Chapter 2, Bad Novel

“I’ve read the file on you,” said Mary Ann, “though don’t know why I bother. Never learn a damn thing from them: story’s always the same. Rich family, father’s a doctor, mother’s a nurse. Girl comes home from school, and there’s no one there. So why come home? Why not go somewhere with their friends, and sneak in the door five minutes before Dad or Mom gets home? Then, of course, they find out. Parent’s don’t give a damn if they’re there or not. So then it’s staying out until all hours, going to bars, drinkin’ and smokin’, and getting up to all kinds of mischief. Well, it wasn’t that way when I was young, I can tell you that….”

‘Of course not,’ thought Joan. ‘when you were young, the glaciers were just starting to recede. So that was nice, since it gave your pet dinosaur more room to graze. God, how will I stand five more months of this? And there’s not much room to escape, since they won’t let us into our rooms until 9:30 PM. Then, it’s lights out at ten, though how anyone in the world can sleep at ten is beyond me.”

The routine, in fact, was monotonous. At seven, one of the nuns came down the aisles of the dormitory, knocking on doors, and announcing that breakfast would be at eight. That, in fact, had caused the first fight between them.

“I don’t eat breakfast,” Joan had said, “I never have. And I didn’t sleep so well, so I thought I’d simply rest instead….”

She realized immediately that that was a mistake.

“Well! So little missy don’t like gettin’ up with the rest of us! And I suppose you’d like breakfast in bed? Served on a tray, with carnations in bud vases? Well, this ain’t no Hilton Hotel, Missy. This here is an establishment with rules, in case you ever heard of them things. So when Sister Albert knocks on your door, you get to your feet, you stand in line to use the bathroom, you splash water on your face and brush your teeth. Then you get out, lickety-split, ‘cause you ain’t the only one needin’ the washroom. Then, you go down to the dining hall and wait for your breakfast. This is a religious house, so you’ll keep your voice down, and not speak until spoken to. Breakfast—twenty minutes, ‘cause my nuns got other things to do than waiting for a buncha rich girls to finish their breakfast. Then, it’s back to your room, tidy up, make the bed, and sweep as necessary. By nine o’clock, you should be in place in the school room, getting at your books. Sister Mary Margaret will supervise you, until noon. Lunch, and then return to school at 1 PM. At four, there’s exercise in the yard. Lucky you, the garden season hasn’t started, otherwise there’d be some real chores to be done. Though you break any of the rules….”

The orphanage was so old, it was impossible to believe it had ever been new. As well, it was so ramshackle, so rickety, that it was impossible to believe it had ever been well-constructed or well-maintained. Every floorboard groaned under the weight, which prompted ceaseless criticism from the nuns.

“When are you girls going to learn to walk modestly down these halls? And please, eyes down in submission; I’ll have no girl glaring at me in the eyes, thank you very much!”

‘We’re pregnant, we’re not junior nuns,’ thought Joan. ‘Though if I had known how bad this was going to be, I’d have braved telling father and had the damn thing at home. Or an abortion, which is looking better and better every day….’

The orphanage was an eyesore at the end of the ugliest road in Wisconsin, though Joan. A long rectangular building, it had a living room to the right of the foyer. Next to that was the dining room, which when not in use doubled as the classroom. The girls’ rooms were lined at the back of the house, down a long, drafty corridor. Mary Ann’s room—by far the largest of any of the bedrooms—adjoined the corridor, but faced the front of the house.

‘That’s the reason the old biddy can keep an eye on all of us,’ thought Joan. ‘She’s right in the thick of us. So any time any of us gets up in the night, the old buzzard comes bearing down on us, with that beady eye of hers, and those hand that look like talons, ready to rip our gullets out. What the hell does she think we’re doing, up in the middle of the night? We’re pregnant, we pee—doesn’t she know that? Does she think there’s an army of Latin lovers coming down the country roads of Necedah, Wisconsin?’

They had seemed to clash the moment they met. First it had been skipping breakfast, that first day. Then, it became about the breakfast itself. The toast was both burnt and cold, the eggs were runny. And Joan had always disliked eggs in any form; her mother had given up trying to get to eat them years ago.

