Six Thugs in Uniform

The problem?

There’s nothing new about it, no new angle or twist that I can spin. And I’ve written about it before—about the absurdity of the Wisconsin State Capitol police telling tourists who are watching the lunch sing-along in the capitol rotunda that they are subject to arrest. Or how about the 80-year old lady who gets handcuffed and led away, still singing away? Or the Vietnam vet who falls on the marble staircase onto his back and his handcuffed wrists? That’s an ouch.

And I questioned before—why are they using metal cuff, or even cuffs at all? When we were all protesting in Vieques, the cops used plastic “cuffs”—really just high-quality plastic bands. Why? They didn’t want any martyrs.

The protests have been going on for a couple of years, ever since Walker and his fellow Republicans stripped government workers of their right to bargain collectively and turned back the clock a couple of centuries on social issues. So every weekday the protesters gather and sing in the capitol rotunda. Here’s a photo taken a couple of days ago.

And you will remember that Walker—via the Department of Administration—changed the permit process from a two-page form to a 25-page document, and declared that any group of four or more people needed to have a permit to meet in the state capitol.

Warning to any family of mom, dad, and two kids—you could be arrested for walking through the state capitol.

OK—a judge, in a preliminary injunction—upped the number to 20, and will rule on the constitutionality of the whole business later. Remember, please, that both the First Amendment of the US Constitution and a similar section in the state’s Constitution allows for the right of people “peaceably to assemble and to petition their Government for a redress of grievances.” So in addition to the regular singers, tourists and interested others can see the group below—wonderfully called “Raging Grannies.”

The Raging Grannies of Madison, Wisconsin, by the way, have a wonderful little website about their group, which is ten years old. Here’s a quote from the site:

We are a "dis-organization" without formal leadership. Each Granny does what she can and we make decisions by consensus. As it says on the Raging Grannies International website at http://raginggrannies.org/, "We are totally non-violent, believe in only peaceful protest (with lots of laughter), work for the 'many not the few' … and see our work as the spreading green branches of a great tree, rising up to provide shelter and nourishment for those who will come after us." That's true -- but we Grannies also want to have fun, refuse to be silenced, and will sing out against those things that harm the planet we will leave to our grandkids.

One wonders—might the Grannies be talked into starting a gentlemen’s auxiliary? Rather the way the Rotarians have Rotary Anns?

There is, I say, nothing new, nothing I haven’t written about; I’m wasting your time here, Dear Reader. Well, wait—the Huffington Post came out with a story, entitled “Wisconsin Capitol Arrest Turn Violent as Police Take Down Protester.”

I suppose this attempt at journalist restraint and “objectivity” should be lauded. Watch the video below, and then tell me—how would you write that headline?

Damon Terrell was not only attacked by the cops, but spent three days in the jug while the capitol police fiddled with the paperwork. And now, he’s been released; here’s the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the subject:

Charges are still possible against Damon Terrell, who was jailed Monday after a violent arrest interrupted a streak of normally peaceful anti-Scott Walker singalong protests in the Capitol rotunda.

The charges recommended by the Department of Administration were felony battery and resisting arrest in an incident widely caught on camera. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said more time was needed at an initial court appearance to decide on charges. 

Don’t know Ozanne, though his grandmother drank coffee with my mother every Friday morning for about thirty years. And reports are that he’s not gonna be too interested in spending his limited resource in prosecuting a guy who was retreating with his hands up before he was tackled.

Though there was a felony committed in the rotunda that day.

Ozanne—you wanna go after 6 thugs in uniform?

Terrell arrest from multiple angles.

Et in terra pax redux

I might be for it if I thought we knew what we were doing.

The videos that came out of Syria following the chemical attack are horrifying, and yes—I think it’s more likely than not that it was the Syrian army, and not the rebels, who launched the attack. Why? Well, all three strikes were in rebel strongholds. As well, it’s apparently not so easy to carry out a chemical attack—either to make the agents or fire them.

And the Syrian government has, as Kerry pointed out, been reluctant to let the areas affected be inspected, which you would assume it would if they had nothing to hide.

So why am I not all for bombing the hell out Syria?

Well, apparently Syria has the third largest amount of chemical weapons in the world. And where is all that stuff? And even if we knew two weeks ago exactly where everything was, what happens if somebody moved it? And then we bombed it?

