Just got back from a terrific, 5-day trip to LA to hear that the son of someone in our Wednesday night’s meal-and-sharing circle has been murdered.

Another dear person in our circle’s sister was recently murdered in a murder-suicide in western Massachusetts.

Four years ago, when a group of us from Friends Meeting at Cambridge considered beginning a sharing circle for “the formerly incarcerated and those who care about them,” did any of us anticipate how profoundly the violence and tragedy people of color routinely experience would touch our lives?

I certainly didn’t.

This morning, copying what follows, the (crumbling, hopefully) Murdock Empire very much on my mind, grokked how pervasively sick our mainstream media is.

For those of you just joining us: What follows is another excerpt from a letter by an inmate currently incarcerated in a MA prison to Michael Rezendes of The Boston Globe.

What about the 141 lifers paroled in the last five years who are law-abiding, tax-paying citizens? Or the 340 lifers currently under parole supervision? What about the ones who are drug and alcohol counselors, or run programs that help ex-offenders reintegrate into society? . . . Where is the footage and sound bites from their hearings? Where are the front-page articles about them? You yourself were  quick to bring up accusations against Charles Doucette, knowing full well that he was acquitted of those charges. [Emphasis added]

When we [men and women in prison] read about ourselves in the paper or see ourselves on the news—individually or collectively—we are inevitably labeled heartless, callous, worthless or unwanted. There is never any mention that we were scared,  frightened, insecure, misguided, desperate, or hopeless.

Apparently the last posting, a 3-page letter by an inmate at a Massachusetts facility, to Michael Rezendes of The Boston Globe, had been scanned originally—certainly the document has proven impossible to copy and paste.

But because the letter IS worth reading, I’ll post a few excerpts here:

[From page 1] I have watched for two decades as rehabilitative, educational and job-training programs have been systematically eliminated from the prison system; I have watched the percentage of inmates in higher security triple and [the] number of correctional officers double as the rules, regulations and the enforcement grew increasingly draconian; and equally predictable, I have watched the recidivism rate triple and DOC [Department of Correction] budget quadruple — all of this ushered in by Governor Weld’s “joys of busting rock” philosophy in the wake of the Willie Horton scandal.

Want more? Stay tuned.

One of the things I love to do on the 4th—don’t know why, exactly—is to read the Declaration of Independence on The Boston Globe‘s editorial page. (Yup; they print it every year.) No longer a home subscriber (Yup; finally gave up), it took me a little while to actually find it online but eventually, there it was. (Yup; reading that lofty document online does give me that same mysterious thrill!)

Like other online articles, The Globe’s annual Independence Day offering included the opportunity for comments. And although an inward voice screamed, “Don’t do it, Patricia!” I did read a few. Not surprisingly, given the deep, deep divisions in the good ol’ US of A right now, many nasty, “vitriolic” comments were there to marvel over. (Apparently, Patriotism really means Freedom to Own Guns. I had no idea!)

One commenter, wasting a perfectly lovely summer day to sit at his/her computer arguing with another commenter at some length, used the words “Mirror-logic.” Which, I take it to mean, interpreting the world—or, in this case, an historical document—from one’s own (limited/flawed, all too human. . . ) perspective.

Loathe to waste a perfectly lovely summer morning sitting at my computer AND eager to address my residual fearfulness re riding my bike in the city (what better opportunity to get my bike mojo working than on a holiday when all the traffic’s on the Cape?!), I strapped on my helmut  and took to the bike lane on Somerville Avenue. And eventually to the bike path out of Davis Square. Final destination: Spy Pond.

Seeing my Somerville-Cambridge-Arlington world from my cushy seat ( a HUGE consideration when I’d bought my Trek Allant for my 65th birthday), I saw connections and patterns and features I would otherwise never be able to see.  How the wetlands near Alewife T Station relate to nearby ponds, for example. Or how a couple of co-housing developments celebrate their  bike path access.

And, I gotta say,  I thought I saw The Beginnings of Something Working Right. That in the current course of human events, when dependence on the automobile MUST be severed,  we are declaring our, well, not independence, but Getting Ready.

Huzzah!