p_c_neary@hotmail.com

AI

“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

To borrow a phrase from Leon Trotsky, “you may not be interested in artificial intelligence, but artificial intelligence is interested in you.” It’s hard to avoid the subject of artificial intelligence, or AI, today. It’s all over the news, with bold predictions of how it will change everything. AI stocks are super hot, and China and the United States are in a chip race based on AI requirements. States, cities, and companies are building vast server farms to feed AI, spiking energy demand at exactly the same moment we’re supposed to be transitioning to electric vehicles! Much of what you hear is hype (no surprise), and you may be old enough (like me) to think, “well that will be somebody else’s problem with which to deal.” But probably not. However AI plays out, it will affect you within a few years, so it may be worth it to understand a little about AI now. Here goes:

I. AI is artificial, but it is not intelligence.

Some of the results AI programs can produce may look almost magical, but in the end, they result from a simple process. Everything called AI today is based on computer coding of large language models (LLMs). What is that? You already know that computers use “ones” and “zeros” (or digits, hence the digital world) to do everything they do. These large language models take words and turn them into tokens, or groups of ones/zeros. The base language doesn’t matter, which is why LLMs can work wonders with translations. What the program does is take the tokens (words in your view) and predict what the next token should be. The prediction uses a probability model (ok, no more math) that says, “based on what I have been trained on, what should the next word be?”

As a simple example, if you trained a LLM on the works of Shakespeare, then you asked it to describe “love,” the LLM would say things like, “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,” or “when love speaks, the voice of all the gods make heaven drowsy with the harmony.” Beautiful, no? Now if you added the lyrics from the J. Geils band to the model’s learning, it might say “love stinks.” Which answer it gives is based on how many times it sees that particular combination of words, and who says it, and how.

But wait a second, we’re falling into a trap by using phrases like “it says” or “it sees.” It does nothing of the sort. The model searches its repository of data and pulls out all the tokens which represent “love” then looks at the tokens surrounding that token, then puts them together to respond to you. There is no thought involved. But how does it get such amazing textual answers?

The key is feeding the model more and more data. Companies started using things like Wikipedia, but that isn’t enough. Now they’re scraping public social media, ingesting copyrighted material, anything to get more data. Because the more data that your AI model uses to train on, the better the results you get. One problem AI faces is recency bias. In the rush to add ever more sources, developers turn to today’s data. Almost no one is creating original data from the 19th century, while the Kardashians probably provide a megabyte a minute. AI will lean ever more heavily on recent data for learning, which negates one of the lessons of history: the things that are best are those which stand the test of time. AI does not care about “right” and “wrong,” just “fit.”

II. AI is a tool, nothing more, nothing less.

The use of tools is the story of humanity, from fire to the wheel to flight to computers. Tools are neither good nor evil; it is all about how you use them. A steak knife can cut a filet or a jugular vein. Alfred Nobel thought TNT would revolutionize mining and engineering. So there is no reason to fear AI, but there are many reasons to learn about it.

Like any tool, AI requires some initial effort on your part to work properly. If you don’t learn to use it through practice, you’ll find it too hard to use (the story of me and typing, as my two-finger approach can attest!). Also, AI benefits from you, as another source of learning. AI programs learn how you speak, how you think, what you expect from interactions with you, and then can respond better to you. Of course, that also opens the door to manipulation, too. Current AI developers are not consciously trying to program AI to be “addictive,” but that is a real possibility.

As a tool, AI most benefits those who can master it. Regular AI users point out that if you ask AI a stupid or poorly-worded question, it may give you a similar answer! Why? Not even the developers know for sure. There is no way to “open the hood” and look at what the model is doing; it is just “doing.” Another mind-blowing fact: AI developers have noticed the AI programs seem to work more slowly and are less productive during December. The developers think the AI has “internalized” the notion of a holiday season from its data, and answers accordingly.

III. AI can do many things for you, but maybe not better than you.

Since it is ultimately simply a computer program, AI is fantastic at taking over mundane or routine work. It never tires, never sleeps, never asks for a raise. Computer programmers love it, as “coding” often involves reams of simple instructions which are boring to write, but perfect to be automated. AI is great at giving you choices. Remember how great it was when you first googled “synonyms for” and found a ton of great alternatives? Now you can ask AI to take a paragraph you wrote and give you five different and better alternatives, and milliseconds later, you have them. AI assistants can “look over your shoulder” as you work on an email, for example, and tell you that your tone is harsh or you’ve mixed up the dates you’ve asked for the work to be completed.

What do you do better than AI? Probably the things at which you are best. The initial AI efforts wrote about as well as a sixth-grader. Current models are working at the undergraduate-level. AI will continue to advance, but it will never replace human expertise. For one thing, its data is based on human expertise, so it needs humans to continue pushing the limits of science, art, philosophy and the like in order to provide the “tokens” AI uses. So a very good lawyer may use AI to do research, or to hone a closing argument, but she will not be replaced by AI. Because AI also “hallucinates.” (Notice how we anthropomorphize AI? we have to talk about it a living, thinking “thing” just to make sense of it!).

There are great examples of this. Remember how AI “guesses” the next word? In most legal briefs, you’ll find the phrase “according to the case of X vs Y, . . .” AI “knows” it should use these tokens when you ask it a legal question, but if it can’t find the right citation, it will simply invent one! To AI, these are the right “tokens” to use, but to us, it’s just plain making things up. Since it has no free will, the AI developers call it hallucinating, since what AI does makes sense to it, but not in the real world.

AI can also be manipulated. Perhaps you heard about Google’s AI called Gemini, which started generating images of black Nazis, Asian Vikings, and Indian Romans. How did that happen. AI generated tokens to create images, but a developer put a filter in the program to make the images it created “more diverse.” So AI promptly ignored reality and made black Nazis. These problems are easy to correct, but demonstrate how AI can go wrong.

Now that’s diversity in action! (from the New York Times)

Positive counter examples exist in the world of medicine. AI can look at hundreds of millions of CAT scans and never tires, never has a headache or eye-strain. A good technician will still beat AI, but AI can serve as an initial screening tool or a post facto double-check. AI can also look at large bodies of medical data and find correlations which individual doctors might never see. Likewise, AI is looking at the development of thousands of ways to fold protein molecules into amino acids and thereby make treatments for various illnesses and conditions. Such work, even with modern supercomputers, would have taken decades.

IV. AI is coming, like it or not.

AI is part of the ongoing digital revolution, which means it happens at a pace with which we humans just aren’t prepared to deal. We have gone from the beta (testing) version of AI to level 4.0 in about ten years, and the trend is accelerating. Unlike the flying cars we were all promised in the 1960s, or the electric vehicle revolution which is always just around the corner, AI is already creeping into many things, whether you realize it or not.

