In Search of the Number 8 Bus

It was a day when it all piled up, a day when the chikungunya decided to move back in to the left hip, which was completely OK as long as I could lie in bed on my right side. There, there was absolutely no problem! But walking, even so far as to the bathroom? Not so good.

Nor did it help that I had broken part of a molar, and the tooth, feeling aggrieved perhaps, decided to join the left hip in a contest to see which could make me more miserable. So that left me directing traffic to the two extra-strength Tylenol: “hip,” I told one, “jaw” I told the other. Did they listen? Of course not….

I have, in fact, an excellent dentist—true, on an island where personalities tend to be plus sizes, his is a petite, but who cares? The only problem was that he was a bus ride away—but that was no problem, because I had taken that bus for 13 years. The ride would take 20 minutes. The wait could take an hour, so I left with an hour and 45 minutes to spare.

“They don’t have buses to transport people, they have buses to say they have buses, and to get more money to buy more buses,” Jorge had once sputtered to me, after he had arrived late to work, despite getting to the bus stop well in advance of his usual time. Oh, and Jorge lives on the most reliable bus line.

Well, buses are a big issue, right now, since Puerto Rico is in the middle of what has kicked off its shoes, settled onto the sofa, turned on the TV, hogged the remote, and declared that it will never leave. Nor is anybody bothering to use the last name—financial o económica—so familiar are we that it’s just la crisis.

And now la crisis—acting much like the chikungunya in its capricious way of attacking a different joint each day—is attacking the AMA, which would be the Metropolitan Bus Authority. And the AMA is part of the Highway and Transportation Department, and that agency? Seriously broke, says the governor, but fortunately, he has the solution! All it takes is to raise the petroleum tax from $9.25 per barrel to $15.50. See? No problem!

Sadly, the rest of the legislature—that pesky body of tree, not forest, see-ers—are having trouble imaging how they are going to walk through the town plazas and explain that to the crusty old men who gather there. Explain what? Well, the price of gasoline has just declined from record highs of four dollars a gallon, and now the governor wants to increase—functionally—the price by 16 cents a gallon? Oh, and these legislators? They’re from his party, not the opposition.

So the governor has been dishing up plates of cookies and good Puerto Rican coffee up the hill at the governors mansion, and how has that been going? Not so well, since El Nuevo Día has just announced electronically, Poca Asistencia de Legisladores a Reunión con el Gobernador. OK—how “poca” was the attendance (“asistencia")? Well, only six of the 18 senators bothered to show up, and only 11 of the 28 representatives. Oh, and that was two hours after the meeting started.

So how are things looking for the governor? No good, but not as bad as things are looking for the rest of us. Because the governor travels quite well, as I can tell you, having seen him come and go from the mansion. It starts with the cop in front of the wrought iron gate telling me to halt on my walk; it continues with my protest, “why should I stop if the gate isn’t even open.” The answer to this is “security,” and I point out: if I wanted to shoot the governor, I wouldn’t be passing his gate, only to be halfway down the block by the time the chauffeur drives through….

The governor, you see, requires three vehicles at least: a cop car in front, a cop car in back, and the tinted-window SUV in between. Oh, and did I mention the cops on motorcycles that are roaring behind the motorcade?

So is it likely that the governor is going to have a hard time getting to work, if the draconian measure that he proposes is taken? Because unless the governor gets his way, he’s taking his buses and locking them up, so there! No bus service, no ferry service to our two little islands of Culebra and Vieques, oh, and the Tren Urbano—the light rail service that transports 36,000 people on weekday? Well, the governor is closing that, too!

OK—all of this is what you can know, merely by reading—in air-conditioned comfort—the newspaper. But the reality? Get set, because that means a trip down to Covadonga, the bus terminal in the old city. And several interesting things will happen: first, the breeze that has been cooling you on your march to the terminal will abruptly quit, and you will instantly start sweating. Next, the noise level in the terminal will deafen you, since all of the buses are there, and all of them are running.

“Ah,” you say, “but there are buses!”

Very true, and there are drivers, as well. But what are they doing?

Drinking coffee and chatting. Oh, that’s about half of them; the other half? Sitting in their air-conditioned buses, watching us sweat. Is there a schedule? Of course not, so logically you should ask the driver when the bus is likely to move.

