Dutch Justice Redux

OK—I have email evidence that at 1:40 AM, I was busy occupying whatever mind I had at that time with the burning question: Was Prince Claus of the Netherlands gay, and if so, was he raping boys in the underground sex cellars of the queen’s personal lawyer, Frits Salomonson. Here’s a jarring excerpt:

I was brought to Salomonson in a black car. His house is decorated with lots of marble details. There was an enormous living room. On the right, a stairway down into the cellars. Leather hats, whips, chains, all that sort of things would hang on the walls. That’s when I saw prince Claus. I was under the influence of drugs and was penetrated. Mister Karel Maasdam abused me in Salomonson’s cellars.

Dear Reader, it has to be said: not everything you read on the Internet is necessarily true, though I can tell you that this blog is ruthlessly and insanely trustworthy. Therefore, I asked Mr. Fernández, who, in regard to the European royal houses, is a walking Hola magazine.

“It’s been rumored for years,” he said. As is the rumor that he had been photographed in gay bars in New York. Oh, and got thrown out of a diplomatic post somewhere or another because of a relationship with a man. And did I mention the rumor that the Dutch government is being blackmailed by Demmink, which accounts for the remarkably relaxed…

Wait, stuporous…

Try somniforesce….

What am I trying to say? That comatose people move faster than the Dutch judicial system when the vexing question of pedophilia strolls into view. Here’s what The Guardian had to say in a report from 2000.

Not just once but repeatedly, evidence had come to the attention of police in England and the Netherlands, that, for pleasure and profit, some of the exiled paedophiles in Amsterdam had murdered boys in front of the camera. Some of the evidence had been pursued. Some of it had been ignored. None of it had led to a murder charge. For a short while, the Bristol detectives thought they might be able to make progress in tracking down the truth; but when two of them flew to Amsterdam in the autumn of 1998 to pass on their information to Dutch officers, they hit a wall.

Terry had described the flat in Amsterdam where he had seen the video; he had named the owner of the flat who was, by implication, also owner of the video; he had provided the name of the man who carried out the killing; he had described events on the video in detail; he had provided the approximate age and the first name of the dead boy.

Dutch police said it was not enough: without the full name of a victim, they would not begin an investigation. Having fought their way through the swamp of inertia which surrounds British policing and prosecution of child abuse, the Bristol detectives had now hit the deeper swamp of virtual paralysis that afflicts its international policing. Within their own jurisdictions, there are now specialist paedophilia detectives - for example, in London and Amsterdam - who will work relentlessly to lock up predatory child abusers.

Yeah? Dutch police won’t investigate a murder without the full name of a victim? And by the way, what’s going on with the Dutch? Here’s the BBC from 2006:

A political party with a paedophile agenda has been registered in The Netherlands, prompting outrage among many parts of society.

The party plans to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and for legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals.

Well, it raised eyebrows and ruffled feathers. But despite efforts to disband the party, a group of judges ruled in April of 2013 that the organization had committed no crimes and could not legally be abolished. Oh, and by the way, guess who was on the board of directors.

A priest!

Yup—here’s Huffington Post:

The order's top official in the Netherlands, Delegate Herman Spronck, confirmed in a statement that the priest – identified by RTL Nieuws as 73-year-old "Father Van B." – served on the board of "Martijn," a group that campaigns to end the Dutch ban on adult-child sex.

Oh, and what do the Salesians—the order to which Father van B belongs—do? Here’s more from Huffington:

According to its website, the Dutch arm of the Salesians has 14 employees and 400 volunteers and aims to help poor children.

Stayed tuned for tomorrow, when I confidently expect to announce the news: man bites dog…..

Dutch Justice

Full disclosure—in the sixties I would have been called a practicing homosexual. I since progressed through the decades from being gay activist to a radical queer to a militant gay radical to….

…you get the picture.

Second disclosure—one thing nobody has ever been able to call me is a pedophile. There are highbrow and lowbrow reasons for this; the high being that I’m in a monogamous relationship, the low being that I’m not into kids.

