A Norwegian Song Cycle

First scenario—I tell you that I’m taking you to the symphony tonight, and that we’ll be hearing some Beethoven. What are your chances of guessing what we’ll hear?

Not very good, I’m afraid—besides the nine symphonies and the five piano concerti and the violin and triple concerti, there are roughly half a dozen other orchestral works, mainly overtures.

Second scenario—I tell you that I’m taking you to the symphony tonight, and that we’ll be hearing some Grieg. And here, you’ll very likely be able to pin it down in the first three guesses. It’ll be the piano concerto, Peer Gynt, or possibly the Holberg Suite. Unless you’ve got a conductor willing to scrounge into the forgotten corners of Grieg’s repertoire, that’s all you’re likely to hear.

So Grieg falls into that enigmatic category—you might call it famous but not well known. He certainly has his place in the pantheon, but only for a handful of works. And given that he died at age 64, shouldn’t we know more music of his? He had to have been doing something other than writing merely three pieces in nearly half a century of creative life.

Yes and no. He wasn’t a very healthy man; a lung condition he picked up at age 17 plagued him most of his life. He was also a conductor, and worked for many years with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, for which he served as music director from 1880 – 1882. But he was unusual for his time in not producing a symphony, except for an early work that he suppressed.

He was, said one commentator, a man of little works, almost a miniaturist. He struggled even to produce a string quartet, although he came up a creditable one—Debussy, not an easy man to please, thought highly of it.

He got around, this man from Norway who studied in Leipzig, disliked the rigidity of the system, and went back to his native land. He met Liszt, who was impressed with him (and sight-read the famous piano concerto and invented a reduction of the orchestral score—they were giants on the earth, some of those guys…). He also met Tchaikovsky, and was struck by how sad he was.

You could—perhaps fancifully—say that he met me this morning on the daily trot, when I was cruising my iPod for something new to listen to. It’s a discipline for me, now—how much new music can I listen to? For years, I was buying CDs of interesting music that I never found time to listen to. Well, now’s the time.

And so it had been with a CD of Grieg’s songs, as sung by Anne Sofie von Otter. And instantly I was struck by the rich harmonies, the deftness of the piano part, the freshness of the music.

What I didn’t know was that I was listening to a song cycle, indeed the only song cycle that Grieg ever wrote. And what, you ask, is a song cycle? A musical form that crops up with Beethoven and is still going on—a group of songs that are meant to be performed together, often because they are telling a story, or are thematically linked. And the 19^th century was a sort of golden age for the song cycle: Schubert with his Winterreise and  Die schöne Müllerin; Schumann with Liederkreis, Dichterliebe, Frauenenliebe und Leben.

Grieg wrote the song cycle Haugtussa over a three-year period, and mind you, the work only lasts 25 minutes. But it was worth it; Grieg later wrote that it was his best effort in song. Sadly, though, in the YouTube clip below, we’re missing the one crucial component of a song cycle—the lyrics themselves.

So here is what will have to suffice, a brief description of the work from Wikipedia:

Haugtussa opens and ends with the nature mysticism of "The Enticement" and "At the Brook". The second extended stage includes the two melancholic portraits "Veslemøy" and "Hurtful Day". Between them the climax is reached in the central love songs "The Tryst" and "Love", which have a cheerful, pastoral approach, and approached and transitioned from in, respectively, "Blueberry Slope" and "Kidlings' Dance". The main character, the Veslemøy, is a shepherd girl who has abilities that others do not have and therefore can not find a place for her personality in rural communities. She turns to nature for answers to her desires and questions. During the course of the text she falls in love with the boy Jon, and "Hurtful Day" describes her feelings when she is deceived by him. In the last song, "At the Brook", which is often compared with the last song of Franz Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin or Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe,[4] she seeks refuge by a mountain brook, musically represented by a rhythmic figure on the piano. From verse to verse, Grieg gradually changes this passage using different harmonizations.

What’s good about the clip? It has the wonderful Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter singing at her best, and that “best” is nearly unbeatable. And how fortunate we are that von Otter is Swedish, and can thus sing in a language most other singers wouldn’t tackle.

Which leads me, perhaps, to the last strike against Grieg—he’s Norwegian, he’s identified as a nationalist composer, and ever so slightly looked down on. However much the piano concerto gets played, among musical snobs—and you don’t have to be told that snobbery is rampant in classical music, do you?—Grieg isn’t considered in the absolute top drawer.

But listening to this song cycle, I think he is….

Twinkling Puerto Rican Stars

Well, it was a day Franny got into me, or rather behind me, forcing me out of bed and then after the morning coffee out the door. I had to go hear, she thought, a bunch of kids from 47 Puerto Rican high schools recite from memory a poem in English. The winner of the competition would be sent to Washington DC to represent Puerto Rico in the national competition, which comprises all the fifty states plus the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Poetry Out Loud, it’s called, and it was only started in 2006. It got to Puerto Rico in 2008, and there were only eight schools participating. Now, it’s 47, and not just in the metropolitan area—it’s all over the island.

