A Day of Shining Eyes

Well, he was a gentleman who came into my life at a time when—as he would put it—my eyes were not shining. How could they? I was waking at five every morning, serving the Gods of corporate America, and straggling home at six or seven, to eat dinner, wash dishes, and put myself to bed. So after five days of that, how was I doing on Saturdays?

Wait—according to policy, I had to work every other Saturday morning, since I was “management,” which meant that I had an entirely different view about the time clock. Why? Because if you were paid by the hour, you had to punch in. Right—but you also got to punch out! To be management meant that you had to arrive earlier than your boss, and stay later. So in fact, you never punched out.

Saturdays? Well, I son learned that I couldn’t go to the movies, since I had no emotional reserves left. And that meant that a sad movie would plunge into an abyss of despair, and anything remotely funny would shoot me into a stratosphere of hilarity.

Do I have to tell you about Sundays?

So I had happened, in my Walmart years, on Ben Zander giving a TED talk about shining eyes, and I had been impressed, so much so that I sent a link to the director of Human Resources, my big boss. Characteristically, this was ignored, and I went on my way: willingly putting myself on the treadmill, until it was decreed that I got off. The severance pay was good; the freedom was better.

Confession—I was both in and out of corporate America, since my job was to hide myself in a room upstairs—away from almost everybody—and convince little groups of people that they could speak English. This, of course, was a joke—since I had no formal training as a teacher, only ten or fifteen years of teaching, during which I had convinced everybody that I was an excellent teacher. Oh, everybody but me.

I had, you see, disproved Barnum and Bailey, or whoever it was: I had fooled everybody all of the time! Wow! So what to do, that first Monday morning, when I woke up jobless? Lie on the couch? Watch some TV? I opted for the beach.

Well, that meant a walk, and that meant seeing people, and that meant saying hello to people—people whom I would see every day, so they became, well, not friends, but friendly faces. If you smile and say buenos dias about thirty times in the morning, eventually your day becomes a buen dia.

So the exercise stimulated the brain, and I would be writing as I trotted home (I didn’t really swim, I plunged into the ocean and paddled about for five minutes—just enough time to become part of the blue sky, the green water, the golden sand….) So I would write and go off to a teaching gig I had picked up.

Two things happened: I encountered the most difficult student of my twenty-year career. The student ended up teaching me more than I did her, since she put me to the test at every turn: did I really believe that I don’t teach, but instead create a space where learning can occur? Every other student had met me, if not halfway, at least part of the way. This student—though perfectly nice and quite motivated—could be derailed but the slightest mote of dust that I blew in her path. Nor could I lift her back onto the track—that she had to do herself.

In the end, she ended up speaking quite well: another person who had proved me wrong that I was a failure as a teacher.

Well, there was work to do: I had put in my 10,000 hours of practice at the cello, so in theory I should have been quite proficient. Was I? Yes, at home, alone. But with other people around? I travelled through performance anxiety and was firmly entrenched in performance panic.

I’m lucky—however much I piss and moan about the things I have had to do in life—who else do you know who has delivered death to his mother?—I have a lot of energy. After a week of intense struggle, I came out the other side. I was and wasn’t a musician; rather, I leant my body and my fingers to the cello, and something or somebody played. And the less I got in the way, the better it would all be. I had gotten to that Zen state: the playing is good today, GREAT! The playing is bad today, GREAT!

I was treating myself—and gee, it only took five decades!—as well as I had treated my students. And with much the same results: when I play Bach suites in the café in  the afternoon, it always comes out OK. Some days it takes a bit longer, but it always comes. And if people drift in and listen? Perfect!

Well, I spent the morning getting pre-admitted for a cataract surgery next week. Right, it took four hours, during which—typical gringo—I had completely streamlined the process in my head so that I, and everybody else, could have sailed in and out in an hour. Then I began chatting with a woman, and telling her the story of my father: he had had to have the same operation, and had a particular terror of anybody doing anything to his eyes. He was, in fact, panicking, when he called the nurse to confess and plead for more time. Fortunately, the nurse knew just what to say…

“…Jack, we’re gonna give you so much Valium, you won’t give a shit!”

So we laughed about that, and then I spoke to the anesthesiologist. He asked: what did I do?

So I told him: I’m a writer, I wrote a memoir of my mother, and how she died. Actually, I just told him: she was old and feeble and losing her mind, so she stopped eating and drinking, and died a wonderful death at home, with the cat on her bed. So the doctor’s eyes shot up, and he wanted to read the book. Hey, good deal!

