On the Edge

I can tell you that Lebanon is about the size of New Jersey, that 70% of the population is Moslem, and 30% are Arab Christians. Oh, and that the civil war lasted one and a half decades.

I can tell you this because a man in his fifties is reading from The World and Its People to a 14 year-old girl, who last year was struggling through state capitals. She’s Naia, the daughter of the café where I write, and she’s being home-schooled, which in this case means reading a lot of stuff in the book, and then getting quizzed on it. And so each morning I watch the pair; they seem to get on well.

In fact, the information that a civil war lasted three decades doesn’t quite begin to tell you the real story. That was best done by author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and it went something like this:

There was once a place where people of all kinds lived in peace: Jews, Christian and Moslem. But religion, though important, wasn’t all-important; being Lebanese was at least as important. And so people lived side by side in prosperity and peace, just as they had for generations, just as they always would.

What happened? I can’t remember and that may have been the point. For Taleb, the civil war illustrated how immensely fragile societies are, and how easily they can be torn apart.

I think about this because of two events taking place or that took place recently. The first was the Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián, which lasted temporally four days and experientially as long as the civil war in Lebanon.

To say that the affair was boggled is to be polite. First of all, the mayor of the city decided to erect cyclone fences on several of the streets and proposed having checkpoints on the rest. Oh, and everybody—residents included—would have to go through metal detectors, be scanned by wands, and do what-not. To do all this, the mayor contracted a private company, at an undisclosed cost.

This immediately aroused the concern of the ACLU, who argued that the idea, and certainly the practice, violated the fourth amendment. It aroused my concern—I thought we’d have a stampede. So the ACLU met with the mayor and got nowhere. Then they took her to court, and got the court to rule that the barricades and checkpoints were indeed unconstitutional. So we went from having extreme security to having virtually none.

The police, you say?

The police in Puerto Rico are more decorative than functional. In fact, in an absent-minded moment, I once looked at a cop and thought, ‘I can’t believe they give those guys guns….’

So the police stood about and watched as a stream of people sauntered by, the children being urged by their parents to make maximal noise. This they did, the worst of which were the boat horns. Don’t let the size fool you: they can roar at up to 135 decibels.

That was the first problem. The second? The city had negotiated with the taxistas to provide—at a charge of five bucks per person—service from the convention center into the fiesta. There were also buses for free. So the predictable happened: nobody took the taxis and the wait for a bus could take an hour.

What follows isn’t so predictable: the taxistas became incensed, and decided to block off access on the major roads that lead to the old city.

You have to understand, Old San Juan is on a little island connected by a bridge to the mainland. Therefore, having an event of this magnitude is not so much flirting but cock-teasing disaster. My in-laws are well into their eighties, and the family was holding its breath that there would be no emergencies.

And so no one could get in to the fiesta, and there were massive traffic jams. So what did the city do? Call the cops and get the taxis towed?

Nope—they cancelled the bus service!

So the residents—those who hadn’t fled—of Old San Juan endured two days of maximal abuse, supervised by our chatting police, who did their best to ignore the crowd. The madness and the noise went on until at least three in the morning.

The café closed, since why stay open when nobody buys anything and your bathroom gets trashed? Because though the festival has great crafts and attracts decent folk during the day, at night it turns into a bacchanalia. The only thing that sells is beer.

Well, that was the first thing. The second thing? Well, the jury is out for Pablo Casellas, the son of a federal judge. The son is accused of killing his wife, and Daddy ducked under a police tape on the day of the murder.

It’s taken four months to get to this point, the principal problem being to find 12 people who didn’t think Pablo did it. The whole thing smelled from the beginning: an alleged robbery of a special pistol that later was found to have been the same type of gun that caused the victim’s death. Casellas alleged that the assailants jumped over the fence so lightly that they didn’t trample the grass, which was quite tall. Oh, and the bloodstains in Casellas’s car? Then there was the DNA….

It was all pretty clear who did it, but it almost came apart when the pathologist testified that—given her wounds—it had to be someone the victim knew, probably family. The defense seized, and petitioned for a mistrial. The judge said no.

He’ll be convicted, of course, and the verdict will be appealed.

Unlike the people who mobbed my city last weekend, Casellas had it all—money, power, status. And he was arrogant—he thought he could kill in cold blood and get away with it. He thought that everybody would believe his story and go away.

That, more than the pathetic hordes whose only fun is to come to a beautiful place and trash it, worries me. If Casellas really lived in a society where the rich can get away with murder….

…we’re screwed.

The UPR Blunders Forward

I’m biased, of course, since I spent several decades working as a sort of teacher, but I have to agree with Dr. Manuel Pérez Quiñones, a professor at Virginia Tech, when he says that the worst crime in Puerto Rico has been the savage intrusion of politics on the university system.

