getting tough on crime

I held my brother's hand in the prison visiting room last night. His long, slender fingers were very pale and smooth. My husband's hand, resting on the table across from us, was calloused from yard work, the fingernails chipped and darkened in places from working on the car. My husband's hands lay motionless on the table, but my brother's hands were never still, fidgeting, playing with the coins on the table, illustrating what he was saying with small, quick gestures.

My brother used to keep his family's cars running, too. He renovated several houses for them, painting, plastering, refinishing antique woodwork. He used to coax gorgeous floods of perennials from the rocky new England soil and chop wood to stoke the kitchen woodstove. His hands used to heal, as well. His gentle touch and kind, humorous manner made him a beloved family physician for many years. His hands delivered babies, stitched up wounds, administered healing medicines, made dyng patients more comfortable while they lingered in hospice care.

But those hands have been idle for seven years now - never motionless, but idle nonetheless. He can still paint the pictures which have hung in many exhibits, he can still write the poetry which has won awards more than once, he can still play the guitar beautifully in prison worship services and sing in the tiny Catholic choir , but he can do nothing to help his family, or to make any kind of restitution for the crime which landed him here. He has been sentenced to ten years of idleness.

I look around the visiting room and wonder how many of the men I see playing with their children, chatting with their parents, trying desperately to be cheerful for their wives are really such a danger to society that they need to be locked up in a cage, because that's what prison is. I know a small percentage of the 1500 men at this state "correctional" facility do need to be isloated from society, but many, if not most, could repay whatever debt they owe by actually doing something productive rather than rotting in a cell for years and years till they come to believe they really are as worthless as the lives they lead behind bars.

They could work for non-profit agencies, they could care for AIDS patients and the indigent elderly; they could renovate low-income housing, they could work at animal shelters. They could do real work for a real paycheck so their families would not need to live on public assistance, which vastly increases the cost of incarceration. Here in NH they used to be able to teach college classes inside the prison walls, but the warden vetoed that because it gave inmates too much power (read "self-esteem") so no one can teach any longer, and no one else can learn. By locking people up behind bars for years we not only insure they can do no more harm; we insure they can do no more good.

Many of the punishments that our enlightened society would consider "cruel and unusual" are far less cruel than the system of lengthy imprisonment that we have come to use as a "one-size-fits-all" punishment for any crime. Many of these men languishing in prison for years would far rather have had a hand cut off or an eye gouged out and go through life with a physical handicap than to have their spirits destroyed through years of enforced worthlessness and humiliation. Most would much rather work for years to make restitution to a victim than to be condemned to sit idle for years with no way to act upon the remorse they may genuinely feel. Most would choose a public flogging any day over the thousands of naked body searches and daily humiliation from guards who call them losers, and much worse, and treat them like so many unruly animals they can order about as they please.

I wonder if there were a reality TV show about daily life in prison whether we might see some changes. But there never will be one, because the whole system can only continue out of sight. No one knows what life is like behind the bars except the families of the men there, and they are the least able to agitate for any change. They have all they can do to pay legal bills, make ends meet without the primary breadwinner, drive hundreds of mile to visit their loved ones as often as possible and pay exorbitant phone charges so they can keep in touch. They have no time or money to put into an unpopular crusade to educate their neighbors who keep voting for the "get tough on crime" candidates.

It seems pretty hopeless to me. I can only imagine how it seems to my brother.

in my own words

All that each person is, and experiences, and shall ever experience, in body and mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced nor has it ever quite had precedent; but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe."
-James Agee

I did a lot of reading on vacation - not the books I took with me but "found words." I am one of those people who can hardly be without reading material, and can hardly be around words without reading them. So although I took a stack of books with me to Gooney Lodge this week, I ended up discovering The Claremont Review of Books, several copies of which were in an old crock used as a magazine holder. In that publication I read reviews of many more books I want to get my hands on before we leave for Malaysia - a collection of the writings of Samuel Johnson, a new critical biography of W. H Auden whose poetry I have always loved but whose life I know nothing of, a study of the idea of Evil in its manifestations "from Beelzebub to Bin Laden."

