Issue #12 December 2025

Notes on Dog Cartography (and other existential concerns)

By Gustavo I. Gomez

You don’t want to know what it’s like to house-sit three spoiled-rotten dogs all by yourself. You have to be on guard at all times. Those little critters your wife calls her “fur babies,” and that you love more than you’re willing to admit, are mischievous little buggers.

You usually never had problems when you lived by yourself, and you only had the one dog. The doggy love of your life. A black Miniature Schnauzer called “Herr Adler von Borinquen,” whom you credit for saving your life and a bunch of other superstitious, physics-law-breaking, serotonin-induced miracles that you attribute to how you felt when he stared at you, and you went off to interpret—as if he were Lassie—that he was communicating with you.

You had not taken him out for a walk; all he wanted was his walk, and there you sat, as if you were a character from the Bible, with a revelation that your dog gave you, all the while he was really trying not to pee where he sleeps, which is next to you.

At least he had the decency to wait for your egocentric delusions, and inadvertently assuage them.

When the second dog came along (his son!), you didn’t have the chance to train him. It was Covid, and Panama forbade people from taking their dogs out. This created a habit similar to one from your childhood: Easter egg hunting, only this time it was tiny little pellets of poop hidden in the most obscure places of your “maison.” Sometimes they chose to go nougat style. Sometimes it was chocolate fondue. It was always someplace unforgivable, and you cannot blame yourself for losing a little bit of your sanity during those prohibition days.

Oh, you also created this little game for yourself: poop-and-pee cartography. Drawing the exact position between the poops and the rivers of pee that formed between the colorful and boldly scented islands of poop, continents of furniture, chairs, the inside of your favorite shoe…

So what did you do? You went ahead and bought a third puppy. A Parson Jack Russell, a breed known for being, well, ask the British government how many irreplaceable antiques were destroyed by the one owned by former PM Boris Johnson. You picked that breed, one that gladly tagged along with the untrained chaos.

You called yours “Brexit.”

You considered yourself a masochist, mentally unstable, or both. Who in their right mind gets a third during a pandemic with one troublemaker already wreaking havoc and an older dog learning that he, too, could get away with it… and his son would get the blame? You knew it was going to be impossible to handle the little velociraptors, let alone train them yourself. All the good manners the old dog had had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with that beautiful (calling her this will get you in trouble with your wife, but she was, and the reader deserves the truth) and very Dutch unemployed ex-girlfriend you had at the time, who used all of her Nordic Pagan discipline (at least Pagan to you, a Latino in a toxic relationship with chaos) to train that first dog like he were to be shipped to Meghan Markle.

These little buggers you had to train yourself. You keep asking yourself why. Every work of art left by these dogs in your house is a tribute to how bad you are as a dog trainer.

And it escalates every time your wife leaves the house. It doesn’t matter how much you have spent cleaning and disinfecting and even changing furniture.

They have a map. You have a dog poop-and-pee cartography chart in your living room.

You better have some poop bags nearby.

And yet, for all your bickering as if you were an old Muppet in the opera balcony, you know deep inside that you don’t just love dem little furry vandals (for they do go Rastafari when you choose to spend their grooming cash on bringing down the credit card balance, and then complain about the smell and the strange stains they leave on the couch). You are obsessed, in love with them. The pandemic came and went. They remain. You spend hours marauding the Web for tips on their behavior, convincing yourself they’re miniature Mr. Miyagis teaching you to wax on and wax off your emotions. Deep down, you know they don’t really do that. You know that if they come toward you, it’s more often than not one of three: feed me, pet me, or watch that carpet turn from white to yellow. You know they are not fur babies. They are animals. And you know the most dehumanizing thing you can do is humanize them. They’re not prophets. They probably do smell the changes in your body when you’re stressed, but you did not train them to. But you don’t care about how the very well-researched rationale for dog reactions and realities works. You toss logic out the window just because the mutts are staring at you with deep, loving eyes, their brains fixed on the taste of those mini burgers you bought at Petco last week. And you, the Internet knowledge warrior, refuse to accept that: they are talking to you. You are special. You are different.

Loving dogs involves a contract nobody warns you about. It is a contract with the most beautiful and the most dreadful lessons of life. You sign up for joy, for unconditional love, for a connection that makes you believe that God is dog spelled backwards. And as alibis: everyone understands the pain of cleaning carpets, disinfecting cushions, mapping out where little digestive crimes occurred, thus needing to go home and walk them or look after them. They are the perfect excuse to leave early from those things you never want to go to in the first place. But what surprises you is how this contract forces you into the present. Into routine. Into care. Into the grit that keeps your feet on the ground when your head wants to float into existential orbit.

But you also sign up for the most painful of lessons: you know your dog will die before you. You know there’s nothing you can do about that. You stop and then reflect: is the chaos they cause really worth the pain you are signing up for? Or is it another life lesson, teaching you that nothing in this world is perfect, that Sisyphus and his rock aren’t really a tragedy, but a lesson about how life is what happens while you wait for the rock to fall off, and wait until your body loses the strength to carry it back up?

