Prologue: Boys vs. girls -- Hard landing -- Cloudy with a chance of poetry -- Meeting Sonya -- Worst Thanksgiving ever -- The portrait -- Jewish in the diaspora -- The band -- Falling-down house -- Green Tara: Goddess of liberation -- Latkes at Suze's -- The lower east side and Yonah Schimmel -- Costume party -- You gotta serve somebody -- The Berkeley revolution -- Los Federales -- Spring picnic -- Loaves and dishes -- Mildred Jackson and the cosmic ray -- Ghosts in the house -- The beat goes on -- Hate crime, LA -- Stoking the fire(s) -- The accident -- Jazz and the river of words -- Coast starlight -- Sunflowers, wild berries, and goatherds: the circus moves North -- Ladders to nowhere and the God cult -- Coney Island Sunday -- Men vs. women -- It's over -- Acknowledgments.