When a Man Becomes a Swan

Well, even I can’t keep it up forever.

There’s a limit to how much storming around I can do, how much moral outrage I can generate, how much rant I can produce.

Time to move on.

Which is not to say that I get it. Romney was governor of Massachusetts for four years from 2003 to 2007. Top federal tax rate is 35%. The guy must have been in the top bracket, right? I mean, being Gov has gotta pay better than Burger King, right?

Mental hygiene, Marc….

I admit it, the tail of the hurricane is still producing a few gusty winds. I considered starting a little business. T shirts!

Here’s the first:

OK, try this:

And for the truly tasteless:

Well, well. I considered starting a little competition for readers of this blog. Who, in the next week, can create the funniest, most mordant t-shirt? But we gotta move on. Can’t be spitting nails all our lives. So take a look at this:

Mitt Romney, Go Right To Your Room!

It was a day when unwittingly I channeled Franny.

It was a story she told me once, after she had said she was being especially nice to Molly, her dog.

Why?

Well, she had scolded Molly unknowingly the day before.

Explanation?

“Well, I got up as I always do and set about the morning chores. Fed the cats, put wood in the stove, made the bed. Put Molly out to eat and do her business. Turned on the radio, and started to make breakfast. Well, the news was just dreadful that day. And that damn Bush was trying to justify his invasion of Iraq! When I think of the sympathy and good will of the entire world after September 11 and then he has to go and squander it all and invade a foreign country under the flimsiest of excuses! And the more he spoke, the madder I got. And then he got stuck in one his sentences and couldn’t get out of it! Damn it! Well, I was pretty steamed up, and went stomping around the house….”

“So what’s that got to do with the dog?”

“Well, I went to let the dog in, and she wasn’t in sight. Then I saw her, crouching under the porch. So I stormed over there and demanded ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!’ And she just whimpered. So I looked around. No trash anywhere, so she hadn’t gotten into that. No smell, so she hadn’t rolled in anything. Just stood there with her tail between her legs, looking at me with those brown eyes….”

“Right…and?”

“Well, I realized then.  I…um…had been talking to George Bush….”

Those who knew her will understand. She could get up a head of steam.

And so can I. Rather, so did I.

Why?

Mitt Romney said yesterday that he had never paid less than 13% in taxes.

WHAT!

Here’s what I said:

YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE AND YOU HAVE JUST LOST THE ELECTION AND I AM DAMNED MAD AND DAMNED GLAD. I MADE 35, 000$ DOLLARS LAST YEAR AND I PAID 14 PERCENT ON IT! AND YOU HAVE THE FUCKING GALL TO TELL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT YOU PAY THAT MISERLY 13 PERCENT ON YOUR FUCKING QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS! 

And then…

YOU KNOW, MY FATHER WAS A REPUBLICAN, BUT HE WASN’T ANYTHING LIKE THE KIND OF SLEAZEBAG YOU ARE! HE BELIEVED IN SMALL GOVERNMENT AND FISCAL PRUDENCE AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND PAY-AS-YOU-GO AND DON’T SPEND MONEY YOU DON’T HAVE. RIGHT! SO DO I! 

Cat looks up, interested…

AND THAT’S THE WAY I RAN MY LIFE WHEN I HAD A LIFE AND HAD A JOB AND GOT UP EVERY FUCKING MORNING AT 5 AM AND WENT TO WORK. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, MITT! MY FATHER WOULD BE ASHAMED OF A PARTY OF RICH JERKS WHO ARE FILLED WITH HATE FOR ANYBODY LIKE THE HUNDREDS OF IMMIGRANT KIDS WHO ARE FILLING CHURCHES IN LOWER MANHATTAN TO APPLY FOR LEGAL STATUS AND MAKE A BETTER LIFE FOR THEMSELVES. WHO DEREGULATED THE BANKING INDUSTRY SO THEY COULD MAKE MONEY FOR THEMSELVES AND THEN THREW US INTO A DEPRESSION, WHICH PARTLY COST ME MY JOB! WHO CAN’T STAND A BLACK GUY IN THE WHITE HOUSE! SHAME ON YOU!