Time still scares you. You watch it trickle, always faster than you expect. Your older dog is alive and well, healthy and happy, and yet you have already chosen the song you will record with your guitar and sing with your own voice for the montage of pictures and videos you will make for his memorial. You think about this while he has a ball in his mouth, tail wagging, full of life. You even thought about it and cried when Oasis played on their reunion tour. The song is “Talk Tonight,” a thank-you ballad to someone who saves the singer’s life.

Maybe that’s the truth you never say out loud: you need chaos to feel alive. Without it, the emptiness gets too loud.

So you hold on to these small, bombastic critters. They become your hourglass. They remind you that meaning isn’t found. You birth it, just like they do with their annoying need for routines and accidents and tiny private miracles. There’s no x-ray for those moments. No chart that can capture them. Except maybe your ridiculous dog-poop cartography on the living room floor. Which you know you could probably fix, but somehow, you still don’t.

Nietzsche said something like, “One must have chaos within to give birth to dancing stars.” And maybe that’s why you choose dogs. The barking, the accidents, the wrestling tournaments, the occasional snout in the litterbox (yes, there are cats too, but that’s a story for another time). Because every one of those stupid, exhausting, infuriating moments is just another little dancing star that shines when the darkness arrives.

Then the chaos within begins to make sense. You’re probably still mad. But it feels right.

Clavier

By Ryan Vergara

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I must go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

            ~Marcus Aurelius

            It takes longer than ever before to play through my repertoire. To be fair, the pieces themselves are lengthier and more difficult than a simple sonatina, though their cumulative number remains the same. But it’s not the length hindering my practice, rather the intense discomfort of the heavily padded leather bench. Now, of all times, when I sincerely care to practice piano rather than contemptuously doing so at my parent’s request, I eventually cannot physically bear to do so. It starts gradually, usually right after warming up with Bach’s Prelude in C Major, but it is a dull enough sensation that I can ignore the pain while it simmers. Slowly, it crescendos, and what once was a harmonic hum rises like the blaring of a tempestuous horn in my lower back. Should I ignore it long enough, it crosses a threshold where nothing will neither reduce nor intensify the pain, so I might as well keep playing until my leg falls asleep, which is just shy of an hour – and, conveniently, the point of diminishing returns for practice. Stretching afterward tends to help over the subsequent hours, as though recovering from athletic activity. Percussive to be sure, but as a technicality. It lacks the explosiveness of drum taps or crashing shoulder pads. Even simulated chaos among the keys breaks down into mathematical divisions and congruent sequences deliberately ordered by composers.

            By the time I’m done practicing, all traces of sunlight have faded away and the scent of dinner is wafting throughout the house. It’s only on rare occasions that I settle in before a keyboard, on evenings when I’m satisfied there is no other work to be done, or my writing has hit a standstill. And given the chronic injury to my spine, it’s unwise to aggravate it so close to bedtime and risk an all-nighter dodging the discomfort. Refreshing as it may be to make music of my own, piano isn’t really a part of the routine. It never truly was, which I find quite unfortunate. To look back on the last fifteen or so years and think of all the hours I pissed away on video games and television and whatnot instead of using thirty of those minutes to practice piano. Perhaps then I could play through Moonlight Sonata or passably sightread Christmas songs. Truthfully, my priorities were different back then, and remain so now, and those priorities ultimately dictate the routine:

            Wake up on time, seven sharp. As appealing as it would be to sleep in, huddling under a blanket is not what I was created for. And so, I set about working. After about an hour or so when the haze of sleep is entirely dispersed, it’s time for breakfast. I carry my computer down and prepare two eggs over-easy, a piece of buttered toast, and a glass of milk. Either I eat in the kitchen or in the office, but the work continues. Midday approaches, and it’s time for a break. I pack up my skates, pads, and sticks and head to the rink for lunchtime hockey. Back home, I do some auxiliary workouts while catching up on the news or a show before taking a shower. Afterward, a protein-heavy lunch, and I’ll either read or write for the remainder of the afternoon. Evenings are for hockey, either playing in a game or watching one, and homework. Somewhere in there is a small snack that could constitute dinner. Eventually, ten o’clock rolls around and I consider going to bed, though I know well enough that even if I lay down, I won’t actually get to sleep until eleven at the earliest, but almost always before twelve. Then dawn comes around, the alarm goes off, and I do it again. Throughout it all, the thought of playing piano scarcely crosses my mind even though I pass the instrument at minimum two dozen times a day. An up-tempo rhythm sets the daily pace, not one in common time or a waltz. Each beat is carefully measured, falling into place with the precise timing demanded by a composition of my own crafting. Day by day, tapping onward, steadily clicking like chronographic snare. No flares, no paradiddles, just the steady beat of 2/4 march fading in and out each time the sun crosses the horizon.

