The wrong grass

In about twenty-four hours, I will be standing—and likely sweating—in a cardboard box, marking my ballot. I’ll fold the ballot, and drop it in a cardboard box. My finger will have been checked to assure that it hasn’t been dipped in ink. The polls will close, and members of all political parties will count by hand the ballots. They will all sign off on the vote.

Here’s the good news—we have elections as clean as mountain spring water.

Here’s the bad news. My cousin in Norway voted for president by absentee ballot.

I cannot.

Nor can some one million American citizens who reside in Puerto Rico.

Nothing to do with being Puerto Rican—Raf could vote in Florida and Wisconsin when he lived there. But—so goes the rationale—since Puerto Rico doesn’t pay federal taxes, we don’t get to vote in federal elections.

Goes a little beyond that. It seems that we are not protected by the entire constitution.

Seems a bit Orwellian, doesn’t it? Some of us are more equal than others….

What we can do, however, is shed blood for our country. And we have consistently, since the First World War. It was startling to me, when I first realized the nature of the scheme.

Our political and ruling classes trade the blood of poor Puerto Ricans for American greenbacks, many of which go into their pockets.

This is a level of cynicism I didn’t expect.

Nor is it a trivial question.

Remember W.?

You wouldn’t, if we had voted in 2000.

And now we got a guy running for president who doesn’t believe in global warming, despite the fact that it’s not just been studied but is now being lived. Try getting to the bottom of Manhattan by subway.

Oh, and it’s been a week since the storm.

We got a guy and a party that would turn back time about half a century on women’s rights and gay rights. We got a guy whose grandfather was a polygamist and who pretty much thinks the same way gramps did.

Nancy votes, Marc doesn’t.

Well, well—no one reads a blog to hear a rant. So here’s the good news.

Bamboo!

It turns out that bamboo creates the same degree of fanaticism as the UFO guys and the JFK conspiracy freaks. 

Friends, we’ve been growing the wrong kind of grass!

Our lawns are ecological disasters. We turn the lakes green due to the fertilizers we have to put on the lawns. They require enormous amounts of water. You can’t eat it.

Bamboo, on the other hand, consumes pollution. It can grow anywhere except in deserts. You can eat it. It can grow, in optimal conditions, three feet a day! And it can be used in construction, as a food for chickens (the leaves) and most importantly, for fuel.

Africa is losing a lot of forest—people are cutting trees for fuel. Bamboo, on the other hand, makes a decent charcoal, and grows back quickly. Trees, once cut, are gone.

I think it’s a tremendous idea.

Now—why can’t I vote?

A staircase to…?

Let me write a sentence that will stir no excitement in you.

I woke up this morning and walked to the beach.

Let me write a sentence that would cause elation for a score of women two blocks away, were they able to write the sentence.

I woke up this morning and went to the beach.

Sometime in the 1990’s a coworker and I were walking past a Chinese Restaurant where—now that I think about it—I’ve never seen anybody eat.

Clue number one?

“It a whorehouse upstairs,” said my coworker. “Oriental girls. Service the guys who work the cruise ships.”

Two.

I tucked the fact away, mildly repulsed. In those days, I had maybe 500 bucks to my name, a few cellos, some rugs and art. Nothing else—I was busy getting by.

(Hmm—defensive, Marc?)

I took a cruise, and did notice that the guys in the engine room were all Oriental, and wearing grey jumpsuits. And I see them from time to time in the grocery store, buying 40 or 50 packages of—what else?—Ramen noodle soup.

Then I started to work at Wal-Mart, which meant that I passed the building every morning at 5AM. And yes, the doors to the staircase leading to the upper floors were open. Music, on occasion, would be blaring out.

Clue number three?

Odd time for a legitimate business to be open, I’d think, and then remember.

Then Franny broke a hip. I went to hang with her in the nursing home. And met, on one of those occasions, a woman whose son had written a book.

An excellent book, in fact, on an abominable crime.

Slavery.

“Scholars estimate the total number of modern-day slaves is greater than at any point in history.”

That’s what E. Benjamin Skinner wrote.

Well, you read a fact like that and you’re pretty much compelled to find out more. So I bought two copies of the book. Read them several times. Went to look for a copy just now, and realized that I had likely thrown them out. No, not on literary or factual grounds, but because they had been consumed by others, smaller though more numerous.

Termites.