That said—what are we going to do? Fire a few missiles at army installations? Bomb the presidential palace? Take out infrastructure?

And when is enough enough? What’s our exit strategy—or are we going to improvise again, as we did / are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq?

And if we do a regime change—what will replace it? One commentator from an Al Jazeera program pointed out that none of the rebel groups are particularly friendly to the West—so is there any reason to get involved?

We may think that we can’t be more despised in the region than we already are, but guess what? We can, and will be. Go on YouTube and enter “Syria chemical attacks” and what you’ll see is chilling. About half are legitimate news clips—the other half (and by no means the least watched) are home-made affairs with titles like “Leaked Documents—U.S. Framed Syria in Chemical Weapons Attack.”

Then there’s the interesting question—over 100,000 people have been killed, and last week’s atrocity? The highest estimate I read was over 3,000. Yes, it is heinous for a government to gas its people. But the West has sat around and watched Syrians kill each other for two long years, now. If we had a moral obligation to act, shouldn’t we have done so a long time ago?

It’s true that using chemical weapons is a particularly barbaric way of killing—it’s indiscriminate, for one thing, which is why so many women and children were victims. But the same might be true with bombs—and especially in civilian areas.

And it might be the case that the world needs to do something—just as we needed to do something in Kosovo. What saddens me is that a response may be justified, but the American people, to say nothing of the rest of the world, have seen enough posturing about chemical weapons—remember that vial of white powder (supposedly anthrax) in Colin Power’s hands? Now, when there really is a chemical attack, the world is too suspicious, and too weary, to respond.

“Why in the world would anybody bother to fight over that land,” my mother used to wonder, looking at some godforsaken desert on television and comparing it to her lush Wisconsin woods.

Why indeed?

Wal-Mart Joins the Parade

OK—so they did it.

It’s a little late for me, since Wal-Mart laid me off over two years ago, but it will be great for the rest of the gay and lesbian associates who are still clinging to their job. Now, those associates can put their husbands, wives, domestic partners on the health plan.

What happened? Did a great liberal wave sweep through the corporate home offices in Bentonville, Arkansas?

Nah—it happened as Mr. Fernández said it would. It got too complicated, for one thing, to figure out what state allowed for domestic partners, what state allowed for marriage equality, when one state would institute marriage equality. Oh, and what to do about a married gay guy living across the river in Minnesota but working in a store in Wisconsin?

That was one thing. The other thing? Talent—and how to attract it. OK, retail is not like academia, which arguably has a higher percent of gays and lesbians than retail. But you’d be surprised—I was—by the number of LGBT folk in high positions in Wal-Mart. And how do you attract a key person away from Costco when Sam’s won’t put her or his partner on the health plan?

That—if memory serves—was also the gist of a letter sent to the Wisconsin legislature by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. Yes, the UW’s History Department has traditionally been very strong. But several high-powered historians had turned down the UW to go teach at Harvard, since Massachusetts was the first state to allow gay marriage, and remains in the vanguard.

Or what do you do when you’re transferring an employee from Massachusetts to Mississippi? His compensation package is going to change, if he can no longer put his husband on the health plan.

Lastly, and Wal-Mart admits it—they held out until the very end. Of the 30 top retailers, only two (Publix and a chain I’ve never heard of) are not offering benefits to same-sex couples.

I wish there were any pleasure in this for me, since I battled for several years to put Raf on the health plan. Instead, he paid several thousand dollars more to be covered under Cobra, when his old job folded. And he is now paying several thousand more from his old job to cover me, since my job folded, and Raf’s current employer—like Wal-Mart—doesn’t allow him to put me on the health plan.

But it’s hardly the money issue that makes me so sour on hearing this news.

I defended the company when I worked for it, for nearly 10 years. Does it pay its workers badly? Yes—and with the exception of Costco—so do all the other retailers. Does it have a disproportionate number of part-time workers? Again, no more so than the rest. Does it fight tooth and nail against unions? Absolutely.

We would have, in fact, seminars on what legally we could say to employees on the topic of unions. No, we couldn’t threaten to fire either individuals or close the store if an employee advocated for unions, or if the store joined one. But we could explain the company policy, which went something like, “Wal-Mart has the open door policy, which is a way to assure that management and workers communicate and come to an agreement.”

Well, I used that policy to press Wal-Mart to put Raf on the health plan. And, be fair, I was listened to, treated respectfully, and told “no.” Be more fair—the policy only promises that you’ll be heard, not that you’ll get what you want.