A further disclosure: I visited the famous red light district of Amsterdam thirty-odd years ago, nor was it a visit that gave me any pleasure. Why? Well, I was in my late teens, and very much in the dark night of wondering about my sexuality. Nor did it help that I was with two couples—my parents, who had a ferocious Midwestern sense of sexual decorum, and a Dutch couple, who were just a bit rubbing their European sophistication in. So we strolled along, my parents rigidly looking straight ahead, the Dutch couple casually looking into the windows and commenting on the virtues or—perhaps more likely—vices of the women displayed there. It was a walk of perhaps three blocks that lasted seemingly hours.

For those of you with insufficiently lurid imagination here’s a photo:

The thinking at that time was that prostitution was an age-old vice; better to legalize it and regulate it and—presumably—make a little money off it. And what are we thinking now? Well, here’s a quote from Wikipedia’s article on prostitution in the Netherlands:

The Netherlands is listed by the UNODC as a top destination for victims of human trafficking.[22] Countries that are major sources of trafficked persons include Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine,[22] Sierra Leone, and Romania.

Or how about this, from the same source?

When the Dutch government legalized prostitution in 2000, it was to protect the women by giving them work permits, but authorities now fear that this business is out of control: "We've realized this is no longer about small-scale entrepreneurs, but that big crime organizations are involved here in trafficking women, drugs, killings and other criminal activities", said Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam.[

Well, in a city where things got a little out of hand, the most out of handedness may be the case of Joris Demmink, who was or maybe is (my Dutch being rusty) the Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice. Oh, and who may have raped boys in Turkey in the 1990’s, as well as trafficked kids in Amsterdam.

Or maybe he didn’t because, guess what? Despite having six witnesses come forward, despite four police reports naming Demmink as a suspect, despite the statement of a Turkish policeman who was supposed to protect Demmink but instead pimped for him, despite a lawyer—Adele van der Plas—who has dogged him for most of a decade—well here’s what she said:

“There has never been a credible investigation into his behavior.”

She said the investigations simply are halted.

“The Dutch Ministry of Justice doesn’t take any child abuse case seriously at all,” she said. “All the pedophile rings in Europe have been investigated and some have gone to jail. Not in the Netherlands. The Dutch have been cited by the U.N. as a center of child trafficking.”

Nor was it just van der Plas who thinks so: here’s what Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey said in a congressional hearing last year:

That investigation has never happened – the investigations that have taken place have been a travesty and have done nothing to clear Mr. Demmink’s name. Rather, they have raised further questions,” he said.

So Demmink is or isn’t a pedophile. What do we know about him?

He’s the head of the Dutch judicial system….

Clara Haskil, In Spite of Herself

However bad your life has been or is, you might be cheered to know that Clara Haskil probably had it worse.

Not that she didn’t have some advantages; she started out life as a musical prodigy, and seemed equally gifted at the piano as at the violin. Here’s one description of her powers:

She was not yet five when a professor at the Bucharest Academy visited her parent’s home and played a Mozart sonata. When he finished she repeated the sonata perfectly, while simultaneously transposing it into another key, all without having had any musical instruction.

Right—not your average five-year old….

Later, she graduated with the Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatory, where she studied with Alfred Cortot (she had earlier stuided with Busoni). She began to tour, but then, at the age of 18, everything grounded to a halt: she spent four years in a plaster cast, trying to correct curvature of the spine.

Her health, it seems, was never great. In 1941, she had a tumor on her optic nerve, and had to have surgery by a doctor smuggled out of Paris. And all through her life, by all accounts, she was frail.

She also had a phenomenal memory, once playing four pages of a composition she had never seen but only heard years before. And also—very nice for a pianist—she had large hands.

Then, in about 1920, she was afflicted with stage fright; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Frequent illnesses, combined with extreme stage fright that appeared in 1920, kept her from critical or financial success. Most of her life was spent in abject poverty. It was only after World War II, during a series of concerts in the Netherlands in 1949, that she began to win acclaim.

Born in 1895, she would have been 54 before “winning acclaim.”

