Wonderful wonderful people

Confession—I spent seven years hectoring my students on rule number one of writing….

Consider the reader.

What does he know? What does he need or want to know? It’s not about you, the writer. It’s all about the reader.

Yup, banged that drum for seven years as loudly as I could!

And then?

Was completely deaf to it.

I wrote a book, you see, all about life and death and iguanas and some other stuff. Then, I concluded it with my getting laid off at Wal-Mart. I mentioned throwing pencils at the students, about not going back to say farewell to my room, about not getting to say farewell to my students.

Well, I sent off drafts to people, and people mostly liked it. Not surprising; is a friend gonna write and say, “Jeez Marc, you’ve written a dog! Couldn’t get past the first chapter!”?

OK—the book is coming out on Saturday. We set up—my partner in literature and I—a little page on Facebook. There was a sample chapter. And then I realized. I talked about the building. I talked about the iguanas behind the building. I certainly mentioned that Wal-Mart cheer!

What didn’t I do?

Mention what in the world I was doing at Wal-Mart in the first place….

Marc? Duh…..

Didn’t bother my friendly readers—they know the story. But wouldn’t a stranger be a little confused?

So here’s what I should have written.

Nothing was more improbable in my life as the fact that, every day between 6:30 and 7AM, I walked up concrete steps, ducked the dive-bombing grackles, passed the alarming cars, and entered the Wal-Mart Home Office.

I knew how it had happened, of course. Ofelia, my old boss and a cherished friend, had sent me off to teach in a trailer in a parking lot in Bayamón.

“No, Ofelia, this is too crazy. I mean, I’ve done the rum factory. That was fun. I’ve done the executives and their wives of the third largest bank on the island. And what is Wal-Mart, anyway….”

She sighed and explained.

Well, needed the dough, and a gig is a gig.

“So how did it go,” she asked, after that first day.

“Ummm, I think I blew it.”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“Look, you know I’ve been teaching ESL for ten plus years, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, what you don’t know is that I become a completely different person when I’m in a classroom….”

“Of course, it’s called the teacher’s persona…  So what happened?”

“Well, I get there and introduce myself to this lady, Elizabeth, and she’s completely unimpressed. I go into this little trailer straight from Arkansas, and begin the class. And then, I hear this clapping from next door and someone shouts ‘Gimme a W!’”

“Oh, the company cheer,” she said brightly.

“Well, I was dumbfounded,” I said. “Didn’t know what to do. So then I said ‘What the hell was that?’ And they said what you said. So then I lost it and said, ‘well, do we have an English class cheer?’”

“Oh no,” breathed Ofelia. “Marc, you didn’t. Marc, tell me you didn’t….”

“Yeah, I got ‘em all on their feet and clapping, and I shouted ‘GIMME AN E, GIMME AN N. GIMME A G’ all the way through the word English, and then I shouted ‘WHAT DOES IT SPELL’ and then ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU’ and then ‘WHAT DO WE SPEAK!’ and then….”

Here I noted that Ofelia had her head in her hands.  

Curious that the company hadn’t called, demanding a change of teacher, I went off to do more damage the next day. And met the president of the company, coming out the trailer door.

“Great cheer,” he said, introducing himself. “Loved it! You’re really part of the Wal-Mart family now!”

Completely sincere!

Well, the disasters multiplied. Tired of teaching, I turned to presentations. Get the kids to talk! (All students of any age are my kids…)

Great—first presentation was about the Florida Keys. I noted confused faces. And did something that I should never do.

Try to be a teacher….

So I jumped up, grabbed the magic marker, went to the flip chart, and started to draw.

I drew Florida, I drew the keys, I created what looked for all the world like an obscene graffitum on a men’s room wall.

Worse, I saw myself do it!

It was like a train wreck—I saw it coming on, I saw my hands creating it.

Couldn’t stop!

Never confessed that to Ofelia.

Well, I started off my Wal-Mart days as a contractor—Ofelia is the head of a very good little language school.

Then Elizabeth, apparently more impressed, phoned me, offered me a job. They had created a position for me, and wanted me to be the fulltime English teacher.