But I also found myself despairing over how little I have read, how little time I have to read, how narrow my perspective is, how pedestrian my own thoughts are compared to the wealth of words penned by others. I wondered if I should ever bother write at all, if my time would not be better spent in reading, contemplating the words and thoughts of better minds than my own. This week, for example, I came across W. H. Auden's comments on the essential loneliness of man and also his thoughts on the superiority of marriage over a passionate affair, and was incredibly moved by both. I, too, spend a lot of time thinking about loneliness and about marriage, but I wondered if I should be "quick to hear and slow to speak," if I should "let my words be few" in the presence of poets and philsophers wiser than I.

Then I read the quotation above by James Agee and stepped back to ponder it. I believe it is true that I (like each of us) am indeed unique in the universe, in all of time. While the issues of life have been considered and discussed for thousands of years, while lovers since Eden have felt similar longings and heartaches, while marriages- happy and unhappy- have always shared certain elements, while mothers and daughters have loved and fought and cried and separated in similar ways; no one in all of time has ever lived my life, or ever will. No one else will ever live the exact life I have lived, with the precise combination of influences, with the same DNA, with the same soul. Although there is much that is shared by all humanity, there is as much or more in each of us which is utterly unique, never known before and never to be experienced in exactly this way again. So it is possible that I might have something to say that is unique to my voice, my heart.

I thought, too, about John Updike's poem, Perfection Wasted in which he likens each of our lives to a stage performance with a sympathetic audience. I don't like the poem; it's tone is all wrong for me, but I do appreciate the metaphor. Each of us has his own audience made up of people whose place in space and time intersects our own in sometimes mundane and sometimes dramatic ways. The chemistry between each of us and our respective audience members is not reproduceable. It will not happen again. Ever.

I thought about some of the implications of that truth. Although I am not the best mother in all time - what a laughable thought - I am the only mother seven people will ever know. While I may not be the wife of every (any?) man's dreams, I am the only wife my husband has. My thoughts and words may be feeble, awkward, inelegant or stumbling, but they still have an audience and a venue no other voice shares.

The author John Gardiner reassures aspiring writers that even if a thought, a metaphor, a word choice is not absolutely unique (could there still be "virgin metaphor" after thousands of years of human thought and experience?) a writer may yet be original in the sense that he finds his own words, "never before thought of as far as he knows."

As far as he knows. . . which is about as far as any of us can go. His own words . . . earned through hardship, purchased by experience, lived and cried and suffered for, etched upon the one soul which is different from all others for all time and eternity. If we speak from our hearts none of us need fear committing plagiarism or unoriginality. So I guess I'll write some more.

_____________________________________________________
*"In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter." W. H. Auden

"Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate." W. H Auden

serpents and doves

My dancer daughter spent our week of vacation braiding her long, blond hair into tiny braids - around 75 she says. She had recently come back from a pilgrimage to the home of Bob Marley (actually it was a missions trip) exclaiming how beautiful the Jamaican people are; since I exercised my parental veto over dreadlocks, she did the next best thing and covered her head with miniature snakes. My husband calls her his little black child, pale as she is!

We have lived a pretty monochromatic life here in northern New England. (Which is one of the disadvantages of living here.) My children know exactly four persons of color in our town. This has had a curious effect upon them; they are intrigued by people who are different than they are. They have no preconceived ideas or prejudices, but they also do not have any of the politically correct caution about noticing (and commenting on) the ways in which people differ. They don't pretend everyone is "just like us," but they don't feel the need to make value judgments about the differences.

On vacation we saw more "people of color" than we do at home, and my five year old was fascinated. We passed two black women and their children in a store who were having a lively, friendly conversation. When we were hardly out of ear shot my daughter exclaimed, "Mommy, did you HEAR how those black people were talking?"
"Yes, honey," I muttered, hurrying her along before she said whatever was coming next!
"They talk different!"
"Well, yes, they do. . . " I began, thinking I would give her a little socio-linguistic lecture about cultural differences, but she was way ahead of me.
"Maybe I could make friends with them. That little girl looked nice. . . but they didn't really notice us, did they?" she said with a disappointed sigh.

