Personhood for Chimpanzees!

Whew—that’s a relief. In the course of sifting and winnowing (all right, a good of scrounging, too) an email dropped into my lap and luck with the news: the bastards are still up to their bastardry.

No surprise, right? What’s surprising is the astonishing breadth and depth of the affair. For it seems that twelve countries—United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei—are getting together to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), a little venture which, according to Julian Assange “would trample over individual rights and free expression.”

Well, he should know, because he released the 30,000-word draft of the document on November 13 of this year, and that was pretty much the first time anybody had any idea what it was all about. Here’s The Guardian—surprise, surprise!—on the issue:

In case you were wondering why we had to get this information from WikiLeaks, it's because the draft negotiating texts are kept secret from the public. Even members of the US Congress and their staff have extremely limited access. Thus the much-maligned WikiLeaks has once again proven how valuable and justified are their efforts to bring transparency to important policy-making that is done in the darkness – whether it is "collateral murder", or other forms of life-threatening unaccountability.

Is it just me, or does anybody else have a knee-jerk reaction to anything done at this level of secrecy? And what, exactly, does the TTP intend to do? The Guardian quotes Public Citizen’s Global TradeWatch:

…set US policy on non-tariff, and indeed not-trade, issues in the context of 'trade' negotiations.

Ummmh?

At least that was my reaction, so I read and then reread and then figured it out—there are some concepts simple guys like me can’t get. So would the answer come later in the article? Quite possibly, and it did. Check this out:

Laws to protect the environment, food safety, consumers (from monopoly pricing), and other public interest concerns can now be traded away in "trade" negotiations. And US law must be made to conform to the treaty.

Well, the email that I got from Alice Jay at Avaaz.org put it a bit more graphically:

Monsanto’s about to celebrate their biggest coup ever, but we’ve got until the weekend to stop them.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge, ultra-secret deal among twelve major countries that would give corporations unprecedented power -- allowing them to use new global tribunals to sue our governments for passing laws that protect us, but reduce their profits! This could apply to everything from labeling GMO foods to protecting internet freedom. Wikileaks has broken the story and opposition is building fast, but the countries are rushing to seal the deal in 48 hours.

OK—let me imagine it. The US decides, at long last, to ban genetically altered wheat, since our foreign market doesn’t want the stuff. But Monsanto decides to raise the middle finger, and argues that the ban infringes on their right to make a profit. So they take us to a new global court, and sue us on the basis of this treaty.

All of this, asserts Assange, is an attempt to impose the United States’ strict interpretation of intellectual property rights, under which a seed becomes an idea, as long as you’ve altered its DNA.

Wonderful, isn’t it, what corporations are doing, and what they’ve become. They’re no longer things, or legal concepts—but people. So under Citizens United, corporations, like people, can donate money to political campaigns. Oh, and they can have religions, too, which is why Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Supplies will argue this year before the US. Supreme Court that they have the right to not offer certain types of contraception through their employee health plans. Nor, by the way, are these particularly small companies: Hobby Lobby employs over 13, 000 people, Conestoga over 1000.

The following information, by the way, comes from the liberal website Slate.com. But it seems that the sword cuts both ways, because I’ve just read that animal rights activists, citing Citizen’s United, are now looking for jurisdictions that would take the adventurous step of declaring chimpanzees legal persons. (The article was entitled “Seeking Citizen’s United Victory for Chimpanzees”—of course I had to read it….)

Back paddling hard back to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there’s one thing to bear in mind: the process in the US may be fast-tracked. And that is, you ask? The Guardian comes through again:

…fast track, which first began under Nixon in 1974, was not only a usurpation of the US Congress' constitutional authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations".

It also gave the executive branch – which is generally much less accountable to public pressure than the Congress – a means of negating and pre-empting important legislation by our elected representatives.

So what’s our time frame? According to the email which alerted me to the issue, it’s 48 hours.

Here’s the link, dear Reader. You know what you have to do….

    http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_champagne_for_monsanto_loc/?bpRuwbb&v=32155  

The Colicky Babies of Puerto Rico

It’s one of those “ouch” moments—like the fact that nine of the ten zip codes with the highest rate of Medicare / Social Security abuse are in Puerto Rico. So what is it today? Well, The WIC program in Puerto Rico has a budget of over 200 million, and serves 184,000 people. Monthly, the government issues 700,000 checks, 80% of which are cashed at small businesses.