The problem I have is the strong-armed tactics. Ten current and former employees were arrested in front of the Washington DC offices of Wal-Mart, recently. And even worse, some 60 or 70 associates have been fired or disciplined for traveling to Bentonville during the annual meeting to protest conditions in the stores.

And Sam Walton would be reeling in his grave at the thought of employees risking their jobs to bus into Arkansas to raise grievances, while the top management was having what is essentially a huge party. Why? Because the Walton family owns about 60% of the stock. So yeah, they have to have an annual meeting—big deal.

Oh, and that 60% of the stock? That’s equivalent to the amount of money owned by the bottom 40% of the American people.

So would Sam Walton be at the party, or would he be outside, listening.

No question in my mind….      

The Governor Scrubs a Wall

Well, they were standing around looking at it, as I passed them on the morning trot. And on the way back, they were still standing around looking at it.

And what’s the “it?”

Nice, hunh? It’s La Fortaleza, officially known as Palacio de Santa Catalina, and the oldest governor’s mansion in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere. But that wasn’t the problem.

“We have to document all those holes,” said the woman to the guy wearing the suit. I had halted the Brahms and was walking especially slowly, since a good dish is always worth it.

They were referring to the wall, which the Spanish began constructing in 1640, and which still surrounds ¾ of the city. And what was the problem?

The governor had taken a pressure hose to it.

OK—not the governor himself, though he’s a kind of a hands-on guy. Yesterday, in fact, I had read that one of the governor’s security officers was in an accident, and the governor was on the side of the road, stanching a head wound with his handkerchief.

So for three weeks, a guy was out there with a pressure hose, blasting the wall with 1,200 pounds of pressure. And when a neighbor noted the activity, she sent a letter to Walter Chávez, the director of the neighboring fort, El Morro. The fort is run by the National Park Service, which a decade ago signed an agreement with the commonwealth stating that the Park Service would maintain the walls.

Well, the walls were dirty, said the governor’s spokesperson—they were full of hongo y excremento de palomas—mold and you-know-what from pigeons. So they called up the Department of Natural Resources, who recommended a tree trimmer named Armando Acsensio.

And what did the tree trimmer do?

He effectively—and with 1,200 pounds of water pressure, you can be very effective—destroyed four or five hundred years of patina. And if they have gotten to the grout that holds the thing together?

I’ve seen the National Park Service guys work on the wall. They’re up there with a spatula and a brush, and nothing else; it’s definitely a low-tech affair.

So in three weeks, a tree trimmer took away what had taken centuries to form. But not a problem, because some people like it.

It is, after all, “clean”….

Buxtehude and Body Parts

I have just spent the last hour plus listening to something that I have always wondered would happen. How would it feel, having spent large parts of my life listening to a LOT of music, suddenly to come upon something amazing, astonishing, and especially—new.

We listen so often to the same pieces that we forget—there’s a lot of surprisingly good music out there. And the piece that today brought tears to my eyes, it was so lovely, was Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri.

OK—if you go to Lutheran churches with any regularity, you’ll hear Buxtehude: he was a famous organist in his time, and his works for organ are still played. And yes, I knew that Buxtehude had taught Bach, who actually walked a couple hundred miles for the privilege of doing so. And yes, I remembered that Buxtehude had this deal going—he was going to give up his church position to Bach, if Bach married Buxtehude’s daughter.

Well apparently the daughter was no stunner—Bach and two other guys (one of whom was named Georg Friedrich Handel) turned the same deal down. Did she have a harelip? Did she snore loudly? We’ll never know—the mystery of Buxtehude’s daughter….

What I didn’t know was that Buxtehude wrote the first Lutheran Oratorio, although somebody had to, so why not he? But Membra is hardly just a musical curiousity: it’s both highly original and in parts ravishingly beautiful (check out the final “amen” for original, and the whole second clip for ravishing).

OK—text first. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Membra Jesu Nostri (English: The Limbs of our Jesus), BuxWV 75, is a cycle of seven cantatas composed by Dieterich Buxtehude in 1680, and dedicated to Gustaf Düben. The full Latin title Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima translates to "The most holy limbs of our suffering Jesus". This work is known as the first Lutheran oratorio. The main text are stanzas from the Medieval hymn Salve mundi salutare – also known as the Rhythmica oratio – a poem formerly ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux, but now thought more likely to have been written by Medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250). It is divided into seven parts, each addressed to a different part of Christ's crucified body: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head. In each part, biblical words referring to the limbs frame verses of the poem.