            At a family dinner, my-brother-in-law brought up his daily duties as a manager at a coffee stand. In essence, utter chaos, and not of his own making. To hear him tell it, their location is the one the franchisee sends failing employees to, either to shape up or lose their job. But despite the difficulties of running a half-errant crew, he was reportedly comfortable with his position in life and the routine he had developed. “But maybe being comfortable with a routine,” he said, “Is just a sign of being stuck in a rut.” As the meal went on, I thought of ways to refute the statement. A comfortable routine and being stuck in a rut could not be one in the same. Most glaringly, routines provide building opportunities, especially when it comes to higher education, professional projects, and career growth. Successful athletes develop routines of practice, eating, training, and recovery. The greatest minds in history developed routines, thus maintaining a healthy body and mind. Writers have routines of their own, most often crafted to the individual’s preference of environment and comfort, and thus craft, build, edit, revise, and publish. Eating elephants bite by bite and building Rome day by day. The fruits of a successful routine. Stuck in a rut – ridiculous and short-sighted.

            Could it be that he was executing an unsuccessful routine? Sure, his work life was in order, but he hardly mentions much about life beyond the timecard. Perhaps his routine was helping him get through the day, but not much further than that. Creating a weekly schedule for employees and checking inventory are hardly momentous projects with a long-term payoff. His rhythm and timing were out of sync. He switched it up recently, now he’s performing at open mic nights a few times a month. Whenever he brings up the subject, he mentions potential paid gigs down the road. From there, who knows where it could lead? The possibilities are endless and the dreams infinite. Perhaps that’s what keeps us out of a rut, having a vision for the future beyond clocking out at the end of the week. Something worthwhile to build a routine around. No more talk about ruts anymore, but then again, he tends to overplay his pessimistic hand.

            I love when Monday morning comes around and I can take up my routine once more. Truly there is satisfaction in pressing onward and accomplishing the things I set out to do, whether that’s a momentary dopamine release or an abiding sense of fulfillment. Dad always said, “Hard work is often its own reward,” whenever it was time for me to pull weeds or mow the lawn. Now that I’m tending to a garden of my own, I understand what he meant. The opportunity to shape and mold something in this world, to participate in an act of creation, is rewarding by virtue of the experience, and it endures after the finished project emerges. Harder labors yield higher rewards, so I press on and on with a vision in mind.

            In the middle of one of my workouts, my wife interrupted my routine. She crossed the threshold into my garden and pulled me into the bathroom. Lying next to the sink was a plastic stick with a cap over the urine-soaked tip. It was like the explosion of a cymbal, hushing the unison marching drums with an insolent crash. Granted, this was part of the composition but meant for much later in the piece when the groundwork was firmly established in the lead up to a variation on harmony and melody. Instead, it stopped the music cold. I wasn’t ready for a child, neither of us were. Thoughts of finances, time management, sleepless nights, diapers, school districts, holes in the wall, and stains in the carpet flooded my mind all at once, shoving aside any chance of taking up the daily routine. The rest of the week dragged by as if to the disdainful beat of a broken metronome, clicking asymmetrically on the down and upbeats.

            Saturday came and I had the house to myself for a couple hours in the evening. With little else to do, and not enough focus to write, I sat down at the piano and began to play. Some of the songs I’d known for a decade or so, others for only a month. The pain in my back flared, but the new meds combined with concerted physical therapy were keeping it mostly at bay. I played on, reaching deeper and deeper into the sheet music for pieces I hadn’t heard since living under my father’s roof, songs that held no meaning in the interim but renewed their influence now, disrupting the routine of my routine’s disruption. Calling out from the keys, like soft cries in the night, their somber melodies and haunting harmonies enveloped me once again, as though I were the child. Tabula rasa, or something like, the erasure of the familiar to make room for a new project. A fresh adventure, hopefully one that would be kind to my spine, a new routine. Notes hang in the air like a fermata in anticipation of a new phrase, for an anxious renewal as though plunging into a cold pool – a distilled variation.

Inadmissible Passenger

By Dani Nuchereno

“Hi Honey, Sending you some spending $. We hope you have a very memorable holiday season in Germany. We will miss you! Love you lots, aunt Deb and uncle Den.”

– Note received just before departure

A winter storm and a Meat Loaf concert landed me in Swiss immigration purgatory on Christmas Eve. I was trying to return home to Germany from what was meant to be a quick trip to Dublin. This makes my life sound glamorous, but my days were spent meticulously cataloguing spare parts for recycling machines while barely getting by with elementary German. Getting away for a few days sounded like heaven, and who would pass up a 63-year-old belting out “Bat Out of Hell” to a packed house in Dublin?

