The Teachers Mutiny

T’was the week before Christmas and…

“…we had a coup d’état,” in the words of Jaime.

Who should know, being a lawyer and an astute observer. So what happened? Well, the governor of the island called a special session of the legislature to pass a “reform” of the teachers’ retirement system, which currently has almost 40,000 pensioners. This follows a move in April to reform the government workers retirement system, which caused protests across the island.

It’s not the chickens but rather the eagles come home to roost; since 1952, governments have had two or three essential strategies to reduce unemployment. The first was legitimate—manufacturing, especially pharmaceuticals. That Valium you mother chugged down to tide her through your terrible twos? Thanks, Puerto Rico!

The other modes were a little less kosher….

“He shipped ‘em all off to New York!” sputtered Mr. Fernández, when someone suggested that Luis Muñoz Marín—a close relative of the devil, in the eyes of Mr. Fernández—had reduced unemployment.

The other solution? Put everybody on the government payroll, give them one task to do, and pay them substantially less than the private sector. So you had an enormous government; if memory serves... well wait. Here’s a graphic:

So everybody knew for years that we were heading for disaster. And thus the last governor passed legislation that slashed 30,000 government jobs. Last April, the present governor took the machete to the government retirement system and raised taxes. And now, it’s the teachers’ turn.

There are two reasons for this. First, the system is broke; here’s what the president of the Senate, Eduardo Bhatia, had to say:

To have a retirement system you have to square the end of the month and it is broken. For every dollar you have to give a person who retires today there are 17 cents in the piggy bank. The question is where the other 83 cents go, and that is the decision we have to make as a country. Are there additional 83 cents in the General Fund? No, not there,’ said the Senate leader.

Put it another way—the norm is to have a plan 80% funded, we are only at 17%.

The other factor at play? A little company called Moody’s, which has our credit rating one notch above junk, and is watching Puerto Rico closely.

Well, “watching” may be generous. Moody’s, in fact, has Puerto Rico quite securely by part of a gentleman’s most prized anatomical possessions. And Cate Long, writing for Reuters states it openly: she wrote, “Moody’s identified this reform as one of the factors that will compose its review of Puerto Rico.”

So what happened? The governor sent legislation to one of the two teachers’ unions on the island, and they erupted. And as you can see in the video below, they not only protested but broke the doors to the Senate and charged in. So soon, the entire island was glued to their televisions, watching as hundreds of chanting teachers gathered in the capitol.

Damage? $55,000. One part of which may have been a senator’s chair, on which, according to The New Day, a child was permitted or possibly urged to urinate. Oh, and a security official got bitten, though the attacker didn’t draw blood.

And what did the Senate do? Well, they got the hell out of Dodge City, which in this case meant retreating into an adjacent room, the Hall for Illustrious Ladies. They continued the debate until seven PM, when they adjourned.

To make a sorry situation worse, the teachers do not receive Social Security, and so their pension is the only thing they have.

The reaction from the guv? He came out and called it “reproachable,” which seems a bit mild, given the damage done and the precedent it sets.

You can argue—the teachers should have seen it coming; it was clear that the system was unsustainable. It’s also true that we have a very expensive government, and that our legislators make a killing, both when they’re in office and when they come back as “advisers.” Nor does it help that—according to Mr. Fernández—the Department of Education has the highest proportion of non-docent versus docent personnel in the country.

The saddest thing? According to an analysis by Joanisabel González in the print edition of El Nuevo Día, “Lo increíble es que Puerto Rico entrará en esta nueva parte del ciclo sin garantías de que escapará a la degradación crediticia”.

Simple translation! Even if we do this—and the House has in the last hour just passed the legislation—it may not be enough.

On the virtues of cold (reposted)

I wrote this post originally on October 25, 2012….


I grew up in a cold place, some of / felt like most of the year. I now live in a hot place. And for the most part, I don’t miss it. In fact, I do my best to avoid cold.

So why was I looking at this?

It’s Norway. And everything about it suggests cold—the brooding sky, the greys and ochres, the diffuse light, the shadows. Step into the water by mistake and your feet will be cold for days, seemingly.

Until you move to a radically different climate, you don’t realize the basic assumptions that you’ve made about your world. A couple of decades ago, I came on Raf standing at the sink, lost in thought, staring at—but not seeing—the water flow over his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Water,” he said. “This is how the water feels at home.”

