Go Directly to Jail

I have commented here before about my book-ended career--teaching college English at the start of my career, and then again at the conclusion of my career. In between those two book-ends lie volumes. Most of them have HEALTH CARE written on the spine.

One of the most interesting projects that I was involved with relating to health care was improving health care in county jails in Pennsylvania. Funded by one of the federal programs that REALLY worked (the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration under President Carter), this program was sponsored by the American Medical Association. The project team there developed standards for county jails that would be applied to those county that WISHED to be certified. In other words, it was not a mandatory program.

At the time, there had been a spate of lawsuits under the Eighth Amendment. Here is what that amendment says:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

County jails had been sued for cruel and unusual punishment for denying or providing inadequate health care to inmates. So, to protect themselves, some county jails were anxious to demonstrate their compliance with voluntary standards.

Whether denial of health care, or inadequate health care, constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment"--I will let you decide. Suffice it to say, the U.S. has a distinctly vindictive bent where incarceration is concerned. The current statistics tell part of the story. A recent article in the Boston Review provides these numbers: the U.S. has 5 % of the world's population, yet has 25 % of the world's inmates. Read the following passage from that article.

"Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan."

But I digress. Back to visiting county jails.

As I began to go around to visit Pennsylvania's county jails, I noticed something unusual about the appearance of these old county jails. See if you notice anything--here are three such jails.




What do you notice about them? They look alike, you say? Well, I made the same observation. In fact, I said--on one visit--these jails look like they were all designed by the same architect. BINGO! I was right--some architect developed this quasi-castle look, and went around to counties in the late 1800s building jails. Many of these jails are no longer occupied as jails, but that's what I was visiting when this program was running.

To test the standards, we had to interview many people in a county jail--from the warden, through the intake personnel, to the correctional officers (COs), to the doctor and nurses in the jail, to the inmates. We would pick a random sample of inmates and ask them things like: when you came into jail, did you get something in writing telling you how to get health care? how do you get health care? have you ever had a health care request denied. Etc.

We were trained NOT to make any promise to an inmate--no taking messages out, or doing any favors. I also decided I would never ask an inmate why he (usually he, but sometimes she) was in "there." I encountered one young inmate who scoffed when I asked if he got something in writing--nah, he sneered, I can't read. And he said it with pride. Oh, my.

I broke my rule on not asking why an inmate was in only once. Usually inmates were younger men, but this one black man was in his mid 50s. And he quoted poetry and was very urbane. I was curious and asked. Well, he said, I was "Chesterized." What? Turns out, there was a murder in a known bad section of a Pennsylvania county, and the police grabbed the first black man they found. Was he guilty? I don't know, although I am sure he was not innocent.

I made several special trips during this project. One was for the U.S. Marshall Service--when I was asked to go to a county jail that housed federal prisoners in transit. The county in question had a horrible jail where inmate health records were kept on 3 by 5 cards, where meds from inmates long gone were piled up in the warden's safe, and where psychiatric cases were put naked into cells with nothing but a bare foam rubber mattress. Needless to say, that county jail was roundly castigated in my report.

I also visited several other state prisons, including Graterford the year before they had massive riots.

Finally, when I had left working for our state medical society, and had gone to work for the state health department, I had one more occasion to examine prison health. An inmate had died in a state prison, and the superintendent didn't know what kind of investigation to conduct. So he asked the Secretary of Health for help. Since I had done jail health surveys in my prior job, the Secretary asked me to investigate.

What I found was that the inmate had gone on a hunger strike. And he had stopped drinking. Rather than order a psychiatric evaluation, or order the inmate be intubated, the doctor prescribed showers. Showers? Yes. The doctor reasoned that if the inmate had to shower several times a day, he would have to drink water. It turns out the reason the inmate died was due to dehydration. In my report, I indicated the doctor had exercised poor judgement--I don't know about you, but I never DRINK the water I am showering in! I couldn't imagine that an inmate bent on refusing food and water would suddenly start drinking in the shower.

A book-ended career, indeed. The volumes in between--well, sometimes it's fun to take one off the shelf and browse a little.

Huh? Wha. . .?

