He dissed me!

Diss. v.t. prison slang. To verbally dehumanize, disrespect, or otherwise devalue the life of a human being directly or by implication.

Summer, 1996, Miles City. The courtroom was quiet and stark. Two prisoners were brought in handcuffed and seated at the defendant bench. Present were some family members of these former students of mine previously convicted of murdering another young man over a confrontation at a bar. 

The boys' defense attorney called me as a character witness at this sentencing at the request of the family, because they had been my students and because the boys' grandfather had been a close friend of mine. I saw tears of anguish that day from family members of both the perpetrators and the victim. Throughout the proceeding, the most important verdict became clear to me: no one was winning anything. These boys would never be free men. The young man they killed would not be resurrected. 

Why did this happen? What destroyed human respect for another's life in these two young men? I remembered them as generally cooperative, sensitive, fearful, socially clumsy boys. They were diagnosed with fetal alcohol effect, which could explain a propensity toward criminal mentality. But I wanted a more useful explanation. 

I did a little research. We in the U.S. kill and incarcerate each other far more than the rest of the world except where there is active civil warfare. A year later I stumbled onto something.

June, 1997, Boston. As tourists escorted by our children, we stopped in at one of many used bookstores so I could feed my addiction. My attention was drawn to Violence: Our Nation's Epidemic and its Causes, by James Gilligan, M.D. I bought it for $2. The book had come out 6 years before, the same month Willie Horton's release and murder rampage destroyed Dukakis' presidential campaign. 

In 1970, suicide and murder rates in Massachusetts's prison system had skyrocketed higher than anywhere in the country. Gilligan was hired by the state to reform the prison system. In ten years, these rates were reduced to zero, and recidivism was drastically reduced. The book recounts Gilligan's research and methodology. It was his research that found the most common reason murder happens in prison, as spoken by the perpetrators, was simply that the victim "dissed" the perpetrator. 

He then built a program to address the problems this phrase implies. It was a controversial program that emphasized rehabilitation and reform. The presidential campaign of the 80s with Willie Horton and Dukakis highlighting the "coddling criminals" mania was the end of Gilligan's research and credibility in the media. Massachusetts's politicians forgot his research-based system, though it continued to be reworked in academia. 

Since then, we as a nation have slumped back into the Old Testament vengeance system God warned against even 2000 years ago (Romans 12.19).

Fall 1980, Kansas. A light came on in my brain that had been shut off in my childhood. Here in a parenting workshop was a list of common phrases used by parents or teachers in correcting children: "Can't you ever do it right?"—"You'll never amount to anything if you don't shape up"—"Why do you always. . . .?" etc. 

I had no idea these phrases programmed children's minds to perceive themselves as inferior, disrespected or depreciated. I was raised in a good, God-fearing family. But I learned this negative language.

It was habitual, and at first I was defensive: our children knew they were loved. It didn't matter, so I thought. We two parents talked with our children for the first time about the meaning of my words. It did matter. I began to see how children's minds are either programmed to respect and expect respect from other humans or the reverse. 

The way we treat our children can set them up to be respectful or disrespectful, and in the same way, the way we treat our prisoners can do the same.
The controversy in 2007 over Hardin's detention center was underlined by the phrase, "coddling criminals." Have you heard of the confusion between "tough on crime" and "tough on criminals"? It seems some of us think the one equals the other. 

It's not that simple. In fact, making criminals suffer dehumanization, disrespect, and being devalued has proven counterproductive to the stated goal of crime reduction. Hardin's detention center program was set to address this reform.

I took the time then for research. The detention program put forth by CEC the company that had contracted to operate the jail, had an awesome record for cutting recidivism through a tough but respectfully human program to habilitate, educate, and reorient appropriately pliable young criminals for restoration to society. It could have turned a Montana prison away from schooling for crime and toward schooling for responsible citizenship. The record is one of true toughness on crime. Too bad we lost that program. 

Here on the Back 40 I'm working on the weeds and the imbalance in the soils. Patience, experimentation, advice and dogged attention to scientific research is needed. It's taken years for me to make a dent in the weeds of my own language habits in my parenting and teaching. I found freedom in repetitive practice of simple positive phrases with my young students. 

I'm still farming and learning. There's hope.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Does stuff just happen?

By David Graber

Illusory correlation. The phenomenon of seeing the relationship one expects in a set of data even when no such relationship exists.

MetraPark destroyed by a tornado? Didn't you wonder? What's the meaning? Did God disapprove of the entertainment booked at the Metra Park Arena? I often hear an illusory correlation justified by the phrase, "These things don't just happen."

The tornado stayed in one spot for several minutes, right over the Metra, pounding and pulling until the roof tore apart. What an unusual tornado phenomenon! Add to this the rarity of a tornado in Montana, and there must be at least a divine role, if not a bona fide miraculous intervention in the weather.

Busby 1914-Back in the 1970's I was transporting Oliver Risingsun, then in his 80's, to the clinic in Lame Deer. He was into telling stories from his youth.