But what acclaim it was—everyone was raving about her: here’s Charlie Chaplin:

"In my lifetime I have met three geniuses; Professor Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Clara Haskil. I am not a trained musician but I can only say that her touch was exquisite, her expression wonderful, and her technique extraordinary." (Swiss Radio interview, 19 April 1961.)

Well, everyone was raving but Clara; here’s  one account:

In years to come I heard her many times, both publicly and privately. For these experiences I remain eternally grateful. As I left the hall, a friend who knew Haskil offered to take me backstage. She seemed inconsolable and unhappy, excusing her poor performance to anyone who congratulated her.

She lived through two world wars, and not without adventure. Here’s a vivid description of her escape from Paris (she was born a Sephardic Jew):

We left Paris at night from the Gare Montparnasse, which was plunged into murky darkness, and before dawn we left the train at Angoulême. Our luggage had gone ahead of us, since, as we expected to have to do a lot of walking, we did not want to be heavily laden. In the sinister railway station, cold and dark, we huddled together, speaking in hushed tones; then we met the guide who was to lead us through fields and woods to the free zone. A taxi drove us to the edge of a forest, where we listened to the scarcely reassuring advice of our guide. He was obviously frightened and told us that the prisons in the neighborhood were full of people like us who had been caught. One road was especially dangerous; we had to crawl across it for, not very far away, as we could see, was a German police station. It was the end of march. The wind was cold but spring had come; there were violets in the woods and birds were singing, but we were not in a mood to enjoy that particular morning walk. On every signpost was a skull and crossbones and a menacing warning to anyone who ventured into this forbidden zone. Our guide wheeled his bicycle ahead of us and we followed in a single file. Le Guillard carried his viola and Clara’s suitcase since she, after a night without sleep, was physically and emotionally exhausted. Each of us wore several overcoats and my wife carried our cat in its basket. Our hearts beat wildly; at last we had crossed that terrible road. I remember that at the exact moment that our cat started miaowing our guide showed us the road we should take to rejoin the railway; he claimed his fee, mounted his bicycle and rode off as fast as he could. Relieved and reassured at having survived this disagreeable experience we soon found a farm whose hospitable owners were used to groups of people in our situation and gave us something to eat.

At last, in 1960, she fell down a staircase in a Brussels rail station, and died in a matter of days.

May her death be happier than her life! 

That Well-Hated Company

Well, you have to admire Peter Schiff—as someone who has tried to engage in debate about gun control, I know that what he was trying to do in a Wal-Mart parking lot wasn’t easy.

And what, you ask, was he doing?

Only asking two questions: did they support higher wages for Wal-Mart workers? If so, would they pay 15% of what they had spent at the store today? He promised to give the money to the workers at the end of the afternoon. Oh, and good try—saying you had no cash! He took plastic.

Understandably, he didn’t get many people to donate….

Well, he comes right out and says it—we love those low prices, but most of us have no idea how tricky the retail business is. The iPad you bought at Wal-Mart? The company didn’t make a dime on it. In fact, Wal-Mart and everybody else makes no money on electronics; for Black Friday, they’re bleeding money, and people in the stores are begging customers to buy the cables, the stands, the insurance for the gadgets. That’s where the money is.

Think that’s bad? Wal-Mart is also the leading grocer in the USA, and that business is even worse. You’ve got perishables, for one thing, and the margin is miniscule. So despite the huge sales, the actual profit is—comparatively—small. So I believe Schiff when he says:

A raise to a $15 hourly minimum would increase its $26 billion annual payroll of hourly workers by 50%, or $13 billion per year. This is approximately 80% of the company’s total operating profit of $16 billion. Taking those increases from profits would devastate the company’s finances, place it a serious disadvantage to its competitors, and force a dramatic restructuring.  

So what is it that Wal-Mart does that is a red cape to so many liberal bulls? Sure, they pay miserably, but guess what? The supermarket next to me pays just as little, and has just as many part-timers, if not more. And I used to ask people who hated Wal-Mart which job they’d prefer: Wal-Mart or McDonalds? Trust me, not a lot of people chose McDonalds.

Still don’t think that Wal-Mart arouses deep passions? Here’s what Schiff wrote about the reaction from the Left.