“Great,” I told her.

“Wonderful,” I said to her.

“SHIT!” I said, after hanging up the phone.

Didn’t want it, but knew I had to take it. The benefits? Great!! Salary? Excellent!

Marc in the corporate world?

Nahhhhh!   

For two years, it drove me nuts. Then, I relaxed. I began roaming the halls with my ruler, pretending to be a traditional teacher. I put a ridiculous yellow duck on the door of my room, and called it my VPI—the volume producing item so beloved of Sam Walton. I instituted the ‘cultura de la clase de inglés’ one tired day after hearing the “Wal-Mart Culture” invoked for the umpteenth time.

Among other items, students had to breathe audibly in and gaze upwards when I pronounced the name of Sam Walton.

Someone wasn’t taking it seriously.

Oh, except for one thing.

The students. Those wonderful, resilient, amazing people who told me their stories, shared the joy and pain in their lives, showed me the pictures of their kids or pets. The kids who put up with my nonsense and dodged the pencils I threw at them, and said “333 jewelry thieves” and hid under their desks when they heard me approach, smartly tapping the ruler against my thigh.

Wonderful, wonderful people!

Two kids, one gone

“We need a filter,” said my shrink on my last visit.

We were talking about the news, which—I know, this is dog bites man!—is horrible. The city of New Orleans is under meteorological attack, the Republicans are doing whatever they do, and the news in Puerto Rico?

Well, front page of The New Day is about the death of Lorenzo, a ten-year old kid who saw something he should not.

And who died an hour or two later.

Today, I’m the filter. I read as much of the story as I could. Anyone reading Spanish can do so as well.

But I don’t advise it.

It’s a curious thing, our morbid interest in these affairs. The senseless killings, the misdeeds of the rich, the random violence and the shattered lives.

Let me tell you about another kid, also ten years old.

Her name is Naia, and she’s totally cool. And she’s the daughter of a lady named Lady and a French man. Lady is a poet, her husband is an artist. But that’s not how I met them.

For seven years, I was constantly seeing and talking to people. I was awash in a flood of 500 people. There were faces everywhere.

Then, I was alone in an empty apartment.

Well, the first thing, of course, was to do the trot. Get outta the house, see people, say hello.

But the trot only lasts an hour….

OK—what to do? Put myself on a schedule. After the trot comes the post. Then lunch and Sudoku.

Right—but the afternoons?

Then came the heat wave, right after we returned from Britain. And solitude and heat don’t make a pretty combination.

So I did what a lot of guys without jobs or with too little work and too much time do.

I made a café my office.

Worked out well, too! They make a good sandwich, they have excellent coffee, and the Internet works.

And there was air conditioning, as well….

And then I noticed Naia. She was busy being home-schooled in the back of the café by her mother, the owner of the café (as well as poet).

“What’s the capital of Oregon?”

Remember state capitals?

Of course I do. What I didn’t remember, of course, was the capital of Oregon. So I waited for the answer.

“Portland?”

“Try again….”

“Umm—give me a clue?”

“It starts with an s.”

“Springfield?”

Well, I knew that wasn’t true—that’s Illinois. 

I’ll spare you, it’s Salem.

Half an hour later, I passed them—still hard at work—on my way to the bathroom. And of course I had to interrupt.  

“What’s the capital of Oregon?”

Mother beamed at me.

“Salem!”

Naia, you see, is completely convinced that the world is a good place, a gentle place. A strange guy can enter her classroom, ask her a follow-up question, and of she answers. No fear!

“OK, so what’s the capital of California?”

That one was harder, but she got it—Sacramento.

Well, yesterday it was multiplication. Six times eight?

Naia blinked six times, and responded correctly.

Right, each blink was an addition.

So I explained a useful trick—ten times eight is eighty, eighty divided by two is forty, add the additional eight and you get 48.

So we played with that for a while.

For reasons that I cannot understand, little girls like me. 

“Tell me a story,” Raf’s niece once said. We were waiting to get off a cruise ship and were bored. So I told her the de Maupassant tale of the horribly, horribly good little girl whom everybody adores. She gets eaten by a wolf at the end.