On an August afternoon in 1914 he was sent by his father to the pine hills nearby to bring home the horses for cattle work early the next morning. On the way back he noticed from his saddle a storm brewing. It got very dark and windy. He gathered the horses just below a pine ridge for protection from wind and hail, and watched as a funnel dipped down and churned right into the Busby Mennonite Church, a log structure built in the early 1900s. So much dust and debris flew he couldn't see the town. It kept churning until the entire structure was torn apart, logs, roof, and lumber strewn down the Rosebud valley. Then the funnel lifted. The house near the church was not touched. Nothing else was damaged in the town, or in the valley. The tornado focused on one building.

Several weeks before this event, so Oliver told me, a medicine man came to the Mennonite missionary* asking him to stop preaching against Indian religion. The minister refused. The medicine man warned him one more time, adding that he liked the missionary, and was concerned that something bad might happen to the church unless he stopped his criticism.

Then the medicine man went to the hills to fast and pray. While the medicine man was on his vision quest, the tornado destroyed the church.

The Christians of Busby, including Oliver, came to pick up the pieces. They found the pulpit tipped over, but still on the church floor. The hymnbooks were inside, none missing. The pulpit Bible was there, not a page missing. They found the reed organ, with damage to some wood carving, but otherwise ready to be used again. Nothing else was left of the church building except the floor.

To this day, Christians will say this is evidence God wants the Gospel preached and Cheyenne hymns sung in Cheyenne country. They believe that though a tornado struck the church, God preserved the hymnbooks, the pulpit Bible and the organ to show that the Christian faith has a place on the reservation.

Others, namely those who held to the indigenous religion, expressed the view that the Divine Spirit sent the tornado to destroy the church because He does not approve of divisive preaching against Native American religions, something the Christians had engaged in at that time.

In the end, the tornado caused something of a "coming together moment" as the two sides realized that railing against the religious beliefs of the other was ultimately unproductive.

After all, there is no objective proof to confirm either point of view. Illusory correlation?

Here on the back 40 this summer my family enjoys confronting my skepticism about correlations I call illusory. Sometimes they don't catch my little secret that I'm also skeptical of my skepticism. In fact, I love the fact of mystery, and that miracles happen. I don't mind either if someone believes it's all an illusion, this correlation of events with a possibly divine prerogative. My opinion is that the most important Divine Mystery is the Creator of All, who made it all so that sometimes, maybe often, stuff just happens.

For comments and previous columns: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

* When the Reverend Linscheid arrived with his family in 1904 a log church was erected at Busby. This building was destroyed on August 14, 1914 by a tornado. It was replaced that year by the current frame church, now the chapel of White River Cheyenne Mennonite Church in Busby. The original pulpit and organ are still there.

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

A sower went out. . .

Spirit and Dust

By David Graber, June 24, 2010

A sower went out to sow, and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them.  But other fell into good ground, and brought forth, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold."
—Matthew 13. 3ff, KJV

It's amazing how acting on hope can bring unexpected gains from unexpected sources.

"Letting things be" in the fields

Early this spring I watched a pair of geese obsessed for hours pecking around in the ground we seeded before freeze-up last fall. That's when we couldn't find a high-tech seeder to place the seed in the ground at the right depth with the best compaction and spacing.

Because we didn't have the right technology, we needed to double the amount of seed we bought, and broadcast it with a seeder made to fit on an ATV. It took some mental adjustment. My heritage doesn't approve of wasteful extravagance. I'd rather win by doing things right.

As spring advanced into summer I monitored the weeds, kicked the grass to count baby hoppers, rechecked my soil tests and regretted not investing in correcting our soil phosphate deficit.

I noticed acres of long strips devoid of anything except a few weeds. It felt wrong, wasting that seed on poor soil. But we did win a round: Nary a seed was visible to any birds thanks to the winter-long snow blanket.

Last week a neighbor finished leveling the lumps in the bottom of our irrigation drainage ditch. In order to do the work, the flow had been blocked, making stagnant water for a population explosion of mosquitoes.

When the work was done, the water started moving much better. Yesterday I walked down to the point where our drainage water enters the channel that connects to the river. The water was clear, and I could see hundreds of minnows in several swarms hanging around the inlet, enjoying a feast of mosquito larva and eggs.

I knew we'd had a mosquito population explosion. I hadn't thought about how flowing water solves the problem. Also, I didn't expect this assistance from minnows.

"Letting things be" in the classroom

I averted my eyes from the child jumping off his seat and falling on the floor, crawling around, disturbing other children's singing in my music class.

I told my students, "Those who sing and sign get to drum or dance." Most children followed my example, ignoring the one out of place. We drummed and danced without him.

Months before the end of school this spring he was drumming and dancing with the others. Cooperation slowly replaced defiance.

Prior to taking the new "let it be" tack, I would have intervened by removing him from the group. That seldom helped. The best intervention I have found is like seeding our pasture. You just do it, everywhere, and let it be. In the classroom setting, I give each child attention, and then do my best to let them be.

I give each a smile or a pat on the shoulder upon entering my music room. I don't distinguish good from bad, or a history of chasing, tripping, and hitting from a history of following classroom directions.

I've noticed that this leads to fewer disruptions and less attention given to those children who aren't following directions. If I don't focus on the kids who are out of line, the children who are participating won't either.

I've tried to learn the value of what I would have previously called wasteful extravagance. Now I'm looking at unexpected beneficial rains this spring greening up even the most saline pasture areas. A little rain extravagance in Big Horn County is OK with me.

See comments and previous columns:     http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/