Arizona football fans disappoint

I've seen college football games in eight of the stadiums of the Pac-12 Conference, but I've never had the chance to see the Arizona Wildcats play at their home in Tucson. 

This troubled me. While Arizona has never had a particularly successful football team, I have long had the impression that they have a loyal and committed base of fans. I respected that and wanted to see it in person.

Finally, this past Saturday, I got my chance to watch football at Arizona Stadium. And to my surprise, Arizona fans were not at all what I expected.

It was Family Weekend at the University of Arizona, where my son is a sophomore, so my wife and I joined throngs of other parents from around the country in Tucson. The Saturday night football game against UCLA was the centerpiece of the weekend's activities.

Considering that the Wildcats had lost 16 straight times, it was surprising how much buzz there was on campus about the game. Inside the school bookstore, fans lined up to buy Arizona t-shirts and other spirit wear (the school had urged people to wear white shirts to make it a "White Out" night.)

Pre-game festivities

On the university mall, fans set up a sea of tents and started tailgating a full six hours before kickoff. Music filled the air, along with the smell of barbecues. Fans bedecked in Arizona jerseys and hats played cornhole, tossed the football around and played drinking games. There was tingling sense in the air, that maybe, just maybe, the Wildcats could pull off a big upset that night.

Come game time, more than 43,000 fans filled Arizona Stadium for the game. That wasn't a sell-out but was pretty impressive considering that ESPN had labeled the Wildcats the third-worst team in the nation.

The large crowd was even more remarkable considering the unfriendly reception fans got at the stadium entrance. You would think that a team with the worse losing streak in college football would be thrilled that anyone would come to its games. I imagined something like this:

"Oh, thank you, dear sir for coming. Here’s a velvet pillow to sit on and a souvenir tankard with the beverage of your choice."

In fact, fans at Arizona stadium we’re greeted with all the warmth of a TSA body cavity search. First, there was the long list of prohibited items. No sandwiches. No cookies. No grapes. No purses. No diaper bags. No fanny packs. Once you got that message, you then had to empty all your pockets, go through an x-ray detector and be prepared to be patted down. 

Nothing like treating your fans — some of whom had paid hundreds of dollars for a single ticket —  like criminals.

Despite this, the stadium was buzzing with excitement as the game neared. A rousing pregame video featuring Arizona sports highlights had the crowd cheering.

The Wildcats seemed to be charged up as well — yes, fan support does make a difference — and drove down the field on its first drive to take a 3-0 lead.

UCLA responded with a touchdown, but Arizona came back with a field goal to make it 7-6.  The underdog Wildcats were going toe-to-toe with the heavily favored Bruins. On key plays, fans roared to exhort the home team.

In the closing moments of the first half,  Arizona scored a touchdown on an electrifying trick play, and that was soon followed by an interception of a UCLA pass. The visitors led only 14-13 as the half ended and the crowd was vibrating with the thought of victory. On ESPN, which was broadcasting the game, announcer Dave Flemming said, "You're feeling the energy start to build in this stadium."

And then the strangest thing happened: People began to leave.

It wasn't apparent at first because a lot of people go the concession stands and the restrooms at halftime anyway, but by early in third quarter it was clear that 20% to 25% of the crowd had left midway through a close game.

I understand leaving a game when your team is getting blown out. But this was far from that. Arizona trailed by one and was besting UCLA in total yards and first downs. It remained a one-point game until late in the third quarter, and even after UCLA took a 24-16 lead, Flemming said, "It's still definitely a ballgame here."

Even well into the fourth quarter, the Wildcats could have tied that game with a single touchdown and two-point conversion. 

Somehow this didn't matter to the fans, who were rushing out of the stadium as if they'd just heard that chicken strips were half-price at Cracker Barrel. The stadium's energy deflated like air rushing out of a balloon. 

With seven minutes left in the game, there probably no more than 5,000 fans remained in the stadium. Some doggedly tried to maintain the enthusiasm, but it was no use. If you were watching on TV, it might have seemed that Arizona's football team ran out of gas in the fourth quarter (UCLA won 34-16). But the crowd quit on the team first. While it's hard to say how much the dwindling crowd support affected the team, it certainly didn't help.

