"As of Tuesday, Nebraska’s prisons held 5,217 inmates, which is about 160 percent of their design capacity of 3,275" — Omaha World-Herald, August 2017 [1]. I circle the Nebraska State Penitentiary on an icy Friday night. From 13th Street, construction makes entrance impossible. My car, older than I, rumbles and huffs, nearly drowns out the voice of my phone’s navigation system, your destination is on the left, take the next left, you have arrived, you have arrived. Irony reac

Francisco Goya, The Madhouse (1812) | Photo credit: franciscogoya.com “On all sides, madness fascinates man . . . When man deploys the arbitrary nature of his madness, he confronts the dark necessity of the world” (Foucault 23). ***** During a recent lazy scroll through Buzzfeed, I clicked on an article entitled “Locked on the Psych Ward.” I’ve been interested in mental illness and its manifestations (and marginalization) for most of my life, ever since depression first coile

The Messiah will come as soon as the most unbridled individualism of faith becomes possible—when there is no one to destroy this possibility and no one to suffer its destruction; hence the graves will open themselves. (Franz Kafka, from “The Coming of the Messiah”1) The two things which etiquette requires we refrain from talking about in polite company—these being politics and religion—are the two things I mean to discuss here directly. At the outset, I feel compelled to admi

- A theoretical meditation in the form of Surya Namaskar A In a recent candlelight yoga flow class I teach every Thursday night at Lincoln’s Lotus House of Yoga, I found myself grimacing with self-recrimination as I guided my 12 students into eka pada rajakapotasana. Otherwise known as “pigeon,” the pose requires the student to bend one knee up to her wrist with the foot angled back to the hip, while the other leg extends straight out behind the practitioner on the mat. In th