I really like this letter from J.V.G because I see how our society is obsessed with labels every day, everywhere I go. In class I’m a student, at my apartment I’m a roommate, at home I’m a sister, daughter and friend. In one of my other classes we’re talking about the ‘intersectionality’ of labels and how someone can’t be defined by just one label but often is. For example, one of the readings we had to do gave narratives about three different individuals who crossed the boarders of labels — as all of us do. One of the stories was about an elderly black woman who was shot to death because she refused to be escorted from her apartment, which she was evicted from. There was no reason for the policeman to blow off her hand with a shotgun then fire again to kill her. What the author said was that the policeman was probably thrown off by forceful manner, poor social class, black skin and older age that he didn’t know how to react. The rest of the essay describes how people who are labeled as ‘disabled’ lose privileges in life, even more so if that person is also colored.
I think our society is obsessed with putting labels on people because it helps us better understand each other and our roles in society. For example, if someone is labeled a jock the stereotypes that usually come along with that label include: strong, dumb, and popular. Jocks are usually perceived as being dumber than other students because they spend a lot of time in practice or games; also, they may not have to work as hard in school because they know they can receive scholarships to schools that want to recruit them. But judging someone on the notion that they are a jock without getting to know them is being ignorant of who that person really is. With social networking sites such as facebook and myspace, people are placed in further categories based on their labels. I don’t understand why it’s so important to put up on display whether you’re “in a relationship” or “single” but everyone is always interested.
Labels help us decide whether someone is important enough to spend time getting to know and having them in our lives. If I met a ‘convict’ I would immediately put them in the category of people I wouldn’t have an interest in building a relationship with but reading a lot of these letters has really made me realize that a lot of the guys at Rockview are very intelligent and are worth time getting to know.

I really relate to this letter because my dad was nothing that a man should be. He fails at the first guideline C. gives for what men should be, respectful. For years I watched him emotionally abuse my mom and act like a selfish jerk. The one thing I'm thankful for is that he showed me what I don't want in a husband. I think the best thing he did for our family was leave because we are so much better off without him. It's sad that it took a number of years in prison for C. to learn what a man should be and I wonder if that's what it would take for my dad to realize how far from a real man he was acting. I agree that men get the idea of how to act through the media and are shaped by movies, television and music since the early years of their lives. Today you can't flip through radio stations without hearing music that demoralizes women or watch a tv show without seeing commercials that reduce women to sexual objects. Reducing someone to an object is the first step in naturalizing violence against them. Because so many women are portrayed as sexual objects in the media, it makes it seem ok for men to view them that way in real life. Children growing up today see celebrities like Chris Brown and Charlie Sheen treat women terribly and unless their parents take the time to talk to them about these issues, kids will view this behavior as acceptable. It's not only a man's job to be respectful and compromising. I believe men and women should be equally responsible for being compassionate, loyal and every other trait C. listed. Sure men like to feel like the protectors and it's nice when they pull your chair out and open doors for you... i'll never complain about that!... but it takes work from both sides for a successful relationship. The lines of how a man should act and how a woman should act have blurred in today's society because gender roles are continuously changing. You kind of just have to go through trial and error to find the best mix. My favorite line of the whole letter is "A man will shower his love with gifts and compliments without there being a reason". I think guys should follow this rule more often, remember: a happy wife, a happy life.

I don’t really agree with what you say about the upper class working hard to get to where they are. Sure there are probably people who’ve worked hard to get to where they are but the truth is, it’s really hard to move out of your social class. A lot of people in the upper class were able to take short cuts and have advantages that a lot of the working class will never receive so they’ll continue to remain in the working class. I think that most of the upper class is able to maintain their position of power because someone in their past worked hard to get there. A lot of businessmen or business owners didn’t just start their own companies and become successful, it’s taken generations to get to the place a lot of these mega companies are at and it seems unfair that the people being rewarded now didn’t have to work as hard as workers who came before them. A lot of successful people were able to complete Doctorates and PhDs because their family had the money and connections to make that happen. Most of the students who get into Ivy League schools are part of legacies and have parents or grandparents that donate thousands, sometimes millions of dollars to the school. If you’re on an admissions board you’re going to look out for yourself — which a lot of life works that way — you will fight to take the best candidates that will benefit the school financially so you can continue to get paid.
I think professional athletes shouldn’t be placed in the same category because you can see how hard they work every time you turn on a game. Most professional athletes have spent all of their life working to get to where they are today, playing professionally. I agree that athletes contribute to the unequal distribution of wealth but that’s such a small percentage of our society. They get paid the high amounts of money they do because it’s rare to be able to compete at such a high level, and it’s partly societies fault for being infatuated by what is considered popular in our society.
I completely agree with your last paragraph. The people who cheat their way to success and exploit other people of lower class don’t deserve the money and life styles they’re living but is there really anything we can do about it? Take THON for example, to become an overall or even a captain you have to have the right recommendations and know the right people. I’m not saying that captains and overalls don’t work hard because they do, but just the way the system works is a good example of how having the right connections gives you the edge over competition.