Our photos from Greece arrived yesterday. Between my husband and me, we took almost 800 photos of our trip to Greece. I had downloaded them all, done some cropping--you know, getting rid of that awkward head that popped into the photo at the last minute--and then uploaded the best of the best (from both of our photo sets) to Kodak Gallery. I can't say enough nice things about this website and its service. I have stored many galleries of photos there, sent emails to family members and friends, and shared our vacation over the years. I have also taken to ordering the ones I want reproduced in living Kodak color, at very reasonable prices.

That's what arrived yesterday. So, today, I thought I'd head over to a nearby craft store and buy some small photo albums to store them in.

Once filled, the new albums would take their places along with the existing array of albums, each color indicating a different trip.




I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a hand-made sign in the store. Woo hooo--a sweet little sale. So, I picked up 6 new albums, two of each color and headed for the check-out counter.


Now the fun began.

First, the young sales clerk rang them up at $1 each, for $6 (actually $6.36 when you add in our state sales tax). I had purchased two other items, so when I looked at the bill, I puzzled a bit--then said--the sign says these are on sale. Oh, she said--the $1 is the sale price. I frowned, and said--no, the sale price is 40% off. Yes, she said (brightly), the $1 is 40% off the regular price. Hmmmm--I said--OK, I will pay, but I will go back and check the sign.

So I did. AHA! I was right. So, I took the sign down (yup, I did) and walked back to the check out counter, waited in line until my turn, and then showed her the sign.




Oh, she said, I think that means they are NOW $ 1. No, I persisted (believe me, by now I was PERSISTING). I said--the sign clearly says WAS $1, now $0.60. So, she called in the manager and asked her to check the ticket price. The manager came back and said--the ticket price is $1.99, so the sale is $1.



No, I said--40% off $1.99 does not make $1. Look--I pointed out--the tag on the one album. It says $1.99 value, A.C. M**re price $1.



The manager sighed and said--well, that's the old price. Huh? Wha. . .? Then she said to the clerk--go ahead and ring them up for her at $0.60 an album. Oh yeah, right--that's the sale price. YOUR OWN SIGN SAYS SO.

So, the clerk said--this is going to get complicated. Going to??? I thought. So she asked for my name, my address--which I gave. I had already decided I was NOT going to give my SS # nor my first born. Then she rang out $6.36, gave that to me, and then she rang up 6 albums at $.060 each. In other words, she couldn't just refund me the difference. She had to cancel the first sale, refund me, then ring a new sale at the CORRECT price.

Well, I'll tell you--it may have been a measly $2.40 (plus sales tax, of course) but I got the albums at the advertised price.

Of course, had I not been such a pain, the store would have had an advertised sale price that they would NOT have been giving to their customers. Huh? Wha. . .?

Sweet Music

We were visiting Boothbay Harbor in Maine, exploring a little shop when we first heard it. This was more than 10 years ago (before we began going to Europe for vacations). Maine is a great state to visit (and I even harbor the occasional thought of retiring there). But that's not what this story is about.

Stepping into this little shop, I heard the most perfect melody playing over the store's sound system. It was an instrumental number, something I had never heard before. I was so taken with the melody that I asked the store clerk what tape they had on--she told me, and I looked up the name of the particular number playing. It was from Andrew Lloyd Weber's newly composed Requiem, the Pie Jesu portion of the mass. Only later did I hear it again, and realize that in fact it was a choral number.

I was reminded of this first hearing when my husband and I attended church today--the Pie Jesu was one of the featured pieces of special music. It always brings a tear to my eye--it is just so exquisitely written. If you don't know it, here is Sarah Brightman singing it (it was for her as original featured soloist that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the piece):



There have been other pieces of perfect music that have captured me from the first hearing. I loved the series on the Civil War directed by Ken Burns, and fell in love with the one piece they used repeatedly throughout that series: Ashokan Farewell, written by Jay Unger.



Music, of course, has this incredible ability to insinuate itself into the very fiber of our beings. Years ago, when I was invited to go and see a stage version of "Amadeus" I warned my theater companion that I was likely to cry, if I heard any of Mozart's music. Sure enough--the opening strains of one of Mozart's pieces began, and I dissolved into tears.

One of my favorite movie scenes comes from "The Shawshank Redemption" when Andy Dufresne locks himself in the office, and plays an aria from "The Marriage of Figaro" over the prison loudspeaker system. If you've never seen it, go here.

Sweet music.

