Tag Archives: class divide

Belize Bound

When I was poor, many years ago, it used to really piss me off when people said things like, “Why don’t you just move to a better neighborhood?” when I told them I’d been burglarized and mugged in one week, that my neighbors kept me up all night with loud parties, and that I had found a used condom and needles in my front yard.

“I can’t afford to move,” I’d say, gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t launch into a rant about how clueless and insensitive they were. And these were always liberals—I think liberals are often more out of touch with reality than conservatives.

I’m telling you this because some of you may not have the luxury of being able to buy plane tickets on a regular basis. Your job may not allow you to work remotely or even offer paid holidays. You may not own a condo you can rent out while you’re away. I hope I don’t come off as clueless when I write about travel. I’ve never claimed any of my adventures have been easy or cheap. I hope some of my stories may inspire you to plan for something when you can afford it, or try something on a small scale if you can’t afford to do it in a big way.

—

I was driving down scenic Summit Avenue yesterday in my beloved Mini; spring was in the air and I was listening to Vivaldi. I felt utter joy.

“Life is beautiful!” I exclaimed in my head.

That’s not a thought I ever had when I was in my 20s or 30s. It’s not a thought many people in Syria are having right now. It doesn’t do anyone any good for me to intentionally kill my joy because others are suffering, but it remembering them certainly intensifies my feelings of gratitude for how far I have come.

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Back to January in Minnesota. The holidays are over. There will be nothing by three months of cold, dreary, short days without a holiday until the end of May.

And so I went to Belize. It makes a difference, getting away somewhere warm, even if only a long weekend.

This would be an all-inclusive group trip operated by Wilderness Inquiry, a Minnesota-based nonprofit. Their thing is “inclusive outdoor adventure travel.” I totally missed that because I Googled “tours of Belize” and went straight to that trip page. I looked at the color photos, glanced through the itinerary, checked the price, and booked it.

This was back in December, and I didn’t give it much thought until I got a call from the trip leader, Mark, in January. I have been on group tours before, and it’s good practice to have a meeting ahead of time—if everyone is local—or to at least talk to someone to learn the expectations and ask questions.

Mark informed me about the Wilderness Inquiry mission of inclusion. “I lead a lot of trips to the boundary waters, and this will be my first international trip,” he said, excitement in his voice.

“You mean, your first international trip ever?” I asked, a little alarmed.

“No, I went to Uruguay last year with my girlfriend. Her family is from there. So I’m ready.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. The Gross Domestic Product of Uruguay is four times that of Belize. But the tour and my plane ticket were paid for, so it was too late to back out and he seemed very confident. Everything would be fine, right?

—

The night before I left, I had dinner with Vince and met his girlfriend, Heather. I liked her a lot, especially since she gave me a beautifully boxed birthday present—a sweater and Moleskin notebooks and pretty pens, which I used to take notes on the trip. I looked forward to watching their relationship develop.

My birthday. Vince picked me up at 5:00 am and took me to the airport. He’s a morning person like me, but 5:00 was even a bit early for him, so it was a very nice effort on his part. And it’s nice to hug a loved one good-bye, just in case something fatal happens.

TGI Thursdays

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This is the story of how I accidentally wound up in a brothel in Dubai, part of a series that starts here.

—

The hostess at TGI Thursdays looked at me like I was an alien, then slowly led me to a table in the center of the restaurant and left me with a menu, which was all in English.

She had an African accent and I didn’t hear enough of it to ID which country, but I’m pretty sure her real name wasn’t the one on her nametag—“Hi! My name is Emily.”

She was about six feet tall, string-bean thin, and wore stiletto heels and a barely-there mini skirt. I vaguely wondered if she changed into more modest clothes to get to and from work, but I didn’t really give it much thought.

I was hungry by now, so I was happy when the waiter appeared almost immediately. He too looked at me strangely. Whatever! What was wrong with these people? I ordered a club sandwich and a beer, then settled back and looked around.

Have you ever walked into a situation and thought nothing of it until it was too late to get out of it?

