Ooh. Pitched a shutout yesterday. I think that’s a first. The end could well be nigh. Anyhow, I was on my out the door this morning, and I heard NPR mention something about this being Holy (aka “Maundy” though I don’t know anyone who actually says that) Thursday. That whole Catholic thing never really took with me, but I can only conclude that this means Sunday is Easter. This is pretty astonishing news (is it early this year?). Has it really been almost 40 days since Mardi Gras? And shouldn’t this really be a four-day weekend kinda thing? You know Good Friday, Super Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Marvelous Monday? I mean, what kind of godless country is this where I don’t get any time off for Easter? How can people make such a big freakin’ deal about birth control when I don’t get time off for Easter? And where are Insanity and O’Reilly and that other guy that looks like Butthead (or is it Beavis) who peaked during the OJ trial? They should be clamoring about the War on Easter.
So, anyhow, as I recall (from movies like “The Robe”), today is all about the Last Supper, which makes me wonder why it’s a tradition to have a big Easter Dinner (which is never at dinner time). I mean, shouldn’t we have the big dinner tonight? Sunday was the day the dead guy came walking around with a hole in his side. Not particularly appetizing, I don’t think (and, stick your finger in the hole, Thomas? That’s kinda gross).
But, whatever. You can’t buck tradition. Not that I’ll be engaging in any activities on Sunday (not Easter-related, anyway). Not that I know of. When I was a kid, we always had ham, of course (I think that was to spite the Jews, but I’ve never gotten confirmation of that).
Speaking of Confirmation, I never got that, either. I started, but was kind of a dropout (they wanted me to go to classes after school and write a letter to the Bishop proclaiming my faith or something like that; what’re they nuts?), which I guess means I’m not a soldier of God, and will be going to hell (which is kind of a given, considering I haven’t been to church – let alone confession – in more years than I can recall). I think I “confessed” before my friend Buster’s wedding (which was probably like 25 years ago). I was the Best Man, and they had the whole Catholic thing, so I figured it would be good if I ate the wafer instead of stepping outside for a beer or something.
I wonder how Buster’s doing these days.
Oh well, have a happy – if not holy – Thursday. Let’s hope tomorrow’s a good Friday.
You mean there is no war on Easter? Should we start one? Where is O’liely when we need him?
Send in the Clowns, and Cheese
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: April 4, 2012
Our question for today is: What lessons can be learned from the current scandal involving the 2010 Western Regions Conference of the General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service?
I know you’re all excited, but don’t everybody talk at once.
Honestly, this is a fascinating story. Not much in the way of sex, but there is a clairvoyant and a clown. Plus quite a bit of cheese.
The G.S.A. is a very large agency with the not-always-glamorous mission of providing support services for the federal bureaucracy, some involving the management of public buildings. Every two years, about 300 of the higher-ranking people in the western half of the country have a conference to open lines of communication and improve teamwork.
In 2010, the organizers chose the theme “A Showcase of World-Class Talent,†which, of course, suggested going to Las Vegas and employing a professional mind-reader and clown as entertainers. The four-day gathering wound up costing more than $820,000, some of it for $4-apiece shrimp and an “American Artisanal Cheese Display†at the M Resort Spa Casino.
My immediate reaction was that people planning a conference that involves the use of taxpayer money should try to avoid staging it in a venue that includes the words “resort†or “spa†or “casino,†let alone all three. However, experts from the business world have assured me that a lot of really serious meeting-type activity goes on at places that sound as if they would be far more appropriate for a family reunion or extramarital affair. Until now, I had no idea how much communications and teamwork gets improved in Las Vegas and Disney World.
Still, there is a general agreement that this particular event was over the top, particularly after the G.S.A. inspector general found that the administrator in charge of planning the conference instructed his minions to make it “over the top.â€
Among the most notable excesses was $6,325 worth of commemorative coins in velvet boxes, which would be the equivalent of topping off a government holiday party with the distribution of silver-plated fruitcakes.
There was much, much more, including the fact that G.S.A. employees spent so much time visiting Las Vegas on “scouting trips,†planning meetings and preplanning planning meetings that you had to wonder if they were angling for residency status. Then there is the question of why the organizers felt they needed to spend $1,840 on “vests.†Why sushi rolls for 300 people cost $7,000. Or why, when signing off on the entertainment, no one ever envisioned the possibility of headlines like: “G.S.A. Clown-Conference Scandal.â€
I will refrain from pointing out that there were much worse G.S.A. stories during the Bush administration, one involving the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. But I’m not going there because, really, that’s all in the past.