Then I went to the café, where I told Amir what Jorge, the manager, had said about him: he’s an excellent worker, he wants to learn everything, he really helps a lot. So Amir was so pleased he sold me coffee to go, but then realized his mistake. I told him: I’ve had a lot worse things happen to me.

Then I watched Ben Zander and realized: it’s been a day of shining eyes!

Mine included…. 

    

Out in the Corporate World

So today’s news?

“Man, this is the third time I’ve spoken to these people in Mexico, and I keep telling them, ‘hey, this is a business, and I’m alone here, so I’ve gotta take care of customers. And so whatever you gotta do to get the Internet faster, you gotta do it….”

That’s Jorge, the manager of the café, and on whose shoulders many things fall. Actually, from one point of view, everything. Consider, for example, that it’s slow season, so he should be getting a break, right? But people have quit, and on one occasion have been fired, and nobody wants to hire anybody in slow season. So Jorge? He’s working harder than ever, and hasn’t had two consecutive days off for months.

“I could go home right now,” he told me, a little after ten this morning, as he was opening the shop. “But once the customers come in, I’ll get my energy back….”

It’s a curious thing, how technology has enriched and enslaved us. Last night, for example, I was watching the encore performance of Figaro, which took pace a week and a half ago on a stage in New York City, got shot up to a satellite, and then got beamed down to movie theaters in 66 different countries. For Montalvo, this is an ordinary state of affairs. For me?

My father once explained the essential workings of the internal combustion engine, which—since I am Internetless—I can only say that I think is what propels your car. And though I’ve retained absolutely none of what he said, it dawned on me at the time: he was the last generation of guys who knew how everything worked. They could fix toasters and cars and lawn mowers, and if they didn’t know how to do it? They could figure it out.

But now we have a satellite that is enjoying Mozart somewhere up there, and then willing to share it with the rest of us. And there obviously is a satellite wizard at the Met. Or maybe the wizard is in Mexico, or India, and is doing his magic from home. But when the wizard’s car breaks down? He’s probably as lost as the rest of us.

And lost is what I am, because I have just tried to get on the Internet, and the little bar that tells how the loading is going goes speedily up to the mid-point, the screen changes and obviously wants to become The New York Times, but then what happens? Well, it’s obvious what’s happening, because I am hearing 80% of a loud conversation in Russian. And the other 20%? Presumably in Russia, though it could be anywhere, since the Russians have stopped being in Russia—where they should be—and have instead been sent out to all the cafés in the Western world, expressly to soak up the Internet!

Hah—it’s clear. The Cold War never ended, and guess who won? Because while he is shouting Russian and peering computeristically at his beloved, this is what I’m seeing!

   

So I’m completely unable to tell you anything interesting: no worrying about Wisconsin, no wondering about the Japanese and their inability to acknowledge to the rest of the world that they’ve screwed up and can’t figure out what to do about their damned nuclear plant, which if it falls down  in the next earthquake will be hasta la vista, baby for pretty much everybody (one view) or absolutely no problem (the opposing view)!

Of course, if the Internet agreed to hop tables and spend some time on my screen, I could give you the full report on Tim Cook, who got outed in a TV show, and then—oh so bravely—came out publically today in Bloomberg Business.

And who is Cook? A native of Alabama, 53-years old, and the CEO of Apple. Oh—and the first CEO of a public company to come out. Where’s he been all this time? Essentially doing a Ricky Martin, by guarding his privacy and not wanting to draw attention away from all the incredible people and products of Apple.

And if memory serves, 83% of gay people do this to some extent in the work force. I should know: I did, and now feel bad about it. Because really, how many people didn’t know? And isn’t it strange  that gay people will be a distraction, but straight people won’t? Because in every office, in every cubicle, there was a picture of the husband, the wife, the girlfriend. What was there on my desk, in those receding days when I worked at Walmart? A picture of Raf, my mother, and me: he was there, yes, but my mother took the sting off. What would have happened if I had put a picture of the two of us, dressed in tuxedos, cutting our wedding cake?

Nothing, officially: Human Resources was smarter than that, and since I had come out and told the CEO that I was gay, and then written to the Senior Vice President of Human Resources that I was gay… well, they would have figured out: I was able to stand up for myself. Of course, people would have whispered; the more religious would have—perhaps—tried to proselytize. But after a week? Old news!