Across the nation, the program, which is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, draws in 365,000 participants annually. On the island, the program is jointly sponsored by the Department of Education and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.

Well, it would be something to see—what would Puerto Rican kids choose to read? Would it differ significantly from the poems gringos chose, or does adolescence carry the day, trump all, shatter the cultural / language barriers.

I was also curious—for many of these kids, English is a second language. How will they navigate Shakespearean English? What about the accent, the intonation? Not for nothing was my mantra “333 jewelry thieves” at Wal-Mart. If you can manage the “th” and the voiced consonants of “V” and “Z” (plus get a good “L” which for many Puerto Ricans is an “R”) you have the basic artillery. But how well can you fire it off?

I’m sorry to say that I can’t completely tell you. The contest was to begin at 9, it actually began at 9:30. A long video from last year’s competition was shown. The Director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture was introduced and spoke highly important words about culture (she also, by the way, referred to the contest taking place this morning as the “national” contest and then went on to give her best wishes to the winner who would represent Puerto Rico in the—also—“national” contest. Even poetry is no refuge for ideology….) At this point, we were introduced to the head of the English Department of the Department of Education, who also assured us that culture was important, and then went on to quote a bit of Dickinson—a nice touch.

It was now 10:15, and we had yet to introduce the judges—who came out solemnly as their various academic and professional achievements were listed. So that took some time, since one of them could barely walk, and nearly catapulted down the stairs from the stage.

This left us free to hear the rules of the competition—no pictures with flash, no applause between poems, no cell phones except on vibrate. These rules had to be repeated three times in both English and Spanish, since—well, it’s generally a good idea. We do many things very well in Puerto Rico, but there are times when our zeal, our zest has to be reined in. Otherwise, Mamita will burst onto the stage after her child recites, hug the child, beam at the audience, stand proudly and pose with the child while all 70 uncles / brothers / sisters / aunts / grandparents take pictures and then post on Facebook. Remember—we gotta get out of here by three o’clock.

It took me back, somehow, to the spelling bees that the State Journal used to sponsor. The parents in the audience, nervous for their kids, almost more nervous than the kids themselves. The cameras , the teachers and officials—my own mouth was dry, my palms sweaty, just seeing it.

Well, it was 10:40 by the time the first child stepped foot on stage—with a solid, creditable job of “Alone,” by Edgar Allan Poe. You’ll know it, of course:

From childhood's hour I have not been


As others were; I have not seen


As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

Well, I understand that—what teenager is not feeling that’s he’s never been as others are? But I was jolted indeed when the next teenager stepped out, and announced that she would recite “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Is this real—I thought? Are we all seriously going to sit and listen to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star?” Somebody is going to start giggling—I had an obvious candidate in mind, and was preparing to dash out the theater—and this kid is gonna be sunk. And what sadistic teacher / mentor suggested this awful choice to this kid? What had she ever done to warrant this? Look, I don’t like kids myself, but neither do I think they should be treated cruelly.

Well, we sat there and took it—we parents and teachers and sibling and interested others. And she got through it, and nobody giggled, and I thought that even on an island where the inexplicable happens with astonishing regularity, I had just seen something wonderfully strange.

It was later, at home, that I wondered—is there something I’ve missed in Twinkle? Are there literary merits, wonderful nuances, subtleties and shades of meaning that I’ve been unaware of? Is it just me?

Well, I looked it up, and if there’s anything there, I can’t find it. But it was a thing to hear, on a Saturday morning in the Santurce sector of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Alas, it was now close to eleven—I had to get home, eat something, and then go off to the Plaza, to read the portion of 30,000 names allotted for today.

But the handful of kids that I had heard today told me something. There’s a wonderful spirit, a wonderful naturalness in the people, and the kids of Puerto Rico. They were nervous, of course. But something in the air, in the spontaneity, in the emotional lifeblood of Puerto Rico comes through despite the dry mouth, sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach.

Get ready, DC—you may have a surprise!

Macondo Redux

Well, a simple reading of the New Day, the preeminent newspaper of Puerto Rico, tells the story.

We’re screwed.

This morning at 12:30 three hundred federal agents of the Bureau of Prisons entered the federal prison here—the first operation of its kind. They literally went cell by cell, confiscating everything from drugs to cell phones to homemade weapons.

The prison, according to the New Day, has been without contact from the outside world since the murder of Osvaldo Albarati—no calls out, not by cellular phones, and not by landlines. Visits have also been suspended.

It all started a week or so ago when Albarati, a prison official, got killed driving home from work one night. It was a clear execution—21 bullets shot into his car, the paid assassins speeding away. And nobody had much doubt who had paid for the killing—two inmates who were directing the drug cartels from behind bars. For this they needed cell phones, which the prison official had found and confiscated. So the inmates got together and paid to send a message to any other honest guy in the prison system who might think about doing his job.