And who gets these benefits? Well, the majority are kids: 36, 000 under one year of age; 111, 000 from one to five. So that’s a total of 137, 000 kids. That in itself is a bit of a surprise, because according to Pew Research, there are 232,000 kids under 5 on the island. So over half of the kids on the island are participating in the program.

Curiously, this is not unusual; here’s the Urban Institute on the subject:

WIC serves many in need. More than half of all infants and more than a quarter of all children through age 4, pregnant women, and postpartum women participate. Nearly two-thirds of all WIC participants live below the federal poverty level (FPL) even though individuals with incomes less than 185 percent of FPL are eligible to participate. 

Right—and while it’s true that Puerto Rico leads the nation in WIC coverage, it’s not by much. The same Urban Institute has this to say:

The five states with the highest WIC coverage rates are Puerto Rico (78.7 percent), Vermont (76.3), the District of Columbia (76.2), California (73.7), and Minnesota (73.5). 

So none of this is particularly surprising. What is surprising? Well, 62% of the kids in Puerto Rico require special formulae, and in gringolandia? Only two percent. 

Nor is the special formula cheap—The New Day reports in its print edition of today that the special formula can reach up to 50 bucks a can. In addition, The New Day reports that some merchants are doing a bit of gouging:

“Sé que la administración no estaba administrando bien los fondos federales desde finales del año pasado. Estamos hablando como desde noviembre, por ahí... que se quedó sin administrador y ahí empezaron a haber malas decisiones. Un ejemplo, la leche Nutramigen en el mercado –para los efectos– se debe cobrar a $32. Los comercios regulares cobraban cuarenta y pico y el programa se los pagaba”, dijo [José Díaz, presidente de la Asociación de Comerciantes del WIC] al hablar de un esquema fraudulento que, según dijo, denunció a la “pasada administradora del WIC”.

(“I know the administration hasn’t been administering the federal funds well since the end of last year. We’re talking about from November on—when we haven’t had an administrator and then they started to make bad decisions. One example—the milk Nutrtamigen in the market costs 32$. The merchants charge forty something and the program pays it,” said José Díaz, head of the WIC Merchants Association, on speaking of a fraudulent scheme that, according to him, he reported to the “past administrator of WIC.” 

And it’s not just the merchants, according to one source, cited in the same article:

“Hay de todo. Hay comerciantes, hay participantes… pueden haber empleados. Hay médicos involucrados en una serie de esquemas. Están trabajando con ello. Se tardan más tiempo en hacer este tipo de investigaciones”, dijo [Dana Miró] la licenciada en nutrición.

(“There’s everything. There are merchants, there are participants, there could be employees. There are doctors involved in a series of schemes. They’re working with them. It takes a long time to do this type of investigation,” said Dana Miró, a specialist in nutrition.)

So the feds came to town, and will let us know—sometime in December—whether they will paralyze the program. It depends, apparently, on what they find and whether we can clean up our act.
The good news? We can, because that 62% that required special formulae?

Now down to 40!

My Problem with Geek….

And so it’s my privilege, this morning, to present the following sentence:

I woke up yesterday, drank my coffee, and decided on the morning trot to listen to Biber’s Requiem, a tremendous piece.

That to me is totally normal—it could have been Buxtehude, who also has an amazing work, Membra Jesu Nostri. Or I could have listened to Bach, of course, because he is the molten core of the earth for classical musicians.

But if I can say stuff like this, and listen to stuff like this, it’s because somebody stuck a cello into my arms and suggested I might embrace it. And I did, variously, with mixed results until recently. And besides opening a seriously beautiful world, the cello gave me friends like Geek and Dorothy.

We were teenagers, which is by definition not easy. We were also fucked up in other ways—both Geek and I were gay and not talking about it. Which is a pity, since there wasn’t much we didn’t talk about. We hung out a lot together, played a really awful Rossini duet together, and did gigs together. Do you ever need to put a string bass in an early 70s Pinto? Unbelievably, Geek can do it.

Like every clique, we chose to define ourselves and forget what the rest of the world was saying about us, if anything. And happily, it worked. Music was our life, mostly—and what free time we had, we hung out in the orchestra room. There, we’d practice, talk, and devise new ways to torment Mr. Percy, perhaps the blandest man I have ever encountered. (He married, coincidentally, a woman who was exactly his equal in apersonality—dammit, computer, you know what I mean…..)