But the storm stretched three days into ten, and rerouted my flight through Switzerland, where immigration officers deemed me an “inadmissible passenger,” a scarlet letter for everyone else in the airport to scrutinize. Other travelers stared as I was turned away at customs, wondering what crime I’d committed to be so summarily rejected from entering the rest of the airport, and consequently the country. In a sea of people pushing to get to immigration control, I was the only one moving in the other direction.

There’s a particular heat associated with the humiliation of being stared at by strangers, and I felt it as my blood pounded in my ears. When I asked the immigration agent who refused my entry, “what do I do now?” I received a bureaucratic shrug that signaled the universal “not my problem.” In crisp English, he informed me I could return to Ireland or fly to the United States, but I wasn’t welcome to re-enter Schengen Europe.

And so I found myself stranded in the non-Schengen terminal with a laptop I couldn’t plug in anywhere, a cellphone with rapidly dwindling prepaid minutes, and clothes for three days that had become indefinite.

The airport’s amenities were many. Looking at the terminal map, I saw a whole host of wonderful shops and restaurants I could access if only they’d let me into the main terminal. Unfortunately, I was limited to the non-Schengen terminal. Food was scarce: one place served pasta and sandwiches but closed early for the holiday. Otherwise, my options were souvenir Swiss chocolate from gift shops or a few small snack foods. The chocolate was, at least, of the finest quality. I’ve had worse Christmas dinners.

A key discovery was a Swiss Gear shop with a life-saving universal travel adapter hidden alongside backpacks and luggage. Without it, my laptop, my only connection to the outside world, would have been a paperweight.

I reported my situation to my family with relentless cheerfulness inversely proportional to my inner despair. Without a working phone, I resorted to internet calling, holding my laptop up to my face while trying to stay out of other travelers’ way. One woman, with perfectly coiffed gray hair, stylish glasses, and matching luggage, seemed to follow me everywhere with judgmental eyebrows. It’s a hallmark of 19th-century novels that some stern matron will ‘sniff’ her disapproval. I’d thought that was dramatic license until I was on the wrong end of it.

Eventually, she caught a flight, along with a steady stream of others. Remaining travelers moved with the particular energy of the holiday rush; some excited to get home, others dreading contentious family dinners at journey’s end. Everyone moved along, part of the current, except me.

I spent Christmas Eve folded across two chairs, trying unsuccessfully to sleep. After a few hours, I gave up and polished off my gift shop chocolate while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol, Home Alone, and Christmas in Connecticut on my laptop. I’d downloaded American holiday specials to share with my German roommates, both spending the holidays in our small apartment. Obviously, I wouldn’t be making it back in time to celebrate.

From the terminal windows, I watched the gradual shift from night to day. It was my first ever Christmas morning alone. I’d spent holidays away from home before, but always with friends or chosen family. Since the time difference meant I couldn’t call home, I focused on securing a flight back to Ireland. Nothing. Not a seat, not a standby slot, not even a maybe. Best case was Boxing Day, but no promises.

Packed light for Ireland, I wandered the now-empty terminal. One particularly obnoxious man with a button-down shirt and the long tan coat sported by wealthy businessmen everywhere spent his entire stay loudly complaining about airline incompetence on his phone in a mix of three languages. He was delayed one day due to weather, would be home for Christmas dinner in a matter of hours. I wanted to shake him.

As I tried to outrun his voice, I stumbled on an odd discovery. All the seats in the terminal were the same at every gate, except one. Tucked away near the end of a gate, almost hidden, one had a high back and footrest while the others were short and uncomfortable. I claimed it, convincing myself things weren’t so bad. I had a perfect view of the runway, watching all the planes I wasn’t on shuttle people where they wanted to go.

A nearby television shared mass in a language I didn’t speak but felt I could almost understand when caught from the corner of my ear. Maybe Latin. It made me think of my dad, who in the flurry of communications shared his engagement to his longtime girlfriend. When lunchtime came and went, marked by more gift shop chocolate (this time with nuts, for the protein), I knew they’d be heading to church. Though I hadn’t attended in years, and had no desire to start, watching that unintelligible mass stirred nostalgic longing.

My laptop kept me sane, providing connection to the outside world. I was a compulsive blogger, and having chronicled my airport stay, messages of support popped up from unexpected sources. My ex-boyfriend, whom I hadn’t spoken to in months, sent an Amazon gift card. “Here’s a little something for your Swiss Christmas. Go get yourself a good book to help pass the time that you’re stuck in customs limbo. Merry Xmas. -Bill”

I emailed my boss to explain my pending absence, and his reply came in perfect understatement: “It sounds for me that the last days are not the best in your life.” He offered assistance, anything he could do, which was unfortunately not much at that point.

Later, I finally reached my mom, holding my laptop to my ear while she managed Christmas dinner prep and fretted that I was alone. I could hear kids shrieking with laughter in the background, adults warning them away from the basement stairs, the clatter of pans and clink of glasses a familiar soundtrack even through tinny laptop speakers.