I stuck my hand in it—it was tepid.

“Ridiculous,” I said. “Water is cold.”

Then I wondered—can I have a relationship with someone whose experience of the world is so fundamentally different that my own? 

Yes.

Although there are challenges.

It works the other way, too. Years ago, at the Conservatorio de Música I attended a master class—a young Puerto Rican singer was tackling Schubert’s Im Frühling (In Springtime). The voice was excellent, technique right in place, phrasing great.

So what was it that was just so slightly wrong?

The “master” got it right.

“Wonderful,” he said. “And tell me, what’s this song about.”

Well, of course she knew.

But also she didn’t.

“Have you ever experienced a northern winter?”

No.

So he described it, quite poetically. Your world becomes grey and black. You stand at the window and see the fine thin snow blowing like a ghost across the landscape.

Then he described spring. Equally poetically. The first time you see green after months of grey—you eyes are shocked, you stand and gape, wondering how you lived without that color. Taking your shirt off and feeling sunshine, on that first really warm day—how light you feel without that 10 pounds of parkas / sweaters / thick shirts.

“I think I understand,” said the soprano. “It’s sort of like going to the beach would be for us….”

The master smiled gently. There are things you have to experience.

And perhaps at a very young age. I live in a hot place, but my body doesn’t. Which is to say that every time I leave the house, I will be sweating before I’m out the door. I walk as one walks in a cold place, which is to say “get-the-hell-home-and-turn-on-the-furnace.”

Nor does my mind. I live in a large apartment. What did I think when I saw it first?

‘How in hell are we gonna heat this?’

In the mountains, I often wonder ‘how do they get up this road in winter?’

Cold tempers you, as the flame tempers steel. You have to prepare. You have to pit yourself against nature, which may overcome you.

I used to tell my students—those who didn’t know winter—that drunk guys coming home at night often dropped their keys. If they were really drunk, they made the mistake of searching too long for them…

…and died of exposure.

In the last three years of my mother’s life she broke two hips and had one open-heart surgery—all in the deepest depths of winter. Cursing, I would be sweating a storm in San Juan, barely able to believe that somewhere, ANYWHERE, it could be cold.

Then I stepped out of the El station in Chicago, and was hit with a blast of air mixed with sleet sandpapering my face. 

I hated it.

But I’m also glad I grew up with it….

(Im Frühling starts at 6" 10')

Amy and Me (reposted)

I wrote this on January 5, 2013. An update to it is that Ms. Tan has a new novel titled The Valley of Amazement, published last month. Didn't have time to write today, so I chose this one to give you. Hope you enjoy it, and the video!
 

OK—confession time. I have—sort of—a Twitter account.

“Nonsense,” you say. “You do or you don’t. How can you ‘sort of’ have a Twitter account?”

Well, I was willing—actually compelled—to write a book. I also vowed to start a blog to promote it. And I spend an hour or two trying to promote my work—asking people to write reviews, calling people who may be interested in the book.

What did I refuse to do?

The social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus.

I’m not stupid. I could do it if I wanted to. But that’s the crux—I have no interest that you ate a six-pound hamburger accompanied by a quart of diet Coke AND you have photographed the monstrosity and put it on your wall. Perhaps it was one too many dead sheep that dulled the senses to it all….

So I gave the thing over to doña Taí, who is capable and also interested. And, periodically, I get messages from people who are “following” me. These I happily ignore—the messages, not the people. OK—both.

Until yesterday, when I got an email notification from Twitter that Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club is now following me.

Yeah? 

A fake, I decided. So I checked it out, going first to her official website, which is quite beautifully done, by the way. From there I clicked on her Twitter page, which looked identical to the page I had received in the email Twitter had sent to me. There was a tweet about her new phone number, with the lucky “88” that’s spurring bill collectors to call daily. (Hmmm, and that’s lucky?) There’s the tweet about Joyce Carol Oates being over at her house.

Well, it’s real or it’s not. At any rate, it seemed a thing to do—find out the real, or at least the presented, dope on Amy Tan.

