The World According to Spong

Well, here’s what the guy believes: 

Twelve points

1.     Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2.     Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3.     The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4.     The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5.     The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6.     The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7.     Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8.     The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9.     There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10.   Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11.   The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

12.   All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

“The guy” is a former Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong, who has written a book called The Sins of Scripture, which argues that the Bible cannot and must not be taken literally. So how does one read the Bible, the interviewer asks in the clip below? Spong believes you should read it as a progression, from the tribal beliefs of the Old Testament through the teaching of the life of Christ.

Well, that was interesting enough for me to check out the Reverend Spong in Wikipedia, which is where I got the twelve theses above.

Well, I thought I knew the term “theism,” but did I? Is Spong using the term in some specialized way? Here’s the definition, also by way of Wikipedia:

Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.[1] In a more specific sense, theism is commonly a monotheistic doctrine concerning the nature of a deity, and that deity's relationship to the universe.[2][3][4][5] Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. As such theism describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and some forms of Hinduism. 

Ummm—I’m a bear of very little brain, especially where religion is concerned, but I’d be curious to know: why is theism dead? And in what way are we to talk about God?

Could it be the ocean, the Goldberg Variations, the love of a mother holding her child moments after birth? Because if that’s God, I might have a shot, here.

Here’s what Spong has to say:

Right—so whatever God is (or are—which to me makes sense theologically, if not grammatically), Jesus is not the incarnation of her / him / it / them. Oh—and I looked up Christology, and yes, it means exactly what you think—the study of the nature and person of Christ. That said, how are we to look at Christ? As the most perfect representation of God?

All of the rest of the theses make perfect sense to me. But apparently, somebody with a better ear for theology didn’t think so; the Reverend Rowan Williams said they embodied “confusion and misinterpretation.”

Spong has various other contentions, some of which are contentious. He’s believed since before Dan Brown that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ. Why? Well, for one thing, Mary Magdalene in one gospel goes to claim the body of Christ—no woman of the time could have done that, were she not his wife.

Spong also decries the fact that “religion,” as it’s commonly seen, has become almost totally a negative thing—the priest abuse scandals, the exclusion of women in many faiths, the prohibition of homosexuality, the total focus on sex, about which he thinks the church knows nothing. Spong feels that two things are happening—the fundamentalist movement is hysterically reaching backward, and the mainstream churches have nothing to offer the rest of us. And so, we’re at a crucial moment when Christianity is going to have to change, to re-invent itself.

And about scripture? Well, first Spong points out that the first gospel of the New Testament was written 50 years after the death of Christ; in addition, it was written in Greek, whereas Christ spoke Aramaic. And he tears through a lot of stuff: nothing, he says, in the scripture paints Mary, the mother of Christ, as a particularly saintly, or even supportive mother, nor is she very prominent in the gospel. Oh, and by the way—the virgin birth stuff? Concocted in the ninth decade, by Matthew; none of the earlier writers ever made the claim. Oh, and he says that no respecting / respected theologian believes it. What’s the source of the confusion? Matthew didn’t know Hebrew, and had to read in Greek. So when he read in Isaiah 7:14 that a virgin shall conceive, he was reading a Greek translation of a Hebrew word that did not mean “virgin” but rather a young woman.

Oh, and another news flash—there weren’t twelve apostles but fifteen. Why? Because there are 15 guys in the New Testament who seem to be apostles, and so we have to assume that Thaddeus was Judas, and they got the names wrong. Poppycock, says Spong. And speaking of disciples—Jesus had both male and female disciples.

Spong says that he started out as a fundamentalist, and only changed when he discovered, at age fourteen, that his fundamentalism was impeding his growth and development. And what does he say now? “God is beyond my human capacity to ever know fully.”

Right—I can get that. In fact, I can buy into all of what Spong says. But I think he’s articulated all of what we shouldn’t be thinking or doing. That’s great, but…

…what is he proposing instead?

On Faith

I shudder to go here, because there’s no help for it—I am as unable to experience God in any of his / her various guises as a rock. And that means that I’m one of just 5% of the American population who are atheist.