And the structure? Well, each section devoted to each body part is a cantata, which starts with an instrumental opening, a concerto for (mostly) five voices, three arias for a combination of voices (mostly one or three) and then a repeat of the concerto.

Please refer to this Wikipedia article for the text.

The Beatitudes Banned?

Every day, the same guy hits me up for food, and I have to confess. I’m annoyed with him.

Annoyed because he hits me up twice or three times in a day—shouldn’t once be enough? Annoyed because I give him three dollars—enough for bread, ham and orange juice, and he wants five dollars for “a hamburger at Burger King.” Annoyed because he now has taken to coming into the café where I “work” and asking for money while I’m busy writing. In short, he isn’t acting like a properly grateful beggar—I have become his bank. And so? I am not a cheerful giver, which I should be.

Right—so why don’t I tell him to go to hell?

Because he’s hungry, dammit.

How do I know? Well, he’s rail thin. And I see him “selling” parking spaces on the street, as well as pushing shopping carts with food for customers at the grocery store. In short, he’s struggling, and he’s just getting by.

I write this because Susan has sent a link to a church website in Raleigh, North Carolina, which has apparently banned churches from giving out food to the homeless. The church, Love Wins, had for 6 years given coffee and sandwiches to anybody who came by on Saturday and Sunday mornings. They were recently told this is illegal.

Second confession—I have not been able to access the link, and I suspect that everybody else in the country is having the same problem. I did read, however, news of the affair in The Daily Kos, and here’s the link.

In chasing down this improbable but seemingly true story, I came upon the interesting news that many major American cities have done the same. In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter has prohibited groups from distributing food in city parks, saying the practice is unsanitary and lacking in dignity. (Hey—just the facts; that’s what he said…)

And it goes on and on—New York City, Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas and Houston have all restricted feeding the poor in some ways. Here’s what one blogger wrote:

New York City has banned all food donations to government-run homeless shelters because the bureaucrats there are concerned that the donated food will not be "nutritious" enough.

Yes, this is really true.

The following is from a recent Fox News article....

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.

In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

You know, I’ve often believed that the internal combustion engine was the ruination of America. Why? Because too many of us wake up, leave our houses, drive to work, come home, eat, and go to sleep. Maybe it would be better to take the bus, as I do. Then people would see, as I once did, a whole family in a parked car at five in the morning. They were all asleep, all except the father, sitting in the driver’s seat. Nor will I forget his eyes, which plainly told me—“this is all we have, all we can do.”

Or people would see—as I do—the guy who routinely goes into the dumpster up the street, fishing out scraps of food. Oh, and the guy in Houston who did so in March of this year? Here’s what the Houston Chronicle said:

James Kelly was hungry and looking for something to eat. He tried to find it in a trash bin near Houston City Hall.

For that, the man, who said he spent about nine years in the Navy but fell on hard times, was ticketed by a Houston police officer.

According to his copy of the citation, Kelly, 44, was charged on Thursday with "disturbing the contents of a garbage can in (the) downtown business district."

"I was just basically looking for something to eat," Kelly said Monday night. "I wasn't in a real good mood."

Houston, by the way, passed an ordinance in 2012 requiring organizations to get a permit to distribute food, and socking any organization in violation with a $500 fine.

You know, there are days when I think the Victorians did it better. However bad the workhouse was, it provided shelter and food. I give it to you, which would you prefer, the streets or this?

Workhouse in Ripon, England

Hard to Do Good to....

There are days when the topic presents itself, when the island outdoes itself in some species of lunacy or illogic that the post virtually writes itself. Today?

Well, I started out trawling for an interesting story. I can therefore tell you that there is a guy, Patrick McConlogue, who observed a homeless person living down by the Hudson River in New York City. McConlogue thought there was something interesting about the guy—he didn’t seem crazy, he wasn’t talking to himself, he was reading and writing. So McConlogue, who is a software engineer, devised a test—he would approach the person and offer two alternatives. The first, he would give the guy $100. The second alternative was a laptop computer, three books on Java script writing, and lessons every morning for three months.