Mary Ann—or the Blessed Mother, as the nuns called her—was a different story.

She was clever enough not to try the waiting game, since what adolescent girl cannot outwait a middle-aged girl? Instead, she had taken the plate away after twenty minutes, and then put a mop and bucket in her hands.

“Latrine duty,” announced the Blessed Mother, and led Joan to the three bathrooms at the back of the house. “And mind you scrub them spotless!”

She then handed Joan scouring powder and rags.

“Shouldn’t there be a toilet bowl brush?” asked Joan. Lois, the family’s cleaning lady, had always used one.

“We’ve no need for them,” snorted the Blessed Mother. “Elbow grease is all that’s wanted. Get to work. Start with the toilet!”

They stood glaring at each other.

“Well, get on with it,” said the Blessed Mother. “Do I need to show you? Here! First you sprinkle the powder into the bowl.”

She did so.

“Then you take a rag,” and she thrust a rag into Joan’s unwitting hand.

It happened with lightening speed. The Blessed Mother clasped Joan’s hand with surprising strength and thrust it into the toilet bowl. Joan, outraged, tried to wrench her hand away, but only succeeded in roiling the water, which splashed onto the floor.

“Now see here, Missy—this foolish rebellion is going to stop this minute, do you understand? Because you’re to have eggs every meal until you learn your place!”

“No,” cried Joan. “I’m pregnant, remember? I can’t eat eggs, and I won’t, and I need a good diet…”

“There’s nothing more wholesome than an egg,” said the Blessed Mother. “And nothing more honest than a good day’s work. Which is something you ain’t never had to do, is it now? Well, you can just make up your mind to obey the rules, eat the food that’s given to you, or pay the consequences. Or do you think your rich father want to know where you are, and what condition you’re in? Oh, it was all very well when you was out drinkin’ and fornicatin’, and breaking every rule that the good Lord commanded. But here, you’ll learn the consequences of your behavior! Now get to work, and get these bathrooms clean!”

Where was she to go? The orphanage was at the end of a long, dirt driveway. It was early March—a sullen, cold drippy day. The nearest town was miles away.

‘One day,’ thought Joan, whose pulse was exploding in rage, ‘I’ll get this bitch, and I’ll get her good.’

Then she got down to work.

Chapter 1.1

“OK—so I have it all solved,” I told Lady. “Now, all I have to do is to write a bad novel first. Complete and utter crap. Stale characters, ridiculous plot turns, stilted speech, long rambling passages designed to impress the reader. All having the opposite effect, of course….”

“Why write a bad novel?” asked Lady. “Though it might be interesting to see if you could. But surely we don’t lack for bad novels?”

“It’s good advice, really,” I told her. “First, it’s tremendously freeing—it takes all the pressure off you. And then, you get to make mistakes, which is the only way to learn. And lastly, you have the knowledge that, yes, you can write a novel. Even if bad….”

“Well, I’d like to see you try,” said Lady. “And I’ll tell you if it’s bad or not.”

“No, you won’t. I’m not supposed to show it to anyone, and I’m not supposed to read it myself for six months. Oh, and forget publishing it, because it’s going to take at least three novels before I have anything publishable. So Penguin and Simon & Schuster? Sorry, guys—don’t call me, I’ll call you!”

“Well, it doesn’t make much sense to me. And what will happen if you sit down and write the 21^st century’s War and Peace? After all, you’ve written one book, though not a novel. But you must have some experience.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” I told her. “I write something one day, and something the next, and there’s no connection between them. But if I sit down and try to outline a plot—which does make sense—then I go completely barren. Which is why I invent absolutely sterile plots.”

“Get to work,” said Lady. “Make an absolute mess. Hey, why not start out with the worst line of all? ‘It was a dark and stormy night!’ That should send you merrily on the way to the quicksand of mediocrity!”

“Great idea,” I told her. “And can I have my main character spirited away by aliens, who implant a chip allowing her to see the Blessed Virgin Mother?”