Born in America, of Chinese immigrants. Her father was an electrical engineer as well as a Baptist minister. But as anyone who has read The Joy Luck Club can tell you, it’s the mother that counts. So much so that the first line in her Wikipedia article runs something like “Amy Tan is an American writer of Chinese descent whose work explores mother / daughter relationships.”  When her brother and father die of brain tumors six months apart, her mother decides logically that there’s a curse—the fifteen-year old Amy is next. So they pack her off to Switzerland, to see the world before Amy leaves it.

In Switzerland, Amy hangs out with the counter-culture—remember that?—and gets arrested for drugs. But then she pulls it together and gets a scholarship to go to Linfield College in Oregon. She does graduate work in linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz and later at Berkeley.

She worked as a freelance business writer for a bunch of telecommunication companies, until she wearied of it, and began to write in her spare time. The Joy Luck Club was her first novel—or rather, in her words, a collection of stories.

She’s written five or six other novels, a memoir, a couple of children’s books, and the libretto for an opera based on her novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter.

An impressive body of work, for which she has received numerous awards. She’s also been translated into 35 languages.

Wow—the lady is major!

Well, well—it was all a hoax, I decided. The world is not always a nice place—sorry you had to read it here, but somebody should tell you—and things are not always what they seem. A hacker, or maybe spoofster, has decided his day would be better off by playing tricks on an aged, unknown writer. It was a mistweet, or maybe a faux tweet.

But it now seems it’s real. Doña Taí writes that she too has gotten a notification from Twitter of a follow from Ms. Tan, and that she had Twitter-messaged Amy some time ago to say how much she—sorry, that’s Taí—had liked her—and that would be Amy’s—work. Especially her love of her dog Bombo. Taí had come across Amy’s blog looking for something, and read through it and saw the videos of Bombo and read Amy’s bio, stories and bloggies, as she calls them. Perhaps Ms. Tan stumbled across my blog through Taí’s tweets reposting links to its posts....

“Compare and contrast” started every essay question on every test I took in high school. (Right, not the math classes, but just about everything else…..) And some forty years later, I’m still doing it. The contrasts are easy—fame, fortune, sex, culture. But the comparisons are interesting—two writers with distinctive mothers, both of whom had Alzheimer’s. A strong love of classical music—she played the piano, I the cello. A total love of animals.

Most, I suppose, the fact that we sit down each day in our varying worlds before a screen of primordial whiteness, and conjure how we are going to cook up other worlds. The cat wags its tail and moves its head when I proclaim him “ridiculous.” Bombo thumps his tail. Somewhere, perhaps, Amy Tan is reading my blog.

I’m totally honored.   

Christmas Lethargy

Full disclosure—at this time of year, I completely don’t want to do anything.

It could be a leftover all of those years in school—why don’t adults get the breaks that kids do? Aren’t we supposed to be in charge? What kind of saps are we to be out working when our kids are vegging at home with their video games? Shouldn’t we reinvent child labor?

Right—so now you know my state of mind. What you may not know is that I’ve spent four hopeless hours looking for anything to write about. And what have I found?

Problems, dear Readers, with the Olympic torch, which according to The New York Times has gone out four dozen times and once had to relighted with a plastic disposable lighter, instead of the “official backup flame.” The story went on to say…

But perhaps the low point in what has seemed less like an Olympic torch relay than an exercise in ineptitude and misfortune came earlier this week when one of the runners carrying the torch to the Sochi Games had a fatal heart attack while attempting to walk his allotted distance, about 218 yards.

Right—that would be unfortunate, but given that fourteen thousand people are participating as torch bearers, little problems are bound to crop up.  Oh, and the torches…well, here more of The Times:

Russia’s torches were manufactured in Siberia at a reported cost of $6.4 million by KrasMash, which usually makes submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It is not everyone’s favorite just now, but it cannot be sent to Siberia, because it is already in Siberia.

“Any normal person will have at least a few questions,” Mikhail Starshinov, a member of Russia’s parliament, was quoted saying in October by The Moscow Times, in an article titled “Veteran Bobsledder Set Alight by Faulty Olympic Torch.” “Why were 16,000 produced? How much does each torch cost, and is this price appropriate? And finally, why don’t they work?”