I really liked this letter. It was surprising that at the beginning M said “now I am an inmate who lives with murderers, rapists and thieves”, like he doesn’t belong in that category. He says later on that he didn’t want to focus on the crime he committed in his earlier letter and I admire that, it’s interesting that he doesn’t let that define him and he doesn’t want sympathy. I think it’s only natural that we wanted to know more about the writer, like what gives him the authority to write about compassion when it seems he had none when he committed a crime that put him in jail for life. Even though he doesn’t wan to be defined by that crime it’s a major part of his life that shapes him and defined his future.
Around the middle of the letter I got my answer about why we can take M’s opinions on compassion seriously. He’s ashamed of what he’s done and feels so guilty that he doesn’t even want to go into detail about his crime out of respect for the victim’s family. Sam told this story in class today and reading it again I feel the same remorse as I did hearing it in class. It seems that M is the example of a political figure looking to make a statement on crime to get reelected. The author puts an enormous amount of blame on himself, calling himself a selfish coward.
I don’t ever think he can get over the crime that he was a part of; he didn’t commit it or even let it happen because it probably would’ve happened with or without him. But the author can learn from his past and only improve his future. Reading his letters has helped me learn to be more accepting of people and not stereotype or judge someone at first glance. It takes really getting to know the truth to make a decision.
I really appreciate M writing this letter. He seems like a strong person who, even though he beats himself up every day about his past, knows he will make the rest of his future worthwhile. It’s sad that it took being sentenced to life in prison to realize this and learn about himself, but maybe it’s just another example of the invisible strings working. If M hadn’t had such a rough childhood, or his parents had been more loving and supportive he could be free. But what are you gonna do? You can’t change the past.

I think that this is such a cool story! Personally, I would hate to live in a place where the sun only shines for 5 hours sometimes but it would definitely be a cool experience. The festival the town has created seems like a good way to cope with the darkness and the light shows and the illuminations of the landmarks are so beautiful. It almost looks magical but living without the sun can be really depressing. I don’t think sitting in front of the therapeutic light box for 15 minutes every day would provide the cheery attitude adjustment that getting out of the country would. It’s odd to think that a whole country is faced with the decision to stick it out and stay in Helsinki for the winter or take a vacation. I’m so used to the seasons changing and getting a days worth of sunlight that living in a place like Helsinki seems so exciting.
But I definitely agree that the winter is the most depressing time to get through. The cold and the darkness mixed together make it hard to get up in the morning or even leave my apartment. I can totally understand the reporter’s observation that people have bigger appetites and gain weight during the winter because it happens to me every year! But unlike a lot of citizens in Helsinki, I don’t really have the option of moving down south or across the country for the winter months to escape the cold/ darkness. I never really thought that was an option. So every year during winter the cold drives me inside to sit in front of my TV or computer, not go to the gym and eat instead. It’s like I’m hibernating, the extra layer of fat helps keep me warm during the winter then it takes forever to work it off and the cycle repeats itself. I hate these invisible strings. Maybe that’s why mostly everyone in California stays in shape, because carrying around extra weight during the summer is uncomfortable.
I can’t imagine a life without the sun — mostly because there wouldn’t be life. Even looking outside now it is completely dark and I have no motivation to leave my room. A lot of people don’t like to walk around outside at night because it feels dangerous, you can’t see if anything unexpected is coming. Helsinki doesn’t seem like a dangerous place though, it seems like the government has made a huge effort to calm people’s nerves and show them it’s not the end of the world to live in darkness. Thank god electricity was invented.

For some reason this subject makes me really uneasy. Sure 99.99 percent of the time strangers will help, but there’s still that .01 percent chance that a stranger won’t help and will actually try to hurt or take you. When we talked in class, Sam brought up the example of 7-year-old children walking less than a mile to school and how the risk of your child being abducted hasn’t increased or decreased in decades. We argued a lot in class about who would and wouldn’t let their children walk a mile to school but the only thing I could think about was why any parent would want to take that risk. Sure the odds are your child won’t be kidnapped but why would you even want to risk it? A child can’t be compared to anything else you’d risk giving up, like money in a poker game or even your life, but a child is something you’ve carried for 9 months and is a part of you. I would never want there to even be the slightest risk of my child being hurt, at least that’s how I feel.
That video is one of my worst nightmares. I would never forgive myself if I was walking with my son or daughter and turned around to find them gone. I think it’s a good thing that I’m scared by that video because it shows that there are people out there who would do something as bad as kidnapping a 4-year-old child. Even though it’s an extreme case, and the number of kidnappings in the U.S. is equal to the number of people who get struck by lightning, it does happen.
I understand Sam’s logic about walking around New York City alone and feeling safe because it’s such a large city, the odds of being attacked or mugged are in your favor. I feel safe walking around State College on the weekends because a couple years ago it was ranked one of the safest cities in America, but I know the more I walk around alone the higher my chances of something bad happening. Taking that risk is addicting, but I still would never let my child take that risk.