“Now you tell me a story,” I concluded.

Well, she bested me immediately.

“There was once a little girl who lived in an island of puke and her brother lived in an island of snot….”

So I’m not surprised when Naia comes with her pet dinosaur and tells me about it. She sits uninvited at the table. We chat, until I shoo her away. I ponder, at times, what life as a father, rather than uncle, might be. And I marvel how kids, now, effortlessly juggle their own childhoods and the intersecting lives of adults. Much better than I did, as a kid….

Oh, and guess what?

There was only one Lorenzo. But there are millions of kids like Naia.

Seeds, Confusion, and 90-Year Olds

I think it started in those days of confusion when I was walking with Moisés. 

I was explaining something to him from a documentary that Sonia had shown Raf and me. It was years ago when we saw it, so I was a bit unclear.

But it was about failure, and how almost inevitable it is biologically.

An example?

Well, today I walked under a palm tree, and saw the ground beneath it completely obscured with pea-sized seeds.

How many of them will become a palm?

(Could make the same analogy of semen, but this is not that sort of blog….)

Well, I remembered all that last night, after I had called my doctor—a terrific woman—to ask her to review Iguanas. She’s bright, funny, an excellent practitioner. Only one problem!

Her specialty is geriatrics….

Stop that sniggering!

Well, well—she said sure, as I thought she would, and then I returned to the problem. For a book is at least potentially a seed. How to get it to grow? How to ensure that it won’t be, like the seeds this morning, one more book among the millions of others that people walk by, unheeding?

Well, I’m ruminative these days, and continued thinking of the old. And also of the documentary. And then, of course, it hit me.

Rita Levi Montalcini!

She was in the documentary all those years ago, and I was fascinated by her story. She was born on 22 April 1909 into a prominent Jewish family. Had a wonderful childhood and then, in her teens, defied her father: she went to med school. World War II erupted, and she fled to Belgium. She returned to Turin, and lived in hiding.

Didn’t stop working, though! She somehow got hold of eggs and continued her investigation of “limb extirpation of chick embryos.” (Don’t ask, I don’t know….) Then the war ended, and an Italian colleague living in St. Louis invited her for a semester to work at Washington University. 

Stayed thirty years!

Then picked up, and went back home to Italy. Then, in the 80’s she won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.

She had discovered, or helped discover, nerve growth hormone.

Well, that’s an achievement! That puts Iguanas to shame! And that’s not all—she’s a senator for life in the Italian Senate.

Great story, hunh?  And she is now, by the way, still going strong. Maybe because she puts drops of nerve growth hormone each morning into her eyes. Take a look at her—what a charmer!

Oh, and nice sense of fashion, hunh?

Well, well—back to thinking of the old. And then I began to wonder about Imogen Cunningham, and her book After Ninety.

Cunningham was a photographer—one of the greats. And she got around—photographing Martha Graham, Darius Milhaud, a whole cluster of greats. Then she got into photographing old people. And that’s where I saw the face that prepared me. Here it is.

She was a distinguished radiologist who asked me to photograph her.  I wasn’t taking on commissions anymore, but I did it because she didn’t care if she looked old, and she didn’t hate her face.

That’s what the caption says. But no…

She wasn’t a distinguished radiologist. At least not to me. She was the face I knew one day I would see.

Maybe it was just being the youngest that explained the bond between my mother and me. But I think it was more. I sat often and stared at the photo and wondered when I would see the reality. 

Well, I lost the book but not the image. Then I lived the reality and created another one—a book I called Life, Death and Iguanas. 

And now I have the image again—peering at me, challenging me, accompanying me as I go into my own third age….

On Whimbrels and Monkeys

Well, the news out of Puerto Rico is typically bad—at least eight murders over the weekend, cops getting thrown off the force for falsifying statistics, protests at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. 

Who needs it?

So I turned to a blog doña Taí recommended—repeatingislands.com. And discovered a bird I never knew existed—the whimbrel. Here it is.

OK, not too attractive—certainly no motmot—but boy, can it fly! Through hurricanes, in fact—two whimbrels went right through Irene last year. And apparently they use the back part of the storm as a sort of slingshot. Don’t know how that works, but that’s what the American Bird Conservancy says.