Reasonable questions that anyone might have—but can I make a post of it? Combine it with some other story about the Olympics? I drift over to the New Day, which has an interesting story coming—as they so often do—right out of a Walmart Supercenter. Because it turns out that somewhere in Broward County, Florida, a Walmart employee shot up a coworker’s car. Why? Because she got awarded Associate of the Month, and not he. Here’s the info:

"Definitivamente parece inusual que alguien pueda estar furioso hasta el punto que puede dispararle al vehículo de alguien solo porque esa persona recibió un premio", dijo Keyla Concepción vocera del alguacil. "Obviamente sintió que era injusto que ella recibiera este premio", agregó.

(“Definitely it appears unusual that somebody could be furious to the point that he could fire at the vehicle of that person just because she had received an award,” said Keyla Concepción, spokesperson of the marshal. “Obviously he felt that it was unjust that she received the award,” she added.)

Well, something to know. News flash—the guy, Willie Mitchell, is available to any of you employers out there!

(One wants to know—does he still have his gun? And was he packing in the store?)

Right—and from there I read that Ricky Martin has no plans to marry, but if he did, he’d do it in Spain. Well, that seemed like something I should know about and who, by the way, gets to be Ricky’s boyfriend? Is there an interview, a competency exam, a competition? If so, I’m screwed because beyond being married myself (and famously faithful to Mr. Fernández), here’s Rick and Carlos together:

Wow! And what this proves, Dear Reader, is that seriously rich and beautiful people very easily hang out with…

Not worth finishing that sentence!

Right, so what about Yahoo? Anything there?

Well, I can tell you that the archbishop of Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, announced that he won’t be ministering publically until he’s cleared of charges of putting his hand on a boy’s bottom during a photo shoot after a confirmation four years ago. But Nienstedt  says he always puts his hands in specific places. So who knows?

Right, then it was time to take the religion quiz, since I had to prove that I, an atheist, was more knowledgeable about religion. And guess what? I got a 92—which I’m calling an A—and the average is 85.

OK—it’s clear. It’s now 2 PM, I’ve wasted four hours and produced nothing, which is not good because what am I gonna tell my shrink tomorrow, when he asks—as he always does—how much time I’ve spent vegetating? It’s one of the signs of depression.

Right—fallback. Check out the stuff I’ve sent myself during my middle of the night munchies run. And there I came upon Noah, who I remembered dimly from 3:52 AM (when I sent it to myself).

OK—829 words! I’m outta here!

White Light (reposted)

This post was originally published on October 31, 2012. I leave you with it, in anticipation to a post coming soon....

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.”

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood? (reposted)

Talking about the Catholic Church, I leave you with this post originally published on May 22, 2013....

Well, a new statistic—there are some 315 million people in the USA, and 750,000 sex offenders. So that means that one person in 420 in the United States is a sex offender. And there’s a little problem—where do you put these guys?

I know about this because the New York Times had a video this morning about a sex offender village in Florida. And I can also tell you—nothing reveals the deep prudery of the United States better than this video. One man, living with his mother, had sex at the age of 18 with a girlfriend, age 16. Another guy was in “gay rehab”—wow, didn’t know we could do that, have to check it out—and mentioned to his counselor that he had touched a boy inappropriately. Still another “computer solicited a minor”—whom he never met.

Granted, no criminal comes right out and says, “yeah, I sadistically assaulted and tortured a little girl, and hey, I’d do it again, in a flash!” But the Times video does make several points. It shows the church member who says that the church got involved because there is almost nowhere to live that isn’t within whatever state limit has been established from a place where kids congregate. So they found a community that had been built to house sugar cane workers; the workers are mostly gone, but the sugar cane fields remain.

Then there is the public defender of Palm Beach, 35 miles away, who makes the point: there’s a big difference between an 18-year old kid screwing his 16-year old girlfriend and a rapist. But they are both “sex offenders” and they both have a label for life.

There’s also the point that not one complaint of a sex offense has occurred in the sex offenders village.

So there are over 100 sex offenders living in the village of Pahokee, Florida—isolated from the rest of Florida by sugar cane. Right, so who are the people in my neighborhood?  Are kids safe?

Don’t have the answer, but according to the NSOPW website, there are eight sex offenders in my zip code.

OK—anything I need to worry about?