Things are a little different, here in Puerto Rico.

“The inmates are in control of the prison,” a friend who is a doctor and who was hired to give medical services in the prison system told me. “They even control who can be held in the prison. That’s because each prison has a gang associated with it, a gang that operates inside and outside the prison. And a member of an opposite gang will be killed in days. So the prisoners vet the incoming convict, and the prison administration listens. They have to.”

It appears that this mentality is lost on the Feds, though, and the prisoners, as reported by the New Day, were a little stunned by the severity and thoroughness of the search.

The situation of the prisoners running the prison all started in the late seventies, when a guy named Carlos Torres-Irriarte—OK, call him by his nickname, La Sombra—decided to form a little group to protest abusive prison officials and abusive gang activity. And La Sombra must have been a charismatic man, because very soon the Ñetas had gained control of the biggest prison on the island, Oso Blanco, or polar bear.

Well, you don’t go places without stepping on a few toes, which in this case was—of course—the rival gang. So that gang—called  “Group 27,” or “The Insects”—decided to kill Irriarte, which they did, with the help of a prison guard.

Or was it just the rival gang? Irriarte, it seems, had come down hard on one thing—no drugs. And soon after his death, the Ñetas had cornered the market on drugs.

They also had a little score to settle with their rivals, so they tunneled for days to reach the leader of the Insects, a guy nicknamed Manota. Then, according to street legend, various body parts were sent to family members, gang leaders, and interested others.

Here’s Wikipedia on what happened next:

The news soared and the media depicted the story as a hostile takeover. Used to their advantage, they used the media coverage as a means to send out messages to other members in different prisons across the island. Their message was clear: They wanted justice and they meant business. They warned the administration and let them know that if their needs weren't met about improving the living situations within the facilities, there would be bloodshed and an all out war. By the middle of 1984, their numbers multiplied excessively. They took over 7 major prison facilities across the island and ruled them with an iron fist.

Well, well—what else is going on in Puerto Rico? Well, the New Day has been looking at the tax returns of our senators and legislators, and comparing them to the financial statements they are required to file. And guess what? The legislators are far more able to make laws than follow them—some serious discrepancies came up. How is it that a senator making over 80,000 dollars a year—the third highest salary on any legislature in the states—only got around to paying 12 dollars in taxes? The matter is under investigation.

And it’s a shame that the legislators aren’t paying their taxes, because we are, frankly, broke. So broke that we can’t pay the 100 million owed to government employees for unused sick leave—and that isn’t making the police and the teachers (the two largest groups affected) happy. Yes, it’s true that the government workers have some nice perks—not the least of which is the thirty days of vacation, the eighteen days of sick leave, and the twenty holidays. Uncharitable minds—perhaps warped by having worked in private enterprise—call this excessive.

So the governor has declared…well, what has he declared? It’s a little uncertain—if he can find the money, he’ll pay; if not, well, he’s not gonna issue checks with insufficient funds. So people will have to wait.

Oh, except for the judicial and the—you were waiting for this, right?—legislative branches.

They’ll get paid.

In Germany, the situation is serious but never critical; in Austria, the situation is critical but never serious.

And Puerto Rico weighs in on the side of Austria. The island is busying itself with chismes de la farándula or jetset gossip. Will our local bombshell Maripily—rumored to have more on the outside than in the penthouse—be on People’s Most Beautiful list? And what about the Lady of Fire, Olga Tañón? Will her newest song take off?

I leave you with this story—perhaps true—of García Marquez, who was once asked why he didn’t write about Puerto Rico.

“They didn’t believe me when I created Macondo,” he said, “just imagine what they’d say if I wrote about Puerto Rico!”

Learning versus Teaching

News flash, Dear Reader—the capital of Washington is….

(Nope, it’s not Spokane.)

There was a time in your life when you knew the capital of the state of Washington. And you had a test on it, and on all the other state capitals.

“What’s the capital of the state of Washington,” I said yesterday to Naia, the little girl whose mother runs the café that is my office. Naia was busy being home schooled by her mother on state capitals last year when I first met them.

Naia gave me the look eleven-year-old girls reserve for silly adults.

 “I dunno, that was last year….”

Well, she may be home schooled, but she’s got the education system down cold. Quick—what year was the Magna Carta?

You may know—I think it’s 1215.

Quick—what WAS the Magna Carta?

Interesting to know—how many people could answer one versus the other?

Here’s the thing about Naia—she has correctly eliminated the useless data of state capitals (she has an iPad, if she needs to know a state capital, she’ll google it….) to create more space or capacity or energy for what she really loves, which is dinosaurs.

She was asking me, the other day, what my favorite dinosaur was, and though I was tempted to say Ronald Reagan, I decided to tell the truth: I don’t believe in dinosaurs. Yes, I know the whole fossil record absolutely and completely refutes me, and no, I don’t hold my belief so strongly that I would die for it. I just can’t get my head around animals that big, that massive, and especially I don’t buy the new theory that an asteroid wiped them out. And if people can deny the holocaust or believe that Obama is Muslim, well, I can not believe in dinosaurs.

