Grant Wood Doesn't Live There Anymore

Guys, guys—you’re making it too easy today!

Usually I have to scrounge to find the issue on which to build up, enjoy thoroughly, and vent explosively the moral outrage that—growing up Norwegian-American in the Midwest—I seem to need so much. Today it just hopped out at me.

I bring you—ta-DAH!—the case of one Brent Girouex, a 31-year old ex-pastor of the Victory Fellowship Church, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Take a look:

“OK,” I can hear you saying, “what has he done?”

Oddly, it isn’t what he’s done that so annoys me. Although that was bad enough—Girouex turned himself in on February 16, 2011, and confessed to having had sex with four teenage boys. Later, eight additional boys would come forward with similar stories.

And what prompted the sex? Simple lechery?

It was more twisted than that. Girouex would tell his victim that they would both pray while Girouex entered him, and that through ejaculation, “the gay would be driven away.”

Nor was this an isolated event—Girouex confessed to having had sex 25-50 times—why do I think the 50 is closer to the mark?—with one of his victims, who was, by the way, 14 at the time of the first encounter / attack.

Here’s a description from one source:

Apparently, Girouex thought he could rape away the gay by “praying while he had sexual contact” with his victims in an effort to keep them “sexually pure” for God.

He then allegedly told police that “when they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind.”

For all of this heinous behavior, Girouex was charged with 61 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor by a counselor and 28 counts of third-degree rape. And since he had confessed, he was convicted, and given a 17-year sentence.

Enter the second—and possibly more vicious—villain, Judge Greg Steensland. Because Steensland presided over the trial, saw the prisoner at the bar, looked at and heard the testimony of the victims, and then “suspended the prison sentence and replaced it with 5 years of probation (the maximum allowed under the law) as well as a requirement for Girouex to participate in sex offender rehabilitation treatment.”

89 counts of rape and sexual exploitation and he gets 5 years of probation? This was, mind you, in March of 2012. What else happened in 2012?

Well, the nation went off on November 6, 2012, to return Barack Obama to the presidency, as well as to take care of state and local matters. And so Greg Steensland was up for reelection. And was he roundly defeated? Nope, he was reelected, by 66.34% of the vote.

So 2 out of 3 voters in the fourth district of Iowa think it’s OK to have a judge sitting on the bench give out a 5-year suspended sentence for 89 counts of rape? Who was the guy running against him—Genghis Khan? Hannibal Lecter? How could this guy get elected?

And here I will put my regional chauvinism fully bared for public view. Look, guys—we all know the tired joke about the Tennessee virgin. (Right, you’ve been orbiting earth in a space shuttle for the last twenty years, OK…. Question: what’s the definition of a Tennessee virgin? Answer: any girl who can run faster than her uncles….) I might expect this from Tuscaloosa, Alabama…. But Iowa?

Well, some people must have snorted around, but it wasn’t enough. The judge got reelected, and is now still on the bench. But here’s Judgepedia again:

This case gained a second round of national attention in September 2013, following outrage over Montana judge G. Todd Baugh's sentence of a high school teacher who raped a student. Judge Baugh also suspended the defendant's prison sentence in that case--requiring him to serve 30 days in prison. Many have expressed disappointment with both the Montana and Iowa rulings, arguing that the judges were too easy on the criminals.

No remarks from Judge Steensland were found. 

No remarks were found?

Geee…I wonder why?

Our Kids on the Street

As I write this, there are four children playing in the Poetry Space of the gift shop next door. And guess what? The kids are loud, so periodically one of the parents has to come and give a directive—quiet down! That works for ten minutes, and then the crescendo begins. At some point, the other parent can abide it no longer, and will come down and reapply the directive. I, of course, am currently not attempting to squelch the noise, since these are not my kids. But I am observing the different parenting styles, and trying to assess the efficacy of each. My conclusion—both are pretty much as effective, which is to say…not very.

These kids are lucky—their parents are loving, concerned, educated. And there’s something else as well: these parents have known a lot of gay people, and if any of these kids is gay, the parent will barely blink an eye.

Now then—time for some facts:

One in every four LGBT kids who comes out to his or her parents ends up on the streets, either because she or he was kicked out, or because the child decided to leave.

The average age for kids to come out, nowadays, is fourteen. In the seventies, most people came out much later, when they were in college and relatively more stable.

Lastly, here is a paragraph from the Human Rights Campaign:

Youth homelessness in the United States is a national crisis in urban, suburban, and rural communities affecting nearly 2.8 million youth between the ages of 12 and 24. Furthermore, consistent research finds that gay and transgender youth are over-represented among homeless youth, comprising anywhere between 20 and 39 percent of the total homeless youth population even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall youth population.

OK—my toy computer doesn’t have the calculator that my Mac does, but my feeble math skills suggest that we may have one million gay and lesbian kids on the streets. And while marriage equality and anti-bullying efforts are important—isn’t doing something for these kids important, too?