Geek had a quirky sense of humor, which extended to putting the local wunderkind, Sharon Levanthal, into his bass case (the bass having been removed), standing it and her up in front of our friends’ houses, and ringing the doorbell. Then, from the bushes is which we were hiding, we could observe the astonished reactions.

There was nothing malicious in this, and mothers began to take as a matter of course the sight of a vertical bass case, which began to talk, if memory serves, in the course of time. In fact one friend’s mother routinely greeted Sharon, and would pat her head through the case. Sharon squeaked back.

Weekdays were West High, and the orchestra room. Saturday mornings were WYSO, or the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras. And if Mr. Percy suffered from severe micropersonality, Dr. Rabin was seemingly the opposite. Generally, he was heard before he was seen, and the character force was felt before he entered the room. And to this day, Geek swears that the best interpretation of the violin solo in the Shostakovich Fifth that he’s ever heard is Sharon Levanthal’s.

For years, we called each other, always starting with the formula:

“Myrc,”

“Geek”

For some reason, my mother Franny found this fascinating. “What do you say after the Myrc / Geek,” she asked. Answer—nothing: we just started talking.

Geek, wisely, decided to go to Interlochen—the high school, not the summer camp. And there, well—let the school’s website tell the story:

Interlochen Arts Academy is the world's first and foremost fine arts boarding high school, offering the highest quality training with college-preparatory academics.

Right—nice to know! Though I might ask why, if you’re so great, my computer has never heard of you…..

So Dorothy and I soldiered on at West High, and later at the University of Wisconsin, where we both studied nursing. (She stayed in the field, I moved on, as do most nurses—Dear Reader, there is never a nurse shortage, just an active nurse shortage.) And we played music together too, and through her I met a genteel lady of European charm, Mrs. Hagen, who played the viola in the Beethoven string trio (Dorothy was a violinist).

“Air your cello,” she would greet me, in her remarkable house filled with art, (her husband had been a distinguished professor of art history).

It was a refuge—the house, the music, the friendship. Because things were seriously not right at home. How not right? Not mine to say, and perhaps neither I nor anyone knows the full hell of it. Because however successful Dorothy’s parents were, they were miserable together. And I could feel it—especially when I stayed with the family in their Lake Superior summer home.

She’s a brave woman, Dorothy—a woman who raised a child by herself, and who decided, she once confided, to go on through the pain of her life just for him. And she always gave more than she got. When my father Jack landed in the ICU five days before his death, who was there? Dorothy, and what was she doing? Untying my father’s hands, since all of the other nurses were worried that he would try to rip out his breathing tube. (Of course he would—wouldn’t you?)

“Do you need money,” she whispered, as I got off the plane that day, the day I got the call from Franny. She knew I was in Puerto Rico, that I was underemployed, that I was still harboring the ridiculous dream: I was gonna make a living as a musician.

I didn’t, of course. Nor did Geek, who told me, a couple years ago, that the bass was now sort of a party trick—and there weren’t many parties.

I can imagine that. Geek is running a bookstore / bar, and it’s one of the few independent, gay bookstores left in the country. As such, it gained the gracious attention of the Phelps family, who were standing around in the freezing February weather with their signs announcing that God Hates Fags outside of the Aut Bar. Where was Geek? Warm, inside, and busy running a fundraiser—he had hit on the scheme of getting people to pledge money for every minute the Phelps family spent outside the bar.

Right—so he had gone on and given back. And I? I had written a book and after years of silence, called Geek to ask him what to do about it. He was generous with a young and not-so-young writer, who went on to do the unthinkable.

Publish the damn thing as a paperback through CreateSpace, an Amazon-owned company. Yes, that Amazon—the company that is busy putting him out of business.

I tell myself that independent bookstore owners are going to have to look at Amazon as small businesses look at Sam’s or Costco, as a business that supports their business. I tell myself that I will call Geek and confess—he’ll sigh and forgive me, I hope. I tell myself that I’ll just send him the book, with a little note, begging forgiveness. I tell myself that Geek would like to know that I’m playing cello again, and raising money for kids in the third world—Bach and Beer. I have no problem telling myself things.

The question?

What am I gonna tell Geek?

The Gringo the Next Island Over

OK—so all the talk of baseball didn’t work….

Or maybe it was the bad Spanish, which admit it, had to have been learned within the last months. But that’s hardly likely, since James “Wally” Brewster, Jr. only spoke two sentences (the first being, “¡HOLA, mi nombre es Wally!”)