Shouldn’t they know?

The other thing is that they fly thousands of miles nonstop.

Well, that’s tremendous news—stuff we should all know about.

There is a little downside.

Several of the birds have made it through hurricanes only to be shot by hunters.

It seems that on some islands of the Caribbean, there are illegal shooting ranges. Just for fun. And there was the whimbrel and there was the guy with the gun, so…

…he shot it.

No, not as a trophy, not to protect his crop. Just for fun!

In fact, the article reports, it’s not unusual for the killers to leave the killed dead on the beach.

The point was just to kill.

This is a part of the male psyche that I don’t get. I can understand—just barely—the allure of hunting. Michael Pollan, of all people, fell prey to it, and likened it to the time-altering effects of marijuana. And it’s certainly in our collective genes.

But this isn’t hunting, it’s slaughter.

May be something more. There are people, I think, who have an indifference to beauty and to nature that verges on hate. They see something brown and white and moving and they kill it.

Why?

Just because….

Well, well—I was determined NOT to be delivering a downer this morning. What else is stirring in the Caribbean?

Monkeys in Santurce!

Well, I knew that they were running around in the mountains down south, but here? In a very much populated section of San Juan? Just look at ‘em!

 

It turns out that it’s not just iguanas that are overpowering our eco-system, it’s monkeys as well. (By the way, the iguana population in Puerto Rico is estimatedat four million—meaning we have more iguanas than people….)

And these monkeys have an interesting pedigree. They were brought here not as pets but as lab animals in the 1970’s. Originally they were let loose on small islands off the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Just one problem…

Monkeys can swim!

Well, the researchers went away, but the monkeys stayed. And now they’re invading the metro area! It’s too much! 

May watch the Republican Convention after all….

Strategy Time!

OK—time for confession. I spent hours yesterday trying to figure out what a blocker corporation was.

Even asked Mr. Fernández, who for once wasn’t quite certain.

And this guy—besides always having the answer (and always the correct one, damn him!)—has an MBA.

Right. So a reasonably intelligent guy (that’s me) and a very intelligent guy (that’s you-know-who) with an MBA can’t figure out the basis for Mitt Romney paying 15, not 35% on his millions.

Or is it 2%?

Well, just googled it again, and guess what?

Can’t get my head around it.

I did learn some interesting facts. Seems that there are two things. Tax evasion is illegal and very, very bad. There is something, however, called tax avoidance and that is legal and very, very good! (Especially for the rich…)

See?

And it appears that blocker corporations are legal. So, I thought, what about me? Can I set up a little blocker corporation? I’m living down here in the Caribbean. Easy enough to run up to Grand Cayman, file some papers, then head for the beach! Supposed to be nice up there.

I think you know the answer.

No.

You gotta have mega bucks to do this scheme. And for little pubic hairs (can’t say the word in Spanish—it’s obscene…) like me?

Sorry. Find another playground.

Well, well. What to do?

Clean the bathroom, I decided. For Carmen was coming to dinner, and it seemed like a thing to do. Can’t have a dirty bathroom if ladies are coming to dinner.

Right, did that. Then dawdled around the rest of the house. Got it half clean when Carmen, ever punctual, showed up.

So we sat, ate dinner, and talked death.

Well, she’s a lady who knows a thing or two about death. Both of her parents AND her lover died virtually in her arms. 

Parents died at home, and were, in good traditional fashion, waked at home as well. Yup, just like the famous (in Puerto Rico at least) painting by Oller. Have a look….

 
And of course, she prayed the rosary. Still does, though Carmen is only culturally Catholic. Which is to say that she (probably) disagrees with 80% of the dogma but gets comfort from praying the rosary.

Who am I to criticize?

She believes, for example, that a green butterfly appearing in the house portends the death of someone close to her. Well, I thought, she’s not alone. Japanese also think so. And I was forming that thought, or rather that sentence (we were speaking Spanish) when Carmen went on to say…

“…it’s such an honor, a privilege, to be present when someone you love dies….”

