Comma Dot Comma

I did get a red car, without really meaning to.  It’s a 99 Chevy Prizm, which the mighty internets tell me is a Corolla in disguise. It has a few dings and paint scrapes, but what do I care? There’s no rust here and the roads are unsalted. It has under 50,000 miles and I plan to drive it into the ground. (Don’t tell it I said that; let’s let the realization dawn gradually upon it.) It was on the lot next to all the Mazdas and Nissans that I thought were more interesting but had more than twice as many miles on them.  It’s only guaranteed for two weeks so I’ve got to get it into the shop, pronto.  Now Dr. G. doesn’t have to wait twenty minutes for the bus in the 100 degree weather.  Summer has hit.  There are these hot breezes that don’t cool you off at all.  It’s like being inside a giant’s mouth, sometimes. 

The hormonal maelstrom of my tween and early teen years coincided with major family upheaval.  There was a new baby, a new house, and some serious religious conflict thrown in for good measure.  I shared a room with my little sister, and thankfully in the new house (which our grandparents sold to us) we didn’t have to have our beds in bunks anymore, but I still felt suffocated.  The house had wooden floors and you could hear people  stomping around day and night.  There was always noise– my youngest brother crying, music playing, tense discussions, the phone ringing.  I would record popular songs offof the radio and use them to make up dance routines in the family room. I’d fill to the trembling point with fury when my sister innocently tried to join me because it looked fun.  I called it “copying.”  Was there not one activity, one corner of the house that I could claim as my own?

One day my mom noticed that I wasn’t around.  I was usually pretty quiet, but she could generally spot me hanging upside down off of the couch with a magazine or inspecting my complexion in the guest bathroom as she hurried from room to room, taking care of the baby and maintaing order.  The way my mom tells it, she opened the door to the deep linen closet in the hallway and was surprised  to find me curled up in the space between the floor and the bottom shelf with a flashlight and a book. 

I don’t remember exactly what conversation we had, but I do remember the outcome.  Where other people might tenderly laugh off their quirky child’s behavior, she took me seriously and  took action.  I couldn’t have my own room, but we did have a sturdy storage shed in the back where my grandmother had kept emergency food supplies in days gone by.  Mom cleared out the junk from the back room of the shed and cleaned and put down some leftover carpet. She painted it pink and yellow with an art-deco looking bicycle and my dad made a plywood desk.  Then my mom outfitted it with a chair, a space heater, a lock, and a sign that said “Private!” I could go in there whenever I wanted and I didn’t have to share.

At first I used it a lot. My brother and sister didn’t like it that I could just go in there and shut the door.  They’d stand outside it and whisper and knock. Eventually they lost interest. After a time, my visits to the Private Room dropped off. In many cases just knowing it was there if I needed it was enough.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I’m thinking about that season, when my mom found room amid her many responsibilities and private worries to notice my situation.  She didn’t just give comforting words; she took on a major project and enlisted other family members to help her complete it, and saved my bacon. Even today that kind of sacrificial giving for her kids and grandkids is a natural part of her life, shaped through years of practice. Thanks, mom.

• The tiny blister on the roof of my mouth from a rigorous bubble-blowing contest.
• A repetitive, bell-like sound in the central A/C vent.
• The weave of the dining room chair fabric pressing into my leg.
• A produce bag containing red potatoes with its mouth moving in the A/C breeze.
• To my left, the bottle of chalky chewable calcium that my doctor insists I must eat regularly.  I don’t like to.
• A sense of fatigue and sadness, nestled inside a larger sense of safety and well-being.
• The way my eyeballs feel as they move around the room.  They are wet machines.

For supper on Sunday night, I ate a short stack of freshly baked cookies the size of silver dollars, with mini-chocolate chips inside them and a mug of cold milk besides.  I don’t question, I don’t nag, I simply eat what is put before me.  It’s only polite.  They were delicious, and worked nicely to counteract the little hike we took up the hillside to watch the sunset.  The digital camera still works even though I dropped it on the concrete from 10 feet up yesterday.  It makes a funny noise now when it auto-focuses.  We were at Bartlett Lake with Dr. G’s sister, Marie, and I was leaning over a rail to take some pictures of shadows.  Oopsie.  Totally not worth it. Wandering around Cave Creek we saw a proud, swishy group of Red Hat ladies all decked out in red and purple, looking great.  We also saw Spider-Man 3, which was good in some ways (I love Peter Parker’s broken door) but could have used a rigorous editing.  Anytime you try to destabilize a relationship with a convenient bout of amnesia, you are treading in daytime soaps territory.   And if the only way you can think of to convey your message is through the speeches of an angelic old woman, you’re in Disney Princess  La La Land.  Disney + Days of Our Lives + CGI  =  Unfortunate Big Screen Mash-Up.   Ordered a few T-shirts from an online store and was wandering around Tempe.  Guy at a cash register says warmly and enthusiastically, “Hey, is that a Threadless shirt?”  and points to his own.  Apparently I have bought my way into some sort of T-shirt brotherhood.