Storm into the kitchen, cat follows!

I could go on but…look, you get my drift.

I’m better today. I took my rain walk, and sure enough, sought refuge under one of the balconies when the predicted downpour arrived. I listened to Haydn. And then I channeled Jack.

Where’s the press? 

With about three keystrokes, I figured out the federal tax rate in 2011 for a guy making 35,000 bucks a year.

15%.

What part of this don’t people get? Don’t people know how much they pay in taxes?

“I’m not paying anything this year,” my students would say in relief on April 15.

Wrong—you’ve been paying through the nose all year. You just aren’t gonna get slugged extra.

So what am I gonna do? 

Or what are we gonna do?

Here’s my plan. Dig out your tax forms for the year 2011. Redact them—you don’t want those jerks playing around with you social security number. And when Mitt comes to town? Go to the rally wearing a big placard, with your annual salary and your tax rate written on it. 

And wave your tax returns at him. Let him take a look at what real people are paying.

Oh, and Mitt?

Go to your room. Don’t come out until you’re ready to say you’re sorry!

All Wrong, As Usual!

OK, look—if this post is more all-over-the-map than usual, there’s a reason.

The damn iPod is all twitty again.

Or rather, it’s following its own internal logic.

Here is—I think—the explanation. 

I had a hankering to hear the opus 40 cello sonata of Shostakovich. So I went into iTunes and looked it up. And there was the big boy himself—Rostropovich, for whom the sonata was written. 

Well, that’s like hearing King James read the Bible. Nobody has ever said Rostropovich couldn’t find his way around a cello.

Eleven bucks—I nabbed it. 

Plus I got a zillion other pieces—this must have been a box set with five or six discs.

And each disc starts with the number one.

Get where I’m going? 

Right, came to the end of the 1^st movement, and then got a tango by Astor Whatever-his-name-is (Pizzarella? Doesn’t seem right…).

Fine, listened to that. Then got a bit of Prokofiev. Then the second movement of the Schumann cello concerto. Then the second movement of the Shostakovich.

Well, I either pressed the damn shuffle key again (possible) or the iPod is playing EVERY track 1 before it progresses to track 2 (likely).

Well, I’m nothing if not resilient these days—thanks, Wal-Mart!—and the purpose of the daily trot is just the trot. And saying, of course, buen día to everyone I meet.

Especially strangers.

It was a thing of Sam Walton’s—the ten foot rule. You gotta say hello, smile, and offer help to anyone within ten feet. That’s if you’re in a store. Otherwise, just smile and say hello.

Well, I did it, of course. Franny must have had some effect on me. Remember that “regular morning hour” her report card adjured on her (not sure that’s correct) when she was a kid? 

Well, when Sam speaks, you listen!

It’s part of making the day. If you’ve been laid off, you don’t get up and lie on the sofa. You grab your shoes and iPad and get moving.

And saying hello to people makes friends, connections. Which is why I was talking to Elvin, the 64 year old Nuyorican who’s working on the building next door.

Fascinating guy. Lives in La Perla, one of the most storied communities of Puerto Rico. Quite literally, the social anthropologist Oscar Lewis wrote extensively about it in 1967 his book La Vida.

OK—for people who don’t know Puerto Rico. Viejo San Juan is the oldest city on the island, and was walled / fortified by the Spaniards. It’s charming—got blue cobblestones that are iridescent when wet, wonderful colonial architecture, vibrant Caribbean colors.

La Perla is its shadow.

Almost literally.  Because the walls are still intact, and the community is wedged between the walls of the Old City and the sea. Take a look!

 Charming, right?

Yes and no. La Perla sprung up quite spontaneously about a century ago. All the cooks and servants for the rich people of Old San Juan, needed a place to sleep, right? And nobody had much money (‘cept for those rich people, who even so may not have had much…). So they went through the gates of the walls, past the cemetery, and found a little land. Built a little house with whatever they could find. And that’s where they lived. 

