.

So I invest in foreign-stock mutual funds, particularly index funds covering everything from developed economies to emerging markets.  Also, I make sure the mutual funds I own do not hedge the dollar.  Why?  I want the currency risk, for better or for worse.  That’s part of the diversification of international investing, and it’s also a bet against the dollar and our trade and budget deficits.  Our politicians will blame each other and vie for short-term power, until one day they will discover the mathematical oppression of our spending-beyond-our-means on unnecessary wars and gargantuan entitlements will have weakened us to a regional power, if that.

Third, I have diversified my portfolio to include things like raw land in Texas, where the demographics are excellent, and TIPS, or Treasury inflation-protected securities.  Although there is scant inflation now, and TIPS seem overbought because of the worries about the deficit, I believe you need a smattering of unconventional assets that will help you fight inflation when it rears its ugly head again, especially after we have printed truckloads of dollars.  There could also be a scenario in which interest rates are high, because of our weakened dollar and jittery creditors, and the American economy stagnant, our stand-of-living in a deleveraging decline.  Unconventional assets mean uncorrelated assets, and will mean less panic for you in whatever scary environment you find yourself in.

Over the past two years, I do feel something fundamental has changed.  The politicians in Washington have stopped working together; our democracy seems more ambush-demagogy than the voices of the people; the way we talk to each other, through TV and radio, in ten-second sound bytes, prevents us from understanding each other.  I just want my family to survive.

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.