I'm not always sure

Next week, the state of Ohio is scheduled to execute Daniel Wilson for his murder of Carol Lutz in 1991. It was the 2nd time in his 21 years of life that he was responsible for the death of another human being. Wilson acknowledges his guilt. He is not claiming that he is innocent of the crime for which he is supposed to die. For reasons that (if you believe his confession) even he does not know, Wilson locked a 24 year old woman in the trunk of a car for a number of hours before puncturing the gas tank and lighting the car on fire with her in the trunk.

Prosecutors argued that he deliberated his course of action and chose to kill Ms. Lutz rather than risk incarceration by releasing her. He let her out of the trunk once to use the bathroom and spoke with her for a while as she plead for him to let her go. He also tried unsuccessfully to start the fire and chose to try again. Being burnt alive must be an horrific way to die and I feel sickened at the thought of it. On some level, execution by leathal injection seems hardly a fit retrobution for such an inhuman act, even with Ohio's shakey history of administration of lethal injection.

In the recently published report of the Ohio Parole Board of their clemency hearing,(pdf) the parole board included a handwritten statement from Daniel Wilson. (see image above for end of statement) When I think of how awful Ms. Lutz' final moments must have been, I cannot help feeling that a person capable of doing something so awful should not be allowed to continue to occupy space on this earth. I'm horrified, disgusted, and feel a desire for revenge on behalf of the victim and her family.

And here we encounter a problem. We, as a nation, do not really know what we want with regards to convicted criminals. Is the purpose of the legal system to exact revenge? Or are we, as we pretend, really seeking Justice?

Let's pretend that the purpose of the Justice System is to try to find some form of justice. Execution changes nothing. Carol Lutz will be just as dead and that death will have been every bit as horrific the day after Daniel Wilson's execution as the day he is killed. In 18 years, Daniel Wilson has become an adult, he has found ways to serve and to benefit his community behind bars. It is, perhaps, arguable that he is not the same person who walked into prison at the age of 21 with a juvenile criminal record that stretched back 9 years prior to that event. Wilson's lawyers are arguing that the sentencing jury was improperly instructed, that they were not allowed to consider his ugly childhood after being abandoned in his father's custody when his mother fled their abusivehome, and that they were not instructed about how to propperly consider the effect that large quantities of alcohol might have had on Wilson's reasoning. They would like the courts to award Wilson a new sentencing hearing where those facts (and hopefully the last 18 years of model prisoner behavior) will be taken into consideration.

Intellectually, I know that the death penalty is not a deterant. In Europe, where they've made elimination of the death penalty a condition of membership in the EU, there has not been an increase in previously capitol offenses now that the death penalty is no longer a potential punishment. The whole process, trial, sentencing, appeals, separate death row facilities, etc costs so much more than the cost of imprisoning someone for life without the possiblity without parole. There is, unfortunately, a very real possiblity of terrible errors resulting in wrongful execution. There are a great many logical reasons why I oppose the death penalty and hope that Gov. Strickland will commute Daniel Wilson's sentence to life without parole. I've spoken to family members of murder victims who opposed the death penalty for their loved-one's killer and to those who witnessed the execution of the murderer who cut short the life of someone they held dear. Closure is a myth.

That said, emotionally I'm torn. And I'm running out of time for this internal debate.

How long 'til Santa files for unemployment?

From: A Kidnapped Santa Claus
by L. Frank Baum

Santa Claus lives in the Laughing Valley, where stands the big, rambling castle in which his toys are manufactured. His workmen, selected from the ryls, knooks, pixies and fairies, live with him, and every one is as busy as can be from one year's end to another.

It is called the Laughing Valley because everything there is happy and gay. The brook chuckles to itself as it leaps rollicking between its green banks; the wind whistles merrily in the trees; the sunbeams dance lightly over the soft grass, and the violets and wild flowers look smilingly up from their green nests. To laugh one needs to be happy; to be happy one needs to be content. And throughout the Laughing Valley of Santa Claus contentment reigns supreme.