But as I remember, there are many faces and forms that slavery takes. Yes, sexual slavery is one of them. And gets most of the spotlight. But actually, wage slavery is more common. 

Remember the company store? You worked at the factory, lived in tenements the factory put up, paid rent to the factory, and had to buy in the company store. A variant of the scheme still goes on.

Circle back. A rumored whorehouse, curtains drifting from the windows of the upper floor windows, and a wide, inviting 5AM staircase, leading to…?

Oh, and by the way, I’ve never seen any Oriental women in Viejo San Juan. Tourists, yes. The jumpsuit guys, yes. Where are the ladies, the “sex workers,” if they exist, getting their Ramen noodle soup?

The Internet?

So it was more than likely, I thought, piecing this picture together, that, in fact, there is a whorehouse, there are sex workers / slaves, and guys in jumpsuits are using or abusing them.

Well, I say this with no pride. Did I do what Skinner did—here’s another part of his story:

He had first flown in under enemy radar with an Evangelical group purporting to buy slaves en masse to secure their freedom. Afterwards, on his own, he hitched a ride on a U.N. Cessna to the frontlines of the north-south Sudanese civil war. There he met Muong Nyong. Like Skinner, Nyong was 27 at the time, and pondering what to do with the rest of his life. Unlike Skinner, he had spent the first part of that life in bondage.

In this, he was following family tradition—his great-great-grandfather was a Quaker as well as a fiery abolitionist.

Well, Skinner is a better guy than I am.

For those interested in excuses, I was busy, the last few years, helping my mother die, waiting for Wal-Mart to “realign” me, losing my mind, and writing a book.

Not sure that’s good enough.

Moral proximity. If there’s a slave in your neighborhood, you gotta do something. And in my neighborhood?

Another thought. Virtually every woman student of mine would tell me they planned to visit Chinatown, should they be visiting or traveling to New York.

No, not for the food.

For the handbags.

And where were those bags produced? And by whom? And under what conditions?

Ladies, you may be just a guilty as the Ramen soup guys.

Or as guilty as I. Though doesn’t it seem curious that a gay guy, an English teacher, would know something like where the Oriental guys get “serviced?”

So maybe some others are a little more guilty than I? Like the boys in blue (actually, black) with the guns in their holsters and the handcuffs and bullet-proof vests?

Aren’t open doorways and blaring music and 5AM all facts to stir curiosity in police minds? 

Here’s my last thought.

A flash mob.

Everybody has an intelligent phone, everyone is on Facebook and Twitter. I won’t do it alone, but I’ll sure join a couple hundred women in the plaza and march down the sidewalk, course up the stairs, and fling doors open.

…even bring the chain cutter.

Ben—whaddya think? 

Bached

Well, if the hurricane is over, somebody should run down and tell the ocean the news.

The surf is as strong as ever. This morning, on the trot, I saw four rows of cresting waves, each wave perhaps 15 feet tall. It was a bit like being in an animated Japanese woodblock print.

If there’s music that only the young could write (see yesterday’s post) there’s also music only the old could create. And in the end, I always go back to Bach.

Started out with the Magnificat (WHAT!! the computer has just red-squiggled Magnificat and suggests instead magnificent!! Dear Reader, we live in degenerate and dangerous days!)—a tremendous piece of music.

And it’s music written with a sure hand by a man in full command of his talents.

Right, so I sat and watched the waves this morning, and heard Bach, and thought that perhaps there is no other composer who manages to capture a particular and wonderful emotion.

Exaltation.

When those trumpets start blaring away, in the first movement of the Magnificat, I’d better be in private, not public. My hands are incapable of remaining at my side, but are instead flung up in triumph to the heavens. I am a Roman emperor, striding in victory into the city. It’s aural orgasm.

Well, the Magnificat lasts only 20 minutes or so, and I wanted a bit more. I’d been living down in the “H’s” on my iPod (damn thing is jittery, so it was easier just to stick to Haydn and parts, and not try to move around too much) but I’d made the effort to move to the “B’s.” (Which is, of course, a pretty crowded neighborhood, in the city of classical music ….) So, time for the Mass in B minor.

To which I came late, as did Bach. (Sorry, combining me and Bach in the same sentence feels just a bit pretentious…)  In fact, I had heard it years ago, and stuck it in the “later” folder in my brain.