All the other women in the bar were either African or Asian, and none appeared to be older than 20. They were all dressed like “Emily”—in high heels, mini skirts, and low-cut blouses. They were literally hanging on the arms of fat, middle aged white men, many of whom were talking loudly, so I could hear their Australian, English, and American accents. North American, that is—I’m sure most of them were Canadian, ha, ha. These were oil workers, no doubt, and I was in a brothel.

The girls (I’ll call them girls because many appeared to be 17 or 18 years old) tittered and cooed at everything the men said, as if the men were the most fascinating, funny, and appealing male specimens ever.

“Ooh, Keef, you so funny!” a girl laughed near my table. Keith was 50-something, ruddy faced, rotund, and very drunk. He sat tilted as though he was about to keel over.

As all this sunk in, one of the few Arab patrons approached my table. He was like a human cliche of an Arab man: wearing a kaffiyeh, sporting a Saddam Hussein-style black mustache, and smoking a cigarette in a short gold holder. He leered at me as he circled my table several times.

I had the urge to bleat like a lamb. Then he aggressively pulled out the chair opposite me and asked, “May I join you?”

“No!” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly.

A giant Sudanese bouncer sidled up to me and the Arab guy slinked away.

“Do you know where you are?” the bouncer asked in a low voice.

“Yeh-yes…” I replied, feeling sheepish (in the embarrassed sense, not in the about-to-be groped-or-worse sense).

“I will stand next to you while you enjoy your meal,” the bouncer said.

What could I say but, “Thank you?”

My club sandwich and beer arrived. They were like any club sandwich and beer you would get anywhere else in the world. I ate, drank, and did what I commonly do when I am dining alone; I wrote in my journal. In this case, I took detailed notes, which is how I can write this narrative years later.

—

It’s not a very remarkable story. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed that something more dramatic didn’t happen. It was an eye opener for me. I had seen adolescent girls in Jamaica with the proverbial obese middle-aged German men stuffed into Speedos. I had read about human trafficking and sex workers in my master’s program.

But this was how the business actually worked. Supply and demand. I figured the maze I had walked through to get to the entrance was a means of shielding passersby from what was going on inside, and also of signaling to people like me who just wanted a sandwich and a beer, “This is something you should think twice about!” Obviously I was too dense to get it.

To be continued …

Calling All Cons

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Before I return to writing about my upcoming travel in Italy, Malta, and Spain, I’ll write a couple more posts about my other favorite topic: prison.

I was involved in two criminal justice reform evening events this week. Normally I hate having commitments like these at night but these were commitments I chose to make.

The first was a phone bank event organized by the Restore the Vote Coalition. It’s run by Take Action Minnesota and includes Jewish Community Action, a group I’ve written about being involved with.

Here’s why we were there: 47,000 ex prisoners in Minnesota cannot vote. They’ve done their time but they’re still “on paper”—slang for probation or parole—and they can’t vote until they’re off paper. Even though Vince has served his time, has been out for a year, has been sober for over two years, is working and paying taxes and rent, and taking his grandma to the grocery and doing all manner of other positive things, he’s not allowed to vote until 2018.

Our job was to call around 7,000 ex offenders who were probably off paper. Since no sane person enjoys calling strangers—much less ex cons—the coalition tried to make it a fun by calling it a Restore the Vote Block Party. They had blocked off their parking lot and had booths with a DJ and food, but it rained so we all huddled inside in their basement offices.

There were five or six speakers, including a rabbi and a young woman from Chicago whose father and uncles had been in prison as long as she’s been alive. It was a very racially diverse group. A couple guys lead a call and response to get us fired up, then we all dispersed to make calls or knock on doors.

All three of the African-American speakers said something along the lines of, “This is a problem that mostly affects black people.” While it’s true that African Americans are disproportionately represented in prison compared to their percentage of the overall population, 56% of adult prisoners in Minnesota are white. As of September 30, that’s 5,228 men and women, not counting juveniles or people in county jails. I don’t think we do the cause any favors by making it all about race. Race is a factor for sure, but so are class, poverty, abuse, education level, disabilities, chemical dependency, and many other issues.