As children, so many of us are taught to believe in Santa Claus. It's a tradition that I'm wrestling with now in regards to how we will raise Sprout. The debate over what we should or shouldn't tell our children about Santa is not, however, the point of this blog entry. (I may write more on that later... There's a lot that I should write about but I'm trying to take this just a little bit at a time...) Back to the point... Through stories and songs, we learn that Santa works lovingly in his northern workshop making toys by hand with the help of elves or other magical creatures. This idea that the toys are made by hand is an important part of the Santaverse...

We live in an industrial world. Increasingly, the objects in our lives have very little contact with human hands before we remove them from their pristine (and excessive) packaging. I'm probably biased on this point, as a craftsperson and as a fan of the Arts and Crafts movement. I love objects that are handmade. I feel, when I hold them and turn them in my hands, a connection to the person whose labor and vision created them. A handmade object always feels warmer to me, as though some trace of the warmth lingers from the craftsman's touch. When I look into the eyes of a handmade doll or toy, there seems to be a spirit looking back at me and I find myself thinking that the sparkle I see there was ignited by the spirit of its maker.

I feel compelled to write about these things at the moment because the future of handmade toys in the US (and indeed any handmade object sold in this country for use by children) is questionable. You see, in response to repeated saftey recalls of toys and other items intended for use by children, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission has created new guidelines which will go into effect in February of 2009. These guidelines require that any product marketed to children be subjected to exhaustive testing and stringent labeling. On the face of it, this sounds like a good idea. But lets take a closer look at the issue.

The testing required costs $4000 per toy. When this cost can be spread over tens of thousands, if not millions of identical toys, it doesn't seem like that much money. The expense is simply passed on to the buyer at a cost of mere pennies per toy. On the other hand, for a craftsperson (i.e. Santa) who labors in his workshop making one of a kind toys, $4000 per toy is not a cost that can be passed on to the consumer. Even if the artist is making several hundred nearly identical toys, the expense is still well above what the consumer will be willing to pay.

And, really, is this safety testing really necessary? The standards being set by the commision exceed those in any other country in the world, including Canada and the European Community where existing production standards prevent the types of problems that prompted these reforms. In fact, looking at the safety recalls that resulted in this new legislation, the vast majority (very nearly 100%) of the products were mass manufactured in China.

Over the last few years, I've been asked over and over why I don't make more puppets to sell. My answer has always been two-fold. First that the puppets are extremely labor intensive and that I'd rather teach others to make them so that they can give them to the people they love. Second that the legal requirements for toymakers are byzantine and that I feel ill-equipped to meet those standards. I admire those artisans out there who have dedicated themselves to continuing handcraft traditions and ensuring that another generation of children experience the joy of playing with toys that are lovingly handmade. I am greatly saddened that the new standards being proposed to protect children will allso serve to ensure that, unless their mother/father/grandparent/or other beloved adult is a skilled craftsperson for whom toymaking is an enjoyable hobby, future generations of children will not enjoy the opportunity to experience the pleasure of a well crafted toy.

For more information, please take some time to read some (or all) of the following links:

Eco Childs Play

Cool Mom Picks: Save Handmade

The Handmade Toy Alliance and their Proposed improvements to the CPSIA

I'm sure that you'll find a great many links from these pages to others with more information and more insight. In these difficult financial times, many people are turning to handcrafts to supliment thier incomes or to brighten their lives. There is a growing cottage industry of artisans producing small quantities of lovingly made work to humanize an increasingly impersonal world. It is difficult, at best, to run a small business and many of these artisans are struggling to by materials and cover their expenses. This legislation threatens to drive most (if not all) of them out of business. And to what end? To protect us from a threat that comes not from individual artisans making the best objects that they can with the best materials that they can afford but instead from huge conglomerations shipping millions of cheaply made mass-manufactured disposeable goods from half way around the world where the labor is cheep and the standards are non-existant.



TITLE: Santa Claus
CALL NUMBER: SSF - Holidays--Christmas [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-113695 (b&w film copy neg.)
SUMMARY: Man portraying Santa Claus, half-length, facing front, in snowy scene.
MEDIUM: 1 photographic print.
CREATED/PUBLISHED: c1895.

