The damn
iPod is all twitty again.
Or rather,
it’s following its own internal logic.
Here is—I
think—the explanation.
I had a
hankering to hear the opus 40 cello sonata of Shostakovich. So I went into
iTunes and looked it up. And there was the big boy himself—Rostropovich, for
whom the sonata was written.
Well,
that’s like hearing King James read the Bible. Nobody has ever said
Rostropovich couldn’t find his way around a cello.
Eleven
bucks—I nabbed it.
Plus I got
a zillion other pieces—this must have been a box set with five or six discs.
And each
disc starts with the number one.
Get where
I’m going?
Right, came
to the end of the 1st movement, and then got a tango by Astor
Whatever-his-name-is (Pizzarella? Doesn’t seem right…).
Fine,
listened to that. Then got a bit of Prokofiev. Then the second movement of the
Schumann cello concerto. Then the second movement of the Shostakovich.
Well, I
either pressed the damn shuffle key again (possible) or the iPod is playing
EVERY track 1 before it progresses to track 2 (likely).
Well, I’m
nothing if not resilient these days—thanks, Wal-Mart!—and the purpose of the
daily trot is just the trot. And saying, of course, buen día to everyone I meet.
Especially
strangers.
It was a
thing of Sam Walton’s—the ten foot rule. You gotta say hello, smile, and offer
help to anyone within ten feet. That’s if you’re in a store. Otherwise, just
smile and say hello.
Well, I did
it, of course. Franny must have had some effect on me. Remember that “regular
morning hour” her report card adjured on her (not sure that’s correct)
when she was a kid?
Well, when
Sam speaks, you listen!
It’s part
of making the day. If you’ve been laid off, you don’t get up and lie on the
sofa. You grab your shoes and iPad and get moving.
And saying
hello to people makes friends, connections. Which is why I was talking to
Elvin, the 64 year old Nuyorican
who’s working on the building next door.
Fascinating
guy. Lives in La Perla, one of the most storied communities of Puerto Rico.
Quite literally, the social anthropologist Oscar Lewis wrote extensively about
it in 1967 his book La Vida.
OK—for
people who don’t know Puerto Rico. Viejo San Juan is the oldest city on the
island, and was walled / fortified by the Spaniards. It’s charming—got blue
cobblestones that are iridescent when wet, wonderful colonial architecture,
vibrant Caribbean colors.
La Perla is
its shadow.
Almost
literally. Because the walls are
still intact, and the community is wedged between the walls of the Old City and
the sea. Take a look!
Charming,
right?
Yes and no.
La Perla sprung up quite spontaneously about a century ago. All the cooks and
servants for the rich people of Old San Juan, needed a place to sleep, right?
And nobody had much money (‘cept for those rich people, who even so may not
have had much…). So they went through the gates of the walls, past the
cemetery, and found a little land. Built a little house with whatever they could
find. And that’s where they lived.
Everything
was fine, and, in a sense, still is. Everybody knows Elvin, the guy I was
chatting with yesterday. Everyone likes him. His shop is right in front of the
beach, and he sleeps with his window open—no bars, unlike the rest of us.
Nothing but salt air between him and the sea.
Sleeps
well, too.
Unlike the
rest of us, who are living in fear, in gated communities behind barred windows
and doors. Oh—and the latest trend? Putting GPS sensors in your kid’s backpacks,
so you can track ‘em if anything happens to them….
But if
you’re safe in La Perla, you’re safer than anywhere in the world.
Why?
“Anyone
messes with my stuff, I spread the word. They find out who did it, tie him up,
and throw him in the ocean.”
Remember—there
are sharks off the coast of Puerto Rico.
And the
“they?”
Well,
Spanish is less fussy about specifying the subject—less fussy than English. You
can say lo encuentran—literally,
they encounter him—and everyone gets it.
But the they may well be somewhat different than the
good, hardworking types of a century ago. And La Perla is perhaps not quite so
poor. The wood shacks have become concrete houses, over the years. And one of
them—you can see from the safety of the walls—has a swimming pool on the roof.
Overlooking
the ocean.
Nice!
So it’s not
quite the community that Elvin remembers as a kid. His aunt raised him in La
Perla. When she left the house, she told her neighbor. Neighbor looked after
the house. Aunt came home, cooked, and gave the first plate—arroz conhabichuelas, no doubt,
and hmmmm….I can taste ‘em!—to the neighbor.
Actually,
the whole neighborhood ate together. People brought what they had, passed it
around, sat, talked, laughed, told stories.
Oh, and
watch out—‘cause ANY adult could smack a kid who needed it….
Well, those
days are gone. Elvin worries, thinks Puerto Rico is going to hell in a hand
basket.
“I hope it
doesn’t go the way of France,” he said.
“Two
hundred years ago?” I said, startled.
Remember
when kids knew about the French Revolution?
“Yup,” he
replied.
Well, he’s
a good man, my new friend Elvin. Just one little thing.
He’s
technically a squatter.
And that’s
where Harry comes into the picture.
“Did you
once tell me that reality is different in Puerto Rico? Years ago, in Chicago?”
I asked.
“Yes.”
Look, there
was land that nobody wanted and there was wood that nobody wanted and Elvin’s
aunt’s father or grandfather needed a place to sleep, so what’s the deal?
Turns out
that somebody wants it, now.
“Sometime
between 2005 and 2007 Donald Trump was fascinated with La Perla as it would be
a great place to make a resort. He was looking at it from above and wanted to
walk down and see it closer but his bodyguards wouldn’t let him. La Perla
residents saw this, heard him [sic.] we know what’s going on. Also some Spanish
developers apparently have their eye on the area as well,” Gómez told
reporters.
Go ahead,
google “La Perla Puerto Rico Donald Trump” and you’ll get the prdailysun.com article from which I stole the above.
Well, I
started this post by typing out the title—All Wrong, As Usual. That’s because I
had read an article about how to create a great blog. Gotta have keywords right
near the top (“keywords?” ummmmm???…). Gotta put in links. And tags.
I was going to
tell you that I’m doing this blog all wrong.
But then Elvin
jumped into the post, and then La Perla, and now we’re forced into the question
of whether we’d prefer to have Trump / Spanish developers and a resort or…
…drug dealers
reclining in their infinity pools after a hard night’s work in the puntos de
drogas or…
…the remnants
of the descendents of Elvin’s aunt, who still remember a place that was and
that now isn’t and that still is.
And I’m doing
it wrong?