Everything was fine, and, in a sense, still is. Everybody knows Elvin, the guy I was chatting with yesterday. Everyone likes him. His shop is right in front of the beach, and he sleeps with his window open—no bars, unlike the rest of us. Nothing but salt air between him and the sea.

Sleeps well, too.

Unlike the rest of us, who are living in fear, in gated communities behind barred windows and doors. Oh—and the latest trend? Putting GPS sensors in your kid’s backpacks, so you can track ‘em if anything happens to them….

But if you’re safe in La Perla, you’re safer than anywhere in the world.

Why?

“Anyone messes with my stuff, I spread the word. They find out who did it, tie him up, and throw him in the ocean.”

Remember—there are sharks off the coast of Puerto Rico.

And the “they?”

Well, Spanish is less fussy about specifying the subject—less fussy than English. You can say lo encuentran—literally, they encounter him—and everyone gets it.

But the they may well be somewhat different than the good, hardworking types of a century ago. And La Perla is perhaps not quite so poor. The wood shacks have become concrete houses, over the years. And one of them—you can see from the safety of the walls—has a swimming pool on the roof.

Overlooking the ocean.

Nice!

So it’s not quite the community that Elvin remembers as a kid. His aunt raised him in La Perla. When she left the house, she told her neighbor. Neighbor looked after the house. Aunt came home, cooked, and gave the first plate—arroz conhabichuelas, no doubt, and hmmmm….I can taste ‘em!—to the neighbor.

Actually, the whole neighborhood ate together. People brought what they had, passed it around, sat, talked, laughed, told stories.

Oh, and watch out—‘cause ANY adult could smack a kid who needed it….

Well, those days are gone. Elvin worries, thinks Puerto Rico is going to hell in a hand basket. 

“I hope it doesn’t go the way of France,” he said.

“Two hundred years ago?” I said, startled.

Remember when kids knew about the French Revolution?

“Yup,” he replied.

Well, he’s a good man, my new friend Elvin. Just one little thing.

He’s technically a squatter. 

And that’s where Harry comes into the picture.

“Did you once tell me that reality is different in Puerto Rico? Years ago, in Chicago?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Look, there was land that nobody wanted and there was wood that nobody wanted and Elvin’s aunt’s father or grandfather needed a place to sleep, so what’s the deal?

Turns out that somebody wants it, now.

“Sometime between 2005 and 2007 Donald Trump was fascinated with La Perla as it would be a great place to make a resort. He was looking at it from above and wanted to walk down and see it closer but his bodyguards wouldn’t let him. La Perla residents saw this, heard him [sic.] we know what’s going on. Also some Spanish developers apparently have their eye on the area as well,” Gómez told reporters.

Go ahead, google “La Perla Puerto Rico Donald Trump” and you’ll get the prdailysun.com article from which I stole the above.

Well, I started this post by typing out the title—All Wrong, As Usual. That’s because I had read an article about how to create a great blog. Gotta have keywords right near the top (“keywords?” ummmmm???…). Gotta put in links. And tags.

I was going to tell you that I’m doing this blog all wrong.

But then Elvin jumped into the post, and then La Perla, and now we’re forced into the question of whether we’d prefer to have Trump / Spanish developers and a resort or…

…drug dealers reclining in their infinity pools after a hard night’s work in the puntos de drogas or…

…the remnants of the descendents of Elvin’s aunt, who still remember a place that was and that now isn’t and that still is.

And I’m doing it wrong?

Take an extra dose….

I wrote some time ago about Jack, and his quirky habit of writing to the presidents of companies whose products he had bought. They—or their secretaries—always responded, and a whimsical, perhaps gently satirical correspondence evolved. Seems like a different time—quieter, gentler. And I remembered Westinghouse, and its funny little trademark. Where’d Westinghouse go off to, I mused.

Well, today I wondered about Parker Pen. What’s up with those guys?

Oh, but first—you have taken your anti-depressants today, haven’t you?