“Sure,” she said. “And if that doesn’t work out so well, there’s always the cavalry, right behind that hill….”

“Perfect,” I told her. “Chapter 1!”

Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night!!!!

(“Love the punctuation,” whispered Lady. “Off to a great start!”

“Shhh,” I told her. “Or maybe ‘shhhhhh!!!!’”)

The lightening fell like celestial swords (‘YES, Marc!’) upon the barren fields of Necedah, Wisconsin. Thunder wracked the air, the animals stirred in their barns, moved closer together, looked upwards in fright. In the nearly deserted farmhouse, Mary Ann van Hoof stood by window, her visage (‘love that…’) torn askew by the tumultuous events of the climatic occurrence.

(“I can’t,” I told her. “I really just can’t do it. It took me five minutes just to cook up that last sentence….”

“You can do it,” she told me.

“You know, what worries me is that by trying to write badly, I’ll actually teach myself bad habits. Actually, ‘it was a dark and stormy night,’ doesn’t seem so bad to me. After all, some nights are darker than others. And if it was stormy—well, that’s what it was. I really think that Bulwar-Lytton-whoever-he-was got a bad rap. I can think of a lot worse….”

“Yeah?”

“Sure—how’s this?

It was at that part of the score plus four-hour cycle that God—so loving in his care for mankind, so doting in his ministrations to the most faltering of the sheep in his flock—when the sun, that golden-globed giver of light, takes to its celestial bed, lies down, sighs in contentment, and rests. But on this night—to give it the word which mere mortals call it—the most fearsome of celestial events shattered the peace and tranquility that normally attend to that period of time during which man lays at rest from his daily toils, and takes solace in his bed.  Events of the greatest sonic magnitude occurred, accompanied by irruptions of energy in the form of light waves; both phenomenon indicating that a tempestuous period of climactic activity was occurring.

“Right—that is pretty awful,” said Lady. “So maybe you should try not quite so hard?”

“OK—but you have to go back to painting houses, now. No more interruptions!”)

Chapter 1.1

It was a dark and stormy night.

The rain came in sheets, battening down the shoots of corns that were just now sprouting from the soil. Spring had come late to central Wisconsin, and Mary Ann van Hoof, looking out the window of her farmhouse, wondered how the harvest would be, if it continued cool and wet.

She had been poor all her life, but what of it? Who, in the little village of Necedah, Wisconsin, had been rich? There had never been much money in the town, and never much purpose for living there. The soil was sandy, and only grudgingly could be put to work. The fodder was thin, and livestock had a hard time of it. Calves were born sickly, and grew into weak, indifferent cows. Horses were colicky; pigs scrawny and discontent.

No, there was no money, and there never had been. And if the town had been poor before, it had really suffered during the last several decades. First, the dust-bowl years—not as bad in Wisconsin as it had been in the West, but still bad.

“You woke up hot,” said Mary Ann to one of the unwed mothers in her orphanage. “Hot—first thing in the morning. Then you realized: you’d been hot all night, even during your sleep. Never got no relief. And never felt like you’d gotten a good night’s sleep. So you’re lying in your sweaty sheets, and you know this day’s gonna be as hot as yesterday. And it’s been hotter than blazes for the longest time. Don’t remember the last time it rained. And it don’t seem like it ever will again, neither….”

The heat made everybody torpid, senseless. Men and women sat on their porches, hoping to catch a breeze that never came. The silence was total; couples that had chattered in court-hood and early marriage fell mute. The heat stewed the mind and stilled the tongue; movement seemed heavier, as if moving through water.

“That was the summer that the baby wouldn’t stop crying, and wouldn’t keep any milk down, neither. Lord, how that child cried! Night and day, and all I could do was hold her, but seemed like she never fell asleep. You don’t know how desperate a body can become, when all you can hear is that damn crying, and ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop it. Lord!”

What little rain fell didn’t do much good. The crops wilted in the field, and somehow the yellowing of the plants was more painful than the brown of death would be. How, Mary Ann used to wonder, how long can we go on like this? The last good harvest had been nigh on a decade ago, and each year they had planted anew, and hoped anew, and never gotten anything much out of it. What little money they had they put into the field, and watched as the crop sickened and died.

