Life, Death and Iguanas

Friday, April 19, 2013

Update from Boston

I might just as well be honest—I have wasted an hour and a half looking at police, ATF agents, FBI agents, drug agents with dogs, and other assorted law enforcement personnel, all of whom…are looking at a grey house at the corner of….

…oh wait, the media has been asked not to reveal precise locations.

So, if Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers suspected in the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, is reading this…HAH! You won’t get it from me!

I tell myself, ‘hey, if nobody is working in Boston, why should you? Who needs to read Iguanas every day?’ And at any moment, the cops could move in, there could be a gun fight, and maybe even an explosion, since authorities—I know this fact because I’ve heard it thirty times—at a Boston-area hospital have reported that Dzhokhar's brother, who is now dead, came in with gunshot wounds AND shrapnel. This means that he had an IED—please notice how casually I’m using the term—strapped on him. (For those who don’t know, I can now smugly tell you that it’s an “improvised explosive device.” (¿Bíjte?)

There is a nineteen-year old kid (the media reports him as armed and extremely dangerous—“we know,” said one broadcaster darkly, “just what he is capable of…”) who last night robbed a convenience store, shot dead an MIT policeman, wounded critically an MBTA agent, and hijacked a black Mercedes Benz. As well, he kidnapped the owner of the vehicle before releasing him unharmed half an hour later.

And now, the entire Boston metropolitan area is under lockdown. Stay in your homes, we are warned. Do not open your door to anyone but a duly identified policeman.

Well, let me take a break here to show you this photo:

Readers—attention! The individual on the right with his arm place over the torso of the other individual and in front of the glasses containing an orange fluid that might be orange juice is the highly dangerous suspect, Dzhokhar. If you see this individual you should NOT try to apprehend him, but rather seek shelter immediately and then proceed to notify your local law enforcement agencies by calling this number: 1-800-494-TIPS.

OK—so I’ve done my duty here both to my readers and to society at large. I can also inform you—since I went to the bathroom and then just thought I’d update myself on this emerging situation—that the president was briefed overnight on the developments and has activated the situation room at the White House. Great—we got Barry on it, and if he can bring down bin Laden, a 19 year-old should be child’s play.

I myself am thinking of contacting—no, not official enough—of communicating or putting myself into communication with local, state, or federal law enforcement personnel to notify them that the individuals in question seem to be in a kitchen with two stoves. This appears to me to be a fact of extreme importance, though at this point in time and in the investigation process it may be premature—or even dangerous—to speculate or make hasty conclusions. More important is the fact that both stoves appear to be functional—at least one of them there appears to be a pot that may be connected with the recent activity of food preparation, as evidenced by the presence of apparent food items on the table. There is a steam kettle on the other stove. This could be significant if the brothers are, as media reports them to be, of Russian origin. The Russians love their tea!

This just in—the grey Honda with the license plate CRV-E58 has been located, so we can all cross that off the list of things to monitor in this fluid and emerging situation. Oh, and no fear, Canadian readers—the border patrol is monitoring the border and working in close communication with United States officials. So you’re safe up there.

I break to report—with shame—that ABC news has made a horrible gaffe and is very wrongly reporting the name of a Watertown street which is being evacuated. Guys! Get a little professionalism here, hunh?

Well, I’ve done my duty, I do think, down here in sunny Puerto Rico, of keeping my readership abreast of the troubling developments taking place even as we speak in the city and neighboring communities of Boston, Massachusetts. I’d like to urge you, as so many others have done, that your personal safety and the personal safety of those you love is the number priority for you at this point in time.

Lastly, all indications are that, yet again, the two suspects were quiet, good students, fine athletes, courteous, and even played the piano! So, if you or anyone you know should happen to know an individual with some or all of those characteristics, I urge you immediately to contact local authorities and report any suspicious behavior or activity.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Blood On Their Hands

Well, it’s nothing we can feel good about. The United States Senate has been bought; we are governed by merciless, mercenary, utterly amoral men and women. They voted their pocket, they caved to pressure, they listened to lies.

They have blood on their hands.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe, after all, it’s better to know whom you’re up against, who your enemies are. And maybe it’s good to get angry, to start screaming “SHAME ON YOU” as two people did.

And as you can see in the clip below, Patricia Maisch seems like an improbable person to have been escorted out of the Senate, yesterday. In fact, even at age 56 I’m still instinctively intimidated by these ladies of a certain age who so many years ago told me to sit up straight and respect your elders and don’t put your elbows on the table.

The question, of course, is not whether they should be ashamed—of course they should—but whether they have any capacity for it. The next question is what to do about them.