After tearfully hanging up with my mom, terminal staff took pity and told me about a small hotel, barely worthy of the name. Tucked in an unremarkable hallway, it had small rooms with beds and showers for people without proper visas to leave the airport. The prices were outrageous, but worth avoiding another night trying to sleep in the terminal.

I hunkered down to watch the Doctor Who holiday special, freshly downloaded on my indispensable laptop. Despite my outward optimism, around 10pm when I’d run out of media and passed the exhaustion where sleep might be possible, I shared my desolation with a close friend:

“I’m trying not to be melodramatic, but I can’t sleep in this miserable little room and I just want to cry. This is really just horrible and I’ve never felt so alone in my life. I can’t stop thinking about what’ll happen if they don’t let me back in [to Germany]. My room is a disaster, how could I possibly ask someone to pack up my apartment?”

After two days of indignities, I couldn’t help but dwell on those still ahead. But something shifted in that sterile little room. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, or the chocolate catching up to me, or simply the human capacity to adapt. I stopped endlessly refreshing flight listings and just listened to the hum of the vents, the muffled footsteps outside, the occasional announcement echoing down the hall. It wasn’t peace, not exactly, but for the first time in nearly two days, I slept.

I still keep that power adapter in my travel bag. I wish I could say it was because I learned some grand lesson about resilience or, well, adaptability. But really, it’s because you never know when three days will stretch into ten. The next time the universe decides to make my holiday season memorable, at least my laptop will work.

The President

By Ryan Vergara

After all the ceremonies for Harvard’s Class of 2025 concluded, my fellow graduates fled Cambridge. I likewise took my leave, out to Rockport on a commuter train. With my wife beside me, I stared out the window at misty Massachusetts, eventually dozing off along the way. It was a chilly day with rain sprinkling on and off, so I donned my hoodie with HARVARD lettered in white on the front. We walked along the beach and throughout town, stopping in a shop whenever a window display caught our attention. I bought pajamas for the kids; she bought French mustard for her sister. While we paid, the lady at the counter, presumably the owner of the boutique, nodded at me, saying, “I like your sweatshirt. Who would’ve thought that Harvard would be the new protest slogan?” I mumbled a thank you but she continued to ask about graduation and my plans. When I told her I wanted to reapply for a PhD, she reassured me, “Let the funding go back to normal. It looks like it will, so when it does you should reapply.” That made sense. When Harvard had clarity and assurance on the future, perhaps then they would be ready for Ryan to come back. Later, we found a place for lunch by the water. Once again while paying, our waitress complimented my sweatshirt, presumably for similar reasons as the shop owner. After all, her and I are from the age demographic that should lean left. But I wasn’t protesting anything, or even supporting anything. I just like my hoodie.

I grew up in a conservative home. We were Christian, in a pew, every Sunday, vacations notwithstanding. Bars of soap for swear words and smacks on cheeks for disrespecting our mother. Hard work merits its own reward. Household culture and politics went hand in hand. Mom and Dad weren’t too hot on George W—we’re antiwar on principle with Mom being an Army veteran and Dad a Pinochet dissident—but Mom voted for him anyway over Gore and Kerry. During the Obama years, Mom had Glenn Beck on in the evenings while she made dinner and I did homework. Dad’s first vote after getting his citizenship was for Romney. When I filled out my first voter registration card, there was no hesitation when marking Republican for party affiliation. I don’t know how many times my parents voted for Trump with me but it was at least once. My brother and I carry on similar conservative politics in our adulthood while our sisters are left- leaning – at least, for now.

And yet politics never seemed to matter all that much growing up. It was an intellectual exercise, an economic debate around tax revenue and expenditures, on differing strategies to achieve the same foreign policy goals, and, of course, making sure our team had more players in office than their team. Even in undergrad, as young adults voted for the first time and (hopefully) considered what the country’s future should look like, disagreements were less of a fistfight and more of an empathetic headshake. Not that politics often came up in neuroscience classes; we tended to focus on objectivity and things we could observe rather than that which we could only guess at. And then Trump beat Clinton. I didn’t follow the 2016 election too closely until the debates in the fall, but after election day, the shift in rhetoric was undeniable. Older conservatives often reassured us that this is how it’s always been, and I’m sure there’s consistent vitriol on both sides, but I’m not so sure that it’s ever reached the degree that it has in the past decade. Amid constant ad hominem, the exercise has become a war.

