The Visiting Room

If you want to be moved, go to the visiting room. If you want to hear how people can change, go to the visiting room. It’s a project based on interviewing and filming  a 100 lifers at Angola State Prison in Louisiana, all those interviewed  have been there at least 20 years. It’s a notorious prison and it holds more lifers without parole than any other state in the country, many convicted of second degree murder, a charge that in Louisiana asks for life without parole. The visiting room is also  a website holding these interviews which anyone can visit and listen to.  So often the idea of life with parole tends to be an abstraction, and one of the project’s creators, Dr. Marcus Kondkar, a sociology professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, wanted to show how it impacts individual people’s lives. Watching the interviews  one becomes aware of the pathos of those lives. Most were young when they entered the system, not educated, without the knowledge of how the justice system works, without adequate defense, in some cases they would meet their attorney the day of the trial. Most of these lifers are black and  the issues of race is inescapable. Their stories expose the harsh life of prison, their childhood, their regrets, their wishes, the desire for mercy and redemption. To me the project and its  website show the need to reevaluate our criminal justice system. Is putting people away really an answer? These inmates are out of sight and out of mind  and ought we not to realize that people can change, that punishing people by life in prison deprives us of what they could have given to society? As such the project becomes a message that we need to rethink our conclusions about criminality.

Period Poverty

Scotland has become the first country in the world to offer tampons and pads for free, for anyone, more accurately for anyone who needs them. Seen on a global scale it’s bigger news than it may at first appear.  That is because of what GZERO Media calls period poverty, the lack of being able to afford feminine hygiene products like tampons, pads or even soap. It’s a problem in any number of countries,  where so often girls are not able to go to school when they  are having their periods, and sometimes buying food takes precedence over buying feminine hygiene products. That means that women and girls have to find unhygienic substitutes. In India for example,  poor women and girls use dirty rags, leaves, newspaper, sand and even ashes, anything to absorb the menstrual blood. The lack of sanitation often causes infections and 70% of reproductive diseases in India stem from poor menstrual hygiene. The problem of cost is compounded by people in governments, usually men, who hold on to taboos about women’s periods. In several societies menstruating women are considered unclean, making it difficult for them to even dry their rags openly in the sun, which would be a disinfectant. Even in the US, the UK and Australia,  laws haven’t been able to pass partly because feminine hygiene products are considered non-essentials. Of course that is not only erroneous, it overlooks the fact these products are not cheap.  All of this highlight Scotland as indeed a pioneer. New Zealand  and Kenya offer free products but only in public schools. So hail Scotland for making these products free on a national scale. May they be an example to many others.

Ghost Guns and Serial Numbers

Up to now  ghost gun kits somehow did not meet the definition of a firearm and were exempt from the ATF requirement that they have a serial number. But a new rule went into effect that certain parts of a ghost gun kit, the incomplete frames and receivers , key parts of the kit, have to be serialized. The rule also asks  federally licensed gun dealers to keep records of gun kit sales until they go out of business. Ghost guns are usually sold unassembled and are often sold to people who want to put them together as a hobby. But recently they have increasingly been found at the site of mass shootings, neighborhood homicides and in raids of makeshift gun factories.  It is not the entire gun that will be serialized, only key parts of it, but obviously that will make a difference. The new rule mainly affects people with a record, or people with a domestic violence history. It is not a panacea just puts under ATF jurisdiction a category of guns which were previously totally under the radar. As can be expected this new rule from the current administration does have its detractors.  Division 80, a manufacturer of the kits key parts is suing to stop the rule. Another  suit to request an injunction on the rule was filed by an individual gun owner, firearm dealer and gun right advocate in North Dakota, and he has been joined by people in 17 states. They claim that the rule would bring irreparable damage to the industry and interfere with individual owners building their own guns. Still the lawsuits are not expected to  stop the rule from going forward. Ghost guns are easily trafficked and  this new rule would make it a little harder to traffic guns,  it is  therefore welcomed.

Upside to Aging

Aging for anyone who is experiencing it does have its downside. There’s an altered appearance which can be distressing and there’s a loss of energy which can be limiting. Cognition can be impaired too. But there’s an upside, a handling of emotions that makes life much easier. Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the university of California, Irvine has been focusing on how older people regulate their emotions  and what she found is that when it comes to emotions it’s the reverse of what happens physically, older people have greater ability to handle and regulate their emotions. It’s due to experience,  and it’s also perhaps the fact that being closer to the end of their lives, older people tend to have a perspective which eliminates smaller issues. They know how to pick their battles, and as a result can eliminate certain amount of stress. Of course it may not  be universal, because many of the people studied had a certain level of financial well being, but not surprisingly it does apply to people with certain level of cognitive impairment. Apparently the impairment does not necessarily  interfere with a certain level of happiness.   The hope is that by better understanding what makes older people better adjusted becomes something that can be applied  to those who are younger. The research as far as I can gather is still in a new field, but it does make a too often overlooked point that aging has positive aspects, that the experience we gather as we live, does matter and if we allow it we can benefit from what we learned or lived through.