There was an elaborate script probably written by a graduate student who’d never been near a prison, which went out the window the moment we started dialing. We used a really cool online system. I logged in and immediately a guy’s name came up with his age and phone number and the names of other people in his household. I said to the leader, “I’d be really creeped out if stranger called me who knew I’d been in prison.” I was assured that this was public information and that ex cons knew it.

I dialed 72 numbers in an hour and a half and spoke to exactly two ex cons. About 80% of the numbers were disconnected, busy, wrong numbers, or no one answered. The two guys I spoke with were opposites. The first one, who was 28, had researched whether he was eligible to vote, was registered, and was committed to showing up at the polls. The other guy, who was 56, said, “I ain’t never voted in my life and I ain’t gonna start now.”

I noted their names as I scrolled through the data base—Frank, Damarius, Jason, Katherine, Moua, John, Orville, Krystal, Matt, Jose, Abdi—all typical Minnesota names, all over the state, all ages, all races. I reached quite a few mothers, which tugged at my heart strings. They sounded care worn. A couple said, “I don’t know where he is.” Ugh. I’ve been there. One father told me, “He’s not here,” then, sadly, “He’s in the ground.” What do you say to that?

“I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice night.”

I only reached two guys, but as our group of 80 volunteer callers got pledges to vote from 122 ex offenders.

It may not sound like much, but we did something.

Tsouris, Tikkun Olam, Teshuvah

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Another week, another shooting of an unarmed black man by police. Three, actually: in Columbus, Ohio; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Charlotte, North Carolina. The kid shot in Columbus was carrying a BB gun; you can understand why that could put a cop on edge. The cop who shot the man in Tulsa has been charged with manslaughter. That seems just, except it’s a female cop. She may be guilty, but I think some of the officers involved in previous shootings (all men) were as well, and most were never charged. Is a woman seen as easier to prosecute? No one can agree whether the guy in Charlotte was carrying a gun or a book. A book. I think even I could tell a book from a gun. It’ll be interesting to watch these investigations unfold.

It is emerging that no one who should be collecting statistics on police shootings has been doing so. The best source seems to be the Washington Post. Its running list illustrates something similar to the situation I’ve written about in our prisons.

Of the 1,500 people killed by police between January 2015 and July 11 of this year, 49% have been white while 25% were black. Whites comprise 62% of the US population and blacks are 13%. Does that mean blacks commit more crime, or that they are singled out and treated differently by police? That’s impossible to know unless all the white people who have committed crimes and gotten away with them step up and admit it.

—

There were also two terrorist incidents this week. You probably heard about the man who planted four bombs in New York and New Jersey. The police managed to take him alive, even though he actually had a gun and was firing at them. Hmm. Ahmad Rahami was born in Afghanistan, came to the US when he was seven, and was apparently radicalized after visiting Afghanistan.

In St. Cloud, Minnesota, where my son Vince was incarcerated for six months, a man attacked nine people with a knife. Dahir Aden was a Somali born in Kenya and also came to the US when he was seven. He was apparently radicalized by online ISIS propaganda.

People were injured but no one died in either episode except Aden. To paraphrase a blog post Vince wrote about the St. Cloud attack, we needn’t live in fear of terrorist attacks, because these guys are incompetent. The ones who should live in fear are African American men.

—

So much tsouris in the world. That’s Yiddish for suffering.

As I’ve written before, Vince and I have been getting involved in Jewish Community Action’s campaign to reform the criminal justice system, including mass incarceration. On Monday night we’ll attend a phone bank event where we’ll call ex offenders to make sure they know they may be eligible to vote and to tell them how to register if they are eligible. Vince may not be able to vote, but he can help others to do so.

Next Thursday, we will speak at a JCA event hosted at my workplace, the Center for Victims of Torture. A CVT psychotherapist will talk about the psychological effects of imprisonment. A CVT volunteer physical therapist will speak about the physical effects, and Vince will talk about the fallout on relationships. If you are local, please join us for either or both or other events.

