A Monday Morning Walk Through Facebook

Well, well, it’s a Monday morning, and isn’t it time to walk through Facebook?

Bloggers get to do this, you see, or maybe we have to, since there are days when the news is so unremittingly bad that The New York Times and El Nuevo Día are merely siren songs for suicide (sorry for that alliteration—all this poetry stuff I’m doing must be rubbing off). So what can I tell you, or rather, in what new ways can I derich your—perhaps/ probably—difficult Monday morning.

Well, start off briskly with this:

Do I have to? Because—talk about a graphic being worth a thousand words—who needs to make that click? I know perfectly well what’s happening, I know perfectly well how I feel about fracking (essentially, frack that), and so why make myself crazy?

Does it get better? Of course not, because then we have to come to this:

Wonderful! Investigated that just enough to know that vegetarianism is out, too, since the storage tanks holding all that highly radioactive water? Do I have to tell you?

Move on to this:

Why isn’t Congress acting? Do you think I haven’t asked myself that question? Of course, and here’s the answer, if you really didn’t know: Congress is not acting because, for the last six years, a bunch of elderly white bigots ostensibly called Republicans have been in a frenzy of obstructionism. You see, the world changed—you see, they don’t. Oh, and guess what? Because here’s what’s next….

Devoted as I am to you, Dear Readers, who wake every day thirsting to read this blog, whose one reason is to wake…oh, skip it. I checked it out and yes, Thomas reasons that Congress can’t establish religions, but that doesn’t mean that a state can’t. So you Mormons out there in Utah? Feel free!

Well, the Supreme Court is taking a well-deserved rest, having busily fucked everything else up for the rest of us, who are going to have to get busy and do stuff like this:

 

Go to it guys!

At last, I have uncovered the reason for the deeply addictifying nature of Facebook, since the site puts you into such a state of catatonic rage—don’t know how they do that, but they got it figured out—that you then have to turn to stuff like this:

Well of course, of course, I had to spend seven minutes of Monday morning looking at the movie references to Wisconsin—you, Dear Reader, deserve nothing less—but having done that, please don’t waste your time. Somebody, after all, has to keep this world together.

But now, I’m saved by Montalvo, who arrives with the news that his poetry is driving him crazy, since he spent five years making the same mistake, namely writing lines of two words each. I’ve told him, the feeling of reading poem like this is just like bumping down the stairs on your rear-end. So it’s time for a challenge: write a poem of four four-line stanzas, with each line being at least eight syllables each. The first line is “Your memory is a silent ghost,” and you have half an hour to do it. Get to work.

Well, can I do that? I decide to try:

Your memory is a silent ghost

That still cries at night, when the wind,

Cold and unwanted, forces itself through the

Cracks of my empty heart, which even now

Has a ventricle for the eyes that saw no one but me,

Before they misted, clouded, became watery, then pus-filled

And at last, all desire lost, refused to see.

A ventricle to, for the voice, which once was only

Laughter, then turned to song, and then

Hardened slightly, turned as somber as mute swans

In a chill Autumn pond, until your voice, as they, fell silent.

I fled, then, to the other chambers of my heart, places

You were little likely to go, places I might have shown

You, but did not.  I slammed the valves shut, cemented them

With hurt, grief, the usual glues of a deadened love.

I waited, alone, in a dusty corner, and listened—

Thump-thump, thump-thump; you knocking insistently

For a while, but each day more silently, weaker, until at last,

Tired of a call never answered, you left, and it was silence

At last.

House of Turds

Well, the forts that guard the entrance to the harbor of the city of San Juan—those forts that have been open and operating for centuries—are now closed. Why? Because the national government is in a shutdown, and 800,000 people are stuck without a paycheck, all but essential services are cut, but guess what? Check out the cover of the Daily News:

Yes, the same congress that gave the middle finger to the 90% of the country who favor universal background checks for gun ownership has decided to hold the nation hostage. But let’s be real. What’s happening here?

Well, we can start with the fact that we’ve had gerrymandering of congressional districts. And what has that brought? The number of strongly Republican districts has increased, and the number of Democratic districts has decreased.