Here are the 54 people who yesterday said, “fuck you,” to 90% of the American people.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho,Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.*, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

*Reid voted no as a procedural move so that he would retain the ability under Senate rules to bring up the measure again should supporters believe they've mustered enough votes to secure passage.

Source: U.S. Senate

And here are the email addresses of those 54 people:

Unfortunately, these are contact forms, so it’s not possible to do a copy / paste and mass emailing. So I’m going to spend half an hour, copying and pasting the message below to all 54 senators.

I’m pissed.

I have never before written to a congressperson, but today I cannot remain silent. As well, I have always been proud to be an American; today, because of your actions, I am not.

You have failed to pass a simple measure that would have saved lives. By doing so, you have put lives jeopardy, because you feared the financial power of the gun lobby groups.

I'm glad one American had the courage to shout "Shame on you!" You have ignored the 90% of the American people who supported this measure, you have jeopardized American lives, and you have lost all of our respect.

Marc Newhouse

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Bombs or Redbuds?

I won’t do it, of course, tempting as it might be. But I do have to wonder—is it advisable for the New York Times to tell everybody that the al Qaeda magazine Inspire has an article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom?”

What I won’t do is check that out—do I need Homeland Security knocking at my door? And what would I do with the information, anyway? Besides, the NYT has given me all the rudiments of the recipe: place small nails, ball bearings, or metal shards in a six liter pressure cooker, reads the opening sentence of the recipe. Presumably, we top with melted cheese (gruyere if fancy, Velveeta otherwise).

News flash—and remember you read it here first—we’re never gonna know who made the bombs, put them in the garbage cans, and left the scene, after having set the kitchen timer on each of the bombs. All we’ll know—I’m guessing or perhaps extrapolating here—is that it took ten seconds for him (sorry, guys, but I think it’s one of our own….) to set the timer of the first bomb and then walk to the next garbage can, where he set the second.

Garbage cans, as you will know if you’ve been to London recently, are very lethal affairs, as deadly as pressure cookers. Unbelievably, unimaginably, the Boston Police Department (BPD) is unaware of this simple fact, a datum a 3-year old child could easily grasp and expound upon.

Yes, the danger is everywhere—kitchen timers, pressure cookers, garbage cans. And now, with the Internet, it’s easy to slip into the kitchen, get down to work, and cook up a little bomb or two. And in the case of the Boston Marathon, you can run out and get the ingredients months in advance. The brads that tore through so much flesh may have been bought in December, during the Christmas rush.

“We can never be safe again,” is the take away (nod to my corporate past) from one writer, a man generally wise and perceptive (read—I usually agree with him….).

Well, yes and no. Susan said it best in her comment about yesterday’s post. Remember that line in the Bible about living by the sword? Well, we’ve been doing that for too many years now, and we’ve pissed off too many people. Now, of course, we don’t like it when the “terrorist” walks into the kitchen to conjure up a bomb, not mac and cheese.

Which leads me to ask—what did you make in your kitchen two days ago? What would it have taken to impel you to take the pressure cooker, put the brads, BBs and metal shards into the pot, to glue it, to fix the timer, to put it into the back pack, and then to repeat the whole process? Because there’s an extra though vital ingredient to that recipe for a bomb, something besides the brads and metal shards—rage, hate, vengeance.

OK—kookiness. Somebody, breaking news on Yahoo informs me, sent a letter with suspicious white powder to Obama. Somebody also sent a letter with ricin to a senator from Mississippi. All the nuts, apparently, are stepping up to the plate and pitching right in.

In the days after September 11, 2001, I used to amuse myself with all the ways you could create disaster. Well, everybody was doing it—imagining subway gassings, warning us never to eat at salad bars, giving gloves and masks to the receptionist, as she opened the morning mail. And since the entire United States was filled with terrorists, just itching to bring down the God-fearing US of A, and since they were willing to give their lives to do it, I conceived a very simple way to create mass mayhem.

No, I won’t tell you. I love my country—as batty as it is; as paranoid as it is; as horribly as it acts, on occasion. We’ll struggle on. And no, I don’t think it’s impossible ever to be safe. I think if we could ever start acting well, if we stopped torturing people and bombing civilians in illegal and immoral wars, the rest of the world might be better off. Oh, and they might stop hating us, or at least not hate us as much.

More breaking news—the Senate, which is supposed to be thinking about gun control today, was locked down briefly when someone without clearance was found delivering packages. Oh, and Obama is speaking live right now about the suspicious letters.

Lastly, I leave you with the image that somehow encapsulates this whole ridiculous and tragic affair. Yes, I acknowledge the menacing Haz Mat truck, the police cars, the men ducking into the secured building, the whole scene one of response to menace and peril. I prefer to look, however, at the lovely redbud tree, in glorious and full flower, serenely sure that there is no, no danger.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Round Two

You know the story as well as I do: the two explosions; the 78 year-old runner blown to the street; the smoke lifting; the stunned man filming the event, who can only keep saying “Oh, my God.”