Computers were supposed to replace mundane tasks, and they did put typists out of a job, but then coders became a thing. Now coders are in danger, and even so-called “white collar” workers are being reviewed. If you’re average or below average at your white-collar job (and half of people are, by definition), your boss will be considering whether an AI program could easily replace you. AI is seeping into service centers, the places where someone from India tried to convince you they were in Cincinnati and really wanted to help you. AI can make travel recommendations, edit papers, even “teach.” As it does so, there will be examples of really excellent AI efforts that are astoundingly successful, and others which are complete busts.

What cannot be denied is that the level of investment going on in the AI field, the development of the data sources and the research into better ways for AI to learn mean it will continue to affect you, personally, whether you realize it or not.

V. AI will exacerbate inequality.

As much as humans are a learning species, it is amazing that we always convince ourselves this next tool will be all to the good. Mark Zuckerberg thought Facebook would be a place for people to connect and become “friends.” This despite his original intent was to create a site for guys to rate girls on their “attractiveness.” Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google worked under the motto, “Don’t be evil,” despite the fact illegal child porn was immediately one of the top search functions.

The internet writ large didn’t make humans smarter, despite making all the world’s knowledge instantly searchable. It did allow neo-Nazis, perverts, and fraudsters a chance to meet and grow. All that information devolves into cat videos, Tindr, and scams. AI will be no different. A good writer will perfect an even better paragraph or story. A scam artist, a better pitch, customized just to you. A good priest, a better sermon. A crank, a more inviting screed against whatever. For every medical breakthrough, there will be fake-news causing unnecessary death or illness.

The power of AI will enable people to do great and terrible things. Those who better understand AI will be better at using it, and far better at avoiding it using them.

E-clip-sin’

Back around eleven months ago, I realized the path of totality for the April 8th solar eclipse was running through Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico. While it’s not close (six hour drive), it’s close enough to lakeside, and we were still early enough to reserve a decent Airbnb. So we found ourselves in a very nice apartment on the 14th floor (18 story building) on the playa in Mazatlán.

The night before, we stood on the balcony and nabbed these pics of what seemed to be a typical Sunday night, with steady traffic along the beach drive and small crowds on the malecon. Of course there was a local group playing banda music directly in front of our building till midnight, but earplugs, a white noise machine, and some melatonin remedied that.

The crowds started to build in the morning. Breakfast at the mom-n-pop restaurant next to our building took twenty minutes to be seated, a full hour to be served, and they were going as fast as they could. By the time we finished and paid, it was only about thirty minutes to totality. The police had suddenly shut down auto access to the beach drive, so traffic was a nightmare, as people who planned to drive down to the beach were suddenly rerouted through the narrow side streets. But it gave the growing crowds unfettered access to the road and the sun show.

Our balcony was facing the beach, and it wasn’t clear if we could stay there and still see the eclipse. As the time grew near, we found a balcony spot where we could stand and–using those special glasses–look at the sun. By the time totality hit, there were several spots on the balcony with a full view.

Here’s my video of the event, with voice over:

The mostly Mexican crowds had a festive atmosphere, even cheering when a few rowdies got hauled away by the policia. As the eclipse neared totality, the crowd started cheering, and resumed it when the sun finally peeked out the other side of the moon. It was very interesting, if brief. I was struck by how “duskish” or “dawnish” it was; dark where we were, but you could see daylight in the distance in every direction, which was odd. And I imagined what it must have been like for people before science could explain and even predict it all; one minute, you’re working on your crops, then it gets dark under a cloudless sky, then light again. What did one make of that?

Our friends Barbara and John joined us for the event, and here’s John’s much better video, which captures how dark it was, and some of the crowd reactions better:

And you knew this had to be added somewhere in the post:

As an event, was the eclipse worth it? Yes, but I would add I think I only need to see totality once. And totality is totally different from any other (even 95%) type of eclipse. My mind wasn’t blown, nor did I have a moment of cosmic enlightenment. It was fun.

How about Sinaloa in general, or Mazatlán in particular. For all the talk about cartel violence, the city was quiet for the event, with the exception of the violence banda does to one’s ears! Perhaps it was the presence of Mexico’s Presidente AMLO, or the number of Guardia National and policia present, but everyone was on their best behavior. We had one brief stop on the autopista (toll road) along the way: a well-run military checkpoint asking if we were trying to import any fruta (fruit) into Sinaloa. Turns out that Sinaloa, like California, is free of the dreaded Mediterranean fruit fly, and wants to stay that way!

Mazatlán has some long, easily accessible beaches, a cute old centro, and plenty of water activities. And it’s still affordable, as it is not yet a big tourist destination. As a low-cost alternative to better-known Mexican resorts, it deserves a look. As a place to watch an eclipse, it was perfect. Now to get some fresh seafood and a margarita!

Spring Forward !?!?!

America just went through its annual rite of passage, jumping forward to daylight saving time. It is always accompanied by another round of complaints, confusion, and protest. ^{Americans have so little to argue about, it’s a good thing they still have this}(^sarcastic font). In the end, it’s all a battle about sunlight, when you get it, and what you call it.

Let’s start with the basics. The amount of daylight one receives daily depends primarily on one’s latitude (a north-south measure). At the equator, it’s twelve hours daily, always. As you move north or south, days become increasingly longer (in summer) or shorter (in winter). The seasonal daylight change is actually due to the Earth’s inclination (tilt), but let’s not introduce astronomy, ok? So there’s little reason to fool with the clocks for lands near the equator, as the amount of sunlight at say 7:00 am is roughly the same, January through December. But as you move toward the poles and light becomes dearer in the dreary winter, your children will be waiting for the school bus in the dark, or you will be driving home from work at night. Likewise, plentiful Summer daylight could be wasted in bed, so the idea was born to simply change what we call the time to adjust that variable to when the sunlight is available.

Next subject is geography. Most countries lie in a single time zone. It is an odd coincidence that most countries are either roughly square or taller (north-south) than wider. While they may switch from standard to daylight saving times (and back) during the year, the whole country is affected uniformly. If your nation fits snugly into a time zone, the fact it gets dark at 5:00 pm in one city and 5:15 in another and 5:30 in a third is hardly worth arguing about.

The major exceptions to this rule are the United States, Canada, Russia, China, and Australia, which span multiple times zones. Russia spans the most (nine), followed by Canada (five and a half!), China (should be four, but is one), the continental USA (four) and Australia (three). Which of these things is not like the other? Only in the US is the population spread out both across and within the time zones. Russia and Australia have the bulk of their people in a single time zone and vast relatively unpopulated other time zones. China is likewise, but simply mandates everyone be on “Beijing time.” Screw you, Xinjiang if dawn is at 11:00 am! Canada has population spread, but is still relatively sparse. In three of the four continental US time zones, there are several large cities on different (east-west) sides of a single time zone. Which means there are many people who will be advantaged or disadvantaged by being in the same time zone. When you try to make the bus stop happen in daylight in Boston, the commute home in Detroit is pitch dark, or vice versa). That is the simple reason it’s always been a contentious issue in the US, especially more so than in other countries.