Regardless, whenever debates over presidential policy arise, there’s often someone by my side who dismisses the subject by asserting it doesn’t matter who sits as president. To their credit, my life was pretty much insulated from executive policy until COVID hit. “Two weeks to stop the spread” was fine with me until in the ensuing January the Biden administration increased restrictions. For months, I couldn’t work and we suffered for it. The simultaneous implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act which paradoxically accelerated likewise hurt our young family. Policy aside, our household struggled in the Biden years. But, in true American fashion, I did what I could to pick myself up and press forward. I found a job that paid our bills and saved enough that I could enroll at Harvard to ditch science for literature. There I found a community far more receptive to liberalism than I ever was, than I am now, than I think I might ever be. It was the other team’s home turf, and I wasn’t wearing their jersey. But we were all collegial. Except, during political discussions, I shied away from sharing my positions, knowing that I was hopelessly outnumbered and would rather preserve friendships than win an argument. And it worked throughout my entire master’s program.

In 2024, I knew I wasn’t going to re-elect Biden; Trump’s response to the Butler assassination attempt secured my vote. As I applauded his victory last November, my Canadian father-in-law snidely remarked, “You’re probably not going to get out of this what you think you are.” All that mattered at that moment was that my team had won. Things were almost normal in the ensuing months. Life went on, I applied to PhD programs and finished my thesis. The price of gas stabilized and the cost of groceries even ticked down. Perhaps we were returning to the days of presidential irrelevancy. When Trump ordered the border closed and criminal illegal migrants deported, I applauded. When he declared the Christian truth that God made men and women, I cheered. When tariffs came down, I held on to my investments and earned a few extra dollars for my patience. And I held my breath for world peace, for my friends in Ukraine to be discharged from Putin’s army and go home. It was all going according to plan; he was doing everything that I voted for.

Then I got an email from President Alan Garber. He was responding to the imminent withdrawal of federal dollars from Harvard and how that would impact the university’s community. It wasn’t too much of a surprise since the Department of Education was already on the chopping block. Plus, my degree was already conferred at that point, and it’s the richest school in the world, so what’s my stake really? To be honest, my reaction was a subdued “hmm” and I went on with the day. There were a couple of subsequent emails on the steps the university was taking in response, along with headlines regarding the White House’s rebuttals. It all just seemed like a political catfight between diametrically opposed presidents.

Sometime during the second week of March, I received the news that I was not admitted to the PhD program I applied to at Harvard. It was disappointing, but such is life. After a week or so, I informed the professors that had written my letters of recommendation while doing my best to sound optimistic. One of the responses I received gave me pause. “It’s not you. With the change in funding across all of higher education, most programs are cutting back.” I must have reread that line a dozen times. Those same changes I had voted for several months prior…Had the president screwed me? Difficult to say, I wasn’t in the room, I don’t know everyone who applied that year, but his remark that was meant to reassure poked a hole in my paradigm. It wasn’t just Harvard’s funding that was on the table, money that could likely be recouped one way or another, it was the accessibility of my future. With the withdrawal of those funds, gaining admission anywhere became harder. Surely, it couldn’t last forever. I could reapply once this blew over and pick up from there.

Besides, there was still graduation to look forward to. The day I packed my bags, another email from President Garber – Harvard’s SEVP has just been revoked by the Department of Homeland Security. Reading it over, it seemed a serious escalation in a fight that was totally irrelevant to me. The DHS rationale made sense: if there are foreign, pro-terrorist students in the country that Harvard is at the very least overlooking, then the university cannot be trusted with SEVP until policy and enforcement changes. As more information came out, the most surprising piece of news was that over 6000 students, about 27% of the student body, were international. That seemed stunningly high. Why would any American university–or French university, or Korean university, or any other country’s institution–why would they admit more than a quarter of their students from a different country, regardless of immigration intention? Especially a university such as Harvard with such competitive admissions and (formerly) billions in subsidies from the US Government—not the Saudi Arabian government or Indian government or Swedish government. Further, if we want to curtail brain drain, shouldn’t we encourage high caliber students to study and work for a better future in their homelands? Then the realization struck me: if there’s such a dramatic drop in the student population, either there will be fewer teachers, or they’ll fill that space with American students–which means there would be room for me now. Selfish, but I felt no guilt. If Harvard’s admin didn’t want to cooperate with DHS, then the suffering of international students was on Harvard. Their loss was my gain.

Conservatism and capitalism at its best, right?

We met my parents in Boston two days before commencement. While showing them around campus, Dad asked what my thoughts were on the international students ban. “More room for me next year,” I quipped. It’s that easy for me to look him in the eyes and forget that he spent his first 27 years under Chilean fascism before coming to this country. But now he’s a citizen that has lived most of his life in the states. He chuckled and reflected the surprise I had upon learning that such a large chunk of the student body is international. Considering the facts, we both agreed that SEVP needed revisions so that American students weren’t deprioritized in its implementation. Even though that’s what I said to him, that didn’t feel quite right. If there’s to be meritocracy in higher education, shouldn’t it be internationally blind, as well as race and gender and religion and all other identifiers blind? But what about brain drain? What about providing admissions to American students at an American school? Can we trust other nations to be similarly nationally blind, or would they prefer their own as nearly all have thus far? What about national security and preventing ideological violence and harassment? Can we just put a box on applications that says “Check YES if bigoted, NO if not” or is that ineffective for obvious reasons? What about me?