So it’s happened again, a dozen years after September 2001. We have spent billions of dollars on “security,” we’ve lost significant amounts of freedom, we have allowed the government to strip us of rights in order to “protect” us. In addition, we’ve lost the ability to think, and fallen victim to fear. Does anybody really think that having zillions of people scrutinize us as we empty our pockets and take off our shoes and belts and go through metal detectors at our airports is making us safer? Wouldn’t a simple lock on the cockpit door have done the trick? And why, since hijacking has been around since the 60’s, wasn’t it standard procedure to lock the cockpit?

So yes, I watched the videos compulsively yesterday, until it occurred to me—it wasn’t doing my stomach any good. Nor was it being particular useful to the people of Boston, so why was I doing it?

Later I wondered—under what circumstances would I ever put a bomb (or two or four, however many there were) in a crowd full of innocent people? Would I ever? Would I ever have so much hurt, so much pain, that it would give rise to that level of rage and bile?

I hope not.

OK—Adolf Hitler. When would I have the necessary knowledge to justify putting the bomb under his desk? Would I need to have seen the concentration camps? Would hearing accounts be enough? Would just seeing the Jews crammed in the cattle cars be sufficient?

So now the country is watching a city block of Boston, Massachusetts, and scratching their heads and saying, “why do they hate us?” The answer, most people think, is that there is such a thing as evil, and the people who perpetrated this deed were evil.

Well, I think there’s an alternative explanation, and the New York Times reported on it today. “US Practiced Torture After 9/11,” announced the headline, and my response was, predictably, “duh….”

Of course we were practicing torture—will anybody in the world forget that sadistic photograph of the female soldier, her cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, her foot resting on top of a heap of naked prisoners? We admitted that we water-boarded, it was reported that the justice department had written memos, and that we had signed off on these “interrogation” techniques, but that no—national security, we couldn’t read them.

So it was a true “dog bites man” moment for me, but not, apparently for a Republican guy named Asa Hutchinson, who served under Bush as head of the Drug Enforcement Agency and undersecretary of the Homeland Security. He was the Republican balance to a bipartisan report, and he initially started out believing that no, there was no torture committed. But here’s what the New York Times has him saying:

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,” Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. He said he thought everyone involved in decisions, from Mr. Bush down, had acted in good faith, in a desperate effort to try to prevent more attacks.

“But I just think we learn from history,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.”

He added, “The United States has a historic and unique character, and part of that character is that we do not torture.”

Yeah? Wanna ask the rest of the world?

I read once that there was a British maxim—a man is judged by how he treats his enemy. And nations as well; that said, how well do we score?

Well, the Army Field Manual on Interrogation may reveal a hint or two; section M allows for interrogation sessions for up to 40 consecutive hours.

“Doesn’t sound like much,” you say. Right, but try staying awake from 8AM Monday morning to midnight the next day—that’s 40 hours.

And the very fact that it was officially permitted led to other things, not officially permitted. Here’s one chilling sentence from the Times story:

The C.I.A. not only water boarded prisoners, but slammed them into walls, chained them in uncomfortable positions for hours, stripped them of clothing and kept them awake for days on end.

Oh, and here’s another one:

The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.

Nor does the report spare the Obama administration:

While the Constitution Project report covers mainly the Bush years, it is critical of some Obama administration policies, especially what it calls excessive secrecy. It says that keeping the details of rendition and torture from the public “cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security” and urges the administration to stop citing state secrets to block lawsuits by former detainees.

Well, you know where I land on this issue. Obama didn’t want to focus on the past, he said, he wanted to focus on the future, going forward.

Lovely sentiment.

Bullshit.

No president is gonna go after a former president, for the simple fact that every president is going to BE at some point a former president.

So now we know. Oops, so sorry—looks like we went a little overboard.

Is that enough?

Let’s see—what time is it, over there in the Hague?

Monday, April 15, 2013

Don't We?

Well, the situation on Capitol Hill, it seems, is getting a bit heated. The Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to figure out what to do about a difficult question—should somebody with a criminal record or a history of mental illness including violence be allowed to buy a gun? Forty percent of guns sold in the US do NOT include a background check.

This is a difficult, difficult question for our senators, who perhaps see things in this question that we simpler souls do not. Because a large majority—is it 80%? 90%? Who cares…the numbers are ridiculous—a large majority of the American public, as I was saying, support universal background checks.