Naia, however, took me on. She has a vast, untaught-but-still-very-educated knowledge of dinosaurs, as well as a fascination for the natural world. She knew, for example, that a bird of paradise was a bird—I didn’t. I thought it was just a plant. But Naia instantly informed me that the birds live in New Guinea and some parts of Australia. And she showed me a picture of one—look!

Nobody, you understand, requires that Naia know all about dinosaurs and birds of paradise. (Or is it bird of paradises?) However, it is vitally important to know that capital of Washington State so that Naia gets a piece of paper that will lead in four years time to another piece of paper that will lead in three years time to the acquisition of another piece of paper that will lead to a job. Because you need a Master’s Degree to get pretty much any job, nowadays.

Well, I had a job for about 35 years, and guess what! Not once did I need to know that the capital of Washington is Olympia.

What I did need to know is how to use a computer, that first day in Wal-Mart, in 2004.

I came late to the game—everybody assumed I knew what a file was, or what the desktop was, or what Excel was.

“Show me how to turn this on,” I was saying to Elizabeth, the lady who hired me—as she and I sat in front of the computer. Like so much else I did, it didn’t inspire confidence.

Seven years later, I had taught myself the rudiments of VBA scripting and was the acknowledged expert in PowerPoint. I could do all that because I shared a passion for something. No, not dinosaurs, but the cello. And if I could play the Chopin and Shostakovich sonatas, of course I could learn how to use Microsoft Office products.

It’s always the first thing cut, in the schools. Yeah, they may threaten to cut the football team—a sure way to get people to vote for the school board referendum—but when it actually comes time to start the slashing? That machete falls straight down on music and art.

As I write, there’s a guy pounding the hell out of some wood in the apartment above me. No, he’s not a construction worker, he’s a sculptor. I am writing this, which is an arguably creative thing to do. Below me, people are selling shoes. So two thirds of the building is being creative.

Or maybe the entire building is. Can you be creative in sales?

I think so. There’s a kind of magic involved when you meet a good salesman—how many times have you walked away with something you didn’t need until the salesperson told you you needed it, or implanted in you some desire for it?

I think Sir Robinson (view clip below) is right—we are doing a wonderful job of stomping out every last bit of creativity in our kids. Unfortunately, I think that’s what we want to do. The news that our schools do more deadening than awakening has been around for 40 or 50 years, and have we changed? Have we done anything about it? Are our schools better places, turning out better kids, smarter kids, more creative kids?

Well, at least in Puerto Rico, I would never have had the job I did had the answer been yes. Every child in Puerto Rico graduates with 12 years of English class—how could I possibly be needed as an English teacher? And why—since I had no credentials whatsoever and was going up against the professionals—did I succeed in getting people to talk?

I think most teachers get in the way. I think it’s better not to teach. I never really did, and still don’t, although occasionally I feel guilty for not having a lesson plan and vocabulary and written exercises and metrics for evaluation. I am not a very good teacher.

I do, however, observe learning fairly well.

Varying Wildernesses

It’s one of those moments when you know intuitively that it’s true. When Susan Cain in the TED talk below tells introverts, “hey, it’s OK to withdraw—seek your wilderness, that’s where the creativity comes from,” I was back behind the building at work, looking on at the iguanas resting in the trees, or the egret sailing off lazily as the barking dogs attempted chase.

I had left behind a huge open office with little individual workspaces and four-foot partitions. The noise level was high, despite constant reminders to respect other people’s privacy and not to play loud music, have loud conversations, or—and this drove people nuts—go away from your desk leaving your cell phone blaring your favorite—and no one else’s—ringtone.

On Friday afternoons, all pretense of work or an office environment was dropped. People roamed the aisles, talked to their friends, laughed, planned—or actually started—their weekends.

Cain is right, as well, about the constant pressure to be in a group, to be a part of a group, to be contributing to the group, to be a leader in the group. Staff meetings were agony for me—I liked virtually all my coworkers individually, but together they drove me nuts.

First of all, nobody came on time. Second, there were constant interruptions. Third, the same people who always talked, well, always talked. So we always agreed to do whatever it was they had decided to do, and so why were we there? Was it really necessary to gather us all together to rubberstamp what was going to happen, anyway?

(When, by the way, did we decide that “rubberstamp” is one word? It seems ominous, somehow—as if it’s legitimizing something that very much shouldn’t be….)

Even worse was the portion of the meeting where a dinámica would be rolled out. The purpose was always some corporate hooey about increasing trust, fostering teamwork, building effective networks—whatever. Once, construction paper was passed out, and each person was given the name of a colleague. With glue and crayons, we were told to make a hat, and adorn on it some emblem or symbol of the person whose name we had been given.