Yeah—a guy who tried to commit rape and sodomy in 1974. Another who intentionally committed child abuse. A couple of men who committed lewd acts, and one who attempted to commit a lewd act. (Sorry, but I can’t quite get my head around that. Was he just about to pull down his pants? Was he intercepted in a grope?) Several have moved in from other jurisdictions, and no details are given.

Mind you, there is a school three blocks away from where I live, as well as a school across the street from where two of the offenders live (if the database is accurate).   

All right—another statistic: one in six women will be raped in the course of her lifetime.

That’s serious—that’s something I’d like to know about. What I’m not interested in knowing is what an 18-year-old kid did with his 16-year-old girlfriend. Assuming it was done consensually, assuming no one got hurt, I couldn’t care less. And the video makes a good point—there’s not a lot of work out there for registered sex offenders. Once you’re on the list, that’s it—you can kiss that promising career in food preparation at Burger King goodbye.

We’ve all gone a little crazy, I think. We have the courts giving sentences to kids having sex with kids two years younger than them. At the same time, we have the Catholic Church, which is reportedly still harboring real sex offenders. And, as well, we have a Catholic bishop who has been convicted of not reporting the case of a predator priest.

Yes, I bring you the sorry case of Robert W. Finn, the bishop of Kansas City, who was convicted last year on one account of failure to report Shawn Ratigan, a priest who had hundred of pictures of the private parts of little girls. The pictures were apparently so shocking that the computer technician who discovered them on the laptop Ratigan had brought in for repair later stated: “my hands were shaking so much, I could barely turn off the machine.”

So what did the bishop do? Transferred Ratigan to another place, and told Ratigan to stay away from kids. And what did Ratigan do? Got right back involved with a youth group. Oh, and went to dinner at a parishioner’s house, and got caught by Poppa, photographing with his cellphone the daughter under the table.

For all of this, the bishop has received a suspended sentence, and has agreed to meet monthly with court officials. But the gay guy—or did the rehab work?—down there in the sex offender village, how much time did he get?

A year in the county jail.

Clothes make the man, it’s said, and it’s evidently true. Who knew that a Roman Collar was a pass to touch any child anywhere at any time?  

Business as Usual in the Catholic Church

Yeah?

Can somebody out there fill me in on why the Roman Catholic Church always gets a free pass?

They don’t think so, of course. To them, everybody is out to get them, liberals and atheists (raise your hand, Marc) are spreading lies and filth, and the only thing these alleged victims are looking for is…you got it.

And there is a case to be made for Time magazine making Francis Person of the Year. He is, apparently, taking on the Curia—which makes him a stronger man than I. He may be reforming the Vatican Bank, which needs it. And yes, refusing to live in the palace and driving your old, beat-up car is endearing.

But let’s be very clear—theologically, he’s not budging. And if you’re standing on one leg waiting for any movement on the ordination of women, priestly celibacy, ordination of openly gay priests—well, you’d better have a great sense of balance.

Because it’s clear—it’s business as usual in the Vatican.

Think I’m wrong? Consider the case of Jozef Wesolowski, the papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Ooops, that’s former papal nuncio, since Wesolowski skipped town—err, was recalled by the Vatican—shortly before the allegations of child molesting were aired on Dominican television. Nor was he alone—his pal Alberto Gil was also screwing around, and shot back to his native Poland when the water got a little hot.

How can this be, you are saying in horror. Aren’t these guys supposed to stay put, face the charges? Isn’t the church supposed to be cooperating with the local authorities?

Well, that’s what I thought….

Nor was all of this confined to the Dominican Republic, since Wesolowski was also spending quite a bit of time here in Puerto Rico, investigating our archbishop for allegedly injecting politics into the church (the archbishop favors independence, and doesn’t care who knows it). So Wesolowski spent a good deal of time in the next diocese over—Arecibo—where he reportedly slept with a group of boys. Oh, and one local priest was suspended. Readers, take note. Arecibo is—in some way or another—American soil. If Wesolowski did indeed engage in criminal behavior in Arecibo, he’s subject to Puerto Rico and—by extension—US law.

Or is he? Because he is also part of the Vatican “diplomatic” corps. The Vatican, you see, is a nation as well as a church, and so gets to have diplomats. And they diplomatic immunity, which Wikipedia defines thus:

Diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity and a policy held between governments that ensures that diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country's laws, although they can still be extradited.