Warning to hypoglycemics—eat a FULL meal before you enter the concert hall. Even so, you may want to sneak in some jellybeans to munch on—it’s gonna be an hour and a half easily.

My main impression from that performance? A sense of failure as a listener. It was common in those days—I’d go to a concert with some heavy-duty music and I’d be in seat 33 in row F. Also, I’d be at the beach, mentally—at any rate far away. Not paying attention. Not giving the great music its due.

So the Bach went on and on—hey look at the trumpet player turn completely red wow is he gonna stroke out?—and I’d sit there—'bet the third chair cellist studied with Karl Fruh'—trying to listen—'he’s gotta be hung' days—and well, you get the picture.

I left feeling like I’d been Bached.

I wish someone had pointed out that there’s evidence that Bach never intended it all to be performed on a single occasion. And it might have helped if I had known that Bach completed it in his last year, though parts of the work were written years before.

So I sat, this morning, and thought about the hurricane that has left and is still going on. The people sitting alone in dark, cold apartments. The people who, as one commentator said, are not the homeless but now are.

Also thought about a cellist who morphed into a writer and didn’t go away, though why, I’ll never know. Mostly, he’s stubborn, I guess.

And there’s a lady who went away, and is now back. She’s stirring around, and will stir further, I’m sure. We go to the beach, most days, on the trot that has now incorporated the plunge. “Moe” I say to her, and she says, right—I’m on that.

Moe writes his thing.

“Brian,” I tell her.

Ditto.

“Let’s get into that water,” she says, and I throw her / me in, diving head first into a crashing wave, which spins us around and soaks us in its power, and we race laughing and exalted to the shore.

We’ve been Bached.

Reflections of a reflection

It’s a curious thing about Facebook. People post stuff that drives me nuts. “Eating mofongo at La Fondita de Mofongo!!!!!!” Usually accompanied by a photo.

(Any of you up there who have never eaten mofongo should go immediately online to get your ticket to Puerto Rico. Mmmmmm….)

Which is to say that, no, the world doesn’t need to know that somebody you friended in a weak moment is eating mofongo.

It may be, of course, that food comments are like golf and psychotherapy. Interesting only to the players….

On the other hand, comments about what people are listening to are interesting—to me, at least. And Cousin Brian did pique my interest with his comment about Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number One. Well, although I have it on the iPod (made by Apple!), it’s something I never hear. But if Brian—no slouch whatsoever in the classical music world—likes it, it’s gotta be good. I decide to check it out.

Not before dealing with a very snarky Mr. Fernández, who is busy peering at the cutting board in the kitchen. He holds up a little white part of a hand mixer.

“There used to be a little plastic bag with tiny little screws around here, and I DON’T SEE IT NOW!”

“Good morning, dear,” I say. I’ve been told about emotional hijacking.

“WELL, WHERE IS IT!”

“Slept well, I trust?”

“Well, it better turn up,” he says, and stomps off to the bathroom.

And this is before coffee.

So the opening of the piano concerto pretty well matched my internal emotional landscape. Think New Jersey on Monday….

And Brian also had said that Chopin had written the concerto at age eighteen.

Well, there is some music that only the young can write, I thought today, on the trot. It’s sort of like love—you may experience it many times in your life, but not like the first time.

And this is definitely a young man’s work. And—trademark Chopin—it has a theme that just squeezes your heart.

I was listening to it today since I had decided that the piece was sort of like all of people you really like, whom you kiss (when appropriate / possible), and say “hey, we really gotta get together” and then never do.

Until the next time.

There’s music like that, too. You hear a piece, think ‘wow, that’s great’ and make a promise to yourself. You’re gonna listen to it often.

The next time being when NPR decides to play it.

All right, so what’s the story of the piece? Well, Chopin wrote it in 1830, and performed it in one of his “farewell” concerts.

Where was he going?

Off to Paris. In fact, he never returned to Poland, but became part of the “Great Emigration.”

Hunh?

Ah, the joys of the hyperlink! One click and I know, or rather remember. Poland got sliced up between Austria, Russia and Prussia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Most of the elite packed up and left, so that Polish political and intellectual activity was really mostly French.

Well, something to know! Now then, what’s the skinny on Chopin?

Well, here I commend you to Wikipedia, which has an excellent article on him. But to make it short, it doesn’t seem to have been a very happy life. And it’s definitely not a healthful (in the sense of full of health) life. Sickful, in fact.