What about me?

Commencement came and I was nervous. Not because I couldn’t find my friends, but because I didn’t know what was lurking outside the Yard. Would this be like last year when walk outs and continuous protests would disrupt the ceremony? Would the agitators be anti-Israeli or anti-Trump? Neither materialized, at least not in the way I expected. A few “Palestinian Genocide” banners went up but were down before most people noticed. No, the real dissent was on stage as President Garber approached the microphone. Before he could get a word out, the Yard erupted with thunderous applause. I’ve been to some special places, but I had never witnessed such a long ovation before. He tried several times to quiet the adulating crowd but it only encouraged them. While this continued, I likewise stood and applauded. Eventually, we relented so he might speak. “Members of the Class of 2025, from down the street, across the country and around the world. From around the world just as it should be.” More applause, just as elated as the first. I don’t remember much else from his speech. I could go back and rewatch it, but I don’t need to. All I need to know was his defiance and the community’s alignment. Whatever the fate of SEVP at Harvard, it would realistically not have any bearing on whether I got in when reapplying. That’s what I got out of it.

Between commencement and the beach, we attended the student association awards. I’d been heavily engaged with the writing society and made most of my friends there, so attending was the cherry on top of an already terrific day. We hugged and laughed and ate plates full of treats. In that room, I sat a table with our society’s former president and my current one. I knew the latter had a more liberal nature and was pleased with the community’s support for international students. But the former, a man that I had come to know so well, I had no idea which way he leaned. I could guess, but I’ve been wrong before. At that table, though, it didn’t matter. Even before sitting down with them, politics hadn’t mattered. The entire time we had worked together, including with other members of our writing society, no one had attacked one another on a political basis, nor had they made it a point of contention. We all cooperated, we all got along, and even though we at times disagreed, we were always friendly. I can’t think of a single time that I felt disrespected or unsupported, and I know at least some of the members of our society knew I had voted for Trump. But it was still all so human. If we can build a club and even student association where we have dramatically different politics and still succeed, why can’t we build a society like that? If our goal is to make Harvard and America the best they can be, why do politics preclude our triumph? Finding the people and the leaders that could achieve that end would be the true meritocracy, the true conservation of ideals.


Cheeseburgers: A Family Affair

By Art Foster

My wife loves chicken noodle soup.

When she isn’t feeling well, chicken noodle soup, a fuzzy blanket, and the Golden Girls bring her comfort. I assume that’s how her mother cared for her when she was young, and it makes her feel safe, it makes her feel loved. When I’m sick, I want a cheeseburger. But not just any old cheeseburger, I want the kind of burger where the corners of the cheese stick to the wrapper and drops of juicy goodness collect on your chin when you bite into it.

If you want a good cheeseburger, there are plenty to be found. My personal favorite is the Holick Burger at The Blind Rabbit on Jacksonville Beach. It’s stacked with a sunny side up egg and a slab of braised pork belly that’s cooked until the fatty skin becomes gelatinous, and it just melts in your mouth. I’d join close friends there for bourbon and burgers whenever I was in town. I can’t think about the Rabbit without thinking about Mike, Meg, and Jes, and the laughs and tears that we shared over the years. A close second is the Classic Cheeseburger at Skybox in Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan, Philippines. Their burgers were hand formed and grilled right in front of you at the outside bar. Served with a simple house sauce on a Kaiser bun, they were a warm reminder of home when I felt so alone on the far side of the world.

Sadly, both restaurants are now closed.

The most recent addition to my favorite burger list is the double cheeseburger from Tasty Burger right there in Harvard Square. I’m not trying to take anything away from Mr. Bartley’s, The Boston Burger Company, or any other place in the area, because I’ve had some fantastic burgers in Cambridge. But after downing a few pints of IPA at Grendel’s, or Shay’s, a double Tasty Burger is about the best way I can think of to end the night.

Well almost.

“You’re going to turn into a cheeseburger,” my wife has told me on several occasions. My doctor isn’t fond of my guilty pleasure either. The 20 mg of Rosuvastatin he prescribed for high cholesterol is proof of that. So, I ask myself why I do it. Why do I slowly poison myself? And I have come to realize that it’s the same reason my wife loves her chicken noodle soup.

When I was eight years old, my parents divorced, and my mother soon remarried. My new stepfather, Harry, a 6-foot, 350-pound truck driver, apparently hated his lot in life and took it out on us. He was the kind of guy that blamed everyone else for his problems and was angry at my brother and me for being the latest burden on his wallet. We weren’t allowed to use the dishwasher because it used too much water. I wasn’t permitted to iron my clothes because the iron used too much electricity. But at the same time, we had a swimming pool, and a satellite dish installed; it clearly wasn’t about the money.