And according to the New York Times, tempers flared at a luncheon for Republican lawmakers last weekend. Senator Susan Collins was pissed—she’s getting attacked, she said, by the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) which has deep ties to Rand Paul. Then Portman got into the fray, saying that he’s spending time raising funds for Collins, and she’s obliged to use it to defend herself, instead of getting her message out or attacking the opposition. Then Ted Cruz of Texas jumped in, and said he had nothing to do with it. (Cruz, apparently, is an ideological fan of Paul.) Then Paul, offended, left in a huff (OK, the New York Times actually said “stormed out of the room.”)

According to the NAGR, the National Rifle Association (NRA) isn’t sufficiently vigilant or militant in protecting “gun rights.” Yes, you read that right—NAGR president Dudley Brown thinks that the NRA is “negotiating backroom deals with left-wing Republicans and Democrats for half a loaf of gun control.”

Some people feel differently, like former Colorado State Senator Jean White, who got shot down in the primaries, and then saw a Democratic opponent win the general election. She says the NAGR is a godsend for the Democrats; several others agree. In the meantime, the NAGR took in and spent 7 million bucks last year.

Collins is also upset because the ads—coming from out of state—suggest she doesn’t act or talk like a Mainer; she grew up in northern Maine, where everybody had guns. And the ads hit pretty low—her face doing a slow dissolve into the face of Obama. Oh, and they call her a “gun grabber.”

Guys, this is insane. And it’s a typical example of how, by trying to be reasonable with crazy people, you end up in the end in completely crazy positions.

What we should have said, those decades ago when we were worrying about “Saturday night specials” (remember those halcyon days?) was this:

1. The Second Amendment applies to the right of the citizenry to arm themselves and form militia. You have no individual right to own a gun.

2. OK—for historical reasons, you can own a rifle and engage in hunting.

3. The only purpose of a handgun is to kill someone. Sales of handguns are illegal, and illegal trafficking will be strictly punished.

4. No attack weapons, semi-automatic weapons, etc. Rifles, period.

5. As technology evolves, you will be required to upgrade your weapon, which means, yes, a national registry. We know that you have a car—why isn’t that a big deal? So you’ll be getting letters, periodically, saying that your gun has to have a Breathalyzer, a GPS chip, a PIN lock…whatever.

6. Duh, background checks…..

7. Sell guns through the mail, the Internet, gun shows? What, are you crazy? Guns are sold only through licensed shops, whose records are inspected annually.

We should have said it; we didn’t. So the gun people kept claiming more ground. Eventually, they got the Supreme Court to reverse two centuries plus of constitutional history and say that the Second Amendment allows individuals to own guns. More and more laws got passed protecting gun owners and gun “rights.” Gun makers got immunity from lawsuits; it became illegal to fund research on the effect of gun policy. As everyone went farther and farther into this crazy land, the NRA and the other gun “rights” groups had to whip up the masses more and more on progressively more crazy issues. Now, they are forced into attacking their friends—like Collins—by making up absurd claims. Oh, and also by lying.

And they have now, of course, put the Republican Party in a real jam. Because they are about to show their true colors to the American people. They’re about to tell 80% (or is it 90%) of the American people to go to hell, that they don’t care what they think or how many kids get killed, because nothing, in the end, is more important than the next election.

As deeply as I care about the issue, it may be time to focus on the way our campaigns are funded. Because now, we have a terrible example of how a single-issue constituency can completely subvert the democratic process by injecting twin amounts of money and lies into campaigns. Add to that the fact that corporations can now contribute freely and we have a looming disaster.

It may be time, it may be well past time, to do what Norway does. About 74% of campaigns are publically funded. Oh, and another wonderful piece of news: political ads are banned on television and radio.

I’d go further, of course. It seems crazy to me that a candidate can opt out of accepting campaign funds. Level the playing field—give everybody the same amount of dough, and let the best candidate win.

I mean we all do want an honest government, don’t we?

Didn’t hear the answer—don’t we?

Don’t we?

Saturday, April 13, 2013

On Singers and Performers

Confession—the news is so bad I’ve turned to music to get me through the day. So I devote half an hour to reading about North Korea, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—oh, and let’s not forget those politicians pondering the seriously hard question of whether any lunatic (literally) should be able to buy a gun—and then I take a walk. Or rather, it’s “then we take a walk.” This week, Ralph Vaughan Williams joined me, and excellent company he was. He told me, which I didn’t know, that he had volunteered for World War I when he was 41—well past the age when he was compelled to. And he had served time as an ambulance carrier in the fields. Then he came home and saw the whole thing happening all over again, fifteen years later. He didn’t go, of course, to the Second World War, but he wrote a bitter, very dissonant symphony—completely unlike his usual stuff—about it. Years later, he said, “I don’t know if I like it, but I meant it.”

Second confession—Vaughan Williams died in 1958.

