I knew a couple who came to the US from the Soviet Union. They were in an American grocery store for the first time, close to Christmas. They wept with joy as Silent Night played over the sound system. A few minutes later, they stood astounded in the dairy aisle. “How many kinds of butter do Americans need?”
I read a book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, about Hmong refugees. Medical science, with its exact doses and precise timing, bumps up against a culture whose clock is the sun and unit of measure is a handful.