I get that following a losing team can be frustrating. I wouldn't blame anyone for simply not coming out to see such a team play. But once you've bought a ticket, commit yourself. Sure, you can walk out of "Fast and Furious" and no one will care. But at a sporting event the energy of the crowd is part of the experience. Arizona fans, you can do better. 

 

NPR interview falls short on border issues

I've grown weary of people who criticize without offering solutions. It's easy to be negative; it's harder to offer realistic alternatives.

I've also grown frustrated with journalists who enable this kind of negativity.

Case in point is the Sept. 24, 2021 NPR interview with immigrant advocate Alicia Schmidt Camacho, who was invited on "All Things Considered" to discuss what should be done about the many migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. I like NPR a lot, but in this case interviewer Audie Cornish allowed Camacho to persistently ridicule U.S. policy with little effort to suggest options.

When Camacho said that "deterrence does not work," Cornish could have asked, "Then what does work?" When she said U.S. immigration policy was a "failure," Cornish could have asked, "What would you do instead?" 

Not only did Cornish not ask those questions, she allowed Camacho to lecture listeners on off-topic points. Yes, we well know that these migrants have traveled a long way and that immigrants fill many jobs in the U.S., but telling us that does nothing to address border issues.

Eventually — though unprompted by Cornish — Camacho did say that she favored "decriminalizing ordinary migration" and dismantling the "large-scale carceral system" used by immigration agencies. 

What does that mean? It sounds like she supports open borders. But why should we have to guess?  Don't let Camacho hide behind academic jargon. Ask her directly: "Do you support opening the borders and allowing everyone in?"

Such pointed questions are not rude. They are necessary. 

Book review: "Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis

In "Flash Boys," author Michael Lewis does something impressive. He takes a complex and esoteric subject — the shadowy practices of Wall Street's high-frequency traders —and makes it accessible to the average reader.

This is a topic that could easily bog down in the minutiae of computer engineering and financial jargon and fog the mind of the most determined reader. Instead, Lewis engages us by turning into the story into a classic battle between good versus evil, even David versus Goliath.

By focusing on the people and not the technicalities, Lewis brings the story alive with a smoothly moving narrative. He describes how high-frequency traders armed with powerful computers profit by detecting investors' buying and selling orders, then racing ahead to get to the stock market first.  The high-frequency traders can then shift the price before the original order arrives, forcing investors to pay more when buying stock or get less when selling.

This all happens in less than a blink of an eye — it is a business measures in milliseconds. It is also a risk-free way for the high-frequency traders to make billions at the expense of investors. 

While Wall Street promotes itself as open marketplace where buyers and sellers can meet, Lewis says the reality is a murky world where dollars disappear into "dark pools" where insiders enrich themselves. Even most Wall Street bankers don't understand how the high-frequency traders are sucking money out of the market, Lewis says.

Into this bleak scenario, Lewis introduces a small group of men — the "Flash Boys" — who set out to expose the problem and right the wrong.

Lewis does a lot right in this book, but I'm frustrated because he doesn't do many things that would have made the book even better.

First, there are no pictures, not even of the central characters. He says of one person, "He didn't look like a Wall Street trader." Ok, but why not include a picture and let us decide? 

Then there's chapter two, which describes the laying of fiber cable from Chicago to New Jersey just for the use of high-frequency traders. This chapter screams for a map, maybe even two or three. But there are none.

Third, a book of this density, with many characters, companies and concepts sprinkled throughout, could really use an index. There is none.

Similarly, because many people come and go in the story, sometimes with big gaps between appearances, a guide with thumbnail descriptions of the characters at the start or back of the book would have been helpful. 

As the book goes on, the "Good vs Evil" theme runs out of steam. Even the main figure, Brad Katsuyama, eventually comes around to say of the high-frequency traders, "They are much less of a villain than I thought." He concludes that they are only doing what is expected on Wall Street.  "The system has let down the investor," says Katsuyama. 