My fifteen year old has not had much more experience with cultural diversity. After her two weeks in Jamaica, she attended Earl Mosely's Summer Dance Intensive. Mr Mosely is an incredibly talented black choreographer and dance teacher. Most of the students were from the NYC area, with the exception of C and two other students from northern New England. (They were in the highest level ballet class, but when it came to hip-hop they were pretty much pre-K! ) Nearly all the dancers were black or Hispanic.

One of her friends found the atmosphere at the camp a little initimidating; she felt like the other dancers resented them, even "hated" them. She felt excluded, ignored and shunned. C, however, refused to take offense. She wasn't sure she even felt what M was talking about, but if she did, she was certain it was just a misunderstanding. She could not imagine that anyone meant ill by things that were said or done. She kept reassuring her friend, "They just do things differently than we do, that's all. Besides, how do we seem to them?" She chose to describe her feelings as "shy" rather than "intimidated."

Sometimes I worry that someday her guilessness will get C in trouble; that perhaps she'd be better off a little more suspicious, a little more guarded. But I know I am dead wrong. She is not stupid, but she is generous. She is not a pushover (well, maybe she is. . . ) but she thinks the best of people. She approaches the world with open hands and an open heart and expects that people will treat her the same way. She disarms them so thoroughly they usually do.

I don't know what C will be when she grows up, but when I grow up I want to be more like her and her little sister. No matter how old we are, the Scripture still exhorts us to grow, and even to grow up. Perhaps what we need to be growing into, however, is best exemplified by children. Jesus himself pointed to children as our example in the matter of humility.

As look at my children I realize that so much of what I have learned as a "grown-up" inclines me to be judgmental, mistrusting, sometimes even cynical. I may not discriminate on the basis of race, but discriminate I do. My heart is often guarded rather than open; I am probably more practiced at rejecting than accepting others. I am a master at snap judgments (I call it "the gift of discernment"). I find it so difficult to be that strange creature who possesses the head of serpent but the heart of a dove, to be at once wise and innocent. Maybe I have as much to unlearn as to learn because Jesus was not fooling around when He said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3-4)

aunt jemima pancakes without the syrup . . .

Fall clothes are in the stores. I LOVE fall clothes. It has always felt like my season. I feel most like myself in velvet, plaid, wine colors, deep hues, sweaters, wool coats, and layers. I love forest green and sage rather than lime; claret and rose instead of pink; navy and royal rather than aqua and ice; true chocolate brown, not tan or khaki.

The reminders are everywhere: cool and crisp are out - soft, warm and fur-lined are in. Pique and seersucker have given way to flannel, plaid and corduroy. There are jackets everywhere - great little cropped ones this year. Sweaters, the comfort food of the fashion industry, are replacing halters and t-shirts on the racks. Sandals are languishing on the clearance shelves looking insubstantial and dated while gorgeous boots are on display everywhere.

I can still remember some of the full page fashion spreads in SEVENTEEN magazine from the early 70's. It is always the fall and Christmas issues I remember - beautiful girls with long, glossy dark hair - the blond summer models were back in mothballs - wearing velvet and lace, cute short skirts with tall, cozy, knee high socks and fabulous tall boots. Football games, fall foliage, Christmas trees, fireplaces and candles provided the perfect backdrops.


For the first time in my fashion memory I can't enjoy the annual renaissance of fall fashion, the dispalys stocked with sweaters and scarves. I have to wistfully pass them by and scour the racks in the corners for the clearance-priced summer clothes which look pale, thin, flimsy, passe by comparison. Compared to the robust fall clothes they lack substance and even significance. I wasn't especially excited by them when they were novel and newly displayed; now they hold no appeal for me. I feel as if I am shopping for limp vegetables surrounded by luscious dessert carts.