Politics: Health Care

Norristown State Hospital
Originally uploaded by road_less_trvled

Do you know someone who doesn't have health insurance? There's a stigma attached so it's possible that they've not mentioned it. It might be better to ask yourself other questions. Do you know someone who is self-employed? Do you know someone who is trying to run a small business? Chances are, they don't have health insurance. The statistics, which I'm feeling too tired and disgusted to look up at the moment, are staggering. But we're not actually talking about statistics here, we're talking about human beings whose lives are at stake. As one of the wealthiest nations in the world, a nation with med schools that aspiring doctors from all over the world flock to for training in their chosen field, it is inexcusable that every day in this country people die who don't need to because they don't get the preventative care that they need. They suffer with pain and go to work every day as it eats away at them with no idea of what is going on because they cannot get a diagnosis without a magic card.

My cousin had surgery today. After months and months of dealing with a degenerative problem, he finally managed to get in to see a specialist who would give him an appointment knowing that he didn't have insurance. That appointment with the specialist was about a week ago. In the last week, my cousin has racked up untold thousands of dollars in medical debt for a surgery which was his only alternative to life-long paralysis.

I didn't sleep well last night, thinking about what was ahead. Now I'm fighting to stay awake as I type this. There was so much that I wanted to say and so many eloquent points that I needed to make. What it boils down to is "Someone in your life does not have the medical insurance that they need in the unlikely event that something catastrophic happens to them." Their future and their health are riding on the results of this election. McCain and Palin want to further privatize healthcare and allow market forces to bring the pricing down.

What will happen to the nation's working poor, to those being laid off by plant closures and those kids coming out of college having trouble getting jobs? Can we as a nation and a society really afford the human costs of Laissez-faire healthcare?

I wish that I could stay awake to really talk about this, but I'm fading fast. Maybe I'll be clearer headed tomorrow.

Politics: Fair Warning (aka I've lost my resolve)

I'm finding that, the closer we get to the election, the more difficult it is to separate my political passions from the rest of my life. Frankly, I don't really want to. So I have to ask myself, why am I trying so hard to keep the politics off my blog? Am I afraid of offending potential customers? (That can't be it, I'm doing nothing to attract customers and have little to offer a customer when they stumble across my work on their own.) Am I afraid of loosing friends? (Everyone who knows me in the "real world" knows where I stand. I seldom have conversations with any of them that don't touch at some point on something related to current events.)

I'd like to offer a compromise. I will make every effort not to sneak politics into "regular" blog entries and will try not to put other content in my political posts. This means that, if I have a studio/life issue to write about, it will be in its own post rather than mixed with a post about politics or what I've been doing at the Obama office. I will also, promise the following:

1. I will write life/studio posts first and political posts second so that if time is short the "on topic" posts will not loose out to politics.

2. Political posts will be easily identified by subject line and with a clearly political image. (i.e. The Obama logo above right which I've modified to add the Dayton skyline for use in conjunction with my local campaign activities...)

3. I will try to continue using my blog on my.BarackObama.com for the majority of my political blogging.

That said, I'm prominently placing a pro-Obama/Biden graphic in the sidebar of this blog and adding a link to the my.BO blog in my blogroll. I really want to be respectful of those with opposing views but I'm afraid that lately I've felt that avoiding these subjects is disrespectful of my own very strong feelings. (Just because we disagree doesn't mean that we have to venture into unpleasant territory.)

Politics

In the past, I have avoided discussions of politics as much as possible. Since politics touch on many of the things that are important to me, this has often required a Herculean effort. The people who talk to me regularly are used to hearing about my thoughts on everything from the state of public education and the inherently unequal way that schools in Ohio are funded, to electoral reform or the racial inequities of the justice system.

It may not come as much of a surprise to anyone that I fall on the liberal side of most (ok, maybe all) of the issues which come up in politics.

It is for that reason that I wanted to mention that I've been writing a little bit on a blog on the Obama website. I'm not going to say much about it and will resume my efforts to keep politics off this blog.

So, I'm working on a series of needle felted finger puppets. So far, I'm pleased with the results and will be posting sometime in the next few days specifically to show off what I've been doing.


TITLE: Hoyt's A contented woman
CALL NUMBER: POS - TH - 1898 .C66, no. 3 (C size) [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-10861 (b&w film copy neg.)
RIGHTS INFORMATION: No known restrictions on publication.
MEDIUM: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, b&w ; 72 x 49 cm.
CREATED/PUBLISHED: Cin., U.S.A. : U.S. Printing Co., c1898.