And then, the heavy mirror hanging over the buffet moved rhythmically back and forth three times.

And no, there was no wind.

Also, not one but I saw it.

Not surprising, really. She’s here and there, that mother of mine. She gets around. No smoke detector, so she grabbed the mirror. 

Well, I did the dishes, Raf and Carmen went off to see a play. Got up and did the morning trot. And began wondering.

How to get through the week? There’s a nest of vipers gathering in Tampa, and what to do? Turn off the iPad / television / newspaper completely, and clean the house?

Music, I decided. And then began thinking of music about music. And that led, inexorably, to Handel. 

Well, it’s a strategy. Not a bad one. So I went to YouTube, and snatched the clip below.

But for stronger souls, click on the link below, and see if you can understand Mitt’s money….

Just don’t tell me until after next week….

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy-street/explainer-romney-tax-documents-part-i

Well, now we know

Breaking news—the Norwegian court has declared Anders Behring Breivik sane.

Great! My question over the last year has been answered! The guy’s not nuts!

That means, apparently, that he will have to be rehabilitated. That’s the focus of theNorwegian prison system. They take rehabilitation very seriously, unlike the US.

So they’re gonna spend pots of money on this guy. 

Well, Norway is hardly a poor country, but is it, well…SANE?

Look, I believe in rehabilitation too. 

To a point.

But I also think that we have to be realistic. Can everyone be rehabilitated? Does it make sense for even a rich nation to spend millions of dollars over possibly half a century trying to reason with a fanatic?

And what Breivik did is still almost unfathomable, even today. How many lives did he shred, that Friday afternoon in June 2011?

How would I feel, if I were the father of one of the victims, paying my taxes year after year, and knowing some part of it was going not just to sustain but pamper the killer?

Exercise room, computer, and special visits by the pastor!

Wow! 

I wonder as well about vengeance. Not a pretty word, maybe not a pretty concept. We talk about justice and feel good about it. But the shadow is vengeance.

You have torn my life apart. Now you will suffer.

No. I think about a person I once hated, and the rot and rage it did…

…to me.

But I don’t think, as well, that this is justice—spending millions on the very dim chance that a fanatic can be rehabilitated.

I think that the guy should be put to work.

Look, presumably all the victims’ families are working, right? They’re all getting up every Monday morning, putting on the work clothes, putting on the smile they don’t feel.

Why should Breivik be different?

He’s clearly a guy with energy. Writing a 200 page memoir exhausted me—his screed was 1500 pages. Oh, and by the way, he apparently is going to use his free time to add MORE!

OK—remember that dictum: don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions!

(Ahh, how I miss the corporate world!)

Here’s what I’d do. First, isolate him. He’s toxic and cannot be exposed to others. Second, find the thing that he can do that will be most valuable economically to society. If it’s folding laundry, let him fold laundry. If it’s designing computer software, let him do that. Monday through Friday, nine to five.

Oh, and after dinner? He goes for two hours into a small room, is put in a chair in front of a screen, and watches—night after night, decade after decade—the videotaped stories of the victims’ families, talking about their lost children, their ruined marriages, their nightmares, their alcoholism, their loss.

Night after night, decade after decade.

That, I think, is justice.

Ooooops

OK—first a word of reassurance to the international audience of this blog, who must be anxiously waiting at their computer screens for word from the battered blogger.

Survived the storm!

What I didn’t do was, well…

…detect the storm.

It did rain hard for five minutes at about 4:30 PM yesterday. So I closed the window. And then? 

Well, Raf came home, we ate, it was warmish, we went to bed. Expecting to get up when the bashing began.

Slept through the night!

Storm apparently weakened and dropped south. Instead of 58 miles south of Ponce, it’s a couple hundred miles.

“Totally exaggerated,” claims a critic of the governor, speaking of the 96 million dollars per day lost in productivity by closing down the island these last two days.

Gentle Readers, welcome to the Caribbean, where even a storm can be politicized!

Let’s be fair. No one can predict these things. The waters of the Caribbean are hot—a perfect source of fuel for a hurricane. The National Hurricane Center was predicting intensification. It’s not the wind, it’s the water that kills. Forty-five percent of Puerto Ricans live in flood zones.

