Notes Every Wrong Direction – The second part of the prose memoir, excerpts from which have appeared in PN Review. ‘Thief’ – chains was short for chain stores, the local supermarkets owned or franchised by the national food retailers. Every chain store had a butcher shop in it, which because of the chains’ greater buying power often could buy meat cheaper than could small independent stores like my father’s, and sell it cheaper as well. Schvitz (Yiddish for to sweat) was the slang name for the Camac Baths, a Russian bath house in centre city which Philadelphia’s Jewish workers and tradesmen like my father frequented at the end of their work week to steam and knead the fatigue from their bones. ‘Impostor Syndrome’ – Institute is the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. ‘Familiars’ – Freeport-McMoran, a sulphur miner founded in Freeport, Texas in 1912, now the world’s largest mining and mineral producer, was headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1971. Senator Russell B. Long, senior senator from Louisiana, was Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate committee responsible for income taxes, at the time the events in ‘Familiars’ occurred. ‘Prospecting’ – In October 1973 Saudi Arabia and the other members of the OPEC-embargoed oil sales to countries supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war. The resulting oil shock quadrupled oil prices from $3 to $6 in 12 months. ‘Departure’ – On 29 November 1979, Saudi fundamentalists seized the Masjid al-Haram, called the Grand Mosque, in Mecca and called for the overthrow of the House of Saud. After the Saudi government regained control of the mosque King Khalid implemented much stricter enforcement of Sharia, or Muslim religious law, and 91