Because, as I have repeated ad nauseum, "We're moving to Malaysia this fall." A land of no seasons and perpetual humidity. I am baffled by how life even goes on in the tropics. I was rasied on the metaphors of a northern clime; I remember to this day singing in college choir, "Spring turns to summer/Summer to fall/ Autumn brings winter/ Then death comes to call." Every fall I contemplate the brevity of life as the fall leaves crackle underfoot; every spring I take hope from the way the world bursts into life again from the hopeless remains of winter. So I wonder, are there seasons of life in Malaysia? If not, what is there?? I have read there is not much Malay poetry written. Perhps the lack of seasons is why. What can you say about endless summer? What can you hope for?

I wonder, how DO people age in Malaysia? Do they shrivel up in the sun? Do they rot like an overripe mango? So much of life is understood by metaphor; I have always felt that getting the right metaphor is vital. I never feel I know how to be until I know how to think. I believe I could endure almost anything with the right metaphorical construct through which to understand my experience. But right now I am clueless.

So, I am trying to stay out of the stores, think happy thoughts about hot places (without entertaining the comparison to the ultimate Hot Place), and look at my summer clothes in a new light. I am consoling myself with the thought that I will have the perfect excuse to shop for ALL NEW fall clothes in 2008! Yes!

August 15, 2006

Our little girls left today. With the rap of a gavel they were transferred from our home to the care of a lovely family who have worked for months to see this day come about. It was the exact answer to our prayers but it was a bittersweet day nonetheless.

We had only a day to prepare the girls; once Vermont DCF was involved things moved very rapidly. We had been told the court would rule on their case mid-week, but we got a call Monday afternoon saying they had to be tranferred to foster care that very night. We scrambled to explain to the girls why they had to leave our home so abruptly, doling out little scraps of information a piece at a time over the course of the afternoon. "You know we are moving. . . . you will be staying with the B's when we move (this move is still two months away). . . school is starting soon and you need to move to the place where you will be going to school. . . " Anything to avoid saying "Judge, court, foster care, not coming back."

Then we learned that they would have to appear in court today - without us or any familiar grown-ups. Just two scared little girls with a judge in a black robe and a group of adults they have never laid eyes on. How would we explain that to them??

But there are harder things to explain. Like why the Daddy who used to tuck them in at night with the reassurance that, "Nobody's going to get my girls" disappeared and never came back to get his girls. Like why so many children's books and songs are about Mommies and Daddies who always come back for their babies but their Mommy and Daddy seemd to have forgotten about them.

Today we arrived at court in separate cars. J and S came with their new foster parents, I came alone. The girls were immediately nervous when we entered the building through the security clearance. They kept asking what the guard was looking for, and what would he do if we did have a gun? They exhibited their usual anxiety when a police officer walked past; "Is someone going to get arrested?"

We went up to the tiny playroom with cheap, bad artwork on the walls and a shelf of old, dog-eared, unattractive books in order to wait. I saw the look of recognition on J's face when the social worker walked in. She was the same young woman who was at her apartment "when the police took my Mommy away." She was accompanied by the weird sisters, the three of them filling the doorway of the tiny room, smiling strangely down at us as we sat on the low, sagging couch. They clutched their clipboards, looking every inch the part of aging feminists out to save women and children from bad men.

The girls squirmed uncomfortably at their awkward, perky self-introductions. "Hi, I'm ----. I'm your guardian ad litem. My job is to make sure you are taken care of." The girls shrank back into the sofa, clinging to my arms. "Isn't that what I have been doing for the last six months?", I thought.

"Hi, my name is ____."continued the other woman. "I'm your attorney. Do you know what a lawyer does? Have you seen lawyers on TV?" (This to a 5 and 6 year old who can barely sit through an episode of Scooby-Doo, never mind court TV). "I'm on the J and S team!" with forced enthusiasm. "I'm here to work for you!" The girls have no idea what she is saying, or why she knows their names and is acting so familiar.

My husband quips to the little girls that maybe they can get her to wash their dishes for them. She does not find this amusing, especially from a man.

I resume reading the 1968 version of "The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse" to the girls and the women drift out of the room. We wait. We play made-up games using the baby toys in the room for props, read another few books and wait some more. Finally the social worker reappears and tells the girls the judge "wants to say Hi" to them. They beg me to come in with them and she agrees since "the hearing is really over."