Parker Pen was founded in Paul Ryan’s hometown—Janesville, Wisconsin. I knew that, of course, because Jack would on occasion refer to “old man Parker.” He started the whole company in 1888. Knew everybody in town, everybody knew him.

And Janesville, thought Jack, was a nice little town. Good people. Nice place to live. Not like Rockford—a hardscrabble city.

And old man Parker did OK for himself. Got a patent in 1894 for something called the “Lucky Curve” pen, and then, in 1931, developed the “quink.” That would be “quick drying ink”—and it eliminated the need for blotting.

Turned out to be a hit. The Parker pen was number one or two in the world for forty years between 1920 and the sixties. They got around—the company had manufacturing units in Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, Mexico and the UK.

Oh, and the armistice that ended World War II?

Signed with a Parker pen!

Things got a little screwy in the seventies, when the company bought, and then sold, Manpower, the temp agency. Also, strangely, an automotive sensor company. (Don’t know what that’s about).

But not as screwy as in 1987, when there was a management buyout, and the company moved to Newhaven, England. Then, in 1991, Gillette bought the company. They manufacture, you may recall, PaperMate.

And then, in the summer of 2009, the company announced two things. Production in Newhaven was moving to France. 180 jobs lost. 

And operations ceased in Janesville, Wisconsin. Here’s what the company said:

This decision is a response to structural issues accelerated by market trends and is in no way a reflection on the highly valued work performed by our Janesville employees over the years.

Gee—why does this sound familiar?

“Not one job will be lost,” they announced at Wal-Mart, in a special meeting called to boost morale and quell rumors.

Well, it was true. The day I was terminated, I was told that the position I held had been eliminated. But there were other positions available! I was given a list!

Cake decorator in the Ponce store?

Night shift receiving in Carolina?

I stopped reading after that.

You know, old man Parker probably made a bundle. He also had to walk down the streets of Janesville, Wisconsin. People looked him in the eye, greeted him. His kids went to the same school as the kids of the guys working in the factory.

Was he a good guy, a nice guy?

Jack never said.

They both operated under one principle:

You don’t do that to good people.

Sorry, that’s the “highly valued workers of our Janesville operation over the years.”

And Thus Spoke Susan

Readers of this blog—which, I’m happy to report, include folk from Spain (17), Russia (11), UK (6), Trinidad and Tobago (3) and one each from France and Ireland—know that I’m busying myself by listening to Haydn’s The Creation. Well, why not? For seven years I sat in a room and threw pencils at the students. Don’t I get a break?

And speaking of breaks, why do I have to write every day? Can’t somebody else shoulder the burden? And since this blog is now international, shouldn’t it start getting serious?

Well, it was puzzling me, yesterday, as I sat in the Internet café absorbing the air conditioning. What to say about my paisano, my countryman, my almost neighbor?

Paul Ryan. Resident—or so I thought—of Janesville, Wisconsin. The very city my father, Jack, was born in! And a man who has cheese flowing in his veins (as he disturbingly said yesterday). 

But what to say?

Well, those years of being a teacher paid off. A student asks a question you can’t answer? Send him to the library to do some research! Get somebody else to do the work.

Susan!

I dashed off an email, asking if she might say a few words about the man, and then began to feel a little bad. Was it an imposition? Was it fair?

Would Jack approve?

Would Susan feel a bit used? She’s a busy lady, after all.

Answer came back in 45 minutes!

And here she is:

The New York Times (part of the liberal media) this morning (August 13) published a story on Paul Ryan (“Conservative Star’s Small Town Roots”). It leads with “the death of his father when Mr. Ryan was only 16 punctured his life of math tests and bike riding . . . ‘Paul went to work at McDonald’s and began to pull his own weight . . . ‘ says his brother. ‘It is remarkable that he chose a path of individual responsibility and maturity rather than letting grief take a different course.’”