His death certificate says tuberculosis, though I prefer the term “consumption” of the 19^th century.

And what of his love life? Also not much fun. Yeah, the affair with George Sand that we all know about, but she became more of a nurse than lover, at the end. And they quarreled and separated at the end—she didn’t even attend his funeral.

Any money? Well, he dies poor, though at least not alone.

And there must have been some comforts. A raging intellect, for example, and good friends. One of them the painter Eugène Delacroix, who plays in this little episode, sent by Sand through Wikipedia:

Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops. 'Go on, go on,' exclaims Delacroix, 'That's not the end!' 'It's not even a beginning. Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right colour, but I can't even get the form ...' 'You won't find the one without the other,' says Delacroix, 'and both will come together.' 'What if I find nothing but moonlight?' 'Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.' The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colours begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colours. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ..

Hey, that girl can write!

OK—that’s a consolation, having company like that, and an interesting woman, as Sand certainly was. But was it enough?

Here’s a photo of him in the year of his death:

I'm voting no.

White light

It was only after I saw my shrink, today, that I fully understood what I had done.

Resolved the defining challenge of my life.

Defining because, yes, it had ruled me since I can remember. I couldn’t get the sounds in my head out of the cello. I raged, I bit myself—never puncturing the skin, but leaving the indentations of teeth marks for hours. I once broke a bow, slamming it on the strings of the instrument.

I knew it was in there; I couldn’t get it out. And with the rage came the depression. Black days, awful days when the minutes dragged, when no amount of will could banish the demon that lurked in the corner, always crouched, always ready to pounce.

Things I didn’t care about I did well. Teaching, never a problem.

The cello?

An agony that I couldn’t do, and couldn’t not do. I couldn’t breath at the cello, I held my breath until I had to gasp. My shoulders cramped, so tight was I.

I was practicing for hours at a time. There were days it went well. I floated down the street, beaming at strangers.

Most days it didn’t.

Late at night, in Chicago. Raf asleep, Marc alone in an empty apartment. I would be meditating, and almost get through.

I called it the breakthrough. The music would get out, I would get out, the struggle would be over.

I’d win.

Or be free.

I’d masturbate, hoping to use the energy of orgasm to push me through that door. And use Rush, amyl nitrite. I’d see a white light, I’d move closer, the orgasm would stun me. But I never got through.

Last March, I relived the moment I lost my mind, back in December. Had two weeks of struggle, of fierce concentration and mindfulness. It took five minutes to save a document. I washed dishes as if the process were a koan. I retrained myself to do everything.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted. I’d sit and read what someone else had written.

I’d laugh out loud.

“He’s so funny,” I’d say.

“He makes the most amazing leaps,” I’d say.

I was reading that day’s post in a blog called Life, Death and Iguanas.

“I’m taking the writer to get his teeth fixed,” I told Taí. She was in a storm of worry ten islands down the Caribbean. I made sure he ate. I obsessed about his having water at all times. I needed to take care of him, this gifted guy whom I have nothing to do with.

And everything….

“He didn’t go away, I could have lost him,” I’m telling the shrink. And then, “hey, aren’t you guys supposedly to have Kleenex?”

He gestured to the side table.

Well, they are our confessors, these shrinks. And at one moment, retelling the story, I jumped back, back to a dark apartment, back to a man in agony, back to a man with his brain flooded with chemicals, and a light, a light, a light I could not get to. A light that would recede and leave me so stabbed with alone.

I’m gasping, now, as I was gasping in that red velvet chair, as I was gasping at the cello.

I have just had an orgasm I have never had. Nothing physical, no hands to wash, or floor to wipe. And no, I saw no white light.

I see that white light when I sit in my chair, at five in the afternoon and read the absurd, the tortured, most—the gifted—words he’s written.

He’s filled with that light, and I tell him, “fuck, you’re amazing.”

Romney and FEMA

Well, there I was, last evening, enjoying my fleeting fifteen minutes of fame, when Mitt strode into the room.

OK—it just felt that way. Is it just I, or does anyone else hear the repressed petulance of a guy wishing for the 1950’s who knows in his heart they’ll never come again?

Mitt, as you can hear, wants to send the responsibility of cleaning up after disasters back to the states, and preferably the private sector.

My first question—what do the experts say? Is there anybody out there that thinks that’s a good idea? Are all disasters alike or can some be dealt with at the state level while others require a centralized / national organization? Would we really save money, or would we just be sticking the tab on the states?