This will prompt a flurry of indignation, since it will be clear to the driver that you are implying that he is not doing his job, and since that will be taken as that most dreaded of Puerto Rican slurs—una falta de respeto­ or lack of respect—the driver will be obliged to denounce you and all riders like you, catalogue all the behaviors he has to deal with, classify you as the worst perpetrator of all of them, and then stalk away. Nor is that feeling you have that the bus has just been delayed at least half an hour unjustified. Because the driver will be talking loudly with his cohorts, gesticulating wildly, and throwing eye daggers your way. So everybody’s morning will be fucked.

Rather, you try not to make eye contact with the putative drivers, as they drink their coffee with their mates. And then, at last, at last—a driver gets into the bus! Can it be?

Of course not—remember that air conditioning? So you are sweltering, and the driver? Putting on his sweater!

At last, curious if his vehicle can still move, after so many centuries of inactivity, the driver starts the bus. He drives 20 feet to where you are standing, since that’s the rule: the buses park one place, you wait another. Now what happens?

Well, everybody—every last person—is going to have to ask the bus driver: is this the number 8 bus? Granted, it does have a sign to that effect, it also is in the lane reserved for the number 8 bus, and you have seen the bus driver everyday for the last six years—but still, why take chances? And just because he told the guy in front of you that it was the number 8, well—best to make sure.

Then comes the little problem—where’s my coin purse? Oh, and those pennies that you keep accumulating? Perfect place to ditch them, so it’s a long count—and why is that tall gringo behind you twitching so? Let’s see, 21, 22, 23—oh dear, I’m two short. So an appeal is made—and sure enough, the woman at the very end of the line has two pennies she can spare. Easy enough to go down there, kiss the lady, give her God’s blessing, and return triumphant with the change!

That, of course, is presuming that you pay with coins, since two years ago, the bus system integrated with the train system—and both now use the little train / bus card that you can “top up,” as the British say. The problem? Well, two years ago the system worked just fine. Now? Half of the meters that read the card—and deduct the electronic 75 cents—are broken! So that means that half of the time, half of the bus gets a free ride! This, in fact, was what puzzled the head of the bus authority, when he tried to figure out why revenue was increasing on the train, and decreasing on the buses.

It may be a free ride, but is it stress-free? Very likely not, since the bus will likely be crowded with schoolchildren, who talent base does not include murmuring. Of it could be two guys—best of friends—who chose to sit at opposite ends of the bus and yell amiably at each other. And then there are all the little old ladies who have traveled on the same bus with all the other little old ladies, so that means that when one of them gets off the bus? Well, it’s fifteen farewells—rather in the way families said farewell to young sons immigrating to the new world. Sensible, really, since we all know—little old ladies don’t last forever! Would you want to die, not having said farewell to doña María?

So now it’s time to get off the bus, but that’s a problem, because the driver—completely oblivious to social niceties—has closed the doors and moved from the curb at such a rate that the little old lady goes flying! Or would if there were fly space, but there’s not, since all of the adults are standing crammed next to each and watching the schoolchildren sitting in all the seats! Makes sense, since the school is the first stop, and we all know how tiring mental activity can be!

So the little old lady is unharmed, having bumped slightly man behind her, but no matter, because instantly the bus will erupt! The driver will be scolded, the little old lady will be quizzed—is she harmed, and no, though she does give her entire medical history, including childhood diseases—and the journey delayed. At last, she will move to the exit, which is in fact the entrance, since no one, NO ONE, would exit from the back of a bus? Why? When you can see the door right in front of you?

So the little old lady is exiting just as another lady is entering—not a good mix, since the little old lady is 78 pounds and the other lady could tackle a Green Bay Packer.

Now do you see why I left an hour and forty-five minutes to go see my dentist? Ahh, and I was needing that Novocain more than any junkie could want his heroin. So, down to the terminal, where….

…there was no bus.

Nor would there be a bus for the next 45 minutes, at which time, I boarded another bus to take an alternative, and still more convoluted way to the dentist. This involved transferring to a bus that almost never comes. How rare is it? Well, people have been known to take it, when they see, even if they have no particular need or desire to go where the bus goes. After all, you can boast that you took it to all of your fellow bus-riders!