So much tsouris. I feel my share of despair and helplessness, but doing something helps. I’ve been estranged from organized Judaism since Vince’s troubles began, when our rabbis were less than supportive. Lately, I’ve felt pulled back toward the community by my involvement in JCA. That’s because the essence of Judaism is tikkun olam, or healing the world. Doing something to right injustice, even if progress is slow.

Last week I took a big step and went to my old synagogue because I heard there was a new prayer book that acknowledges doubters and atheists. I went to a study session with one of the (new) rabbis was a dead ringer for my aunt. I don’t believe in signs, but this did make me feel like I was literally returning to the family.

Oxford to St. Louis via Festus

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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While Lynn slept, I explored the breakfast bar at the Quality Inn in Oxford, Mississippi. It offered weak coffee, powdered “milk”, white bread for toast, single serving boxes of corn flakes, single portion bags of instant grits and oatmeal, and … do-it-yourself waffles.

These weren’t toaster-ready waffles. I watched people try to figure out the waffle maker one after another as I ate my instant grits. Where was the batter? How did it come out of the container? Where did it go into the waffle maker? Then what? How long did you keep the lid closed? Where you supposed to flip it over? How did you get the waffles out? It looked simple, but to someone from…oh, let’s say China, it must have been about as familiar as I would have felt trying to make dim sum.

Meanwhile, I was keeping an ear on the conversation of two guys at the next table, who appeared to be truckers. I had heard the word “Jesus” and “Bible” and assumed they were fervent Christians, so I avoided eye contact. One was flipping through a pile of magazines. Maybe they were having a bible study at the Quality Inn. Finally I was able to pull my attention away from the Chinese guy fumbling with the Made-in-China waffle maker and was able to listen in on the conversation next to me. “These born agains are fucking crazy,” the guy with the magazines said. “They don’t reason. They cain’t tell the difference between opinion and fact. They only know what they’ve been told to think by their preachers.”

“Ah know, ah know,” replied his companion. “They’re wreckin’ ar country. We used to be superior for our inventions and idee-urs but now everybody’s laughin’ at us.”

“Everybody but Saudi Arabia,” replied the first guy. “They probably love that we’ve stopped using our brains.”

This went on for some time and I was able to very subtly—I hope—get a look at the magazines, which included Popular Mechanics and National Geographic. So they must believe in evolution! Did you know that 42% of Americans believe God created the world in seven days? I can barely bring myself to type that, it’s so embarrassing. That’s an average, of course, and a much higher percentage of young people, urban dwellers, and yes—northerners believe in evolution.

I’m aware it can be irritating when I reproduce people’s accents in writing, but I did it above to make a point. Well, two points. First, I’m aware I’m prejudiced against southerners and second, there are southerners who don’t fit my stereotypes.

I had the urge to reach across and introduce myself, “Hi, I’m Anne! I’m from Minnesota, and I’d just like to say how thrilled I am to discover free thinkers in Mississippi!”

Instead I went next door to Starbucks and got a decent cup of coffee.

—

We headed north again, toward St. Louis. This would be a short day: we would only put around 400 miles on the odometer.

The drive was uneventful. We passed by Memphis, then veered northeast near the town of Marked Tree. We passed Osceola, Tennessee; Blytheville, Arkansas; Hayti, Missouri; then Portageville, Tiptonville, Sikeston, Cape Girardeau, Pocahontas, Ste. Genevieve, Prairie du Rocher, and Festus.

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St. Louis was the first place I used Air B&B. We were staying in the upper part of a fourplex on Flad Avenue, in the Shaw neighborhood, chosen because it was a short walk to the Missouri Botanical Garden. Shaw appeared to be a historically African American neighborhood that was being gentrified.

We had been instructed to park behind the building, but a pack of bearded, plaid-shirted hipsters who resembled Neanderthals were unloading a truck in the alley. They smiled dumbly at us and clearly weren’t going to put themselves out to get out of our way, so we parked on the street.