What are the problems? Well, the first is what to do with kids who are on the streets—are there beds in the shelters for them?

Answer—no. According to the clip below, called “A Day in our Shoes,” there are 3,800 homeless youth in New York alone, and 1,500 of them are LGBT. And how many beds are there for them? Two hundred.

Shelter is just one issue. A kid on the street is at major risk for drug and alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, prostitution, and being the victim of violent crime. That kid you see sleeping after “school” on the subway? That’s the only safe—relatively—place for him to sleep. He’ll be up at five minute intervals all night, checking to make sure he’s all right.

It may be there are treatment programs which will help a kid achieve the daunting task of being an adult: paying bills on time, going to the dentist, convincing the bank to let you open a checking account even though your only ID is a high school identification card. But even those programs “age kids out,” as one of the directors in the clip “Kicked Out” put it. So at age 21 you’re supposed to be on your own—but what happens when you fall at the disco and need to go to the hospital? Ask any parent—it doesn’t stop at age 21.

Which is why Caitlin Ryan’s work at the Family Acceptance Project is so exciting. She starts with a simple premise—virtually no parent wants his or her kid on the street. No matter how terrible the parent is, or how badly drunk or addicted he or she is—no parent wants that for their kid. So the trick is to find a way to get parents to accept their gay kids.

It makes intuitive sense—families do change. Mine did, and Raf’s as well. And as you can see in the second clip below—even very macho, Hispanic families can change. And as the clip on the Family Acceptance Project website shows—the Mormons can change as well. Perhaps especially so, since the family is of huge importance in the Mormon church.

Ryan has reached out to John Kerry, who in 2011 introduced the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act. Here’s what the Human Rights Commission has to say about it:

The Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services establish a demonstration project to develop programs that are focused on improving family relationships and reducing homelessness for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. These programs must include research-based behavioral interventions designed to decrease rejecting behaviors and increase supportive behaviors in families with LGBT youth and research-based assessment tools to help identify LGBT youth at risk for family conflict or ejection from their homes. Additionally, the Secretary must provide educational tools and resources to help families identify behaviors that put LGBT youth at risk as well as provide multimedia educational tools and resources that are focused on helping a diverse range of families understand how their behavior affects LGBT youth.

And now a confession—I know that this legislation was not approved in 2011, and I think it has been reintroduced, though as of June of this year it hadn’t been. But after Googling frantically for 15 minutes, I can’t find who reintroduced it or when.

Normally, this would upset me, but nowadays I have more perspective. Not being able to chase down a reference is annoying. Being fifteen, gay, and on the streets?

That’s major!

Opening Night Gets Heated

It was, apparently, a noisy night at the opera.

I pondered in this blog several weeks ago whether I should sign an online petition asking the Metropolitan Opera House to dedicate its opening night—a more-champagne-than-beer night out—to the cause of LGBT rights.

There were good reasons to sign the petition. First of all, Anna Netrebko, the Russian-Austrian soprano at the top of the field, and Valery Gergiev, the Russian conductor, were singing and conducting. And both, to some degree, were supporters or perhaps friends with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who signed into law draconian laws against even speaking about homosexuality. More to the point, neither artist had condemned these laws. Oh, and the opera to be performed on opening night? Eugene Onegin, by that most lavender composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

There were good reasons not to sign the petition. First of all, it was mere coincidence that the two Russian artists were appearing in a gay Russian composer’s opera that opening night; the Met was hardly endorsing or even acquiescing to homophobia. Second, the opening was in New York, not in Moscow—the Russians weren’t making any money off this one. Third, the Met has never endorsed any cause in its 130 year-plus history. And, look guys, we’re not the only game in town. In the last 130 years, there have been a LOT of atrocities. The Met could have devoted every performance to a different cause, and still not be done with them….

So I didn’t sign, but 9,000 others—including Mr. Fernández—did. And yesterday evening, the opening night took place. And was Netrebko in good voice? Did Gergiev conduct with a toothpick, as he has been known to do? How was the staging, or the lighting?

Well, readers of The New York Times this morning won’t be able to tell you. What they will find is the story with the headline: Gay Rights Protest Greets Opening Night. Here’s the Times’ description of the event:

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Sister Lotti Da, passing out leaflets, was among the demonstrators in front of the Metropolitan Opera on Monday.

After the lights dimmed for the Metropolitan Opera’s Russian-themed opening night gala on Monday evening, the first solo voice that rang out in the house was not of a tenor or soprano, but of a protester criticizing the recent antigay laws signed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Putin, end your war on Russian gays!” a man shouted in the vast auditorium, which was packed for the black-tie gala opening of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” before turning to two of the evening’s Russian stars: Anna Netrebko, the popular Russian diva, and Valery Gergiev, the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. “Anna, your silence is killing Russian gays! Valery, your silence is killing Russian gays!”