Which is why I found myself watching Richard Dawkins yesterday, as I munched on a tuna fish sandwich in the café. Granted, Dawkins goes after the most extreme of the religious nuts—he tracks down Ted Haggard in Colorado, and yes, I can now tell you: it’s quite likely that the reverend was doing cocaine and call boys. Haggard, perhaps annoyed by Dawkins’s pristine Queen’s English, accuses Dawkins of intellectual arrogance.

Well, Dawkins gets around—from Colorado to the Middle East, where he interviews a Jew turned Muslim from New York. The Muslim angrily accuses Dawkins of dressing women as whores; Dawkins retorts hotly that he doesn’t dress women, they dress themselves. Not good enough for the Muslim—by allowing women to dress as whores, it’s as good as dressing them. Short version: women are chattel, to be dressed according to male dictates.

Every bush has a nut hiding underneath it, and Dawkins beats every bush. There’s the Reverend Keenan Roberts, who hit on the wonderful idea of the Hell House—a dramatic working-out of the post-life experience throughout all time of those who don’t personally accept Christ. Here’s the clip:

Oh, and here’s the description, as provided in YouTube:

Check out this "movie trailer" promo for the upcoming 2013 FIRE & THE FLAME theatrical outreach, presented by New Destiny Christian Center of Thornton, CO. This heaven and hell drama wowed audiences last year, and the spiritual impact was incredible! This year's production will feature 4 new scenes. Performances will be: Saturday, March 23 at 6pm, Sunday March 24 at 6pm, Saturday March 30 at 6pm, and Easter Sunday March 31 at 8:30am and 11am. All performances are free. A love offering will be received. Nursery available for children through 3 years of age. For more info visit www.Godestiny.org or call 303.289.1547. Senior Pastor: Keenan Roberts.   

In fact, this clip is substantially tamer than what Dawkins filmed—and Dawkins got right into it with the pastor. How old, he asks, should a child be before he is allowed to see the play—which features leaping flames and gay people groaning in agony and the devil leaping around tormenting people? And the reverend has the answer—twelve would be a good age. Dawkins protests—wouldn’t that be somewhat searing for a child’s mind? Better that, says Roberts, than growing up godless and falling into perdition.

Well, Dawkins goes through every lunatic religion and denomination—though curiously, he missed the Mormons—until at the very end, he found himself a good English Anglican, whose moderate views fell like manna in the desert.

Today, I started out watching Dawkins on the third of his series on The Age of Reason; today’s topic being the growth of “alternative medicine.” And I had just gotten to the wonderful picture of Dawkins sitting bemused and very much open-eyed as all the others in the room visualized a pearl, into which they were invited to step, and there they would find…

…their real selves!

Well, Dawkins has to find out about that, so he goes off to interview the healer, who claims to be able to alter DNA and who also informs him that most people have a double strand of DNA.

Dawkins is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, in evolutionary biology.

He was, then, very much interested in the topic—were there people who had more or less than a double strand of DNA?

The healer doesn’t miss a beat.

“The people of Atlantis had 12 strands of DNA,” she explains.

Predictably, Dawkins goes nuts.

Dawkins thinks that reason and science are under attack, and is out to challenge all religions—on the grounds that they promote irrational thought as well as divisions.

I’m both more extreme and less extreme. Though I cannot feel God, there are people who can, and who struggle as hard as they can to live up to beliefs that are truly admirable. And these people, acting together as a community, can accomplish what I—a solitary atheist—cannot. And these people adopt a theology that is both liberating and challenging—one that could help the world, if it ever got adopted.

My friend Susan, in fact, is one such person, and sent me a clip of another such person: John Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop. Right—if I could hear God, I would hang with Spong, and his flock. Check out a clip of a remarkable man:



I said that I was both less and more extreme than Dawkins. Why? Because for every man like Spong, there are men like Scott Lively, the evangelical who has exported homophobia to Uganda and Russia. This is a level of hypocrisy and hatred that even Dawkins doesn’t contemplate. And according to Wikipedia, Evangelical Protestants make up 19% of the American population. The mainstream protestants? 15%.