Or not. The music is going strong, there is a Vaughan Williams Society promoting his work, and if his words were resonating in my mind, on the morning trot, well—is he really dead? And so to the greater glory of Vaughan Williams, I wrote a post about him, and put it in a new blog, Words on Musick. (Sorry for the affectation—that “musick” business—but somebody had already got to “music”). The next day I got into Cecilia Bartoli singing all those wonderful arias written for castrati—the ones only a manic singer on cocaine can sing. They’re fun, they’re (mostly) more a romp than music, but who cares? There’s a place for Mozart, a place for Broschi.

Right, so that lead me into the world of the soprano, and I wasted an hour which I cheerfully have watching a BBC documentary on castrati—the singers who had parts removed to preserve their voices. And I discovered two or three remarkable singers. There’s Radu Marian, a guy from Moldavia who for medical reasons never entered puberty (though I noted today that he sports a mustache—don’t know what that’s about….) Anyway, Radu has a clean, high voice—fully soprano, very pure, and yes, I mean it when I say high. He could break glass.

Another singer, as well, Michael Maniaci, who like Radu never entered puberty—they’re both astonishing singers. Right, so it felt that the world needed to hear me weigh in on this, so I wrote about that.

It’s unfortunate, how easily just doing something three days in a row becomes a habit. What to write about today?

Well, there is the intemperance of commentary on YouTube; has anyone noticed it besides me? Or is it that musicians—I’m skating quite close to the truth, here, just to mix a metaphor—are an irritable, irascible bunch? Anyway, the YouTubians / YouTubists / YouTubers / nothing-satisfies-the computer-these-days are going at each other with sabers over the question of Simone Kermes. Here is one of the more temperate remarks—I fear to introduce the more incendiary to the Gentle Readers of this blog:

Whatever she's taken, I think I want some too! She has such a gorgeous voice but the coloratura just isn't accurate at ALL from the word go although she has way better technique than Bartoli (it's hard to do it properly!) All this drunk-auntie-at-a-wedding dancing, what is all that about? It is so vulgar I actually sort of love it. Quite frankly the best Rodelinda in the world (IMO) doesn't need to "prove" she can sing this (or not). 8/10 for singing, 10/10 for chutzpah!

This from the hugely talented and universally acclaimed…La Prima Ragazza.

I think you get my point. One of the reasons nobody listens to classical music much is that regular people have been snobbed out of it. Yeah, in the movies, classical music is OK. But actually go to a concert, with all the formality, the protocol, the anxiety of when you’re supposed to clap…. And what if you don’t like the music?

Well, Kermes gets called by Mosart200657 “The Operatic Lady Gaga,” so I decided to check her out. And here she is, romping her way through Come Nave in mezzo all’onde.

Well, as always, I’m mixed about it all. I think Ian Bostridge said it best: pop music is now the mainstream; if you really want to be counterculture, listen to Mozart. And isn’t it hypocritical to keep viewing popular music as somehow the underdog?

And why does Simone Kermes have to emulate Lady Gaga? Why does she have to sell herself—isn’t the voice and the music enough?

That said, I’m not so sure that I can comfortably pan her. If she wants to romp around on-stage, why not? Yes, it’s all a bit campy, it may also distract from the aria, but it’s another point of view, it’s something to see. My only problem with it is that Kermes will never out-gaga Gaga.

When are we going to admit the truth?

She easily out-sings her.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Wonderful Terrible Music

OK—you should probably hear it once in your life, if you want to consider yourself musically well traveled.

Welcome to the rarified world of composers seriously obscure like Porpora, Hasse, Broschi. How obscure? Well, my computer has just red squiggled the names, and I’ve spent a moment or two wondering if it was worth the time to add them to the dictionary. Would I ever write them, much less even remember them, again? Or would I be sufficiently annoyed by the squiggle appearing throughout the document that it would be worth it?

This ambivalent attitude towards these composers carries over into their music, which is absolutely wonderful—wow, the sheer number of notes they can pack in a score! These guys must have died of writer cramp; it’s music that tires me just to listen too, imagine writing the stuff…..

And do I care enough even to find out anything about even one of these guys? Luckily, I did—though more out of duty than interest. But I’m happy to tell you that his story is just as good as Farinelli’s, and it’s even true!

Now we back up. People have been cutting balls off boys for millennia, for varying reasons—humiliation, slavery, or just well, for a song. Quite literally—there were, according to Wikipedia, castrated males in the early Byzantine Empire. But the castrati first get into opera in the middle of the 16^th century—just as opera was being created. So it’s no surprise to find castrati in the operas of Monteverdi.