Let’s take Mexico for example. The federal government did away with daylight saving (note there is no extra “s”) time last year. Mexico has four time zones, with the bulk of the population being in the Mexico City time zone. Quintana Roo (home of Cancún and the other resorts) mirrors US Eastern time, as that is where the bulk of its tourist business lives. Likewise, the Mexican border states mirror their northern cousins, switching or not to simplify travel and trade across the border. Mexico is in the tropics, so the real daylight change is between one and two hours at most, so no one is terribly disadvantaged and time doesn’t become a contentious issue.

Why do we even change times? It started as a wartime experiment when the US adopted it in 1918 during WWI. The idea was to economize on power and fuel by adjusting times so war industry workers had access to the most daylight in Summer. No one has ever definitively proved any real advantage to it, however. The initial opposition was attributed to farmers who complained about messing with Mother Nature, but this is probably apocryphal, since farmers work on natural schedules, and don’t care whether city folk call dawn 5:00 am or 6:00 am; it’s just when the animals need feeding.

Another silly argument to dispense with is based on the recurrent studies which show negative health effects from time changes. These are what is known as correlation–not causation–effects, meaning two things vary together but one does not cause another. If you ever heard the phrase “what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” the meaning of that obscure saying is that you can find many variables that increase or decrease together, but no one should then assume one causes the other to change. How do we know there is no direct causation? If there was a causation between time changes and major negative health outcomes, the millions of business people and tourists who fly across the Atlantic and Pacific every day would be dying in droves. It doesn’t happen, so there is no causation, just correlation. What does happen is jet lag, which is lousy but not fatal.

What is very real is an increase in things like accidents when driving or walking at night, so forcing commuters or children to do so costs lives. But remember, making it work in New York means it doesn’t work in Indianapolis! There are workarounds. People in Xinjiang keep Beijing time officially, but do all their scheduling on “local time.” The central time zone in Australia is on a half hour offset, as is Newfoundland & Labrador in Canada. But that involves relatively small groups of people and places without that much travel between them.

So if daylight saving time is so great, why not keep it permanently? It’s only great in Summer, when it maximizes your time outdoors in the sunshine. The US tried this in 1974, when Congress repealed the “fall back” time change during the Summer of that year , and President Nixon signed the bill into law. Seventy-five percent of American supported the measure. When Winter came, the new Summer-focused time failed miserably (darkness for school busses, for example), leading to a massive change in public opinion and the repeal of the repeal by then-President Ford in October, 1974.

Time doesn’t have to change. Time changes probably don’t save power, or fuel, but they also don’t make you sick. What they do, do, is maximize your access to plentiful sunlight in both Summer and Winter. If that’s important to you, embrace DST. Or move to Singapore. But please stop complaining!

Ecce Homo

I have heard it said that nothing brings home one’s mortality more than the death of one’s last remaining parent. You now stand at the door, looking into the abyss, with no comforting generational buffer between you and eternity. My Dad just passed on, but I don’t feel that way at all. I have many emotions: I am sad for the grief I sense in my wife, my children and grandchildren, and my siblings. I am relieved that Dad’s suffering is at an end. I am grateful for the life and upbringing he (and my Mom) gave me. Mostly I am proud of the Man he was.

Charles William Neary, Chuck (but never, ever “Chucky,”) was the eldest child of Charles Joseph and Loretta (Vollrath) Neary. He was born on June 4th, 1929, and he liked to insist the market crash was not his doing. That was Chuck, always quick with a quip. If he didn’t invent the concept of “dad jokes” he almost certainly perfected it.

The eldest of twelve siblings, he was in some respects an extra parent to the youngest ones. Like his father, he was a good enough athlete to entertain notions of being a player, but too grounded to pursue them. In the early twentieth century, boys played sports, men held jobs. He was a quick study, and even briefly attended the University of Notre Dame, but couldn’t hack working a union job at the local Bendix factory with his father, attending classes, and commuting from their home in distant LaPorte, Indiana. At the same time.

His father wanted him to stay and support the family; Chuck wanted to get married and leave. He could easily recall the epic fistfight he and his Dad had in front of the family home when he decided against his father’s will. Chuck enlisted in the Army; a way to leave with dignity while setting the stage to marry Delores. His brief stint in uniform was uneventful, and he returned to LaPorte with his bride, until the fateful day when he soon got another telegram from the War Department directing him to return to duty due to the Korean war.

Chuck had learned to type in high school, so he was assigned as a personnel specialist to a division HQ. Through an accounting mis-classification, he found himself re-assigned as a combat infantryman just as the Chinese sent a million volunteers south to stop the United Nations advance. He never seemed traumatized by the months in combat, but he never talked that much about them, either. When he finally returned again to Indiana, he traded the olive drab of Army life for the navy blue of the Indiana State Police.

If the Irish cop is a stereotypical character, Chuck was straight from central casting. His had a wry sense of humor, was a quick and excellent judge of character, coupled with a friendly style that served him well. He lucked into a local starring role during the manhunt for a fugitive who killed a sheriff and eluded the police. Chuck literally chased him down in a foot race and became above-the-fold news in Chicagoland. He later helped pioneer a traffic speed enforcement program which placed police cars (driving the speed limit) abreast on highways; whoever tried to pass was arrested for speeding. One can’t print what he was called on the CB radios those days.

Sadly, he was as bad at office politics as he was good at policing. He found himself on the wrong end of several changes in leadership, stifled in his career and sometimes punished just for not taking sides. At one point, Chuck was sent to the ultimate dead-end job: the sole police officer assigned to investigate crimes within the Indiana State Prison. When I asked him once what was so bad about it, he said, “the victims are criminals, the witnesses are criminals, the perpetrators are criminals, everybody lies, and nobody really cares what happens.”

Chuck somehow survived that experience and got a fresh start as the Commanding Officer at a new post near Lowell, Indiana. He excelled in the leadership role, and eventually rose to headquarters in Indianapolis, where he was chief of investigations. He later admitted HQ was far too political a place for a no-nonsense detective like him. He retired from the force as an official “Legend of the Indiana State Police” although he continued to work security and investigatory jobs for years more.

When Delores became incapacitated after failing to rehab from a knee replacement, he became her full time care-giver. She refused a wheelchair or an electric scooter. He literally carried her around, or wheeled her from place to place in one of those chair/step-stool devices meant for home improvement jobs. He cared for her thusly till the day she died.

All those details are the stuff of his biography. They are things about him, but not him. What I could barely ever fathom was the “how” he was the “who” he was. Police work is legendarily the realm of workaholics, cops being on-call all day, every day. Yet Chuck was an omnipresent figure in my childhood: on the parish council, coaching the baseball team, running the school’s Presidential physical fitness test. At times I wished he wasn’t always around, like when he called me “Neary” so that he didn’t show any favoritism among the other team members. Perhaps the fact he often showed up in uniform was a detail I missed at the time: somehow he crammed thirty hours of activities into every twenty-four-hour day.