The article continues: “His self-reliance followed him to summer camp, where as a counselor he canoed and hiked, and into young adulthood, where he took up deer hunting, a fact noted in his engagement notice in 2000 in The Milwaukee Journal- Sentinel. “Ryan is an avid hunter and fisherman,” the paper reported, “who does his own skinning and butchering and makes his own Polish sausage and bratwurst.”

What you won’t read in this lengthy hagiography is that Ryan’s mother inherited a bundle from her family’s fortune*, his father was a successful lawyer, the camp Ryan went to was Camp Manito-wish (a pricey camp in Northern Wisconsin -- the price today runs from $2000 for two weeks of basic camp to $12,300 for three weeks on an expedition), the Ryans lived on Courthouse Hill in Janesville (and still do --at least for voting purposes, although he’s rarely left Washington since graduating from college). But the NYT article makes him sound like a typical small town kid, bike and paper route, and appealing to Palin fans’ love of hunting and butchering.

As a student (Miami University in Ohio), Ryan was described as “a freshman with a Ph.D. attitude” but Ryan only completed a bachelor’s degree in -- well, they don’t tell us what his major was. He was in too big a hurry to get to Washington. In summers he was an intern there for GOP politicians. Upon graduation did he get a job and some real-world work experience? He did work briefly in the family construction business founded by his great-grandfather. (In the mail room, no doubt.) But not for long. He ran for Congress and scurried back to Washington.

Besides being entitled, Ryan is a hard-core Catholic -- he is adamantly opposed to not only abortion (even in cases of rape or incest), but also birth control. He hates gays and loves guns. Not only for hunting, evidently, as he supports concealed carry of handguns and the kind of weapons used to kill people in the Colorado theater and the Wisconsin Sikh temple.

The article winds up with “Ask one of the 87 Republican freshmen who came rolling into Washington in 2010 — many of them with no political experience — whom they most idolize in Congress, and chances are Paul Ryan’s name will come up.”

Interesting, as the Tea Party loathes Washington insiders, and Ryan is as insider as it gets.

So the GOP has given us two men from privileged backgrounds and money, neither of whom appears to have done a day of sweaty work in his life, both of whom are deeply embedded in authoritarian, patriarchal, anti-woman religions. 

 *See Esquire Magazine: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-family-wealth-11644997

Wow! Guess I got the answer there!

Well, I did ask. And I pondered it all today, on the daily trot. The Creation, I had decided, was what was called for, after such a gloomy report from home. And I had decided that The Creation would be done in German, since the English version, apparently, resembles a bad computer-translation. Here’s WikiPedia on the subject:

Van Swieten was evidently not a fully fluent speaker of English, and the metrically-matched English version of the libretto has given rise to criticism and various attempts at improvement. Indeed, the English version is sufficiently awkward that the work is sometimes performed in German even in English-speaking countries. One passage describing the freshly minted Adam’s forehead ended up, “The large and arched front sublime/of wisdom deep declares the seat”. The discussion below quotes the German text as representing van Swieten's best efforts, with fairly literal renderings of the German into English; for the full versions of both texts see the links at the end of this article.

Right—German it is! So all I understand are three words: Und Godd sprach. And God spoke. Until I came to this, the slyest and most respectful homage to Handel possible.

Tire 'em Out!

Murder. It’s so charged with emotion that it’s hard to think rationally about it.

Here are two facts: The New Day reported that 14 people had been killed between Friday and noon on Sunday; 30,000 people marched under a broiling sun from the capital to El Morro in a demonstration against the savage crimes committed on our streets daily.

I didn’t march.

Not because I didn’t believe in the cause. 

Because I think it’s the wrong approach.

And I was thinking of Harry, whom finally I saw last week. We talked briefly about a TED program he had seen given by a mediator who works in broken states, such as the Balkans.

Harry’s view?

We’re very close to becoming the Balkans.

And one of the first things that the mediator does?

Keeps young men busy.

Why?

They’re the ones killing.

OK—is that true? Well, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Departmentof Justice…

…yes.

In the years from 1976 to 2005, 65.0% of killers were between the age of 18 and 34. And 52.7% of victims were between 18 and 34.