“Had to go to the bank every year,” said Mary Ann, “and we ain’t the sort that ever did. But my husband’s daddy and his granddaddy had farmed the land for generations, and we wasn’t about to be the first generation that lost it. So we kept on, though how I don’t know. So every year it was another loan, and another set of payments, always slightly higher. And each spring, we’d get one good hard rain, and we’d get our hopes up. This year, we’d tell ourselves, we’d get lucky, get a good crop in. And then, nothin’. Ed would sit on the porch, when he should have been out in the fields cultivatin’, but there wasn’t nothin’ to cultivate—even the weeds weren’t grownin’. He’d sit on the porch, smokin’ his hand-rolled cigarette, and he’d look at the horizon. ‘Seems like it’s getting’ dark in the West,’ he’d say. Well, I’d look, and I didn’t see nothin.’ But I couldn’t say nothing, could I?”

“Yes, it was a terrible time. Terrible because of how it turned the men into weaklings. Oh, they could hunt and fish and climb mountains, but they couldn’t work the land, and they couldn’t provide. They saw their wives wearing the same dress year in and year out, and the soup got thinner and thinner. Everybody got thinner, and the little kids musta had worms, probably ‘cause they were eating dirt. ‘Bout all there was to eat, those days.”

“You don’t know nothin’ about being poor,” she told the girl. “Father’s a fancy doctor, down there in Madison, where all them snooty intellectuals live. Oh yes, never had a day when there wasn’t meat and potatoes on the table. Never had to wonder whether the rice and beans would hold out for another day.  And never had the worry of a colicky baby cryin’ day and night in the house. But the worst of it all was the wind. Didn’t never stop blowing, those days—and it didn’t cool things down, neither. Like a blast from a hot oven, it was, and it like to have burned you, that’s how hot it was. It was like the devil himself blowing over the land. Lasted all day, and the sound got into you. Seems like there wasn’t nowhere you could escape it: a constant, nagging howl. That and the baby’s cryin’ seemed to be all that a body could hear, and you’d step outside and that blast of wind would hit you, and you’d swear that you were nigh on burning to a crisp. Well, you just prayed you’d get to evening, see the sun set down, and get a little relief. But it never got no cooler, and the wind completely died. So you sat on that damn porch and wondered how in the Lord you was gonna get through another day of this, ‘cause you knew that tomorrow wasn’t going to be no better. And I’d look over at Ed and think, ‘Lordy, is this the man I married?’ ‘Cause he was lookin’ so old, now, like he’d never been anything but a dried up, withered old man. Used to wonder what I’d done to the man, to make him so sad and unhappy. Beaten, really, and just going through the motions of getting’ through the days.”

“Hard to know,” she said, “who had it worse. The menfolk were hit hard—worse than they had ever had it. But the women had to scrounge for whatever there was to put on the table, and then they had to see their men all silent and beaten up. And the worst of it was that you couldn’t say nothin’ cheerful, nothin’ to lift the spirits. ‘Cause if you said, ‘don’t worry, it’ll surely rain soon,’ well, that’s what you’d been saying for years, and when had that ever come true? And you couldn’t stand to see the look on your husband’s face, since both you and him knew it wasn’t true. Oh yes, awful, awful years.”

‘It’s so fucking boring,’ thought Joan. ‘Every night, on and on, like I hadn’t heard it a million times. Why do old people think kids never had it tough? Why do they get to have a monopoly on suffering? They had nothing, we have everything. Christ, I’ll be glad when I’m out of the clutches of this old lunatic.’

Outside, the wind howled and raged; the storm was nowhere near abating. As if by divine command, both Joan and Mary Ann looked out, just as a bolt of lightening split the century-old oak in two.    

  

  

On The Value of Human Life

When are we going to tell the truth, finally, that on some if not all levels, the value of human life very much has a price?

I say this because last Saturday, I discovered how much the life of an elderly gentleman was worth. For we had taken his wife to the opera, and then stopped by the nursing home to see her husband.

