Columns

A quick flight to Houston last week was packed with complex news, most of it post-electoral, along with some hard words for the way that state and its communities have traditionally dealt with voters.  Austin (the fastest-growing city in the United States, and Texas’ most liberal), plus Dallas and Houston, traditionally rigid Republican enclaves, along with San Antonio, went for President Obama. These are the state’s largest cities. Still, Obama lost Texas, garnering just 41.38 percent to Mitt Romney’s 57.17 percent.

Heard it on the grapevine:  A continuing – and increasingly loud – unhappy reaction to Mexico’s new (and clearly complicated) federal laws and increased fees for foreigners wishing to visit or reside in this Republic temporarily or permanently.

A lot of Mexicans on both sides of the border have a new spring in their stride.  And after a multitude of threats and an avalanche of vilification that increased as the United States’ presidential election neared its culmination, they are beaming with unabashed self-confidence.  The rap on Mexican American voters has long been: They may have fervent political views, but they don’t vote.  Even though a vote might begin to ease their problems.  But their voting record showed an indifference that bruised their cause.

Most Mexicans were pleased – and puzzled – with the results of the United States election.  The seemingly growing acceptance of the legalization of marijuana gave them nightmares about the increasing power of drug cartels.  Almost every Mexican friend has relatives living, legally or illegally, north of the border.  The disaffinity for Hispanics, relentlessly declared during the seemingly endless Republican primary campaign process, all of it repeated again during the general election, put them energetically in Obama’s camp.  Relatives here wrote to family members in the States urging them to vote for the president.  Shyly, Mexicans here would ask U.S. citizens they knew well who they favored.

It is akin to something akin to universal law: During times of peace a government’s need for money (often no matter what its real value) is merely chronic; during a revolution the need is bottomless.  Throughout history as the turbulent winds of revolution raged across Mexico, countless state, municipal and national governments were rearranged.  With each shift of rebellious wind, the more temporary of the affected governments were barely able to keep city and pueblo shops open.  The more canny (and sometimes shifty) businesses lasted long enough to come to shrewd grips of their dilemma and began, quite literally, making money – of their own.

“Hearing Things? Seeing Things? Many of Us Do?” was an Oliver Sacks’ article in the New York Times this week helping launch his book, “Hallucinations.”  It points out that such phenomena are experienced by nearly all of us at some time in our lives – though we tend to keep that secret.  Sacks is the much-acclaimed author, practitioner and professor of neurology and psychiatry, who has written 12 books regarding patients’ experiences with neurological disorders.  His most well-known books: “Awakening” (made into a Oscar-nominated film, starring Robert de Niro and Robin Williams),  “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” and “The Last Hippie,” also made into a film.   He presently serves as both clinical professor of neurology and consulting neurologist at the center of the epilepsy at the New York University School of Medicine.