Mexicans, Hugs, and Tea.

Wow, I wish I could be in California to see this film when it opens: A Day Without A Mexican. I have no idea how accurate it is, though it sounds fairly plausible. But I don't really care because it sounds like good political fun too.

This morning I had planned, but forgotten, to blog this fun NYTimes Metro article by the legendary J-School alumna Andrea Elliott. I forgot until I saw that Robert Stribley has noted it. It's about Jayson Littman, who bestows free hugs on passers by at Washington Square Park on Sunday afternoons. Besides reminding me of my dear buddy James Gill, whom I got to know during his phase of hugging everyone in the physics department who would stand still, it also brought back very fond memories of one of my early ventures at Berkeley: The Society of Mad Hatters At Cal (SMHAC). We served iced tea for no good reason---have a good day! Over the course of the spring of my freshman year we had about six tea parties, followed by another two in the fall, all over campus, delighting and confounding strangers and invited guests alike. Some of the alumni of that august organization are still my best friends. It seems impossibly cheerful and goofy now, and I cannot tell if that's because I am older and less wise, or because 1997 was in fact a happier time. But I do hope that, despite the current chaos in the world, out there are rambunctious college freshman doing similarly goofy things.