Was it true? I had looked it up, and discovered that Netrebko had issued a watery statement of support—not mentioning the laws or Putin or homosexuality, but valiantly coming out and stating that she supported equality for everybody! Wow, talk about living on the rim of the volcano! Brave move, Anna!

OK, so what about Gergiev? Here, the water is murkier; in an article from March of 2009, The New York Times said: 

“I don’t know of any case in musical history, except maybe for Wagner and mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, where a musician has been that close to a powerful ruler,” Richard Morrison, the chief classical music critic of The Times of London, told me.   

And it may be that, in Russia, you have to be a politician to be a musician. Gergiev’s passion was to rebuild the Kirov—which had a fabled history—into a glittering opera house. And to do that, he needed swagger, and the nerve to say to politicians what he said to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Here’s The New York Times again:

Gergiev arrived with Irina Arkhipova, a great singer already advanced in years. Representing the Bolshoi, she had one overriding mission — to obtain financing for the Glinka competition for young singers.

Recalling the meeting, Gergiev emphasized his persuasive bluntness. “The prime minister had 15 minutes, in between Chechnya war meetings,” he recalled. “Arkhipova ate 10 minutes talking about the Glinka competition. She wanted $10,000. I saw that the next person was waiting outside the door for his meeting. It was my turn. I said, ‘Viktor Stepanovich, if you don’t give $10 million now to each theater, both will be lost.’ The most upset person was her. She thought she would lose her $10,000. I said, ‘You don’t know that the salaries are so pitiful that the only ones who can survive are those who work in the West.’ He said, ‘Where am I supposed to get $10 million?’ I said, ‘It’s the money you spend in one hour in Chechnya.’ He said: ‘It’s nothing to do with Chechnya. Why do you speak of it?’ I said: ‘The money disappears. It wasn’t you who built these opera houses. It is a glory of the nation. You should come see. And maybe first the Bolshoi — they are in even worse shape.’ He at some point shockingly realized that I was telling him directly and openly what was going on. We spent one hour extra there. The prime minister immediately gave $10 million together to the two houses. A very Russian story.

In the same interview, Gergiev says that Russia is a big country—you need a loud voice to be heard. And you need to get into bed with some unsavory characters, because an enemy in the Kremlin is far worse, and more powerful, than an enemy in Washington. In short, that $10 million for the Kirov—now called the Mariinsky—doesn’t get given to a guy who protests human rights abuse.

According to Anthony Tommasini, the Times’ music critic, it was not the best of nights at the opera—not the least because the director pulled out at the last minute, and was replaced by Fiona Shaw, who had never directed at the Met, and who anyway was directing elsewhere at the time.

Tommasini points out that street protests are one thing—protests within a theater another. Very true—if the protests had lasted long, the Met could have gone into overtime, and that, dear Reader, is something you don’t want to do. But the protesters left gracefully.

So let the Met off the hook on this one, guys. But the Sochi Olympics?

No frigging way….  

A Man of God and Catholicism Lite

Three men of God, three men speaking their views on gay people. Which strikes me as a bit odd—has anyone come around and asked Ricky Martin, say, or Anderson Cooper their views on religion? At any rate, we have the pope on record—he’s a sinner, he said, as we all are. And who is he to judge gay people? Here’s his quote, as it appeared in The New York Times:

In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are “socially wounded” because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro, I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: “Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?” We must always consider the person.

OK—it’s a step. It’s better than Benedict, who tended to couple the word “homosexuality” with the phrase “intrinsically evil,” or the like. And we all took the bait—hey, after all those years of Ratzinger, we’re yearning for a pope who gets it, who starts moving the church forward.

And he certainly seems different—living in the guest house, driving a Ford escort, eschewing the pomp that was Benedict’s lifeblood and focusing on the poor. But how liberal is this pope? Here are his views on women, from the same interview:

I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of “female machismo,” because a woman has a different makeup than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo. Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity. We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there confused about that first sentence, and the reference to “female machismo?” I think what he’s saying is something like, “insisting that men and women are equals and should be able to hold the same positions is wrong. Women and men are intrinsically different, and no, dears, no priesthood or God forbid papacy for you!”

And am I the only one who is thoroughly sick of the church’s trotting out Mary every time women raise legitimate questions or demands? Partly because as I understand it, biblically speaking, Mary isn’t an especially likeable character—nor does she seem to figure very prominently in the life of Jesus. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

There is also an incident in which Jesus is sometimes interpreted as rejecting his family. "And his mother and his brothers arrived, and standing outside, they sent in a message asking for him^[Mk 3:21] ... And looking at those who sat in a circle around him, Jesus said, 'These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.'"

But all this veneration of Mary seems to come with the message: we’re perfectly happy to put you on a pedestal, but not in the priesthood. And notice as well that the pope’s “liberal” views on homosexuality don’t go that far, he hardly comes out and says, “both gay and straight people were made in God’s image, both of their loves are of equal worth, and gay people will have the same rights and privileges as heterosexuals in the Catholic church, including marriage.”