To say it was wrenching is to understate the tragedy badly. I have seen, this season at the opera, kingdoms lost, armies destroyed, loves relentlessly shattered. Nothing was as painful as seeing this older man, with no idea where he was, look at his wife. He began to sob, and did not stop for twenty minutes or so, until we diverted him and took him downstairs. He held her hand, he caressed her face, he told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

He also did not know her name.

It’s Alzheimer’s, or another dementia, and it could be much worse. The home is very good, the family has the resources to pay for excellent care, there appears to be ample and well-trained staff. But since the gentleman needs to be turned every hour, the cost of keeping him in the facility is, according to his wife, 7000 dollars monthly.

That’s 84,000 dollars yearly.

The gentleman has been in the home for only a few months; he is in his late 80’s, but otherwise in good physical condition. Given that his father died at age 100, the real question is how long and how expensive his final days will be. In addition, of course, there is his wife, who is his age and who will need care as well.

And so there is every likelihood that the family is facing a multimillion-dollar end-of-life bill. Let’s assume that they have it. My question, which may send you shuddering, is should they spend it?

My mother was quite clear about it: she hated every minute of every nursing home that she had recuperated in or visited. And for the most part, those facilities had been excellent. Still, no nursing home had ever been, and would ever be, her home. She sensibly felt that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be kept alive in a place she didn’t want to be was ridiculous. And in those moments when it seemed that there was no alternative but to keep my mother imprisoned in a nursing home, I suffered more despair than at any other moment in my life.

I know all the arguments: once you start on this path, it’s the slippery slope. OK—a life isn’t worth $84,000 annually; how much is it worth? $50,000? $25,000? And if a life is worth $84,000, is there then a figure at which it becomes too expensive to keep a person alive? If it cost $800,000 or eight million, would that be justified?

 Another argument: do we want the government to decide the worth of a human life?

But wait, don’t we? Because imagine if the man I had seen had been without resources—would he still have been in that very beautifully restored older building, with its murals and original oil paintings, and the ornate ceiling in the foyer? No, not by a long shot. He would have been in whatever facility was willing to accept what Medicare was willing to pay. Some bureaucrat, or rather a group of bureaucrats, has made the decision on the value of a human life.

Nor is it just in health care. We make lots of decisions about spending money on schools, on sports arenas, on bringing “democracy” to those nations who may or may not want them.

Everything, in short, has a price. And to pretend it doesn’t has a price, too. I am writing this two yards away from a homeless man, and perhaps three yards away from another homeless man. The first is sleeping in the back of the gift shop: the second is cruising the Internet. A classical guitarist, he lost everything except his computer and guitar in a fire on Thanksgiving Day.

Since I talk to the guitarist, I can tell you the price of homelessness, or at least of losing your home. Because the city had stepped in, and given him a hotel room for a week, and vouchers for two meals a day. Then, he was on his own.

Three lives: two people who have no home, and a third who has—perhaps—a home he doesn’t much want. We have decided that the two homeless men should be cast off, and that the older man should be allowed to die slowly in “luxury.” And do I want any government to redistribute the wealth, take away from the elderly man and give to the two homeless men? Absolutely not.

But do we really have to make that choice? If it is cheaper, in the long run, just to give the homeless homes, what besides our puritan heritage is keeping us from doing that?

And what obscenity could be worse than spending trillions on foreign wars, and having veterans of them on the streets, shell-shocked and homeless? Do we really not have the money to provide for basic needs?

Lastly, maybe it’s time to admit: if we were honest about putting a value on human life, maybe then we could be rational, and make sensible decisions. Instead, every time someone proposes an argument, the counterargument is always that “no price can be put on a human life.” Then we outsource drinking water and pollute an entire city. Or we send off more troops to Iraq.

The old man in the nursing home had been prudent all his life. The couple saved and saved, only hoping that they could pass something on to their children. I had spoken to the wife years ago about what my mother had done—stop drinking and eating—and how well it had worked for her. But the woman’s husband was a cultural Catholic, and wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to end his life.

