drink lots of water, as much as you can (can you believe my latest doctor told me not to drink too many fluids in the evening?)
don’t smoke; and, by all means, no drugs
drink only a little, or in moderation
eating light is better, but don’t get obsessive about diet
fewer sweets and less sugar are desirable
don’t take ANY meds (including aspirin) unless YOU feel you absolutely have to (and ignore what the docs say about them) — in short, leave your brother body alone
exercise as much as you can, but only if it’s fun for you; KEEP ACTIVE
try to keep the weight off, but don’t obsess over it
DON’T EAT LATE AT NIGHT OR BEFORE BEDTIME (it’s better to go to bed hungry)
allow yourself to get as much sleep as you want
stay away from hospitals (“the patients check in, but they don’t check out”) — they’re bound to make you sick, or sicker
avoid doctors, if you can manage it
try to ignore colds if you can … keep going; you’ll find that once you forget about it, the “illness” will forget about you
don’t let inclement weather stop you from going out … cold air is good for you
don’t listen to the advice of would be doctors (family, friends) and “medical meddlers” — except for mine (!)
above all, AVOID STRESS (this includes worrying about your health)
have known and loved the first movement from a very young age
but, to my surprise, I think I enjoyed the second movement (Andante) even more tonight … it is a musical conversation between the instruments … Mozart THINKS musically (as I noted in a previous post)
The second piece, “Voy a dormir,” was the world premiere of a work by a young composer … beautiful soprano voice (the composer collaborated with her on the work) … Spanish text, based on poetry by Alfonsina Storni (Argentinian)
It is pleasurable to hear Spanish and to be able to follow the lyrics, since I know the language. It sounded so beautiful, as are all the Romance languages. All kind of the same — in a way — and at the same time each unique with its own “melody.” En el fondo del mar / hay una casa / de cristal.
Listening to the Emperor Concerto performed live. What an experience. There is such a range of emotions in Beethoven — e.g., from the first to the second movement.
One can HEAR such a difference in and evolution of styles between and from Mozart to Beethoven. From classical to romantic. But, to me, Haydn is the clearest exemplar of the classical style — not Mozart (not to detract from Mozart; it’s just a question of musical styles).
I had unusually good seats. It was great to watch the conductor, Robert Spano, and the piano soloist close up.
There must be such an incredible feeling of power to be the soloist in a piano concerto.
I thought of my father, a pianist who conducted occasionally
and of my family’s experience with music as performers
my father, who graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in music and who was a professional musician and piano teacher
my mother, who was in the Radcliffe College chorus and played the piano
my three siblings, all of whom are gifted musicians, notably on the piano, and each of whom achieved proficiency in more than one instrument
my maternal grandmother, who — I never knew this during her lifetime — is said to have played the piano well
my paternal grandmother, who was a church organist and choir director … and my father the same
my paternal grandmother’s mother (my great-grandmother), who, I was told by an aunt, played the piano and sang in a Methodist Church in the nineteenth century
I have hazy memories of my father conducting once or twice … I see him striding down the aisle proudly with his usual good posture, perhaps a bit more serious of mien than usual, but not overly so; assuming an appropriate air of dignity … being applauded … the performance commencing
where did he learn to conduct? … guess it’s not difficult if you have performed in orchestras … he did not, to my knowledge, conduct classical works
when one is growing up, one takes one’s parents and nuclear family largely for granted … they are a given, like your front yard or neighborhood
your parents’ unique or distinctive attributes are something you are not likely to think about until much later in life
watching this particular concert, I felt a twinge of sadness, loss, and regret for my father and mother — occasioned by thoughts of what such a concert would have meant to them; how we could have talked about it (and would have enjoyed doing so); and how their existence and persons not only made mine possible, but endowed me with musical and aesthetic sensitivity
I absolutely love the singing and the voice of famous jazz singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990).
Some find her songs to be treacly. There seems to be something to this criticism — as it applies to some, but by no means all, of her songs — but I love her nonetheless.
It is my nonprofessional opinion that her deep, rich voice cannot be equaled.
Regarding the lyrics of the song, below, I have interpolated my own comments on what they mean. Many readers of this post will say, does he think I can’t read? I don’t need to have the lyrics interpreted for me.
I have interpolated comments nevertheless — for the sale of the many foreign readers of this post who may not be familiar with English jargon.
By the way, I think that the “The Green Leaves of Summer” is a great song.
— Roger W. Smith
February 2018
**********************************************
Addendum: To see how a group can mess up a great, sentimental song such as this one, listen to the version by The Springfields (at the same YouTube link). This version is treacly, and the arrangement stinks.
Woo, woo,
A time to be reaping [reap: to harvest crops]
A time to be sowing [sow: to plant crops]
The green leaves of summer [tree leaves; green in summer; change color in fall, fall off trees in winter]
Are calling me home
Twas so good to be young then [“Twas”: it was]
In the season of plenty [season of plenty; things were growing in abundance; the earth was fertile, like a woman]
When the catfish were jumping [catfish: fresh water fish; jumping — the fish are so plentiful they jump out of the water; times are good]
As high as the sky [the fish jump as high as the sky]
A time just for planting [time for planting seeds]
A time just for ploughing [a tractor plows the earth to make it ready for planting]
A time to be courting [it’s also the time for “courting,” finding a mate, love; everything is pregnant, ripe]
A girl of your own
Twas so good to be young then [it was good to be young and full of energy and spirits at that time]
To be close to the earth [good to be in close to the earth; one feels it in summertime, and when one is young, one’s body feels full of vigor]
And to stand by your wife [to bond and to have a love object]
At the moment of birth, woo [the earth is producing food; the wife is giving birth]
A time to be reaping [reap: harvest]
A time to be sowing [sow: plant, not only seeds to grow in earth, but also make babies]
A time just for living [the joy of just plain being ALIVE]
A place for to die [the lyrics are the words of someone at end of life recalling the summer days of his young manhood]
Twas so good to be young then
To be close to the earth
Now the green leaves of summer
Are calling me home [“home,” meaning to return to the earth and be buried]
Twas so good to be young then
To be close to the earth
Now the green leaves of summer
Are calling me home
The #MeToo movement is accomplishing what sexual harassment law to date has not.
This mass mobilization against sexual abuse, through an unprecedented wave of speaking out in conventional and social media, is eroding the two biggest barriers to ending sexual harassment in law and in life: the disbelief and trivializing dehumanization of its victims.
Sexual harassment law — the first law to conceive sexual violation in inequality terms — created the preconditions for this moment. Yet denial by abusers and devaluing of accusers could still be reasonably counted on by perpetrators to shield their actions.
Many survivors realistically judged reporting pointless. Complaints were routinely passed off with some version of “she wasn’t credible” or “she wanted it.” I kept track of this in cases of campus sexual abuse over decades; it typically took three to four women testifying that they had been violated by the same man in the same way to even begin to make a dent in his denial. That made a woman, for credibility purposes, one-fourth of a person.
Even when she was believed, nothing he did to her mattered as much as what would be done to him if his actions against her were taken seriously. His value outweighed her sexualized worthlessness. His career, reputation, mental and emotional serenity and assets counted. Hers didn’t. In some ways, it was even worse to be believed and not have what he did matter. It meant she didn’t matter.
These dynamics of inequality have preserved the system in which the more power a man has, the more sexual access he can get away with compelling.
It is widely thought that when something is legally prohibited, it more or less stops. This may be true for exceptional acts, but it is not true for pervasive practices like sexual harassment, including rape, that are built into structural social hierarchies. … If the same cultural inequalities are permitted to operate in law as in the behavior the law prohibits, equalizing attempts — such as sexual harassment law — will be systemically resisted.
This logjam, which has long paralyzed effective legal recourse for sexual harassment, is finally being broken. Structural misogyny, along with sexualized racism and class inequalities, is being publicly and pervasively challenged by women’s voices. The difference is, power is paying attention.
Powerful individuals and entities are taking sexual abuse seriously for once and acting against it as never before. No longer liars, no longer worthless, today’s survivors are initiating consequences none of them could have gotten through any lawsuit — in part because the laws do not permit relief against individual perpetrators, but more because they are being believed and valued as the law seldom has. Women have been saying these things forever. It is the response to them that has changed.
Revulsion against harassing behavior — in this case, men with power refusing to be associated with it — could change workplaces and schools. It could restrain repeat predators as well as the occasional and casual exploiters that the law so far has not. Shunning perpetrators as sex bigots who take advantage of the vulnerabilities of inequality could transform society. It could change rape culture.
