Saturday, March 28, 2009
Thought for the Weekend...
Follow Up: They should get life in prison.
Things were different in the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, and everyone knew it. Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance how many juveniles to expect at the end of each day — even before hearings to determine their innocence or guilt. Lawyers told families not to bother hiring them. They would not be allowed to speak anyway.
“The judge’s whim is all that mattered in that courtroom,” said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center, a child advocacy organization in Philadelphia, which began raising concerns about the court to state authorities in 1999. “The law was basically irrelevant.”
Last month, the law caught up with Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, who ran that juvenile court for 12 years, and Judge Michael T. Conahan, 56, a colleague on the county’s Court of Common Pleas.
In what authorities are calling the biggest legal scandal in state history, the two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks.Send them away. Here's the rest of the article.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Pennsylvania Embarrasses Itself (again)
When a high school cheerleader in northeastern Pennsylvania learned that she might face criminal charges after investigators reported finding a nude photo of her on someone else’s cellphone, she was more confused than frightened at being caught up in a case of “sexting”: the increasingly popular phenomenon of nude or seminude photos sent over wireless phones.
“They said they had a full-bodied naked picture of me, but I knew I’d never had any naked picture taken of me,” the student, Marissa Miller, 15, recalled of the Feb. 10 telephone call to her mother as the two were having lunch together at Tunkhannock Area High School. Marissa is a freshman at the school, where her mother, MaryJo, works with special education students.
The picture that investigators from the office of District Attorney George P. Skumanick of Wyoming County had was taken two years earlier at a slumber party. It showed Marissa and a friend from the waist up. Both were wearing bras.
Mr. Skumanick said he considered the photo “provocative” enough to tell Marissa and the friend, Grace Kelly, that if they did not attend a 10-hour class dealing with pornography and sexual violence, he was considering filing a charge of sexual abuse of a minor against both girls. If convicted, they could serve time in prison and would probably have to register as sex offenders.What a maroon.
Poetry Friday
Po Chu I was considered the "people's poet". His success in government gave him a wide perspective on the suffering all around him, and yet he didn't become complacent or withdrawn. This earned him devotion over the next thousand or so years.
If you want to see more go here. If you want to peruse a great book on the poet, here's an e-text.
There came an officer knocking by night at my door
In a loud voice demanding grain-tribute.
My house-servants dared not wait till the morning,
But brought candles and set them on the barn-floor.
Passed through the sieve, clean-washed as pearls,
A whole cart-load, thirty bushels of grain.
But still they cry that it is not paid in full:
With whips and curses they goad my servants and boys.
Once, in error, I entered public life;
I am inwardly ashamed that my talents were not sufficient.
In succession I occupied four official posts;
For doing nothing—ten years’ salary!
Often have I heard that saying of ancient men
That “good and ill follow in an endless chain.”
And to-day it ought to set my heart at rest
To return to others the corn in my great barn.
A Disgrace Repealed
The prison population of the U.S. exploded for a number of reasons. One was a Reagan era pushback against the justice reforms of the 60's and 70's. Another was the boom in private prisons and the investment of numerous entities in keeping them in business. Yet another was the failing school systems and de-industrialization of urban areas. The evaporation of the job base slowly devastated many cities. The most significant reasons were the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, which criminalized minor drug activity and the three strikes laws, which essentially sent thousands to prison for decade for minor offenses. On top of all this, prison seems to cripple many people, and beside stigmatizing them, forcing them out of the job market and into the underground economy.
To a degree I do not understand, the relatively low levels of crime that we have right now (on average) seem to related to our huge prison population. A lot of bad actors get swept up. But the price is gigantic, both fiscally and psychologically. There are too many children who do not have contact with parents because of prison sentences. There are too many men and women who are repeatedly traumatized in prison. And there are far too many young people in the prison system being hardened up and then turned out into the street with no other skills but raw survival.
Finally, change. Thirty years or so later, New York State is repealing the Rockefeller laws:
Under the plan, judges would have the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders in all but the most serious drug offenses — known as A-level drug felonies — to treatment. As a condition of being sent to treatment, offenders would have to plead guilty. If they did not successfully complete treatment, their case would go back before a judge, who would again have the option of imposing a prison sentence.
Currently, judges are bound by a sentencing structure that requires minimum sentences of one year for possessing small amounts of cocaine or heroin, for example. Under the agreement reached by the governor and lawmakers, a judge could order treatment for those offenders.