That’s what happened to the first CEO to get outed: John Browne, whose 23-year old rent boy turned nasty—ah, reportedly they do!—, and ratted to the tabloids about their affair. Browne was then CEO of British Petroleum and in his fifties; now he is a Member of Parliament, and chairman of the trustees of the Tate Galleries. According to the New York Times, Lee Scott, then CEO of Walmart, called Browne and rescinded the offer to be on the board of directors of Walmart. Why? Browne says that Scott told him that Arkansas wasn’t ready for a gay board member; Walmart says that Browne was being investigated by BP for misuse of corporate funds (so said—here he is again!—the rent boy, but the company checked it out and cleared Browne).

What happened to Browne? Well, all of the stuff he feared didn’t happen. Yes, he resigned, but all his friends rallied, and those who didn’t? Ahhh, the bliss of knowing who your friends are!

That’s the thing about the corporate world: the pressure to conform, not to rock the boat, is amazing. Every day, I used to see about twenty people whom everybody feared: people who could make an entire division disappear. And those twenty people? Strong, rich, powerful—emperors, but without a stitch of clothes.

So fearful were we, that things didn’t get said. And where weren’t they said? Not at the bottom—well, not always at the bottom—but more often at the top. Nobody could tell Bentonville, Arkansas, that Puerto Rico wasn’t Mexico. So the little store with the rice and beans and some cans and some personal items? That store that had no parking? Well, we had to open it, pretend it was a success, and then close it. Because people in Mexico may travel by burros down the mountain to do their shopping, but  everybody, everybody in Puerto Rico has a car! And nobody is going to walk in the tropical heat to get to a neighborhood market.

Had I Internet, I could tell you the story I read in a Malcolm Gladwell book about the program to train pilots how to communicate, since a Chinese or a Japanese copilot would obediently fly the plane into the mountain, if his pilot mistakenly ordered him to do so. Dying with decorum intact is better, apparently, than living with the disgrace of telling your superior he’s full of shit.

Unless, of course, you’re running a business, or answering to the Board of Directors who are—isn’t this the way it’s supposed to work?—answering to the investors. So why it the corporate world so screwed up?

Because for all the talk about diversity, they never got it. The females in top management had to be tougher than the males, the Puerto Ricans more gringo, and gay? Gay???

Well, it’s happened. The first Fortune 500 company to have a gay CEO.

Wait—500 companies? 500 CEO’s?

Stay tuned! 

   

Wednesday Paranoia

It happens every day at 2PM: Google alerts sends me the latest news from Fukushima. So I peer at it, ponder the improbable but apparently true fact that a disaster is unfolding before our blind eyes, and that life is obliviously going on. In the meantime, we are worried about Ebola! And here’s the latest news:

Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO] says it has found high levels of radioactive cesium in groundwater in the compound. Officials at TEPCO say a recent typhoon may be the cause… TEPCO officials say water taken on Wednesday from a well had 460,000 becquerels of cesium per liter (Bq/l)… another well contained 424,000 becquerels. Officials say those levels are 800 to 900 times the previous peak.

Right—definite fodder for a blogger whittling away his Wednesday. So then I came to this:

What? Steel can be radioactive? But wait, there’s no time to worry about that because what in the world is happening to the horses in California? Why is their skin falling off?

But there’s not a moment to stress out about that, since there’s the pressing fact that ENEnews is reporting that “Radiation Levels have Surged Around Fukushima…100,000% of the Previous Record High…Officials Say They Don’t Know the Cause…Recent Typhoon May Be to Blame”

But before I concern myself about that, I really have to think about that weird cloud that appeared over the famed Venice Beach in California, and isn’t it strange that it produced thunder and lightening, since normally the ocean’s cooling effect prevents formation of lightening?

Then it was time to look in on Dr. Helen Caldicott, the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and what she is saying, which is that there’s a huge cover up in the United States, since the nuclear industry has bought Obama and Hillary as well.

Well, before I could digest all of that, there was this, from the Associated Press:

Craig Welch, July 24, 2014: Once-common marine birds disappearing from our coast [...] a significant ecological shift in our region — a major decline in once-abundant marine birds. [...] the number of everyday marine birds here has plummeted dramatically in recent decades. [...] several new studies now also link many dwindling marine bird populations to what they eat — especially herring, anchovies, sand lance [...] Some forage-fish species, such as herring, are a fraction of what they once were. [...] There’s certainly no shortage of crashes [...] “It’s one thing to have a rare species decline,” said Joe Gaydos, with the SeaDoc Society. “[...] We’re talking about big, common species, and a lot of them.” [...] it wasn’t clear whether this was a local or continental- scale problem, said Scott Wilson, a biologist with Environment Canada. It’s both: Up and down the West Coast, the winter breeding population [of Western grebes] is half what it was in 1975. [...] since 1970 [Puget Sound's biggest] herring stock has crashed, with more than 90 percent of the population all but gone. [...] some scientists believe the herring problem itself may be far worse than others acknowledge. [...] Wayne Landis, at Western Washington University [...] found that while Puget Sound herring used to live eight to 10 years, they now survive only to age 3 or 4. [...] “They don’t get. That old anymore,” he said. That could be the result of disease or toxic contamination or other changes [...] Usually after a bust, herring eventually recolonize, Landis said. The question now: Is this bust different [...] “Something’s happening on a big level,” [Gaydos] said. “But what is it?”