Until the 2000 elections, when I learned about convicted felons being disenfranchised, I didn’t quite realize that in this country we like to continue punishing people well after they have served their prison time. It came as a bit of a shock. Now Dr. G has cowritten a policy paper on the issue of lifetime sanctions for felony offenders. I’ll link to it once it comes out. He and his cowriter advocate two things: 1. Except in rare cases, lifetime sanctions on former convicts should be abolished or replaced with shorter-term sanctions. 2. Use of criminal background checks should be regulated and have sunset provisions (that is, people would be able to access only a certain number of recent years of a person’s record).

These sanctions are created for two reasons– continued punishment, and to reduce risk of further harm to society. Examples of these punishments at the state level include not being able to vote, not being able to get public funding for education, and being barred from hundreds of different jobs. Examples of preventing risk include sex offender registries and bans from adopting children. In most cases, Dr. G explains, these lifetime regulations are unnecessary and have ethical problems. This is a big deal because these laws affect 16 million people* already.

Let’s say a drug dealer with a felony charge completes his prison term and is sent back into the community to go and sin no more. “Become a productive citizen!” we tell him. “Except, you can’t get financial aid for school, there is a big list of jobs you will never be allowed to do, and for the jobs you can get, employers are pretty much going to rule you out based on the criminal background check. Good luck! We wish you the best! And oh, you don’t like these policies? Too bad, because you will never be able to vote to change them.” These sanctions not only put him at an immediate disadvantage in getting back on his feet, but likely severely limit the opportunities he has to create a better life for himself. Multiply his dead-end situation by 16 million. That’s just ridiculous. Punishment for a crime should be contained to a specific time period; once you’ve done your time, you should regain full citizenship. Anything else is, in my opinion, unethical except in cases where vulnerable members of society, such as children, need additional protection.

Voting in particular is an essential check on government abuses. Imagine if the government started picking on a particular group. Let’s say, Christians. Draconian laws are passed against Christian assembly and prayer. People are convicted of felonies for carrying bibles and spend years in prison. People plot to vote in more open-minded leaders. But once they get out of prison, they find their right to vote has been rescinded, so they can’t do anything legal to change the situation. The government has effectively taken a group it doesn’t like and found as many ways as possible to reduce its power. Dangerous policy, indeed.

Dr. G also pointed out the good research on what happens to people over their lifetimes and after they get out of prison. The fact is, people commit less and less crime as they get older. Some studies show that by the time career criminals are 40, their criminal activity goes into steep decline. Nearly everyone is done with crime by the age of 60. * In addition, the longer someone stays out of prison, the less likely they are to be arrested again. By the time someone has been out of prison for seven years, you can’t tell the difference in risk of offending between that person and someone who’s never been convicted*. They blend right in to the general population. So, then, there is no need for lifetime bans and sanctions, since people become much lower risks to society with each passing year.

That’s why the indiscriminate use of criminal background checks should be reigned in. The common wisdom”once a criminal, always a criminal” just isn’t true. To withold opportunity and trust from someone for a conviction from 10 or even 20 years ago makes no sense, in light of the facts. Let’s not stigmatize people lifelong for the crimes of their youth.

*Updated5/7

The best online resource on this issue is Chris Uggen’s webpage. The 16 million figure comes from his 2006 paper with Manza & Thompson, available on his research web page:
and another paper:

“Scarlet letters and recidivism: Does an old criminal record predict future offending?”

Today, our favorite Netflix reviewer weighs in on child rearing, beauty being skin deep, and magic. Yes, it’s Nanny McPhee.

This movie make no senses to me! I am understanding that man who is father needing of help to taking care of his badly actings children. But I don’t to feel any wonderful of “magic” of nanny Mcphee. There was not none explaning or logical of why children would behaving for her. Also, it was not explained to me why she loses facial and bodily uglinesses, or why that’s was important thing. And, when she nanny Mcphee does loses uglinesses, I don’t finds her to be much pretty anyway. I think this movie was very stupid and not wonderfulness!!!