The reaction I have seen online leads me to believe that the left wing of the political spectrum is home to some of the most intolerant, hypocritical, vindictive, and judgmental people in the country.  In the comments on my Facebook and YouTube pages I have been called some of the most vulgar names imaginable.  I, and all members of my family, have been wished slow and painful deaths, with some even inferring that they would be willing to hasten the process themselves.  Others did not think I should actually forfeit my life, just my liberty, as they thought I should be thrown in jail.  Many on the religious left have even offered prayers that my soul could find a special place in hell where my torment could surpass the anguish of the commonly damned.

The insults were not limited to me, but extended to woman who appeared in the video with me. She did not utter a single word, but merely stood by my side holding a sign.  Yet many made extremely rude comments about her physical appearance.   I thought liberals didn’t do that?

People often charge that Wal-Mart drives everybody out of business, an argument I find a little strange. Look, guys, this is business, remember? This is about competing for customers, who are driven by (mostly) price, service, and very marginally loyalty. And competition means there winners and losers—and what happens when you lose in business?

Is it the fact that Wal-Mart is and was an essentially southern company? Is that what’s bugging all the (mostly) northern liberals?

It’s true that Wal-Mart is rigidly, adamantly anti-union. And also true that at the first hint that employees are organizing, management calls a hotline, and a TEAM flies out to the store. At that point, the manager loses all control—the anti-union is calling the shots. And yes, as a former part of management at Wal-Mart, I had to go through the famous training on what to say—and not to say—to non-management employees.

It’s also true that this morning’s edition of The New York Times had an article about the Local 1 of the stagehand union. Here’s the headline:

Hey, Stars, Be Nice to the Stagehands. You Might Need a Loan.

Here’s a quote from the article:

Five stagehands at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center were each paid more in total compensation in 2011 than the highest-paid dancer at New York City Ballet, filings showed. And, in 2010, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” paid its stagehands a total of $138,000 a week, while the principals and members of the ensemble earned slightly less than $100,000 put together, according to documents submitted to the state attorney general’s office.

Look—there’s something screwy when a stagehand can earn than the highest paid dancer at City Ballet.

So what is it about Wal-Mart that we hate? Let’s be honest: too many of us are living lives completely dedicated to possessions, to consuming, to have more and more for which we have to work harder and harder at jobs we hate. We’ve become junkies.

And Wal-Mart?

Our pushers.

Wisconsin is Open for Abuse

It’s the time of the year when my mood turns cynical, or rather, more cynical, since I’m never entirely free of the outlook.

But in this case, it seems absolutely justified, since the great—well, at one time—state of Wisconsin passed a law that forbids…OK, here’s the headline:

New state law conceals records of abuse, neglect in nursing homes

I came upon it via Ralph Nader, whom you can see and hear below, on his talk on the defining question / issue of our time: the corporation. And, in passing, he mentioned that tort lawyers are finding it difficult to sue nursing home chains. Why? Because the homes are owned by a corporation with few assets that are owned overseas (probably a tax shelter) by another corporation, which in turn may be owned by another corporation. So even if you sue successfully and get a judgment, can you collect? Nope!

Well, that was sufficiently interesting to turn off Nader—sad the things you can do cybernetically but not in real life—and google “tort law nursing homes.” And that’s where I came across the state law, which was meant to promote a more business-friendly environment in the state.

And what’s the essence of the law? Here’s the State Journal:

The law, which went into effect in February 2011, bars families from using state health investigation records in state civil suits filed against long-term providers, including nursing homes and hospices. It also makes such records inadmissible in criminal cases against health care providers accused of neglecting or abusing patients.

What does that mean? It means that if you—as did Joshua Wahl, in the article cited above—leave Mother in a home and she is lying in her feces for hours at a time, she will very likely develop a bedsore. And if, as happened to Wahl, the bedsore is never adequately treated, Mother may develop an infection that may turn into septicemia. And that’s life threatening.