Right—let’s get to brass tacks. What’s pissing off folks in the Dominican Republic about Wally, the new ambassador for the United States? The fact that his spouse is a guy.

Brewster, according to his account, grew up in a little Texas town; he went into business there and eventually moved to Chicago, where he started in 2010 a company called SB&K. Along the way, he raised funds for Obama, which is a nice way to get to be an ambassador. In fact, The Daily Mail reports that he raised more than a million dollars for the 2012 presidential campaign.

And he’s been active in LGBT issues as well: he’s now serving on the Board of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

So the reaction to Brewster? Well, let’s put it this way: over 60% of the country is Catholic, so what did the cardinal, the top dog over there, have to say? Well, he referred to Brewster as a maricón (faggot) and gay people as “social trash.”

And then there’s this:

"He has not considered the particularities of our people. The United States is trying to impose on us marriage between gays and lesbians as well as adoption by these couples," said Father Luis Rosario, director of youth ministries for the church.

Then thousands of evangelicals took to the streets, and organized a “black Monday,” urging people to put black ribbons on their cars to protest. But not to worry, because the groups came out with this statement:

Expresaron que aman a los homosexuales y a los drogadictos, pero no  su actuación. “Si hoy aceptamos esa ley que nos quieren imponer, luego tenemos que aceptar una para patentizar las drogas”, señalaron.

(They expressed that the love homosexuals and drug addicts, but not their behavior. “If we accept this law that they want to impose on us, later we’ll have to accept one that patents drugs,” they said.)

Though homosexuality is legal in the Dominican Republic, there is—as you can tell—a strong cultural bias against it. Worse, the situation seems to be getting worse, and not better. Here’s what the French paper Le Monde had to say about it:

“En Haití, la República Dominicana, Jamaica y otros países de la región, los ataques contra homosexuales y transexuales han aumentado en los últimos meses. La homofobia no es nueva en la Cuenca del Caribe”, señala el reportaje.

(“In Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and other countries in the region, the attacks against homosexuals and transsexuals have increased in the last months. Homophobia is not new in the Caribbean basin,” the report indicated.)

Brewster isn’t the first gay ambassador—there have been five or six others. He is, however, the first ambassador to be named to such a homophobic country.

Good luck to him!

Anybody Got 70 Billion Out There?

I know that I was reading it at 3:45, because that’s when I sent it off to myself in an email. Bloggers do that, since a large part of my day now is spent wondering what, if anything, there might be to write about. The problem? Much of what seems perfectly splendid in the middle of the night looks a bit different in the colder light of day.

And you don’t really want to know, do you, that Puerto Rico is on the brink of financial doom? Why? Because for decades, every governor of either party has followed essentially the same strategy: hire as many people as you can, pay them marginally, allow them to do as little as possible, and borrow money to pay for it all. So what happened?

Well, the chicken came home to roost, and the Washington Post reported yesterday we’re 70 billion bucks in debt. Cancel that—I just checked the headline, and it’s not even “70 billion,” it’s “at least 70 billion.” That makes us number three in the nation—behind California and New York. We do, however, easily trump little Detroit, who went bankrupt at a mere 18 billion. Pikers, obviously.

Nor is that the only problem for today—everybody is leaving the island; in the years from 2006 to now, we’ve lost 138,000 people, most of them to the mainland, and most of them professionals. And why not? Salaries are low, crime is high, and the quality of life? Well, the Post also reported that our murder rate is six times higher than the national average.

Right—so what’s the solution? Well, here’s what we can’t do—go bankrupt, since apparently cities can but states cannot. Nor can we simply say “screw you” to the investors that have bought all our bonds, since the constitution stipulates that investors get paid before retirees and public employees. So what to do? Here’s the Post on the subject:

The situation is being closely monitored by the White House, which recently named an advisory team to help Puerto Rican officials navigate the crisis.

How bad are things on the island? Worse, apparently, than I thought. Here’s Caribbean Business:

The GDB-EAI (Government Development Bank—Economic Activity Index) had returned to growth in December 2011 for the first time since Puerto Rico’s recession began in 2006. It showed small but consistent year-over-year gains for nearly a year before beginning to retreat again last October. Since then, it has been on a steadily steepening decline: falling 0.7 percent in November, 2012, 1.3 percent in December, 2012, 1.8 percent in January, 3.1 percent in February, 3.1 percent in March, 3.5 percent in April and 3.4 percent in May, 4.5 percent in June, 5 percent in July, and 5.4 percent in August.