Nonetheless, everybody is jumping on the bandwagon, including the Reverend Timothy M. Dolan, the Archbishop of New York. Here he is, courtesy of The New York Times:

After Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal Dolan, who has himself softened his language on homosexuality in the past year, likened the pope to the Yankees’ retiring relief pitcher: “I think he’s our Mariano Rivera. He’s a great relief to all of us.”

Ummmm, this is a guy who said the following to The New York Times during Holy Week this year:

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is: ‘I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God’s image and likeness. And — and we — we want your happiness. But — and you’re entitled to friendship,’” Cardinal Dolan said. “But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that — especially when it comes to sexual love — that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally.”

Yeah? This sounds suspiciously like all those people whose views are “evolving,” and can’t we say it, at last. “Evolving” simply means not sticking your neck out until it’s absolutely imperative—failure to do so will make you look like a complete hypocrite. Great—now we know that God loves us, as well as the Cardinal, but sex with a person of the same gender is a sin.

The person who gets it? Gene Robinson, who just about caused a schism in the church, when he became the first openly gay bishop. And as you’ll see in the clip below, he doesn’t mince words: we’ve done a lot of damage to gay people, and we’re gonna have to work hard to repair the damage. There’s a reason why LGBT people are suspicious and angry. He comes out and says it to a group of Presbyterians who will be giving out glasses of water at the Gay Pride march later in the day: “You are representing the community of Christians, Jews and Muslims who are 95% of the repression we LGBT people have experienced in our lives.”

Or how about, “you are the oppressor offering the cup of water to the oppressed?” Robinson doesn’t pull the punches, or—perhaps a better image—hesitate to go into the temple and lecture to the money lenders. Nor—from the faces of the stony Presbyterians—is his message better received.

And Robinson is out there, walking the talk—passing out the cups of water to drag queens, scantily-clad boys, street performers, and the just-general-folk who drift by.

For all the talk of not focusing on abortion, homosexuality, contraception—what are we hearing? A sort of Catholicism of Nice—we won’t talk about it, we won’t judge, now come into the church but please, lower your voices, don’t rock the boat, no demands.

Congratulations—the Catholic Church has progressed to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Corporate America Buys the Statehouse

Feeling just a bit overwhelmed, lately, legislatively speaking? Beleaguered? Under attack?

If it feels like you just can’t keep on top of the constantly more right-wing, not-to-say lunatic legislation—well, there’s a reason. It’s being cranked out like Oscar Mayer cranks out the wieners. And remember the old adage—there are two things you don’t wanna know what went in to: a sausage and a legislative bill?

Well, relax—you won’t know. And why not? Because for the last forty years, a shadowy triumvirate of conservative state legislators, corporations, and think tanks have been beavering away to create more than 800 pieces of legislation, all designed to be tweaked according to state tastes, introduced as legitimate legislation, and then jammed down the throats of the people.

The organization is called ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, though it started out a bit more forthrightly as the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators. And according to Wikipedia, the group has more than 2000 sitting state legislators, or nearly a third of all state legislators.

And what does ALEC espouse? Well, let’s start with the first of three concepts at the top of the group’s website.

Limited government—of course! But mind you, this is not the old Goldwater conservatism of pay-as-you-go, the business of America is business, etc. Here’s what John Nichols, who wrote an exposé on ALEC for The Nation, said on NPR:

According to Nichols, legislation authored by ALEC has as a goal, "the advancement of an agenda that seems to be dictated at almost every turn by multinational corporations. It's to clear the way for lower taxes, less regulation, a lot of protection against lawsuits, [and] ALEC is very, very active in [the] opening up of areas via privatization for corporations to make more money, particularly in places you might not usually expect like public education."^[52] 

Hmmm—is that true? Well, here’s a copy and paste from one of the 800 pieces of model education, taken from the group’s own website:

The Charter Schools Act allows groups of citizens to seek charters from the state to create and operate innovative, outcomes-based schools. These schools would be exempt from state laws and regulations that apply to public schools. Schools are funded on a per-pupil rate, the same as public schools. Currently, Minnesota operates the most well-known program.

How very convenient! So does that mean that the school is free to teach “creation science,” and not evolution? Is geology going to be taught as starting at 4000 years before the birth of Christ? Is daily attendance at chapel going to be funded on my and your dime?

As you might expect, it gets worse; here’s Wikipedia again, with another tidbit of conservative misdoing:

Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, two of the largest for-profit prison companies in the US, have been contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council. Under their Criminal Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed bills which State legislators can then consult when proposing “tough on crime” initiatives including “Truth in Sentencing” and “Three Strikes” laws. Critics argue that by funding and participating in ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Forces, private prison companies directly influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences.^[38] ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to create for-profit prisons, which served as a boon to both of the aforementioned contributors.