This will sound bad—a large part of our murder rate (twice New York City’s with half the population) is drug related. And though the death of any man diminishes me—well, sorry….no. I don’t care if one pusher offs another.

But in the twenty years at which I made a living teaching ESL, it would occasionally occur to me: how can it be that I have this job? Every kid has twelve years in English classes—shouldn’t everybody be bilingual?

Oh, and why was it that I knew the rules for accentuation in Spanish, and they didn’t?

Or there was the time I was buying a $24 product that had a 35% discount. The clerk stood open-mouthed at the register—there was no calculator. $17.80, I told the clerk. Well, we waited several minutes, which I devoted to telling the clerk—once a teacher, always a teacher—the three ways that I had dreamed up to calculate the sum. But it took a manager with a calculator to prove it to him.

I am telling you, then, that we have a serious problem in Puerto Rico. And if we are ever going to get out of this morass, we’ll have to start with kids, teach them, prepare them, and then hope they’ll do a better job than we’ve done.

What Pérez Quiñones bemoans is real. I somehow slid through the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but even I knew that the university’s School of Engineering was very strong. University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez has a school that is just as good, if not better.

According to Pérez Quiñones—well, let the man speak for himself:

The UPR as it has always been, was once again invaded by local Puerto Rican politics. In 5 years at Mayagüez, the campus had 4 Chancellors (i.e., campus president). The turn over in positions from Chancellor, to Deans, to Department heads was so regular, that it was a common joke to ask "who is the Dean this week?" The situation continued to deteriorate. Recently on the press there was an article about the sanctions imposed by NSF to the UPR system after an investigation of misuse of federal funds. The UPR system cancelled the Presidential Fellowships that paid the graduate studies in the US to future UPR faculty. And the faculty at their several campuses continued to either fight for their academic lives or simply hang up the boxing gloves and move on to a better (bitter?) future.

Alert readers of this blog are wondering—what’s the deal with the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds?

If it were irregularities, that would be fine—almost. But it’s much more than that. Which is why in April of this year, the FBI charged onto campuses and locations holding university servings and—reportedly—confiscated a bunch of material.

That’s bad—worse is that the NSF stopped paying 50 million dollars for research projects. Or perhaps it’s 90 million dollars—the Internet is shaky today, and I can’t verify.

Nor is it the case that the NSF simply dropped this on them. The investigation has been going on since 2006, and the university was given the chance to make a Corrective Action Plan (CAP). OK—that was approved, but the university couldn’t follow its own plan.

What was the problem?

Caribbean Business Reports has this to say:

To pay professors involved in research—in addition to their basic salary and a reduced academic schedule—professors are assigned a sum of money from the grants, which can't exceed 30% of their wage as compensation for their participation, according to circular A-21.

The source said the way to report time & effort was out of control, and some professors' salaries had increased by more than 100%. "You could see professors whose basic wages were about $80,000 a year, and suddenly they were earning $300,000 annually."

Right—so you can see why the NSF was a little peeved.

There were other problems, too. Some professors were reportedly receiving money as compensation from funds earmarked for other uses, such as indirect costs.

Well, the university had to get some money from somewhere—so where to turn? To our Government Development Bank, locally called Fomento. So the university submitted a loan application to…

…the wrong people. Somehow, the university ended up submitting the application of the General Fund of the University of Puerto Rico. So they had to do it over again.

Into this comic-horrific scene came the 2012 gubernatorial elections, which the party then out of power won. So what did that mean? That the university’s president had to be changed. And guess what? The gentleman who consistently has assured us that the problem with the NSF has been resolved—only to be told by the NSF that it has not—is now the interim director!

Comic-horrific, I wrote in the last paragraph. Sorry—I’ll take that back.

We’re a strange mix, down here. Half of us don’t work. The other half works harder and often better than anyone else. And our professionals—in general—are more highly trained and educated than any I’ve seen.

They deserve so much more.

Trust Us

Well, Greta Van Susteren says she knows the guy, so it must be all right.

Granted, I didn’t know Greta Van Susteren, so I had to do a little checking around to see if I could trust Greta enough for her to tell me that Reggie B. Walton is OK.

Don’t know Reggie B. Walton?

Join the club, but I can now tell you that he is the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And he came out in a rare statement bristling at the idea that the court—which had 1856 petitions last year and approved all 1856 of them—is a rubber stamp. Here, with the impartiality for which this family of wordsmiths is famous, is what the guy said:

“The perception that the court is a rubberstamp is absolutely false. There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the Executive Branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts, and then by the judges to ensure that the court’s authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize.”

Here’s the deal with the FISA courts—they only hear one side of the story. In every other court in the United States, the opposition gets a chance to come forward, state his defense, and have a judge or jury weigh in. But FISA listens to the government’s case, and then decides.