Sexual harassment law can grow with #MeToo. Taking #MeToo’s changing norms into the law could — and predictably will — transform the law as well. Some practical steps could help capture this moment. Institutional or statutory changes could include prohibitions or limits on various forms of secrecy and nontransparency that hide the extent of sexual abuse and enforce survivor isolation, such as forced arbitration, silencing nondisclosure agreements even in cases of physical attacks and multiple perpetration, and confidential settlements. A realistic statute of limitations for all forms of discrimination, including sexual harassment, is essential. Being able to sue individual perpetrators and their enablers, jointly with institutions, could shift perceived incentives for this behavior. The only legal change that matches the scale of this moment is an Equal Rights Amendment, expanding the congressional power to legislate against sexual abuse and judicial interpretations of existing law, guaranteeing equality under the Constitution for all.
But it is #MeToo, this uprising of the formerly disregarded, that has made untenable the assumption that the one who reports sexual abuse is a lying slut, and that is changing everything already. Sexual harassment law prepared the ground, but it is today’s movement that is shifting gender hierarchy’s tectonic plates.
* * *
The problem, as I see it, with an article like this — I find it boring, and not uplifting — is that it is overly generalized writing, what I might call genericspeak, amounting to boilerplate written for a certain interest group. The dictionary definition of boilerplate is as follows:
1. standardized text
2. formulaic or hackneyed language
There is nothing new. It is all generalities and the author of the piece is essentially preaching to the choir, i.e., to radical feminists with views identical or very close to her own.
There is no personality on the page. A writer’s voice does not come through, other than an angry, cold one propagating dogma.
In 1896 my great-great-grandfather left his hometown, Chattanooga, and traveled north to purchase a small, fading newspaper in New York.
The moment was not unlike our own. Technological, economic and social turmoil were upending the traditions of the country. People trying to understand these changes and their implications found themselves confused by polarized politics and by a partisan press more focused on advancing its own interests than on informing the public.
Against this backdrop Adolph Ochs saw the need for a different kind of newspaper, and he committed The New York Times to the then-radical idea that still animates it today. He vowed that The Times would be fiercely independent, dedicated to journalism of the highest integrity and devoted to the public welfare.
His vision for the news report: “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.”
His vision for the opinion report: “to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
This mission feels particularly urgent to me today as I begin my work as publisher of The New York Times. Our society is again being reshaped by political, technological and environmental forces that demand deep scrutiny and careful explanation. More than 120 years after Adolph Ochs’s vision was printed in these pages, the need for independent, courageous, trustworthy journalism is as great as it’s ever been.
This is a period of exciting innovation and growth at The Times. Our report is stronger than ever, thanks to investments in new forms of journalism like interactive graphics, podcasting and digital video and even greater spending in areas like investigative, international and beat reporting. Our audience, once confined to a single city, now stretches around the globe.
This is also, of course, a period of profound challenge for The Times, for the news media more broadly, and for everyone who believes that journalism sustains a healthy society.
There was a reason freedom of speech and freedom of the press were placed first among our essential rights. Our founders understood that the free exchange of ideas and the ability to hold power to account were prerequisites for a successful democracy. But a dangerous confluence of forces is threatening the press’s central role in helping people understand and engage with the world around them.
The business model that long supported the hard and expensive work of original reporting is eroding, forcing news organizations of all shapes and sizes to cut their reporting staffs and scale back their ambitions. Misinformation is rising and trust in the media is declining as technology platforms elevate clickbait, rumor and propaganda over real journalism, and politicians jockey for advantage by inflaming suspicion of the press. Growing polarization is jeopardizing even the foundational assumption of common truths, the stuff that binds a society together.
Like our predecessors at The Times, my colleagues and I will not give in to these forces.
The Times will continue to search for the most important stories of our era with curiosity, courage and empathy — because we believe that improving the world starts with understanding it. The Times will continue to resist polarization and groupthink by giving voice to the breadth of ideas and experiences — because we believe journalism should help people think for themselves. The Times will hold itself to the highest standards of independence, rigor and fairness — because we believe trust is the most precious asset we have. The Times will do all of this without fear or favor — because we believe truth should be pursued wherever it leads.
These values guided my father and his predecessors as publisher as they steered this company through war, economic crisis, technological upheaval and major societal shifts. These same values sustained them as they stood up to presidents; battled for the rights of a free press in court; and overrode the financial interests of our business in favor of our journalistic principles.
The challenge before me is to ensure The Times safeguards those values while embracing the imperative to adapt to a changing world. I’ve spent most of my career as a newspaper reporter, but I’ve also been a champion of The Times’s digital evolution. I’m protective of our best traditions, and I look to the future with excitement and optimism.
Much will change in the years ahead, and I believe those changes will lead to a report that is richer and more vibrant than anything we could have dreamed up in ink and paper. What won’t change: We will continue to give reporters the resources to dig into a single story for months at a time. We will continue to support reporters in every corner of the world as they bear witness to unfolding events, sometimes at great personal risk. We will continue to infuse our journalism with expertise by having lawyers cover law, doctors cover health and veterans cover war. We will continue to search for the most compelling ways to tell stories, from prose to virtual reality to whatever comes next. We will continue to put the fairness and accuracy of everything we publish above all else — and in the inevitable moments we fall short, we will continue to own up to our mistakes, and we’ll strive to do better.
We believe this is the journalism our world needs and our readers deserve. That has been the guiding vision for The New York Times across five generations and more than 120 years. Today we renew that commitment.
A.G. Sulzberger Publisher
* * *
This is all self-congratulatory boilerplate blah. There is not one original thought or idea, and hardly any information.
The entire piece could be boiled down to a sentence or two and not lose anything with respect to content or meaning: e.g.: I pledge that The New York Times will continue its mission of providing readers with the best journalism on the face of the earth.
Such writing might be appropriate as the text of a hortatory address by the principal at an assembly at the beginning of the school year, or for a motivational speech to employees by a CEO. Sulzberger’s op-ed is not worth reading. It is full of platitudes with no substance, just an assurance to readers that the Times has always been great — or, as he sees it, has always adhered to the highest journalistic standards — and will, he pledges, continue to do so. That’s nice, but so what? Is his oration worth a reader’s time?
Such language is often used by leaders in business and academia and, with embellishment, by politicians. There is nothing necessarily wrong with a motivational speech. But, such writing does not belong on the op-ed page.
What if Sulzberger had said, for example?
We are opening up a new bureau in Novosibirsk to cover developments in the Far North from the perspective of global ecology.
We intend to provide more coverage of ethnic minorities worldwide, such as the Rohingya people.
We have given more priority to coverage of women’s sports at the college level.
That would have been informative to Times readers. He should have used the op-ed piece to convey substantive information about what to expect from the Times in the coming months and years under his stewardship. He does not, for the most part, do this.
In years to come, it will be known as “doing the Leona.”
It will be written up in the lawbooks, and in the privacy of their offices, slick-suited defense attorneys will discuss using it on behalf of their clients. Certain crass members of the press, always quick with the cynical remark, will call it the “red bathrobe” technique — and they’ll use it to refer to any convicted criminal who cries, whines, scrabbles and is willing to do just about anything else to stay out of jail.
We’ve been subjected to this sorry spectacle in recent weeks as Leona Helmsley and her lawyers tried every ploy they could think of to keep Leona from being carried off in in handcuffs today for the crime of bilking the federal government of millions of dollars in taxes. The strategy didn’t work for Leona, who presumably is even now wending her way to a Kentucky prison. But that doesn’t mean that in the future “The Leona” won’t work for other felons.
The basic elements of “The Leona” are these:
1. PROCLAIM YOUR innocence, in spite of voluminous evidence to the contrary. Admit no wrongdoing, or even any mistakes, and express no remorse whatsoever for your behavior.
2 CLAIM YOUR spouse is sick and will die if you’re sent to prison, since you are the only person on Earth who can care for him properly. (Despite the fact that her 83-year-old husband, Harry, is a billionaire and can afford the best possible medical care, according to Leona it is only her presence that can ward off his premature death.)
3. CLAIM YOU are sick and will die if you are sent to prison. After a federal judge turned down her request for a new trial, Leona collapsed outside the courtroom and was rushed to the hospital. Her attorneys have since argued that because she suffers from hardening of the arteries and high blood pressure, the stress of prison life could kill her. Try telling this to the 67,000 other federal prison inmates, many of whom also feel that prison is not conducive to good health.