Knew that, but what I didn’t know is that castration does more than preserve the voice of a boy before puberty. The lack of testosterone also weakens and lengthens the bones—among which are the bones of the rib cage. So these guys developed huge chests, and phenomenal breathing capacity. As well, they had more agility than the female singer, and produced a distinct sound. All of this meant that composers could write music of phenomenal vocal difficulty, inversely related to any musical worth.

If you’ve seen the movie Farinelli, you’ll know—they were the Michael Jacksons and Beatles of their day. People went wild for them, they became hugely rich, they died young (generally). At the height of the craze for castrati, 4,000 boys a year were castrated.

Times changed, fashion changed. The last role for a castrato was written by Meyerbeer in 1828, but the tradition lingered on until quite late in—guess where—the Catholic Church. Yes, popes as far back as Benedict XIV in 1748 had tried to ban castrati, but their popularity was such that people might leave the church had Benedict done so. So as late as 1913, there was a castrato in the Sistine Chapel Choir. There has been talk, by the way, of urging the church to make an official apology.

There is, in fact, a recording of the last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, which you can hear below. Be warned, though, that styles in singing have changed in the last hundred years, and Moreschi may not have been that great a singer (sorry—it seems really mean to pan a guy who lost his balls….). But it’s a thing to hear.

It’s a rather forlorn sound, and it must have been a difficult life, living as the last relic of a dying tradition. Moreschi stands in contrast to his colleague three hundred years earlier, Siface, who was acclaimed as the best singer in the world by a critic in London (never an easy accolade to attain), and had a crazy love life.

You’re asking—at least I think you’re asking—how can a castrato have a love life? My answer: I don’t know, nor am I willing to find out. This isn’t that kind of blog, dammit.

All right, getting over my fit of pique and moving right along, I give you in Spanish what happened since it’s more complete and somehow sounds better:

Estuvo al servicio del el Duque de Módena y se enamoró perdidamente de Elena Marsili, viuda del conde Gaspari-Forni y hermana del Marqués Giorgio Marsili de Bolonia, quien se opuso tenazmente a la relación amorosa entre Siface y su hermana, por considerar a los castrati como un engendro (sic, or should it be asi?) de la naturaleza y una afrenta a la memoria y la sangre de la casa de los Marsili. El asunto fue llevado ante el Duque de Módena, quien tenía alta estima por el castrato y decidió alejar a Elena de Siface, enviándola al monasterio de San Lorenzo.

OK—loose translation. Siface falls head over heels with Elena Marsili, a dame who’s the widow of the Count of Gaspari-Forni (definitely sounds like comic opera) and the sister of the Marquis Georgio Marsili, who absolutely weirds out that his sister could be getting it on with a freak of nature. So everybody runs over to the Duke of Modena, who was wild about the castrato, and who decides to stick Elena into a monastery—always a good solution, right?—in San Lorenzo.

And is Siface beaten? Nope—not he!

Aun así Siface no renunció a Elena y cuando le fue dado el rol de Perseo en la ópera de Martelli, el cantante pudo frecuentar más Bolonia e inmediatamente pidió salvoconductos para visitar a Elena en el monasterio. El escándalo público y la ira del Marqués Marsili llegaron a su punto más álgido. En hechos no esclarecidos del todo, el cantante fue asaltado en su carruaje que lo conducía a Bolonia por 4 hombres enmascarados que le dieron muerte, primero con bayonetas en su espalda y le remataron destrozándole el cráneo. El juicio iniciado no pudo inculpar al Marqués pero el Papa en persona se decidió a intervenir y desterró al Marqués de Bolonia y los Estados Papales. Elena Marsili desapareció del monasterio meses más tarde y se dice que coleccionó un gran número de aventuras amorosas, según muchos por venganza contra su hermano.

Siface doesn’t give up but rather, when he gets a role in Bologna, he begins begging permission to visit the monastery. Now the Marquis gets really pissed, and guess what happens? Four masked guys hop into the carriage that Siface is riding in; they kill him and then rekill (well, what else is rematar, computer?) by destroying his cranium. Well, they can’t pin it on the Marquis, so the pope steps in—I’ll send a sworn official translation to any of you scoffers out there—and exiles the Marquis from the Papal States and Bologna. The pope could do stuff like that in those days. Now then, what does the fiery Elena do? Wonderfully, she sticks out her tongue at her brother, escapes the monastery, and goes off screwing half the men in Italy!

I think, Dear Reader, that you really should send me a good bottle of scotch for digging up that story!

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Interesting Times Redux

Well, it’s clear that we’ve been afflicted with the old Jewish curse: may you live in interesting times.

Interesting, for example, that little Uruguay—best known I thought for providing a warm, Latin welcome to retiring (in only one sense) Nazis—has now become the second nation in South America to “allow” same sex marriage. OK—I know nothing about Uruguay, except that it’s the only land-locked South American country. But whoever or whatever they are, I cheer them on. Besos from Fortaleza Street!