And that was the bus that pulled up at the bus stop just as the bus I was riding on came up behind it. So that meant that I would again have reason to thank those long legs my parents had given me, since it would be another mad, panicked dash running from one bus to another. A dash involving screaming espere and pounding on the side of the bus and hoping against hope that someone would be in a wheelchair at the bus stop, since that would delay the process by at least fifteen minutes. So all of my blood had shifted to my skeletal muscles, and I was set for the dash—was gonna win it, too—when what did the bus driver do? He waited, in the middle of the intersection, 25 feet behind the desired bus, and refused to move or especially open the door, as I explained to him in three languages (bits of High School French drift through the mists of time under duress) that I wanted that bus. Once, the bus had zoomed off and become a dot in the landscape, a mere memory in the minds of men, only then, I tell you, did the bus pull up to the stop.

Now it wasn’t my hip, it wasn’t my hip, it was my sanity. Or rather, it wasn’t my sanity, since that had fled, and I was hot and sweating and late for my appointment and going down to the other terminal, where I saw that there was absolutely no bus. There wasn’t even anybody waiting. And somehow, I could bear it no more, since I did see three or four taxis, all empty, but did they deign to be flagged? No way—none of that New York foolishness!

And now the governor wants to suspend the bus service? The only question is….

…will anyone notice?                       

The Death Penalty…for Some

It may be a day when it’s better to choose your reality, rather than having it chosen for you. Which means that I could tell you this:

La cruel masacre de toda una familia y un quinto integrante de 13 años herido, ha despertado el debate en las redes sociales de la “Pena de Muerte” ya son miles los que atreves de diferentes medios sociales piden que los federales tomen jurisdicción y que se aplique la pena máxima que tantas veces ha sido tema de debate en el país.

Even if you know Spanish, you may not know the story behind “la cruel massacre,” of virtually an entire family, except for a thirteen-year old son, who was thrown off a bridge and assumed dead. Bad move, since it was he who stumbled to a house, related what had happened, and had the resident call 911.

It’s a story that disturbs, since it disrupts the narrative. Because here, in Puerto Rico, we can make some assumptions about the 700 to 1,000 murders that take place every year. They will happen late at night, when the drugs and the alcohol have taken their toll. They will happen in the street, or in the pubs, or in the parking lots of the pubs. And if they happen at home? It will be the jealous husband, or the abusive man, who kills. And the motive? Drugs or revenge. Whatever happens, it will not happen to a family looking like this:

This hits home, which is precisely the point. These people, gathered at some family celebration, are precisely like us: we know them, or could have known them, and could have been celebrating with them in that marquesina—the carport that often isn’t a carport, but rather a semi-outdoor, private, protected area that isn’t quite inside the house and equally isn’t outside the house. Think transitional area.

So we would have been there—that Saturday or that Sunday, celebraing the  birthday or the anniversary or the graduation…whatever it was. And it would have been a Saturday or Sunday because these people have jobs—just like us!—which means that they, like us, will never be the victims of “una cruel massacre,” since they will be in bed, sleeping, awaiting the alarm that will get them out of bed and propel them on their way to their jobs. There, we will greet them, if that had been our connection to them, and life will go on as normal.

It didn’t for this family. The father, presumably the second of the faces-blotted-out, had rented a dwelling to a man, who had neglected to pay. The father, Miguel Ortiz Díaz, had instituted proceedings to evict the tenants. On Monday night, two men—one of whom was the tenant—went to Ortiz’s house, ostensibly to pay. Instead, the two men killed Ortiz, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Then they abducted the two sons, killed one, and left the 13-year old injured.

And now? Well, the quote above states that the killing has “awakened the debate about the death penalty, since thousands of people in the social networks have requested that the Feds take over the case.”

Why?

Because although the death penalty is illegal under commonwealth law, it’s not under federal law. And that has traditionally been a big source of debate among those who favor independence: how is it that the Feds can come in and impose their wishes over us?

Because the answer to any question about the death penalty? Well, I’ve heard it for over two decades and it still makes me wince: “only God can decide to take a life….”