Guess what? Leo, the homeless guy, chose the second offer. And it developed that Leo is a sharp guy—he’s particularly passionate about the environment…but let McConlogue describe it:

It turns out Leo is a genius particularly concerned with environment issues. As I sat there becoming increasing stunned, he rattled off import/export prices on food, the importance of solar and green energy, and his approval for “efficient public transportation initiatives [referring to NY’s new Citibike]”. He is smart, logical, and articulate. Most importantly, he is serious. It’s up to him if dedication is also his gift.

So he returned the next day with the following stuff:

      Samsung Chromebook with 3G (access to code academy etc).

            Beginner: “JavaScript for Beginners”

            Intermediate: “Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja”

            Advanced: “Javascript the Good Parts”

            Solar charger for the laptop.

            Something to hide the laptop in. (Anyone have ideas? Email me: pmcconlogue[at]gmail.com)

McConlogue then went on to write a blog post entitled (infelicitously) “Finding the unjustly homeless, and teach them to code.”

Vitriol exploded across the Internet. Were there “justly” homeless people, critics demanded? Was McConlogue really suggesting….

One guy tweeted, “I hope the homeless guys takes the 100 bucks, just to mess with this condescending dick-face.

Guys? This guy is a software engineer, not a public relations expert. Of course he was suggesting that some people deserved to be homeless. Oh, and remind me again—what are you doing for the homeless?

“It’s so very hard to do good to people,” Margaret Mead once said. You want to help—but is that money you give some homeless person going for food or drugs? And will Leo—despite his brains—be able to stick to three months of learning Java script?

My gut tells me that Leo is very likely bipolar and is currently exhibiting no symptoms—but what do I know? At any rate, it’s an interesting experiment—and I hope it works.

So that got me thinking about The Soloist, Nathaniel Antonio Ayers, Jr.—the former student at Juilliard whom Steven López, an LA Times reporter, befriended. Ayers dropped out of Juilliard when he had a psychotic break—and he never quite got his life back again. So López got involved, got Ayers an apartment, contacted Ayers’ sister; he did a mammoth job of helping a person who…

…was not always easy to help.

What do you do when you convince a landlord to rent an apartment to a psychiatric patient, and then the tenants start complaining—why is that guy in 4D walking around outside the building all night?

He’s pacing because he’s hearing voices and he’s scared to be in his apartment. Or he attributes some magical power to a ritual in which he must walk nine times around the building, saying a talismanic series of phrases. And if he gets it wrong, he has to start all over again. Or maybe….

You get the picture.

OK—so Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. made a film—also called The Soloist in 2009. And what’s up with Ayers now? Now that the book has been written, the movie filmed? Anyone still concerned about Ayers?

I’ve looked. Ayers’ sister has a foundation to help artistically gifted people who are suffering psychiatric illnesses, but there’s not much info on Ayers there. So the most recent info came from Pat LaMarche in Huffington Post from April of this year. Here’s part of what she wrote:

Ayers wants to change what people call him. He wants to be Tony Ocean. He has emblazoned the new name all over his violin case; his trumpet case hasn't yet been monogrammed.

Ocean says "his" reporter made him a household word: "I have a reporter. His name is Steve Lopez, from the LA Times. He made me famous. I went to the White House. I was in the China Room. I flew Alaska Air. They made a movie about me and about his book." It seems this fame is the reason Ocean has dumped his old name. "I threw the other one away. I want to be Tony because I like the food there." Ocean took the menu for Tony's lunch counter out of his trumpet case to emphasize the name change, "and because my mother liked to call me that. I picked Ocean because I like the sound of the ocean. I like the rolling sound as it comes and goes."

Ocean likes the sound of the music he hears on Skid Row too. "I was a Cleveland-born person. I decided to move here because the center of town has Beethoven. And you can get food. They have a pot full of beans and they will give you some," Ocean explains without mentioning exactly who "they" are. Then he referenced his audience as a reason to stay, "And Steve Lopez says, 'you were playing your violin for your friends.'" And that's reason enough for Ocean to stay on Skid Row.  

Well, most people make their choices in real estate based on something other than where Beethoven is. And those people who do, like Ayers?

Not easy to do good to….

A Gala and a Controversy

Moral dilemma, here—should I sign the online petition asking for the Metropolitan Opera to dedicate the season’s opening gala to the LGBT community?