So that means, that you and I never had a say in the question of whether Verizon turned over your call history to the government. Oh, and not just your call history but your Internet history and also your snail mail, which is photographed—every single last piece of it. All of which can be accessed by the government by petitioning the “rigorous” FISA court, so famously not a rubber stamp.

OK—here’s the dope on Walton: he grew up in Donora, Pennsylvania, a steel town, and was dabbling in gangs when he saw a friend nearly get killed. So that sobered him up, and he went to West Virginia State College on a football scholarship and then to The American University, Washington College of Law for his law degree. Here’s Wikipedia on Walton:

Walton served as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and from 1991 to 2001. He also served as associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2001, he was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, and subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In 2004, Bush appointed him to chair the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, investigating ways to curb prison rape. In May 2007, Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. appointed him to a seat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.[3]

The Washington Post reported, "fellow judges and lawyers who appear before him say Walton's decisions do not appear to be guided by politics but by a tough-on-crime mentality." Walton is known by local defense attorneys as a "long ball hitter" - a judge willing to impose long sentences in order to deter future crimes.[3] In fall 2005, the judge was driving his wife and daughter to the airport for a vacation when he came across an assailant attacking a cab driver on the side of the road. Walton tackled the assailant and subdued him until police arrived. The D.C. police spokesperson noted in response, "God bless Judge Walton. I surely wouldn't want to mess with him."[3]

OK—that’s a good story. Sounds like the kind of guy you could trust to make the right decision, right? And I like it that Walton was the guy who sent Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to jail.

Now then, what about Roger Vinson.

Having another “who he” moment?

He’s the Florida judge who authorized the government to demand that Verizon turn over your telephone history (assuming you’re a Verizon customer—but don’t worry, because all of the wireless providers have done so).

OK—Walton may be OK, this guy is questionable. Good news—he’s moderate on drug sentencing. Bad news, he’s a Tea Party conservative who even he acknowledges gives out draconian sentences. He also is the author of the famous broccoli quote:  “If they decided that everybody needs to eat broccoli because broccoli is healthy they could mandate that everybody has to buy a certain amount of broccoli each week.”

One piece of good news, via Huffington Post: “Vinson is known for his love of the flowering camellia tree. He is a longtime member of the Pensacola Camellia Club and is a former president of the American Camellia Society.”

Well, it’s a thing to know….

Here’s something else to know—Vinson’s order to Verizon expires on 19 July—in twelve days. Presumably, someone will walk into the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse and ask Vinson or another judge to approve the petition for another three months.

Will we know? Will anyone be around to argue the case for NOT collecting the data?

Don’t think so.

Earlier this week, I was watching Rachel Maddow explain—as only she could—how the FBI has killed 70 people and shot another 80. Here’s the New York Times quoting the FBI:

“The F.B.I. takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents, and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” a bureau spokesman said.

It may be that the FBI takes shooting incidents seriously, but guess how many of 150 shootings have been found to be justified? That’s right—all 150 of them. And, like the FISA courts, this is wholly internal—no district attorney can declare that the death of, for example, a young Chechen was a homicide committed by agents of the Federal government. A young Chechen whose family retrieved the body, and discovered it with six bullet holes, including one fired point blank to the temple.

More than ever, I am mistrusting my government. We have got to find a way of putting advocates for civil liberties to argue the case for privacy in every FISA petition.

And we gotta do it quick.

Death of a Rich Canadian

Every evening at seven or eight, most of the women (and some of the men) on the island plant themselves in front of a television and gorge themselves on several hours of steamy romance, diabolical intrigues, crimes of passion combined with greed, incest, infidelity, and virtually every other crime or vice that you can imagine. They’re watching las novelas, technically las telenovelas, or the soaps.

There are, however, occasions when life imitates art, and one of them is unfolding today on the island. Because yesterday, Áurea Vázquez Rijos was arrested in Madrid when arriving at the airport from Italy, where she had been living.

Why was she arrested?

Well, the FBI is curious to know what really happened sometime on the night of 22 September 2005, when Vázquez and her husband, Adam Joel Anhang Uster, were brutally attacked. OK—Anhang was murdered, she sustained a head injury that required surgery, and was hospitalized. And the murder was not a particularly well thought out affair: it took place in the old city slightly after midnight, and was witnessed by several people.

Murders in Puerto Rico usually take place for only a couple of reason: drugs and passion. But this case was interesting because it featured that very well worn but still very powerful motivator…money.

Lot’s of it.

Anhang was Canadian, 32, an entrepreneur who had been CFO for Dr. Ho Casino (an on-line gaming operation) and the CEO of CWC Gaming, as well as being a part owner of a luxury hotel on Vieques, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Apparently, he was well liked, very intelligent, and, as one business partner said, “frail and nerdy.” Not, in short, a difficult man to kill.