Look, even if I bought into the “God” thing, I can’t help thinking that we quite easily manage to take lives. There are all those Iraqis and Afghanis that we mowed down, as well as the “terrorists” we droned, and the prisoners in Guantanamo, on their hunger strike, and then what about all the children of immigrants to whom we deny healthcare, to say nothing of our homeless, or….

…get the picture?

So I am, in general, completely unpersuaded by the God thing. I do think, however, that the death penalty has to be approached very, very carefully: how many people on death row have been exonerated with DNA testing? And if there’s any question about the perpetrator of a crime? Forget the death penalty.

So it’s interesting, the fact that this massacre has provoked a groundswell of support for the death penalty—if in fact it has. It’s also disturbing—since I think that one of the reasons is precisely because the victims were precisely like us: job-holding, mortgage-paying, church-going people. Not, in short, people in the underworld.

But wait—isn’t a life a life? Something only God can take? If my son is hanging out in a bar at midnight, and gets in between the gun and the intended victim—well, isn’t his life and death as worthy of justice? Does it matter if someone is killed in a nice home in a good suburb of San Juan—with access control and landscaping, not rotting cars, in front of the house?

The murder has rocked the island. But today? I have gone to the beach, and then  to the café, where I observed a Buddhist monk in the sala poética giving a workshop on “transformando el coraje y el conficto con la meditación.” Coraje—anger. And there are ten people, meditating.

“Wow,” I told Jorge, “came for coffee, and got enlightenment instead.”

“She’s nice,” said Elizabeth, the manager of the shop, and referring to the Buddhist monk, or nun, or whatever she is, “but her voice is so soft and slow, if I listen to her, I’ll fall asleep.” Elizabeth has two elementary school kids: her two speeds are exhaustion and sleep.

Consider as well that I am sharing space with two German children, who are happily playing, and consulting their parents. The girl—only a year or two retired from her job as the Gerber baby—is a sort of made-to-order Nordic. Hitler himself would have patted her head, just to absorb some of that blondness. And the children are behaving well, since Herr papa and Frau grandmamma—sorry, too lazy to look it up—are quite firmly in charge.

Which is what I meant—it’s a day for choosing realities. Which means that I can be inside a bloodied living room, which in one account I read was described as “grotesca.” Or, I can hang in the café, observe two children who are in and soon out of my life, and then go about my day.

Any guess what I’m choosing?        

         

   

The Tiny Homes of Wisconsin

“Did you hear,” said Lady, “Roberto is dead….”

“Who’s Roberto?” I said.

“You know, the flower pot guy….”

It was typically Lady, to assume that I would know the name of the guy who had spent seemingly all his life resting his upper torso in one large planter holding a miniature palm tree, while resting his feet in another potter—but in fact I did. We all knew Roberto, and since we passed him several times a day, he was fixture in the landscape.

“So what did he die of,” I asked.

“Who knows, but he died….”

So I had seen Roberto, but had I ever helped him? Given him food or money? No, since I have a regular band to which I do give money, though come to think of it, I hadn’t seen the most persistent of the group, who used to come into the café and cadge funds. I would give him a dollar or two, and he would protest: he wanted five dollars to eat at Burger King. That stumped me, raising as it did the question of whether the guy had the obligation to take what I gave him and be grateful, or whether, in fact, it wasn’t quite reasonable. But why did I begin to dislike him, and start to feel like an automatic money machine? And that led, of course, to wondering whether the fact that I disliked him was reason enough to stop giving him money: his needs were unchanged, and wasn‘t that the main thing?

“So whatever happened to the old guy who stood outside the supermarket and begged for money, and would push your grocery cart home?” I asked Lady.

“Oh, he got in trouble with the police, since he was also being used by the mob to move drugs around,” said Lady. “So he’s somewhere, either with the police, or with the mob, or in jail. Anyway, not around….”

Well, it made sense, in a way. If you were homeless, why not take what money you can get and move some drugs?