More significantly, the former marine and all-round tough guy Senator Jim Webb has introduced prison reform as a key part of the legislative push for the next year:
Senator Webb's interest in reforming the U.S. criminal justice system stems from his days as a Marine Corps officer, sitting on courts-martial, and "thinking about the interrelationship between discipline and fairness." Later, as an attorney, he spent six years in pro bono representation of a young African American Marine accused of war crimes in Vietnam, eventually clearing the man's name three years after he took his own life.
Twenty-five years ago, while working on special assignment for Parade Magazine, Webb was the first American journalist allowed inside the Japanese prison system, where he "became aware of the systemic dysfunctions of the U.S. system." Japan, with half of the United States' population at that time, had only 40,000 sentenced prisoners in jail compared to the U.S.'s 580,000; today, the U.S. has 2.38 million prisoners and another five million involved in the process, either due to probation or parole situations.
"We are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life, and we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail," concluded Webb. "I believe that American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problems of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.
"We all deserve to live in a country made better by such changes," said Webb.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Spiritual Development
But spiritual development requires exposure to many different approaches and traditions, as well as an exploration of self. Both of these routes tend to turn back on themselves. Looking at different ways of being "spiritual" can seem like shopping, but why not? Why shouldn't we approach important things like we approach everything else?
Self-exploration is often incoherent. Age nineteen was a disaster for me. I was depressed and overwhelmed and far away from my best self. That was the year I lost three jobs and spent far too much time alone. It was also the year I met or became close to people who would stay in my orbit from then on. I discovered the I Ching, Gurdjieff, P.G. Wodehouse, the Athenaeum, and Harvard's Widener Library, and dove into the underground music scene (it was 1984, a great year for music in Boston). I was all over the place and not much was working for me, but I was stumbling across alot of what would later become crucial to me.
I keep that year in mind when I worry about my older students.
Humanism often gets missed when discussing this subject. Slowly, TAS is going to be introducing a special track for students interested in their own spritiual development. It won't be simply Zen oriented, but it will be fairly disciplined and require a commitment. Will the school districts that pay us get queasy? If they do, then what? Ironically, most schools in our area don't even teach secular-humanist philosphy (which is what they are supposedly doing anyway); they don't teach much of anything in the way of consistant personal development and integration.
Over the next few weeks I will be posting some of the aspects of the proposed TAS program. Let us know what you think. Meanwhile, drift over to this site, the web HQ of secular-humanism.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Art. or art.
Goldsworthy is deeply engaged in environmental art. His work really clicked with me- I was skeptical, a lot of such stuff doesn't move me at all. Some of it is a kind of sand mandala, some of it simply beautiful. It made me want to do it too, which I consider a strong indication of effective art.
Andy Goldsworthy at the Met, 2004
Bill Dan is a bit of a savant. He "rock balances". Enough said.
Japan Wins! Hello, Tuesday...
Japan wins the World Baseball Classic in a beautifully played game against Korea. Ichiro, the brilliant outfielder and batsman who plays for Seattle in the Major Leagues is famous for his calm focus. Check this quote out, describing his own state of mind when the game was on the line:
“I really wish I could be in a state of Zen,” Suzuki said. “I kept thinking of all the things I shouldn’t think about. Usually, I cannot hit when I think of all those things. This time, I got a hit. Maybe I surpassed myself.”
"Maybe I surpassed myself", meaning in spite of imperfect focus he was able to get the job done. Very interesting, from a Zen perspective. Speaking of flow states and baseball, there is new authorized biography on Manny Ramirez, perhaps the best right handed hitter of the last 15 years, and a notable eccentric. The author is a psychologist, and was granted special access to who she called "the Greta Garbo of baseball". Luckily Manny's wife was around to help coax the conversation along (from an interview in the Boston Globe):
Q. If you had to diagnose him, what would you say?
A. Well, he has an incredible ability to focus and get into a flow state, which transcends the known world. He's fundamentally a very shy person and experiences a high level of social anxiety. It's like the whole world is conspiring to take him out of his flow state. Also, there's a degree of narcissism. That can't be denied.
I thought this was interesting as well. Ramirez is utterly focused on hitting and has mastered it. Everything else on the field is secondary. He is highly anxious in other situations. Did he just stumble on this ability to concentrate, and how much of it is temperament? Or is there something else going on?
Most important is the idea of "flow". Anybody interested in optimizing their abilities should become familiar with this research.
Monday, March 23, 2009
a good article from The Inquirer
This is worth reading. It should also prick your interest in the new anthology of Horace's Odes, a foundational text of Roman literature.
Most exciting to me is the staging of Carson's translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia. To bad it is for members only. But perhaps it will go public someday.