The couple met in 2002, began dating, going out to the movies, and going to parties. He praised her, she teased him by saying that he would never take her seriously: she was Latina, and so off limits. Well, he called her bluff, and they were soon living together. In 2004, the parents and little sister of Anhang came to Puerto Rico, and stayed with the couple. Here’s what Vazquez says about the visit:

Ellos no aceptaban que yo era latina y que no era judía ortodoxa. Lo más que odiaba el papá era que yo era latina (se ríe al decirlo). Lo odiaba. Pero nunca tuvimos problemas mayores con su familia. Él tenía problemas con su papá normalmente, como todo hijo con su padre. Pero nunca hubo guerra. Yo no podía ir a tantas cosas porque no era judía. Pero ya había conocido primos, algunos tíos, fui a Canadá tres veces con él. Conocí sus amistades.

Loose translation:

They didn’t accept me because I was Latina and not orthodox Jew. The father hated me the most because I was Latina (laughs while saying it). He hated it. But I never had major problems with his family. Adam had problems with his father—normal things like any son with his father. But there was never a war. I couldn’t go to so many things because I wasn’t Jewish. But I had met his cousins, some uncles, I went to Canada three times with him. I met his friends.

The relationship went sour—according to Vázquez, Anhang was under the sway of his business  partner, Roberto Cacho, who hated her because of previous business dealings that had gone west. In the days after the murder, rumors whirled that Vázquez, who had bought a bar in the old city, was having an affair. At any rate, the couple sought marriage counseling, which proved fruitless. Anhang filed for divorce.

 En caso de un divorcio, ella recibiría anualmente entre 126,000 dólares y $180,000 durante dos años, o hasta que volviera a casarse. Si Anghan moría antes del divorcio, la viuda recibiría 23.1 millones de dólares.

Well, the economic incentive is pretty clear—a max of $180,000 for two years after a divorce, or $23.1 million bucks if Anhang died before the divorce. All this from the prenuptial agreement they signed.

In a crime like this, you’d expect some action—money may not talk, but it can whisper very effectively. And Anhang’s father came to the island, to rattle cages and get some justice done. Significantly, nothing happened. Vázquez remained in the hospital for a month, during which she received—according to her—one visit only from the police. That occurred two days after her surgery, when she was sedated with morphine.

If this case is anything, it’s a magnificent demonstration of the colossal ineptitude of our police force. Anhang’s father came right out and said it—the couple was going through a bitter divorce, Adam had no enemies, Vázquez had to have something to do with the murder of her husband. Vázquez, in turn, alleged that she had been the victim of physical abuse at the hands of her husband.

Predictably, the fight about money began. Anhang had a life insurance policy for ten million. Vázquez tried to collect—rumor is that she never did, because Anhang’s father came down and spent a couple of years fighting to make sure she didn’t get her hands on the dough. Also, of course, pressing for justice to be done.

Which it was. Or rather, an appearance of justice occurred in October of 2007, when our local police decided to run down to the seaside slum that lies outside the old city’s walls, La Perla, and arrest one of the boys.

OK—so there was no physical evidence against him. Worse, an eyewitness testified that the man, Jonathan Román, was definitely NOT the guy who had murdered Anhang. But if a grieving and very rich Canadian man needed a trial and conviction—the thinking may have gone—well, not a problem! So the jury declared him guilty, and the judge sentenced him to 105 years in prison.

“Of course he’s being framed,” said Mr. Fernández, about to enjoy his postprandial cigar. “Everybody knows that. The guy probably made a deal, or the street was too hot for him, or they’ll wait until the Canadian is off the island and then he’ll ‘escape.’’

He went on to propose other possibilities, logical and or possible only in the Caribbean.

Then something happened, perhaps related to the nonpayment of the three million dollars that allegedly Vázquez was to pay the real hit man, Alex Pabón Colón, who is known on the streets as Alex el Loco. Letters surfaced in which it was clear that el Loco had conspired with Vázquez and her sister to relieve Anhang of the tedious chore of living. El Loco wanted his money—well, what professional wouldn’t—and also his saxophone, which was at the bar Vázquez owned. He made several not very original threats, and dismissed as unlikely her pleas that she was broke; she had sold her business, after all.

When confronted, el Loco confessed, and that meant that the ostensible killer, who had spent two-and-a-half years in jail, could be set free. Which he was, with everybody declaring that they had never, never believed that he was guilty, and much patting on the back! Justice had been done! The truth—as God ordained it—had come out! The system worked, and the public trust had been restored! (Word on the street, by the way, is that he got half a million not to sue....)

Curiously, this interpretation, which captivated and conquered the warm Latin imagination, was unconvincing to colder temperaments to the north. Anhang pere said, “won’t you please the hell get involved,” or words to that effect, to the FBI. So the FBI came down and came very soon to the conclusion—as had 3.7 million people of the rest of the island—that Aurora Vázquez, in conspiracy with several others (her sister, et al), had caused el Loco to kill Anhang.