4. HAVE A public relations firm organize a “Keep Leona Out of Jail” rally. This tawdry event took place about 10 days and reeked of insincerity.
5. APPEAR ON national TV talk shows, claiming you have been railroaded. Leona cried a lot on the “Joan Rivers Show.” And on “20 /”20” in an interview with Barbara Walters, the queen with the fabulous ballgowns was interviewed in a long red bathrobe — her version of sackcloth and ashes, and clear proof that she was emotionally overwrought. On the same show, she claimed her only friends in the world, besides old Harry, are her black maid and the security man at her Connecticut estate.
6. OFFER TO perform community service in lieu of prison time, a ploy overused by white-collar convicts who believe prisons are for the lower classes.
7. CLAIM TO be a member of a reviled minority group. Leona’s attorneys argued that she would face hostility and abuse by other prison inmates because she is “a widely reviled, vastly wealthy New York Jew.” Try this argument on the convicted drug lords, gang members, mob chieftains, and homosexuals who also expect to encounter some “hostility” from other inmates.
8. ARGUE THAT you can’t go to jail until after your next religious holiday. Leona’s attorneys argued that she should at least be allowed to celebrate Passover with the aging Harry. I’m not sure when Leona became a devout Jew, but I do know that a lot of prison inmates have foregone a final Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, or Kwanzaa with their families.
9. IF ALL else fails, try to bribe your way out of jail. In a last-ditch bid for freedom yesterday, Leona’s lawyers offered to turn over several Helmsley hotels for use as homeless shelters. This sudden burst of charity came from a woman never particularly known for benevolent gestures, who apparently became aware of the homeless problem only this week.
In the end, none of these tactics worked for Leona Helmsley. Not even the skillful briefs and arguments of Alan Dershowitz — a brilliant defense attorney who in recent years has squandered his abilities to serve the wealthy, the contemptible and the guilty — could sway the courts in her favor.
Nor could this massive public-relations campaign change the public perception that Leona Helmsley is an awful human being with a voice like a foghorn and the morals of a pirate. For years she plundered the poor and the powerless. She abused and intimidated her minions, the low-paid, unskilled hotel workers who desperately needed their jobs to make a living.
She blatantly stiffed the contractors who worked for her and who then got their revenge by turning her in to the authorities. But the IRS was the one entity she could not stiff, and so Leona is going to prison.
Legally, her crime was cheating on taxes. Morally, her crime was in believing her wealth and power set her above the law and exempted her from normal standards of decency. A horror of realization must have set in yesterday when the court rejected her last appeal.
So, on this 15th day of April, tax day, Leona Helmsley goes off to jail. Sources tell me the little people are planning a demonstration today on the steps of the U.S. Court of Appeals downtown. They will gather with their recently completed income-tax returns in their hands and when a sign is given they will lift these forms high above their heads and wave Leona bye-bye.
* * *
Leona Helmsley, the so-called Queen of Mean, was the wife of Harry Helmsley, a billionaire real estate investor and property developer. She was convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989 and sentenced to 19 months in prison.
The story was front page news in 1989. It is mostly forgotten now, and Sheryl McCarthy’s op-ed piece seems dated. Op-ed pieces are, by necessity, topical, but this one is also superficial:
In years to come, it will be known as “doing the Leona.”
It will be written up in the lawbooks, and in the privacy of their offices, slick-suited defense attorneys will discuss using it on behalf of their clients. Certain crass members of the press, always quick with the cynical remark, will call it the “red bathrobe” technique — and they’ll use it to refer to any convicted criminal who cries, whines, scrabbles and is willing to do just about anything else to stay out of jail.
This assertion seemed clever, supposedly, to the writer. It makes little sense now, because it was built on a very flimsy conjecture — in fact, one that has no substance: that the Leona Helmsley case would set a legal precedent. Of course, the writer knew it wouldn’t, but her piece is jerrybuilt on the playful assumption that it would.
The rest of the piece is a trashing of an easy target: the reviled, convicted and unpopular Leona Helmsley, who was publicly perceived as a greedy, haughty, arrogant woman getting her comeuppance; “an awful human being with a voice like a foghorn and the morals of a pirate” in the writer’s words.
This is glib, overblown writing.
So, on this 15th day of April, tax day, Leona Helmsley goes off to jail. Sources tell me the little people are planning a demonstration today on the steps of the U.S. Court of Appeals downtown. They will gather with their recently completed income-tax returns in their hands and when a sign is given they will lift these forms high above their heads and wave Leona bye-bye.
Did this actually happen? Certainly, it did not the way the writer envisions it.
In principle, there is nothing wrong, or that should be “prohibited,” with trying to be inventive or clever in writing a lead, in trying to make a point (often with irony or sarcasm), or in using or devising scenarios in one’s head or out of thin air (for the purposes of illustration or exemplification) that the reader knows are not literally true. One sees this often in fiction, naturally, but it is also used in essay writing: consider, for example, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” But it takes a clever writer to pull this off and not end up looking plain foolish, whimsical, and as if the piece was conceived in la-la land. This seems especially true of the op-ed page.
Other athletes are known today as the Rocket, notably pitcher Roger Clemens, the tennis legend Rod Laver and receiver Raghib Ismael, but they plagiarized the nickname. To anyone who saw Maurice Richard play hockey, he was not only the original Rocket, but also deserved to be remembered as the real Rocket, the only Rocket.
Just as Babe Ruth defined George Herman Ruth, Rocket defined the Montreal Canadiens’ folk hero who set all the National Hockey League goal-scoring records that Gordy Howe and Wayne Gretzky eventually shattered.
Whenever Richard scored in the hockey cathedral that was the Montreal Forum, hats, programs, galoshes and newspapers were tossed onto the ice in celebration as the public address announcer boomed formally, first in French and then in English, “Goal by Maurice Ree-chard.”
But his coach and former linemate at left wing, Toe Blake, usually referred to him as “Rocket.” So did his teammates.
“I sat beside Rocket in the dressing room for the seven years I played with him,” center Jean Béliveau once said. “He was an inspiration and the idol of my generation. On the team we all knew he was kind of an introvert and not the greatest talker.
“But in his own way, he was a leader and, as players and as a team, we followed him because we were inspired by his desire to win. When we lost, Rocket did not need to say anything to show how hard he accepted defat. You could see it in his eyes.”
Yes, those blazing eyes, which finally closed Saturday when he died at 78 after a two-year struggle with abdominal cancer.
* * *
This op-ed piece is a eulogy for hockey great Maurice Richard. The central premises are that Richard was a great player beloved by fans and an idol and inspiration for his teammates. Dave Anderson, who was The New York Times’s leading sportswriter when this op-ed piece was published under the “Sports of the Times” heading (Anderson had the prestige of writing the column), should have stuck to these points, but he overdid it with his assertion that there is something special about the nickname Rocket that distinguished Richard, or that anyone could claim distinction based upon a nickname. Such a literary device was used for Anderson’s lead, which gets the piece off to a bad start and makes it fall flat.
The Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, should right now be shopping for twin beds.
Well, not really beds — gurneys on which you strap humanity’s filth and jab them with the needle of ultimate night.
I don’t know why DA Brown, who screwed up in the first place by not locking up John B. Taylor for 12 years, is wrestling with himself over whether to seek the death penalty.
Rick Lazio, speaking through a stitched lip, sewed up Mr. Brown’s agony when he said the words that certainly will make him the next senator of this Empire State:
“After a fair trial, competent counsel and if Mr. Taylor and [Craig] Godineaux are found guilty, there is no question that the district attorney should seek the death penalty.
“That is what the death penalty was made for. Here we see a senseless slaughter of human beings. Hard-working, never looking for a handout, not being rich, just working. A senseless slaughter.
“If they are convicted, after due process of law, there is no question about what the punishment should be.”
Rick Lazio got a lot of votes yesterday from my friends. Yeah, they’re beer-drinking cops and firemen. And yeah, they’re the guys who put their lives on the line every day to make sure I wake up after I go to sleep.
Taylor was on five years’ probation when he committed three armed robberies and Judge Pauline Mullings gave him an incredibly low bail of $3,500.
The New York state court system accuses District Attorney Brown of screwing up because he did not indict the little punk called Taylor. Who cares now who was wrong?
You could tell it to the Marines, but don’t tell it to the friends and family of those who died in the Wendy’s slaughterhouse.