So I’m on the fence. In general, I cannot enter churches, and the smell of burnt-out candles is particularly upsetting to me—I associate the smell with the end of services at Christ Presbyterian Church. I dislike seeing crosses anywhere, and especially around people’s necks. And nuns—of which we have a full convent in Old San Juan? Don’t ask….

But before I throw out the bathwater, I’d like to see if somehow, somewhere, there might be a baby….

Scrambling to Keep Up

“I can be the president of the United States or I can control Alice, but I cannot possibly do both,” famously said Teddy Roosevelt about his hellion daughter. And every father in America knew just what he meant.

And that’s the way I feel about Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Consider—I emailed myself an article my friend Gary posted on Facebook; here’s the headline: 
    

Wisconsin Prepares to Hand Half-Million in Taxpayer Funds to Koch-Tied GOP Lobby Shop

OK—that was something I had to check out. But it was late, my brain was tired; I sent it off to my inbox to be dealt with in the morning. Well, it’s 11:50, and where have I spent the morning? Right up there in Wisconsin—virtually—looking at, among other things, a map of frac sand mines and production centers.

Sorry, I couldn’t copy / paste the map, but here’s the link.

In Iguanas, I reported that South Western Wisconsin is known as the Drift-less Area, so called because the glaciers never rolled into the area. So it’s hillier, and there are curious rocks, the Niagara dolomite limestone, or some such thing. And that’s precisely the area where there were a few sand mines, because Wisconsin is one of the few, or at least one of the richest, places to produce this:

OK—that’s frac sand, or “silica sand: smooth, round grains of almost pure quartz that can be found in lower Wisconsin’s sandstone bluffs.”

A couple years ago, Wisconsin had fewer than ten sand mines; today, it has over one hundred. And here’s what they look like:

And what’s the big deal with frac sand? Well, it’s the only sand you can use for fracking, a process which involves drilling extremely deep vertically, then drilling horizontally several lines, and then forcing a water mixed with frac sand at extremely high pressure. The water / sand mixture fractures (hence the name, get it?) the shale and natural gas is released.

Those fussy environmentalists, of course, have various quibbles. The process requires enormous amounts of water, and thus lowers the water tables, and makes irrigation all the more difficult. Oh, and it also produces some really gunky byproducts—water and sand and a lot of toxic petrochemicals. And where do you put that? Into the river? Dump it on the ground, or in ponds?

Never mind—says the industry. It produces natural gas, and that’s a clean fuel, and don’t we want to be energy independent?

OK—to get at all this sand, the Koch brothers, owners of Koch Industries (a huge petrochemical concern), had to run up to Wisconsin and find someone they could work with. And they certainly did—Scott Walker, who promised to relax Wisconsin’s fussy environmental regulations. How fussy were they? Quite a bit like Minnesota’s, which also has the frac sand deposits. And how many mines / processing plants does Minnesota have today? A handful.

Which tells you how effectively Walker made a “business-friendly” environment in Wisconsin.

So what’s the problem, you say. We create all this sand, ship it off to North Dakota or Texas. That’s their problem, right?

Well, beyond being just a bit callous…no.

“It was clanging railroad cars at night, underground blasting that put cracks in the walls of peoples’ kitchens,” she said. “I had emails that said, ‘I don’t know what they’re doing, but there’s sand all over the inside of my house.’” 

That’s what Kathleen Vinehout, a Wisconsin state senator, said.

Right—sand all over your house is an annoyance. But what about sand in your lungs?

These particles are associated with an increased risk of a battery of illnesses that Crispin Pierce, a professor of environmental public health at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, ticked off for me: “Silicosis, bronchitis, tuberculosis, chronic pulmonary diseases—it’s a really nasty, toxic substance.”

Well, there are emission standards for each mine—but they measure the emissions from one mine only. And what happens when there are three mines, one processing plant, and trucks filled with the stuff—all in one area? Sadly, because this industry is so new—no one knows. So we’ll find out in a generation or so, when Wisconsinites all start wheezing (in the Drift-less Area, of course).

