The Kate Chronicles

A Word About Prison During the Holidays

It is so easy to forget - especially during the holidays - that there are more than one million people incarcerated in the United States. In New York State, the number of men and women locked up is roughly 60,000. 

I'm proud of my work with Rehabilitation Through The Arts, a non-profit which offers critical life skills through the arts to incarcerated people. In the past I have taught memoir, and early next year, I'll be starting a new class that combines memoir with journalism. I'm a little nervous but I think it will go well.

Whatever you may think of the prison population,  these men and women are human beings, many of them parents, most of whom will one day be returning to society. And they can also use support while serving their sentences, and they can use the skills RTA provides both on the inside and beyond the prison walls. 

If you have a minute (this is only 60 seconds), please check out  this video which will tell you more about the program.

And that concludes our commercial message.

Wishing everyone a happy week!

 

 

"We Live Here!"

The Weatherman and I are settling into our new home in the Hudson Valley. We've been exploring our new surroundings, and almost every day, we turn to each other with wonderment and say, "We live here!" 

When we lived in Westchester, our "neighborhood walk" was up windy suburban streets. Now our neighborhood walk is in a Nature Preserve that is no more than two minutes from our home. Our "backyard walk" is in Fahnestock State Park, where we have countless trail options on the 14,000+ acres of land.

These photos were taken during our ramblings over the last week.

Meanwhile, here's a fun fact: every evening, at 5:00 pm, we hear a canon shot from West Point, which is across the Hudson River from us. (Evidently there's another canon shooting at 6:30 am, but I always sleep through that one.) Apparently, one marks "reveille," aka wake up, and the other marks the end of the day.  We live here! 

 

 

Roxanne Gay on The NFL

When I got married, I had to convert to my husband's football team. I learned all about the game. I wore the NFL swag. I even went to the Super Bowl, back when the face price of the tickets were $40, and it was a -relatively - low-key event. When our children were born, they were gifted with little NFL onesies.

My feelings about the game began to change for a couple of reasons.

1. The sexism - those iddy, biddy cheerleader uniforms, the whole macho culture surrounding the game.
2.  The brutality - the more we learn about CTE, the brain damage caused by collisions to the head, the more I feel I'm watching a snuff film. (Here's an appalling NYT piece on CTE and youth football.)
3. The Military Jingoism - the partnership with the military and the NFL bothers me, with the flyovers and the America, Right or Wrong ethos.

Expressing these concerns always made me feel like an elite whiner. But then I read this Substack post by Roxanne Gay, reprinted below. She focuses on how the NFL tacitly closes its eyes to sexual assault by the players. I'm not sure that I need any more reasons to stop following the game.

The NFL Dilemma

The impossibility of the NFL's woman problem

ROXANE GAY NOV 30