Now, let’s imagine you are the incredibly slacking type who doesn’t turn Mother over every two hours and perform a thorough inspection along with good skin care. You shockingly assume that that’s their job, after all. What resource do you have, to make sure that old Mother is getting the proper care? The friendly smile of the home’s administrator?

You know, of course, that the state inspects the facility, and there’s that official-looking certificate on the front door (or next to it). And so you decide to go online and check if the Wisconsin Department of Health Services has any info on Mother’s nursing home (now euphemistically called a “skilled nursing facility”). Well, I did—and came upon a page which, in miniscule type said this:

Wisconsin Nursing Homes: State Citations Issued from 10/01/2012 to 09/30/2013 Information is current as of 10/28/2013

OK—I’ll save you a trip to search for the magnifying glass—it’s Wisconsin’s citation of nursing homes for an entire year, from October 2012 to October 2013. And guess what? I was looking up my own mother’s old nursing home, Ingleside in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. So I was on the “I” page, and how many citations were there for an entire year for nursing homes beginning with “I” in Wisconsin?

One.

OK, it’s diluted but it’s there. Jack, my old journalist father, sometimes spurs me to action. And so I went page by page counting nursing citations in Wisconsin. I can hear the bated breath out there….

There were 28.

Here’s the link: try it yourself.

Yeah? Well, let’s do a posthumous—in my mother’s case—search for records on Ingleside. So I did a search in the “providers” page, entered the name, the county, and the city. And guess what? The search turned up this:

No records were found for your search criteria

(At least that’s what happened to me. It has to be said, however, that the talented Ms. Taí came up—somehow—with a helpful six-page report. Here’s the link, and good luck!)

https://www.forwardhealth.wi.gov/WIPortal/DQA%20Provider%20Search/tabid/318/Default.aspx

OK—Ingleside doesn’t exist, what about the Attic Angels, where I worked many a night shift?

Also not found….

Four Winds in Verona?

Curiously, the site found it! Wow, and there was a map!

What wasn’t there?

Anything else….

All right—time to trot over to Google, to check out how many nursing homes—including the phantom one that had sheltered my mother three times in three years—there are in Wisconsin. And I chose what must be an industry (word used quite intentionally) site. Here’s the dough:

Wisconsin contains 390 certified Medicare and Medicaid nursing homes. These nursing homes have a total of 34,876 available beds for skilled nursing residents and at the time when we updated this data 82% of those beds were full. The overall average Medicare 5 Star Quality rating for Wisconsin skilled nursing homes is 3.5 which ranks 13 nationally.

What! We’re only 13 nationally when in an entire year we only had 28 citations for 390 certified homes! Wow, those twelve other states must be immaculate!

Walker, with his “Wisconsin is open for business” slogan, seems to have gutted any effective regulation of at least nursing homes. And you know, I spent a portion of today inventing new, Walkeresque regulations. Things like:

Inspectors are encouraged to choose between on versus off site inspections.

Or how about…

Inspectors are under no circumstances permitted within 50 yards of the facility. Inspections should be limited to general questions—e.g. “everything going OK in there”—to passing staff members. Non-responses will be considered a “overwhelmingly positive.”

You know, I worked for years in those places. I know perfectly well that in even the best homes I could have found a dozen citations, had I been armed with the regulations. Considering a little time to rest up in a nursing home?

Enter at your own risk!

A Christmas Reform

It was close and it was bitter, but last night the senate approved the “reform” of the teachers’ retirement plan.

In fact, it couldn’t have been closer—since it passed 14 to 13 with four members of the ruling Popular party breaking ranks and voting no. And the final product wasn’t entirely without a few sweeteners. For one thing, teachers over 55 with 30 years of service actually got an increase in the minimum pension to $1625, and there’s a window for teachers with 28 to 30 years to retire with 70% of their monthly salary. Oh, and teachers got a raise of $25, as well.

“They haven’t been doing their jobs,” said a friend, just now. Her child is being home-schooled, but parents who can afford it send their kids to private schools. Why? Because if Missi or Míster—as teachers are known here; it’s a Puerto Rican thing—is sick, the school lets the kids go home. Or maybe home, since nobody may be there; so that means the streets. So if—unreasonably—you insist on knowing where your kids are and what they are doing, you shell out eight to ten thousand per kid per year for a private school.