Well, things were looking rather hot for Vázquez, when she decided or discovered that she had a passion for art. (Confession—this is the way I remember it; I can’t be sure that’s what it was). And where do you go to satisfy a taste for art? What country is utterly saturated with art?

Italy.

Which has—good Roman Catholics that they are—an extradition policy that states that no person who might face the death penalty can be extradited. And Vázquez, of course….

So Vázquez had been cooling her heels for five years, having twins by her new Italian lover, working at a travel agency, and dealing occasionally with whatever pesky press bothered her with events long gone.

Then she got careless. She used her American passport to fly to Spain last weekend. And that tipped off the FBI and Interpol, who contacted Spanish authorities. And Spain, which may be just as Catholic, tends to be a bit more bloodthirsty than those merry Italians.

Extradition will take time, but it will take place.

Readers, stay tuned!  

El Nuevo Día Reviews the 30,000 Lives Project

Following is an excerpt, in English, of a review of my 30,000 Lives Project, by journalist Antonio Quiñones Calderón, published on Thursday, March 21 (yesterday) by the Puerto Rican daily newspaper El Nuevo Día. 

(For the full, original article in Spanish, please go here.)

(...) It is in such citizen-participatory spirit that the “30,000 Lives Project” is centered. The project was conceived and is being sponsored and performed personally by Marc Newhouse, a cellist, teacher of the English language and writer who has resided in Puerto Rico for many years; Newhouse, originally a Wisconsin native, has become another good Puerto Rican.

Marc was highly disturbed by a fact he had recently encountered: 30,000 people, on average, are killed every year in the US and its territories—including Puerto Rico—as a direct consequence of gun shots. He was specifically disturbed by the fact that approximately one in every 30 murders by gun shot—within the whole US jurisdiction—occurs in Puerto Rico alone, even when our island's population amounts to a mere 1.19 percent of the total national population. When his brain fully grasped this troubling fact, Marc was instantly convinced that nothing will be instrumental in halting such tragedies until, as he explained, “all of us who favor a strong gun control policy are vigorous and passionate enough as gun advocates are.”

A quote by the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin came to his mind then; Stalin said—cynically and cruelly: “One death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic.” This encouraged Marc to produce his project, hoping that those 30,000 deaths by gun shots in 2011 in the US would not end up becoming just one more statistic.

So he decided to compile a randomly-generated list of 30,000 names symbolizing those lost lives. For this, he used an 8 1/2” x 11” sheet format for a single-spaced list, one name per line, written with normal font at 12 points. He ended up with 474 pages [sic.]. “Everyone who sees the printed document—tells us Marc Newhouse—has the same reaction: ‘Wow! Those are a lot of lives....”

The list will be read out loud on Saturday afternoons in public squares in the metro area of San Juan until next December. Marc, his friends, and citizens who find out about the project and recognize its merit meet each Saturday to read 100 names out loud and publicly. They then engage in a dialog to tackle the importance of finding ways to confront the violence that has taken large control of our society. This initiative, akin to that on Agenda Ciudadana, is, without a doubt, a valuable example of individual contribution to society. (For more information, please visit: http://lifedeathandiguanas.blogspot.com/) 

UPDATE: Please note this weekend's reading has been postponed for Sunday, March 24 at 1:00 PM (instead of the usual Saturdays) at Plaza de Armas, Old San Juan. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Out There

She’s a nice kid, and she’s very good to me, as they all are. I give her two dollars and she gives me change and excellent coffee, which is a fair deal. Or I give her more money and she brings me food, and I sit and munch and feel that there are people around me. I need that—an empty house can be menacing when the husband leaves for work, and you remember a life that got shredded on a Friday morning two years ago.

So I like Nicole, and Nicole, it turns out, likes guns. I know this because I had printed a copy of the list of 33,050 randomly generated names and was showing it to her and Sebastián, her coworker. Sebastián is in my camp, Nicole is not.

Her father is an armed guard, and there are guns all over the house. Well, no—she says that her father keeps his guns in a safe at all times, except for the gun he keeps in his bedside table. And he taught her gun safety from an early age, even before she got a gun license at age thirteen. Keep your safety on at all times, he told her. Point your gun at the ground always, he advised.

The problem, said Nicole, is irresponsible people, not guns. She and her father are responsible people. And her father tells her repeatedly, “I hope you never have to use a gun, but I want you to know how in case you do.”

I told her—your dad’s a responsible guy. And at some point I began to see the difference between the gun people and the gun control people. I think I see it now, why there’s this gulf between us. Simply put, the gun people are living in and with fear, with the possibility of danger and violence. The rest of us are not.

