When I was a kid I traveled to Mexico several times. My mom was born and raised in Mexico City. Outside of the City we met many beautiful people in small towns in rolling hills under Mexican skies that were filled with the kind of clumpy painterly clouds only seen in Mexico. Horses grazed on grassy slopes and donkeys helped carry firewood. Basic needs were met but towns were dark at night except for a few dim streetlights or low lights trying to shine from small windows in thickly plastered buildings. When we crossed the border we experienced real culture shock: acres of paved and empty lots brightly lit to the horizon, roads lined with vacant sidewalks and intense streetlights every twenty feet, closed stores and unoccupied parking garages bright as summer, the abandoned movie set of the American landscape depleted of people.