The liberals, who are against the death penalty, say lock them up forever, away from society.
Well, this state under Gov. Hugh Carey, who was more interested in dyeing his hair than a peace officer dying, should have learned its lesson on May 15, 1981 at Greenhaven prison.
Lemuel Smith, a total worm given life for three murders, was locked away in Greenhaven for life … No threat, according to the liberals, to society.
Apparently, Donna Payant did not count as part of society. She was just a correction officer.
And that gave· triple murderer Lemuel Smith the right to rape and murder Donna Payant and trash her body in a prison Dumpster. So much for locking someone away to protect society.
In the case of the lice John B. Taylor and Craig Godineaux, they have told cops what they did.
Yes, I’m sure they’ll bring in psychiatrists for their defense. I will never forget May 28, 1998 when Dr. Sanford Drob, chief of psychological assessment at Bellevue Hospital, gave evidence on behalf of triple murderer Darrel Harris.
He told the court that Harris should not be executed because he couldn’t draw a bicycle.
Harris, of course, could draw a gun, and when he ran out of bullets, he slashed Evelyn Davis to death with a knife as she said: “Please let me out of here. I have five babies.”
Don’t ask me why Dr. Drob — read that as dope — came up with the conclusion that not being able to draw a bicycle had anything to do with Darrel Harris getting a tiny needle in the arm.
Despite the best efforts of Dr. Drob, Darrel Harris became the first killer sentenced to die under the state’s new capital punishment law. So District Attorney Brown has no real problem.
All he has to do is look at the files of this newspaper, listen to Rick Lazio and listen to common sense. Lifetime in jail does not guarantee that killers won’t kill. Killers sometimes shank people in jail just to get celebrity status.
Ask me. I told the so-called “Boston strangler” Albert DeSalvo that he would be murdered by Peter Wilson and Patty Devlin in Walpole State Prison, Massachusetts, if he didn’t stop being a big mouth. They did him.
The only thing that stops murderers murdering is to have them removed from the face of the earth. Rick Lazio understands that, thank God. So does New York and I pray that today Richard Brown grasps it all.
* * *
Steve Dunleavy is a tabloid journalist known for his focus on crime and other gut issues which, in his view, call for mob justice.
“gurneys on which you strap humanity’s filth and jab them with the needle of ultimate night”; “the little punk called Taylor”; “Lemuel Smith, a total worm”; “In the case of the lice John B. Taylor and Craig Godineaux, they have told cops what they did”; “Killers sometimes shank people in jail just to get celebrity status.” “I told the so-called “Boston strangler” Albert DeSalvo that he would be murdered by Peter Wilson and Patty Devlin in Walpole State Prison, Massachusetts, if he didn’t stop being a big mouth. They did him.” “The only thing that stops murderers murdering is to have them removed from the face of the earth.
This is supposedly tough street talk. It actually serves to show Dunleavy’s crudeness, stupidity, and ghoulishness; the utter absence of any reflection on his part; and that he is unqualified to be a journalist.
Note the one sentence paragraphs. This is a hallmark of tough guy, in your face journalism. And, the writing is just plain dumb and crude. It’s as if one wrote an angry note to one’s ex-girlfriend saying: “YOU’RE A COMPLETE JERK. I HATE YOU.”
Supposedly great (and, in my opinion, very overrated) journalists such as Jimmy Breslin (d. 2017) and Pete Hamill often write in the same vein. They are extolled for presenting in plain language the views of the man on the street, the common man. They do not seem to be in the same class as Dunleavy, and they can write half decently. But, they do not write that well — certainly not at a level which deserves admiration — and their views are often simplistic and can lead to serious distortions when it comes to contentious issues.
One further thought. Re jerrybuilt op-ed pieces and writing that seems too “cute.” Op-ed writers can certainly use humor and ingenuity to get their points across. No one is saying they can’t or shouldn’t. But, it takes great skill to be funny without seeming jejune. Current and former columnists whom I admire who (in my opinion) have a genius for humor and use it effectively include Russell Baker of The New York Times, Art Buchwald of The Washington Post, and Maureen Dowd of the Times. (For fun, I have posted below, as an attachment, two notable op-ed pieces by Baker and Buchwald.)
My Brandeis University roommate John Ferris, when he was in junior high school, skipped school to attend Ted’s last game. He told me a story once that is worth repeating.
Williams had come up in the bottom of the fifth inning, batting against Orioles reliever Jack Fisher (pitching in relief). He hit a tremendous drive to right center field that barely missed being a homerun.
Here’s how it was described by sportswriter Ed Linn (who was at the game) in his book Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams:
As the ball jumped off the bat, the cry “He did it!” arose from the stands. Right-fielder Al Pilarcik ran back as far as he could, pressed his back against the bull-pen fence, well out from the 380-foot sign, and stood there motionless, with his hands at his side. …
At the last moment, Pilarcik brought up his hands and caught the ball chest high, close to 400 feet from the plate, A moan of disappointment settled over the field, followed by a rising hum of excited chatter, and then, as Ted came back to the first-base line to take his glove from Pumpsie Green, a standing ovation. [It was the third out.]
“Damn,” Ted said when he returned to the bench at the end of the inning. “I hit the living hell out of that one. I really stung it. If that one didn’t go out, nothing is going out today.”
My friend John Ferris described the play to me with relish and added a detail. He said that Pilarcik waited for the ball to come down (as described by Linn) with his back against the bullpen fence, caught it just before it cleared the fence, and then, made a gesture in which he turned toward the fans in right center field, shrugged his shoulders, and with body language seemed to be saying: “Sorry, but I couldn’t not catch the ball when I could.”
Not among the 10,454 paying customers but at the game in the eighth inning when Williams did homer was a relative of mine: McLaren Harris, then a graduate student at Boston University. As Harris told me years later, he had been listening to the game on the radio. Boston University is right next door to Fenway Park. Harris and his friends decided to attend the last couple of innings.
You could do that in those days because (besides the fact that the game was not a sellout), the Red Sox had a policy of opening the gates to fans after the seventh inning on. Anyone could enter for free. My older brother, friends, and I used to do this in the 1950’s.
So, Harris, with incredibly good fortune, arrived just in time to see Ted’s final homer.
Gene Stephens was the left fielder for Baltimore. He went two for four with a double. It’s intriguing that he was playing on the opposing team because Stephens spent most of his career with the Red Sox. Stephens played for the Red Sox from 1952 until 1960, when he was traded (in mid season, on June 9) to the Orioles. I remember Stephens well because in the 1950’s he would always be entering the game in late innings as a replacement in left field for Williams. The sportswriters called him Williams’s caddy.
It’s worth noting, also, that Stephens had been traded for Orioles outfielder Willie Tasby. In his famous piece about the game for The New Yorker, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” John Updike describes Williams warming up before the game by playing catch with Tasby. Tasby played center field that day.
Despite Williams’s homer, the Red Sox went into the bottom of the ninth trailing by a score of 4-3. With one out, Red Sox second baseman Marlan Coughtry singled off Fisher. Then pinch hitter Vic Wertz doubled, sending Coughtry to third. Vic Wertz, none other than the slugger whose fly ball to the deepest part of center field at the Polo Grounds in the first game of the 1954 World Series was caught by Willie Mays in a play that came to be known as The Catch.
Red Sox pitcher Tom Brewer came in to pinch run for Wertz. I remember Brewer well. He once came to speak (in June 1958) at the North Church (Congregational) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which my family attended.
The next batter was Pumpsie Green. He walked. The aforementioned Willie Tasby grounded to third. The second baseman, Billy Klaus, attempting to complete a double play, threw wildly to first. Coughtry and Brewer scored and the Red Sox won 5-4.
I recall Klaus well from the 1950’s, when he played shortstop for the Red Sox. He was traded to the Orioles after the 1958 season. Klaus began the 1959 season playing third base for the Orioles, but was replaced in mid-season by none other than Brooks Robinson and moved to shortstop.
Another piece of trivia. Gene Stephens was traded in 1961 by the Orioles to the Kansas City Athletics for first baseman Marv Throneberry: “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry. Throneberry was the starting first baseman for the 1962 New York Mets. (I remember “Marvelous Marv” best from Miller Beer ads). And, who was Marvelous Marv’s older brother? Faye Throneberry: an outfielder who played sparingly for the Red Sox in the 1950’s. I had his baseball card.
In my humble opinion, Linn’s account is more informative — there is no comparison when it comes to descriptive detail — and more telling. I prefer it to Updike’s.