Even on an island where crime is rampant and violent crime no less, it never occurs to me to be afraid. I did the trot this morning, greeting my neighbors, walking briskly towards a stranger. Did I think for a moment that he was anyone else but a guy getting exercise like me? Did it cross my mind—it’s just him and me. What if he’s packing?

Nah, I was too busy listening to Bach. 

But for some people, the possibility of danger and violence is real—so real that these people literally and figuratively arm themselves. And they regard the rest of us with a mix of incredulity and derision—can we really be so stupid about the world around us? Hey, it’s not always pretty, the stuff that goes down….

No, it’s not. But I have lived over half a century—more than half my life—and never been in a situation where I needed a gun.

I have been, however, in many situations or more precisely states where it would have hugely inadvisable to have a gun. There’s a reason for the term “murderous rage,” and I might not have seen dawn, those days when I was deeply depressed, if there had been a pistol in the nightstand as I rolled sleeplessly around in bed.

Taí writes an E-mail with some advice her friend gave to her. Get a bulletproof vest and wear it visibly, she says. And goes on to say—she’s a little uneasy too. There are a lot of nuts out there, as well as a lot of guns. And if a murder can happen at a public square at midnight—as it did a month ago, and no one has yet been arrested—it can just as easily happen in broad daylight.

The logic of this goes by me, since anyone who wanted to kill me could simply shoot me between the eyes. Or better, from behind me, at the base of my cerebral cavity. But that’s not my real fear.

My fear is of having to deal with the anger and scorn of people who feel threatened, who see me as an enemy, and who are in the mood and mindset to fight, not take flight. By good luck, I’m a tall guy, which has served me well. Nobody pushes me around.

Be honest—I hate fights. I hate raised voices and widened eyes and the chin thrust belligerently out. Even now, my stomach churns a bit, thinking about it. There are people who thrive on conflict—I do not.

So why do it? Why not sit home and write the letters and make the calls and post on Facebook? Why put myself out there, when I am so much not an “out there” kind of guy?

Maybe the answer is somewhere in the document below.

The bound copy of the list of 33,050 names

Question Time

It seems to be my destiny to have a callus on my thumb. For years, it was the left thumb, and the callus was the result of playing the cello for three or four hours every day. This week, it’s the right thumb, and it came about when I decided to compile a list of 33.050 randomly generated names, representing the 33,050 genuine (and nameless, officially speaking…) people who in 2010 died as a result of a gunshot wound.

There was a time about ten years ago when I was a computer idiot—in fact, I had a theory that my own electric-magnetic field collided with any electronic device, especially computers. The moment, it seemed, I tried to use one, it crashed, almost always fatally. So it was a big event, the day I announced to Mr. Fernández and doña Taí that I had done a copy / paste. Their eyes rolled like a drunken sailor at sea.

Well, on a Mac laptop, the only or at least the best way to copy / paste is with the thumb. And the list, which took over ten hours to create, took massive copy / pasting.

So what did I learn from the experience?

Here goes, in random order:

·    The list is in size 12 font (20 for the state), single space and occupies 724 pages.

·    California has the most gun deaths—slightly above Texas, which has, however, ten million more people.

·    There’s a huge range in mortality rate—lowest is Hawaii at 3.3, the highest in the fifty states (hear something coming up?) is Arizona at 20.3.

·    Puerto Rico lo hace mejor is the official tourist slogan assures us, but if we do it better, we don’t do it the best. Yes, with a gun mortality rate of 24.3, we’re pretty high. But unbelievably, the US Virgin Islands has a gun mortality rate of 59.7.

“Why are you doing this,” asked John with genuine curiosity.

And it is bizarre. Look, it is statistically more dangerous to send your kid to sleep over in a friend’s house if the parents have a swimming pool as opposed to a gun. Death by gunshot is about number fifteen on the list of leading causes of death—more people die of pneumonia that gunshot, so why aren’t I out protesting against Staph aureus? As well, there are more suicides by gunshot than homicides—though death is death, no matter who pulls the trigger.

And though the attention always goes to the crazy people with semiautomatic weapons, the reality is that most deaths by gunshot occur by handguns—the very weapons that we are earnestly (and ineffectively) reassuring the NRA we would never, never even THINK about banning.

So why spend all this time and energy—reading thirty thousand names in public?

Is it that guns are such a potently masculine symbol? Am I still, at the age of 56, dealing with being a man?

Or is it the randomness of the act? But wait, most victims know their assailant, and anyway a Staph infection is also random.

If we were going to be honest, we would be forced to admit—seeking a ban on semiautomatic weapons probably isn’t going to do much good. Every gun fanatic has gotten his hands on one or more now, and it’s the handgun that kills more often. So really we should be talking about increasing mental health funding and figuring out a way to reduce handgun deaths.

“So why are you doing this,” asked my brother. And here’s my question—at the end of reading 30,000 names, will I have found the answer?