The man loved to drive, and he drove very fast. As a child I remember keeping tabs on how many cars he passed when we went on a long vacation drive. It exceeded a thousand. After all those years as a trooper, he was comfortable driving, and it was very hard to finally get his grip off the steering wheel. And yes, it’s genetic, just ask my daughters.

Chuck had a temper, and he could be overly strict. Between his upbringing and career, he tended to view the downside of things more than the positives: you can’t witness the worst of people and things all the time and not be affected. That manifested itself in views that were stereotypical and emblematic of his times. He fought to overcome the urge to voice thoughts which he later regretted, but you could see him struggling with the difference between what he thought and what he knew he shouldn’t say.

He was always his own man, very sure of who he was, and what he could or couldn’t do. If the man had a midlife crisis, it passed before lunch. If he pondered any existential dread, he shrugged it off with a so-what. His Catholic faith was enough for him.

He was clever, but always regretted not finishing a college degree. After a few beers on a Saturday afternoon, he once told me “being right all the time” was his biggest problem: “people resent it.” He was right about that, too. He probably didn’t realize how unusual that talent is.

In a modern twist on an Irish tradition, we loved to fight. Dad and I always engaged in battles of wits whenever we got together. Like the scene from his favorite movie “The Quiet Man,” we enjoyed the contest more than the result. I’d make an overly strong comment, Dad would object, and off we went. At times the argument would go on-and-on, each trying to find a new opening or point of attack. On more than a few occasions, we ended up completely changing sides during the argument: what mattered was the fight itself.

Chuck’s Dad died at sixty-three from a debilitating neurological disorder. The grandfather he never knew died at forty-two (kidney failure), great granddad at sixty-four (gastric ulcer). I once told him–based on our paternal history–my goal was to live to forty and anything more than that was “extra time.” Chuck lived to ninety-four, and I’m in year twenty-four of extra time. Maybe the genes aren’t all that bad.

In his final years, Chuck became a mainstay at his parish, then at his retirement community. He rediscovered his inner ham, playing the lead roles in several plays there. He found another chance at romance with Sharon, who was his companion and eventual caregiver to the end. His heart simply refused to stop beating although it declined from sixty-to-forty-to-twenty percent effective, and he needed to move into assisted living. When my sister asked him which facility he wanted to move to, he simply pointed up.

At 5:17 this past Tuesday morning, I woke up. I usually wake up around 6:00 am, a habit from years of military and government service. This was different. I went and said my morning prayers, then started my daily reading, when I got an e-mail from my brother-in-law asking that I call my sister immediately. Dad had hit the call button around 5:30, and had died shortly thereafter. I can’t help but think he gave me one last shove that morning, a little “get ready, you’re next in line.”

I loved the man, warts and all. His entire extended family, of which he was literally the paterfamilias, will miss him dearly.

Behold the Man.

Cuaresma, or Lent

We are currently three weeks into the holy season of Cuaresma, or Lent. Growing up in a predominantly Catholic community centered on the local parochial school, Lent (and Advent, leading up to Christmas) was a period of significant, noticeable change. The colors of the priest’s vestments and the altar cloth changed to penitential purple from everyday green. Fasts hit on Ash Wednesday, when Catholics (and Episcopalians among others) carried a visible reminder in ashes in the form of a cross on the forehead, and Good Friday, which was also the only day all-year that no masses were celebrated. The absence of meat on Friday was a year-long thing back then, so there was nothing new about it during Lent.

Time marches on, or to paraphrase the Beatles In My Life, some things “have changed, some forever not for better.” The Roman Catholic Church decided to modernize some of its practices after the Second Vatican Council, in a bow to the modern world. Unfortunately, the world didn’t respond in kind. There was no great increase in devotion, no increase in charitable activity, no increase in vocations to the priestly or religious life. Rather, most took the changes as signs that such things didn’t really matter: if the Catholic Church doesn’t even require such things, obviously they won’t matter to the faithful.

Some Catholics struggled with abstaining from meat on Fridays, which remained a requirement only during Lent. Children didn’t like fish, and some were allergic to it. Business people had dinner engagements where avoiding meat was a hardship. The Church compromised by indicating Catholics should substitute some personal form of denial in place of abstaining from meat. What the faithful heard was “we only have to give up meat on Fridays during Lent.” Ask a Catholic friend (or yourself) what you give up weekly during the year in lieu of abstaining from meat, and you’ll get an excuse (“Oh, that’s only during Lent) or a puzzled stare. Not what was intended, but what was effected.

It’s not like it was a great hardship. I’ve caught myself eating fine Salmon hierbas on Fridays in Lent and thought, “well, I’m technically in compliance, but is this really penitential?” Where I grew up in northern Indiana (last millennium), fish was fresh as perch from Lake Michigan (where fish could be used as thermometers due to their high mercury content), or frozen and expensive, or frozen and cheap in the form of “fish sticks,” which mainly consisted of batter around unidentifiable fish-meal that served as a means to carry enormous slabs of “tartar sauce” into one’s mouth, since eating “tartar sauce” by itself would be uncivilized. Heck, even McDonald’s catered to Catholic tastes, inventing the filet-o-fish when burger sales plummeted on Fridays.

Nothing reminds me of life as it was back then like being in an overwhelmingly Catholic country here in Mexico. Restaurants and shops advertise their comida de Cuaresma, special menus or meals that comply with the liturgical restrictions. When I still worked, the guards at my office building routinely stopped me to say “Sir, you have something on your forehead” every Ash Wednesday; I responded, “why, yes, yes I do.” That would never happen here. Holy Week, Easter Week, and the days between Christmas and Three Kings Day are vacation days, either in fact or in practice. The Mexican federal government and the Catholic Church have been at odds (or even at war) over the centuries, but the practices and habits remain unchanged.

I saw a phony FaceBook meme quoting Pope Francis as saying ‘to be kind to strangers, to help the homeless, rather than giving up things’ this Lent. I knew without researching it that it was false, as it makes a fundamental theological error. That is, it equates an everyday necessity (give to the poor, clothe the naked, etc.) with a penitential practice. The former all Christians are called to do ALL the time as in Luke 17:10, “we are unworthy servants, we have done only what we are required to do.” The latter is something we do special. But why?

Penitential acts are not for self-improvement. Long before Dry January became a thing, I started giving up all alcohol during Lent. No red wine with my pasta. No afternoons with a margarita on my terraza. No beer (green or otherwise) on St. Patrick’s Day (On this, I am still lobbying the Church in Mexico to offer a dispensation, as my Bishop back in Indiana did; no luck so far). While my Irish liver enjoys the respite, that is a secondary benefit. I give up something I enjoy as a penance: in a small way, I mirror Christ’s period of fasting in the desert before He began His earthly ministry. And I deny myself something that I want in order to submit my desires to God’s. If God wants me to drink Guinness on St. Paddy’s Day, He’ll arrange that dispensation; otherwise, my next tipple will be at Easter brunch.