Say whaaaa?

You’re telling me that we have these draconian laws that have one in three black males going to prison at some point in their lives—all to support a prison industry?

Seems so, for ALEC is divided into 9 task forces, and here they are:

1. Civil Justice

2. Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development

3. Communications and Technology

4. Education

5. Energy, Environment, and Agriculture

6. Health and Human Services

7. International Relations

8. Justice Performance Project

9. Tax and Fiscal Policy

Well, that does cover quite a large tract, hunh? And all of this in secret, because you won’t know where the bills are coming from. Here’s what Arizona Assistant Minority Leader Steve Farley had to say about the group:

I just want to emphasize it’s fine for corporations to be involved in the process. Corporations have the right to present their arguments, but they don’t have the right to do it secretly. They don’t have the right to lobby people and not register as lobbyists. They don’t have the right to take people away on trips, convince them of it, send them back here, and then nobody has seen what’s gone on and how that legislator had gotten that idea and where is it coming from. All I’m asking... is to make sure that all of those expenses are reported as if they are lobbying expenses and all those gifts that legislators received are reported as if they’re receiving gifts from lobbyists. So the public can find out and make up their own minds about who is influencing what.

Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Well, not according to J. B. Van Hollen, the Wisconsin State Attorney General. He has just declared Leah Vukmir, a state legislator from Wauwatosa, has immunity from turning over her record in the state’s open record standards. And why? Because when in session, the legislators have “immunity” from lawsuits requesting them to turn over records. The problem? The legislature is almost always in session.

"I think the attorney general's position is a radical misinterpretation of that (provisions that are supposed to outline a narrow measure of legislative immunity),” Susan Crawford, a Madison attorney who served as an assistant attorney general and as chief counsel to former Gov. Jim Doyle, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I've never heard a legislator asserting they're above the law, which is what (Vukmir’s) doing. You have to wonder what she's trying to hide."

Do you have to wonder what she’s trying to hide? Probably, if you want the details. But let me spell out to you the general idea:

Frustrated at the national level, corporations have overtaken the state legislatures and are secretly writing legislation that will make them richer, stifle regulation, and ruin the environment at the expense of the American people.

It’s as simple as it is cynical…..

All the Little Ayudits

A friend once told me a story about a factory owner in the 1950’s. He noticed that workers tended to drift away and call in sick on Fridays. What was wrong? Was it the pay? After all, it was nothing by stateside standards. So he raised the pay, and guess what? The workers began calling in on Wednesdays and Thursdays. What was happening? The owner consulted a local…

…who told him the obvious. The workers worked just enough to pay the rent, buy the rice and beans, as well as a bottle of rum or two. And so when they earned enough for these simple needs, they stopped working and enjoyed themselves. The solution was not to raise but to lower salaries.

OK—I tell you this story because I have just pondered this sentence from The New York Times:

Currently, states can extend food stamp benefits past three months for able-bodied people who are working or preparing for work as part of a job-training program.

Yeah? Then how is it that there are 1.3 million beneficiaries of the tarjeta de la familia—our local electronic version of food stamps—in Puerto Rico? Oh, and our population is 3.7 million people, so that means that roughly one in three Puerto Ricans is getting food stamps.

“Eighty percent of our revenue is generated by EBT sales,” said a student, when I was working at Wal-Mart. To me, that seemed wildly off the mark, but he swore it was true. Then I began to think about it, and realized two things—first, there were a lot of people using the card. And second, since the card only gets charged—or whatever it is—once a month, people tended to make one large purchase once a month. They didn’t go weekly. So all of a sudden, the 80% figure seemed reasonable.

That said, how can 1.3 million people be “able-bodied who are working or preparing for work as part of a job-training program? Especially since the size of our work force is under one million?

It’s one of many mysteries about the program. How is it possible, by the way, that there were only 84 cases of unauthorized use of the cards in all of 2012? Out of 1.3 million recipients? And what about this interesting headline?

En Puerto Rico se bebe ron con la tarjeta de la familia

Here, the passive voice greatly aids in dispersing responsibility: “In Puerto Rico, rum is drunk with the family card.”

And here’s the photo:

 Oh, and what’s the story with all these students running around with the family card? Well, I bring you this from a blog called Pide, que hay, which could be translated “ask for it—there IS,” or perhaps more idiomatically, “grab what you can.” 

¿Sabías que, como estudiante, puedes pedir cupones? Pues sí. Cualquier persona de bajo ingreso, desempleada, o estudiante a tiempo completo puede solicitar el Programa de Asistencia Nutricional (PAN). Si eres estudiante, lo más importante es no decir que dependes de tus padres, porque mientras puedan lograr que tus padres te mantengan no te darán ayudas.

(NOTE: grammar and orthography were corrected….)