Oh, and men are nine times more likely to murder than women. 

Bottom line—a guy in his twenties with nothing to do is dangerous. He drinks. He looks at other guy’s girlfriends. He joins gangs and starts abusing drugs. 

He murders or is murdered.

So the Balkan guy says keep ‘em busy. Wear ‘em out. Get ‘em good and tired and they don’t go out to the pubs and drink until daylight.

They go to bed.

And train them to do something. Make them carpenters or bricklayers or furniture reupholsters or something. Just put them to work.

In addition, get them to believe in something. This is our island. I’m part of rebuilding my country. I’m making a better place for myself and my family.

Send them out and get them to fix things. The schools opened last week, and were predictably a mess. Dirty halls, leaking toilets, trash in the playground—the usual nonsense we’ve come to expect.

What were all those twenty-year-old guys doing all summer?

Drinking and killing.

There’s a lot of stuff to be done. Take the orange bus, as I did for seven years, down highway 1. Look out the window. There’s trash all over the place. Go out to the kiosks of Luquillo, but skip the alcapurria. Go to the beach instead. Same thing.

Here’s my plan. Every boy serves a year of National Service—picking up the trash, building park shelters, repairing toilets. At the end of the year, the kid decides—do I want to go to college? If so, and if he is accepted, then let him go to school. And monitor that he actually completes the semester.

A guy doesn’t want to go to the university? Then he goes into a training program for a skill of his choice. Teach him to be a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter. Then let him get a job.

And monitor that for a couple of years.

Expensive?

Sure. So is sending millions if not billions of dollars in welfare payments to able-bodied kids who do nothing until they murder.

The people who marched yesterday heard words that we all should value: respect, integrity, tolerance. But it may be that we need a discussion on a simpler yet vaster scale.

We gotta tire these kids out.

Valores intachables

Those were the words used by a colleague to describe federal judge Salvador Casellas.

Valores intachables—impeccable values. That’s Mr. Fernández’s translation. But I looked it up—una tacha is a blemish.

And what if it’s true? What if the judge possesses unblemished values?

Then it’s a Greek, not a Caribbean, tragedy.

And I’ve wronged the judge.

Well, he’s no lightweight. Born in 1935, got his law degree from Harvard in 1961, served in the army for two years, worked at Puerto Rico’s most prestigious law firm, was appointed federal judge in 1994, and senior judge in 2005.

Do the math. The man is in his late seventies, and has had a distinguished career. Only now does he have…

…una tacha.

Well, we were discussing him at the dinner table last night. And Raf, as always, has a twist on the events. Carmen, he thinks, wanted a divorce. Pablo was jealous. He sets up a carjacking, and one of the guns “stolen” was a rare weapon, called a “cop killer.”

Goes through bulletproof vests.

Oh, and by the way, that’s the type of weapon that dispatched Carmen.

So, goes the theory of Mr. Fernández, Carmen goes through with her plans. She leaves home briefly, but comes back because her daughter is distressed. She’s reading by the pool. Pablo comes out, shoots her between the eyebrow and in the left chest.

Then empties 14 or 15 more shots in her. 

He goes to the bathroom—where apparently the blood was detected. Takes a shower. Then goes to visit Daddy.

Who knows nothing.

Pablo acts normally—some guys can. Leaves after a while, and then comes home to see the “intruder” leaping the fence.

A ten-foot cyclone fence with razor wire on top and vegetation on both sides that is intact with no sign of trampling.

Pablo fires the shots needed to establish an alibi of discovering an intruder, goes inside and calls the police. Then Daddy.

Or maybe the reverse order.

Then, this honorable judge, who has worked and struggled a lifetime, makes the mistake that will cost him his reputation.

He goes to the crime scene.

Why?

He doesn’t trust the cops.

And he loves his son.

If it happened that way, if this honorable man instinctively knew that the cops would make a botch of it and raced to safeguard his son, then yes, it’s a tragedy.

Not a Greek, not a Puerto Rican tragedy.

A tragedy for us all.

Who Killed Carmen Paredes?