(Added value to Wisconsinites in that area—definitely consider taking up smoking, because guess what? Your lungs are fucked, anyway….)

Oh, and there are social costs, too. The mining companies are coming along waving huge checks at people who will either sell or lease their land. Here’s one account:

She was offered more than $100,000 from the mining company EOG Resources Inc. to move but declined, citing high moving costs and a connection with the area. Since then, she said, her home value has dropped by about half, to around $60,000. The mine provides subsidies for lower property values, but Sonnentag said her property is too far away to qualify.

What happened? Reading further on in the story, it’s clear. She said “no,” her neighbor said “yes.” So she saw the value of her property fall, due to the mine, which was too far away to qualify for the mine subsidy program.

From the same story:

As the mines have been built, a chasm between some neighbors has widened.

"Why should I have to move because my neighbor wants to be selfish?" said Sonnentag. "If I had trouble, I always used to know I could count on my neighbors.

"Not anymore. Now, it's the sand people versus the anti-sand people."

Remember how I was going to tell you about the half million the State is going to give a Koch brother lobbying group?

And remember Teddy Roosevelt and his daughter—Alice ?

See what I mean?

A Voice of Incomparable Price

One of my favorite authors once wrote a line to the effect of “the person you have become, through sheer hard work and adversity, is just as much if not more the true self than the person you started out as.”

Robertson Davies wrote the line referring to a young soprano, but the person who brought the line to my mind was an old soprano: Leontyne Price. And what an amazing soprano! Take a listen to a relatively unknown aria—Song to the Moon, from Dvorak’s Rusalka.



OK—now you can hear why BBC’s Music Magazine in 2007 listed her among the 20 best sopranos. (She came in number four, after Callas, Sutherland, and de los Ángeles.)

And she has an interesting story—she was born in Laurel, Mississippi to parents of limited means. Which, oddly, may have been a break; the schools were strictly segregated, but she has fond memories of the teachers, all of whom were devoted to their students. (In one anecdote, Price admits that the Home Economics teacher had told her, “Leontyne, you’ll never be a great housekeeper.” Somehow, Price manages to make this remark self-deprecating and funny—as she is all throughout the interview.)

So Price, as an older teenager, worked cleaning for a prominent white couple—who were sufficiently impressed to ask Price’s parents if they couldn’t send her off to Juilliard. With their help—as well as a benefit concert from Paul Robeson—she got there.

Like Marian Anderson, born thirty years earlier, Price made her career in Europe before attacking the United States. And when she got there, as she tells New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini, she had faced some of the toughest critics and audiences in the world. So when she was to make her Metropolitan Opera debut—was she fazed? Yes but mostly no. However, she did have a little prayer: Jesus, you got me into this; now, get me out!

Well, Jesus came through—she got a 42-minute ovation; it was one of the longest ovations at the Met.

Asked to describe her voice, Price admits to being a spinto—a rare breed of soprano who has a flexible, lyric voice that can be pushed to a more dramatic, powerful voice. Here’s Price singing Vissi d’Arte, from Puccini’s Tosca.

And just to hear a dramatic soprano perform the same aria—here’s the incredible Birgit Nilsson, a dramatic soprano who could single-handedly take on an orchestra of 120 furiously playing instrumentalists, plus a chorus of dozens, and still make herself very much heard. Oh, and do it for five hours, and repeat the whole thing the next day.



She had thought, initially, to be a recitalist, and she had a close friendship with the composer Samuel Barber, who wrote his Hermit Songs for her. And though another one of Barber’s masterpieces, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, was premiered by another soprano—Eleanor Steber—Price has a special affinity for the piece. Like both Barber and the lyricist James Agee, Price’s father had just died. And so this piece—a nostalgic look at parents on porches, small-town life, kids playing amid the sounds of crickets—had special meaning for Price.



And it was for Price that Barber composed his second opera—an opera that still attracts controversy: Antony and Cleopatra, which the Metropolitan Opera commissioned to open the new hall in 1966. It was a fiasco—Franco Zeffirelli created a ghastly stage setting, the orchestra was under-rehearsed, and the stage machinery was acting up. At one point, Price got stuck in a pyramid and couldn’t get out. But there she was—still singing away!