Shakespeare makes multiple references to music in his poems and plays. This quatrain sums up the power of music:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Merchant of Venice Act V, scene i

Let the sounds of music creep in our ears. Ah, sweet music.

Any favorite piece of sweet music that moves you?

It's Beginning to Look. . .

. . .a lot like an office!

Remember several months back, when I wrote about the grumbling rumble around the office that professors were going to be forced to GET NEW FURNITURE? Oh, the howls and gnashing of teeth. What about academic freedom? We need our space to be. . .ours. We want to live the way we want to live. Et cetera, et cetera, and so on and so forth.

You can refresh your memory here, and also see the photos of how things looked.

Last week, I went to campus and unpacked my moving boxes and generally arranged things. At that point, I was the first one in our three person office to get my work done. I think the results look just fine.



Today, I checked back to do a little finishing up. One of my office mates has unpacked her items. Not bad.

The other office mate plans to go in next week and unpack hers. I hope so; some of her boxes were sitting on my desk. Truth be told--I am not using the desk during the summer, so no harm.

Now the real coup was the senior professor who grumbled the most. His space was the one featured in the first photo in my previous post.

Here's the scene when the professor was half-way done. I asked if I could take a photo--and he protested--I am NOT done. Well, I said--I will take another one when you are done.

So, first you have the absolute BEFORE photo, then the midway photo, then finally the TADA all done photo.

While I can chuckle at all the fuss--I do understand it. After all, my colleagues who work full time spend a LOT of time in their office spaces, so appearances and comfort matter a great deal.

We are all defined by our space--we define it, it defines us. It's a symbiotic relationship.

R-A-I-N-I-N-G

No, no--you're quite right. The fact that it is raining here in central PA is NOT news-worthy. And, please understand, I don't claim that it is. It is ONLY note-worthy. You see, a bit more than a week ago, I washed ALL the windows in the house, inside and out. See how clearly you can look through the front window?


Since then, we have had rain almost every day. Not all day, mind. But showers on most days. Today's rain is actually heavier than some days. Heavy enough for this stream to emerge from my neighbor's downspout.

My flowers along our front sidewalk look bedraggled, barely able to lift their heads.

This is NOT a stream--but the walkway to our pool area.

This poor bird--one of the ubiquitous house finches that we have all around here--hangs on to the shutter under the eave of my neighbor's house.

A few more sit on the down-spout.
And yet one more bird sits on our copper feeder, with its small roof overhang.
The picnic table and plants are drenched.
And the bird bath gets a free refill.

I should have known that we would have several days of rain--after all, I washed all the house windows. The other surefire way, it seems, to attract rain is to wax the family cars. With my powers, I had best head out to California and help the folks there.

Romance at Twin Pines

If this were a movie, or maybe even a Nancy Drew book (not a Hardy Boys), it would be titled "Romance at Twin Pines."

Since I promised, in my last blog, here's the story of how my husband and I met.

It was the summer of 1965. I had just completed my junior year in college; my parents had returned from Africa--having been gone for 5 years. And I was looking for a summer job. My parents were planning to go around the U.S. giving missionary talks at churches. So I needed a job where I would be able to live and work. I am not sure exactly how I learned about this job, but I heard that a local church camp needed a craft teacher. Well, I can do that--I thought. So I applied.

As it happens, this church camp had been founded, in part, by my husband's grandfather, and father, and was sponsored by the church my husband attended as a youth. And, as it happens, he was a counselor for the first week of boys' camp. So that is how we met.

Oh, but there's so much more to this story. You see, even though we knew each other's names--after all, we were co-workers, we really didn't click. In addition to being the craft teacher, I also helped lead the singing at the chapel services. The camp had a lovely outdoor chapel, so all the morning worship times were held outdoors. I had picked a song that involved some motions--singers standing when it was their turn. I divided the group into two segments--and when it came time for the side where the counselors were sitting to sing--they produced a paltry sound. I mentioned that--maybe, if the counselors would sing up, that side would do better.

S-l-o-w burn. The counselors, led by my husband, decided to get even with me. He went out to a local store, and bought a cardboard plaque. This isn't the same plaque--but the words are EXACTLY what that one said.

Yup--you read it correctly: EVEN A FISH WOULDN"T GET IN TROUBLE IF HE KEPT HIS MOUTH SHUT!

I was incensed, non-plused, and speechless. Fume, fume. I don't know if the battle escalated, but I was really mad. So, we had this low-grade rivalry going.

