Mike Mennonno is, in my opinion, a terrific writer And he’s based in Boston. And he’s gay! And he gardens!!

I’m really enjoying his post about Gay Pride, but I’m even more enamored of this passage from his discussion of how strangers can interact:

As noxious as smoking was, people forget why they started: because when everyone was doing it, it was the perfect opening line. “Got a light?” was the all-purpose come-on. Everything about cigarettes was perfect for bridging that now unbridgeable gap between strangers — even the fact that they were addictive. It gave both parties an out. If she rebuffed you, usually with a “no, sorry, this is my last one,” you still had your pride. You could be all like: yeah,well, I’m only asking because I’m about to have a nick fit, not because I want to get in your pants, sugartits.

If she — or he — said yes, there was always time as she fished in her pocketbook, or he unrolled the sleeve of his tee, looking all rebelly without a cause, to show off your charm. The cigarette was an in, an opening. And despite the fact that it would eventually kill you, it was also supremely civilizing. Nothing has taken its place. Gum-chewing lacks sophistication, asking the time doesn’t invite intimacy, and you can’t just go up to someone you don’t know and start talking about the weather, even in New England, where it is a rich, voluble topic.

I used to think of cell phones as the new smoking, but only because they, too, pollute the environment. But cell phones are actually worse. They’ve allowed the virtual, in the guise of the private, to colonize and completely overrun the already decimated public sphere, the shared space of strangers that once held the promise of a strange intimacy, without which our common life withers. Smoking, as damaging as it was to health, at least had a social function among strangers to partly make up for it.

A worthy addition to your blog-world, I daresay!

The Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation has published some animated 3D renderings of the proposed stations on the Green Line extension, which is scheduled to begin service in 2015. Pictured above is the Union Square station, which the Commonwealth is proposing be located along the existing Fitchburg Line railroad right-of-way… that means you’d have to walk up the hill by the Dunkin’ Donuts to get to the station, something Union Square transit advocates object to (it’s harder for elderly and disabled folks to reach it). The advocates’ alternative, though, is to run the Green Line as a streetcar directly into Union Square from about where the Target store is located at the end of Somerville Ave. That’s not likely to fly.

There’s a bunch more information on the web from the Commonwealth, from the City of Somerville, as well as from Union Square Main Streets, a great neighborhood advocacy organization.

My childhood friend, David Klemes, turned me on to a producer/musican friend of his, and fellow Isreali, KutiMan. Check out his amazing AV remixes of YouTube videos: And if you are new to youtube and want to grow your channel click here to see how you can buy views for your youtube channel.

Unusual personal post: I’m going to my first marching band rehearsal next Monday night, and I’ll be playing the big bass drum!

That will seriously tick the box on one of my lifelong ambitions.

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The Iowa Supreme Court:

In this case, we must decide if our state statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the Iowa Constitution, as the district court ruled. On our review, we hold the Iowa marriage statute violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. Therefore, we affirm the decision of the district court.

It’s not just the “librul-elite” on the decadent coasts anymore. Now it’s the “real” Americans in the “heartland,” too, who believe that adults should be able to marry the person they love.

The list of organizations and individuals that filed briefs of amicus curiae is interesting, as it’s basically a list of allies and opponents. The list of allies is much longer, and includes the usual suspects (Freedom to Marry coalition, MassEquality, P-FLAG, and so on), but it also includes The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, The National Black Justice Coalition, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Immigrants’ Rights Program of the American Friends Service Committee, the National Association of Social Workers, the Howard University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic, and the American Psychological Association.

You can read the whole opinion or just the court summary (PDFs) if you like.

The United States has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population – and this nation holds more of its citizens in solitary confinement than any other nation, by a wide margin.

Atul Gawande, writing in the New Yorker, has a long and devastating article that carefully demonstrates that isolation is one of the cruelest forms of torture ever devised. He also marshals convincing evidence that isolating prisoners doesn’t even achieve the stated aims of its proponents. I’m lifting one of the less depressing sections, where he explores some of the alternatives, but I suggest you read the whole thing.

Is there an alternative? Consider what other countries do. Britain, for example, has had its share of serial killers, homicidal rapists, and prisoners who have taken hostages and repeatedly assaulted staff. The British also fought a seemingly unending war in Northern Ireland, which brought them hundreds of Irish Republican Army prisoners committed to violent resistance. The authorities resorted to a harshly punitive approach to control, including, in the mid-seventies, extensive use of solitary confinement. But the violence in prisons remained unchanged, the costs were phenomenal (in the United States, they reach more than fifty thousand dollars a year per inmate), and the public outcry became intolerable. British authorities therefore looked for another approach.

Beginning in the nineteen-eighties, they gradually adopted a strategy that focussed on preventing prison violence rather than on delivering an ever more brutal series of punishments for it. The approach starts with the simple observation that prisoners who are unmanageable in one setting often behave perfectly reasonably in another. This suggested that violence might, to a critical extent, be a function of the conditions of incarceration. The British noticed that problem prisoners were usually people for whom avoiding humiliation and saving face were fundamental and instinctive. When conditions maximized humiliation and confrontation, every interaction escalated into a trial of strength. Violence became a predictable consequence.

So the British decided to give their most dangerous prisoners more control, rather than less. They reduced isolation and offered them opportunities for work, education, and special programming to increase social ties and skills. The prisoners were housed in small, stable units of fewer than ten people in individual cells, to avoid conditions of social chaos and unpredictability. In these reformed “Close Supervision Centres,” prisoners could receive mental-health treatment and earn rights for more exercise, more phone calls, “contact visits,” and even access to cooking facilities. They were allowed to air grievances. And the government set up an independent body of inspectors to track the results and enable adjustments based on the data.

The results have been impressive. The use of long-term isolation in England is now negligible. In all of England, there are now fewer prisoners in “extreme custody” than there are in the state of Maine. And the other countries of Europe have, with a similar focus on small units and violence prevention, achieved a similar outcome.

iLL-Literacy – a collective of spoken word, hip hop, and musical/visual artists… with links to good events and interesting work!

A friend’s Facebook status update pointed me to The Victory Garden of Tomorrow, a series of agit-prop posters exhorting viewers to plant gardens, compost, ride bikes, and generally Do The Right Thing. It helps that the hand-screened posters are gorgeous!

Mark Bittman writes in the New York Times about healthy eating, organic or otherwise:

Last week, Michelle Obama began digging up a patch of the South Lawn of the White House to plant an organic vegetable garden to provide food for the first family and, more important, to educate children about healthy, locally grown fruits and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become national concerns.

But Mrs. Obama also emphasized that there were many changes Americans can make if they don’t have the time or space for an organic garden.

“You can begin in your own cupboard,” she said, “by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.”