Barber never quite got over it—he drank more and more, and wrote less and less. Price shook it off and went on with her career—she sang her last performance in 1997—and she was seventy at the time. That, for a singer, is extraordinary.

I’ve no idea how old she was when she did the interview below with Tommasini, but she’s clearly no spring chicken. Yet she sings in the shower every morning, and gets up to the F above high C. Then she tells herself two things—if she can do that F, her high C will be right there. Oh, and also that yes, she has the energy to go downstairs and eat breakfast.

She is, after all, an extraordinary artist—noble, funny, self-deprecating, and yet keenly aware that she has had both a great gift and has worked mightily to use it well. W. Somerset Maugham, in a short story, portrayed a great singer as a kind of monster of egotism and ruthlessness.

Price is the absolute opposite.

Six Thugs in Uniform

The problem?

There’s nothing new about it, no new angle or twist that I can spin. And I’ve written about it before—about the absurdity of the Wisconsin State Capitol police telling tourists who are watching the lunch sing-along in the capitol rotunda that they are subject to arrest. Or how about the 80-year old lady who gets handcuffed and led away, still singing away? Or the Vietnam vet who falls on the marble staircase onto his back and his handcuffed wrists? That’s an ouch.

And I questioned before—why are they using metal cuff, or even cuffs at all? When we were all protesting in Vieques, the cops used plastic “cuffs”—really just high-quality plastic bands. Why? They didn’t want any martyrs.

The protests have been going on for a couple of years, ever since Walker and his fellow Republicans stripped government workers of their right to bargain collectively and turned back the clock a couple of centuries on social issues. So every weekday the protesters gather and sing in the capitol rotunda. Here’s a photo taken a couple of days ago.

And you will remember that Walker—via the Department of Administration—changed the permit process from a two-page form to a 25-page document, and declared that any group of four or more people needed to have a permit to meet in the state capitol.

Warning to any family of mom, dad, and two kids—you could be arrested for walking through the state capitol.

OK—a judge, in a preliminary injunction—upped the number to 20, and will rule on the constitutionality of the whole business later. Remember, please, that both the First Amendment of the US Constitution and a similar section in the state’s Constitution allows for the right of people “peaceably to assemble and to petition their Government for a redress of grievances.” So in addition to the regular singers, tourists and interested others can see the group below—wonderfully called “Raging Grannies.”

The Raging Grannies of Madison, Wisconsin, by the way, have a wonderful little website about their group, which is ten years old. Here’s a quote from the site:

We are a "dis-organization" without formal leadership. Each Granny does what she can and we make decisions by consensus. As it says on the Raging Grannies International website at http://raginggrannies.org/, "We are totally non-violent, believe in only peaceful protest (with lots of laughter), work for the 'many not the few' … and see our work as the spreading green branches of a great tree, rising up to provide shelter and nourishment for those who will come after us." That's true -- but we Grannies also want to have fun, refuse to be silenced, and will sing out against those things that harm the planet we will leave to our grandkids.

One wonders—might the Grannies be talked into starting a gentlemen’s auxiliary? Rather the way the Rotarians have Rotary Anns?

There is, I say, nothing new, nothing I haven’t written about; I’m wasting your time here, Dear Reader. Well, wait—the Huffington Post came out with a story, entitled “Wisconsin Capitol Arrest Turn Violent as Police Take Down Protester.”

I suppose this attempt at journalist restraint and “objectivity” should be lauded. Watch the video below, and then tell me—how would you write that headline?

Damon Terrell was not only attacked by the cops, but spent three days in the jug while the capitol police fiddled with the paperwork. And now, he’s been released; here’s the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the subject:

Charges are still possible against Damon Terrell, who was jailed Monday after a violent arrest interrupted a streak of normally peaceful anti-Scott Walker singalong protests in the Capitol rotunda.

The charges recommended by the Department of Administration were felony battery and resisting arrest in an incident widely caught on camera. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said more time was needed at an initial court appearance to decide on charges. 