As for the good guys, Lewis portrays them as so squeaky clean that it strains credibility. Everyone else on Wall Street is greedy as hell, but these guys are purely altruistic?  It turns out that each of the Flash Boys are themselves quite rich, so the David versus Goliath analogy does become strained. 

The latter part of the book slows as it focuses on what the Flash Boys consider the solution — a new stock exchange called IEX that Katsuyama and his colleagues are setting up. They claim IEX will level the playing field and eliminate the chance for high-frequency traders to cheat. There is no great final showdown where the villains are vanquished, but there is a small window of hope. 

Book review: "Rough Riders" by Mark Lee Gardner

A good place to start with "Rough Riders," Mark Lee Gardner's 2016 book, is at the end.

In the "Note on Sources," at the back of the book, Gardner explains why this work goes deeper than previous histories of the Rough Riders, the legendary American cavalry led by Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. Earlier books failed to take advantage of many first-hand accounts written by soldiers that were published at the time in newspapers around the country, simply because the authors were unaware that those accounts existed. 

But today, with millions of historic newspaper pages available on the Internet, Gardner was able to find those published letters and use them to make a much more complete picture of the Rough Riders. This book, Gardner asserts, is "the first to make use of this previously unknown and significant body of firsthand accounts."

Gardner, whose 2010 book "To Hell on a Fast Horse" was also thoroughly researched, supplemented the letters he found with material culled from unpublished Rough Riders' diaries as well as books and news accounts.

The result is an meticulously detailed book about the Rough Riders, a cavalry made largely from "cowboy" volunteers from the American West the was specially created for the 1898 war on the island of Cuba. The full title of the book is "Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill."

Before reading this book, the story of the Rough Riders had long existed on the periphery of my historical knowledge. Yeah, I'd heard of them, but I didn't really know the whole story. I'd also heard a few things that suggested the supposed charge up San Juan Hill either never happened or was blown out of proportion. 

I was first surprised to learn that the Rough Riders were famous even before they even set foot in Cuba and began battle with the Spanish occupiers of the island. The whole creation of the regiment, in part because Roosevelt was involved, was widely reported across the country (Roosevelt was not president yet, but was well-known for his writings and speeches). They were, in effect, celebrity soldiers.

Theodore Roosevelt is my favorite president, but I was dismayed to read how much he and other war hawks selfishly pushed to start this conflict — any war would do — simply so they could join in the battle.

That said, the book makes it clear that the fighting on San Juan Hill (and elsewhere on Cuba) was real and deadly, and that Roosevelt was in the thick of it. Men died all around him. The fact that a bullet never hit him, even though he was often sitting high on his horse Little Texas, is remarkable (and certainly added to his mystique).

Not only did Roosevelt lead the charge up San Juan Hill, he did so twice. The first time, almost no one heard him give the order and only five men followed. They regrouped and the second charge was much more successful.

"Unfortunately, the myth that Roosevelt and his Rough Riders did not charge up San Juan Hill survives to this day, mostly perpetuated by historians who, quite frankly, either have some bias against Roosevelt or have not done their research, or both," Gardner says. 

It's important to note that this book is narrowly about the Rough Riders. I would have liked more "big picture" information on the issues that led to the war and some perspective from the Spanish side, but there's almost none of either.

Even though the Rough Riders suffered through difficult conditions from the start of their training through the end of the war, the soldiers' accounts tend to be upbeat, even "chipper." For instance, one man who was ordered by Roosevelt to stay put in a location exposed to relentless enemy fire, said, "It was a ticklish place, but we'd have lain on a gridiron of hell, if he'd given the order."

Were the soldiers truly so positive? Or was it just not fashionable at that time to complain? Even after reading the whole book I'm not sure. 

If you'd like another good book about Theodore Roosevelt , consider "River of Doubt," the story of his arduous trip through the Amazon in 1914.

Book review: "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck

(This review contains spoilers. A lot of them.)

You want to get rich quick? Think again, suggests John Steinbeck, in "The Pearl."