Presumably this means the Wesolowski can screw all the kids in Christendom and get away with it. So for a time—in September of this year—there was a great to-do in the media. And then what happened?

The church is very wise, and moves on its own time. And if you had to bet between the church and a glacier in some imagined race? Put your money on the glacier.

The church is conducting an investigation. Now you can say “whew” and wipe the sweat off your brow. But that also means—quite reasonably—that they cannot comment on the affair. They did, however, get around to appointing a new papal nuncio to—guess where? And he was sworn in or inaugurated or whatever-it-is last month. Oh, and here’s what he the article said:

Santo Domingo - El arzobispo nigeriano Jude Thaddeus Okolo reconoció hoy, tras recibir oficialmente la bienvenida como el nuevo embajador del Vaticano en República Dominicana, que tendrá que hacer un "gran esfuerzo" para enfrentar los "desafíos" que entraña su misión en esta nación.

(Santo Domingo - The Nigerian archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo acknowledged today, after receiving officially the welcome as new ambassador from the Vatican to the Dominican Republic, that he will have to make a “great effort” to take on the “challenges” which are attached to his mission in the nation.)

Guys? Hope you were listening well, because guess what? That’s all you’re gonna get.

My complaint isn’t with the Vatican, which is doing what every organization would do. If the manager of a Walmart in Blowyournose, Idaho, kills stray dogs in the parking lot, The New York Times will write about it, and Bentonville will express its official horror, state that an investigation is being conducted, state that their administrative policy specifically forbids the poisoning of strays, and release a photo of Sam with his hunting dog, Ol’ Roy.

What bugs me is the lack of follow-up. Google “pederastia Arecibo” and you’ll find the most recent news to be from last month, and oh…it’ll be a great chance to bone up on your Polish.

But wait—the story gets more interesting. It now appears that Gil—who had been hiding not very originally in his parents’ house—will be tried in Poland for abusing seven minors. Oh, and the same report has this to say:

Entretanto, denunció que el exrepresentante del Vaticano fue sacado del país con documentación ilegal y habló de una presunta red internacional de pederastia detrás de los acusados Wesolowski y Gil, la cual lleva niños desde la República Dominicana a Polonia.

(Among other things, he [ex-priest Alberto Athié] decried that the ex-representative of the Vatican was removed from the country with illegal documentation and spoke of a presumed international web of pedastry behind the accused Wesolowski and Gil, who took children from the Dominican Republic to Poland.) 

And all of this happened on Francis’s watch, since a Dominican prelate had tipped the pope off in August of this year. So Time? Francis is not the Person of the Year….

…just the Image of the Year.

Just Gale (reposted)

I wrote the post below exactly one year ago today, and since I don't feel like writing a new one at the moment, I'm happy to repost it, instead. It's good to revisit ourselves!
 

It’s December 12, the old year is ending, and comparisons are inevitable. Where am I now, versus where was I a year ago?

Answer—much better off.

Financially, no. But in every other way, yes. A year ago I was still reeling from the loss of a job. Today, nothing would compel me to go back to where I misspent seven long years.

Because for those seven years, I was on autopilot. I had no time to think, much less to write. One small thing—a need to visit a store, a phone call—could upset the rigid and delicate structure of the day. A pebble was a colossus.

And if the day got upended, then everything fell apart and it was scramble scramble scramble to put it back and then go on and watch out because maybe there’s another pebble and if there is wait I think there IS a pebble oh SHIT I can’t go through another disruption to my day.

Feel the tension in your shoulder?

That’s where it got me, in those days of waiting for the end. I would go down to Amilda, in Sam’s, and she would sigh and open her desk and give me the patch that smelled of Ben-Gay and I would stick it on and struggle through the rest of the day.

Relaxation was something that was structured, as well. Or at least scheduled. There was no “hey, let’s go to the beach.” That had to be planned, and every day had something in it—something to do. Something, usually, I HAD to do.

When all that goes away, it’s like experiencing the world after the big bang. There’s a lot of time, a lot of space, a lot of nothing. What to put into the nothing?

A structure.

Another structure.

So I learned—every day begins with a trot. But I learned as well—sometimes the interruption is as valid as the trot.