Well, somebody came out and said it, namely an adviser to the president of the House; and here, dear Readers, are his intemperate words:

“Faltan cada rato. Trabajan cinco horas diarias. Tienen 60 días de vacaciones al año. Ganan más que el salario promedio anual. No pagan seguro social. Salen de la escuela antes que los estudiantes. Llevan 15 años con los mismos planes y materiales. Ah, pero ni pal car...jo le pidas que pongan de su parte porque te muerden, te gritan suciedades y te rompen las puertas. Sí. Así son”, dijo Hernández en una entrada a su cuenta el pasado 19 de diciembre.

El mismo día, Hernández declaró: “Y si después de pasar por 12 años por 12 manos de diferentes maestros no aprendes inglés, agradece a un maestro o a los 12 que no hicieron ningún esfuerzo por lo que se les paga”.

(“They call in sick. They work 5 hours a day. They have 60 days of vacation a year. They earn more than the average annual salary. They don’t pay Social Security. They leave the school before the students. They’ve spent 15 years with the same lesson plans and school materials. But don’t frigging ask them to do their part because they bite you, shout obscenities and break down the doors. Yup, that’s how it is,” said Hernández in an entry on his Facebook page on 19 December.

The same day, Hernández declared, “And if after 12 years of passing through 12 hands of different teachers you don’t know English, thank a teacher or the 12 who didn’t make any effort to do what they’re paid for.”)

Understandably, the teachers were howling—nor did it help that Hernández has a contract for $84,000, whereas the base salary for teachers is $21,000. Hernández’s boss came out and stated that the opinions were not his nor the House’s, and that he regretted that such expressions had been made.

Did Hernández back down? Nope, he responded to The New Day’s lead—which used the word insulto and yes, it means what you think—and said this:

No he insultado a nadie. Di mi opinión basada en mi experiencia en las escuelas donde han estudiado mis hijos. Sin faltar respeto a nadie". 

(“I haven’t insulted anybody. I gave my opinion based on my experience in the schools where my children have studied. There was no lack of respect for anyone.”)

Well, the governor has just signed the legislation, and the teachers? They’re threatening a strike, which—according to the governor—is unconstitutional.

It’s the usual story: who is to blame for the sorry situation we’re in? The usual culprits…

…everyone and no one!

Beethoven in the Dark Night of the Soul

I knew that they were there, and I knew that everybody said they’re a majestic, a towering, a titanic achievement—but isn’t that a little off-putting? Besides, I’m really not much into piano music—I really prefer string chamber music and especially vocal music. So I’ve given the Beethoven piano sonatas a wide berth—which is to say I never listen to them.

Big mistake, because the third movement of the opus 109 sonata below is one of the most beautiful compositions Beethoven ever wrote. And what an astonishing performance!

This is late Beethoven, written at a period when the composer had abandoned all hope of marriage or a family, and after a disastrous affair with his nephew. He had money and fame, but his health was poor, and his hearing was going—if not already gone.

You’ll know the familiar stories: he conducted the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, and had to be turned around to see the cheers and applause of the audience; he burst into tears. He went off to Heiligenstadt to recuperate—or at least try to—and there wrote his famous Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he wrestles with whether to commit suicide. He engaged in a custody battle for his nephew against Johanna, the 9-year old’s mother; the case dragged on forever, and the nephew turned out to be a disappointment.

What I didn’t know was that Beethoven had a group of devoted friends, all of whom were writing to him in “conversation books,” of which there may have been 400 (his first biographer, Anton Schindler, may have destroyed some of them). At any rate, the books that remain are a treasure for historians and musicians alike.

Nor did I know that the famous strong-willed character was quite so strong; here’s Wikipedia again:

Sources show Beethoven's disdain for authority, and for social rank. He stopped performing at the piano if the audience chatted amongst themselves, or afforded him less than their full attention. At soirées, he refused to perform if suddenly called upon to do so. Eventually, after many confrontations, the Archduke Rudolph decreed that the usual rules of court etiquette did not apply to Beethoven.[89]

Right—good to know!