I had received several texts from the Air B&B owner, Yuri, about gaining entrance, and it went without a hitch. There were two bedrooms, a bath and a kitchen that would be our base for exactly 17 hours.

Creole, Cajun, Casserole

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This continues a series of posts about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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We had the same conversation every morning:

“What do you want to do today?”

“I dunno. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t care. I’m up for anything.”

“Okay then, let’s go!”

I had been to the city before. One of the most memorable things I had done was a tour of a Creole plantation called Laura. It was about what you’d expect: a wide lawn, big house, antiques, and vignettes of how people lived 150 years ago. The house was a different style from Tara, the plantation you might recall from Gone with the Wind:

This is actually a photo of Oak Alley, another plantation near New Orleans on which Tara was based. I think. Don’t quote me on that. Anyway, it’s built in the English style, symmetrical and staid. Built to impress.

By contrast, here is Laura:

Very French, don’t you think? Because that’s partly what Creoles are—a people of French or Spanish descent, sometimes with Afro-Caribbean or Native American mixed in. They speak Creole, cook Creole, and make Creole music.

I was enjoying the tour of the plantation. Then we stepped out back to the slave quarters and it was like everything turned from brilliant color to grey. We “toured” a restored slave cabin, but only two or three of us could fit inside at a time. Meant for a family, it was about half the size of a boxcar, made of rough-hewn wood and sparsely furnished. Next we gathered outside so the guide could talk to us all at once, and that’s when I happened to turn and notice this behind me:

You don’t need to read French to know this is a bill of sale for people. My eyes welled with tears. I’m teary right now. The poor woman at the end of the list is a “lunatique.” What did that mean? Was she schizophrenic? Autistic? Rebelious maybe? Would someone have bought her because she was cheap? For what purpose? Ugh. Double ugh.

—

I passed around the brochure about the tour and told Lynn, Molly, and Christine about it. No one wanted to go. Maybe I should have left out the part about the lunatique.

When I was younger I would have pressed and wheedled until I guilted everyone into going, because I thought it was an important, historically significant tour.

But I got it. Lynn and I had spent half a day in the civil rights museum learning about slavery and lynchings and Jim Crow. Molly is a head start teacher whose kids live in trailer parks and whose parents are in jail or on drugs. Christine works for Oxfam, which aids people in disasters and wars. I got it. We didn’t need to be “sensitized.” And we were on vacation!

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You may be wondering, “What’s a Cajun?” since I wrote about Creoles above. Cajuns are descendants of Acadians, who lived in eastern Canada and the Northeast U.S. When the British took over this region, the Acadians, who are French and Roman Catholic, refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the crown. They wound up in Louisiana, either voluntarily or forcefully exiled, and that was a much better fit for them. As with the Creoles, the Cajuns have their own food, music, and language.

So there’s this theme in Louisiana of cultures coming together—French, English, and Spanish; African, Caribbean, and American Indian. It seems like they mostly got along, although that may be because they stuck to their own territories. In New Orleans, for instance, Canal Street marks the boundary between the old English and French parts of town.

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Back at the B&B, we had our own little cultural casserole. The English couple avoided the Germans, who were sour faced but friendly in their serious German way to the Dutch pair. The French couple seemed anxious about everything while the Scotts and Canadians were outgoing. I had two free bus tour tickets and offered them to the group. The Germans recoiled as if I were trying to hand them a rotting fish, while the Dutch couple eagerly grabbed them.

Jim Crow, Old and New

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This is the latest in a series of posts about a road trip from St. Paul to New Orleans that starts here.

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If you don’t learn something about yourself when you travel … well, that’s okay—I’m not going to sermonize—but I was pleased to learn something important about myself in Memphis.

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In the morning, Lynn and I took a walk along the riverfront, which is beautiful:

We walked back to Beale Street, found a restaurant, and ordered breakfast. We were excited to try southern foods like grits and biscuits. We waited, and waited. You could say this restaurant put the “wait” in waitress. She kept coming by and giving us a dose of another southern treat—calling us “honey”, “sweetie”, and “darlin’” as in: “Your food’ll be up in just a minute, darlins’”

It seemed like half the morning passed away before we got our meals, then we wolfed them down and headed over to the National Civil Rights Museum.