Things are a little murkier up in the United States Northwest. In Washington, the attorney general is suing Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, for refusing to provide the flowers for a gay marriage. And in Oregon, Aaron Klein, owner of Sweet Cakes, is facing a complaint lodge with the Oregon Department of Justice for refusing to provide a cake for two women’s wedding.

Both Stutzman and Klein refused to provide goods based on their religious beliefs—Stutzman told her long-time customer, Robert Ingersoll (no, not the Great Agnostic, who died in 1899), that she had a personal relationship with Jesus; the two hugged, Ingersoll left the store, and she thought the whole thing was over. In Klein’s case, he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, I didn’t mean to make anybody upset, it’s just something I believe in very strongly.”

Confession—my first thought was purely political. ‘Drop it,’ I rebuked Ingersoll and the two ladies, ‘we have enough problems to deal with. Get over it, find another bakery and florist, take your business elsewhere. We don’t need Christians screaming that they’re being persecuted for their religious beliefs.’

Part of coming out, as I wrote a few days ago, is that it never stops. So I played with the thought—if Klein and Stutzman had refused to sell their good to an interracial couple, would that be OK? Or what if I were a florist, and a member of the Westboro Church—the guys holding the “God hates fags” signs outside of veteran’s funerals—came in the door? Would I be entitled to kick them out of my shop, or would I be obliged to smile, fork over the goods, take their dirty money?

Other questions emerged—does a shopkeeper even have the right to inquire in what way or circumstances his products will be used? If I went into a florist and ordered a dozen roses, I might be a bit nonplussed (hmm, and have I ever been plussed?) if the florist asked, “Now who are you going to give them to? And how long have you known her? And you’re not giving her these roses, buster, just ‘cause you want to get into her pants, are you? Because in that case….”

There’s also the size of the store. Somehow, it feels that Stutzman and Klein have more of a right to act on their religious beliefs than an associate of Wal-Mart, for example. But in fact it is law in many states that a pharmacist can refuse to dispense the morning-after pill if doing so violates her or his beliefs.

Hmmmm—I’m a woman in a small town in the American Southwest. It’s five hours to the next small town. I’ve suffered a sexual assault, woken up with my dress around my ankles in a stranger’s house, and been to see the doctor. I have a prescription in my hand, now it’s time to get it filled. And Smith Pharmacy says sorry, they don’t even carry that drug. Problem—by the time I drive five hours to get the drug, it’ll be too late.

In the scenario above, it seems that the pharmacist has less acted on his beliefs than imposed them. And is he or she going to spend two decades paying and caring for that child?

I’m gay, I’m married, and when I worked at Wal-Mart I was political; I told Human Resources as well as the president of the company that (I thought) they were completely off base to refuse to put my husband on the health plan. What didn’t I do?

I never made an issue of being gay. I never discussed it with the students; more, very frequently I would listen as students discussed their beliefs that marriage was an institution specifically created by God for a man and woman only. I treated this as I treated any other view—respectfully, asking questions that would explore the issue, probe it. What I didn’t do was rant.

Why not?

It wasn’t my job. If a student talked for fifty minutes about Jesus, well, that’s what Wal-Mart was paying me to do.

Right—so move down to the state of California, where another controversy is brewing. Here’s Associated Press’s lead:

A bill aimed at pressuring the Boy Scouts of America to lift its ban on gay members by making the organization ineligible for nonprofit tax breaks cleared its first vote on Wednesday in the California Legislature.

‘Guys,’ I thought, ‘first we’re pissing off the Christians and now we’re going after the Boy Scouts? Are we gonna have any friends in town?’

Well, I went through the whole thing—this time remembering the Madison Club, a very exclusive, very expensive group of wonderful, very nice people, all of whom just happened to be white. They went around in the 60’s saying things like, “well, I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. I mean, I just adore Sadie, my maid, and she’s colored. We could talk for hours, but do I want to see her at the Madison Club!”

Interesting question—does the Catholic Youth have the right to ban atheists from their group, and if so, can it claim tax breaks?

Well, I’m happy to say that I have questions but no answers. And I can live easily in a world of questions—much more easily than I can in a land of answers. Some of the answers might be the right ones, of course, but what if they weren’t? What if I were a German in 1935, and blindly accepted the current right answer—Nazism? You only get out of a wrong answer if you engage in that balancing act so few of us do: hold a belief and hold it to scrutiny.

And I think that way because I went to schools that prized discussion more than answers. There was Miss Kohler, wire thin and in her 60’s, who trotted into the classroom the first day, and started the class off on the right note: “Kids, you can say anything you want about absolutely anything, but you will never get me to believe that Joe McCarthy was anything but a mean-spirited, despicable son of a bitch.”