Factors in the decision—the season opens this year with a performance of Eugene Onegin, by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Right, so would dedicating the gala to the LGBT be a sharp stick in the eye for Vladimir Putin and the 430 legislators of the Duma who passed a draconian law outlawing even talking about homosexuality, much less getting down and…well, getting down? Somehow I don’t see it.

Nor is the Met’s choice of a Russian opera an endorsement of Putin and his law, given that the law is three months old, and the Met undoubtedly scheduled this years ago. You don’t run out and ask Anna Netrebko, whom the Associated Press called “the reigning new diva of the early 21^st century,” if she’s up for singing next week.

However, there is the fact that Netrebko is Russian, as is the conductor, Valery Gergiev. However, Netrebko came out on Facebook—that’s how it’s done, these degenerate days—with this statement: “As an artist, it is my great joy to collaborate with all of my wonderful colleagues — regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. I have never and will never discriminate against anyone.”

Well, good to know! It may not be a ringing denunciation of Putin and the wretched law, but it’s something.

Both Gergiev and Netrebko supported Putin in the past, but there’s no indication that they support the antigay legislation.

OK—but consider the fact that Tchaikovsky was homosexual, despite a two-and-a-half-month attempt at marriage—which left him drained and unable to compose. And though the Russian government is trying to deny that fact, Tchaikovsky mentions the fact himself in his letters. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

In any case, Tchaikovsky chose not to neglect social convention and stayed conservative by nature.[100] His love life remained complicated. A combination of upbringing, timidity and deep commitment to relatives precluded his living openly with a male lover.[101] A similar blend of personal inclination and period decorum kept him from having sexual relations with those in his social circle.[102] He regularly sought out anonymous encounters, many of which he reported to Modest; at times, these brought feelings of remorse.[103] He also attempted to be discreet and adjust his tastes to the conventions of Russian society.[104] Nevertheless, many of his colleagues, especially those closest to him, may have either known or guessed his true sexual nature.[105] Tchaikovsky's decision to enter into a heterosexual union and try to lead a double life was prompted by several factors—the possibility of exposure, the willingness to please his father, his own desire for a permanent home and his love of children and family. There is no reason however to suppose that these personal travails impacted negatively on the quality of his musical inspiration or capacity.

Well, we have a sad story, here—a gay man living in a troubled time. Russia then, and perhaps now, ran on “understandings,” according to one writer. The laws were on the books, but were they enforced? Well, you came to an “understanding” with whatever authorities you needed to and you were OK—until the winds blew in an unpleasant direction.

Another factor in the decision: the Met is not going onto Russian soil to do this gala—it’s taking place, of course, right at home in Lincoln Center. So it’s not quite like the Olympics, which will be taking place in Sochi, and which is expected to cost 12 billion.

There’s also the question of politics in art. It’s all very well to say that politics and music don’t mix, but in the past they certainly have, at least in some cases. Casals wouldn’t play in Spain for years, in protest of Franco. No one dared to play Wagner in Israel, until Barenboim did it—and he barely got away with it. 

Well, the Met is in an uncomfortable position. Prepare to be stunned, Readers, but opera is to gay men what softball is to lesbians. The LBT community might safely be snubbed, but the G? Tread carefully.

The good news? I’ve decided, no, I won’t sign the petition. But I have listened to the opera, and it’s a knockout….

Foreign Shame

I would see them every morning at five o’clock, when I traveled first to Río Piedras on my way to work in Caguas. They were young, they were old, most of them appeared healthy—a few had canes or crutches, a few appeared ill. There was nothing particularly special or unusual about them.

The plaza del pueblo in Río Piedras was quite lovely, especially at that hour, with the sun just coming up. There were large mahogany trees, which have a tantalizing scent when they flower in May and June. There were always stray dogs and cats, banana kwits, and the Greater Caribbean Grackle, which in mating season has a call identical to the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. So I would sit, wait for the second bus to arrive, and observe the crowd.

There would be about fifty or a hundred, especially later, around six or seven, when the doors to the Social Security Administration offices would open; an employee would slip out and hand out the numbers of those who would be seen.

It was puzzling, but I was in no mood in those days to give it much thought; I had a job to get to, and an aging parent to attend to.

Well, now I know—I was witnessing the biggest case of Social Security fraud in the United States.