What’s the trick? You have to say that you are not living with or depending on your family. Oh, and in the next paragraph, the blogger goes on to say that the process can get a little tricky, depending on what person takes your case. Chillingly, the blog post ends with the sentence:

Recuerda, es tu derecho solicitar todas las ayudas posible.

(Translation: “Remember, it’s your right to apply for all the benefits possible.”)

OK—got that mystery cleared up. But how can it be that people are buying cigarettes and alcohol with food stamps? Because 75% of the amount in the card must be spent electronically—the other 25% can be exchanged for cash. And in many cases, the recipient doesn’t even bother to go next door to buy some beer. Why? Because it’s a Mom and Pop, and everybody knows each other, so what’s the problem? Besides, it gets hot down here in the afternoon—everybody needs a cold beer or two!

Oh, and pizza, which until recently you could buy with the family card, since in 2011 the legislature decided that the card could be used at fast food restaurants! However, wiser minds prevailed, and in April of this year, that provision got quashed.

The Feds put their foot down….

When the Jungle Gets Taken Away

OK, somebody figured it out just as I had. And did it better, went further, and is—according to him—getting great results.

Stephen Ilardi, a clinical psychologist at the University of Kansas, has a thesis: as a species, we’ve lived over 99% of our existence as hunter-gatherers, and our body is designed for that experience. But what’s happened? Well, several millennia ago, we started agriculture. And then eight generations ago, we all cooked up the Industrial Revolution—and that’s completely screwed us up. Why? Because our DNA, and thus our bodies, hasn’t had time to adapt to the change—we’re still in the jungle, ready to fight or flee at the sound of a twig snap. What do we get instead? The morning traffic jam, the eight hours of computer screen, and fast food on the way home from it all.

I knew even at the time that the life I was living was unsustainable. In my brief sojourn into corporate America—hey, I’ll try anything once!—I could see what it was doing to me, and my coworkers. I would arrive at 6:30 in the morning, caffeinated but unfed. I would scrounge for food, and then go down to see my students, who would tell me they were “stressed.”

This struck me as curious, since all of the physical signs of stress—flushing, narrow eyes, hyperventilation, etc.—were absent. In fact, my students more closely resembled zombies that an animal about to fight.

But, in fact, the students were right—they were so stressed that they could no longer respond to the adrenalin that was coursing through them. Just getting the kids up, fed, washed and dressed, and dropping them off at school had been enough stress for the week. And so they had shut down.

I took fifteen minutes for lunch, which was often “food” from the vending machines. I worked until 4:30, when the decision had to be made: sneak out “early” or wait for 5PM? It wasn’t quite stated, but the official times for management were 7:30 to 5:30. I had done my nine hours plus given up my hour for lunch, virtually, but still it felt, somehow, like cheating.

That I was thinking this way—that working almost ten hours a day wasn’t enough—is to tell you how sick I had become. I discovered, after a year or two this, that I couldn’t see movies on Saturdays: I was still too wrought up from the week; I was emotionally a train wreck. I forced myself to get off the bus a mile before home, and walk by the side of the ocean. But many times I couldn’t—I was too tired.

And so, when the ax fell, I was already exhausted. But there was a twist—as toxic as the environment had been, there had been one huge benefit: I was deeply loved by many people. People who surrounded me, people I saw constantly. And then, the Monday after the lay off, I was alone in my apartment.

I knew what I was going to do, and I did it, hard as it felt.

I went to the beach. I listened to Bach on the way, Beethoven on the way home. I smiled and said hello to every stranger I met. I did it because I knew—if I sat down on the couch, I would never get up.

I had read—guys who lose their jobs gather in coffee shops, because they’ve gotta see somebody. My coffee shop is a block and a half away.

Without knowing that I was doing it, I essentially adopted Ilardi’s six-step treatment program:

1. Exercise
2. Sleep
3. Omega-3 rich diet
4. Social connections
5. Sunlight
6. Meaningful work

Yesterday, I had done two posts, I had fixed the leaky faucet, and I had played a Bach suite. Right—time to trot to the beach, which I did. And noted, as I was floating in the water, a group of people in bad new clothes who were clustering around a woman wearing Khaki pants and a navy blue polo. A photographer, obviously professional, was setting up his equipment.

It hit me—it was a group of Wal-Mart associates from the stores; Wal-Mart has the habit of picking associates to “model” their clothes for the shoppers. Ostensibly, it’s to give employees a boost in morale; cynics suggest that Sam Walton was too cheap to pay for models.

And so they had been corralled and taken to the beach, and were staring glumly out at me. I, of course, was considering the rich irony of it. They had jobs but couldn’t frolic in the water—no, their job was the beach, or at least to stand and look attractive by it. And I? No job, no problem.

I wrote recently that after two days of not taking a medicine for depression / anxiety, I was a quivering wreck. So why, since I am essentially following Ilard’s treatment plan, am I not “cured?”

