Image 1: Students morning Routines in Boston Public Schools

Image 2: My high school

Image3: Nashua Street Jail in Boston, Ma

Image 4: Zero Tolerance Policy in schools

...but that's what having a Vision is all about, right? 
Image from: cultivatingyoungmindsathome.com

“I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions” – Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye

I brought a lot of guilt into my space today. I felt guilty for not having yet finished writing an essay due today, guilty for feeling behind. I felt guilty for having to set aside time to sit when I hadn’t finished all my other work; for not managing my time well enough to give all my work the equal attention it deserved. Everything seemed to serve as a reminder of this guilt; the breeze that made my attempts at keeping my papers together futile, the people who stopped to talk to me reminded me of the distractions I allowed to take precedence in my life. I began to really think about the way we impose emotions in a space. I thought about the way I perceived the weather almost as a malicious bully, working against me. While I doubt the weather itself had very little mal-intent toward me… I resented it, and the almost playful way the wind would pick up my homework and scatter it across the grass, as if to tease my attempts at being a good student.  What on earth are you studying for? I imagined the bully to say, giving some of my index cards a hefty toss away from me, and laughing as I scrambled to catch my precious study cards.

Glowing viens of shist like the sparkeling wetness on a cow's nose. The formal grass carpet is overwhelmingly uniform and ridgid in comparison with the overgrowth, even in fall, of the Harriton House garden. Yet again, I find myself alone in these four walls. The vault of the sky is my roof. The House property, meanwhile, buzzes with life. Cows loll in the pasture, the air swirls with insects and plants sprawl wildly, brushing each other's stalks with tender fingers. Inside the cloisters, a breeze tickles the golden ends of my hair. Mechanical sounds are in the air. Chattering fills the space from the mouths of idle girls. Sunlight bypasses my eyelids, straight into my brain.

This video was something a friend shared via facebook last night that related really deeply to my Memo topic, so I wanted to share it with you. 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWtDMPaRD8&feature=player_embedded)

My latest observation at the Miller Memorial bench really put into perspective how isolated the spot really was. True for the most part the spot and the surrounding area was not as lonely as it had been.  Seeing how it was early afternoon on a day with fairly warm weather for an October day, I saw plenty more hikers, dog walkers, and runners (especially one who streaked across my field of vision 4 times in a 20 minute period) than there had been on my previous observation periods. Yet while it was more common to see people nearby than before, surprisingly there were huge spans of time where I was completely alone in the area and quite frankly enjoyed it. It was quiet and peaceful and made it hard to believe I was close to a busy road nearby and with a hugely populated college campus no more than a football field behind me. I was not only one who seemed to finally accept this spot as a quiet little bubble to get away from it all. When I first arrived, there was another observer, a local resident it seemed like, on a bench nearby, and it was only my arrival that forced him to reevaluate his position and leave, his content isolation apparently shattered by myself. But for me the highlight of the hour ( and perhaps of all my observations so far) was seeing a fox move out of the bushes bordering the Nature Trail and quietly slip back in after a few minutes.

Ideas of motherhood are often tools that incarcerated mothers use to help them survive imprisonment, but, they fail to realize just how many barriers are imposed on them that inhibit their ability to be mothers once they are released.