Birth Rank And Its Privileges

March 6, 2008 – 11:55 pm

From fairy tales to film, everyone is obsessed with the idea of one’s “firstborn.” But what about the lastborn?

For my part, I’ve recently discovered that the lastborn child has magical abilities.

Of course, you have no idea what I’m talking about right now. Allow me to explain:

At the end of a long vacation week came a ski day for my wife, daughter and me. Discussions went back and forth as to where to go. Mount Wachusett never became an option given it is an over priced, over crowded, underwhelming experience in spite of their advertising (I think the slogan should be - “little mountain skiing at big mountain prices: you might find worse, but you won’t pay more”).

Other options included mountains around two hours away. We eventually settled on a return to Crotched Mountain where my daughter has been involved in a thoroughly enjoyable school ski program, in stark contrast to prior experiences at the operation criticized above.

I hadn’t been to Crotched Mountain in over twenty six years and found it to be a thoroughly pleasant, small mountain experience that likely could use a few more customers. It’s a perfect little place to take novice and intermediate skiers without having to pay for the lift tickets with a financing plan.

So, on Saturday we loaded up the car for a little quality time on the slopes. We planned our arrival perfectly, we would have about 20 minutes before the lifts opened to suit up and get on the mountain for some early groomed runs.

There was, however, one slight glitch that became apparent only after we parked in the Crotched Mountain parking lot.

My daughter forgot her ski coat.

The equanimity with which I took this news astounded me. It was if I left my own body and observed this aging, portly man operating with extreme calm. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Society, family, humor | Comments (0)

America’s Prison Problem: If Iron Bars Were Cellophane

March 3, 2008 – 3:31 am

America loves prisons. Not just in the sense of just thinking they’re a good idea, or that we need to build more of them. No, prisons appear to American voters much the way strippers appear to drunk businessmen at 12:07 a.m.; irresistible, shiny, and worth throwing money at.

We also treat strippers and prisoners alike as deserving recipients of rape when it happens to them, but perhaps I’m stretching the analogy too far.

Prison reform is not a sexy topic to most people. If you suggest that maybe, just maybe, building more prisons is dealing with the wrong end of the supply/demand problem, it sounds to people as if you just suggested that they should let someone slit their throats and go sell their TV for crack.

If you suggest that maybe we should try to make prisons a less volatile, criminalizing environment, you may as well have personally signed the order for Willie Horton’s furlough. I try to avoid this conversation, because I’ve been treated to one too many Bronson-esque tirades about how “they’re animals and belong in cages,” or “no, if anything, prison is too good for them,” etc. But America can’t afford to continue avoiding this conversation.

It shouldn’t be a hard one to have, after all; how many of us have had a relative or a friend do time, or done it ourselves? Statistics say quite a few of us. From a cold, practical standpoint, how many of us are looking at an ex-con moving into our neighborhood at some point? Statistics say much the same thing. How many of our tax dollars go into building and maintaining more of these things? You probably don’t know an exact figure, but you know it ain’t cheap.

Ignoring the statistics on how many prisoners are inside for non-violent drug offenses, or how many are serving time for a questionable conviction, or even how many are guilty but serving ridiculously long sentences because of bad legal representation or a legal panacea like three strikes laws (all three situations seeming to correlate somewhat with race and class, but I digress), we still need to look at the function of prison in American society: Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, Society, north america, rape | Comments (5)