That is also why I avoid some of the Pharisaical or Jesuitical practices (big words we could easily translate into modern language with “lawyerly”). For example, some friends offer to not drink in front of me; I insist they go right ahead and enjoy themselves, which is all part of my penance. Others recommend a non-alcoholic beer or a Mocktail which is promised to be just as good as the real thing; I decline, since the point isn’t the alcohol. And perhaps you’ve heard of Lent as a period of forty days, but if you count on the calendar from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, there are forty-six days. Seems that forty total excludes Sundays, which are technically Catholic “feast” days when fasting and penance are inapplicable. Sorry, but that turns a long-run commitment into a series of one-week stands, which doesn’t sound theologically appropriate to me. Likewise, the fasting and abstinence rules apply only until age fifty-nine, but since God gave me more years than that, and I’m still healthy, I think I owe something in return.

Penance is a discipline, and it turns the mind from things we want or crave to higher things. I also gave up added sugar this year. Sugar is terrible for you, but I gave it up because I like it, and it’s so terribly addictive that I kept adding more just to make my coffee stay just as sweet. Every day starts with a reminder that while I would prefer adding sugar to my coffee, I said no. I don’t like my coffee better now, but it’s proving a solid exercise in self-denial.

Marriage, faith, or career all require hard work. It is rare to find a married couple who just always-and-forever get along. See one and ask them, they’ll tell you the relationship is either strengthening or weakening. You’re working on it or else. You won’t find a successful professional who is simply a natural. Even freakishly-talented sports superstars readily admit to thousands of hours practicing. And faith is the same. The more time and effort you spend on it, the better you are at it. Which is not to say it makes you a relatively “better” person. Just ask my wife, who readily admits I can be a just a subtle shade of irritable for some reason during Lent. I don’t know what the heck she’s talking about. Perhaps her penance is dealing with me during Lent!

No, giving up alcohol or sugar doesn’t make the world a better place. It may not even make me a more faithful person. But it’s an attempt at denying one’s self, and if there’s anything today’s world is sorely lacking in, it’s that type of self denial.

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Forty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, a lowly US Army First Lieutenant took his pregnant wife on a week-long vacation (we didn’t have the fancy term “babymoon” back then) from Bavaria to the Balearic islands. They spoke no Spanish, had no cell phones, and had only a 1:250,000 government map to navigate by. They stayed in a tourist-package hotel near Magaluf, one which targeted Brits, evidenced by a full English breakfast and the London tabloids at the front desk. The hotel next door was for Germans: it had brötchen mit käse and the Süddeutsche Zeitung to read. From this the 1LT learned that Americans weren’t unique in wanting things from home, even on vacation.

Only his pregnant wife had an international driver’s license–a must back then–so the Lieutenant was reduced to the role of navigator. They got lost, more than once, on mountain roads, looking for a religious relic in a remote village, following a tiny line on a large map (insert your favorite Lieutenant with a map joke here). They arrived in small towns without any ability to ask for directions or even for help. They sought and found a convent offering a unique local pastry by walking around a village until they saw a nun, then following her home. They ended up on a “bilingual” cave tour where the local guide described the cave formations for ten minutes in Spanish, then stopped and said. “The Madonna. See? The Madonna.” They attended a silly recreation of a knight jousting competition (complete with eat-roast-chicken-with-your-hands) because it actually made sense regardless of the language.

It was their first great travel adventure. They survived, proof that there are Guardian Angels and they do look after fools and children (the couple qualified both ways). It was a great success, and they had stories to tell which still amuse themselves and others to this day.

When we started on planning a visit to try out the region of southern Spain, Judy asked me if we would be far from Palma de Mallorca? Why, no, and so here we are, forty years later, back where all the wanderlust started. The Cathedral still stands as mighty and majestic as always, but there’s an entirely new chapel with a Antoni Gaudi influence. The arch which was a must-see in the 1980s (“it had a mix of Roman, Muslim, and Christian influences”) is only a footnote now, found via Google Maps. One can’t get lost, even navigating the winding backstreets of the old city, because GPS tracks your every step. And the little lanes and winding country roads are now well-lit streets and highways courtesy of the European Union.

We speak Spanish, but everybody speaks English, too. Oh, and some German here. There are still little hotels catering to Brits and Germans, but who needs newspapers when your smart phone is in constant touch with news back home. On our last night, the hostess at the tapas bar heard us speaking English, so she assigned the English-speaking Argentine waitress to our table. When Judy started ordering in Spanish and we explained our home in Mexico, the waitress loved it. We even found a little Catholic church back near Magaluf, where the very English congregation holds one English-language Mass every Sunday with a very Nigerian priest presiding. Such is the world today!

Mallorca retains its unique culinary traditions, a mix of Spanish and North African, as translated by the Catalan settlers who civilized the islands. Plenty of delicious seafood, rabbit (like Malta), olives in every form, and of course tapas. The road signs are a mix of Mallorquin (local Catalan dialect) and Spanish, which at times even defeated Señor Google Maps. We traveled among the locals, visiting Sunday markets and strolling through the plaza, secure in the knowledge that even in a tiny village, we could find a kebab place for lunch–because who doesn’t want kebab for lunch? Apparently the whole word does!

We walked, we drove, we wandered, seeing how much had changed and how little, too. Mostly we recalled how much we had changed . . . and how little, too! The Balearic islands are known for partying, nature, and glitz (Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza respectively, although there’s a mix on all three). We were then youngsters “putting away childish things” and becoming adults. We had dreams of children and career and travel. Now we’re far more mature–at least in years–and we have realities of grandchildren, retirement, and still travel.

Perhaps Buckaroo Banzai was right: “no matter where you go, there you are.”

Andalucía, Spain

What’s better than being an expat? Maybe an intercontinental expat? A Tri-national? We’ve noticed that every Spring, we like to head to Europe for a few weeks. It is the period of the worst weather where we live–although I would note it is still not bad weather, per se, just dry and warm (90 F) with no rain in sight. And it’s shoulder season in Europe, with improving weather there but without the large throngs of tourists and expensive airfares. We would spend more time there in Europe, but we get tired doing the bag-drag as we visit all those wonderful places. Which got me to thinking, which is always dangerous, as my wife likes to say.

What if we got a holiday home somewhere in Europe, where we could go and stay for an extended period of time. How long? EU rules permit tourists to stay 90 days out of each 180, so an April-May-June period is doable. I considered Airbnb and its variants, but we don’t want to be trying a new place every year, and there is no guarantee you can get the same place. We don’t want “a” place, we want our place. But what kind of place?

Has to have great weather during the target dates. Small city or village, not big urban setting. Apartment or small house; we don’t need a big property, and can’t have a yard or garden to maintain. Are such things available, and affordable? Turns out they are! We’re not talking about those One Euro houses you sometimes see advertised: here’s two words of advice on those–JUST NO! But reasonable and affordable small homes and apartments are available for a few tens of thousands of US dollars! Why?