Well, I read the answer to that several years ago. Chronic depression, or depression that has gone untreated too long, produces hippocampal volume loss—a fancy way to say that the brain has been permanently scarred.

Or has it? All of the work in neurology nowadays is suggesting that the brain is remarkably plastic—things that we thought were hardwired and unchangeable can be rewired and changed. So it may be that, after 30 years of healthy living have balanced 30 years of unhealthy living, I can cautiously attempt to get off antidepressants.

I was lucky—the medicines worked for me, and on the first try. And I have no deep-seated dislike of medicines, and no burning wish to get off the drugs. What I do have, fiercely, is one simple, overriding wish…

…never to be depressed again.

With Love from Mother Russia

OK, guys—time to exercise that dialing finger.

On June 30 of this year, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill prohibiting the distribution of “propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientation.” What does that mean?

Welcome to Russia, where laws are made vague for a reason—to allow for selective enforcement and blackmail. But if that weren’t enough, there’s something else going down in Mother Russia.

Gay people are getting the shit beaten out of them.

Or perhaps a video may be more persuasive. But be warned—from the first seconds this clip is scary.

OK—disgusting and awful. But that’s in Russia, why should I get involved?

Well, a whole bunch of companies are sponsoring the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and guess what? The largest of these companies have departments that do nothing but burnish the company’s reputation. So that means that people get paid to read newspapers and keep abreast of what’s going on in the world. Which means that these companies have known about the draconian Russian laws and they have made a simple, though brutal decision: fuck gay people, let’s make money.

And what are the largest corporate sponsors? Here they are, with contact numbers provided:

P&G Contact Number:

Monday-Friday, 9 am - 4 pm ET:

(800) 742-6253, or (513) 983-3034 (outside the U.S. and Canada)

24 hours a day:

(800) 764-7483

Coca-Cola Contact Number:

1.800.GET.COKE

(800.438.2653)

Panasonic Contact Number:

1-800-211-PANA (7262)

Hours:

Mon-Fri 9:00 AM - 9:00 PM EST

Sat-Sun 10:00 AM - 7:00 PM EST

Samsung Contact Number:

1 (800) 726-7864

VISA Contact Number:

1-800-522-VISA

Here are Coca-Cola’s main products: Coke, Sprite, Minutemaid products, Bacardi mixers, Dasani water and Evian water. For the company’s website page of complete products, click here.

P&G? Wow, it’s almost easier to list what’s not their product. But here goes: Oral B, Crest, Gillette, Nice ‘n Easy, Clairol, Mach 3, Olay, Scope, Vidal Sassoon, Tampax, Joy, Pampers, Swiffer, Downy, Comet, Tide, Mr. Clean, Bounty, Febreze, Metamucil, Pepto-Bismal, Bounce, Vicks, Charmin, and Cheer.  For the company’s website page of complete products, click here.

Samsung is easy—all of their products are branded Samsung, including the Galaxy.

Panasonic, besides electronics, sells personal care products like shavers and blood pressure monitors.

And Visa? Well, maybe it’s time to switch to MasterCard.

Get dialing, guys…. 

OK—Flunked That Test….

Yeah?

That seems to be my reaction to everything, today, since the news, guys, is anything but great. True—no category five hurricanes are barreling down on us, and the murder rate is actually down in the little town of Loíza, traditionally a very hot-in-every-sense place. Internationally, the news from Syria is good. Oh, and in Florida, this hovel got sold….

Yes, I bring you this in the spirit of compare and contrast, which was dear to the hearts of all of my high school teachers. So here it is:

1. Compare and contrast the lives of the 1% versus the 99%

(‘Shit, I hate these questions—hey, can I use the Internet? There’s gotta be something there….)

To start, the top 1% in terms of wealth own one third of the net worth of the United States. And that’s why, dear Reader, somebody was able to shell out 41.1 million greenbacks to live in the current mansion of the former Gianni Versace in Miami.

In the meantime, we have this:

Meet Deirdre Cunningham, who, according to today’s The New York Times, is working two jobs and living in a homeless shelter. Nor is that unusual—apparently over 20% of people in New York’s homeless population—estimated at 50,000—are working. An apartment costs at least 1,000 bucks in New York, and Cunningham doesn’t have a good credit rating: she was evicted.

Consider this curious sentence, from the Times:

The average monthly cost for the government to shelter a family is more than $3,000; the cost for a single person is more than $2,300.

Ummm—is anybody seeing what I’m seeing? Such as if there are apartments for $1,000, why aren’t we renting them and putting homeless people in them and saving 1,300 or 2,000 bucks monthly?

This idea, apparently, would be anathema to New York’s mayor Michael R. Bloomberg—who if he’s not part of the 1%, by the way, we’re really fucked—since he feels that the homeless like to be homeless and like to live in shelters. Or something like that—that’s how I interpret this sentence from the Times:

To make the shelter system less inviting, the city also stopped giving homeless families priority for public housing, and made it harder for those who left the system to return.

