Podcast: How to Pay for an Abortion

This is the podcast Jessica mentioned in rehearsal

In the premiere episode of Unladylike, Cristen and Caroline tackle one of life’s most unladylike practicalities: abortion. But even though one in three U.S. women will have an abortion, how much they cost is any uterus’ guess. We’ll hear from three women with radically different experiences paying for their abortions, and unpack the dollars and nonsense that determine our access to safe, legal abortions.

Bowling Alone

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital“. Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He describes the reduction in all the forms of in-person social interaction upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this decline undermines active civil engagement, which a strong democracy requires.

To illustrate why the decline in Americans’ membership in social organizations is problematic to democracy, Putnam uses bowling as an example. Although the number of people who bowl has increased in the last 20 years (1980-2000), the number of people who bowl in leagues has decreased. If people bowl alone, they do not participate in social interaction and civic discussions that might occur in a league environment.

Abstract from 1995 essay:

“The US once had an enviable society, but over the last two or three decades this civic society has shrunk, and more people are watching TV. Possible explanations for this trend include more women in the workplace, increased mobility of families and changing demographics.”

(Full Essay Here)

The End of An Era: The Demolition of Swiss Lanes

NB: This is the New Glarus bowling alley Rebecca mentioned in our conversation. It closed in 2013, prompting this loving, two-part story on the history of the bowling alley.

At night, as you drive through New Glarus on HWY 69, you feel that something isn’t quite right. Then you notice something is missing. Something that has greeted you for the past 58 years. The big neon bowling pin atop Swiss Lanes is no longer lit. The crowds all are gone, the seats in the restaurant all are empty.

Soon, the building will be demolished and hauled to a landfill. All that remains now are the memories of the nights spent at Swiss Lanes with friends, neighbors, classmates who gathered for bowling, perhaps a beer or a fountain Coke, good small town restaurant food, often cooked by the baby boomer generation’s mothers, who found part-time employment at Swiss Lanes.

Full Article Here

Related: A few Yelp reviews for Swiss Lanes

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

From Alcohol.org, an American Addiction Centers Resource

The original 12-step program has a significantly Christian basis. However, many AA programs change the wording to have more secular appeal.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Video: Life Inside a Woman’s Prison

http://www.oprah.com/video_embed.html?article_id=15110

A Day in the Life of a Female Inmate

by Hope Racine, From Bustle.com

Despite what television might lead us to believe, a day in the life of a woman in prison isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In the best-case scenario, it’s boring. But in the worst case, a female inmate can be subject to abuse, negligence, and harassment. If you’ve watched Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, you probably thought at one point that prison doesn’t seem too bad. Structure! Free food! Built-in friends! But the reality is far from ideal.

The Marshall Project: What is Prison Like for Women and Girls?

The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.

Fast facts:

• Nearly one-third of all the female prisoners in the entire world are in the U.S (more than 200,000).
• Prisoners who maintain close contact with family do better once they are released and have lower rates of returning to prison.
• About 60 percent of women in state prisons have children under 18.
• Females are the victims of one-third of all sexual abuse cases committed by prison staff, despite making up just 7 percent of the prison population.
• “Sarah Zarba was addicted to heroin when she was sent to jail, which did not help her with withdrawal symptoms. Getting off heroin can be dangerous. The number of people who have died from this is not tracked, but media reports show there have been at least 20 lawsuits filed between 2014 and 2016 that claim a prisoner died due to complications from opioid withdrawal.”

Full Article

Cap Times: Women’s prisons are overcrowded

Full Article

“(Capacity) is sort of like the speed limit. If you stay under the speed limit you shouldn’t have to worry about anything extraordinary, assuming it’s not raining. The more you go over the speed limit … things could start happening a whole lot faster.”

• Taycheedah Correctional Institute, the only medium-security and maximum-security prison for women in Wisconsin, is overcrowded and needs facility improvements
• The number of inmates in Taycheedah was around 700 in 2010, which already “felt crowded.” Now it is around 950. The building capacity is supposed to be 653.
• Female inmates make up the minority of Wisconsin corrections, with under 2,000 inmates compared to over 22,000 men.
• Maximum-security prisons “at capacity”: one inmate per cell
• Medium-security prisons “at capacity”: 20 to 50 percent of the cells to hold two inmates
• Two former prisoners allege that they saw or have heard that cells meant for two people have housed three or four inmates
• The dining facility was designed to accommodate about 400 inmates, the budget request says, but “unfortunately our current population is over 800.”
• Overcrowding makes it harder to get into prison programs that can help women shorten their sentences and reintegrate into society after their release

“I think it’s hard to actually portray it unless you’re there. It’s not even something that’s easy to describe … (The) oppressive nature of it all, it’s inhumane as it is, aside from them trying to cram you in like sardines.”

Jail vs. Prison, Probation vs. Parole

What is the NCAA?

The National Collegiate Athletic Association regulates the athletes of 1,268 North American institutions and conferences. It also organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

The NCAA is divides participating colleges and universities into three divisions (Division I, Division II, and Division III) based on school size, athletic funding, and number of athletic scholarships.

• Both Ohio State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison are Division I schools, with the most sports funding
• The NCAA Bowling Championship, unlike with most sports, has all three Divisions compete together
• The NCAA categorizes bowling as a winter sport. The Championships are held in April