How big? Well, there were 75 people arrested yesterday—all of them perfectly capable of trotting into the processing area, and all of them—if The New Day is to be trusted—acting like star actors. Here’s ABC News:

Rodriguez said agents took videos of people that belied their claimed ailments. She said one who claimed back problems was a gym owner who posted a picture of himself on Facebook lifting a girl above his head.

Well, of course he had a back problem! Lifting girls above your head would give anybody a back problem! Anyone can see that!

Well, among the 75 people arrested were two shrinks (not, I’m happy to clarify, my own) and a fisiatra or a physiatrist (the island is full them, though I never met one in the States—the physiatrist is basically a rehab doctor…). Then there was also the ex-employee of the Social Security Administration, who very helpfully guided the abled to those doctors who could disable them. And then—hey, great customer service here—“facilitated” the process of getting that pesky paperwork attended to.

How well did they do?

Según la investigación, el principal gestor del fraude fue un exempleado del Seguro Social, identificado como Samuel Torres Crespo, quien recibió alrededor de $3.4 millones al gestionar solicitudes de seguro de incapacidad basadas en supuesta información falsa.

Yup, that’s The New Day reporting that Samuel Torres Crespo, an ex-employee of Social Security, got 3.4 million bucks for helping in the disabling process. His cut? 25% of the amount received. And the doctors? They took from $150 to $500 for their part in the scheme.

Well, it was good while it lasted. Some families were raking in $5000 monthly—that $60,000 annual salary buys a lot of bling-bling.

And the overall total? Upwards of 35 million dollars.

Nor is this over—the sub director of the federal district attorney states that this is the first of many.

In fact, disability seems to be winning in the race against ability, at least on the island. Caribbean Business, in an article tellingly titled “Disability Island”, reports that “Social Security data reveals that about four times as many working-age Puerto Rico residents receive disability income than those on the U.S. mainland.” We have 1 million working people on an island of 3.7 million. We also have over 200,000 disabled people not working—for a rate of 17.7% of disabled workers (some of the 200,000 disabled presumably being older or younger than working age). In the States, the rate is 10.3%.

Not all of these are frauds, of course, but the situation was so alarming that the Social Security Administration decided to move its review center from the island to Baltimore. Oh, and they’ve opened a special office to investigate fraud on the island. And of the top ten zip codes for SSA fraud? Nine of them are in Puerto Rico.

Well, I would see them, wonder about them, and then get on the bus, trot up the stairs and—quite frequently—help Leida up the stairs. She was tall and thin, and the first time I saw her, I couldn’t believe she could walk. Nor was it, truly, a walk—it was a lurching, swinging prelude to a fall. She may have had braces, those many years ago; she has never not had a walker. She arrived each morning in a special car: not having the use of her feet, she had to do everything with her hands. My “job,” when we coincided those mornings, was to open the trunk, get out the walker, and watch in never-diminished terror as Leida grabbed the railing of the six steps up to the lobby and hauled herself swaying up the stairs.

She was unfailingly cheerful; she had been dealt a rotten hand in life, and in the only remark that in a decade of knowing her she had ever made about her condition, she confided that a video shown at a meeting of disabled kids had made her cry. It made her remember her childhood, with its many hospitalizations and surgeries.

She had the nobility that a few people acquire through suffering. She knew very well that a supervisor’s annoyed look or an intemperate email didn’t deserve a place in her day, and she didn’t let them in, much less insert them into other people’s day. As much as she had struggled, she would have scorned to complain. And while the very substantial ladies of Human Resources took the elevator to the second floor, Leida took the stairs.

I consider myself Puerto Rican, though by adoption; I’m proud to be Puerto Rican, and the Puerto Ricans who work work harder than many other people in many other places. But in my classes at Wal-Mart, there was a sure theme that would revive any sputtering class: el mantengo.

It’s the philosophy of the kept, the entitled, the petty cheats who play the system, don’t work, and receive every benefit—from a free apartment to (almost) free electricity to free food to free…you get the picture. And the rest of us? Pendej…. (a very vulgar word that—wonderfully—actually means a hair on the human vulva. Meaning—somebody else is having all the fun, and you’re just standing around watching…)

No, I didn’t complete that pendej—though every Puerto Rican will know it. As they will the term that I can complete….

Vergüenza ajena.

On Becoming a Footnote

OK—it’s 11:22 in the morning and what have I done?

Well, it must have been the fatigue following the exertion of becoming, with Mr. Fernández, a footnote in the legal history of Puerto Rico—that must be what’s operating, here.