Pitcher Jack Fisher’s recollections of that date are recorded in the following article: “Jack Fisher: So, What Was That Like?” By Elon Green, The New Yorker, May 1, 2014
At the end of a career that spanned four decades, Ted Williams announced his retirement from baseball, on September 26, 1960. Two days later, he played his last game—at home, in Boston, against the Baltimore Orioles.
Steve Barber was the starting pitcher for the Orioles. He allowed two runs in under an inning, and was replaced by a twenty-one-year-old right-hander, Jack Fisher.
In the seventh inning, with the Orioles ahead 4–2, Fisher threw Ted Williams—in his last at-bat—a fastball. Williams thwacked the ball toward center field. John Updike, who attended the game, tracked the ball’s trajectory as it “struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.”
Here is Jack Fisher’s memory of that day:
As you probably heard, it was a very cold, dank day type thing. Williams earlier had hit a ball off of me to right field—a fly ball that our right fielder, Al Pilarcik, caught back close to the warning track. So Williams had hit the ball pretty well that time, and I thought, Uh oh, but it was an out. So, it’s the seventh inning, and he comes up, and Jackie Jensen was their next hitter, right-hand hitter, and with the short left-field wall there, I thought, There’s no way I’m gonna pitch around Williams.
I think the first pitch was a ball. The next pitch—he swung and missed—was another fastball. The next pitch I just went to another fastball and he hit it out. Made the score four to three.
I mean, all I was trying to do was win the ballgame. The fact that he hit the home run wasn’t that big to me because I’d actually had pretty good success against him.
After he hit the home run, he went in [the dugout] and of course, as you know, he kind of ignored the fans and everything. And they were all standing and waiting and wanting him to come out of the dugout and wave to him or something like that. And finally, he’s sitting on the bench and he waved to me and said, “Go ahead and pitch. I’m not gettin’ up.” I actually stood behind the mound and waited for him to come out, but he didn’t.
We went back to Baltimore, probably by train, at that time. And got to the hotel room, and I thought I knew what hotel he stayed at in Boston. So I gave him a call, and asked for Ted Williams’s room. And I’ll be damned—they hooked me up, and Ted answered the phone! And I said, “Well, I guess I got to congratulate ya for, you know, retiring on a home run and everything.” He pretty much told me, at the time, “Hey, I wanna thank you for challenging me, and not really pitching around me or anything.” And I said, “Hell, I’m two runs up in the game. What am I pitching around you for?” So I did get to talk to him, that night after we got home.
One of the sportswriters looked it up, and he said that Williams lifetime was two for thirteen off of me. So I did all right against him.
Note that Fisher mentions that the cleanup hitter, following Williams, was Jackie Jensen. Jensen was not in the lineup that day. The cleanup hitter, batting fourth, was catcher Jim Pagliaroni. Jensen retired after the 1959 season and was not on the team in 1960. He returned to the Red Sox in 1961 and played one more season.
People have told me over the years, many times, that I have an excellent vocabulary.
I never stop looking up words.
Here are some ones I have recently looked up. They are all from my reading. Some I more or less knew or could guess the meaning of from context. Others I had encountered before, but did not know the exact meaning.
showing no imagination; commonplace or dull (said especially of speech or writing)
I love this word for how it can be used to apply in this particular sense; it was used by Charles Dickens.
demotic
denoting or relating to the kind of language used by ordinary people
synonyms: popular, vernacular, colloquial, idiomatic, vulgar, common
revenant
noun
a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead
midden
a dunghill or refuse heap; a term more commonly used in earlier times (e.g., the nineteenth century) when waste disposal methods were more primitive (I came across it in a Dickens work)
parataxis
The stringing of simple clauses together in rapid, spontaneous talk. Example:
Look, having nuclear – my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at M.I.T.; good genes, very good genes, O.K., very smart, the Wharton School of finance, very good, very smart – you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world – it’s true! – but when you’re a conservative Republican they try – oh, they do a number – that’s why I always start off: “Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune”– you know I have to give my life credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged – but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me.
miry
adjective
very muddy or boggy
“the roads were miry in winter”
used by Dickens
Brummagem
cheap, showy, or counterfeit
“a vile Brummagem substitute for the genuine article”
pule
verb; literary
gerund or present participle: puling
cry querulously or weakly
periphrasis
the use of indirect and circumlocutory speech or writing
example: “not a shadow of a shade of doubt”
anaphora; anaphoric
a rhetorical term for when a writer or speaker repeats the same beginning of a sentence several times. Writers and speakers use anaphora to add emphasis to the repeated element, but also to add rhythm, cadence, and style to the text or speech.
example: “The wrong person was selected for the wrong job, at the wrong time, for the wrong purpose.”
alembic
something that refines or transmutes as if by distillation
“filtered through the alembic of Plato’s mind”
exordium
the beginning or introductory part, especially of a discourse or treatise
repine
verb; literary
to feel or express discontent; fret
used by Mary Shelly in Frankenstein
slough
1. a swamp.
2. a situation characterized by lack of progress or activity
chamois
1. an agile goat-antelope with short hooked horns, found in mountainous areas of Europe
2. a type of soft pliable leather now made from sheepskin or lambskin.
keeping (term used in the arts)
“It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as painters call it) keeping …” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Keeping, in painting, signifies the representation of objects in the same manner that they appear to the eye at different distances from it, which is only to be done with accuracy by attending to the rules of perspective.
flagitious
marked by scandalous crime or vice: villainous
ungenial
rather than uncongenial
used by Mary Shelley; author’s introduction to Frankenstein; “a wet, ungenial summer”
lubricity
1. capacity to lubricate: “the wonderful lubricity of this new oil”
2. instability; shiftiness; fleeting nature: “the lubricity of fame and fortune”
3. (formal or literary) lewdness; lustfulness: lasciviousness; salaciousness
4. something that arouses lasciviousness, especially pornography.
from Old French lubricité, from Medieval Latin lubricitis, from Latin lubricus (slippery)
flapdoodle
noun; informal
nonsense
can also mean a fool
mumblespeak
an attempt to cover something up by giving information that says absolutely nothing
“Devin Nunes used mumblespeak to try and divert the public’s attention from the investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia.”
dottle
noun
a remnant of tobacco left in a pipe after smoking
fetor
a strong, foul smell
“the fetor of decay”
used by Walt Whitman in his poem “This Compost”
tarn
noun
a small mountain lake
used by Theodore Dreiser in his Dawn
pinchbeck
an alloy of copper and zinc resembling gold, used in watchmaking and costume jewelry
as an adjective: appearing valuable, but actually cheap or tawdry
lowery; also spelled (more commonly) loury
adjective: ““A lowery sky, and from it flecks of silvery light dropping lightly, like mirrored feathers.”
lour (English word) is a verb; it has the meaning of look angry or sullen; scowl (“The lofty statue lours at patients in the infirmary.”)
Used as a noun, lour can mean the dark and gloomy, or threatening, appearance of the sky or a landscape.
Lour comes from the Middle English lour (“sad or frowning countenance”), louren (“to frown or scowl; to be dark or overcast; look askant, mistrust; wither, fade, droop; lurk, skulk”); and from the Old English lowren, luren. Compare Dutch loeren, German lauern (“lurk, be on the watch”), and English leer and lurk.
synesthesia
the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body
afflatus
a divine creative impulse or inspiration
noisome
adjective, literary
1. having an extremely offensive smell
“noisome vapors from the smoldering waste”
2. disagreeable; unpleasant
“noisome scandals”
metonymy
a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (such as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”)
A place is often used as a metonym for a government or other official institutions, for example, Brussels for the institutions of the European Union, The Hague for the International Court of Justice or International Criminal Court, Washington for the U.S. government (as well as capitol), the White House and Capitol Hill for the executive and legislative branches, respectively, of the United States federal government. A place can represent an entire industry: for instance, Wall Street is often used metonymically to describe the entire U.S. financial and corporate banking sector. Common nouns and phrases can also be metonyms: red tape can stand for bureaucracy, whether or not that bureaucracy actually uses red tape to bind documents. In Commonwealth realms, The Crown is a metonym for the state in all its aspects.
pathetic fallacy
the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature
humblebrag
noun: an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud; used as a verb: to make an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement with the actual intention of drawing attention to something of which one is proud
“She humblebragged about how ‘awful’ she looks without any makeup.”