Don’t know Ozanne, though his grandmother drank coffee with my mother every Friday morning for about thirty years. And reports are that he’s not gonna be too interested in spending his limited resource in prosecuting a guy who was retreating with his hands up before he was tackled.

Though there was a felony committed in the rotunda that day.

Ozanne—you wanna go after 6 thugs in uniform?

Terrell arrest from multiple angles.

Et in terra pax redux

I might be for it if I thought we knew what we were doing.

The videos that came out of Syria following the chemical attack are horrifying, and yes—I think it’s more likely than not that it was the Syrian army, and not the rebels, who launched the attack. Why? Well, all three strikes were in rebel strongholds. As well, it’s apparently not so easy to carry out a chemical attack—either to make the agents or fire them.

And the Syrian government has, as Kerry pointed out, been reluctant to let the areas affected be inspected, which you would assume it would if they had nothing to hide.

So why am I not all for bombing the hell out Syria?

Well, apparently Syria has the third largest amount of chemical weapons in the world. And where is all that stuff? And even if we knew two weeks ago exactly where everything was, what happens if somebody moved it? And then we bombed it?

That said—what are we going to do? Fire a few missiles at army installations? Bomb the presidential palace? Take out infrastructure?

And when is enough enough? What’s our exit strategy—or are we going to improvise again, as we did / are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq?

And if we do a regime change—what will replace it? One commentator from an Al Jazeera program pointed out that none of the rebel groups are particularly friendly to the West—so is there any reason to get involved?

We may think that we can’t be more despised in the region than we already are, but guess what? We can, and will be. Go on YouTube and enter “Syria chemical attacks” and what you’ll see is chilling. About half are legitimate news clips—the other half (and by no means the least watched) are home-made affairs with titles like “Leaked Documents—U.S. Framed Syria in Chemical Weapons Attack.”

Then there’s the interesting question—over 100,000 people have been killed, and last week’s atrocity? The highest estimate I read was over 3,000. Yes, it is heinous for a government to gas its people. But the West has sat around and watched Syrians kill each other for two long years, now. If we had a moral obligation to act, shouldn’t we have done so a long time ago?

It’s true that using chemical weapons is a particularly barbaric way of killing—it’s indiscriminate, for one thing, which is why so many women and children were victims. But the same might be true with bombs—and especially in civilian areas.

And it might be the case that the world needs to do something—just as we needed to do something in Kosovo. What saddens me is that a response may be justified, but the American people, to say nothing of the rest of the world, have seen enough posturing about chemical weapons—remember that vial of white powder (supposedly anthrax) in Colin Power’s hands? Now, when there really is a chemical attack, the world is too suspicious, and too weary, to respond.

“Why in the world would anybody bother to fight over that land,” my mother used to wonder, looking at some godforsaken desert on television and comparing it to her lush Wisconsin woods.

Why indeed?

Wal-Mart Joins the Parade

OK—so they did it.

It’s a little late for me, since Wal-Mart laid me off over two years ago, but it will be great for the rest of the gay and lesbian associates who are still clinging to their job. Now, those associates can put their husbands, wives, domestic partners on the health plan.

What happened? Did a great liberal wave sweep through the corporate home offices in Bentonville, Arkansas?

Nah—it happened as Mr. Fernández said it would. It got too complicated, for one thing, to figure out what state allowed for domestic partners, what state allowed for marriage equality, when one state would institute marriage equality. Oh, and what to do about a married gay guy living across the river in Minnesota but working in a store in Wisconsin?

That was one thing. The other thing? Talent—and how to attract it. OK, retail is not like academia, which arguably has a higher percent of gays and lesbians than retail. But you’d be surprised—I was—by the number of LGBT folk in high positions in Wal-Mart. And how do you attract a key person away from Costco when Sam’s won’t put her or his partner on the health plan?

That—if memory serves—was also the gist of a letter sent to the Wisconsin legislature by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. Yes, the UW’s History Department has traditionally been very strong. But several high-powered historians had turned down the UW to go teach at Harvard, since Massachusetts was the first state to allow gay marriage, and remains in the vanguard.