In this harsh parable, Steinbeck shows sudden wealth ruining the lives of a young Mexican couple named Kino and Juana. And I mean, ruining. In the end, their baby is dead, their house is burned down, many of their neighbors are out to get them, and Kino has had to kill four people defending his family. 

It all starts when Kino, a poor and illiterate pearl diver in a small village in Baja California, finds the "Pearl of the World." The gigantic orb should make him and his family rich, but instead it only brings misery.

"The Pearl" is a short 1947 novella, with only 90 pages in my version. I finished it in two days and it could have been just one with a little more focus.

It is a smoothly engaging tale, starting right from the beginning when a scorpion bites Kino and Juana's baby. Steinbeck's descriptions are evocative. For instance:

"Kino deftly slipped the knife into the edge of shell. Through the knife he cold feel the muscle tighten hard. He worked the blade lever-wise and the closing muscle parted and the shell fell apart. The lip-like flesh writhed up and then subsided. Kino lifted the flesh, and there it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon."

In Steinbeck's telling, sudden wealth can not only upend the life of the recipient, but can disrupt the fabric of a community. Kino's pearl exposes greed and treachery among many of the villagers.

One small flaw: A doctor introduced early in the book as a seemingly important character curiously disappears in the latter half.

Also, I wonder about the message. Is Steinbeck suggesting that people should not attempt to improve their quality of life? If they do, is it inevitable that the hand of fate will bring misery and death into their lives?

I don't buy it. Kino hoped that his new wealth could one day send his son to school so the boy could learn to read. What's wrong with that?

Trying out Long Beach's new Amazon Fresh store

Amazon recently opened a new grocery store in my town, Long Beach, California, and I was eager to try it out. After all, the company has promoted its Amazon Fresh stores as offering a "seamless grocery shopping experience" where customers can skip the checkout line.

How well does it work?  I went there for the first time yesterday and while it was interesting, I would not call it "seamless."

Entering the store, I was surprised to see that it had many normal grocery store checkout stations. In fact, I was to learn, you can shop at Amazon Fresh just like other stores, going to a human checker to pay for your items.

But that's not why I came to the store. I want to shop the New Way. So I immediately headed for one of the Amazon Dash carts, a green grocery basket souped up with a video screen and bar code scanning devices.

An Amazon Dash Cart

Almost immediately, a friendly staff worker came over to show me how it works. First, you pull out the Amazon app on your phone and select "In-store Code." This generates a QR code — one of those blotchy ink-blot like squares — that you show to a screen near the handle of the cart. This logs you in; you can then put your phone away.

All the Dash Carts started preloaded with two empty double-bagged paper bags ready to receive your groceries. As the helpful worker explain, as you place items in the cart, a set of readers (small screens) around the perimeter of the cart will see the bar code and add the item to your total.

I had brought two plastic bags of my own, but the worker told me not to place those in the basket, because that would confuse the machine. I had to hang them on plastic hooks at the back of the cart.

My first stop was the produce section, where I tried placing some bananas in the cart. I kind of knew this wouldn't work, since there's no bar code on the bananas. Indeed orange lights lit up on my cart, warning that something wasn't right. I pulled the bananas out, and using the screen on the cart, entered the four-digit "PLU" number. It asked how bananas there were, I entered the number, then placed them in the successfully in the cart.

I picked out some cucumbers and followed the same process. I didn't choose any items that had to be weighed, but there were scales in the produce section if you needed to.

Buying produce always is a bit more complicated than other products no matter what store you're in. If you were using a self-checkout station at any grocery store, you would be entering the number of bananas or the weight of the item at the checkstand. Amazon Fresh has just shifted this to the produce section.

From there, I moved on to items with bar codes. I tossed a small bag of pasta into the cart, and the system successfully read the bar code on the fly. But for a couple other items, I got the Orange Lights of Rejection and had to pull them out and place them more slowly in.

I tested the cart a couple times by placing an item in and then removing it. The screen acknowledged that the item was removed. The screen kept a running total of your purchases, which could be handy to monitor your spending.

The Dash Cart is not set up for a large shopping trip. If you fill up the cart to the brim, the code-reading lights won't be able to see properly. You also can't place items on the shelf under cart.