To live in Old San Juan is to live in constant contact with the homeless. This morning, taking the bus? The woman who wears tight short and a tight tank top—you know, the one who sits in front of the old Western Bank—asked me for a quarter. Coming back from the beach, a homeless man was taking a shower at the place where the surfers rinse their boards off. And at some point today, I’ll pass the profoundly disturbing sight of a ragged, filthy man, who will look at me blankly as he has for several years and ask, “do you have one change?” I will smile, shake my head no, and go on, though I have considered, as an English teacher, pointing out the difference between “one” and “any.”

There are times I wonder about our attitudes about homelessness: when I was a kid, there was no such thing, there was only vagrancy, which carried quite a kick. What did it mean? That you were shirking your duty to get on with your life, to exert yourself, to take pride and get a job and put a roof over your head. What? You’re in a park drinking a bottle of cheap wine in the middle of the afternoon? Of course the police should go after you!

It’s now 2014, and I get it now. I’ve had, after all, that Friday morning meeting, in which I went from jobful to jobless in 20 minutes—never have I seen Human Resources work so efficiently! And I have faced too many bottles of wine not to know that some day, I could wake up and want to reach for one. This is called, I’m told, the “morning bottle,” and it’s not a good sign.

So the double edge sword of addiction and joblessness has at times swung quite close to my side, and may one day fell me. I ponder it, at times: would I sleep at the beach? Trust myself to a doorway? Or would I, as I see so many homeless people do, sleep during the day, all the better to be awake and vigilant during the night?

Of course, I won’t have to worry about the most terrifying thing of all: cold. But consider the fate of the homeless in Madison, Wisconsin: according to Huffington Post, there are 3370 homeless people in the city of 250,000. And given that it’s my hometown, I can tell you about cold. Why am I still sweating, walking the streets of San Juan?

Because here, the idea is to stroll, to amble, to move leisurely, all the while wearing a coat or sweater. But I’m still back on those frigid streets of Wisconsin, where the idea is to charge, stride, trot—all the better to get the hell home and sit next to the radiator. OK, so what would I do if I were homeless in Wisconsin? Well, I’d better hope for this:

Cute, hunh? It’s one of nine 99-square feet houses built in Madison and inaugurated recently. They cost 5,000 dollars each, and are heated with propane and solar panels. Here’s a picture of the inside:

Madison is one of a half dozen cities to start this project, which came about after the Occupy Madison movement had folded—or rather, been busted up. So the organizers had an epiphany: they had to comply with every last national, state, and local regulation if they wanted to build these houses. Here’s what one source said:

Local organizers also state “Our approach to working within the system came only after we realized that without dotting every “i”, and crossing every “t”, the city and the county would never let us operate– they used every opportunity to enforce ordinances, regulations, and seemingly arbitrary whims against us. This paralleled precisely the persecution of everyday, unaffiliated, homeless individuals. When you are homeless, “the system” is rife with obstacles designed to prevent creative innovation or adaptation– we at Occupy Madison experienced the same headaches.

Occupy Madison, by the way, has this to say:

“Now is a critical time for us financially– if we can’t raise enough funds to pay for making the site as wonderful as it is, there’s a real risk our whole project could go under.” Donations can be sent to PayPal account http://bit.ly/1uSYGew Fundraisers in the past have been matched on a dollar per dollar basis and none of current progress would be possible without a 100% volunteer effort.

Is it worth it? Well, even if you subscribe to the “vagrant” theory, you might consider this:

A study recent study followed the progress of the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) in Seattle, WA. All the residents at this Housing First-styled residence had severe alcohol problems and varying medical and mental health conditions. When taking into account all costs – including housing costs – the participants in the 1811 Eastlake program cost $2,449 less per person per month than those who were in conventional city shelters, as described in the article from the Journal of American Medical Association.

Homeless people get ill a lot, and often wait until their condition is extreme—and then where do they go? Emergency rooms. And who picks up the tab? Or consider that homeless people also go to prisons and jails—another cost to society.

If we can’t be charitable, at least can’t we be sensible?

                                                                                                                                      

      

The Soft Dust of Time

I had read the book, Joys and Sorrows, a biography of Pau Casals, and every cellist has seen the pictures: the aged cellist walking arm in arm with his young wife, Martita, on the beach. Then I moved to Puerto Rico, and went to the museum in his honor in Old San Juan; there, I peered at the memorabilia, watched a few tapes of the old Casals Festivals, and especially, peered through the Plexiglas case at his cello.