I saw my hands making it, and watched in horror. To my right and left—as well as in front and behind—people were making orderly, ordinary hats. My own? Well it was a lop-sided affair that had three horns stuck out the top of it—God knows what I was thinking—and little paper dreadlocks hanging down the back. To this I applied colors that instantly clashed—I never got around to learning the color cycle, which is why I always wear black pants and a white shirt: that way the tie won’t clash…see?—and then began to contemplate what symbols I could impose upon my creation.

The problem being that the person whose name I had been given was absolutely the blandest creature I had ever met. Right, I thought, so I’ll just draw in some abstract figures, and let her figure it out.

It was a monstrosity: a misshapen, disfigured, cruel joke of a hat. What if I added some curls to the side?

Made it worse….

OK—string little doohickeys from the three horns?

Horrible.

The room had grown still, all were finished, all eyes were on my hands, wonderfully finding new ways to make the hat uglier. I myself watched in horror as the thing grew in hideousness, a hat with a terrible genetic malformation exposed to horrific blasts of radiation. At last, the director of the department put an end to it.

It was time—I had to present my hat. The problem being that my recipient was one of two colorless women who had the same position, very similar names, almost similar physiognomies…oh, and they always hung out together.

All I could do was call out her name….

She lifted her hand to her mouth and gasped as I marched the abortion over to her and wedged it one her head.

It got worse—I was asked to explain the meaning of the abstract figures I had scratched on the hat.

“Kindness,” I said, pointing to something that looked like a chewed up dog toy.

“Carefulness,” I said, thinking anybody so boring had to be careful.

And the last?

“Precision,” I said, and retreated to my chair.

At a certain point it was clear. When they announced the “realignment” (get with it—it’s no longer called a “restructuration”) it became obvious. All things come to an end. I had my meeting with the HR people from Bentonville, the meeting that began with the question, “now, what is it exactly that you do,” with the explanation followed by blank looks and noncommittal murmurings.

So the day when I came upon the most zealous of the dinámica guys filling up buckets of water before the staff meeting?

I couldn’t, I absolutely couldn’t bear to find out—would someone be blindfolded and told to carry the bucket of water through an obstacle course without spilling one drop—just by receiving feedback from the rest of his team?

I was free, I decided. Nothing I did was going to alter my course, change my destiny, save my job. I was coasting along to that Friday morning that indeed came—the one announced by the E-mail stating “your attendance is mandatory.”

So I can’t tell you, dear Reader, what manner of nonsense got done on that bucket of water. I was out, as ever, peering at iguanas, consoling myself with a warm bit of wilderness outside before plunging back into the madness inside.

Ordinary People, Heroic Acts

For the last two Saturdays in a row, I have taken two chairs, a pair of jeans and a shirt, a video camera, and a satchel with information cards and consent forms as well as two books, each containing about 350 pages, to a public square.

It’s the 30,000 Lives Project, in which I cheerfully consent to look completely ridiculous. My object is to read the randomly generated names of 30,000 people: the number of people who die every year of gunshot wounds.

Why do I do this?

I had to ask myself the question that first day—when I was visibly nervous. I had support, thank God. Raf was there, holding the sign that announced the project. Pablo was there, reading names and talking to people. Nydia strolled into the scene, kissed me and got right to work. Then doña Ilia strolled in and stole—blessedly though not surprisingly—the show.

The point is that nobody would have been on the plaza doing what I was doing if I hadn’t gotten pissed. The NRA was making me crazy—how many more massacres would it take before we had gun control? And yes, Facebook and the social media are fine—but all my friends think like me, for the most part. That’s why we’re friends.

So the real work wasn’t the ten hours of copying and pasting in the one hundred name batches that it took to generate the 724-page document. And the real expense wasn’t the hundred bucks spent on printing the books, fliers, consent forms or sign. The real effort was to put myself out there—to make a fool out of myself and to expose myself to the possible scorn of NRA members or gun “rights” advocates.

I don’t do well with conflict. Or so I thought, because when I encountered that first day a gun rights advocate, the conversation was surprisingly cordial. I heard him out, disagreed, and parted company. No big deal.

Well, it’s been two Saturdays—we’ve read six thousand of thirty thousand names, or 5% of the total. And we’ve spent 4 hours doing it. So it should take 80 hours to read the names of all the people who die of gunshot wounds in the United States. Yup—two full work weeks.

So now we know. But is it worth it? Do we get anything from having Marc and friends stand / sitting around in public reading names?

I think Philip Zimbardo would say yes. And he should know—having written my Psychology 101 textbook those many years ago. So I clicked on his TED talk, and was immediately hooked. It’s that old question—if you were a German in Nazi Germany, what would you do?

Sadly, we know what you would do. You would follow the crowd, go off to war, press the button that sends the poison gas into the nostrils of the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in the chamber next door.