In the present, the Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee announced plans to hold hearings on clown-and-cheesegate. The chairman, Representative John Mica of Florida, did acknowledge that no one in the administration had tried to impede the inspector general’s work or keep the results quiet. Perhaps he was thinking back on Lurita Doan, the Bush G.S.A. head, who claimed that attempts to examine contracts for fraud and waste were “eroding the health of the organization†and compared the auditors to terrorists.
Once again, moving on. Honest.
You are probably wondering how the Obama administration reacted to all these developments. It is safe to say that any president would have been seriously displeased at the news that 300 federal building managers had blown almost a million dollars on four days of cocktail parties, although maybe Warren Harding would have wanted to know why he wasn’t invited.
As soon as the inspector general issued his report, Martha Johnson, the head of the G.S.A., canned two top agency officials then resigned herself. One of the now-departed deputies was overseeing a project that involves turning Washington’s Old Post Office Pavilion over to Donald Trump for a luxury hotel. There is no word on whether the uproar might derail the plan, but, personally, I can respond with equanimity to the idea of disappointing Donald Trump about virtually anything.
The Obama administration has actually had its agency chiefs reviewing the money spent on conferences since last fall, and claims it has already saved $280 million. Minus, I guess, $822,751.
The State Department said it has figured out how to hold most of its conferences in government facilities rather than hotels, and that’s my take-away thought. If the G.S.A. party animals had done their team-building in a federal office, I’ll bet there would have been a lot fewer shrimp and commemorative coins. They should have been able to find a spot, what with being the people whose job is managing government buildings. Honest to gosh, you’d think they just wanted to hang out at a resort casino spa.
Actually, I posted twice yesterday but they ended up on the previous day and I don’t think I can time travel my posts.
From Sister Joan:
A journey of painful discovery
[In South Africa] ….
In this case, the sisters had been teaching and nursing these same people for almost 100 years. They had watched their children being born and their ancestors being buried and their corn being ground and their animals being yoked to haul and plow and carry for generations. It was a place where people had no experience of any other way to live until white business interests came promising them wealth and development.
“How are things going here?” I asked the two sisters. The school was twice as large as it had been when I was here last, they said. The novitiate had grown. People came to the clinic by the hundreds. They were opening another clinic, they smiled, further out in the valley with a surgeon and a resident anesthesiologist. “What kinds of cases do you see most?” I asked.
There was a pause, a lowering of the voices. “We get so many cases of AIDS,” they said sadly. “Most of the cases are women now. More women than men. And the children, of course, who are born with it.”
“But why the women?” I pressed them.
They looked at me intently for a moment. Said nothing. Looked down again.
“Why?” I asked again.
“Well,” the older sister went on, “the men are taken to work sites for long periods and so the companies bring in women to … to ‘service’ them, you know,” she said, looking at me again to be sure I understood what they meant. “Then they come back and infect the wife. Condoms — are not allowed.’
I groaned inwardly and shook my head. There had been a flurry in November 2010, when the pope in an interview was understood to have mused about the use of condoms to avoid infection. Many theologians, some very prominent bishops and an international body of health care personnel had applauded the move. But by the next day, of course, Vatican spokesmen had “clarified” the statement to mean that it had simply reasserted a continuing ban on the use of condoms in any situation, all serious dissent from every level of the church across the world notwithstanding. What was this kind of morality that could sanction one kind of murder in the name of honoring life and preventing another?
“Why?” I said, thinking out loud and looking out over their heads to the throngs on the pavement outside. “Explain to me why my church cavalierly allows these women and their children to die rather than actually insist that morality demands that these men use condoms. Are women’s lives expendable? Is this sexism at its worst? Is the morality of contraception greater than the morality of life? How can they call that kind of theology holiness and the people who have doubts about it heretics for having the effrontery to ask an obvious question?”
The conversation had gone dumb, gone mute, gone aphasic. The nuns said nothing. Nothing at all. But when I looked up, to my eternal wonderment, I saw that they both had tears in their eyes.
“They know,” I thought. “They know.”
From where I stand, that was the new insight discovered in this journey that changed the way I see life