Overheard at Home, After School

 
Asa's friend, Fred:   Dude, do we 
have to bring our computers to class?

Asa:   Fred. . . it's computer class.

{[(5 - 3) + 6 - 2 = 6 - 1] = 5 - 1 = 4} - 1 = 3 - 1 other nonfiction book, reviewed here, with remainder of 2.

7.  Shot in the Heart 

"I have a story to tell. It is a story of murder told from inside the house where murder is born. It is the house where I grew up, a house that, in some ways, I have never been able to leave."                  -- Mikal Gilmore  

    

Mikal Gilmore's brother was Gary Gilmore. In 1977 Gary Gilmore became the first prisoner in America to be executed after a decade-long span that many thought would lead to abolishment of the death penalty. 

Gilmore had been sentenced to death by a Utah state court for two cold-blooded murders. After all appeals failed, the state of Utah tacitly assumed that he would live out his life on death row. But Gary Gilmore knew his rights. He was entitled to an execution if he so wanted, and he was asking for death. Death by firing squad.

Gary Gilmore was undeniably intelligent;
and by all reports, so were the other boys.
Mikal is a reporter for Rolling Stone.
He is the only brother who broke
out of the family mold.

The country and beyond kept vigil on site and at the TV as days and hours and minutes passed, to see if Gary Gilmore would be executed. Yet when the Utah firing squad shot him in the heart, there was widespread shock and sorrow—not so much for Gary as for the change wrought in the history of capital punishment.

The family on the book cover are the Gilmores; the boys, Frank, Gary, and Galen. (Galen also died a horrible, violent death—over time.) The brother who wrote this book, Mikal, hadn't been born when this photo was taken. 

Gary looked pretty hardened already. 

This is a multi-generational story of a ruined American family living a low-rent life in the American West. There's a familial connection, at least according to family lore, to Harry Houdini. There are sweet but painful stories of the extended family's past, where the ultimate tragedies told of in the book seem foreshadowed. 

In the boys' time growing up, there's alcohol, and domestic abuse, and both random and predictable violence. These are children routinely terrified, and terrified of what comes next. Then they are adult men, who model their lives on family history and who carry the outcome of that to the highest imaginable extreme.

Norman Mailer wrote a book about these same events, The Executioner's Song. Won a Pulitzer Prize, it did. It's 1000+ pages, with trivialities like a hotel room described in exhaustive detail over multiple pages. Whatever. Shot in the Heart is much more worth our time.


Photo from date of execution, 1977

Caption states: Sandbags reinforced the chair in which Gary Gilmore died today. Arrow points to blood-stained bullet hole. Hood rests on top.

Therapy Comes to Juvie, #5 in a series

I understand, Rocky, that you've picked up a skill here to take forward into your future:  Small appliance repair?

 

Earl, we can work on the behaviors that keep you

 from enjoying meals with the others on your cellblock.

Thelma, when you were already on lock-down, why did you disrespect the warden so directly?

                                        

It is made clear in orientation, Melvin,
that throwing gang signs is forbidden.

Sadie Mae, please put aside
the coloring so we can talk
about your adjustment here.

{[(5 - 3) + 6 - 2 = 6 - 1] = 5 - 1 = 4} - 1 = 3 nonfiction books left to review—so here's this one.

 6. Elephant's Graveyard

 

This play is nonfictional. It's based on a 1916 historical event and the legend that has grown out of that. 

Elephant's Graveyard is one of the most upsetting pieces of literature I have ever enjoyed. I was fascinated and horrified by it. For the entire second half of the play I wept openly. It was the same for pretty much everyone around me. 

The story's about a traveling circus and a muddy Tennessee town that come together to effect an unspeakable tragedy.

Oh, boy, let's read that! But seriously, you must read it, and if you ever get a chance, see the play. I lived through the performance (barely) and went right home and ordered the play. Its sadness is redeemed by the depth of its portrayal of humans as animals.


The star of the traveling circus is Mary, a giant Asian elephant. The circus advertises her as “The Largest Living Land Animal on Earth,” weighing “over 5 tons” and standing “3 inches taller than Jumbo,” the star elephant of the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

That's all you need to know for now. If you go to read Elephant's Graveyard, I suggest you shield yourself from the blurbs on Amazon, and the copy on the back of the book. Avoid anyone who says, I've seen that! You want to encounter this story unprepared.

Now let me see if, without giving away anything more, I can express one level of meaning I got out of this.... The events in this play exemplify the worst of human behavior toward those perceived as the lesser, or weaker. It's how animals, children, women, blacks, people with disabilities, immigrants, Jews, Mexicans—I could go on—have been treated by people who come to view the Other as dangerous beyond their differences, and get an opportunity to wield self-righteous power.

As I stumbled out of the auditorium after this play, I felt shock, shame, despair, sorrow, humility, I'll stop there. This is not a work that resolves or redeems in the end. The ending is as far as you can get from happy. And as close as you can get to the Shadow. 

This is the production I saw. 

Interestingly, there is no elephant in the play.