The conventional theory is that late Beethoven is difficult to listen to, and it’s true that Beethoven goes places no one else had gone. But in the last movement of this piano sonata, Beethoven does something that few composers can do: he writes the music of a man who has suffered, gone through the suffering, observes it dispassionately, and refuses to back down. If any music could be called transformative, it’s this.

This blog has been temporarily sequestered once again....

... by its "webmistress"!

To wish my dearest Marc Newhouse and Rafael Fernández-Toledo a Happy Anniversary!!!

Hear me out, Marc's "dear Readers," for a moment or two….

Marc and Raf have been together for more than 25 years, which is a record when it comes to many couples of their generation (gay or not.)  And five years ago today they were LEGALLY married in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the same wonderful lady who officiated the first same-sex marriage in the state, one Margaret Drury.... (and I hope she reads this and knows how I will never forget her name...nor will those wonderful guys!)

Marc's beautiful mom, Frances Newhouse (greatly responsible for the occasion,) is—I know —celebrating, big time, from her landscape in the stars....

Marc and Raf are two of my most important and essential (exemplary!) people in the world, and I just want to let it be known that it's their anniversary!!

So here it is.

I love you guys!!!! And forgive me for not remembering it was today, thinking it was tomorrow!! I'm that clumsy when it comes to dates!

H A P P Y   A N N I V E R S A R Y,

R A F  A N D  M A R C !!!!

 

The Teachers Mutiny

T’was the week before Christmas and…

“…we had a coup d’état,” in the words of Jaime.

Who should know, being a lawyer and an astute observer. So what happened? Well, the governor of the island called a special session of the legislature to pass a “reform” of the teachers’ retirement system, which currently has almost 40,000 pensioners. This follows a move in April to reform the government workers retirement system, which caused protests across the island.

It’s not the chickens but rather the eagles come home to roost; since 1952, governments have had two or three essential strategies to reduce unemployment. The first was legitimate—manufacturing, especially pharmaceuticals. That Valium you mother chugged down to tide her through your terrible twos? Thanks, Puerto Rico!

The other modes were a little less kosher….

“He shipped ‘em all off to New York!” sputtered Mr. Fernández, when someone suggested that Luis Muñoz Marín—a close relative of the devil, in the eyes of Mr. Fernández—had reduced unemployment.

The other solution? Put everybody on the government payroll, give them one task to do, and pay them substantially less than the private sector. So you had an enormous government; if memory serves... well wait. Here’s a graphic:

So everybody knew for years that we were heading for disaster. And thus the last governor passed legislation that slashed 30,000 government jobs. Last April, the present governor took the machete to the government retirement system and raised taxes. And now, it’s the teachers’ turn.

There are two reasons for this. First, the system is broke; here’s what the president of the Senate, Eduardo Bhatia, had to say:

To have a retirement system you have to square the end of the month and it is broken. For every dollar you have to give a person who retires today there are 17 cents in the piggy bank. The question is where the other 83 cents go, and that is the decision we have to make as a country. Are there additional 83 cents in the General Fund? No, not there,’ said the Senate leader.

Put it another way—the norm is to have a plan 80% funded, we are only at 17%.

The other factor at play? A little company called Moody’s, which has our credit rating one notch above junk, and is watching Puerto Rico closely.

Well, “watching” may be generous. Moody’s, in fact, has Puerto Rico quite securely by part of a gentleman’s most prized anatomical possessions. And Cate Long, writing for Reuters states it openly: she wrote, “Moody’s identified this reform as one of the factors that will compose its review of Puerto Rico.”

So what happened? The governor sent legislation to one of the two teachers’ unions on the island, and they erupted. And as you can see in the video below, they not only protested but broke the doors to the Senate and charged in. So soon, the entire island was glued to their televisions, watching as hundreds of chanting teachers gathered in the capitol.

Damage? $55,000. One part of which may have been a senator’s chair, on which, according to The New Day, a child was permitted or possibly urged to urinate. Oh, and a security official got bitten, though the attacker didn’t draw blood.