Disclaimers first: I came to this story late. I only got curious about it when I saw the photo clip of Senior Federal Judge Salvador Casellas observing the paramedics loading his daughter-in-law’s corpse into the ambulance.

First question—what was he doing there?

Well, the cops let him in.

Into a crime scene?

Second question—how did the daughter-in-law die?

What version do you want?

According to the son of the judge, Pablo Casellas, it all started with a carjacking near a shooting range. Pablo has a nice little collection of guns, and was off on Father’s Day to do a little practice. Only problem was that the range was closed.

OK, he reports the crime, and the missing guns. Then a couple weeks later, on the 14^th of July, Pablo goes to visit his father, the judge. Comes home at 9:40 in the morning, sees an intruder leaping from the roof of his garage, goes to get his gun, comes back and shoots, to no avail. Then discovers his wife dead by the side of the pool.

Well, the New Day (El Nuevo Día—our local rag) is now painting a different picture. According to the Day, the evidence is piling up against Pablo. The police noted signs even in their initial investigation that the victim, Carmen Paredes, had been shot earlier than 9:40, as Pablo said. Neighbors allege that they heard shots earlier, at 8:30 or so. There is evidence that Paredes was killed in a different part of the house, and that the scene had been cleaned. Pablo is filmed leaving his closed neighborhood at 9:14, not 8:30 as he stated. There are blood stains in Pablo’s BMW and on his clothes, both of which were confiscated from…

…the judge’s house.

Just a second….

Had to read that last long paragraph again. Why? Well, it beggars belief. And you know, the questions in my mind multiply.

First, what kind of guy goes running to his father after he murders his wife? What in God’s name must their relation be? And not for the first time I begin to appreciate Jack, my father. Why? Because the first thing he would have done, had I come fleeing home with blood on my hands?

Call the cops!

Second question? What kind of cop allows Daddy—even or perhaps especially if he is a federal judge—into a crime scene?

Third question—where’s the press? Go to Google, as I did. Type in Salvador Casellas. And you’ll get, yes, information in Spanish about these goings-on. Fine! In English? Not in the first five pages, which I scrolled through in disgust.

Fourth question—is this where Puerto Rico has come to? That almost a month after a woman was killed, her husband still has not been charged?

Oh, and the question I DON’T have?

Who killed Carmen Paredes?

The Worst Thing That Can Happen

Well, it’s not, of course. I mean, come on—I should know a thing or two about proportions. What have I lost in the last two years? My mother, my job, my mind.

Why do I think losing my cell phone is the worst tragedy?

Well it was there, and then it wasn’t. Happened two weeks ago, and I took desperate measures immediately.

Cleaned the house!

All right, just picked it up—there’s still dust everywhere. But that, sadly, was no help at all.

It’s not there.

Or rather, it’s not here. 

So maybe it was there. Internet café? Grocery store? Radio Shack, where I had gone to get new headphones? (Yeah, for a day I was without communication AND music!)

It’s neither here nor there.

Or rather, it’s not neither nor there. 

“I’d rather lose my wallet,” I said almost in tears to the kid at the café.

“Oh, I know,” he breathed. Short of cancer or AIDS, this plight evokes the maximum in hushed commiseration….

It’s not the phone—it’s the contact list.

For the phone, you see, is really nothing. It played a tune, I flipped it open, and somebody was there. Alternatively, I flipped it open, pressed contacts, keyed “R” and instantly came up with Raf.

Little beeping noises….

“Hey, waddya want for dinner?”

“I dunno, you decide.”

“Right, see you at six…”

And that was it.

So why do I miss it so much?

Because I don’t know Raf’s number. 

It’s actually a serious problem. Johnny told me the story of a friend who had her cell phone stolen. She was stuck, she needed to call someone, she needed money. People offered to lend her their phones but…

…whom to call? What number?

She finally recalled one number from her pre-cell phone days.

An ex-boyfriend.

Fortunately, they parted on good terms, or at least time had healed the wounds.