“At times, Brown seems capable of writing in only two registers: brag and humblebrag. I prefer the straightforward brag — at least all the brass horns are playing in the same key — though I do admire how she twice manages to reveal, by Page 10, that she was quite shapely in her youth, both times under the guise of a complaint.” — review by Jennifer Senior of The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992 by Tina Brown, The New York Times
asyndeton
noun
the omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence
declension
1: noun, adjective, or pronoun inflection especially in some prescribed order of the forms; a class of nouns or adjectives having the same type of inflectional forms
2: a falling off or away: deterioration
3: descent, slope
“Schlesinger kept writing books he hoped would ‘serve the liberal cause,’ as he had intended for his past works. But they were jeremiads about America’s declension rather than heralds of its rendezvous with a destiny of progress.” — Michael Kazin review of Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous
ferity
archaic
the quality or state of being feral; also, barbarity
used by Thoreau in one of his essays
glossed (past tense, participle)
1. apply a cosmetic gloss to (synonyms: shine, glaze, polish, burnish)
2. try to conceal or disguise (something embarrassing or unfavorable) by treating it briefly or representing it misleadingly: “the social costs of this growth are glossed over” (synonyms: conceal, cover up, hide, disguise, mask, veil, shrug off)
used by Theodore Dreiser as a verb:” He would talk to me by the hour … of the French Revolution and the great figures in it, of Napoleon, Wellington, Tsar Alexander, Also of Peter the Great and Catharine of Russia, Frederick the Great and Voltaire, whom he admired enormously. But not the silly, GLOSSED, emasculated data of the school histories with which I had been made familiar, but with the harsh, jagged realities and savageries of the too real world in which all of them moved.”
tussock
1. a small area of grass that is thicker or longer than the grass growing around it.
2. a woodland moth whose adults and brightly colored caterpillars both bear tufts of irritant hairs. The caterpillars can be a pest of trees, damaging fruit and stripping leaves.
emprise
an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise: “He always seems to be having the sort of high emprise that most of us experience only in our dreams.”
synonyms: adventure, experience, exploit, gest (or geste), happening, time
gad, gadding
go around from one place to another, in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment: “help out around the house and not be gadding about the countryside”
used by Thoreau in one of his essays: “the gadding town”
clamber
to climb, move, or get in or out of something in an awkward and laborious way, typically using both hands and feet: “He clambered out of the trench.”
The meaning is not unfamiliar, but it was used interestingly in the following sentence: “[Ulysses S. Grant] armored himself with simplicity. Grant’s style is strikingly modern in its economy. It stood out in that age of clambering, winding prose, with shameless sentences like lines of thieves in a marketplace, grabbing everything in reach and stuffing it all into their sacks.” — T. J. Stiles, essay in The New York Times
perspicacious
having a ready insight into and understanding of things.
a well-known word, BUT NOTE:
perspicuous
plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation: “a perspicuous argument”
skirl
verb
(of bagpipes) make a shrill, wailing sound
phatic
adjective
denoting or relating to language used for general purposes of social interaction, rather than to convey information or ask questions. Utterances such as hello, how are you? and nice morning, isn’t it? are phatic.
granular
1. consisting of or appearing to consist of granules; grainy
2. finely detailed: “granular reports”
“Ms. Cummings was called to testify for two days during the trial, speaking in sometimes GRANULAR detail about her work for Mr. Skelos, as well as the inner workings of Senate campaigns and the Republican conference.” — “More Corruption Trials? Possible Reprise Makes Albany Groan”, The New York Times, October 4, 2017
A recent acquaintance with the writings of Maya Schenwar has given me gleanings about what the horrors of the U.S. prison system are actually like.
Maya Schenwar is the editor-in-chief of Truthout, described on its web site as a “nonprofit organization dedicated to providing independent news and commentary on a daily basis.” See
Ms. Schenwar’s sister Kayla has been jailed numerous times for victimless crimes: heroin use and dependency, as is explained in the former’s book Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better (2014). When the book was published, as is noted in the concluding pages, Ms. Schenwar’s sister had just been released from prison. Her current status is unknown, to me.
I first became aware of Ms. Schenwar through an op-ed piece of hers in The New York Times: “A Virtual Visit to a Relative in Jail,” By Maya Schenwar, The New York Times, September 29, 2016
Computer-based video visitation allows people in jail or prison to see loved ones who can’t visit in person for whatever reason—the long distance, disability, illness, a busy schedule or responsibilities at home. However, what Securus [a private company that manages phones in jails and prisons] doesn’t advertise is that, in many cases, you’re not allowed to visit any other way. …
When my sister began serving a sentence at the Lake County jail outside Chicago in July, I … planned to drive over immediately to see her. My sister had been incarcerated before, and I’d always relied on regular visits to help show my love and support. But I discovered that in-person visits were not allowed. All “visits” were to be conducted via video, through Securus’s system.
My options were to schedule a video visit at the facility (sitting in a booth alone) or at home. I scheduled an at-home visit, paying $5 for the privilege. Many jails charge more, but even $5, at regular intervals, can be a burden to families of incarcerated people, who are often poor. …
Moreover, at Lake County and a number of other jails that allow visits only by video, visits must be booked 24 hours ahead of time, which can be an impediment for families struggling to juggle busy schedules with the obligations that come with having an adult (often the primary wage earner) missing from a household.
In my attempt to visit with my sister by video, my visitation privileges were initially denied because of a blurry ID photo: Securus requires that you take a picture of your ID card with your webcam, an endeavor that’s harder than it sounds. This delayed me by a couple of days.
Eventually, I was able to schedule a visitation. The day before, I spent an hour researching and downloading the necessary system requirements for my computer. For people with an older or otherwise incompatible computer or less knowledge of technology — not an unlikely scenario, given the demographics of families of incarcerated people — those requirements could prevent a visit.
My preparation did me no good. I signed on at the required time … and waited. The minutes ticked by as a box telling me my “inmate” hadn’t yet arrived hovered on my screen (although my sister later confirmed she’d been present). After 10 minutes, I called Securus’s tech support. There are no extensions with video visitation; after the half-hour slot you’ve paid for has passed, your connection is cut. I sat on the phone with a helpless tech person, crying. I knew my sister would be devastated. I was worried she’d think I hadn’t shown up.
After a half-hour, the box disappeared. My visit was over. Despite several follow-up calls to tech support and emails to Securus, I never found out why it hadn’t worked.
The second time I tried a video visit, I succeeded in connecting. I was relieved when my sister’s face popped up on my screen. But our video conversation was glitchy: Her face was dim and her words were delayed and didn’t sync with the movements of her mouth. For much of the visit I saw only half her head, and neither of us could look each other in the eye, no matter how much I fiddled with my setup.
These problems weren’t unique to my experience: Technological issues are a common complaint with such visits. When the camera flickered off at the half-hour mark, I felt our conversation had hardly begun.
This article induced me to read Ms. Schenwar’s book: Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better.
“The book … debunks myths about conjugal visits in prison, lays bare the ways that businesses gouge and exploit the family of prisoners through charging exorbitant rates for phone calls, highlights the importance of letters for and to prisoners, describes the deplorable treatment of pregnant and parenting mothers, underscores that ‘re-entry’ for most prisoners is exceedingly difficult because of the barriers they face and more.”
The sections about Ms. Schenwar’s sister were heart rending:
Visitation
When my parents and I visit Cook County Jail for the first time in February 2009, it is a Saturday and the place is jam-packed. We squeeze into the slow-snaking security line, which curves around several ropes and bumps up against the doorway. Some visitors stare at their feet, hands stuffed in their pockets, trudging forward every few minutes when the line loosens. Others shout to their children to stay within the roped boundaries, fearing that they’ll be booted out for causing a disturbance. A thin, shivering woman standing in front of us is shaking her head over and over, rocking a blanket-covered baby in her arms.
As we inch closet to the metal detector, a guard pulls a tall young woman off to the side, gesturing to her short skirt and scoffing, “You think you can come in here like that? Huh?” After a few hesitant protests—”Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know”—she walks away slowly, toward the exit, face in her hands. We follow commands, removing our shoes and socks, stepping through the metal detector, raising our arms for the pat-down, following the officer who escorts us across the yard.
After a three-hour wait, we’re called into the visiting room, and we file through the narrow door. It’s a short, dim corridor lined with wobbly stools facing a thick wall of plexiglass with several barred holes. On the other side of the plexiglass, Kayla shuffles in with a few other women. They scrunch down in a row, each opposite their visitors, and lean toward the holes. We start talking—well, screaming—back and forth. We don’t scream because we’re fraught with emotion, though we are. We scream because we can’t be heard otherwise, due to the thickness of the plexiglass divide and the compressed cacophony of the fellow visitor-screamers competing with us on either side.