Or you wouldn’t. There was a German resistance, there were people hiding prisoners of war or Jews or anybody who needed hiding. So maybe you wouldn’t have colluded, maybe you would have been a hero, which is, according to Zimbardo…

…an ordinary person. A seamstress with tired feet, as Rosa Parks was that day she sat at the front of the bus. She didn’t wake up and say, “hey, I really oughta be a hero today,” she later said; she just had tired feet.

Years ago, at Wal-Mart, a motivational speaker concluded a talk by pulling out a dollar bill. He talked about how a person had given him a dollar bill with the message: go ahead, dream, follow your passion, you’re a leader and you can make change happen. So at every talk he gives, he pulls out a dollar bill and gives it to the person he sees having leadership potential.

There were about thirty people in an one-of-you-will-betray-me-moment—‘is it me?’

Well, I took the dollar in complete confusion, and did the only thing I could think of—put it under the laughing Buddha that then sat on my desk and now sits on my desk. And no—I haven’t spent it.

But if I was the person with the most leadership potential—and that guy really should cut out the morning bottle—it’s probably due to one thing.

I’m gay and I came out.

After you do that, you learn two things. First, that you can do it—that you can have the courage to face social disapproval, professional suicide, parental rejection. After that, standing in a plaza reading names is no big deal.

Second, going along with the crowd is not so important. Being liked is not so important. You realize—I’ll make my crowd, I’ll make my family, and no, I don’t have to have people like me.

Zimbardo talks briefly at the end of his talk about the bullying issue. And I agree with what I suspect would be his analysis—it’s stupid to tell a thirteen-year old kid “it gets better.” Sure, it’s true, and yeah, if feels good to say it. But do you remember how long time was when you were a kid? Christmas or a birthday took centuries to come around—now they pop up every other day.

I would tell these kids—“hey, you know what? There’s a reason you’re getting bullied, and it’s a good reason. You’re different, and that’s wonderful. There’s something special in you. I don’t know what it is, but I can sense it, and so can the kids around you, and they’re jealous ‘cause you’ve got something special, something to give, something unique. Do you know what it is?”

Kid looks up.

“Nah….”

“Well, that’s what we’re gonna find out….”

A Rich and Bankrupt Church

It’s a story at once byzantine and utterly evil. There is a man, a Father Maciel, who commits horrific acts of abuse against seminarians in his own seminary, in the seminary he has founded. This fact was acknowledged by the Vatican in a statement in 2010. Here’s Wikipedia on the matter:

The "very serious and objectively immoral acts" of Maciel, which were "confirmed by incontrovertible testimonies" represent "true crimes and manifest a life without scruples or authentic religious sentiment", the Vatican said.[31] The Vatican also stated that the Legion created a "mechanism of defense" around Maciel to shield him from accusations and suppress damaging witnesses from reporting abuse. "It made him untouchable," the Vatican said. The statement decried "the lamentable disgracing and expulsion of those who doubted" Maciel's virtue. The Vatican statement did not address whether the Legion's current leadership would face any sanctions.[32] Actions taken by the current Legion leadership will be scrutinized; but no specific sanctions were mentioned, amid suspicion that at least some of the current leaders must have been aware of Maciel's sins. The Vatican acknowledged the "hardships" faced by Maciel's accusers through the years when they were ostracized or ridiculed, and commended their "courage and perseverance to demand the truth."

“No, Marc,” you are groaning. “enough with the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church. Basta ya!”

Well, you may have a point. But this is a story that hasn’t been much heard. The YouTube clip—actually four clips of 15 minutes each—has only been seen by some 1900 people. That’s nothing in YouTube terms. And this is a story that, yes, is as saturated with abuse as a wet dog. But it also is about something often linked to sex…

…money.

Father Maciel, born in Cotija de la Paz, Michoacán, Mexico in 1920, barely made it to the priesthood—two seminaries kicked him out, and no other seminary would touch him. So he was tutored privately, and then wealthy connections greased his way into the priesthood. And he was on the Vatican’s screen early on—in 1956 he was hospitalized for drug abuse in Rome, and suspended as a priest. But he slipped back in during the interregnum between popes—the Secretary of State for the Vatican reappoints him head of the congregation.

What congregation, you ask.

Maciel founded the Legion of Christ in 1941, with the help of his uncle, a bishop. And Maciel was a charismatic leader, who followed a well-established tactic for gaining power. Go after the rich, especially the rich women, and better yet, old rich women.

And he certainly did well. Here’s a statement from the National Catholic Reporter: “By 2004, the Legion had a $650 million budget and $1 billion in assets for the prep schools, seminaries and universities in Latin America, Europe and North America.”

Macel also was, according to another source, the greatest fundraiser to the Catholic Church in modern times.

That makes you friends, and friends he had. Certainly in the Catholic world—the prominent Catholic thinker Richard John Neuhaus defended him, called charges against Maciel “scurrilous.” Carlos Slim, the world’s richest guy is a pal, as is William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education turned-CNN commentator.

And the biggest pal of all was John Paul II, who praised him lavishly on the first trip ever of a pope to Mexico.