We enter the cavernous court room where five women are turned in their chairs staring at us as we enter. No one, in fact, seems to be doing anything but staring at us. The judge, a friendly- looking man in black robes booms out from the far end of the room, "Hi. Which one of you is J?" Under the scrutiny of so many adults both girls blush and dip their heads. The well-meaning man talking loudly from his elevated seat goes through a little performance meant to put children at ease, bringing out his "friends," two large, dingy stuffed animals that look like they are glued onto uncomfortable seats. He puts them on the railing in front of his bench and makes some joke about the bear falling asleep in the last hearing and getting slapped. This time I am the one who fails to see the humor.

So finally, in order to humor the judge, we take the girls up to his bench where he offers J the gavel, which she declines to take, hiding her face on my shoulder. Mercifully, the hearing is really over. He raps the gavel and announces the court is adjourned. Everyone rises and he sweeps out the door. The girls heave a sigh of relief.

Outside they play happily, though in a rather subdued fashion with their new brothers and sister. Although we know they understand something big has happened, they are careful not to ask any questions. I suspect they don't want to hear the answers. One of them says she misses my five year old with whom she has shared a bedroom the past half year. Later she confides in me shyly that she would "like to have a playdate with the girl with the blue bag" who happens to be the social worker. I think she represents some tie to her Mommy and Daddy and her past life.

We hug the girls who are wearing oak seed pods on their noses and ears, decorated by their new foster sister. I hug their foster mom, giving her my blessing and aching to think how much more grace she will need than she knows yet. We wave goodbye to the family in the silver van as they drive off, five kids under nine years old packed into booster seats. It is a good ending; perhaps the best we could ever hope for. Pehaps the kindest thing the girls' father ever did for them was to leave them in good hands and disappear. But my eyes are still wet as I walk to my car.

Angelina Jolie, Grace Kelly and me

I just could not resist including this in my blog, as the mother of five daughters and two sons. . . . finally, a news article I could feel good about!!!


Attractive parents 'have more daughters'
By Amy Iggulden
(Filed: 31/07/2006)

Beautiful people not only seem to get richer, live longer and float through life with greater ease than the less visually blessed, they are also changing the face of the world.

Researchers have established that very attractive people are 36 per cent more likely to have daughters than sons and that the world's females are becoming better-looking than men as a result.

The report, from the London School of Economics, may provide an insight into the biological forces that lead the most striking people to produce first-born daughters.
It postulates that differing "evolutionary strategies" lead parents to produce the sex that would most benefit from their own characteristics
.
So while the children of aggressive, scientific parents tend to be boys, who can outwit their competitors when it comes to finding a mate, the children of beautiful, empathic parents tend to be girls, who can take their pick from the gene pool and then hang on to their man
.
"These may be stereotypes but they are also fact," said Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, the evolutionary psychologist who led the research.

"We have shown that beautiful parents have more daughters than ugly parents because physical attractiveness is heritable and because daughters benefit from this more than sons."

The findings are not short of famous examples, including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the actors who named their daughter Shiloh Nouvel and can now claim a family waxwork at Madame Tussaud's and Grace Kelly, whose firstborn with Prince Rainier of Monaco was the beautiful Princess Caroline.

out in the Styx

Yesterday we paid a river outfitter $130 to let us float down the River Styx for 4 hours. The only thing missing was Charron, the boatman, but we did meet Trace, the guy who drove the rickety old blue schoolbus from hell down the narrow, bumpy road to the river. (Being from New England as I am, I didn't know there were real people named Trace.)

We had just signed our lives away in the air-conditioned office, never bothering to read the fine print in the contract. If we had paid attention we might have seen the warning signs, recognized the oracles like the shirtless guy at the concrete block grocery store who hopped out of his ancient car long enough to shout, "Hey" to us. "Hot, in' it?" he chuckled before he roared off the down the road. We blindly followed.

After handing over our money we were sent out on the porch to wait for Trace who arrived soon. A small, sinewy character in his mid-fifties, he was sweating as much as the rest of us as he climbed out of the bus. He wore wrap-around extreme sport sunglasses with purple/blue reflective lenses so we could not see his eyes. His knee-high athletic socks were rolled down many times to make thick, neat cuffs around his ankles, just above his white, high-top Reeboks.