Then there are the various voting laws, the effect of which is to make it more difficult for young people, students, are minorities to vote.

But these are the symptoms—what really is going on?

“Is this about race?” asked Lady, the owner of the coffee shop I write in.

So I told her about José Serrano, who came out and said it frankly: there are people who have never accepted the fact that Obama is our president. And why is that? Pure racism. This is what Serrano told WKAQ 580, a radio station in Puerto Rico:

“‘Este grupo nunca ha aceptado que Barack Obama es un presidente legítimo, sí hay racismo, te lo dejo ahí. Hay un pequeño grupo que nunca pudo aceptar que él es un presidente legítimo y si les dolió que fuera elegido en el 2008, más les dolió la reelección’, subrayó el representante demócrata por Nueva York.”

“‘This group has never accepted Barack Obama as a legitimate president. There is racism involved there, I’ll tell you that. There’s a small group that has never accepted he’s a legitimate president, and, if they were upset by his election in 2008, his reelection upset them even more so,’ stated the Democrat for New York.”

There’s no ideology here. What is this? The terrified reaction of a bunch of rednecks who know that their world is vanishing and cannot cope with a world in which the straight white male is no longer supreme.

They know something else.

They know that they can get away with this. Why? Because the people back home will think them heroes, and the big money from special interest groups will keep flowing. In fact, they love the fact that they have shut down the government. Why? Because that’s exactly what they want—a minimal federal government that won’t interfere with them as they foul the environment, enrich the already too rich, and screw the poor.

The corporations and special interest groups have bought the statehouses.

And now they’ve shut down the federal government.

The Governor Hears the Door Slam

Right—I usually back away from this topic, which is not a hot potato but a burning and radioactive one instead.

If you’re a gringo, the word  “status” has no particular meaning for you. If you’re Puerto Rican, you tense—here it comes, the old but undiminished in its ferocity debate on whether Puerto Rico should be a state, independent, or continue as it is.

And what is that, you ask?

Depends on whom you ask. In Spanish, our status is something called Estado Libre Asociado, which puzzled me the first time I saw it, those decades ago.

“How can something be free and yet a state and yet associated,” I asked Mr. Fernández, those many years ago.

Little did I know…

“IT’S A LIE, IT’S A TRICK, IT’S A BASE AND FOUL CANARD….”

Hint—remove trajectables (it’s a word in Spanish, computer!) at the onset of any discussion of status.

Advocates of our current status have developed a capacity to smoke screen unparalleled by any other group of fanatics. We are a nation, goes the theory, a sovereign nation in “association” with the United States. We therefore hold US passports, receive federal benefits, pay no taxes, and don’t vote for president. In fact, Puerto Rico is one of the few places—the US Virgin Islands is another—in the world where an American citizen cannot vote for president, and has no voting representation in Congress. And for those of you who gnashed their teeth through the eight long years of George W. Bush, trust me—you would have been spared them had Puerto Rico been allowed to vote….

We got to be citizens back in 1917, with the passage of the Jones Act. And how convenient that was, because there was a little war going on—the first of the World Wars—and Puerto Ricans died, and have subsequently died in every other war, in disproportionate numbers.

 Which is what made me believe, fifteen years back, that our current status is heart-stoppingly simple, as well as cynical. Here’s the deal—the rich and empowered Puerto Ricans receive federal dollars in turn for the blood and lives of their poorer brothers.

Predictably, there are those who aren’t satisfied with that. So periodically we have plebiscites—usually when there is a statehood governor. And our last plebiscite, in November 2012, was a double decker—first we were asked if we were satisfied with our current territorial status; then we were asked to choose between statehood, independence, or a sovereign nation in association with the United States.