Money, Dear Reader, doesn’t talk—it’s sings, it lures, it clouds and befuddles the intellect, not to mention the moral scheme, as effectively as those vials that filled a large suitcase that Maciel showed to a legionary.

Yes, by the 80’s or 90’s, Maciel no longer had to send seminarians to the hospital, to plead for more drugs for the founder of Legion of Christ. A doctor had given him carte blanche to mix as much of the opiate as he wanted.

He was “sick,” went the story, and in great pain.

Well, the sick part I believe, though not quite in the sense intended.

He also fostered sickness. The legionaries are told never, ever, to criticize Maciel, and to snitch on those who do. They are taken as teenagers and told only to send letters once a month to their parents. Worse, they are allowed to see their parents once every seven years, according to one parent, a heartbroken woman form Elk Grove, Wisconsin. Their Internet access is restricted, their letters home are censored.

Remember—this was the thing that got the Moonies in trouble—or at least earned them a few black marks, in the public eye.

This would be bad enough—the abuse, the cultism that prompted the bishops of Cincinnati and Columbus to ban the Legion from their dioceses. And speaking of abuse, it seems that Maciel swung both ways, fathering as many as—perhaps—six children.

What’s worse?

The Vatican knew all this.

It’s the familiar story. Nine victims of Father Maciel lodged a formal complaint in the Vatican. Incredibly, even as the investigation was continuing, the Vatican then announced that it had stopped the investigation. Later, the Vatican announced to the victims that the case had been shelved.

In 2004, the victims get a letter—the case has been reopened. The letter is from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Ratzinger, who, as I wearily point out, had directed that ALL cases of priestly abuse be sent to his desk.

And Ratzinger has a little moral dilemma. Here’s the Catholic Reporter again on the subject:

"Ratzinger wanted to elevate John Paul to beatification," said Barba, coauthor of La Voluntad de No Saber ("The Will Not to Know"), an analysis of Vatican documents on Maciel. The book's publication last March and Benedict's refusal to meet with Maciel victims on a trip to Mexico ignited an onslaught of bad press for the pope. Benedict had to reckon with the embarrassment of John Paul's praise of Maciel after the 1998 case, in essence scoffing at allegations against one of the most notorious sexual criminals in church history. By keeping a lid on Maciel's secret life, Barba said, Benedict hoped "to defend the sainthood case against the accusations that John Paul protected predators."

Well, it’s another case of a morally bankrupt man who heads a church of 1.2 billion people of doing anything to promote his church. This man, who meets with abuse survivors, who prays with them, sheds tears with them, values a canonization over the truth.

Which had it been told might have swayed the mind of a devoted legionary, a widow named Gabrielle D. Mee, who left 60 million bucks to the Legion in 2008. The family is suing, stating that Mee would never have given the money had she known that the founder of the organization was a pervert who had fathered children as well.

That’s interesting, but hardly the point that concerns me.

At three this morning I was eating pizza and reading a piece by John Cornwell, a writer and Catholic known for his book Hitler’s Pope. He points out that the death—and now resignation—of a pope doesn’t remove just one man, but the entire curia, the administration of the church. The top guys all lose their jobs, and new guys are put into their place. And yes, Cornwell completely buys in to the theory published in the Italian press that the report commissioned by the three cardinals reveals sexual and fiscal misdeeds at the top level of the curia.

Which may be the reason Ratzinger isn’t returning to the beloved Germany of his birth. He can’t. He has to stay, and work with the new pope.

Here’s the question: is he staying to clean up?

Or cover up?

Shared Secretarial Services

Two days ago, I wrote a post about the case of Stephen Kiesle, a child molester and priest who was convicted in 1978 of tying up two boys and having sex with them. Kiesle then wanted out of the priesthood, and the bishop of Oakland, California, couldn’t have agreed more. And so a correspondence with Rome began.

Correspondence may not be the word—it was really a written monologue directed at Rome. True, there was an early response asking for more documents, but then… nothing. Oakland wrote several letters over the years, pointing out the conviction, stressing the potential for scandal. Finally, the answer came. Evoking the good of the church, the common good, the need for pastoral care for the priest / molester, Ratzinger said no deal.

Two years later, the priest was finally defrocked. He then went on to molest again, and eventually served prison time. He lives now as a registered sex offender.

I am, as you can see, fascinated by the character of this man, Joseph Ratzinger, whose life story seems to be one of finding himself in events or times saturated with evil, and dealing ambiguously with it.

His biographer points out that he grew up in a heavily Catholic town with virulent anti-Semitism. He is inducted into the Hitler Youth—it was mandatory—and also, later, into the army. He doesn’t fire a shot in the army, nor was he particularly active in the Hitler Youth. Nor does he resist, though the Nazis had seized and murdered his cousin, a 14 year-old child with Down’s syndrome.