Well, in an effort to be fair—that father of mine is still lingering around somewhere—I did a brief google on the topic. And guess what?

Still don’t have the answer!

There is a guy, however, who makes a case for privatization in the case of disaster response. And he adduces a little company I know something about.

Wal-Mart!

Right—Wal-Mart’s finest hour was in response to Hurricane Katrina.

Anybody remember FEMA’s response to hurricane Katrina?

Or that “heck of a job” that “Brownie” was doing?

Well, while Brownie was answering emails or shopping for shirts, Wal-Mart was giving away ice-cold water to people who needed it.

Good business strategy, really. Lady in the shop across the street did the same for me, after one of our hurricanes, and am I gonna buy cigars anywhere else?

Nope!

Right, and I’ve had a little experience with FEMA, too. Well, actually, I’ve not. But my students have, and the reports were hardly raves.

Also true, of course, that NOBODY is happy after a disaster. There’s something about not showering for two weeks, sweating bullets as the mosquitoes dive-buzz your ear at 2AM, and not having a hot meal for a fortnight that sours the mood.

But hey—wait a sec. Before we privatize our disaster response, there’s something we ought to consider.

Wal-Mart is perhaps the most centralized company in the world.

Want an example? When a freezer in the Bayamón store goes above a set temperature, an alarm is activated in Bentonville, Arkansas, and a technician there calls the store—as he or she will call ANY store, anywhere in the world. At this moment, Bentonville is monitoring freezers in China.

Bentonville, as well, is monitoring the weather. It’s got its own meteorologist—nice guy, we exchanged emails once—who said metaphorically to New Orleans what I said actually to my brother John.

“You’re fucked….” 

So since they have a very efficient (and very centralized) logistics system, it was no problem to put the trucks with that cold water in a nice high-and-dry spot.

OK—so we’re at the point of asking: which is better, the (probably centralized) private sector or the public sector? Does business do it better? Does the profit motive increase efficiency to the point that we save money AND get better results?

Well, Mitt, I grew up in the fifties and sixties in a little town that worked. Nobody except the Catholics paid for private schools, nobody had gated communities, you could drink the water. And government did all that, or regulated the industries that did. And everybody grumbled about their taxes, but assumed automatically that if you called an ambulance, one would come.

It was efficient, it was clean, and the press kept an eye on things, as did an educated populace.

Well, maybe those halcyon days weren’t quite as lustrous as remembered. But I got a question.

Why am I suspicious of rich guys who want to privatize everything? I bashed FEMA, a few paragraphs up.

Anybody remember Halliburton?

Hooching the Homeless

Well, well—today on the morning trot I was absolutely convinced I could combat global warming, solve once and for all the problem of the homeless, and provide visual delight to an island in need of it.

Hey, pretty good for a morning’s walk, right?

Well, I was informed over the dinner table that no, it’s not such a great idea.

Readers of this blog will know of my interest, actually my passion, for tree houses. It’s like Mom and apple pie—who could be indifferent, much less averse, to a tree house?

Readers may not know that Puerto Rico has a lot of bamboo, which Mr. Fernández avers was brought in to keep the roads from eroding in the earlier part of the last century. And like the iguanas, that bamboo has done well. About the only thing that can stop it is the road itself.

Readers of the blook—and by the way, sales are terrible, buy it please—will know that I am not a fan of contemporary Puerto Rican architecture. Right, when the population was exploding in the 50’s, nobody had any time for aesthetics (except, of course, for hair…). And yes, there are exceptions. But face it: the average Puerto Rican house is a cement box with windows punched into it. Hot, airless, and dark.

“But what about the hurricanes,” cried the students, when I suggested—very delicately—that there might be other materials than concrete to use in construction.

“When was the last hurricane?” I’d ask.

…’bout a decade ago.

And when was the last time you sat outside, enjoyed the night breezes, shared a chat with your friends?

They go to the Hilton for that….

It was no use.

Why not work with nature, not against it? Why not build a series of bohíos—little Puerto Rican huts—and link them in with thatched-roofed pathways and make it all very simple and rustic and then, when the hurricane comes, put all the stuff that’s truly important (electronics does come to mind) in a concrete room, where you’ve stockpiled the salchichas and the beer. Then, when you come out, well, you just rebuild! And look, you always get stuff wrong the first try or two, so on the third or fourth rendition, you’ll have the morning bohío perfectly sited to catch the breezes, and the evening bohío perfectly placed to see the stars.