And it’s not over yet. The tail of a storm can do bad damage, and this is a wet storm.

But it’s cool and overcast today. The banana kwit is chirping across the street. Elvin, the guy from La Perla, is continuing his work next door. And I?

Comparing and contrasting—as they made me do those many years ago in high school.

The sober Norse have constructed a special psychiatric cell for the mas murderer, just in the event he gets declared insane tomorrow. Yup, cost a cool million bucks, but that’s not unusual. The cost of keeping highly weird guys away from society in Norway is routinely over a million dollars a year.

Has to be done, because they have rights!

Yeah?

It’s a little hard for me to get my head around this. I don’t think he should be put on the wrack and tortured—though I’m also not the father of any one of the victims. Might think differently if I were.

But a million bucks? When my cousin’s husband had to wait over a month in agonizing pain for a very much-needed surgery? 

Still, you have to respect the Norwegians, that good sober earnestness. Doing the right thing. Playing fair, even with a guy who very much did not. Refusing to give in to any base instinct.

Well, well, it’s all rather different in Spain! There, the nation is going crazy making jokes on a poor 80 year old lady who gave her time and talent to the church!

How can they!

Shame on them! It may be true that the results were less felicitous than hoped. Celia Giménez has asked pardon, but also points out that she wasn’t able to finish the work. And no, it’s not a masterpiece. The artist dashed it off in two hours a century ago. Here’s how it looked….

Well, and here’s the restoration!

And now, of course, the entire world is laughing at this poor dear! This lovely lady who went into the church and got right down to work! The press is dubbing the work—originally called Ecce Homo, behold the man—as Ecce Mono, behold the monkey.

That’s just not right!

All right, drop the ironic tone. Admit it, come clean. 

I couldn’t stop laughing. The storm brings many things—salchichas, beer, anxiety. No, I didn’t go as crazy as before. But the general hysteria works its way into you. And when it’s released?

I get punchy.  

Well, Jack wouldn’t think Ecce mono was funny at all. He’d have some sympathy for that good Spanish lady that all the world is laughing at. He’d run to her defense!

He was a better man than I.

I can’t stop laughing….

Stormy Weather

Well, well, we’re in full storm silliness.

A tropical storm, expected to become a category 1 hurricane, is going to pass 58 miles to the south of Ponce, the second largest city on the island, at 2 AM tomorrow. 

First question. Where did this number—58 miles—come from? How does anyone know? How can anyone predict?

Second question. What to do? Well, in the past I went crazy. Or rather, I joined the craziness. Even as I write, there is a run on gas stations. People are lining up—or rather their cars are. Fights are erupting. The social networks are going crazy. The Aguadilla Shell station has run out of gas!

Walmart, of course, will have activated its emergency plan. The buyers will be frantically calling suppliers, who are supposed to have sufficient supplies of crucial items.

Salchichas!

That’s little chicken sausages to you. Yup, they’re utterly necessary in an emergency. People consume ‘em like crazy. And yes, people fight for them in the stores.

It’s not pretty. Two little old ladies whom you’ve seen and chatted with over the past year? Those sweet dears who call you m’ijo and wear little pins of pope Benedict?

They’re attacking each other with their canes!

No, I’m not exaggerating.

Well, those chicken sausages are important. But guess what really gets the crowd boiling?

Ice!

After Hurricane Georges, there were numerous reports of armed robbery. No, not for money. For ice….

The governor, stung badly by the defeat of his referenda, is milking the situation. As I write, the sun is shining brightly, a gentle wind is blowing, the banana kwit (called the reinita, or little queen) is flirting with the cat. It hops on the branches of the dead bougainvillea just out of reach of Loquito, and skips away when he lunges.

In short, all is normal.

The government, however, has completely shut down.

Ah, one thinks, how can they tell?

(A nod to Dorothy Parker on Coolidge!)

We are urged to take all possible precautions to safeguard life and property. The refugios are being set up.

Well, the little old ladies are fighting over those salchichas, but the guys?

They’re going for the beer!   