Also predictably, the Popular Democratic Party—which champions our current status—frothed at the mouth at the mention of the word “territorial.” The party has been trying for years to deny that we are an unincorporated territory. Instead, they hope to “improve” our current status, presumably by getting full parity of money with the states, not paying taxes, but being fully represented in Congress. The last time anyone expressed this idea to a puzzled congress, one congressman noted that if that idea were feasible, he’d have to go home and recommend that his constituents pursue the same option. And so last Wednesday the Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing, and the governor ran up to Washington to advocate for “enhanced” commonwealth.

He had a pretty rotten time of it.

Here’s what the chairman, Ron Wyden, had to say at the start of the session:

The “New Commonwealth” option continues to be advocated as a viable option by some. It is not.

Persistence in supporting this option after it has been rejected as inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. Justice Department, by the bipartisan leadership of this Committee, by the House, and by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations undermines resolution of Puerto Rico’s status question.

Well, ABC news reports that the governor was “frustrated” with the event. Here’s a sample of what he said:

In a meeting with reporters after the hearing he said he favors an "enhanced" commonwealth status that would give Puerto Rico "maximum autonomy" while cementing a permanent relationship with the United States. He'd like Congress and Puerto Rico to agree on which federal laws should apply to Puerto Rico and which should not. He would oppose laws that would be "harmful" to the island's development, he said, but didn't go into further detail.

Wyden, apparently, didn’t buy in. Here’s more of the opening statement:

Puerto Rico must either exercise full self-government as a sovereign nation, or achieve equality among the States of the Union.

The current relationship undermines the United States’ moral standing in the world. For a nation founded on the principles of democracy and the consent of the governed, how much longer can America allow a condition to persist in which nearly four million U.S. citizens do not have a vote in the government that makes the national laws which affect their daily lives? That is the question.

At last—a congressman got it….

Prostitution Day at the Beach

Well, I could tell you that our loopy Congress (gonna have to rethink those caps) has once again voted against the will of the American people, and decided that it’s perfectly OK for government to spy on us. Or how about Syria—over 100,000k have been killed in the civil war there. Or really to rain on your day, how about the fact that in the same day that we all hung by our screens to see British kid named George Alexander Louis, 440 women died in childbirth across sub-Saharan Africa?

“It’s Prostitution Day,” I told Gustavo, the sexy guy from the café, “you’re not going to the bank…”

Nor were we going to the bank, but rather to the beach, and a very good day it was for it. We snailed along at Mr. Fernández’s glacier-in-reverse pace, caught some rays, and sampled some local color, of which there was a very full palette.

We do some things very well, down here, but going to the beach we do either very badly (seen through gringo eyes) or superbly (don’t have to tell you….).

On this particular beach, there are signs posting the rules of the beach. To a gringo mind, one would get to a place, look for a sign, read it, absorb the rules, and follow them. To us?

What sign?

It’s almost a competition—which group of people can violate the most rules. There were the people picnicking outside of the picnic area (1), grabbing beers (2) out of the cooler (3), as their dog (4) chased after a tossed cigarette butt (5). But they were pikers. Most people were scoring at least eight.

There are no barbecues allowed except in the picnic area—of course everybody has a grill. There is no drinking allowed—hey, wanna beer? There is no music, but of course a guy had a boom box in a little red cart—remember them from childhood?—and was blasting reggaetón to half the beach.

“Free music,” I told Mr. Fernández. You gotta go with the flow….

Mind you, nobody is actually swimming. Most people are bobbing in the water, chugging back the beer or the gasolina—a rum drink that comes in a pouch. Men will have 15 extra pounds per decade over 20; women will have 20. Everybody will be shouting, children will be running between your legs, and the smell of charcoal and grilled food will be intoxicating. And yes, people will bring everything to the beach—chairs, the baby crib, the baby, Mamita, large umbrellas, tents, tables to hold the food.

It’s wonderful. We strolled home, bumping into homeless and now toothless Gale, who told us the horror stories of the community—Puerta de Tierra—just next to ours. We gave her some money, chatted for a bit, and moved on.

And now, do I want to read about Syria, contemplate death rates in the developing world, or allow the United States Congress to dampen my psyche?

Forget it—here’s a little known but wonderful cello sonata, by the curious French composer Charles Valentin Alkan….