Well, one person in the room liked the idea….

“Crime,” they chorused.

Bougainvillea, I cried. Nobody can get through the stuff—nature’s barbed wire!

“What, and have the baby run into it and poke her eye out!!?”

It’s deeply ingrained, this phobia of nature. And it may be —hold onto your seat here—a class thing as well. Mr. Fernández suspects that the majority of Puerto Ricans are a little too close to their jíbaro (peasant) past. Abuela may have grown up with the chickens roosting under the stilted-wooden house. We have concrete!

Well, it turns out I’m not alone. Some guy in the western part of the island felt the same way, and guess what!

He’s a gringo!

And quite an interesting guy. Where did he get the idea of the hooch? Well, he never says, and to a not-very-engineerical (lump it, computer!) person, I’m a little unclear as to the mechanics of it all. Better to let him explain it:

The hooch is an evolutionary, revolutionary building system that turns architectural conventions on its head. It stands on a single point, and maintains its balance by a web of cables to the surrounding trees. The foundation is minimal. In fact, the hooch holds the record for the smallest foundation of any land based building. The advantage? Minimal disruption of the site, and environment; quick and economical construction (no foundation); and easy dismantling, in the event that the hooch is moved. The hooch is an ideal structure for a place of respite in an environmentally sensitive area. I built a 10' by 10' version for a friend along a riverbank. The site did not lose one fern, a species abundant in the understory of the forest.

The treehouse requires no special engineering, or architectural design to fit in a particular tree. It stands among the trees, and relies on them for support. It is intimately entwined with the trees, and yet does no damage or requires any alteration of the site. The design has been worked out for quick and accurate pre-fabrication of the components- away from the site. Quickly assembled and situated at the site, the hooch is raised up by a pulley system and secured -perfectly level.
An architectural gem, the triangular shape maintains rigidity, yet is free to move about its foundation, flexing as a unit.

The redundant cable system is self correcting—any stress or distortion is quickly relieved back to the original position.
As a place of respite, the hooch served its purpose well—whether in the backyard, or along a mountain stream. It is safe, secure, and above it all.
After a warm reception of every hooch I've built, I now offer plans, kits, and complete construction services for everyone. I have plans and specs for a 6' by 6 , 8' by 8', and 10' by 10' version (floor area). Our 6' by 6' backyard hooch served well in our backyard of a rental house. Last year, we moved to our new mortgaged house. The hooch proved itself as a ephemeral architectural gem. It was dismantled, and moved in a few days. It now has its place among a grove of douglas fir trees, with a killer view of Mt. Ashland. Check out these other sites for even more perspective on the hooch. 

Right, maybe a picture would help….

What a tremendously cool idea! Wow—what a stunner! My palms are sweating, so eager am I to get my hands on that ladder and start climbing.

Mr. Fernández was less impressed.

“I’m not sleeping in any bamboo grove—rats!”

I dispute that, and point out that we can sprinkle some warfarin here and there.

Well, he also wasn’t too excited about my brilliant idea to home the homeless.

Build ‘em hooches!

Maybe it was excess oxygenation of the brain brought on the morning trot, but it seemed logical at the time. We have the bamboo, we have the homeless, why not get ‘em to build their own hooches? Or get the Evangelicals (whose numbers roughly equal the iguanas…) to build them. If you’re homeless, and the rope ladder is down, then you climb up it, pull up the ladder, and bingo! You’re safe! No more sleeping in doorways!

“Fire,” said Mr. Fernández.

“Extinguisher,” I completed.

“What if they trashed it,” he complained.

“Build another!”

“People using ‘em for drugs or rapes,” he said.

“Anyway,” he added, ”I read somewhere that most homeless don’t like shelters. They don’t like rules. You can’t show up drunk or high….”

Well, I understand that. We were on our second bottle of wine—who are we to talk? 

“It’s a good idea,” he said, “just needs more work….” 

I think it’s brilliant, of course…..

Individual and Mass Madness

We heard it with annoying regularity, the bromide about “thinking outside the box,” so we did what any sensible person would do.

The Puerto Rican “no.”

“Well, I’ve lived in England, Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, so I know at least four ‘noes.’ But the Puerto Rican ‘no’ is the only one I can’t do anything about.” Words a friend said to me, years ago.

