For photos follow this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=102722&id=510568119&l=4a28dbf0ee
I am, it transpires, living in a museum. I knew my apartment was in the old part of town and had noticed that people who work here often wander around in period costume and demonstrate olde worlde crafts, but according to the website the Historic Town of Salem is in fact a bona fide museum. To explain, Winston-Salem used to be two separate towns, Salem being the part which the Moravians (Protestants who came over from what is now the Czech Republic) founded in 1766. Winston was founded in 1849, and grew into an important tobacco town when RJ Reynolds founded his first factory here, the home of Camel cigarettes. In 1913 the two towns were officially joined, but in what was Salem (now referred to as “Old Salem”) most of the original buildings have been preserved or restored, and it is in this “living history” district that I currently reside. For those northerners reading, imagine living in the middle of the American equivalent of Beamish (midlanders, think the Black Country Museum). There are tinsmiths, blacksmiths, shoemakers, gunsmiths, bakers and carpenters actually practicing their trades while interacting with visitors and dressing like the original Moravian settlers, and all on or around my street.
Living in Old Salem is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It really is very pretty (see pictures) and peaceful, and safe. There is also an excellent bakery 2 doors down from my house which sells traditional delicacies like Moravian cookies and sugar cake; a dense bread-like cake soaked in sugar syrup and topped with, well, sugar. Nothing to complain about there. On the other hand, it is a bit weird living in eighteenth century Americana-land, even if there are cars driving around and downtown is only a 10 minute walk away. Surreal is probably the best word to describe it. July 4th was a particularly trippy affair, as I stepped out of my house to be greeted by a reading of the declaration of independence, uniformed infantrymen firing muskets, horse-drawn carriages clip clopping past the house and women in large skirts playing games with wooden hoops. There was also a brass band playing “My Country Tis of Thee,” an American patriotic hymn (so I’m told) which confusingly has the same tune as God Save the Queen. I would’ve protested at such flagrant plagiarism had I not just heard the declaration of independence for the first time and realised that July 4th probably wasn’t the best day to be asserting British national pride. Turns out the Americans were really cross with us back then.
Shortly after I moved in I joined the numerous American tourists wandering around my live-in museum and learned the following fun facts which may or may not come in handy at pub quizzes:
1. George Washington spent 2 nights in the tavern on my street in 1791
2. The tin coffee pot at the end of my street is reportedly the largest in the world (see photos)
3. The Moravians in Old Salem were the first people in the US to celebrate 4th July
4. Moravians celebrate special religious occasions with a lovefeast, a service of prayers and hymns which also involves drinking coffee, eating sweetened buns and lighting candles.
5. The first ever Krispy Kreme store was in Winston-Salem, and the donuts were made using potato flour, which is an old Moravian custom
6. Just round the corner you can visit the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Art. For an exhibition of furniture from a very limited time period and geographical area tis surprisingly interesting…
Monday, 24 August 2009
Monday, 17 August 2009
Return to Death Row
Last time I did a capital defence internship I was dealing with appeals, so cases where the person we were defending had already been found guilty and put on death row. This time I’m working on pre-trial cases, and I’m learning a lot more about how the US justice system really works. For example, I hadn’t realised quite how much getting the death penalty is affected by politics and sheer luck. Not only does the DA (district attorney/ prosecutor) decide in each case whether or not to ask for the death penalty, but they also decide whether to offer the defendant a plea bargain, and if so what sentence to offer in return for a guilty plea. DAs don’t have to offer pleas at all and some rarely do as they’re more interested in chalking up lots of executions. (To give you an example, one DA was so keen to get death sentences in his county he’d give out golden lapel pins in the shape of a noose to assistant DAs on his team if they got someone executed. When you consider that most of those assistant DAs would love to take over the head DA’s job or become a judge one day, and that DAs and judges are elected, not appointed, you can see how those lapel pins could seem worth working for.) As a result, who gets the death penalty can become a bit of a lottery. If you’re charged with murder in a county with a particularly ruthless DA you’re looking at getting executed, whereas if you’d happened to kill the same person in exactly the same way in the next county along the DA there would be quite happy to offer you a plea, usually to life without parole. In the US life without parole means what it says on the tin – you’re never getting out of jail. Some would say life in jail must be worse than getting the death penalty, but when it comes down to it you’d be hard pushed to find anyone on death row who’d agree with that.