It was difficult to find—there was no signage—but then we turned a corner and there it was, the former Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I recognized it immediately, having seen it a hundred times in iconic photos.

And this was the beginning of learning something about myself, because I got so choked up I had to turn away so no one would see me in tears.

I have been to Holocaust museums in Washington, DC; Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Chicago, and elsewhere, and they’ve been tear-filled experiences too. But then, I’m Jewish. Were my tears only because the story was about my people? That fear—that I only felt empathy for my own kind—was laid to rest in Memphis.

I wiped my tears away but they welled up continually inside the museum, which was one long, sad horror show that traced the abuse of African Americans from slave days up through the assassination in 1968.

There was a large group of school children, mostly African American, going through with docents. I wondered what they felt seeing Africans in chains, the police dogs, the fire hoses? If it was my kid I would want to be on the tour to put my arm around him. There was the usual laughing and fooling around that any group of kids will exhibit, but I wondered if they would have trouble sleeping that night.

—

I commented to Lynn, “A coworker of mine at Oxfam used to find every opportunity to mention, ‘the UK never had slavery’ in a superior tone.”

“We may not have had slaves in the country, but we certainly benefited and participated in the system,” Lynn replied as we read a display about how global the slave trade was.

And of course it didn’t end with the abolition of slavery. “Jim Crow” was the system in the southern United States from reconstruction up through the civil rights era in the 60s that kept “negros” in their place. Here are a few of the ridiculous laws from that time:

Really? Checkers!? Who knew checkers could subvert the social order?

Then we marched slowly through exhibits about bus boycotts, lunch counter protests, and strikes. Then there were the cross burnings, lynchings, and bombings by white racists; somewhat counterbalanced by the support of white and other allies (including Jews).

I watched a video about James Meredith, the first black student to be accepted to the University of Mississippi, in Oxford Mississippi. Of course he hadn’t mentioned his race in his application, and when he showed up to enroll all hell broke loose. After weeks of rioting by whites, which resulted in two deaths, he was reluctantly let in, and as Lynn read later, he did graduate and lived a normal life afterwards.

The museum was really well done. There was a second building that explored African American activism post 1968, but after three or four hours in the first building we had to leave.

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Last week Vince and I talked to a group about mass incarceration. One of the audience members referred to it as the New Jim Crow. I agree, although in my opinion it’s about poverty, addiction, mental health, and class as much as racism.

The Other Country

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I woke at 5am. My plan was to go to Walgreens—conveniently located at the end of the block—which opened at 7am. I would buy all the auto fluids they had and pour them into the car in hopes it would make it to New Orleans.

I dressed and slunk out the door to the nearby coffee shop. When I returned, David our innkeeper greeted me and started recounting his early days in Chicago. I had time to kill, so I sat back and enjoyed my coffee and David’s stories.

He had come to Chicago from Kentucky to attend college in 1977. So David and I were the same age. He seemed older, like he’d weathered some pretty tough times.

Anyway, his arrival coincided with the Tutankhamen exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History. I remembered “Tut Mania” well. My mother had driven to Chicago with some friends to see the exhibit and came back with T-shirts with images of scarabs and Egyptian cats and—of course—King Tut.

David was taking a class from a professor who was a world expert on Tut, and who was leading the logistics for the exhibit.

“The train from Egypt was escorted by armed guards with shoot-to-kill orders,” he said. “They packed everything in Styrofoam so if the ship sank, all those priceless antiquities would bob back up to the top.” He explained that Tut had been a very minor king who was only famous because his tomb “wasn’t very ornate,” and thus hadn’t attract the attention of tomb robbers.

Talking about King Tut and his college days, David grew animated and could have passed for an archaeology professor himself.

—

Have you ever heard of magical thinking? That was me as I started the car up after a 36-hour rest. Somehow, the engine light wouldn’t come on, right? Wrong.

