The Big House

C

In Jefferson City, Missouri (1836-2004) open now for tours.   Not quite escape proof:  in April  1967 James Earl Ray escaped in a leaving bread truck and went to Canada for a year.
Then in April 1968 made his way to Memphis to shoot and kill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Caught in London shortly after ( for an escapee he seemed to have adequate traveling cash !)   Back to the Big House.

Turns out that 1/4 of the worlds prisoners are held in US jails, some 2.4 million --  38% black and 34% white.  Of course, blacks are overrepresented compared to their percentage in society.  Through the processes of  "drug wars", "tough on crime",  "three strikes and your out", and tough law directives the cells are filling up, many innocent of the crime or charged with minor drug offenses.  It used to be that rehabilitation was the goal, but  now just basic housing seems to be considered adequate especially with the privatization of  many facilities; with solitary isolation being  used on unruly or gang-suspected prisoners.  Some 25,000 are in isolated  (6ft X 9ft) cells most in super max prisons, many mentally ill.  Cruel and  unusual punishment?   The record for solitary isolation is a fellow in Louisiana (Angola prison) who has been held for some 43 years :  https://medium.com/amnesty-international/solitary-review-albert-s-treatment-should-be-confined-to-history-e01a0d95bf1a  .
  It is hard to even imagine what effect this would have on a person . . .

Seems to me that a progressive society must attend to the needs of all of its citizens ,  even those who have gone wrong in the eyes of the courts. Fair play and dignity must lead ,otherwise it's just another ineffective and uncaring system bound for failure.

Time is in the Way

Exhale •

Going through it
The long duration of dark
The cold winter night
The silent day
When will I know my reason
When can I enter into peaceful solitude
Life is but a blink of the eye
A bat of the lash
If you want to know
I'm chasing the wind
And will soon be mown down
By the sharp blade
Come on spring
Make me new again
I set and wait for both

Anonymous


I wish I could attribute  the source of this 1 and 0 rendering, the magical woods, but no.  So much beauty presented in this vast digital world of possibility. .  But I appreciate the effort of whoever put finger to key for us to enjoy.

Far Away in Time and Space

It takes a little planning: design a spacecraft and attached lander which will travel 4 billion miles in space to a comet 2.5 miles across, 4.5 billlion years old, moving at 40,000 miles per hour. Plan on a 9 year trip to reach the comet from earth launch.

This is the comet orbiting the sun in a large elliptical path.  The Rosetta craft with its lander Philae reached the comet and launched the lander to the comet on November 11, 2014 by the European Space Agency at Darmstadt Germany.

Lander Philae took 7 hours to drop 14 miles to the comet surface.  The 220 pound lander weighed as much as a piece of paper due to the small gravity of the comet. Philae bounced thrice because devices which were to secure it to the surface failed to deploy.  First bounce took two hours to hit the surface again. Upon final bounce, the lander ended up in a partially shaded area which prevented solar panels from charging the battery system..  But it was able to complete about 80% of scientific tests (including finding carbon in the atmosphere) before the batteries ran down.  It may be a wait until spring before the lander is oriented such that the sun will reach the charging panels and re- invigorate Philae.  For sure when it nears our sun there should be sufficient light to recharge and continue testing and research on the comet.

These are the experiments that the lander is equipped with :

Lander Instrumentation

 First photo from the comet's surface.  One lander leg is visible sticking up since Philae landed on the other two legs in a shadowy place.  It was still able to perform experiments and relay the results to Rosetta, then a 30 minute trip to earth with the data.

 Mockup of what lander should have looked like upon landing.

Orbiting Rosetta

The equations for elliptical orbits  are fairly basic, even including the mass of the orbiting objects.  But to "slingshot" that object around earth, mars, and the sun, in order to build up the velocity necessary to reach an object 4 billion miles out in 9 years amazes me.  Bravo . . .

Deserts

    Having finished reading a book given me at Christmas  (slow reader)  about Thomas Edward Lawrence and his leadership of the Arab revolt during World War I, I wondered how Iraq was formed of Mesopotamia and Syrian lands after the war. The Arabs were promised Syria from the start   --- "To Damascus" was the battle cry ---   but, as it worked out, the French got Syria and Lebanon and the British formed Iraq and took Palestine as  "protectorates".  Arab Prince Faisal ibn Hussein was installed as King of Iraq in 1921 to placate the Arabs.

 

    Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (1868-1926) was of English gentry (father was a steel magnate) with a degree from Oxford, explorer, mapper, archeologist, outlier of her time. Red hair, green eyes, chain smoker, she wandered the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) mapping and photographing ancient ruins  SOME  PHOTOS.

    She was a British spy in the Iraq area under the guise of archeologist so that the enemy Turks (Ottomans) would allow her access to the areas.*  Her maps were of great value to Lawrence and others heading into Syria and Iraq.  She traveled the deserts with Arab guides and aides, knew the Arabic language along with Farsi and German, and was respected by the Arab tribal leaders  as she moved about. She helped draw up the western and southern boundaries of Iraq (some say disregarding 2,000 years of tribal sectarian and nomadic occupation of the areas to the west), and, living in Baghdad, helped install Faisal as King. It is said that she died chaste, although I don't see how anyone could know that. Her first male interest was rejected by father and her second killed at the British disaster at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles.

    While in Baghdad, where she later lived, she established the Iraqi Museum and collected  antiquities for preservation.  She died and is buried there after, some say, too many sleeping pills in1926 at 57 years. 

Churchill, Bell, and Lawrence at the  Arab bureau in Cairo in 1921.  Much fun was had as Churchill fell off of his camel. The maps of Iraq, Palestine, and Syria were being finalized to the advantage of French and British interests.

 

Bell and T.E. Lawrence after the war.

*  " In a 1920 letter home, she described her method of collecting information. She and a male colleague were invited by a leading figure in Baghdad to meet merchants and caravan drivers in a coffee house. 'I do them a good turn whenever I can and they respond by coming in to see me whenever they return from Syria or Arabia and telling me what they've heard and seen. The tea party was delightful. The walls of the diwan are mellow with decades of tobacco smoke, the furniture, benches around the room and one table for us at the upper end... We talked Arab polities with great gusto for an hour and a half... I do like them so much. They are to me an endless romance. They come and go through the wilderness as if it were a high road, and they all, most politely, treat me as a colleague, because I, too, have been in Arcadia (wilderness). When they talk of tribes or sheiks or watering places, I don't need to ask who and where they are. I know; and as they talk I see again the wide Arabian horizon.' "    Ref: "Gertrude Bell and Iraq" by Barbara Furst    READ MORE

    I am reminded of a statement given by Faisal to Lawrence in the David Lean film "Lawrence of Arabia : "No Arab likes the desert. There is nothing in the desert."  (Little did he know of the oil under the desert.) The film, by the way, follows the reality of the Arab revolt and the exploits of Lawrence pretty closely.

    Seems all of the chances for individual historical influence have been taken.  We are left with canoeing around the earth or walking backwards across Death Valley!  

    Where is a place where others have not trodden or seen before us?