This Amazon Fresh is an average-sized grocery store, but had slightly less selection of items than normal. It had no diet root beer, for example. The orange juice shelves offered only a few choices.

Finally, I was ready to check out — and this is where the promise of the Amazon Fresh stumbled. You supposedly can simply walk down a dedicated lane with a big green arrow and leave. Your Amazon account be automatically charged

But when I got to that lane, there were two customers with carts in front of me. Two store employees seemed to be checking what they bought. So I waited and pondered the meaning of "seamless."

Trying to leave

Finally, the lane cleared, and the same helpful employee showed how I should double check the total on my screen, and then click accept and then go.

Except I really couldn't. She now told me that I couldn't walk to my car with my cart. The cart couldn't leave the store. 

I hadn't planned on this twist, but I was able to do some quick reorganizing, placing all my items in the two paper Amazon bags and one bag that I had brought, then carrying them out. This is another reason not to fill your cart too full. I suppose I could have moved all my items to one of the regular carts, but I thought Amazon was trying to make shopping easier not harder. 

All in all, I'm underwhelmed by Amazon Fresh. The checkout was not particularly fast and having to hand-carry your groceries to your car is a step backward. Also, the small size of the Dash Cart greatly limits its usefulness. 

Book review: "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Patton

 It took me a long time to read "Cry, the Beloved Country." Decades, really.

That's how long the book sat on the shelf at my house. It was one of those books that I thought I would get to someday.

That day finally came this year, and I pulled it off the shelf. I figured I'd already taken too long to get to a book that is often considered the classic novel of South Africa.

But even with the book in my hands, it took a while to get started. The paperback version I had began with a  three-page "Note on the 1987 Edition," followed by a one-page "Note on the 1959 Edition." That was followed by "Note on the 1948 Edition" (another three pages) and then the foreword, and then an 11-page introduction.  Then, finally, came the book - whew!

So was it worth the wait? "Cry, the Beloved Country" is quite good, though imperfect. I would recommend it for anyone with an interest in South Africa.

I was impressed by how author Alan Patton used a personal story focusing on an aging pastor to illustrate the culture and conditions of South Africa of the 1940s. Perhaps not surprising — since blacks and whites in South Africa at the time lived much different lives — racial issues are a large part of the story. 

The book engages you from the start as main character Stephen Kamalo, receives a letter prompting him to abruptly leave his small village and head to the massive city of Johannesburg, a place he initially finds bewildering. Kamalo is on hunt for, first, his sister, and then his son, both of whom vanished into the amorphous metropolis after leaving the village. 

The hunt keeps the story moving forward, but when it ends, only midway through the book, the story loses much of its impetus. Patton, a South African, clearly wants to show the racial tensions in the country, but seems unsure how to best do so. There are some passages in the midsection of the book, seemingly unfinished, where it's hard to tell whose perspective is being presented. The character of Kumalo's brother rises to some significance in this portion, then disappears from the narrative.

The book regains it's footing in the last third, and finishes strong. An emotional scene between Kamalo and his condemned son had me close to tears.  

The book, and much of the dialog, is written in something of a stilted, old-fashioned format.

"I have come," he said.

"It is good."

"You did not write."

"No, I did not write."

"Where is your husband?"

"I have not found him, my brother."

Taken out of context, the passage seems almost cartoonish. But it works in "Cry, the Beloved Country," because Patton uses it consistently and the rhythm fits with the story.

I did find it strange that there are some characters with continuing roles through the book —"the girl," "the boy," "the young white man" — whose names you never learn. 

Once I finished, I returned to the start of the book and read the notes and foreword. It was interesting to find that the book wasn't even written in South Africa, but in Norway and San Francisco. (Patton was traveling at the time.)

Even more interesting was that the book came to be published largely because of the determined efforts of two friends Patton had in California. They liked the story so much, they queried publishers on Patton's behalf.  When one expressed interest, then spent a frantic few days turning the author's handwritten manuscript into a typed version that barely reached New York in time for a fateful meeting between Patton and the Scribner publishing house.