And me?

Well, I took my morning trot as always, and decided no. I’m not doing this storm. Rather, I’ve done it. I’ve weathered more in the last two years than I had for decades of my life previously.

And in March of this year, I weathered the hardest storm—harder than Franny, harder than Walmart. 

I took on myself.

Touch and go, there. For a week, I battled all the fear, all the insecurity, and the accumulated self-defeat and doubt. Was I any good? Could I write? Was I worth it?

“Bach when I need clarity, Beethoven when I need courage,” wrote Susan, or some such words. So each morning I walked to the beach listening to the Goldberg Variations. And then, after a week of turmoil, I walked by the walls of the old city to the mouth of the harbor, and confronted the open sea. 

And heard the music you’ll hear below.

And said, finally, goodbye to Franny.

Who’s gone, and who isn’t.

I was crying, I was shaking, I was wracked with gratitude for a woman who had given me life. And I was amazed that she had placed her own life in my hands, and entrusted me with her death.

She had all the nobility of all her dogs and cats for whom she had done them same.

“You can go now,” I said. “I’m OK now.”

And I was.

I came home, turned on the computer, wrote a post. Cleaned the house, did some wash, played some Sudoku.

Six o’clock, slam of the gate, steps on the hall. Raf!

“How was your day,” he asked.

“Great!”

And it was…. 

Despair, Impatience and Sin

 Susan strikes again, with words as keenly chiseled as a reredos:

-->

Religion is the greatest obstacle to living a godly life. Like all human institutions, religions are corrupted to suit human purposes, which are overwhelmingly about power and money, and subject to the fears and superstitions of the ignorant. So what's a person who loves God, his/her fellow creatures and the planet to do? Julian of Norwich recognizes only two sins: impatience and despair. Those are the two tough ones. I'm impatient for human beings to get our act together, and I despair that we ever will. One small ray of hope: things like war and the death penalty are at least controversial now, and we don't pack up the family and a picnic to view public hangings as a form of entertainment.

-->

Well, yes. Despair and impatience come all to easily to me as well. And yesterday, as I wondered about “legitimate” rape, it was all the more difficult to keep from sin.

OK—let’s try to be fair.  I’m sure—I’m at least trying to be sure—that Akin meant something other than there is “legitimate” rape. He probably meant what used to be called forcible rape. A maiden is sleeping virtuously in her bedroom at night, her flannel nightgown covering all her nasty bits. An intruder jimmies the window, steals into her bedroom, and puts the gun to her temple. Her pupils constrict in terror.

That sort of stuff.

This is in contrast to the “other” kind of rape. A woman goes to a bar by herself. She’s wearing her best clothes, looking good. She meets a guy, he buys her a drink, they talk. She flirts. At some point, in the car going to his apartment, or in the apartment itself, it turns nasty. She says no, he overpowers her.

What happened?

Rape.

But to all too many people, there’s still that voice—“she lured him on”—in the back of their heads.

However, the representative seems to have gone further. Apparently, he really believes that in cases of “forcible” rape the woman’s body will reject the spermatozoa, and she will not get pregnant.

I tried, Susan, I really tried to give this argument the benefit of the doubt. It’s said that more male children are born in times of war than peace. Is it true? Well, I looked it up and, yes, it appears so. I also remembered a story I read in my Walmart days of women being more receptive to a stranger’s sperm than to her regular partner’s. Therefore accounting for more pregnancies as a result of a casual fling than in a monogamous relationship.

Too tired to look that up….

Or rather, I realized that it wasn’t the point. My belief? The senator doesn’t want anyone to have an abortion. Period. As a result of rape, as a result of poverty, as a result of a life- threatening condition—zip. NO ABORTIONS!

OK—but why twist science to justify it?

Oh, and by the way, the representative is on the House Committee of Science, Spaceand Technology.

Does this inspire confidence?

And then I began to wonder about how men have justified rape in the past. One of the myths common in my childhood was that no woman could be penetrated against her will. The idea was that the vaginal opening was a sphincter, which would automatically snap closed if needed. So any penetration meant implicit consent.