So our projection for the local economy in 2014? Instead of the minute growth projected originally, it’s now predicted that we will shrink by .8% next year. And if that’s not gloomy enough, consider the statement made by somebody at Moody’s—one of the three credit rating firms that has us one step from junk status:

“Further weakening of economic growth could result from the additional corporate and sales taxes, as well as increased tax compliance and enforcement measures,” Moody’s said. “Despite the increase in much-needed recurring revenue for the commonwealth, weaker economic conditions would also increase negative pressure on the rating.”

A friend who was the press secretary to two governors told me a story, once, about the governor who charged his cabinet to go home, think long and hard about the situation on the island, and come back the next day with a plan of action. So they all did, and returned with in-depth analyses and ideas. At the end, only one man was left who hadn’t spoken.

“Governor,” he said, “I thought about it a lot, and I came to one conclusion….”

“And that is?” asked the governor.

“Estamos jodidos,” the advisor replied.

We’re screwed.

And that was in the good old days!

98 Bucks, Five Hours Waiting, One Broken Nose

Right—it was a standing joke, in those days when I dedicated myself to pounding on tables and throwing pencils at the students (ostensibly, I was teaching English at Wal-Mart).

Supercilious Student: “Are you working Black Friday this year, Marc?”

Marc (too serious): “I most certainly am!”

SS (leaning in and peering into Marc’s face): “Really, Marc!”

Marc: “Not only will I be there, but I will be opening the door!”

SS: “Are you sure?”

Marc: “Nor is that all. I intend to address the crowd. I will emphasize that we Puerto Ricans are a gentle, peaceable, and tranquil people. Therefore, I will ask for a minute of silence, as we ponder the true meaning of Christmas: the amazing and miraculous gift of a son, our savior who is Christ our Lord, sent to mankind….”

SS: “Marc? Marc?”

Marc: “Then I’ll announce the rules. People will enter our stores in groups of five, at two-minute intervals. No running, no pushing, no fighting. Ladies and the elderly first, as well as the handicapped.”

And so it would go—the students would ask what store I’d be at, and routinely I’d say either Bayamón or Carolina: it was a toss-up which store was the worst. But I would hear the stories—the fights in the store over televisions, people jumping over the góndolas (the retail term for the set of shelves that the merchandise is placed on), front doors being broken, people falling in the rush to get in, and having other people jump over them. In short, it was madness.

Nor is it unique to Puerto Rico—I spent yesterday reading reports of the same madness in New Jersey and Florida. And in fact it was in New York, several years ago, that a security guard actually lost his life during the melee in the store.

Well, of course I never went to the store—either to work or to shop. In fact, I used to point out to detractors of Wal-Mart that they should actually be glad I was working there; I was taking their money but not spending it in their stores. And so my students would drag themselves in, exhausted still from Black Friday, and I would have had a restful four days. Time for Act II:

SS: “Did we see you there in Bayamón on Friday morning, Marc?”

Marc (pounding table and pointing his index finger upward, like a medieval saint): I WAS THERE! I personally took charge of the crowd, addressing the shoppers variously in English, Spanish and French. I thanked them for honoring us with their presence and patronage, and that it was a privilege to serve them in any way. It was a most orderly morning, and the shoppers unanimously thanked me at the end for a truly enjoyable shopping experience. Several of them have written me little notes of gratitude….

Well, the trick was to claim to have gone to the furthest Wal-Mart on the island—the Wal-Mart that absolutely nobody from the metro area would go to. So I claimed, for many years, that I had gone to Wal-Mart Mayagüez, and that the shoppers of that western city were by now well accustomed to well-bred, genteel shopping. I went so far as to say that people were saying things like: “Well, yes, I had thought about buying a television, but if you’d like it—please, be my guest.” Accompanied, of course, by a grave little nod of the head and a quiet bow. Oh, and that they were stopping at the entrance of the store and insisting that others enter first.

That said, I’m sorry to say that things have deteriorated a great deal since my years there—and you can see it yourself in the video below. And this was hardly an isolated case: Huffington Post’s headline says it all:

Walmart's Black Friday Going About As Badly As You'd Expect

Well, this year’s revolú was all about a 32-inch television going for just 98 bucks at Wal-Mart, as The New Day explains below:

Adames, [sic.] aseguró que próximamente evaluará la disposición que regula las llamadas "ventas excepcionales", al hacer referencia a que la mayoría de las quejas que recibió y las de incidentes de violentos fueron de situaciones ligadas a consumidores que buscaban un televisor de 32 pulgadas que Walmart vendía en precio regular de $98.