Many European countries are on a population downslope, a decade or more ahead of the US, which is experiencing the same phenomenon. In brief, there are two sets of aging grandparents with one child each, the coupling of which has one child. So there are three households, many times in small cities or villages, and only one young adult to inherit them. This adult wants to live in the big city, where there are jobs and opp-or-tunities (as Eminem sang), not in Grandma’s village. So these small houses are for sale, and there are many of them, which drives prices down. The trick is to find one which doesn’t require enormous renovation, is livable, and is in a town not on the brink of itself expiring.

My basic research indicated two target areas: southern Spain (Andalucía) and southern Italy (Puglia and Sicily). Both have great weather and many available properties. Spain has a well-developed expat market paved by Brits back before Brexit. Italy has the same for Americans returning to their Italian roots. Spain has a language advantage (for us), a better, high-speed, rail network, and allows tourists to own cars. So we made our way to Andalucía to see how it feels.

Much as Jalisco summons up Mexico, Andalucía calls to mind Spain. Tapas, Flamenco, bull-fighting, Jamon Iberico, and more history than anyone can possibly consume. Córdoba and its alcazar, Málaga and the sea, Granada and the Alhambra. It all felt oddly familiar. We had no language difficulty at all. We refused to adopt the Ca-thil-ian lisp, but no one paid our “esses” any attention. A few times we caused some confusion with a pronunciation gaffe, but generally everybody was welcoming and genial. The culture was easy to adapt to, with the exception of the hours. They keep to the afternoon siesta, but eat another meal around 10:00 pm! Given we have taken to eating only breakfast and lunch, we got along fine, but I have no idea how Spaniards do it, eating so much so late. And it remains the case that nothing happens before noon on Sunday, owing to Saturday’s late night revels.

The weather in January is about as cold as it gets here: 50-60 daytime, 40-50 nighttime. Bright sun most days, with fair skies. Cafes are still open, and restaurants have outdoor heaters. Even the beaches are still active, although more for exercise than sun-worshipping. The summer can get beastly hot (>100 F), so air-conditioning is probably a must, heating a maybe. Spring might require neither.

Andalucía passed all our tests. We probably won’t go looking for a place in the big, touristy cities, even in the suburbs. But we saw plenty of smaller towns and even villages that were attractive options. Welcoming culture, great food and weather, good-to-great transatlantic options (including a nonstop from Guadalajara to Madrid): All boxes checked. Come Spring, we’ll give Southern Italy the test!

A Mexican Cable Fable

One of the things making expat life such a phenomenon is the internet. No matter where you go, you can bring parts of your life with you: television shows, sports, even family connections. This access greatly mitigates the home-sickness any expat might feel living far away in a different culture. Of course the internet is (in the famous quote from the late-Senator Ted Stevens) “a series of tubes” through space. Tubes, cables, whatever. The ridiculous metaphor works on many levels, since a small series of cables is the lifeline which provides the whole world to your home. Yes, your telephone does it without cables and delivers it to the palm of your hand, but only a digital native wants to stare at a palm-sized screen all day.

When we arrived in Mexico, our first house had internet supplied by TelMex, the onetime Mexican government utility now owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. It was old-school copper, bundled with your landline, and you could get upwards of 20 Megabytes per second (mbs), enough to stream live television. Reliability was always an issue, with frequent outages and significant speed lags when more users logged in. Years behind the developed world, but good enough.

Eventually fiber optics came to Mexico. TelMex by law had to provide it to all customers, installed free of charge, but their roll-out plan was several years long. Our neighborhood paid to jump the queue, getting fiber optic cable installed early. Of course it was a classic negotiation: we had to pay to have it done, while those immediately around us declined to join in, getting the installation for free. Our neighborhood voted to go ahead, since we wanted the improved speeds (>50 mbs) and reliability. As for our other neighbors, it was just their good fortune to get access, too.

You might be wondering at the fiber optic speed, as in the States it would be in the hundreds of megabytes per second. Here, the fiber optic cable runs to a box in your neighborhood, but the last hundred feet or so are still copper cable into your house and modem, resulting in less performance. Fiber optic cable is expensive and delicate, so TelMex decided to take the performance reduction and avoid the problem of all that cable maintenance. I can’t say that I blame them. If you step on it, kink it, or otherwise molest it, fiber optic cable dies. Copper is far more resilient. You’ll see just how much more later.

Years later we moved into another house closer to the Ajijic centro, and the TelMex fiber optic was already in place there. We were all set for about a year, until the quality and the performance became unstable. It went out for days at a time, and when it worked, speeds dropped below one mbs (barely able to read e-mail) in the evening. Needless to say, television and streaming were out of the question.

We flagged down a TelMex vehicle in our neighborhood (that’s what you do here), and the technico (repairman) agreed to take a look. His instruments told him there was a signal getting through to our modem, but it was very weak, and there was something wrong down the line leading into the house. He showed me where our connection ran along our property line, then into a retaining wall and down to a junction box. The copper cable was stuck inside a broken, corroded plastic tube as protection: for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been lying on the ground. And in the junction box was a mass of extra cable, left there by the installers probably because they didn’t want to bring it back. It was a mess, and the technico couldn’t tell where the problem was, as he was primarily an “indoor” repairman, and this was clearly an “outdoor” problem. He worked for several hours identifying where the cables were, but could not help us any further. He even refused a propina (tip), as he said it was just his job. We weren’t excited about contacting TelMex for help, as we had heard plenty of stories of bad customer service.

We had upcoming travel, so we delayed contacting TelMex. We adapted and endured for a few months. I started using the internet early in the morning, when there was sufficient bandwidth. Judy & I shared time, to make sure we both weren’t trying to use the same few mbs. We sometimes used our phones, even for hotpots, but our T-mobile unlimited international plan throttles you down to 2- or 3-G speed when you are outside the States. We made do. Finally, the internet connection went out completely, and we had to contact TelMex for help.

Judy used the app (en español) to alert them to the problem and what their technico previously had told us. She lost the chat before she completed it, and thought she may have to start over. When she did the next day, they informed her that we already had a trouble ticket and would see a repairman shortly. At least they didn’t say, “mañana.” The next day, he alerted us he was coming and arrived late in the afternoon. He confirmed we had no connection, and I showed him the cable and the junction box. He inspected the cables, and while he agreed they weren’t protected properly, he said the problem must be further up the line.

He walked along until he found the appropriate utility culvert and opened it up. Inside there was another mass of cables, and another junction box for the incoming fiber optic cable. The tunnel was full of dirt, water and an ant colony, the latter quite upset their secure complex was disturbed! The technico brushed all this off (he had seen worse, obviously) and picked up the fiber optic cable, half of which was sticking loose out of the junction box. You could see the cut open ends of the cable and the light shining through! How it got that way he didn’t know; he seemed amazed anybody in our neighborhood had internet with that connection. He told us he needed to return the next day with more equipment and a partner to help test the re-installation.