The psychological abuse, and what some people call gaslighting today, was ever-present. He convinced me that I was a bad kid, just the worst kid to ever live. Never mind the fact that I was an “A” student in the Gifted Program at the time. As I look back, I like to think that he was jealous. Can a grown man be jealous of the abilities of a child? I think so, and I think he was.

And then there was the physical abuse. It wasn’t often, but when it happened, it left marks. For the high crime of being late for dinner. Yes, you read that right, late for dinner, my thirteen-year-old stepbrother experienced the wrath that was Harry. I watched from the corner of my room as Harry beat the boy, his own child, with his fists. When my mother stepped in, Harry shoved her to the floor. He had gone too far. I leaped onto Harry’s back and, in vain, tried to choke him into submission. But my seventy-five pounds was no match for his massive size, and I was quickly thrown across the room. About the time I made it to my feet, he grabbed me by the throat, denying me of oxygen, and threatened me with death. Not a beating, whipping, or time out. Death.

My little brother still has a scar on his forehead from being slammed into a wall over forty years ago. At ten years old I learned headwounds bleed profusely. The two-inch gash on his head seemed to bleed uncontrollably. There was so much blood, it covered his face, his chest, his hands. My hands.

But every other weekend, and two whole weeks during the summer, we were granted a reprieve. Our father picked the two of us up and took us to his house for his court ordered visitation. Every other Friday at 6pm, my little brother and I would be packed and ready to go. Our bags were full, but our bellies were empty. There was no way in hell Harry was going to feed us a meal he didn’t have to.

There wasn’t ever much food at Dad’s house. He lived quite Spartan, he rarely turned on the air conditioner, he didn’t even have a phone. As a tradesman, he worked every day and was seldom home when we weren’t there, so he ate on the go. The cupboards were, more often than not, bare.

But on the way to Dad’s house, there was a McDonald’s. Mack-Donald’s, he called it, heavily accentuating the Mc. Sometimes we would get Happy Meals to go, other times we would eat in and play on the playground. This was a time before the arrival of indoor ball pits, taking off your shoes, and no one over twelve allowed. This playground was outside and made of concrete and steel. We would slide down the winding red and yellow slide and climb inside Mayor McCheese’s head. And Dad was right there with us, climbing and sliding and laughing.

On the weekends we spent with Dad we were always on the move. We visited family, we camped quite often, we toured nearby Civil War forts, went fishing, we even went to Six Flags a few times. And when we were on the go, breakfast, lunch, and dinner were often eaten from a paper bag. “Let’s get it and go,” he would say. I have very few memories of him sitting in a restaurant. Much of his sustenance consisted of convenience store snacks. “Let’s stop and get a Coke and a pack of crackers,” was what he would say when he wanted a snack. He would get a drink of some kind, not always a Coke, and a small bag of roasted peanuts, or something like that. He seldom actually got a Coke and a pack of crackers, but that’s what he would always say.

And when the weekend ended and we had to go back home, our Sunday evening meal was often at the same McDonald’s we had eaten at when he picked us up on Friday. He knew dinner wasn’t waiting for us at my mother’s house. We ate cheeseburgers and we slid, and we laughed, and we climbed.

That’s how it went for a while, until he moved four hours away and I saw him less often. But when I did see him, cheeseburgers were often on the menu. The years passed quickly, and soon I had a career and a family of my own. I did my best to hold it all together. But as fate would dictate, I found myself at a McDonald’s on Friday evenings, feeding two hungry children who had to be back at their mother’s house by 6pm on Sunday. By this time, the playground had moved indoors and was made of plastic. So, I watched them play as I ate my cheeseburger, stealing a hug and a kiss when they ran back to the table to grab a swallow of Sprite, or a fist-full of fries.

Last year, after my son’s college graduation ceremony, Dad, my son, and I, accompanied by my ex-wife, her second ex-husband, her current husband, and her daughter, had lunch at Surcheros Tex Mex; my son’s favorite restaurant. I had a chicken and rice burrito, and Dad had a veggie burrito bowl. If there had been a cheeseburger on the menu, I might have ordered it. But there wasn’t. If there had been a playground there, dad would have probably played on it with me if I’d asked. At seventy-five, he was still a meandering soul. He had never remarried and still lived alone; cupboards still bare. It seemed that my mother leaving him had just as a profound effect on his life as it did mine. We had lunch, we ate cake, and we celebrated my son’s academic achievement. I didn’t talk to Dad as much as I should have, because I thought there was plenty of time for just the two of us to get together. But there wasn’t.

My son, my little brother, a couple of other family members, and I have reserved a deep-sea fishing charter out of Key West on May 13th of next year. We plan to do a little fishing and spread dad’s ashes at sea, just as he always wanted. On the way, I think we might stop for a cheeseburger.

P.S. In 1999, Harry was hit, head-on, by a moving truck when he crossed the center line. We buried him next to his parents.

No one wept.