Al ser un artículo vendido a precio "regular", los consumidores no podían pedir un vale ("rain check") o un artículo sustituto. El titular de DACO dijo que buscará la manera de que los comercios expongan la diferencia de forma más clara para evitar problemas.

What was the problem? Well, Wal-Mart was saying that the TV was being sold at the “regular” price of 98 bucks. And given that, the customers had no right to get a rain check when the merchandise ran out.

Yeah? I have just gone on to Google, and yes, the 98-dollar TV at Wal-Mart is all over the Internet. But if you go to Wal-Mart.com? Click on the 30-39 inch size, and you’ll see that prices start at $179. So what gives?

At any rate, our department of consumer affairs issued 49 citations to Kmart, Wal-Mart, CVS and assorted others. Oh, and 50 social workers inspected the lines, and told parents to take their kids home, or find someone to come get them. Most people complied, except for two—curiously, from Mayagüez.

I’m lucky—I don’t have a job, but I don’t have kids. And so I can choose—do I want to celebrate Christmas? If so, do I want to spend money or not? The answer is usually “not,” but that’s not an option for a lot of people.

Personal responsibility—say some people. “If you decided to have children, then you should have figured out how you were going to pay for them….”

Guess so. But I wonder—one of the women in Mayagüez got into a fight with a guy, who slugged her and broke her nose. And she had been waiting for six or seven hours for that 98-dollar TV.

Have we all gone crazy?

Vasallo Dreams Up a Canal

Good news—the city has a terrific museum. And why not, since the founder, Luis A. Ferré, was, in addition to being governor, a seriously rich guy. How rich? Well, he owned the factory that produced all the island’s cement at the time. (Critics suggest that his intrusion into politics was to further the law that required all cement to be locally produced—is there anyone left with faith in the basic goodness of man?).

So Ferré went running around collecting Pre-Raphaelites, which at the time were both around and cheap, relatively. Consequently, the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, has one or two of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelites in the world. Want to see this picture?

Head to Ponce!

What doesn’t Ponce have? Well, despite two seriously large cranes, and despite ten years of dithering, it doesn’t have the super port that the late mayor proposed for it. And why not? It wasn’t lack of money—we’ve already spent a quarter of a billion on it. Nor was it lack of potential: we had the infrastructure, the ties to the US mainland, the engineers to do the job. In fact, ten years ago we were in a good position to capture a developing market. Now? Here’s Caribbean Business on the subject last year:

"At that time, all the horses were at the starting gate. Now, all the other horses have finished the race. Our neighboring islands expanded their facilities, signed agreements with global operators and are fully functional while we never got out of the gate," Lewis said.

What happened?

Well, I could look it up and tell you all the various issues and controversies that cropped up, but why bother? In a nutshell, it was business as usual, which in Puerto Rico means politics. And so when the governor was of one party, the mayor of Ponce was of the other party. And on those rare occasions when the mayor and the governor were of the same party? Well, then they only had four years—insufficient time to reverse all of the progress that had been made—if any,—revoke the contracts to the former governor’s friends, fight the legal challenges that ensued, and re-award the contracts to the preferred companies / cronies / friends. All of this takes time, you see.

Time which the Dominican Republic used well, since they now have a super port and cheap labor, whereas Puerto Rico? No super port, expensive labor.

Happily, while Ponce may have blown—or had it blown—their shot at a super port, they are not without resources. As proof, Inquiring Reader, I bring you this….

OK—here’s what you need to know about Ponce: it’s fiercely hot and just as dry. In fact, there is a certain point in crossing over the central mountain range when I will unconsciously start to sing Copland’s Rodeo—because at any moment you think that Agnes de Mille is going to send her dancers out. Oh, and the mountains spontaneously burn during dry season, which lasts nine months.

It’s perhaps the fact that he has never seen a river that accounts for the desire of a legislator from Ponce, Víctor Vassallo, to convert this “body” of water into the Panama Canal. Because where you and I might see a ditch, what does Vassallo see? Let The New Day tell the story:

Vassallo está convencido que su proyecto es viable y sueña con la idea de que Ponce tenga una obra que opere con un sistema de compuertas o esclusas con ingeniería de la utilizada en el Canal de Panamá. Otro que confía en la viabilidad del proyecto es el presidente de la Comisión de Desarrollo de la Industria Turística, Ángel Matos García, quien desconocía el costo total del proyecto. Indicó que “en su primera etapa no veo (que la inversión sea) mayor a $2 millones”.