It was in 2008 that, on a cold December morning, Rafael and I walked into the Cambridge City Hall to get married. Had we made an appointment? Of course not. So the secretary sighed, and called the justice of the peace, Margaret Drury, down to marry us.

Every trip to the altar—even when there’s no altar—is a long one. In our case, it was physically a long trip; I had spent the early part of the week in Wisconsin with my mother, who was recovering from open-heart surgery. I had flown out of a huge snowstorm, missed a flight in Miami, gotten back home, confirmed our flights to Boston—and discovered that Expedia had botched one leg of the journey. We eventually flew to New York, and took the bus to Boston. And then the snow began—the storm I had flown out of from Wisconsin I had bussed in into Boston.

I was still on edge on the day of my marriage—it had seemed unreal, somehow. But I had told my boss, the director of Human Resources, that I was getting married—and to whom. She asked how long we had been together, and I told her: twenty five years. “It’s high time,” she said. Later, meeting her in the crowded lunchroom, she kissed me, wished me a good trip, and bustled off to wash her hands. Glancing over her shoulder, she called out, “and congratulations on…the other thing!”

And so we referred to our wedding as “the other thing,’ throughout the trip.

I had told her, because I knew perfectly well what I was going to do: ask the company to put Raf on the health plan. He was between jobs—and his Cobra payment was a couple hundred dollars easily over what I would pay to put him on my company’s health plan.

So I found myself, after we returned, with my boss and the president of the largest company on the island—Wal-Mart Puerto Rico—arguing that if we had a statement in the Employee Handbook stating that we didn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, shouldn’t gay spouses be included in the benefits? “I think you should,” said the president.

It was the first time anybody had raised the issue to him.

Was it easy to do that? No—my hands were wet, my mouth was dry, I was in the classic fight or flight response.

I also knew that I would do it, that I was right, and that if I didn’t do it, I was letting the next generation down. Drag queens fought in Stonewall for me, and if they can fight cops with Billy clubs, I could talk to a Colombian man in a small office in Puerto Rico.

My request was denied, of course, on the grounds that my marriage was not legal in Puerto Rico. OK—so I wrote requesting reconsideration from Bentonville. Oh, and I wrote a letter to the executive vice president for Human Resources for the entire company.

This is called rattling the cage, and somebody has to do it.

Bentonville never replied, so I sent a certified letter. That got a response.

So it became a tradition, in those last years of my time there—I would formally petition to put Raf on the health plan, and present my marriage certificate.

“What do you want me to do with this?” my buddy Karen would ask.

“Oh, just send me the same letter you sent last year,” I’d say.

“Ay, Marc….”

If the Internet were working, I could tell you who said, “courage is a muscle that becomes stronger with exercise.” Recently, I came out to a room full of strangers, blurting out, “Sweetheart, I’m your husband, not your friend,” after Raf, about to read a poem of my mother’s, referred to me as a friend. The whole room laughed—look, how threatening is a roomful of poets?

So it was natural to me, to protest when a notary public, in preparing a deed for an apartment I bought, referred to me as soltero, or bachelor.

“No, I’m married in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” I said.

We went around about it; he explained that legally, I was a bachelor. We signed; I went home and had a drink. The lawyer went home and lost sleep.

In Puerto Rico, property sales are handled by a notary public, who must be as well a lawyer. So the notary public got it into his head—he knew he had to do something. The next day, he called the professional association that rules over the notaries, and asked them the question: what to do about a marriage legal in one state but not in Puerto Rico?

“It was great—they all took the question very seriously, and very respectfully,” said Tony, to give the notary his name.

Even the head of the association, with whom Tony finally ended up….

“Your job as a notary is to record the facts, not judge on the legality,” the director said. “You have to amend that deed, and state that Marc and Raf were married in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And they both have to sign it….” The director went on to speculate—what happens if Puerto Rico is obliged to recognize all marriages from other states, including same-sex marriages?

So we did, but not before asking Tony if they the notary association had ever had the question put to them.

“No,” he said, “they had been waiting for it, but it had never come up. They’re actually thinking of writing a memo to all the notaries on the island, directing them to do what we’re doing. So yours will be the first gay marriage recorded on a legal document in Puerto Rico.”

“You really should spread the word around,” said Johnny, when I called to tell him the news. “There could be other gay people who need to be aware that their marriages need to be recorded….”

So I have!