Tag: Clarice

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.

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.

Continue reading “A Day in the Life of a Female Inmate” →