And that would be?

“You ask for something, and it’s instantly agreed to. Absolutely! No problem! And then nothing happens. You protest, and the process repeats. You beg, you cajole, you cry, you scream, you threaten. All to no effect. Nothing happens…. And you can’t have a rational discussion because they keep agreeing!”

An exaggeration, of course, but there is some truth to it.

Maybe it was that just some Puerto Ricans practiced the “no”—others didn’t.

But those who did, did it almost reflexively.

The multitudes of you who check your computers scores of times daily—awaiting a new post!—will know about the ten-foot rule, so beloved of Sam Walton. You had to smile, greet, and offer help (if in the stores) to EVERY customer within ten feet.

All part of that Wal-Mart culture!

Well, it was also part of the culture—the real one, that is—to pay lip-service and leave.

Well, the lips were pretty convincing, that 10-minute-really-half-hour weekly meeting of Human Resources. How that lady talked! The service those lips provided! She virtually role-played Sam W. challenging us to do the ten-foot rule!

She left to go visit the stores. I trailed behind her. I smiled and greeted.

Bet you know who didn’t!  

So I took it all seriously, sort of. And by chance or design, I thought outside the box in at least two ways.  First physically, when I could bear no more and had to leave the madness behind and look at iguanas. And second, creatively, when I had my spate of ten brilliant ideas daily and had to go tell someone about it.

I realize now what that slight but perceptible rise in shoulder level meant….

Well, I suppose if there is a Puerto Rican no, there may be a Wal-Mart no, as well. If so, it was generally postceded (well, look, what about preceded?) by the proper noun “Marc.”

Though some of my ideas were really very good.

Did you know that you should keep fruits strictly segregated from meats?

Logical, really—how many times have you picked up a package of meat, and gotten a sticky, bloody hand for the effort?

Right—and where is the produce department in most stores? Right by the entrance.

Which means that almost inevitably you’ll have to put the leaking meat packages over or near the fruits. (By the way, you probably should use the little baby seat for fruits and vegetables….)

Well, that came out at one of the monthly meetings, during which we were routinely peppered with the question ¿cómo se siente?—how you feeling!—to which we would mechanically roar “¡Super bien!, oooh, ahhh, ay, YES!”

That’s culture, you see!

(Get why I was out behind the building?)

Well, I got to work on that problem! Hey, don’t we have a responsibility to our customers? Aren’t we an industry leader? As Wal-Mart moves, so moves the country!

And it was gonna start right here, in Puerto Rico! Yeah, we were gonna be the pioneers in an adventure that would save millions of lives, and it was starting here, right here, not just in Puerto Rico, or in Caguas, but in the creatively explosive atmosphere of Marc Newhouse’s classroom!

Gentlemen—we gotta redesign the shopping cart!

“Look,” I was exclaiming to the head of Loss Prevention, “this is what we can do. Put a little basket with a picture of a banana—here, I drew it—on the right side of the cart. Now, we got another little basket—got a burger on that one—on the left side of the cart! See! Look, this is the redesigned shopping cart, called a SaftiCart, which is a very good name, if I do say so. Just look!”

He barely glanced.

Well, at least he didn’t tell me to throw the plans in the wastebasket as I left….

Still think it was a good idea, though.

It was the world of the corporate no. And to be fair, not all of my ideas were quite so good.

“Listen, I got this plan to absolutely ensure that we get the bonus EVERY year.”

Well, the bonus was quite a juicy plum, especially for the already well compensated. So it did get the CEO of Wal-Mart Puerto Rico, Inc.’s attention.

I had just finished telling him that I was legally married to a guy and Wal-Mart needed to put Raf on the medical plan.

Thought to lighten the air in the room….

“We build an extra Sam’s Club and an extra SuperCenter somewhere, but we don’t tell Bentonville! That way it’s pure gravy! They can’t expect us to make any money off a store they don’t know exists, can they? So all the profit goes straight to the bank! And bang into your pocket, at the end of the fiscal year!”

He was puzzled, but painfully earnest.

I kept trying.

“Well, the gringos are hardly gonna run around the island, actually counting the stores, are they? Come on!”

He was a very powerful, probably very rich guy.

From Colombia.

And so had no use for the Puerto Rican “no” (if it exists…).

No, Marc!

Gotta be photoshopped, but fun to think about, anyway….