Loosely, “Vassallo is convinced that his project is viable and dreams of the idea that Ponce have a work that operates on a system of compartments and locks with engineering like that used in the Panama Canal. Another who believes in the viability of the project is the president of the Commission for the Development of the Tourism Industry, Ángel Matos-García, who was unaware of the total cost of the project. He indicated that, “in the first stage, I don’t see that the investment would be greater than two million.”

Vassallo sees the canal as having twin benefits. First, it would be an excellent form of transit, and who hasn’t suffered through a Ponce traffic jam? Second, it would be a terrific tourist attraction—who wouldn’t want to come and see the canal, the locks, the boats floating gently through the arid landscape?

The predictable scoffers are sniffing, of course. There’s the fact that not one of Puerto Rico’s rivers is navigable. There’ also the fact that the US government has stuck in 375 million bucks to build a dam on the river four miles north of the city. Why? Because when the weather isn’t being fiercely hot and dry, it’s being torrential. So what happens? The ditch that you saw above overflows, carrying off cars, cows and the occasional child.

Despite all these obstacles, what’s happened to Vassallo’s proposal? Well, even despite all the objections and difficulties, guess what? Our legislators have agreed to study the matter.

Oh, and the water level in the Río Portugués yesterday?

Two inches!

669 Worlds

Sir Nicholas Winton pooh-poohs the idea, which is hardly surprising. If any nation could pooh-pooh, shouldn’t it be the British?

So Winton really thinks the credit should go to Trevor Chadwick or Martin Blake or the Dutchwoman Gertruida Wijsmuller-Meier, and there may be something in that. Winton, after all, only spent three weeks in Prague, sitting at a dining room table in his hotel room overlooking Wenceslas Square, and interviewing the (mostly) Jewish parents who were desperate to get their children out of Czechoslovakia. Hitler had been given the Sudetenland, and everybody with a brain knew—he wouldn’t stop there.

And there were other organizations getting German and Austrian kids out to safety—it was called the Kindertransport, and the British had raised half a million pounds for the effort. But in Czechoslovakia? Nothing.

So Martin Blake called on Nicholas Winton, a 28-year old London stockbroker, to cancel his ski vacation in Switzerland, and come to Prague instead. There, he found families not just from Prague but from Slovenia; so desperate were they to flee, they were living in camps, hoping to arrange transport out.

In fact, the list would grow to 5,000 children, and there were the predictable problems. First, what governments would take them? After Kristallnacht, the two-night pogrom in November of 1938 in which Jewish stores and synagogues were torched, the British and Swedish governments opened their doors to people under eighteen. The rest of the world, including the United States? Cold shoulder.

Money—kids had to have 50 pounds on deposit to assure repatriation. And 50 pounds then was the equivalent of about 3500 dollars today. Many of the parents were refugees living in camps; they barely had enough money for a meal.

So Trevor Chadwick took note and was told—nobody is doing anything, have a go at it. He opened an office, word spread, and hundreds of parents were outside on the street, desperate to hand over their child to a stranger. And the account of Chadwick by one author is fascinating; here’s Dorit Bader Whiteman:

He certainly was a superman.  Tall, handsome and with striking Nordic look… At the time, though, it seemed as if Trevor Chadwick had singlehandedly killed the dragon and was wafting me away. I was accepted at once…. My stout little mother planted herself firmly in front of Chadwick, addressing a speech of thanks to his navel (he being much taller than she). She liked to air her English, and I suspect she thanked him from the bottom of her heart. Trevor Chadwick shuffled his feet.

Later, Bader Whiteman wrote that the prevailing feeling on the trains going out to Holland, where they would ferry to England, was not sorrow but excitement. The parents had gone and spent their last money—in many cases—on new clothes. And they had told the children—we’ll join you soon, maybe in weeks, perhaps in months. But what a wonderful time you’ll have in England.

England, where Winton had returned, and where he resumed his day job as a stockbroker. But in the evenings and into the night, he was arranging for foster parents, putting photos of children everywhere he could think of, begging newspapers to donate advertising, and lastly, dealing with the paperwork. Not altogether uncreatively; here’s his comment:

"Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only to be told languidly, 'Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in Europe.' This was a few months before the war broke out. So we forged the Home Office entry permits."  