And then I remembered the book that changed it all—Against Our Will. Yup, Susan Brownmiller. Anybody remember her?

What she said was quite simple. Rape is an act of aggression. No is no. There’s no difference between the maiden sleeping in her bed and the girl out for a good time in a bar.

She went further. Here—as always!—is WikiPedia:

Brownmiller argues that rape had been hitherto defined by men rather than women, and that men use, and all men benefit from the use of, rape as a means of perpetuating male dominance by keeping all women in a state of fear.

Wow! When I read that in 1975 it set my head spinning. Me, a gay guy benefiting from rape?

“Of course you’re racist—you’re living—we’re all living—in a racist society,” said a black lover of mine, when I asked him if he thought I was racist. And Brownmiller, I suspect, would argue much the same. At the age of 55, a perfect Kinsey 7—I’m a pretty safe guy for a woman to be around. But the fear of rape changes every woman’s life, and mine as well.

Right—so they were strong words to hear. I read Against Our Will several times and eventually understood it and agreed with it. And after the initial shock, I no longer reacted defensively to the notion that all men benefit from the use of rape.

And now, I yearn for the earnest directness of the late sixties, seventies. Brownmiller came slugging out with her book, knocked us out of the water, changed the dialogue, maybe changed our beliefs. 

And now we have this little weasel trying to pull us back into the rap again.

So no, Susan and Julian of Norwich, I shall not sin. I’ll just say what should be said of all bad thinking and dishonest motivation.

Ne fas!

When less is more

I wrote yesterday that there are, in fact, things in Puerto Rico that we do very well. Friendships, for example.

And also…

…elections.

OK, one or two caveats. First, politics is the national sport of Puerto Rico. Why? Well, about a third of the population works for the government. According to the governor, the current size of the government is 120,000 people. Walmart, Puerto Rico’s largest employer, has 14,000 employees. So who wins an election means rice and beans—or calling in on your friends at 6PM every day.

Second caveat. Convicts vote.


Yup, here’s a photo!

OK, that’s screwy to me. But there’s one thing I’m sure of. The referendum we had yesterday? The one to limit bail for certain crimes and reduce the size of our legislature?

Both lost soundly. And nobody doubts it. That fact alone is amazing.

“Of course the Republicans stole the recall election of Scott Walker,” said my friend Gary.

And he may be right. I googled the issue. And discovered that the makers of the newest, high-tech voting machines? The three largest are owned by rabid Republicans. Worse, the technology is so high tech that it’s virtually impossible to understand the whole process without spending days doing so.

But with just a few exceptions, elections in Puerto Rico are immaculate.

Why?

We do low tech.

Here’s the process. Every voter must have a voting card, issued by the State Elections Commission. Election day is a holiday—a paid day off. The governor puts the dry law into effect. Your only activity for the day is to vote.

You go to the polls, and present your card. There are representatives of the three largest political parties on the island. The person holding your card verifies that your name is on the rolls. He or she announces your name, and the page number. You sign next to your name. You’re given a paper ballot and a pen. You go into a flimsy cardboard affair resembling an empty refrigerator box and mark your vote. Exit, and cast your vote in a cardboard urn.

Before doing all this, somebody has examined your hands for ultraviolet ink. Because after voting, you put your right index finger into the ink.

After the polls close, all three members of the different parties are put into a locked room. They each examine the ballots, determine the vote, sign off on the results.

It’s possible, I suppose, to cheat. But it’s pretty hard to imagine how. And nobody, today, has questioned the results. The governor, who very much sponsored the referendum, admitted defeat. The press hasn’t breathed a word of doubt. And on an island where conspiracy theory and cynicism abound, everybody agrees. It was a clean as it could be.

So why can’t it be done in the States?

Canada does it—here’s WikiPedia:

All votes are made on the same standard heavy paper ballot which is inserted in a cardboard box, furnished by Elections Canada. The ballot and the box are devised to ensure that no one except the elector knows the individual choice that was made. Counting the ballots is done by hand in full view of the representatives of each candidate. There are no mechanical, electrical or electronic systems involved in this process.

It can’t be, can it, that some people don’t want a clean election?