Eventually, I just go for it and press my mouth up against the bars of the hole so Kayla can hear me. I taste sweat and sour steel.
“How’s it going?” I scream.
“It sucks, what do you think?” Kayla shouts back. “I feel like my life is over. But, at least, I’m working out.” She twirls, her dismal blue smock flaring wearily.
Kayla’s arms have grown quite muscley (push-ups are a favorite pastime in jail), and her eyebrows are meticulously groomed, if a little greasy.
“Your eyebrows look awesome!” I yell.
“Thanks—we did them with thread that we pulled out of our jumpsuits!” she yells. “They don’t let us have tweezers! I learned it in Audy Home.” The “Audy Home” is the old name of Chicago’s juvenile detention center, where Kayla spent some time in 2005 and 2006. Now she pauses, then knocks her head lightly against the plexiglass, her eyes closed. “But no one gives a shit about my eyebrows, if you think about it. I just don’t know what else to do.” Mom and Dad take turns. Then I’m back on the stool. We quickly run out of things to talk about: Kayla doesn’t want to belabor how hopeless and miserable she’s feeling, and I don’t want to carry on about the happy things in my life—or the frustrating things in my life, most of which seem ridiculously trivial given the circumstances. Later, my dad observes, “What’s left to scream?”
Soon, a jarringly loud buzzer sounds, silencing all conversation. A guard calls time: Our thirty minutes are up. Kayla and her companions rise to march out. “I miss you I miss you I miss you I love you … ” Kayla calls, the ends of her words quivering. She touches her fingertips to the plexiglass before she’s led away. Then, “TIME!” a guard barks on our side of the glass, and we fall in line, too. …
[My] parents and my partner Ryan visit Kayla at Decatur Correctional Center (a central Illinois prison) in early summer of 2012—she’s in for retail theft, stealing over-the-counter medications to sell in order to pay for under-the-counter heroin. … Decatur is a minimum-security women’s prison. Unlike Cook County Jail, there are no long, cramped lines punctuated by guards barking orders. The waiting room is quiet and barely populated; family visits are much less frequent here. The four of us are privileged to be able to take the day off and spend the money to travel to this far-off spot.
A correctional officer (CO) leads us silently through a heavy door into a hallway, and my mother and I are intercepted by a female CO and pulled into a narrow, dusty room that smells like Lysol. Ryan and my dad are pulled into another. We’re patted down firmly, and I flinch as the CO’s hands pass over my breasts and between my legs. This is a mild ordeal compared to the strip search that prisoners themselves must undergo prior to each visit.
Inside the visiting room, the incarcerated women, all garbed in baggy, pale blue uniforms, are nevertheless dressed for the occasion: fingernails freshly lacquered in bright pinks and greens, just-applied layers of lip gloss and eyeliner. Later in an interview, activist and former prisoner Kathy Kelly tells me of how women hand over their meager dollars to the commissary (the prison store, which sells a rotating stock of overpriced items) for makeup and hair supplies, prepping compulsively for the visits of their partners, family, or friends. When Kathy first went to prison in 1988, the commissary sold only things like “oatmeal and Cracker Jacks,” but the selection has ballooned along with the size of the prison-industrial complex, feeding off prisoners’ desperation. Unable to control any other circumstances, many long to know that when family and friends catch a glimpse of them, they’ll think, “At least she’s looking good!”
Unlike Cook County’s heavy-aired, crowded cavern with its shouting-through-the-glass misery, Decatur’s visiting area is a real room, in which one can move one’s arms and legs and even walk around. We hug Kayla, sit down with her at a small, round table, and watch babies play with their incarcerated moms, although, of course, that scene is not uniformly cheery. When conversation stagnates, we can stroll over (without my sister, who must stay seated) to the vending machine and purchase aged treats: Kayla has come to favor a stale-tasting peanut butter and marshmallow lump, the offspring of a Moon Pie and a hardened Twinkie. …
“You would love it here, My,” I’m happy to be able spend an hour with Kayla face-to-face. But the relative “comforts” of visiting the prison bring to mind the fact that, unlike jail, this place is—for many of its inhabitants-—a very long-term residence, very far from home. And despite her soy dog jokes and vending machine enthusiasm, Kayla’s face is damp, stained with the residue of tears and sweat. She’s shaking like crazy and explains that she’s been sedated on large doses of prescription meds dubiously assigned for “anxiety,” then abruptly pulled off of them. Our chatter is peppered with “urn’s.” We revolve around safe topics, reaching for hypothetical fun activities we can do after she’s out, which mostly just involve hanging out in public. Ryan and I share plans for our upcoming wedding, for which Kayla has a slew of ideas—-purple candles, a rhinestone headband, a cheesy love song we both adored as kids. We nod and laugh and emit meaningless witticisms that skirt the fact that Kayla won’t be there for the wedding, that she’ll be here, crossing off the wedding day’s box on her countdown calendar, probably crying.
Undergirding our visit is a sense of quiet desperation. We know Kayla has practically nothing to do all day besides paint her nails with polish purchased off the commissary. We know she encounters regular violence and degradation from guards.
We know that the drug treatment program in which she was enrolled upon entering prison has since been eliminated due to state budget woes, and Kayla, by her own admission, spends a fair amount of her ample free time yearning for crack and heroin. We also know this: Though Kayla will be released in six months, she has absolutely no postrelease plans. How could she have plans? I wonder. In prison, “outside” exists as a diaphanous dream; untouchable, it’s sometimes tough to comprehend that it really still exists.
As we slip out, walking backward and waving to Kayla until the door shuts, Mom says, “It’s so weird that now she just stays here.” I look at her, then around to the other tables, where other prisoners’ families are hugging and sobbing and leaving. “It’s just a room, like any other room,” Mom says. “It’s almost as if she could just walk out with us!”
But of course she can’t. We spun plenty of vague dream-plans for our future life together as we sat around that table. (Traveling to New York to see Grandpa! Playing basketball with Ryan! Finally meeting each other’s friends! Writing together! Thinking together! Being “real sisters”!) But later that year, a couple of days after Kayla’s release, the two of us are “visiting”—joylessly munching cookies at a coffee shop and talking about nothing. She looks up at me and shakes her head languidly. “I don’t know what to do,” she says. “I don’t know what to say to people here. The only thing I know how to do is be in prison.”
In mid-June, my parents and I drive four hours to central Illinois to visit Kayla at Logan Correctional Center. Unlike her previous prison, Kayla’s current abode is a medium/maximum-security facility, and she has been assigned to a “maximum” unit. It’s a strange placement. The offense for which she’s incarcerated this time, we now know, is the theft of a bottle of perfume, intended to be a Christmas present. (She’s stolen before, usually planning to sell the items for heroin money, but this time she got caught.) However, this spot is the location where almost all of Illinois’ pregnant prisoners are placed. Kayla is now housed with women who are serving very long sentences, and seeing the years that stretch out before them seems to have a sobering effect. Kayla had a big group of friends—affectionately referred to as “my girls!”—-her last time down, but she’s not looking to re-create the scene. As we sit down at our cable, after Kayla has hugged us so tightly that our ribs ache a bit afterward, she says, “I just want to keep my head down and do my time.”
We move on to an extended debate about what to purchase from the vending machine, and settle on Fritos, strawberry milk, and an immense packaged cinnamon bun. I am dispatched, as Kayla is not allowed to get up. But I promptly fail my mission. Glum and distracted, I leave our prepaid vending machine card—no cash is allowed in the prison—in one of the machines after my first purchase. Only the strawberry milk is salvaged. I return to the machine after realizing my mistake and ask, “Has anyone seen my card? It had $20 on it.”
“Ugh, My,” Kayla groans, humiliated. “This is prison! You’re not gonna see that card again.”
Resigned, I hold the milk carton out to her. She shakes her head.
“I can’t even think about it,” she says, and it takes me a second to understand that she doesn’t mean the milk. “It’s just gonna be so hard this time.”
You’ll get through it, we say, though none of us can imagine carrying out a pregnancy while in prison, along with the agonizing anticipation of separation from her baby.
“I know,” Kayla says. “But what am I going to do?”
“Just think about the day you get out,” I say.
She pauses, and I realize again that we are talking about very different things.