But there was no going back—we were gonna make New Orleans by Wednesday! Back at the inn Lynn was enjoying breakfast and another of David’s soliloquies. He was talking about Kentucky again. “Most people think it’s like Deliverance,” he said. I gave Lynn a blank look that said, “He’s right.”

—

Travel does not equal adventure, or vice versa. Adventures can be delightful but more often, at least for me, they involve dealing with something strange, stressful, or slightly scary.

Once again, the car was fine above 75 miles per hour but shook if I slowed down.

“I wonder if I got a bad tank of gas at the Cranberry Discovery Center.” This would be the first of many hair-brained theories about the car.

“Maybe it’s the spark plugs,” Lynn suggested. Then, sheepishly, “Does it have spark plugs?”

“I don’t know!” The Mini’s engine was sealed inside a sleek black box. It was just like BMW to make something stylish that prevented access or even viewing.

“Maybe when I get a new tank of gas it’ll fix itself. I’ll stick to gas stations near the freeway that sell a lot of gas, to make sure I get a fresh tank.” More magical thinking.

The landscape slowly changed, from flat and sere to lush, green, and hilly. The car struggled up the hills. But maybe if I just kept driving… we drove from 9 to 3:30 with two five-minute pit stops.

Finally, starving, we stopped in Charleston, Missouri. The “downtown” was deadsville. The only place open was a thrift store. I asked if there was a place to eat in town. The response I got from the woman at the register sounded like this:

“Ya’ll gawla rawla dayown aray-owna Mexican raistrawnt gonna donna lowna haw-way.” Lynn beat it out the door. I fought the urge to follow her while my brain worked to make sense of what she’d said.

A customer stepped forward and said, slowly, “She said there’s a Mexican place out by the interstate.” I thanked him and we drove out of town, pausing only to take a photo of this poor old theater.

We found Las Brisas and ordered iced teas, which were served in pitcher-sized plastic cups. Listening to the accents around us, we felt like we were in a foreign country, but it wasn’t Mexico.

Updates

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Travel, addiction, prison … sometimes I feel I have to justify why I write about these seemingly unrelated topics. How about this: they all fall under the meta theme of “feeling trapped, or just bored, and wanting to escape.” There—does that explain it?

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I was at a big work meeting and we were discussing human rights in the countries where we operate in the Middle East and Africa. Someone said, “What about solitary confinement? Shouldn’t we be advocating against it?” Everyone clamored in agreement. As far as I know, I am the only employee with a family member who has actually been in solitary. I was tempted to raise my hand and make a speech about how, if we decided to advocate against solitary confinement, we’d damn well better include the United States. But I didn’t feel like being a spokesperson for prison reform that morning.

—

Vince is off lockdown, after a month of confinement to the house except for work and AA meetings. It may not sound that bad—after all he had Facebook and phone to communicate with friends. He could binge-watch movies and cook real food and look out windows and take a shower without 50 other guys around. He had a pretty good attitude toward it, but I know he was really chaffing toward the end. He had steadily been earning freedoms after his release, then they were all taken away. The offense was so petty compared to the consequence. Most of all, he just had no power or choice about his comings and goings.

Regardless, it’s over now, and today we are doing a make-up birthday outing for me—going to hear the Minnesota Orchestra play the entire score of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, accompanied by some Finnish choir. I expect it will be either fantastic or dreadful.

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Nothing has happened with the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 in the five weeks since I wrote about it and about how Republicans are using its bipartisan popularity to shove in language making it harder to prosecute corporate criminals.

Then there’s the controversy swirling around The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which is being blamed for creating mass incarceration. Bernie Sanders says he only signed it because of the good stuff in it, even though he disagreed with the sentencing parts. Hillary has been confronted by Black Lives Matter activists about ruining millions of Black people’s lives because she voted for it. Bill Clinton has disavowed it—his own law. I give him credit for that, even though it may only be a political tactic. Ugh. I would have to write five more posts to get to the bottom of that one, if I ever could.