Later, he’s teaching at the same university as Hans Küng, the prominent theologian who has at times been a thorn in the Catholic Church’s side. Küng describes Ratzinger as initially liberal, until the student turmoil of the sixties. Students rushed in protest into his classroom; the rigid German, Ratzinger, was appalled by their demands, their conduct, their clothes and grooming.

He steps onto a path that will take him into an increasingly more rigid, repressed, authoritarian, absolute world. Finally, at the end of his life, he confronts evil again, as each week he reads the reports of the sex abuse in his church. And he knows, better than anyone, the magnitude of the problem because he’s given the order: all cases of sexual abuse come to his desk.

Given this fascinating, if rigid, man, I was of course watching via YouTube Ratzinger boarding the helicopter that would take him to Castel Gandolfo. And I was reading the comments as well, one of which was adulatory: you’ve been the best pope ever, thank you, Benedict, for your wonderful service to the church.

I had just written of the Kiesle affair, and had spent the morning reading the letters the diocese had sent and the reply that—after years of silence—Ratzinger had sent. So I posted a comment back, disagreeing, and giving as much of the Kiesle story as I could, in 150 characters or less (I used all but three).

There was—you’re expecting this, right?—the predictable response. I was accused of spreading lies and distortions. That I expected. What lifted the eyebrows was the sentence, “nobody has done more for ridding the Catholic Church of homosexual filth than Benedict.”

True, in a way. Very early on, Ratzinger made it clear to the seminaries—check out those guys. Any seminarian who won’t toe the line, who won’t play by the rules, who comes out and says, “hey, I’m gay—so?” is out. It was back to the fifties—a time of clear, unambiguous repression. 

I could have responded, pointing out that I had spent most of the morning reading the documents of the Kiesle affair, but instead I deleted the comment—from my computer, at least. Mentally, it rankled for a day or two.

Today, I read that the redoubtable Andrew Sullivan has blogged that Ratzinger is gay. No, not that he’s acting on it, but that he is innately gay, and has spent a lifetime repressing it. And he offers several clues that this may be true—Ratzinger’s voice, his scrupulous… but wait, Sullivan does it much better than I. Here he is on the subject.

At times, it seems to me, his gayness is almost wince-inducing. The prissy fastidiousness, the effeminate voice, the fixation on liturgy and ritual, and the over-the-top clothing accessories are one thing. But what resonates with me the most is a theology that seems crafted from solitary introspection into a perfect, abstract unity of belief. It is so perfect it reflects a life of withdrawal from the world of human relationship, rather than an interaction with it.

Sullivan wrote these words in 2010. Today, in 2013, he writes:

The damage Benedict XVI has done to the Catholic church and the papacy may be far from over. All I can say about yesterday’s developments is that they seem potentially disastrous and also indicative to me of something truly weird going on underneath all of this.

Well, it has to be said, there is something strange about a man who, reportedly, has never much liked the Vatican and—equally reportedly—misses his family and native land who then decides to stay in the Vatican. Why? His will be a life of seclusion and prayer; he is withdrawing and giving his absolute obedience to the new pope. Wouldn’t it be prudent to do that many hundred miles away, in a land that speaks his language, where his brother is at hand to chat with, to reminisce, to remember the happy days of a Nazi childhood?

Or is he staying around because of this?

Yes, this hunk, Padre Georg, has been the personal secretary of the previous pope for some time—they met when Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And now, it seems that this ex-pope, who is now in seclusion, praying for the welfare of his beloved church, still feels the need to have a secretary. So Padre Georg will spend the evenings and nights with Ratzinger, and then trot over to fulfill his other secretarial duties with the new pope.

See?

And here is Sullivan quoting Padre Georg—wicked tongues call him gay.org—giving us a little peep into the day of a pontiff:

The pope’s day begins with the seven o’clock Mass, then he says prayers with his breviary, followed by a period of silent contemplation before our Lord. Then we have breakfast together, and so I begin the day’s work by going through the correspondence. Then I exchange ideas with the Holy Father, then I accompany him to the ‘Second Loggia’ for the private midday audiences. Then we have lunch together; after the meal we go for a little walk before taking a nap. In the afternoon I again take care of the correspondence. I take the most important stuff which needs his signature to the Holy Father.

Well, that’s a cozy picture—the breakfast and lunches together, the exchange of ideas, that afternoon nap.

Dear Reader, please believe me—I accuse the Holy Father of absolutely no impropriety. Yes, in the presence of such a sex-god, I would be stripping and kneeling as fast as I could, but I think the pope has / does not.

Twin thoughts on Ratzinger—he must keep this man as a constant and terrible reminder of what he has given up, what he has repressed, what he loves and what he cannot express or especially possess. He is a man in love who has never loved and who—obviously—cannot give up the man to whom he has never given himself. It’s a fascinating, religious / erotic hair shirt; a spiritual / psychosexual session with the scourge. He cannot tear himself away.

Could you?

And incredibly, he expects the whole world to believe this.

Second thought—what in hell is the next pope gonna do about this?