Fitting also that Johnny had told me the story, since he also got me into this mess. It drove him nuts, my refusal to join the rest of the world and get a cell phone. In utter exasperation at his Luddite brother, he dove into his closet and produced a cell phone. I offered to pay for it, he told me forget it. It was a family package, and his family is more nuclear than most.

Hey, a free cell phone!

Came in handy, too. I got to call Franny every morning and, at the end, most afternoons. I stuck in numbers into a contact list.

I once even texted!

Well, there it was—this little device that was such a dream when it was there, and such a nightmare when it went its separate way.

Well, I thought I was equal to this challenge. Google! So I typed in “where’s my cell phone?” And yes, you’ve got it….

wheresmycellphone.com

Well, why not? I tried it. Entered my number, then pressed the “make it ring!” button. Then went scurrying around my house, hoping to hear that familiar song.

And the only time that silence was not welcome?

Right. It’s gone. I’ll have to get a new one. I’m age 55, not poor, not rich. It’s time to join the rest of the world.

Oh, by the way—what’s your number?

Invasion

Well, they’ve done it again. Now the iguanas are moving from the mangroves to the newspapers. The New Day (El Nuevo Día), our local newspaper, reports that scientists are unsure about the effect of the swarming population of iguanas. Do they harm fauna / flora or are they just a nuisance, visually speaking? (The author of the article describes them iguanas as feas—ugly. Well, has anyone ever asked them what they think of us?)

The real question, he goes on to say, is what they eat. The answer, most people say, is that they are herbivores. Great—let them eat grass.

But wait—they have been seen to eat eggs. 

Presumably scrambled, though not cooked.

So now the question vexing scientific minds is how often? So guess what they did!

Trapped 'em and cut into their stomach!

Guys!

Look, what did the iguana ever do to you? 

I think of the story I read, once, of two African safari expeditions encountering each other. They’re both observing the giraffes, but in rather different ways. The Americans are getting as close as they dare, and snapping away with cameras. The British expedition is drinking tea and observing them from a distance. The British leader of the expedition can contain himself no longer.

“It’s so bloody disrespectful to the animals!”  

Good point.

Well, the news is that with one exception the gastrointestinal content of eviscerated iguanas contain only plant matter.

The exception?

Lapas.

Hunh?

OK, another word I don’t know. Turns out that lapas are limpets.

Hunh again….

And limpets, it turns out, are mollusks which stick tenaciously to ships. 

Oh!

Well, there is something fishy (hope you didn’t notice that) here. Are there limpets in Puerto Rico? Or is this one more case of a Spanish word that means various things, depending on region? (One local hotel is named La Concha—the conch. But Venezuelans, when they spot it, go into gales of laughter, and the men take salacious pictures of themselves in front of the sign. In Caracas, the conch is the nether region of ladies….)

Wasn’t I speaking of iguanas?

Right. Well, I looked it up—the iguanas, I mean. And it turns out I had it all wrong! I had written that there are two species of iguanas, the greater and the lesser. Now I find that there are many more species of iguanas, including our very own Mona Island Iguana, which inhabits, very properly, Mona Island, midway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up….

Wow! An iguana wearing camouflage! Often called the rhinoceros iguana, because of the bump on its nose. Here, you see it better.

Well, this iguana bears the name Cyclura cornuta stejnegeri.

Stejnegeri?

Well, one of the nice things about NOT using the computer to cruise Internet porn sites is that you have time to look things up. So who was Stejneger?

A Norwegian! Born in Bergen, emigrated to the states, worked in New York, and came to Puerto Rico. Discovered the Cyclura cornuta and stuck it in his book, the classic Herpetology of Porto Rico.

Yup, that’s Porto Rico. The gringos changed our name when they invaded us.

So of course I had to read about Stejneger. But really, what stuck with me most was not the biography but the image. Here he is….

Looking at it, one imagines him dressed just as above on the searingly hot island of Mona. And would he be trapping the Cyclura cornuta? And cutting into their stomachs?

No way!

It’s so bloody disrespectful….