Or what do you do when you’re transferring an employee from Massachusetts to Mississippi? His compensation package is going to change, if he can no longer put his husband on the health plan.

Lastly, and Wal-Mart admits it—they held out until the very end. Of the 30 top retailers, only two (Publix and a chain I’ve never heard of) are not offering benefits to same-sex couples.

I wish there were any pleasure in this for me, since I battled for several years to put Raf on the health plan. Instead, he paid several thousand dollars more to be covered under Cobra, when his old job folded. And he is now paying several thousand more from his old job to cover me, since my job folded, and Raf’s current employer—like Wal-Mart—doesn’t allow him to put me on the health plan.

But it’s hardly the money issue that makes me so sour on hearing this news.

I defended the company when I worked for it, for nearly 10 years. Does it pay its workers badly? Yes—and with the exception of Costco—so do all the other retailers. Does it have a disproportionate number of part-time workers? Again, no more so than the rest. Does it fight tooth and nail against unions? Absolutely.

We would have, in fact, seminars on what legally we could say to employees on the topic of unions. No, we couldn’t threaten to fire either individuals or close the store if an employee advocated for unions, or if the store joined one. But we could explain the company policy, which went something like, “Wal-Mart has the open door policy, which is a way to assure that management and workers communicate and come to an agreement.”

Well, I used that policy to press Wal-Mart to put Raf on the health plan. And, be fair, I was listened to, treated respectfully, and told “no.” Be more fair—the policy only promises that you’ll be heard, not that you’ll get what you want.

The problem I have is the strong-armed tactics. Ten current and former employees were arrested in front of the Washington DC offices of Wal-Mart, recently. And even worse, some 60 or 70 associates have been fired or disciplined for traveling to Bentonville during the annual meeting to protest conditions in the stores.

And Sam Walton would be reeling in his grave at the thought of employees risking their jobs to bus into Arkansas to raise grievances, while the top management was having what is essentially a huge party. Why? Because the Walton family owns about 60% of the stock. So yeah, they have to have an annual meeting—big deal.

Oh, and that 60% of the stock? That’s equivalent to the amount of money owned by the bottom 40% of the American people.

So would Sam Walton be at the party, or would he be outside, listening.

No question in my mind….      

The Governor Scrubs a Wall

Well, they were standing around looking at it, as I passed them on the morning trot. And on the way back, they were still standing around looking at it.

And what’s the “it?”

Nice, hunh? It’s La Fortaleza, officially known as Palacio de Santa Catalina, and the oldest governor’s mansion in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere. But that wasn’t the problem.

“We have to document all those holes,” said the woman to the guy wearing the suit. I had halted the Brahms and was walking especially slowly, since a good dish is always worth it.

They were referring to the wall, which the Spanish began constructing in 1640, and which still surrounds ¾ of the city. And what was the problem?

The governor had taken a pressure hose to it.

OK—not the governor himself, though he’s a kind of a hands-on guy. Yesterday, in fact, I had read that one of the governor’s security officers was in an accident, and the governor was on the side of the road, stanching a head wound with his handkerchief.

So for three weeks, a guy was out there with a pressure hose, blasting the wall with 1,200 pounds of pressure. And when a neighbor noted the activity, she sent a letter to Walter Chávez, the director of the neighboring fort, El Morro. The fort is run by the National Park Service, which a decade ago signed an agreement with the commonwealth stating that the Park Service would maintain the walls.

Well, the walls were dirty, said the governor’s spokesperson—they were full of hongo y excremento de palomas—mold and you-know-what from pigeons. So they called up the Department of Natural Resources, who recommended a tree trimmer named Armando Acsensio.

And what did the tree trimmer do?

He effectively—and with 1,200 pounds of water pressure, you can be very effective—destroyed four or five hundred years of patina. And if they have gotten to the grout that holds the thing together?

I’ve seen the National Park Service guys work on the wall. They’re up there with a spatula and a brush, and nothing else; it’s definitely a low-tech affair.

So in three weeks, a tree trimmer took away what had taken centuries to form. But not a problem, because some people like it.

It is, after all, “clean”….