Then came game night--Thursday night. We were playing Cabin Hunt--the point of the game was for one cabin to hide, the other to hunt. But this time, it was counselors against campers, and that's how my husband and I ended up on the same team. And, for some unknown reason, we decided to hide so well that the campers wouldn't find us. A particular detail my husband recalls is that we decided to wear dark clothing, but I didn't have a suitable dark shirt, so he loaned me one of his. This detail will become important later in the story. On the camp grounds were many lovely tall pine trees, including twin pines, their branches within ten feet of each other, reaching majestically toward the sky. Up we climbed. All the way to the top. Each in our own tree. Completely out of sight of campers below.

We watched the campers scamper back and forth, unable to find us. And, after a bit, we got to talking. We talked, and talked. Finally, by game's end--we had not been found, climbed down, raced to the base victoriously. And we had ended our rivalry.

The next night was Sleep Out. Campers and counselors trooped out to the ball field with their sleeping bags. First, there was a campfire service, and then the non-counselor staff was to return to the main camp. I stayed behind, sitting with my former rival, talking some more. And, after campers had fallen asleep, I sang to him--the song "There is a Ship" which was popular at the time, sung by Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary. (And that's why he gave me the first gift he ever gave me--the album by Peter, Paul and Mary which included that song.)

Finally, one of the adults--I mean a real adult--came out and shooed me back to my cabin.

The next morning, Saturday, campers and counselors left for home, including my new found love. I got in the shower that morning, and stood there and bawled my eyes out, convinced I would never see him again. And then on Saturday evening, the one free time before new campers came in, he showed up. He asked me--what would your boyfriend say if I asked you out. (At the time, I was "dating"--nothing serious--someone else.) My answer--why don't you ask me what I would say?

I said YES. We went to Twin Kiss and got icecream sundaes.

The next date we went to Mt. Gretna and saw a performance of "The Sound of Music."

And, as they say, the rest is history!

Oh, the shirt? Well, I was wearing the perfume I wore at the time--"Blue Grass"--and the scent lingered on it. That particular detail my husband remembered--and had to remind me of, as I tell this story.

The Road to Memory Lane

So, it is Saturday afternoon, and my husband and I are out for a drive. Our destination: Memory Lane. Oh, not really Memory Lane, as in an address--but Memory Lane of our relationship. This summer marks 43 years that we have been together. We met about this time of the year 43 years ago. More about that in the next post.

Now, we are driving toward Mt. Gretna. Not far off the PA Turnpike, this destination instantly transports us back to the place we had our second official date.


We are going to the Jigger Shop. This trip is a once a year event. The Jigger Shop is a local treasure, having operated for more than 100 years. We don't go more than once a year (ok, maybe some years twice) for reasons which will become clear.


Mt. Gretna was originally intended to be a place for the PA National Guard to hold summer exercises, but it became so much a favored vacation site, that the Guard relocated. A local creek was dammed, and the resulting lake still provides a place for summer swimming. Cabins sprouted up, and in 1899 a camp meeting was established there, built on the Chautauqua model.

Mt. Gretna oozes charm. And the crowning destination is the Jigger Shop--rustic in appearance, it is a draw all summer long.

While there are tables indoors, and under the awning, the preferred place to sit is under the trees. Tables have red plastic table cloths, and the seating deck has been built around mature trees. Sunlight filters through, providing all the decor one could wish for.

The cuisine (the reason for limiting our trips) is not cardiac approved: bar-b-q pork sandwiches, fries, root beer and birch beer (with complimentary refills), rootbeer floats, and JIGGERS--butterscotch or chocolate. What's in a jigger? Well, ice-cream, butterscotch or chocolate syrup, lots of goopy whipped marshmallow topping, and the secret ingredient-- jigger nuts. Got me--I have NO idea how they make them.

Listen--you can just hear the soft sound of ANTICIPATION!

Decor--by Mother Nature.

When we finish eating, we stroll over to the next-door whimsey shop. In past years, this place has been crammed with charming knick-knacks. I was most disappointed to see this year that cheap trinkets have replaced the whimsey. Maybe trinkets sell faster!

A last look-around. All over Mt. Gretna are lovely plants. I have NO idea what this flowering bush is.

Are any of you taking trips down memory lane this summer?

Do tell.