Indeed, what is it? Because I’m either supposed to stop eating hazelnuts—so says Dr. Caldicott, since hazelnuts come from Chernobyl-affected Turkey—or everything is just fine. That’s what the BBC says in an article titled, “Fukushima: Is Fear of Radiation the Real Killer?”

Right, but then it’s time to consider that a former mayor in the Fukushima prefecture is alleging that the kids are dying of thyroid cancer, and the government is covering it up. And it’s certainly true that TEPCO hasn’t exactly welcomed any help in solving what they themselves say could be a forty-year cleanup.

The real question is whether this is a matter for TEPCO at all: if I were living on the West Coast, seeing the marine birds die off and watching my horses lose the skins…well, I’d be howling for an international team to address the situation. But who’s working in the plant? According to The New York Times, it’s a motley group of homeless / drunk / mentally impaired guys picked up off the street and bused to the plant. Oh, and did I mention the mafia?

Any way you look at it, it’s a bizarre situation, made worse by a relative lack of openness. True, as you can see in the video below, they allowed the BBC in, but what the BBC found is even more frightening: nobody really knows what’s going on in key parts of the reactor, since nobody can get in to see. So they’re relying on an improvised boat with a camera to go about the core of the reactor, trying to figure out where the leaks are. And you can see it quite well: water is gushing into the core of the reactor.

As if that weren’t bad enough, my real worry is that North America—OK, the US and Canada—has discovered that it’s sitting on tremendous amounts of shale oil, so for the first time in decades, we’re starting to export oil. The problem? All of that oil needs to be released by fracking, at huge environmental cost, so what’s going to happen to all the alternative, clean energy sources that we should have been developing for the last fifty years? If oil drops down to 20$ a barrel, is a windmill going to look so attractive?

Well, we’ve been sharpening both sides of the sword for centuries, now: we’ve moved from sword to gun to bomb to nuclear warheads. And now, Dr. Caldicott raises the possibility that with the advent of artificial intelligence, computers could reproduce themselves and as well…

…start a nuclear war and annihilate the planet.

Why do I think they might do a better job of things?   

The Oil Barons Buy Wisconsin

If one picture can explain the situation, this might be it:

If one paragraph can explain the situation, this might be it:

Wisconsin is the nation’s No. 1 producer of frac sand, with an estimated output of about 26 million tons annually, more than double what it was in 2012. The sand mined in Wisconsin is injected into oil and natural gas wells in the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

If one quote can explain the situation, this might be it:

“We've spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We're going to spend more."

The quote above is by billionaire David Koch, speaking to the Palm Beach Post, and what is the source of Koch’s wealth? Wikipedia to the rescue:

The Koch family (/ˈkoʊk/ koke) of industrialists and businesspeople is most notable for its control of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States (with 2013 revenues of $115 billion).^[1] The family business was started by Fred C. Koch, who developed a new cracking method for the refinement of heavy oil into gasoline.

You probably know—the Koch brothers are as conservative as they are rich: their father was a founding member of the John Birch Society. OK—being conservative is no crime, but are the Koch playing by the rules? Well, I’m happy to tell you—yes! And that’s because…

…they’re making the rules.

Consider this quote from the John Muir Society (I know, the name is as damning as anything with “heritage” or “prosperity” is….):

AB 426 demolished environmental safeguards related to mining, eliminated public input, reduced revenues to local communities, and rushed the permit review process.

In fact, ABN426 never passed, but a later and virtually identical bill passed by one vote, with no Democrats voting for the measure.

Nor is it just at the gubernatorial or legislative level that the Kochs are willing to spend their money: they also are meddling in local elections. Remember that open-pit iron mine that—if approved—may be the world’s largest? It’s in Iron County, where the County Board gets elected on the strength of about 200 votes each, and where no one could remember anyone challenging an incumbent. Oh, and the average amount spent on the race is usually under $1500. But all that changed when the mining issue came up:

The Madison-based group (of the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity) sent a field organizer to Iron County after a strongly pro-mine candidate for the board was defeated in a three-way primary in February.