A Voice That Cryeth?

Is everybody crazy?

There is a retired guy in Midland, Alabama, who has killed a school bus driver, abducted a kid, and held him hostage for over six days. The community is outraged, in pain, holding vigils. Law enforcement people apparently can’t go in because the guy is heavily armed. However, they are in contact with the abductor, who has agreed to provide coloring books and medication for the child, who has Asperger’s Syndrome. For these actions, the sheriff—as you can see in the clip below—took the liberty of thanking the abductor for caring for the kid.

I’m having a disconnect, here.

Well, how about yesterday’s news? A navy seal, a guy who killed 150 people in Iraq, came home, wrote a bestselling book about it, and is shot on a shooting range. Another guy was shot as well, and the killer took off in Kyle’s car (he being the seal), went to his sister’s house, confessed and then went home. The sister called the cops, who apprehended the killer some hours later.

You’ll have guessed my reaction. Simply put, if a gun cannot protect a navy seal who is an expert sniper from what I presume is a surprise attack, well…what’s the point of having a gun? Actually, it gets a bit worse. Who knows which of the two people was the first to be dispatched, but presumably there had to be at least a second when the second victim could have turned, drew a weapon, shot the assailant.

Unless you’re trained to respond instantly and reactively, your reaction to a sudden and shocking violent act is stupor. You’re stunned. You stand there with your mouth open looking down at your slain friend and you don’t do the obvious thing. Which is, of course, to take the assailant out before he takes you out.

Right, so we’ve got an insane guy in Alabama with an Asperger’s child in a heavily armed tornado shelter. (This, by the way, seems like the least pleasant way for anyone to spend six days—it may tell you how crazy the guy is….) We’ve got a sniper who couldn’t defend himself.

And we’ve got a whole bunch of nuts who believe that the government is out to get them, and their only defense is to have as many guns as possible. And the quote the second amendment, which runs as follows:

The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[97]

OK, Educated Reader, I know you caught it. Here’s the complete version:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[97]

It was probably those famously radical Madison Public Schools in the dangerous days of the late fifties and early sixties that put the idea in my mind: the second amendment was not about telling people it was just fine to have semi-automatic weapons, it was about ensuring that the citizens could grab their muskets and fight in a well regulated militia. Short form: individuals don’t have a right to bear arms—the state does.

Well, was I busy daydreaming of boys in high school? Was that the class I skipped, in order to play chamber music with a friend? It was forty years ago, after all.

What I didn’t know, until I tracked it down just now, is that the US Supreme Court only decided that the second amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms in 2008. Yup—that’s four and a half years ago. And as you can imagine, it was a five / four decision—with all the justices that you’d expect piling up to protect this “right.” And here, of course, is the voice of reason, John Paul Stevens:

In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that the court's judgment was "a strained and unpersuasive reading" which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had "bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law".[49] Stevens also stated that the amendment was notable for the "omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense" which was present in the Declarations of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont.[49]

So now we’re stuck. It’s a curious thing, how people who have a visceral, knee-jerk hatred paranoia of the federal government have no trouble jumping on the bandwagon and rushing off to Washington when it fits their purpose. And of course it’s no surprise that of the 47 amicus curiae briefs, most of congress, John McCain, and—no surprise here—Dick Cheney came out swinging for this “right.” Obama did not, nor, interestingly, did the United States Department of Justice.

All of us are busy placating. “No,” we tell the gun crazies, “we’re not after all your guns—just the semiautomatics and the assault weapons, and please—couldn’t you go along with background checks at gun shows?” Obama claims that he shoots skeet at Camp David, and then has to release a picture of him with—literally—a smoking gun to prove it. Hasn’t he learned? Half of the population “knows” only two things about him: that he wasn’t born in the state of Hawaii and that he’s a Muslim.

In fairness, interpreting the United States Constitution is nothing you do on a Saturday afternoon while drinking beer with the boys. I’m just as glad not to have to do it. How does free speech as comprehended by the founders apply to something like the Internet? Don’t have a clue. But I do have a thought about the guns that individuals have a “right” to own. Sure! Let’s be a strict literalist here. Of course you can have a gun.

A musket!

Notes From a Timid Man

There is, apparently, a misconception going on about me, if I read the reviews correctly of the people who have read Iguanas. “Moving and brave,” says one reviewer; “a story of great love and courage,” says another.

Wrong.

That was desperation, those months in spring of 2010, when I / we figured out what we were going to do with “old Mother,” as Franny deprecatingly called herself. And it was easy to be courageous around her—if she could do it, how could I not? And no, writing the book was also not brave—it was just a purging, in a way.

“Courage is knowing what to do in a dangerous situation,” Harry once told me—and he should know. He’s a philosopher; he’s told me a million times what the Platonic forms are (even now, I’ve only a muddled idea); this definition was some Ancient Greek’s, perhaps Plato himself.