Seven “shipments” of children were sent, the eighth was to leave on 1 September 1939—the day broke out, and Hitler invaded Poland. Here’s the account:

"Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling."

An awful feeling, yes—but there is the consolation that 669 children were saved—thanks to the efforts of Chadwick, Winton, Blake and others. In fact, one child stated that the men are responsible for the survival of a generation of Czech Jews, since almost no one else survived the camps.

Winton joined the air force, and fought for five years. Then, he came home, put his diary of the efforts to save the children in his attic, and never mentioned it to anyone, including his wife. It was she, in fact, who found the diary, and learned of the story.

Winton wears a ring with a quote from the Talmud: save one life, save the world.

Winton saved 669 worlds.

Why, Lord, do you treat me thus?

Seen out of context, it seems like exactly the justification of all those people who argue that opera is phony, stylized, artificial. Seen in context? It was a knockout.

Maybe it was because I had spent the last three days opening doors every fifteen minutes or so to workmen who had, it seemed, invaded my space and trashed my tranquility. True, they were doing what I wanted, and what I was unwilling to do. Because among the experiences that I don’t need to have my life fulfilled is rappelling 20 twenty feet down the side of my patio under a hot tropical sun to plaster a large area on the side of the wall. So why was I complaining?

Well, there was the power washer, which has for adult men, apparently, all the allure and charm of a car for teenage boys. A spot of mold appears on some surface in your home? Any red-blooded American man will be running for the pressure washer.

The problem was the noise—well, for me at least. Granted, it was infinitesimally quieter than a jet engine, but not by much. And it went on for hours.

Or maybe it was the habit of workmen appearing suddenly in view, as I looked up in the study where I was trying to write. The door was closed, I had let no one in; how did they get there? Well, it turns out that you can rappel down, but rappelling up is a more taxing affair. So they rappelled halfway down the building, did some plastering, and rappelled down to the window and hopped in. Right—so I would get up and let them out. (Why not keep the door open? A four-letter word: cats….)

Or it could have been dealing with the excitable Spaniard who owns the first floor. We generally get along, but he requires—no, I require—coffee before the encounter. And so when he arrived shortly before seven in the morning, I was unarmed. And then cross. In addition, he shares a peculiarly Puerto Rican trait: a dislike verging on hate of vegetation.

Who can explain it? For every Puerto Rican who loves plants and trees, there are two at least who much prefer concrete. And so García, to give the gentleman his name, took a look at the jungle that is the patio and instantly salivated for a machete. So every second sentence included a reference to the day when all of those plants would be gone. This, of course, didn’t sit well with Mr. Fernández, who would much prefer to tackle the situation with other implements—perhaps tweezers and embroidery scissors.

They were good guys, generally, and they cleaned up after themselves, but guess what? Walking barefoot through the gallery is like walking on the beach—not surprising, given the amount of grit, sand, concrete and dust they generated.

And they came on time, except for two days. Then they didn’t. But they did respond to García’s clarion call; who doesn’t?

So I was ready for last night, when they were rebroadcasting Tosca, the famous opera by Puccini. And here, for those who may not know what in the world this woman is acting so crazy for, is a short synopsis of the plot.

Tosca is a singer, in love with a young painter and revolutionary named Cavaradossi. While painting in a church, he encounters another revolutionary, who has escaped from prison. The hounds will be after him, so Cavaradossi agrees to give him shelter.

Enter one of opera’s most sadistic creatures: Scarpia, the police chief, who tracks down the revolutionary at Cavaradossi’s house. Or rather, he doesn’t, but he smells something fishy. So what to do? Easy, subject Cavaradossi to torture; Tosca is permitted to hear the gruesome business being done off stage. And so for a whole act, Scarpia is playing a deadly mind game with Tosca. And how can she stop the torture of her lover? Old story, sweetheart—put out.

She tries to move him, and sings Visi d’arte, the aria below.

Well, it didn’t work on Scarpia, except for perhaps making him more determined in his lechery. But me?

Got it completely….

I lived for art, I lived for love,


I never did harm to a living soul!


With a secret hand
I relieved as many misfortunes as I knew of.


Ever in true faith


My prayer
Rose to the holy shrines.


Ever in true faith
I gave flowers to the altar.


In the hour of grief


Why, why, Lord,


Why do you reward me thus?


I gave jewels for the Madonna's mantle,


And songs for the stars, in heaven,


That shone forth with greater radiance.


In the hour of grief


Why, why, Lord,


Ah, why do you reward me thus?