Late the next afternoon, they started in on the junction box, cleaning the leads and reconnecting the cable. After about two hours, he came up to the house to say they were done, and our internet connection should be restored. It was: a bounteous 50+ mbs! Yes, we still see pretty substantial changes in speed, and brief outages. And we’ve purchased a Starlink dish as satellite backup. And no, the TelMex workers still refused a propina.

Lessons learned? Internet access is a key component to expat life. We bank, connect to family, plan travel, and socialize using it. TelMex customer service was very good. They were willing to speak slowly in Spanish, and happy we could understand and respond. Things like internet speeds are relative, and you can live with much less than sizzling. Global internet access continues to increase. It is amazing to me we’re using the same satellite system (Starlink) as a back-up that the Ukrainian army is using to fight the Russians, but that’s the nature of technology today. Sometimes old tech like copper wires has its uses, especially if the new tech like fiber optics is fragile.

Nothing momentous, just another aspect of life as an expat.

The End of History

Most of my friends will immediately recognize this title, that of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 nonfiction book about what comes after the Cold War. When published, it was a sensation, although the number of people who actually read the magazine article summarizing it greatly exceeded those who waded through his 339 pages of dense politics and philosophy. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Fukuyama for a private lunch one day (benefit of working in the Pentagon), so I was obliged to be in the latter group. With the benefit of that experience, I can strongly recommend the article, as the gist of his argument is there.

Frank’s work was widely ridiculed–again, by those who never read all of it–after the 9/11 attacks. He didn’t predict an end to conflict, just the fact that the Cold War proved two things: freedom is better than authoritarianism as a governmental system, and capitalism is best at economic production. Those truths have stood the test of time since he wrote them. But those who stopped at the bumper sticker (history is over, end of story) just didn’t get it. They didn’t know history, and they were wrong because of it.

I used to think not knowing history was practically criminal. For example, I would hear people say, “why do I need to know who went to war with whom?” (they never got the who/whom part right, but that’s a different argument for a different day). I often quipped back with a quote from Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Otherwise peaceable Palestinians who lived in Gaza are suddenly realizing what happens when someone starts a ruinous war on your behalf. You don’t get to opt out, you just get to suffer. But lately I’ve decided there is something worse than not knowing history; it’s learning bad history.

See, if you don’t know something about history, you can honestly learn about it and fill in the gaps. But if you have been taught something about history that is either factually incorrect or seriously biased, you’ll continue to insist you’re correct. You will resist the correction. Several current examples suffice:

Kissinger’s War Crimes.

Henry Kissinger recently passed. To say he was controversial is an understatement, as much as it would be to say he was important. Yet most of the press coverage focused on the allegation he promoted or encouraged various war crimes. The most prominent of these charges was that he extended the Vietnam war by “carpet bombing” neutral Cambodia, killing tens of thousands and undermining the Cambodian government so that it fell to the vicious Khmer Rouge. These are three factual statements, although seriously shaded to hide the truth. Kissinger did promote the extension of the war by bombing Cambodia. Many people did die in those attacks, although the number is suspect for reasons I will explain. The Cambodian government did collapse under attack by the Khmer Rouge. What is the bias?

The main supply line between North Vietnam and the Viet Cong guerrillas in the south was the famous Ho Chi Minh trail, a network of roads and jungle paths in Cambodia which paralleled the border. Note the bolding in Cambodia. The US bombing didn’t extend the war into Cambodia; the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) extended the war into Cambodia. The US Air Force simply followed. As to casualty figures, the Air Force was largely bombing jungle trails, so it used carpet-bombing tactics. The idea that tens of thousands of innocent Cambodians were wandering these trails night after night, when they knew bombs were falling, strains credulity. While most of the people killed were just doing a job, moving things from here-to-there, they were involved in the war effort. Finally, the US went on to support a coup d’etat which replaced Cambodian King Sihanouk with General Lon Nol, but neither leader was able to resist the Khmer Rouge, who overran Phnom Penh just as the NVA overran Saigon. Cambodia’s fall was as inevitable as South Vietnam’s.

Bombing an area militarized by an opponent is not a war crime (a lesson being recalled currently in Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, and schools). Neither is killing civilians engaged in combat support efforts. And the postwar history of the Khmer Rouge demonstrates there are things worse than US meddling. Kissinger’s legacy deserves a critical assessment, but war crimes? Sorry, no.

The Nakba.

Many press reports covering the “bigger picture” of the current war in Gaza mention the Nakba. The term means catastrophe in Arabic, and it is used as a descriptive nickname for what happened to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. As the media “contextualized” the story, the nascent Jewish state forced a little less than a million Palestinians from their homes and turned them into stateless refugees. Again, it’s a factual statement, but leaves the full truth wanting. These stories remind me of my visit to Hiroshima two decades ago. As I walked into the Peace Museum, I was struck by the story it told: on a bright, sunny day, people were going peacefully about their lives when suddenly a thousand suns exploded above them. Seriously, no mention of the war going on, the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanjing, the brutality of the Bataan death march or the various atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Just rainbows and unicorns and BOOM. Missing something?

In a similar fashion, the Nakba was preceded by the Palestinian Arabs rejecting the UN two-state solution and joining with five Arab armies in an attempt to kill all the Jews and destroy the Israeli state. They failed and were forced to flee. At the same time, several hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries, and they primarily went to Israel for protection. A catastrophe? Yes. Traumatic? Of course. But this is what happens when you attempt to eradicate a people and fail; they simply won’t return to the peace table until their security is ensured. But the many pro-Palestinian protests you see at American universities stem from teaching only the Nakba, not the rest. Which is why many students draw the wrong conclusions.

The 1619 project.

Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project is an attempt at re-evaluating all American history by tracing our roots not to 1776, but to 1619, the beginning of English chattel slavery in Virginia. The New York Times News division (not Opinion) promotes the project, suggesting they see it as historical fact, not simply an alternative view. There is an associated educational curriculum being used by primary and secondary schools across the nation. The crux of the project is that race, and specifically race-based slavery, is the appropriate prism to view the development of the United States. In the end, everything is about race. The American Revolution? Designed to protect southern slavery against the British abolitionist movement. The Second Amendment? Arms citizen-slave owners against possible slave revolts. America’s police system? Drawn from the fugitive slave patrols. America’s justice system? Incarceration of black men to prevent their development, just as in the old South. American capitalism? From the Plantations. I could go on, but you get the point.

Many professional historians have pointed out the serious fallacies in these arguments. Some proponents of the 1619 Project have backed off, suggesting they only wanted more–and more serious–consideration of race. Who can argue with that? But that’s not what they put forward. These factually wrong ideas are now out there, circulating in the young minds of America. We’ll see more incoherent and violent results in years to come.