Which is why I was talking to Gale, yesterday. She’s one step up from homeless—living in a housing project that she describes as “crack hell.” And she’s a bit worried—three people have died recently on her floor. Is it the huge puddle of water that accumulates after every rain, a perfect breeding pond for mosquitoes and then dengue fever? Nobody, of course, bothers to unclog the drains….

Gale looks to me like a bipolar who is currently on a slight manic phase. Pressured speech, restless movement, emotional lability, and some pretty fantastic stories.

How the government ripped her off of 75,000 dollars. Her daughter, who is bedridden in a hospital in New York and whom Gale cannot see because if she does, she’ll freak out, and the daughter can’t handle that.

So I generally give Gale some money, because I respect what she does. She combs the beach every day looking for shells, coral, interesting vegetation or indeed any object. Then she glues them together into an interesting, occasionally beautiful object, and tries to sell it.

‘Another thing to dust,’ I think. So I give Gale the money and refuse the object.

So we were chatting, yesterday, because just giving the money didn’t seem enough. She’s lonely and depressed—went into the Old City a night or two ago, but the bright lights and party spirit made her feel more alone. And since she doesn’t speak Spanish—she’s got an accent that booms Long Island—she’s even more alone.

“Call me,” she says, “I’ll clean your house. It would be an honor to clean your house. I love to work….”

I consider this briefly. At this point on the spiraling curve downward to pure chaos, only a manic could reverse the trend in this house.

This is now my pebble. A near-homeless person scrambling to get by whom I, having more money than she, give money to because…

…well, she needs it.

As much as she needs to tell me that the cops are abusive—they see people robbing people and they KNOW they’re robbing people and she TELLS THEM they’re robbing people and what do they do?

Nothing! Stupid idiots! “No comprendo,” she imitates.

She’s had to pull a knife twice, just to protect herself.

The pebble of Gale would have entirely upended my day in those Wal-Mart years. First of all because I didn’t have five minutes to spend talking to a person.

‘I can’t believe that that woman waits until the bus comes to a complete stop and then she looks around like she’s never seen a bus stop and then of course she has to take 25 years to look around for the door to exit and does she get it—NO!—she goes out the front and not the back which is totally my pet peeve people trying to get on the bus but can’t because stupid idiots, and oh my God now she’s kissing everybody on the bus and showing pictures of her grandchildren to the bus driver and doesn’t she realize SHE HAS WASTED THIRTY MINUTES COLLECTIVELY OF OUR TIME!’

Or how about this.

‘No, you are not gonna put that sauce in a stupid little sauceboat because in the first place it will take 8 million years to find the damn sauceboat, and then you will have to rinse it, and then I will have to dry it, and I don’t have time, and then the ladle will have to be washed as well as the little dish that goes UNDER the stupid little sauceboat and I woke up at 5:30 and I’m tired AND I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A SAUCEBOAT!’ 

So—if I didn’t have time for a sauceboat, did I have time to listen to a lady down on her luck (also probably down on her Lithium….)? A lady from whom the government stole 75,000$? 

I have time, now, and generally use it well. I spent, for example, an hour looking at Laurie Anderson on YouTube. Well, that would have appalled me, those years ago. But now?

Well, it’s interesting to hear music I don’t like, but in a sense admire. I certainly think she’s an interesting person. And like all people from the “dear” suburbs of Chicago (“Winnetka, dear,” or “Highland Park, dear,” they always responded—the “dear” took some of the sting off) she doesn’t open her mouth.

And it’s interesting to ponder the question.

I think she’s right. I think we may not have a society anymore. Looking at my life as it was, there was no point in which I interacted with people as people. They were units—the cashier who took my money, the driver who guided the bus, the student who had to be taught.

And I, of course, was a unit too.

Until the day when I was bumped off the treadmill, feel rudely on my ass, and picked myself up and looked around me.

There’s a woman worse off than me out collecting flotsam and jetsam and she’s hungry and I’m in her path and I have the five bucks she needs. And should I let her into my house because what if she breaks something? And as well, she may be OK now, but what if she gets REALLY manic? Do I really want her to know where I live? But what can I do for her?

She’s no longer a pebble.

Is she a problem?

Or is she just Gale?