This was 1972? Could she do it today?

Ask Jerry Conti, the teacher whose letter of resignation has just gone viral, the guy who decried the administration for taking “creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation” out of the schools.

Hey, Jerry—you wanna weigh in?

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Et In Terra Pax

At first I dismissed it as typical hype, and worse, another example of a vexing condition from which we suffer. But first let me tell what prompted it all.

The New Day, or El Nuevo Día, as everybody else calls it, is the island’s largest newspaper. And today, it took the sensible step of telling us all how to cope in the event of nuclear fallout or rain.

Well, I remember the t-shirt from the sixties, which had more succinct and trenchant instructions. “Close all windows,” the t-shirt counseled, “sit in the middle of the room, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.”

Well, the New Day acted more professionally, today; they gave several intelligent pieces of advice. We should all have an emergency plan, including a meeting point in the event that a disaster happens when we are not at home. We’re supposed to have cash on hand, food for at least a week, water, extra medicines, insurance policies and identification documents. Then, we maintain ourselves informed—sorry, these Latin constructions are creeping in to my English—as well, of course, as tranquil (¿bíjte?).

Now then, in the event of an evacuation, we should have sleeping bags—time to run out to Wal-Mart—and also cages or carrying cases for all animals. Oh, and remember, you’ll need to check out whether the shelter will accept animals.

This is, you understand, just slightly surreal. We have four cats, one of whom is virtually impossible to put in a cage. And don’t even think about putting more than one cat per cage. So am I really supposed to go and buy two sleeping bags (in Puerto Rico? It’s early April and the temperature is already in the high 80’s) and three more cat carrying cases?

Somehow, it reminded me of Jack, my father, who got it into his head in the early ‘60’s that nuclear attack was imminent, and so he had to be prepared. Which meant that he got up one Saturday morning, headed down to the basement, and began beating the hell out of one of the walls with a pick ax. Then came the backhoe, and in a month’s time we had our bunker—a room about ten feet by twenty feet, with two single beds. Since there were five of us at the time, it wasn’t exactly certain how this arrangement would work—would we sleep in shifts?

Another problem, which Johnny—of course it would be he—pointed out, was that it wasn’t much of a secret around the neighborhood what we were up to; nobody could really believe that the backhoe was there for the garden, could they? So what to do about the neighbors, their children in their arms, who come running to our house when the A bomb hits? Would we let the Goodriches in, but not the Baumans?

And what was the point, asked Johnny, of the little stove pipe in the corner of the shelter that communicated with the outside? Was Jack really going to open that up, all the better to breathe in radiation-laden air?

Jack covered the pipe with a piece of plywood the next day.

So now the New Day has fulfilled its mission—in the event that a madman in North Korea decides to unload a missile on South Korea or Guam we readers are informed and ready to take necessary procedures to safeguard life and property. Oh, and fear not, because in the event of an disaster, the government—which barely works in normal times—will activate the emergency management team, and everything will be well under control. Wow!

The New Day did point out a few more things. Yes, it’s unlikely that North Korea will do a direct strike on the financial district of San Juan. But if it zaps South Korea, it may well contaminate the entire region, and guess what? We get a lot of our food from there.

Then there’s the little problem of radiation in seawater. In fact, a month ago fishermen off the coast of California pulled up a tuna contaminated with radiation. One wonders—how did they know? Are Geiger counters standard equipment on fishing boats nowadays? Or was the tuna merely glowing?

Oh, and the BBC reported that the Japanese nuclear reactor, Fukushima (always loved that name), had reported a leak yesterday. Well, that seemed sufficiently important to check out, and I’m happy to say it’s not true. In fact, Fukushima may have had THREE leaks since Saturday. And here’s what one writer for the BBC said, after touring the plant last March:

The scale of their task is daunting, and it will decades before anyone can truly say the Fukushima disaster is over, and the threat from the plant contained.

There is still a reactor—Number Three—that is so highly radioactive that no one can go into it. So how are they getting the rods out? By using remotely controlled cranes. Another reactor—Number Four—still has 1500 spent fuel rods, and the building may collapse if there’s another earthquake. And there are thousands of tons of highly contaminated water sitting in tanks that now, apparently, are leaking.

“Puerto Rico is an island surrounded by mirrors,” goes an old saying, “and when on occasion we look out to see the world, we can only see ourselves.” That’s what occurred to me this morning—a crisis is imminent a world away, and The New Day was worried about how it might affect us. In fact, it’s not improbable that the crisis happened two years ago in Japan, and anything North Korea does will only make it infinitely, infinitely worse.

Pages