“OK,” she says. “But what am I going to do the day after that?” …
Giving Birth
It’s late July and humidity drenches the sweat-scented air of the visiting room at Logan prison. Kayla is shifting back and forth in her stiff chair, tugging at her pink polo shirt, which is standard attire for incarcerated pregnant women. The pink identifies them as particularly vulnerable bodies, should “something happen.” (The example Kayla gives is a physical fight: A person will get in more trouble, she says, if her adversary is pregnant.) She pushes impatiently at her belly, which is beginning to usurp the rest of her body. “I’m just moving Angelica around,” she explains. “She’s getting up in my rib cage.” Kayla’s a month and a half from her due date. We ask if her fellow prisoners avoid the topic of the pregnancy. Kayla shakes her head.
“People put their hands on my baby, and say, ‘Aww, when is she due,’ and am thinking, Who the hell did you murder?” she says, rolling her eyes. Logan houses all but three of the women convicted of homicide in Illinois. Kayla heaves her long hair into a pile atop her head, dark drizzles of makeup residue sliding out the corners of her eyes. “The next day, I find out. Oh great, you killed your kid! And your dog? Thanks for the good luck.” She smiles. Kayla’s sense of humor may be floundering a bit, given her current pool of material, but she’s still got it.
Murder jokes notwithstanding, Kayla often reminds me not to make assumptions about people based on their conviction. She’s friends with women convicted of murder—women who, in the midst of gang violence or domestic violence or any number of circumstances, made one horrible decision that condemned them for the rest of their lives. “Those crimes happened within a few minutes, usually,” she says. “And then they’re here forever.”
The clock inches toward our visit’s 7:30 departure time. We scoot closer, and Kayla grabs each of our hands to put on her belly. We feel the baby kicking. “Do you feel her now? Now?” she asks, and turns to Mom with a sudden, eager grin. “Are you excited to be a grandma?”
As we hurry back out to the car, I’m laughing and forgetting about the heat, bouncing a little as I make my way through the somber, emptying parking lot. The circumstances are wretched, but still—I’m going to be an aunt!
“I Want to Hold Her Forever”
At 4:47 a.m. on September 3, 2013, Mom wakes me up with news—”Kayla called she’s on her way to the hospital she’s really scared naturally whoa I can’t believe this is happening!” No one really can, including Kayla. Her water hasn’t broken, and she’s not having contractions. Yet, at the convenience of the prison, her labor has been scheduled for today: It will be induced.
Mom and I commence waiting by our phones. No family can be present during labor and birth. Kayla’s only company will be medical personnel and prison guards, who must watch her at all times. At some point after the birth, she’ll get one phone call to let us know the baby has arrived. Once Angelica is born, Kayla will have twenty-four to thirty-six hours with her. Then the baby will be taken away, and Kayla will return to prison by herself.
I’ve never seen someone give birth in real life. My images of it, culled from movies, books, and friends, all feature groups of anxious, excited loved ones clustered inside and outside the birthing room, radiating warmth and comfort, preparing to ring in a time of communal celebration. I can’t imagine anyone having to go through it alone. Kayla will not only be alone but also literally confined to her hospital bed: As soon as she’s given birth, she’ll be shackled to the bedposts.
Finally, at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Mom calls the prison and pleads for news. She’s transferred around and finally handed off to a counselor. He doesn’t have much information, he says, and he shouldn’t be telling her anything, but here’s what he knows: “Ten fifty-two a.m., seven pounds, five ounces.”
“EEEEE!” I dance and cry around the kitchen. “Ten fifty-two, seven pounds, five ounces! Ten fifty-two, seven pounds, five ounces!”
Then I stop. Is Kayla OK, health-wise? How did she handle almost twenty-six hours of labor? Did she get to breastfeed? When will they be separated? Aside from weighing seven pounds and five ounces, what’s Angelica like? How is she dealing with methadone withdrawal? (Kayla has been kept on a steady dosage of methadone over the past few months in prison.) How is Kayla taking the anticipation of a different kind of withdrawal—withdrawal from her baby, whom she’s only just met? Mom redials the counselor and asks him why Kayla can’t yet call.
“She’s in the free world right now, so there are security considerations,” she’s told. The warden has taken the day off and can’t authorize the call, and the guards in the hospital room haven’t allowed Kayla to pick up the phone.
The free world. This was the phrase used in the Cold War era to distinguish the US and friends from their communist foes. This was the phrase Neil Young used, ironically, to describe many Americans’ poverty and despair, in “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.” The American president is the “leader of the free world.” I think, In what “world” do America’s incarcerated live (that is, when they’re not giving birth alone except for the company of prison guards)? Who’s responsible for that un-free world; where mothers are torn from ‘their babies every day?
Finally, my mom gets the “one call” from Kayla. She puts her on speaker and calls me in. Kayla’s breathing rapidly, and I can’t tell whether she’s laughing or crying as she gasps, “Oh my God, she is so beautiful. And I love her, I love her, I love her, and. I just want to hold her forever.”
Angelica is wailing full-blast when Kayla holds her face up to the receiver.
In the background, Kayla is sobbing “My little baby, she doesn’t even know what’s coming,” and her voice is heavy with the weight of the prison-bound pregnancy, the lonely labor, the painful birth, the love-at-first-sight, the shackling, the dreaded moment of separation, and the eighty-one days of waiting to come.
An hour after our conversation, Kayla is handcuffed and led away from her baby and back to prison.
When my parents and I visit Angelica in the hospital, long after Kayla’s gone, she’s wide-eyed, squirming in her tiny bassinet. Taped to the wall of her crib is a three-page note filled with my sister’s neat, decorative handwriting: a list of instructions. She likes the top of her mouth tickled with the tip of the pacifier or your finger. It helps her feed. She loves to be held. She loves when you hold her hand. And on, and on. And then: I love you so so much, baby. I promise I’ll be home soon.
Deepening the irony, that “seizing” is more likely to happen if women admit to drug problems, seeking rehabilitation: “Their admissions are used as evidence of their incapacity to be good mothers.”
Indeed, as the weeks tick down to Kayla’s release from prison, the Department of Child and Family Services will pay her a visit. Because she has admitted to a drug addiction, she’ll be told, she might be denied custody of her child, even after release.
On the afternoon of the parenting class conversation, as we’re driving out of the parking lot, Mom provides a word of commentary: “Probably, a better parenting lesson would involve letting her actually spend time with her child.”
And then we head off to the hospital to see Angelica, who’s tucked into her nursery crib, alone.
I am sure there are many examples of it in literature.
I was angry with someone over something the other day that has been festering. My anger was feeding on itself. it spilled over to another person, anger with whom over a related incident the new incident reminded me of.
“Damnit,” I thought to myself, “I’m going to revisit the old, related incident with the other person and bring it up again. I will tell him how the new incident with that person reminded me of the old incident with him, and how the two are related. I will use the meeting with him to air some of my grievances. Maybe it will make me feel better.”
I met the other person today for a preplanned meeting that had nothing to do, as far as either of us know beforehand, with any particular issues. He greeted me warmly and asked how I was. He was so nice. I thought to myself, “well, go ahead,” and told myself, “I will start out right up front by bringing up the old grievance. The direct approach and the most honest one are best.”
But, I couldn’t help answering one or two pleasant questions about how I was doing. The discussion kind of took off. “I’ll get to it [my grievance] in a minute,” I thought.
The discussion was so pleasant and interesting that I decided on the fly, as it were, to let the matter lay. For another time. Better yet, never.
When I left my friend, I felt better: about myself and things in general. I was very glad that I hadn’t ruined the day by bringing up old matters that would have only led to aggravation for us both and renewed tension for no good reason at all.
I went home feeling great inside. And, as if I had been given a new lease on life. Like my day had ended well.
One day we were in the garden. Father stood looking in at the pig. Mother was hanging clothes out, and I was weeding. Two travelling journeymen came past. They were dusty, carried knapsacks on their backs, and looked rather wretched. Seeing the pump near the cottage, they asked for a drink. Mother asked if they would rather not have beer, in which case they could come in. I heard Father say she was not to invite such ruffians in, but Mother answered, “Niels, dear, just think if they were two of our own boys.” Father said nothing, but I could clearly see that he was struck by the reply.
— Carl Nielsen, My Childhood (translated from the Danish by Reginald Spink; Copenhagen, Hansen, 1952, pg. 91; originally published in Danish in 1927 as Min Fynske Barndom)