Anyway, a poll from Pew Charitable Trusts shows that all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, men, women, Latinos, African Americans, seniors, young voters, and even law enforcement households agree we need to fix our broken federal prisons system. If you’re an American and you agree, please sign this petition urging Congress to pass the Act now. These are all the celebs who are endorsing the call for reform.

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A lot of what I do in my job involves raising funding from foundations. I was happy to see that 42 foundations have banned the box on their employment applications that asks, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” This is really only symbolic, since foundations have abysmal records of hiring people of color or even just people who aren’t wealthy and well connected. But they are calling on all philanthropic institutions to follow suit, so maybe it’ll catch on.

Anytime anyone speaks out in support of ex offenders I am thrilled. The president of the Rosenberg Foundation, in announcing the foundations’ move, said, “It is time to end the pervasive discrimination against people with past criminal records. The era of mass incarceration and the war on drugs have done severe damage to families and communities, with an enormously disproportionate impact on people of color. Everyone deserves a second chance and the opportunity to compete for a job.”

The Awakening

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This is the seventh post in a series that started here.

I wrote in the first post in this series, “Wrestling with Restless,” that I would eventually make a point about my question: “Why would I want to leave Minnesota, one of the cleanest, healthiest, most progressive states in the U.S.—a state with great microbreweries—to go study/work/volunteer in a developing country?”

I’m finally at the point of making the point.

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I was on a bus in central Mexico with 50 other mostly American Spanish-immersion students, and we had just been directed to gaze upon a garbage dump a big as a mountain. It was beautiful—from afar. Trash is colorful. Flocks of seagulls soared and reeled above it and the sun glinted off the metal and glass it contained. Our guide had called it a garbage dump city. Why would anyone live in a garbage dump? The stench would be overpowering! Think of the filth and the disgusting things you would see!

To my relief, we didn’t stop but kept going until we arrived at Nuetros Pequeños Hermanos, or Our Little Brothers and Sisters. As I mentioned previously, the Spanish school we attended specialized in Spanish for social workers, health care professionals, and teachers. I wasn’t any of those; I just had just liked the school so much the first time that I wanted to return for more. Now here I was, about to tour an orphanage.

We piled out of the bus and someone walked us around. This is how I know I was having a Yerkes-Dodson moment, because I cannot remember whether it was a man or a woman or a priest or one of the older kids or a volunteer.

“We have 550 children here, from toddlers to teenagers,” the guide informed us. “Most of them aren’t orphans; their parents are just too poor to feed them. Or they’re alcoholics, or unwed mothers, or mentally ill, or in prison.” The guide talked as we walked. We passed a half dozen teenage boys shaving the heads of little boys. We stood and listened in a dorm with rows of bunk beds and cartoon murals on the walls.

“Then there are the children from the garbage dump city,” the guide said. I was transfixed. “Hundreds of families make their living by picking through the rubbish and salvaging anything that can be sold. Mostly it’s metals like copper but also appliances, furniture, shoes …. We send buses every morning to pick up about 250 children. We bring them here, give them showers, delouse them and put them in clean clothes, and they spend the day in school here. Then we bring them home at the end of the day.”

Home. To the garbage dump city.

We kept walking; we saw the dark little volunteer quarters and the kitchen garden tended by the older children. A teenage girl and boy were flirting over a fence. Since it was a Catholic home, I assumed there was no sex education or birth control. How many babies were born here, to children like them?

The census of children is lower now than when I was there, but at that time, as I did the math, they were in charge of feeding, educating, housing, clothing, and providing health care to about 800 children.

“We have a dozen homes in nine countries,” the guide stated. This is the moment when I had my “international awakening,” for lack of a better term. I don’t know if there are homes like this any more in the U.S. There are thousands of children are in the foster care system.

But the scale of this … for every adorable, doe-eyed two year old there were a dozen or a hundred more who needed someone to care for them.

I felt like I was in one of those videos where the camera pulls back from the earth so you feel lifted off the ground. You look down on the tree tops, then you can see rivers and highways, then shorelines of countries. You zoom out farther until you are looking down on the blue marble we called Earth, and then out, out, out until you can see the Milky Way.

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