Think not? As I wrote this post, the Economist covered a new poll of Americans 18-29. Not youths, young adults. Twenty percent thought the Holocaust was a myth. Another thirty percent couldn’t say whether the Holocaust was a myth (or not). And the results didn’t adjust by education: that is, having an American college degree didn’t make you more knowledgeable about the truth. How could that be? Secondary school history curriculum is perfunctory, and if you cover the Nakba, are you going to cover the Holocaust? It gets worse in college, where educators increasingly teach critical theory focused on oppressers-and-oppressed, leaving Israel in the former group. Which begets the ill-informed pro-Hamas rallies on today’s campuses.

Want to argue whether Henry Kissinger’s narrow focus on the Cold War was brilliant or myopic? Worthwhile. Does the Israeli war against Hamas end up radicalizing more Palestinians than there are now? Good question. What is the lasting effect of slavery on modern America? Start the debate! The examples I cite aren’t designed to illuminate, but to confuse. They stake out extreme positions, lacking context or just being plain wrong.

Baja and the Ruta del Vino

Back after Christmas, we flew from Tijuana back home after getting stranded by bad weather. As a result, we ended up with a large credit on Volaris, a discount Mexican airline beloved by those who are under 5 feet 4 inches, travel with only a purse, and don’t really care what day you depart or arrive, as long as the cost is under $50 USD. I exaggerate. Only slightly.

Being a discount airline, Volaris helpfully expires your credit after only six months, relieving you of the burden of actually using them. Some of our hefty credit was about to expire, so we decided to risk another spin on the Volaris Wheel of Fortune. But where to go? Why not Baja California?

During our Christmas cruise, we visited Cabo San Lucas and Todos Santos, at the very bottom of the peninsula; so this time we headed back to Tijuana, to see the area inland at the very north of the peninsula, called la Ruta del Vino, which lies just north (and inland) from Ensenada.

This area, the valle de Guadalupe, is where 90% of Mexican wine is produced. Mexican wines have a growing reputation in the wine world, based on two important facts: the first is European vintners who wanted to go to the New World and try something new, and the second is Baja’s unique climate, which has many of the advantages of California’s wine growing regions without the costs.

Our concept was simple: fly up during the week, hit a few of the two hundred-plus wineries, eat at a few promising places, then come back home before the next weekend’s crowds. There was one flaw: Volaris. They attempted to involuntarily change our itinerary twice before the trip, once moving our departure back a day, the other time changing our three-hour afternoon return flight into an overnight red-eye. I was able to adjust and keep the flights as we wanted. But of course, Volaris had the last word. When we arrived for our afternoon departure from Guadalajara, they announced a three-hour delay (no explanation, no weather, just sit and wait). We also got to enjoy Volaris’ unique boarding and de-boarding processes, modeled after those you might have last seen at Kabul international airport.

After surviving the one-row-at-a-time deboarding (which sounds good, but when one’s hand baggage is not directly above one’s seat, and you can’t get up to get ready until the flight attendant approves, it’s achingly slow), we found the 24-hour Alamo car rental kiosk empty. The taxi hawker told us he knew where Alamo’s office was; they were supposed to be at the airport, but of course they weren’t. As the taxi took us ever further from the airport area and into Tijuana, Judy finally got the Alamo office phone number to work, and they informed us to turn around and go back to a different location, where we finally got our vehicle. As this was the week after the Standard time change, we didn’t arrive till after dark. So our leisurely and scenic afternoon drive along the Pacific coast turned into fighting rush hour in Tijuana, then driving in the dark along the unlit roads of the Baja interior wilderness.

And by wilderness I mean no streetlights, few road signs, and one (count it, one) paved highway. Topping it off, Waze decided a route over the mountain was a few kilometers shorter, so it sent us that way instead of on the highway through the valley. The blessing was that in the dark, I couldn’t see the cliffs we were snaking around. It was not a promising start.

Still, the morning dawned and we saw what we had missed the night before: the natural beauty and bounty of Baja. We had a cabaña at one of the boutique wineries, set amidst the vines. This is a growth industry: nearly every winery we saw was adding acreage, building cabañas, or enlarging tasting venues. The valley is close enough to San Diego that there is a steady stream of Americans taking day trips on guided tours, then there are the shore excursions from ocean cruisers, and finally the more adventurous types (like us) just arranging it all on their own.

We have never been to Napa, but based on what I read and heard from others, the valle de Guadalupe could be described as either a poor-man’s Napa or Napa many decades ago. The vineyards are in, the wines are improving, the wineries are branching out into tours and restaurants. Higher-end gastronomic experiences are spreading, featuring fresh seafood and exotic fusion cuisine. There is a small but increasing set of gastropubs and microbreweries, too. The infrastructure remains pretty basic, but is geared toward American tourists. Most of the working locals we met at tastings were surprised to find gringos who spoke (or at least tired to) español and lived in Mexico.

If you don’t stop here, you may not be allowed to leave Baja!

Since we primarily eat breakfast and lunch, and our hotel provided a freshly made breakfast plate each morning, we were limited in our ability to sample the cuisine. One of our two lunches had to be at la cocina de Doña Estela, a local favorite once named the world’s best breakfast restaurant. Down a rutted dirt road, in the middle of nowhere (Baja, remember), we had a huge steaming plate of machaca (dried shredded beef re-hydrated while cooking with eggs, peppers, onions, etc.) and another of corn pancakes, a savory take on a usually sweet breakfast staple. With drinks, the total was around $500 MXP (perhaps $25-30 USD), and the portions large enough we could have skipped our first breakfast that morning. We didn’t, because like all hobbits, one must eat both breakfasts!

As to wines–we did come here to taste the wines after all–we had an enjoyable time sampling a variety of types of wineries. Again, one can’t miss L.A. Cetto, the largest Mexican winery and local mega-producer. This winery aims at the low-to-middle class market, aiming to make drinkable products for the average consumer. I’m no expert, but I am in the target demographic, and we liked their offerings. At the local wine museum, the curator told us her favorite boutique vintner was Magoni, so we tried that one, too. This was an intriguing, new winery in a beautiful location. We sat under a giant tree which had been cultivated to provide a tent-like canopy over about a hundred tasting seats and tables. Another enjoyable experience.

There are so many vintners experimenting in Baja you can find almost any combination: organic? Si. Straight traditional varietals? Si. Obscure blends? Si. The lure of a start-up region which doesn’t have many rules is attractive to some in the industry, who like working with unusual blends and varietals

Advice for visiting Baja? Either come midweek on your own, or get a tour. Many of the larger wineries (for tastings) and restaurants insist on reservations on weekends and during the high tourist season, and a tour will cover you for these. There are plenty of small, independent operators who won’t break your budget, and they help out local small business-types. I would plan to visit at least one of the scenic, high-end restaurants with a view for a sunset dinner. If you’re on your own, don’t overdo the tastings, and make sure your rental car has some off-road capability (most do). Don’t be afraid to try the seafood: its fresh and delicious! I doubt the wines are world-beaters (if you have that type of palate) but it might be fun to visit and taste at a place that eventually will be world-class. Enjoy!