I wonder…what would he say now?

Macro and Micro

It’s a time filled with reality and unreality. Or perhaps we should call it dysreality, since it seems that reality is not lacking but distorted.

The macro—Puerto Rico is about to default on 422 million bucks worth of debt repayment.

The micro—I entered the café at 11:30 in the morning yesterday, only to find that while open, the establishment had only emergency lights on. Right—I know what to say when the lights go off, so I called out, “I…AM…A…GHOST!”

That’s when Santana said, wearily, “hello, Marc.”

Santana is my age, or perhaps younger. Anyway, he remembers New York City in the 70’s, when he was living up in Inwood. There, he felt at home, and part of a community. He moved back to a small town on the island, where he doesn’t feel the same. And now, he was sitting in the dark in the café he has recently taken over.

So we sit in the dark, and Santana tells me—he’s lost X amount of money. Nor does he know precisely what happened, but every business on the street lost power as they were opening up at 9 AM. In addition, he has no idea when the power will be restored, and that’s a problem since tonight is the poetry open mic. And that means it’s his best day.

We say the things that every Puerto Rican says: the politicians are crooks, they have ruined the island; Cuba is the new threat, the people there want to work.

I point out to him: he and his family are Puerto Rican, and they work…well, I’ve never believed in that expression, “working like a dog.” So I’ll use the phrase a black colleague from the South Side of Chicago once used: most days, Santana and clan are busier than a cat covering up shit.

So we are sitting in a dark café, and there is something strangely intimate about it, since there is nothing to do. As I write this, I am watching the clan of Santana unload groceries from Costco. But yesterday, there was nothing to do but wait, and tell the customers wanting to trade money for coffee that the deal was off. 

I tell you the micro since it’s something we can all get on board with. Is there anyone, anywhere, who wouldn’t sympathize with Santana, sitting in every way powerless in his dark, hot café? But something happens on the way to macro—which means that ideology intrudes, the battle lines are drawn, blame is assigned, responsibility is disavowed.

And I tell you that because I have watched John Oliver on Puerto Rico, and yes, I agreed with a lot of what he said. But is it time to point out some things that don’t fit the narrative? Aren’t we at the point where are only chance out of this mess is to look honestly at all sides of the issue, and hope to find some way out?

Narrative: the vulture funds are sticking it to Puerto Rico.

Fact: John Oliver himself said it. Only 30% of the debt is held by vulture funds. The rest is held by individual investors, many of them Puerto Rican, and in mutual funds. I know two people, elderly and now retired, who suffered greatly from buying Puerto Rican bonds, and seeing their worth diminish. I do not know any hedge fund managers.

Narrative: the politicians got us into this mess, now they’ll have to get us out of it.

Fact: we elect the politicians, and the population all watched as every government for the last twenty years got us closer and closer to this mess. Oh, wait—we didn’t watch. We gave up on reading the news because it was too depressing, and we got cynical and decided that all politicians were crooks. Which meant, of course, that no one was holding any politician to any standard. So then we really did get crooks. Try telling your kids that they’re headed for life in the state penitentiary, and see where they’ll end up. That’s what we’ve done with our politicians.

Narrative: The fiscal control board is stripping us of the limited self-government we have, and thus re-imposing the worst abuses of colonialism on us.

Fact: Well, first of all, did we do a really good of of self-governance? No—and we are not alone. Nor is it all our fault: we, like everybody else, suffered from the economic crisis of 2008 to 2010 (roughly). And if we suffered, so did a number of other states and municipalities. From nymuniblog.com:

Most notably, the comptroller (of New York) determined that over 100 local governments have insufficient cash to meet current liabilities, roughly 300 local governments had deficits during 2010 and 2011 or both, and 27 municipalities have seemingly exhausted their reserve funds.   

I got to nymuniblog.com because I was curious about the financial crisis of New York in the 1970’s. Doesn’t anybody remember that? Doesn’t anybody remember when the Bronx was burning and no fire truck would dare go there, when whole blocks of Amsterdam Avenue were boarded up or burned out, where virtually everyone had seen a murder, or at least a shooting?