Pretty clear, hunh? A few details from Cunningham’s life:

1. she gets four hours of sleep from 7AM to 11AM
2. She can’t keep sharp objects of razor blades with her
3. She has to take her laundry to a laundromat, since the washing machines at the shelter are either broken or being used
4. Oh—there’s a curfew, so even if she had the money to go out, she couldn’t

I’ll come clean—that wasn’t all Deidre: it was a composite of three women mentioned in the article.

But there is something perversely wrong about American culture today. Do we really think anybody would want to live in a shelter? Listen to another sentence:

But in an interview, Ms. Gibbs reiterated the Bloomberg administration’s long-held position that more benefits only attract more people to shelters. “That drives more demand,” she said. “It’s a Catch-22.”

Guys—we’re talking about people here, not widgets. People whose alternative is the streets at 3AM. People who have daughters—Deirdre’s is eight, and wants to take ballet.

I remember when my family went to New York, for my brother’s wedding. We saw a man pawing through the trash can.

“What’s he doing,” asked my father.

“Looking for food,” said Jeanne.

“In AMERICA?” cried my father.

What have we become?

Before and After Life

“I know that my mother and grandmother are with me,” said Ilia, my mother-in-law. “And once, when I was in deep pain, I felt a hand caressing my shoulder and I was so relieved….”

Well, Ilia should know a thing or two about all this—seven-and-a-half years ago, she went into respiratory arrest, sailed up to the Pearly Gates, and then told St. Peter she’d had a change of mind. She’s been unstoppable ever since.

So that might explain why I chose to listen to 14 minutes of Deepak Chopra talk about his book, Life After Death. And in the process, Chopra threw in the fact that there are 250 cases of children remembering previous lives that have been studied by the University of Virginia.

Well, that seemed a thing to look into, on a Tuesday morning. And is it true?

Well, it’s certainly true that in 1967, the University of Virginia created the Division of Perceptual Studies, under the direction of a Canadian psychiatrist, Ian Stevenson. Stevenson’s mother had been interested in the paranormal, and Stevenson had read widely in the field.

In the mid-60’s, Stevenson got a grant to go to India to interview a child who claimed to remember a past life. He came back, instead, with 25 cases.

What did he claim? Well, very often the child could remember quite specific details from a previous life, and often the details could be corroborated. In one case, a child remembered selling incense in a previous life, before he had been hit by a truck. And the incense he described wasn’t available in the village he currently lived in, but had been sold in the village he claimed to have lived in.

Children may make various other statements, claims Stevenson, such as:

• You’re not my real mommy / daddy
• I had another mommy before I was in my mommy’s tummy
• When I was big, I used to….

Children usually began talking about their past lives just as they were learning to speak—between two and four. And in that period, they displayed talents that they couldn’t have had: speaking a foreign language, or playing an instrument. At age 7 or so, they usually forgot their past life.

Nor was Stevenson going to leave it there—he claimed that children very often had the likes and dislikes of their previous lives. And going further, that children were born with birthmarks and scars in the same place as the trauma which had killed them in their past life. Oh—and speaking of which, Stevenson reported that 61% of the children remembering past lives had met with violent ends, or with an early or sudden death.

Stevenson’s work met with critics. First of all, the stories of children remembering past lives tended to come from places where the belief in reincarnation was strong. Was it possible that villagers were looking for resemblances, and subtly reinforcing or reinterpreting what the child said? More to the point, Stevenson relied on interpreters—could they be trusted?

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

Despite this early interest, most scientists ignored Stevenson's work. According to his New York Times obituary, his detractors saw him as "earnest, dogged but ultimately misguided, led astray by gullibility, wishful thinking and a tendency to see science where others saw superstition."^[6] Critics suggested that the children or their parents had deceived him, that he was too willing to believe them, and that he had asked them leading questions. In addition the results were subject to confirmation bias, in that cases not supportive of the hypothesis were not presented as counting against it.^[7] Leonard Angel, a philosopher of religion, told The New York Times that Stevenson did not follow proper standards. "[B]ut you do have to look carefully to see it; that's why he's been very persuasive to many people."^[6]

Stevenson died in 2007, and his work is carried on by Jim Tucker, a man whose delivery is so dry that it makes a fascinating subject almost dull. Nor is previous lives the sole interest of the Division of Perceptual Studies—they also look into near-death experiences (NDE). In particular, they look into veridical NDEs, in which a person reports information that he or she could not have known—such as someone coming into the room after he lost consciousness, or a medical procedure was going on.

Do I believe any of this?

Well, I give you the story of a friend of mine, fluent in French and raising a small child. And one day, the child was being absolutely impossible, and so my friend, wanting to scold the child, berated him in French. The child retorted, also in French. So, you’re asking?

My friend had never spoken French to her child before.