Before we even started down the road to perdition he began making his hackneyed jokes, the first about "Type A personalities." The whole outfit, in fact, seemed to have a personal animus against "Type-A personalities," as if the innermost circle of hell was reserved for them. Signs everywhere warned them and ridiculed them. I think he mistook my engineer husband for a "Type A" because he asked an innocent question about where the tubes were (there were none on the bus), so we got off to a bad start with Trace.

As we jerked and rattled down the narrow, washed out road to the river our conductor continued his practiced, mildly caustic humor. Jokes about dyslexics ("your other left hand, if you're dyslexic"), about cows who wander into the river ("Shenandoah river hippos"), about the perils of thunderstorms on the river. It's been a long time since I heard a grown man use the word "tush" that many times in five minutes, but he worked it in. To his credit, he warned us to use lots of sunscreen on the river lest we burn to a crisp, but he did not warn us to repent of our sins before it was too late. Somehow I missed the "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" sign on the outside of the bus.

After the bus jerked to a stop Trace dropped us off at what was, we would learn, the only shady spot along the river bank, waited only long enough to make sure everyone had a tube and clattered away in the old blue box, presumably to pick up more unsuspecting mortals.

The first half-mile or so was deceptive. While it was nothing like our last family river trip in North Carolina, on a chilly, rushing river which was over far too soon, it was pleasant enough. The current moved along at a moderate pace if you found the right spot and the water felt cool next to the 102 degree air. But that all changed.

The water moved more and more slowly and grew uncomfortably warm. Dragonflies, most of them in curiously conjoined pairs (were they really doing what first comes to mind?) kept landing on our knees and arms. Soon we were floating so slowly we could only detect movement by watching the river bottom; staring at the shore we couldn't tell if we were moving at all.

The sun grew hotter and hotter but there was no shade near either bank. I began to long for the trip to be over, but there was no way to hurry things along. At one point we actually got out of the tubes and trudged through the knee deep, tepid water, since walking was faster than floating. When we finally saw the old barn and silo Trace has told us to look for as the final mile marker our journey had become like some bad dream that never ends. It took us 15 minutes to float past the barn; every time I opened my eyes to check our progress, it was still there. Mute, white-faced cows standing in the warm water stared at us as we floated past to oblivion.

Finally we spied the bridge which was the end-point of our journey. At that point I didn't care what waited on the other side; I just wanted to get off the river. Anything would have been a relief.

We crawled out of the river and dragged our tubes up the hill to the same office building from which we had begun our odyssey. It was still hot as hell, but our own purple Dodge oven looked heavenly after that river. We never saw Trace again. Perhaps in this life we never will.

Are we there yet?

We're in Virginia this week. Not so far south that you see many Confederate flags, but far enough that the highway is named for Stonewall Jackson. We're probably less than 100 miles from Gettysburg, but we've stepped through the looking glass; "victory" and "defeat" at a particular battlefield mean the opposite of what they do up north. It's evident the hometeam has changed.

We are not so far South that absolutely every building is air conditioned, but far enough south to wish they were. To be fair, it's as hot in Boston today as it is here. . .

We are actually just west of Washington, DC, technically mid-Atlantic, not South. We're really in Appalachia, not Flannery O'Connor-land, but there are subtle signs that we're not in Kansas anymore. We have passed signboards advertising "Revivals" at tiny Baptist churches; the NASCAR scores are reported hourly, it seems, on nearly every radio station. I encountered a wiry, older man in a 100-degree parking lot who chivalrously chased after the red onion that went bouncing out of my grocery cart, executing an entertaining little two-step in the process. He not only returned the onion, but carefully closed up all the rest of my bags so nothing else would fall out. A real Southern gentleman this far north!

We are definitely far enough South to suit my husband, though not nearly far enough for me. I would have kept driving another couple hundred miles if my family had been willing. As it is, I have to content myself with the occasional "Y'all," the Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the super market and the heat. Maybe next vacation. . .