Little peach houses

Sometimes I write about big important political stuff. And sometimes I just want to talk about me. Hey, it’s my blog, ya know?

So this is the story of a house.

I was about 13. My mom was in graduate school studying library science. We lived in Denton, a nice little college town in north Texas. My mom had some kind of library seminar to attend in Austin, so we packed up for a long weekend and headed down I-35. Back in those days, all children were free-range children, so while my mom did her library stuff during the day, she turned me loose on Austin with $10 in my pocket and instructions to meet her at 5 p.m. every day.

During the day, I wandered happily through Austin’s streets and alleys. There were no skyscrapers then, just the pink dome of the capitol looming over the rest of the city. I walked through the capitol, stared up into the rotunda, marveled at the custom carpet in the chamber with the Texas logo woven into the pattern. I ran my hands over the limestone walls of historic buildings. I stood under the vast green canopy of the Treaty Oak and felt its peace wash over me. I lunched at cheap downtown sandwich shops and window shopped at all the boot stores. I wandered around the university and breathed the sharp sweet smell of boxwood hedges basking in the sun. I checked out cool restaurants and bars to bring my mom to after hours.

In the evening hours, Mom and I went to steak restaurants and piano bars and drove around town checking out the sights. In Texas then, a minor could go anywhere and drink anything with a parent. Good times. I remember driving together down one quiet, tree-lined street and seeing a house that instantly captured my heart. It was a stucco house, peach-colored, with a porch and a round window on one side like a hobbit-hole. It looked so complete, so content, so right on its green street corner, and I fell immediately in love. ‘Some day,’ I told myself, ‘I will live in Austin, and I will own that house.’

The weekend ended, we returned to Denton, and years went by. I joined the Army, married, got out of the Army, and dragged my new husband to Austin to go to college. We lived in a little rental duplex in south Austin, and I forgot about the little peach house. After 3 years, I graduated, moved to Houston, moved to Portland, moved to Oklahoma, suffered my share of trauma and setbacks.  Then a friend emailed me about a job in Austin that I should apply to, and I did. After three brutal interviews, I got an offer, packed my bags and boxes and pets, and moved back to Austin after years away. An Austin with skyscrapers, with traffic jams, with tech yuppies and hipsters and coffee shops. An Austin where the boot stores have been converted to pubs and the pubs have been converted to condos. I found another south Austin rental, unpacked, and settled in.

Then one day, driving down 45^th Street on my way to somewhere, I noticed a dark gray house on the corner. It was odd, how that nondescript little house kept catching my eye whenever I drove past. Something about it. I maneuvered my Jeep around the treacherous curves and wondered. A week later, I drove past again. What a cute little round window it had, I noticed. Then it hit me, out of the blue. That was the house. The one I had dreamed of. The house I would live in when I was old enough and free and could do as I pleased.

I have my own house now; a nice green tri-level fixer-upper in south Austin, with a scruffy garden and chickens in the yard. It’s not my dream house but it’s mine and that’s okay for now. I go to dance class with my daughter every Monday, and we drive past the little gray house that should be peach. I look over at it and smile. The other day, I turned off and parked my car and took some pictures of it. There was an older man with a child in his lap on the porch. A friend parked her car in front and walked up the front walk, smiling and waving. The traffic roars past now. 45^th Street is a busy thoroughfare, not a quiet neighborhood street as it was. But the house is happy and lived in and loved. I wonder if the people who live there think it’s odd, strangers stopping to photograph their house. I wonder if they know it's supposed to be peach.

Solitary Hell

I'm writing a series on Texas issues and legislation for a Facebook group I help administer, called What Happens in Texas. This was first published there.

When I started looking for information about the use of solitary confinement in Texas, I naively assumed that there were laws and rules governing the use of same. It didn’t take much research to disabuse me of that happy little fantasy.

So what is solitary confinement? It means isolating a prisoner in a small cell, usually with a solid door and the lights always on, for 22-24 hours a day. Solitary confinement has become so common that there are “Supermax” facilities at the state and federal level that are comprised mostly or entirely of solitary confinement cells. At the state level, there is little reporting and oversight of the use of solitary confinement. The management of its use is generally internal to the prison, which means that prisoners have no recourse or protection.

The ACLU reports the following statistics about solitary confinement in Texas:

• About 4.4% of Texas prisoners, or 6,500 people, are in solitary confinement.
• On average, these prisoners spend FOUR years in solitary confinement, but over 100 prisoners spent more than TWENTY years in solitary.
• There is no rehabilitation from solitary before jail release; in 2013, Texas released 1,243 prisoners directly from solitary confinement to civilian life.
• Maintaining the solitary prisoners costs Texans $46 million a year.

“We’re torturing people, in my eyes. We’re torturing people and then we’re letting them out. It’s not to our advantage as a community to do that.” Betty Gilmore, SMU

Human beings are social animals. We do not do well deprived of human contact. There is a multitude of mental and emotional side effects of solitary confinement. These include:  hypersensitivity to stimulus, hallucinations, panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, nightmares, insomnia, dizziness, depression, suicide, and total mental breakdown.

What makes this even more horrific is the fact that the many if not most prison inmates suffer from mental illness before they ever set foot in prison. Due to our lack of mental health care, prisons have become de facto housing units for the mentally ill. The fact that we’re essentially torturing people who are already victims is sadistic.

Well, you might think, people only get put in solitary if they are violent and dangerous. It’s a necessary evil. Well no, not exactly. The reasons why people get placed in solitary vary widely and often have nothing to do with safety:   acting violent, possession of weapon, testing positive for drug use, possessing contraband, using profanity, ignoring orders, exhibiting mental illness, being gay, being transgender, being a minor, being Muslim, being Rastafarian, reporting rape or abuse by prison guards, using social media, having gang associations….

So, in civilian life, you might be bullied, teased, fired, harassed, or beat up for being a little different. In jail, it is perfectly legal for the state to torture you to insanity for these things. And there’s no avenue to plead your case. There’s nothing but your own strength to keep your mind from flying apart as you spend years staring at gray walls.

Resources:

http://www.aclutx.org/2015/02/05/a-solitary-failure/

http://solitarywatch.com/facts/faq/