Well, one of his cellos, since Wikipedia has confirmed what I remembered: Casals played at least two Gofrillers throughout the course of his career. The instrument I remember was a Vuillaume: not quite a Gofriller, but still a very distinguished French luthier of the 19^th century.

“What were those evenings like,” I would ask Mr. Fernández decades ago—what cellist wouldn’t want to know what the early Casals Festivals had been like? Back when it was a festival, instead of what it has now become, which is a two-week concert series of orchestras, chamber groups, and the obligatory cellist brought in. Yes, the concerts can be excellent, but…

“…in the old days, all the great musicians would come, stay, spend several weeks, give master classes. Best of all, you could go to the rehearsals—that’s when I heard my first Messiah. Beverly Sills, Alicia de Larrocha, Alexander Schneider—they all came. And since it was held at UPR Theater, I could walk through town and attend the rehearsals. It was magical….”

Nor was he alone; it was what everyone said who remembered those days. And the festival was hardly the most important thing that Casals did for music in Puerto Rico—he also founded or helped found the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico.

Casals died in 1973, in the year of the deaths of the three great Pablos: Casals, Picasso, and Neruda. And what had happened since then?

Let me tell you a melancholy fact, dear Reader: however great you were in life, in death you take your chances. Or, rather, the dust of the passing years settles softly on all your accomplishments and fame. Casals will always be revered as a cellist, a composer, and especially as a man. But the politicians? The people who direct public policy? The bureaucrats who assign the funds? Many of them were not yet born on that day when Casals died.

I tell you that because I have just walked the two blocks to where the Casals Museum once was and should be. And what did I see? An abandoned building, as I knew I would. Because I had bumped into the directors of the museum a couple of years ago; we had chatted, and they had told me that the instrument—the presumed Vuillaume—of the Museum had been restored by my friend Rodrigo Correa, who had laid down the law: that instrument was never going back to that site. Where is it, instead? Apparently, for reasons I’ve now forgotten, somewhere in Texas.

And the rest of the collection? Scattered, since, well, here’s the official explanation, from El Nuevo Día of August on 2013:

“El Museo Pablo Casals nunca ha cerrado sus puertas al público, lo que pasa es que el deterioro del antiguo edificio en la Calle San José (el Viejo San Juan) afectaba. La casa parecía una casa fantasma y nosotros no podíamos hacer nada, porque el edificio es del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña”, puntualizó

(“The Pablo Casals Museum has never closed its doors to the public, what happens is (sic) the deterioration of the old building in Old San Juan on San José Street was affecting it. The house seemed like a ghost house and we could not do anything, since the building belongs to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.”)

Yeah?

To a bureaucratic mind, this may make sense, but to the rest of us? And what did Casals’ wife think? Because after I had watched a documentary of Casals on YouTube, I had become interested in Martita Casals Istomin; for one thing, she was obviously a very talented cellist who had stopped playing—at least publically—and devoted herself to Casals. She later married the pianist Eugene Istomin, and had been at various times the Artistic Director of Kennedy Center and the president of the Manhattan School of Music. And as you can see in the clip below, the years have faded neither her beauty nor her charm.

Well, in the course of the clip, the name of Casals’ good friend Emanuel Moór was mentioned—and I wondered: could it be? Because I had grown up hearing about Moór, but not as a composer, but as the inventor of the double keyboard piano—of which my mentor, Gunnar Johansen, had had two. One—was it the Bösendorfer?—had lived upstairs, the other had been in the basement studio. The sound of those pianos still rings in my ears.

So it was time to check out Moór, of whom Casals had thought highly. The cellist Steven Isserlis apparently didn’t think much of him, and no one will ever say that the composer is played ad nauseum. But is there anything there? YouTube, of course, held the answer.

It came in the form of a double cello concerto, written for Casals and his first wife, the Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia. And it’s so rare that the first movement has had only 531 hits. Oh, and the “orchestra” is in fact a piano reduction, though the soloists are excellent.

Two dead cellists; two old friends; a widow twice over; a closed museum; a cello in exile, in Texas….

Is that why this music sounds so evocative?