What this means in day to day life as a capital defender is that your first concern is making sure your client doesn’t get killed. In some cases, like the one I’ve been working on recently, that is pretty much all you’ve got to work on anyway – the client was caught on CCTV walking into a gas station, robbing the cashier and then shooting both her and some poor guy drinking his coffee in the café area. At first I thought this would be a fairly unrewarding case – I mean I’m against the death penalty but this guy killed two people in cold blood, so I didn’t expect to feel too sorry for him. But then I met him and his family, looked into his case and started to feel a bit differently. He’s younger than I expected – he was 19 at the time of the crime and is 21 now, and surprisingly he’s a really nice kid, not the smartass, nasty thug I expected. He’s polite, softly spoken, and pretty clueless about the gangs his older cousins are allegedly involved in (although he’d never tell you that). He was brought up in the projects by his grandma who, ironically, was a tireless campaigner for cleaning up the neighbourhood she and her grandkids lived in. She and her neighbours would go out at 3am taking the licence plates of cars driving through the area to buy drugs, and handing out polite letters to the drivers telling them their licence numbers were being given to the police and asking them not to come back. Seriously. She was on committees, organised rallies and activities to keep local kids off the streets, and was given numerous awards for her efforts. Our client used to go with her handing out newsletters and flyers. He wasn’t even a bad kid on paper – he had no prior record of violence or felonies. None of that makes what he did ok, but it does give the situation a whole new dimension of tragedy.
From the information we’ve gathered so far we’re still not sure why he did what he did, or even if he actually knew what he was doing. That’s what our job is at this stage – to try and find an explanation for what happened to present to the jury. Hopefully that explanation will save his life, even if it is spent entirely inside a prison cell. (Some people have asked why taxpayers should pay for a convicted murderer to live in jail, especially when they’re so young and are going to be there for a very long time. In fact it’s cheaper to pay for that than for a capital trial, costly appeals process (which can easily last 10 years or more) and then an execution). I can’t say much about what we’re looking into, but now we’ve started investigating we’ve found several factors that make him seem much less of a monster and will hopefully convince the jury not to kill him.
What this means in day to day life as a capital defender is that your first concern is making sure your client doesn’t get killed. In some cases, like the one I’ve been working on recently, that is pretty much all you’ve got to work on anyway – the client was caught on CCTV walking into a gas station, robbing the cashier and then shooting both her and some poor guy drinking his coffee in the café area. At first I thought this would be a fairly unrewarding case – I mean I’m against the death penalty but this guy killed two people in cold blood, so I didn’t expect to feel too sorry for him. But then I met him and his family, looked into his case and started to feel a bit differently. He’s younger than I expected – he was 19 at the time of the crime and is 21 now, and surprisingly he’s a really nice kid, not the smartass, nasty thug I expected. He’s polite, softly spoken, and pretty clueless about the gangs his older cousins are allegedly involved in (although he’d never tell you that). He was brought up in the projects by his grandma who, ironically, was a tireless campaigner for cleaning up the neighbourhood she and her grandkids lived in. She and her neighbours would go out at 3am taking the licence plates of cars driving through the area to buy drugs, and handing out polite letters to the drivers telling them their licence numbers were being given to the police and asking them not to come back. Seriously. She was on committees, organised rallies and activities to keep local kids off the streets, and was given numerous awards for her efforts. Our client used to go with her handing out newsletters and flyers. He wasn’t even a bad kid on paper – he had no prior record of violence or felonies. None of that makes what he did ok, but it does give the situation a whole new dimension of tragedy.
From the information we’ve gathered so far we’re still not sure why he did what he did, or even if he actually knew what he was doing. That’s what our job is at this stage – to try and find an explanation for what happened to present to the jury. Hopefully that explanation will save his life, even if it is spent entirely inside a prison cell. (Some people have asked why taxpayers should pay for a convicted murderer to live in jail, especially when they’re so young and are going to be there for a very long time. In fact it’s cheaper to pay for that than for a capital trial, costly appeals process (which can easily last 10 years or more) and then an execution). I can’t say much about what we’re looking into, but now we’ve started investigating we’ve found several factors that make him seem much less of a monster and will hopefully convince the jury not to kill him.
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Lisa and Rich do DC
For photos follow the link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90438&id=510568119&l=c2ea4bd1d9
After Regan and I were discharged from the E.R we were ferried to a nearby hotel where we spent 4 days in a bit of a daze lying down, hobbling very slowly between the hotel room, next door restaurant and the pharmacy, cleaning everything I’d inadvertently bled all over in the van (this was much easier than expected, evidently my blood has no staying power…) and wondering how we were eventually going to get out of Nashville. By the end of the week we’d got it together enough to book a couple of flights and while Regan flew home to Rhode Island I also headed north to meet up with Rich in Washington DC.