The city was a mess, and the same voices were singing the same songs then as now. New York was begging for help, Cashman and West were pleading musically just as Lin-Manuel Miranda is now, and the conservatives were telling the city, well…

       

So what finally played out? First came the Municipal Assistance Corporation, which was a dud. Then came the, well, here’s Wikipedia:

It failed to achieve results and the state came up with a much more drastic solution the Emergency Financial Control Board (EFCB). It was a state agency, and city officials had only two votes on the seven-member board. The EFCB took full control of the city's budget. It made drastic cuts in municipal services and spending, cut city employment, froze salaries and raised bus and subway fares. The level of welfare spending was cut. Some hospitals were closed as were some branch libraries and fire stations. The labor unions helped out, by allocating much of their pension funds to the purchase of city bonds—putting the pensions at risk if bankruptcy took place. The city's banks and the state of New York did not have enough credit to handle the entire crisis, Federal loans and loan guarantees were needed, which Congress provided it (sic) in the "New York City Seasonal Financing Act" of December 1975.^{[15][16][17][18]} 

In short, the Emergency Financial Control Board did much of what is being proposed for Puerto Rico: it stripped the city of fiscal control, it imposed severe measures, it brokered a deal between the unions and the city, and it finally got Washington to provide loans, which were repaid with interest. Did New Yorkers like it? Of course not—they hated it, who wouldn’t? But twenty years later, the city was back on its feet.

I could go on and on, but at this point, perhaps, you have pegged me: a Republican, a statehooder, a fiscal conservative. In fact, I am none of those things. Certainly our colonial status has much to do with where we are. The cabotage laws are completely unfair. Congress has dragged its heals on this crisis and is about to throw us under the bus. I would go further, and wonder why any state or municipality should have been permitted to wrack up such a debt. The bartender—as my friend Lady once said—is responsible for getting the drunks out of his bar in not too bad a shape. Who was tending bar when we were getting sloshed on debt?

My worry is that our love of narrative will blind us to some things that all of us should worry about. And here, in a situation that is somehow the lovechild of Salvador Dali and García Márquez, is what I worry about.

The Government Development Bank is broke: where did the money go?

Well, what money there was got withdrawn and put into banks in the private sector. That meant that the biggest bank on the island—Banco Popular—got a lot of accounts. But was it the municipalities who transferred their funds? The agencies? And who authorized this? And who oversaw the transaction? And what about the organic law creating the BGF (the Spanish acronym for the GDB)? Can you simply disband a government bank, and put it into the private sector?

Or is it the private sector? And is Banco Popular now liable to action by creditors? If so, is my money safe? And how will the state banking commission regulate Banco Popular, now that it is some hybrid of a private and a public bank?

Oh, and what about all the regulatory bodies that we have, that supposedly guard us against corruption, though the controller recently reportedly on a municipality that spent megabucks on a coliseum that never opened? So now how is the controller going to do her / his job?

Funny thing about Banco Popular, because at the same time this was happening, the bank was transferring some government debt to another entity. Of course, you’d have to read Caribbean Business to be let in on that secret, and then you’d have to know business to figure out what means. And do I? Of course not, so I have idea what it meant to be the “trustee to 3.8 billion dollars worth of GDB debt.”

Well, I wouldn’t want to be on the hook for 3.8 billion dollars of GDB debt, and neither, it seems, did Banco Popular. So they requested to be relieved of the trusteeship of the debt. And guess who now is the trustee? The Wilmington Trust, National Association. And that sounds all very much on the up and up, right?

Well, it did to me, until I came upon this:

    

Yes, the Wilmington Trust has become the first bank to be indicted for allegedly concealing information about the bank’s loan portfolio. And this is CBS news, of 7 January 2016. Presumably just a few months before the government of Puerto Rico assigned Wilmington Trust as trustee for 3.8 billion dollars of GDB debt.

Is this a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing? Curiously, I am less interested in those questions than in one other question…

…why isn’t anyone talking about this, and asking these questions?