This is such a powerful letter. When I first started reading "Remember" I thought it was very different from a lot of the other letters I've read from lifers. While reading the beginning of this letter or poem I was getting angry because all I kept thinking about was the reason this inmate was in prison. Like all of the lifer letters I read I guessed he had killed someone — because I can't imagine another crime that would require anyone to get sentenced to life in prison — and was angered about how the author kept talking about himself. How he couldn't remember the last time any of his friends had come to visit or the last time he'd talked to his girlfriend or wife. What about the friends of the person he killed? What about that person's family and loved ones?? They have to go through the rest of their lives not being able to see that person because you took him from them. People choose not to visit or communicate with you.
Then I read the second part of the letter and began to understand that the author wasn't being selfish in stating that no one had come to visit him or sent him letters but making the point that that wasn't important. The important things to him aren't whether his girlfriend has forgiven him but if God has forgiven him. That's a really powerful idea and I think that in the 26 years the author has been behind bars he's done a lot of thinking. It's obvious that he regrets what he's done and probably wouldn't repeat his mistakes if he was released from jail. But because he knows there's no possibility of that happening he's gotten the opportunity to evaluate himself and turn to God for guidance. I'm not saying I believe in God or that I'd do the same thing if I was in his shoes but it just hit me how powerful this letter is and it's one of the shorter letters from a prison I've read.
I admire the author and am kind of envious of how sure he is that God will and probably already has forgiven him. Having that confidence is probably really comforting but getting to that point in your life when you can feel that takes a lot of work and self reflection (I think). Like Sam says, we're all going to die. But if you don't know what's going to happen after death it makes it a lot scarier. The author of this letter seems confident that he'll be fine after his death regardless of the decisions he's made in the past and that's so surprising to me because I haven't committed murder but I still question 'what happens next?'.

I thought this video was so funny and it looks ridiculous, like it’d be so obvious that you were part of a study, but in reality you can see examples of this type of conformity every day in society. For example, if I get home from class and my roommates are all watching a movie and eating pizza I’ll sit down and eat a slice even if I’m not hungry. Or if they’re all cleaning the apartment I’ll pick up some cleaning supplies and help out. Everyone conforms without even realizing it!
Sam said in the opening of this post, we are socialized about how to act in a wide range of social interactions. I completely agree with this statement but one thing he said in class today that I thought was really interesting was that people who don’t conform are considered sociopaths. I looked up the profile of a sociopath and one of the main features I found was lack of remorse, shame or guilt. I think those emotions are classic examples of how society has conformed us. There are certain behaviors or acts that we’ve been ‘programmed’ since a young age to feel guilty about or shameful about. I guess an extreme example would be the act of killing. At a young age children are taught about how violence is wrong and killing is unacceptable. When I think of serial killer and sociopath profiles one thing is always the same, cruelty to animals. That shows that they don’t feel the same remorse that most people would.
One interesting thing that was brought up in the post was about how we’re subtly taught how to use facial gestures to let someone know what we’re thinking and how we’re feeling. It reminded me of how people can specialize in facial expressions and hand gestures, like in that show ‘Lie to Me’ about a guy who works with the police to help analyze suspect’s reactions to questions. Even in these small circumstances, like lying, everyone generally has the same reaction, which is what makes it easy for specialists to notice the triggers. I think people conform because everyone wants to feel part of something. You don’t go through life thinking ‘I’m going to be alone’. As human beings it’s in our nature to want to feel a part of something else, it makes us more comfortable in our lives. Like we’re doing something right.

I think the best way to prevent this is through educating the students about sex. A high school student isn’t ready emotionally or financially to have a baby and a lot of teenagers aren’t thinking about the consequences of having sex before they do it. At my high school we were forced to go through sex education in health class and I think that put sex in perspective for a lot of students. Taking that class is another example of invisible strings shaping our lives. I don’t think these girls were destined to get pregnant or anything but there are so many factors that shape their decisions.

I watched The Pregnancy Pact on Lifetime with my roommates the other day and the story seems really similar to this one. In the movie, based on actual events in Massachusetts, a group of girls make a pact to get pregnant at the same time. Although the girls in Massachusetts weren’t as financially poor as many of the families in this Memphis story seem to be a lot of other similarities seem to pop up in both of the stories. One main reason the movie gave for the girls getting pregnant was because there was nothing else to do. Students who aren’t involved in after school activities and come home to an empty house are more likely to get into trouble. These circumstances are beyond their control but only to a certain point. The girls in Memphis could have chosen to not have sex or taken measures to prevent pregnancy.