AFP mailed full-color flyers on March 19 accusing seven opponents of pro-mine board members of being radical environmentalists. AFP also made plans to telephone potential voters and talk to them door-to-door, and the group sent a second mailing that lauded eight board members and one challenger.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/environment/five-backed-by-koch-brothers-group-win-seats-lose-in/article_4988c4c7-9996-58c7-a58d-e759d0795640.html#ixzz3HSsKRrRc

In fact, it was an almost even draw for the AFP, since five of their candidates won, and four lost.

There are several galling things about what’s happened in my home state of Wisconsin. There is the trashing of our legislative process, which has traditionally been open and clean. There is the betrayal of our history of conservation of natural resources. There is the tawdriness of duping basically good, honest conservative people with disinformation and lies.

I never thought my state could be bought.

And it breaks my heart that it has….

The Regal Tweet

Let’s see—should I be responsible and get down to the serious business straightening things out, or should I take the Friday off, and go—figuratively, but hey, I could do it literally!—to the beach? Does the world really need me, today? Are my services so essential?

And what am I supposed to do about the 150 to 160 teachers in the public school who, according to El Nuevo Día, resign each month, thus creating una situación alarmante? Should I start strolling down school halls, sticking my head the classes, giving the thumbs up and shouting, “¡excelente trabajo!?” (Good job!)

Alternatively, I could run over to the Department of Education and ask questions like, “why is there no toilet paper in the bathrooms?” This is, of course, not the most urgent necessity, since Elizabeth—the manager of the sister shop—has just shown me her children’s grades. And very well they’re both doing in Spanish, Science Social Studies, and Math. But English? Well, it turns out that there’s still no English teacher—though one has just been hired—so what did the school do? Did they leave it blank, perhaps with a note of apology / explanation? Of course not—they left off English altogether!

Right, so that means that the last English class these kids have had was mid-May, which, counting on my fingers, was almost six months ago. So unless something happens, these kids are going to have promising careers in the food service industry, AKA flipping burgers….

Of course, while at the Departamento de Educación I could check out whether it’s true, as Mr. Fernández avers—OK, swears—that the DE has the greatest number of non-docent versus docent personnel in the United States. Who knows? But absolutely nobody would deny it.

Of course, couldn’t I drop in electronically? Why, after all, on a now-Friday-afternoon do I have to hop a bus to observe the sluggish behavior of our civil servants? So it was a quick trip via Internet up to Elizabeth’s children’s school, and here is the report card:

Ouch—only a 34% in English? Hmm, so how are the kids doing across the bay, in Cataño? Well, take a look!

OK—so alert readers of this blog, raise your hands if you’ve noticed a certain familiarity / similarity in these numbers. I certainly did, until I realized that that word metas meant “goals.” So the Department of Education has a goal of 34% in English? And 34% of what? Kids passing the test, which has been specially designed for Puerto Rican kids, since in theory kids can’t take the national test?

OK—so how are they kids up the street doing? Well, here it is:

So only 8% of sixth graders were proficient or advanced at Abraham Lincoln School? Not surprising, given that for half of the year, the kids are without any formal instruction. And each grade, the numbers drop: from 73% in 3d grade to 8% in 6^th grade.

So what’s going on? Well, the Department of Education, in its pdf file on the Pruebas de Aprovechamientos Académico y Alternativas Educativas has this to say:

El profesor José Hernández del Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras de la Universidad de Puerto Rico señala lo siguiente: “Cambiar el sistema de enseñanza del inglés sería una aceptación implícita de que este idioma es foráneo, por ende, no sería constitutivo de nuestra cultura, lo que no conviene a quienes dicen que el inglés es una lengua oficial”.

Here’s the story: the University of Puerto Rico has a great program to teach foreign languages, and the students are speaking in a year or so. So why not adapt their system? Because it would imply that English is a foreign language, not part of our culture, and that doesn’t suit the beliefs of those who say that English is an official language.
Guys? You’re going to put a whole generation at risk—as well as an entire island—for some political beliefs? You guys would do that?!?

Yes, because guess what—probably not one child of the people running the Department of Education is attending a public school. Nor is the purpose of the department to educate: its purpose is to collect federal funds, create programs, and most important, provide low-paying jobs to as many of the political pals of the party in power.
The mind boggles. I am happy to report, however, that the queen of England, not content to coast along on 60 years of successful queening, has decided to plunge—well, as much as her title allows—smack into 21^st century and issue—perhaps a more royal word would be emit or even dispense—her first tweet! And her hashtag? What else, Elizabeth R!

Don’t know why this cheers me so much!