OK—so let me tell you how dangerous the situation is.

Three weeks ago, a couple hundred thousand drunks decided to invade my neighborhood in order to progress to greater levels of inebriety, hear noise and make still more, as well as to expel body fluids in forbidden places. They called this Las Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián.

And one of the body fluids was blood. Yes, a man bumped into another man, an argument ensued, and the bumper ended up shot, with two different guns, and left dead on the pavement. The killer(s) logically left the scene, the mood of the crowd became a bit dampened, people whipped out their cell phones and took pictures to tweet and facebook. What didn’t they do?

Talk to the cops.

Yes, the “festival” was weeks ago, and no—nobody’s been arrested. People are afraid of retaliation.

Not convinced?

OK—there is a lovely town in the southwest of Puerto Rico. It’s historic; both Raf and I think it’s the second oldest town on the island. And the people there are gentle, sweet. Once, when Raf and I were looking at (and exclaiming over) a wonderful old house, the owner hailed us, brought us in, gave us a tour, and then made us coffee.

Welcome to San Germán!

Where there was a little basketball game that turned bad. Very bad. One player fouled another player, a discussion ensued, and the guy who had been fouled walked to his car, opened it, took out his gun, and killed the guy who had fouled.

Guys? A little tip, here. It’s a game, got it? Not something to shed blood for.

But there’s a lot of blood shed around here. Consider this…

About one in thirty murders in the United States occur in Puerto Rico. Compared to California—which has 11% of the population—we have about half as many murders. But our population is 1.19% of the US population.

Or this. New York City has three times the population of Puerto Rico and half the number of murders.

“So I can read those names, right?”

I was busy seeking free legal advice from my brother—hey, didn’t I nurse Franny all those weeks? I think of it often: my finest hour as a nurse, though the patient did die…. 

“Just a sec, I gotta take this call,” he said.

I felt a bit bad for him. He had been on a conference call earlier; he keeps getting interrupted by affairs oddly more important that mine; he has not so much taken a vacation as moved his practice to Mexico, which is where I have tracked him down.

“Everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I’d think strongly about it.”

In legal terms, that means “no.”

I’ve told him the plan. Thirty thousand people die of gun shot wounds every year. I want to wake up every morning, take a público (the minivan that gets the un-carred around the island—eventually) to a different town, set up my video camera on the tripod, sit in the plaza and read 100 names. This I will do for three hundred days. And around about the time Christmas is running in, I’ll be done. Hopefully, people will come by, ask questions, tell their stories. Lots of material for the blog, and I can also stick the footage on YouTube, where it will instantly turn viral—who can resist a mad gringo running around Puerto Rico reading thirty thousand names! Wow!

I was, of course, filled with excitement—as fervid as I was when I announced the plan to the CEO of Wal-Mart Puerto Rico to get the annual bonus. Just build an extra supercenter and Sam’s club, and don’t tell Bentonville. See? Thinking outside and OF the box!

My question to Johnny—who was probably salivating for a golf course—was whether I could use the names of actual victims that I had found on a website. The names had been submitted by the mourning families—to me it was public record, or implied consent, or something, but what do I know? This is why I have a lawyer brother—though he may not see it quite that way….

Well, Johnny had a reaction essentially similar to the CEO’s.

“You know, it’s possible that one member of the family put the name of the victim on the site and it was really another member of the family who shot the victim by accident and that guy is a member of the NRA so he goes running to them and they file a lawsuit and they’ve got bigger pockets than you, pal!”

Right, it’s also possible that the pope is conducting satanic masses in the basement of St. Paul’s Basilica.

Well, we agreed—if I use those names, I’ll first put all my money (about 300 bucks) in a Swiss numbered account.

“You know, I just can’t stand bullies and bastards getting away with it,” I said.

You know of whom I was speaking….

“I have only a voice,” I thought today, on the trot. And then wondered—where’s that from? Feels like a poem or something. Well I googled it, and couldn’t find it. But I did find a little gem, with which I leave you.  
  

Making Amends

By Allison Grayhurst

The night is caught

like a mouse’s tail caught

between a cat’s shining teeth.

  Once I believed in recognition

and the glory of making a name.

Now it’s only time before me,

and the ashes of my loved one.

  The world and its shallow passions

is not a place to put my hopes in,

is only the grand flame of ‘me’

and my short span.

  Loving a child is what matters.

No words, no pat-on-the-back,

no cry out for justice or the soft sniffles

of fickle brilliance.

  Soon I will join a tree or even a flower.

The sloping roof with the snow on top -

that is stillness.

  The wind pushes its way under my door

like a maddened bird.

I have no ambitions. I have only a voice

that must continue its singing.

Copyright © 2002 by Allison Grayhurst

(Poem reproduced here with written consent from the author.)