And what did the Senate do? Well, they got the hell out of Dodge City, which in this case meant retreating into an adjacent room, the Hall for Illustrious Ladies. They continued the debate until seven PM, when they adjourned.

To make a sorry situation worse, the teachers do not receive Social Security, and so their pension is the only thing they have.

The reaction from the guv? He came out and called it “reproachable,” which seems a bit mild, given the damage done and the precedent it sets.

You can argue—the teachers should have seen it coming; it was clear that the system was unsustainable. It’s also true that we have a very expensive government, and that our legislators make a killing, both when they’re in office and when they come back as “advisers.” Nor does it help that—according to Mr. Fernández—the Department of Education has the highest proportion of non-docent versus docent personnel in the country.

The saddest thing? According to an analysis by Joanisabel González in the print edition of El Nuevo Día, “Lo increíble es que Puerto Rico entrará en esta nueva parte del ciclo sin garantías de que escapará a la degradación crediticia”.

Simple translation! Even if we do this—and the House has in the last hour just passed the legislation—it may not be enough.

On the virtues of cold (reposted)

I wrote this post originally on October 25, 2012….


I grew up in a cold place, some of / felt like most of the year. I now live in a hot place. And for the most part, I don’t miss it. In fact, I do my best to avoid cold.

So why was I looking at this?

It’s Norway. And everything about it suggests cold—the brooding sky, the greys and ochres, the diffuse light, the shadows. Step into the water by mistake and your feet will be cold for days, seemingly.

Until you move to a radically different climate, you don’t realize the basic assumptions that you’ve made about your world. A couple of decades ago, I came on Raf standing at the sink, lost in thought, staring at—but not seeing—the water flow over his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Water,” he said. “This is how the water feels at home.”

I stuck my hand in it—it was tepid.

“Ridiculous,” I said. “Water is cold.”

Then I wondered—can I have a relationship with someone whose experience of the world is so fundamentally different that my own? 

Yes.

Although there are challenges.

It works the other way, too. Years ago, at the Conservatorio de Música I attended a master class—a young Puerto Rican singer was tackling Schubert’s Im Frühling (In Springtime). The voice was excellent, technique right in place, phrasing great.

So what was it that was just so slightly wrong?

The “master” got it right.

“Wonderful,” he said. “And tell me, what’s this song about.”

Well, of course she knew.

But also she didn’t.

“Have you ever experienced a northern winter?”

No.

So he described it, quite poetically. Your world becomes grey and black. You stand at the window and see the fine thin snow blowing like a ghost across the landscape.

Then he described spring. Equally poetically. The first time you see green after months of grey—you eyes are shocked, you stand and gape, wondering how you lived without that color. Taking your shirt off and feeling sunshine, on that first really warm day—how light you feel without that 10 pounds of parkas / sweaters / thick shirts.

“I think I understand,” said the soprano. “It’s sort of like going to the beach would be for us….”

The master smiled gently. There are things you have to experience.

And perhaps at a very young age. I live in a hot place, but my body doesn’t. Which is to say that every time I leave the house, I will be sweating before I’m out the door. I walk as one walks in a cold place, which is to say “get-the-hell-home-and-turn-on-the-furnace.”

Nor does my mind. I live in a large apartment. What did I think when I saw it first?

‘How in hell are we gonna heat this?’

In the mountains, I often wonder ‘how do they get up this road in winter?’

Cold tempers you, as the flame tempers steel. You have to prepare. You have to pit yourself against nature, which may overcome you.

I used to tell my students—those who didn’t know winter—that drunk guys coming home at night often dropped their keys. If they were really drunk, they made the mistake of searching too long for them…

…and died of exposure.

In the last three years of my mother’s life she broke two hips and had one open-heart surgery—all in the deepest depths of winter. Cursing, I would be sweating a storm in San Juan, barely able to believe that somewhere, ANYWHERE, it could be cold.

Then I stepped out of the El station in Chicago, and was hit with a blast of air mixed with sleet sandpapering my face. 

I hated it.

But I’m also glad I grew up with it….

(Im Frühling starts at 6" 10')