We spent a great week together and took things very easy – Rich was recharging his batteries for the rest of the trail and I could only limp for around 20 minutes before my leg told me I had to sit down. We still managed to see the sights though (see photos) and my overriding impression of these is that the White House is much smaller than it looks on TV and you aren’t really a former US president unless you have your own very large monument. DC is a cool city, with lots of funky neighbourhoods to drink coffee in or watch the occasional gay pride parade. Ate in lots of great restaurants too, on the basis that we could do this without having to walk very far and the trail has given Rich the appetite of several horses. Tuesday was Rich’s birthday so I took him to a Jenny Lewis gig and didn’t complain when we went to watch a baseball game. I actually really enjoyed the baseball in the end, especially all the theatrical organ music they play when someone does something impressive. The best bit was the mascot race – the Washington Nationals have 5 mascots in fact, 4 being former US presidents who come out and race each other around the field at the allotted time. Crazy Americans.
At the end of our trip we rented a car and drove out to Harper’s Ferry, a pretty, olde worlde town at the spiritual halfway point of the Appalachian Trail, where Rich needed to resume his hiking. Spent a lazy day wandering around the town and along the river, as well as walking along a very short section of the AT itself (although Rich didn’t see the humour in my suggestion that I could now tell people I’d “hiked the AT”). Spoilsport. After another tearful farewell Rich resumed the trek northwards and I drove back to DC for my flight to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the start of my 3 month internship with the Office of the Capital Defender.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90438&id=510568119&l=c2ea4bd1d9
After Regan and I were discharged from the E.R we were ferried to a nearby hotel where we spent 4 days in a bit of a daze lying down, hobbling very slowly between the hotel room, next door restaurant and the pharmacy, cleaning everything I’d inadvertently bled all over in the van (this was much easier than expected, evidently my blood has no staying power…) and wondering how we were eventually going to get out of Nashville. By the end of the week we’d got it together enough to book a couple of flights and while Regan flew home to Rhode Island I also headed north to meet up with Rich in Washington DC.
We spent a great week together and took things very easy – Rich was recharging his batteries for the rest of the trail and I could only limp for around 20 minutes before my leg told me I had to sit down. We still managed to see the sights though (see photos) and my overriding impression of these is that the White House is much smaller than it looks on TV and you aren’t really a former US president unless you have your own very large monument. DC is a cool city, with lots of funky neighbourhoods to drink coffee in or watch the occasional gay pride parade. Ate in lots of great restaurants too, on the basis that we could do this without having to walk very far and the trail has given Rich the appetite of several horses. Tuesday was Rich’s birthday so I took him to a Jenny Lewis gig and didn’t complain when we went to watch a baseball game. I actually really enjoyed the baseball in the end, especially all the theatrical organ music they play when someone does something impressive. The best bit was the mascot race – the Washington Nationals have 5 mascots in fact, 4 being former US presidents who come out and race each other around the field at the allotted time. Crazy Americans.
At the end of our trip we rented a car and drove out to Harper’s Ferry, a pretty, olde worlde town at the spiritual halfway point of the Appalachian Trail, where Rich needed to resume his hiking. Spent a lazy day wandering around the town and along the river, as well as walking along a very short section of the AT itself (although Rich didn’t see the humour in my suggestion that I could now tell people I’d “hiked the AT”). Spoilsport. After another tearful farewell Rich resumed the trek northwards and I drove back to DC for my flight to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the start of my 3 month internship with the Office of the Capital Defender.
The Not-So-Great Tennessee Car Wreck
Some people might’ve heard about the unfortunate car crash we had on the way out of Nashville. Everyone involved was fine apart from poor Scooby, Regan’s trusty VW camper who sadly is now a resident of the big campsite in the sky. When I say everyone was fine there were ambulances and fire engines involved (getting out of the van was a bit problematic and turns out even minor scalp lacerations can produce an alarming amount of blood). Regan broke her toe and sprained her wrist and I got a hefty bash on the leg and a rather magnificent cut to the head that needed 10 staples, but in terms of lasting damage there isn’t any thankfully. Anyone who is interested in seeing a delightful picture of my head post-staples but pre-hair washing just let me know. I’m rather proud of it as (a) it looks much worse than it was and so makes me look v. brave and (b) the hairstyle could’ve won me prizes at Halloween parties across the country had the accident been more appropriately timed.
Monday, 10 August 2009
Dollywood & Nashville
Follow this link for photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99244&id=510568119&l=08bc1e4246
Ah, Dollywood. Many mocked our decision to visit Dolly Parton’s theme park, but I think they're missing out – it’s great! In between visiting the Dolly Parton museum and seeing her many and varied stage outfits, tour bus, etc, watching the delightfully cheesy musical she wrote about life in the Smoky Mountains (complete with flying Native Americans, I kid you not), eating corn dogs and curly fries, watching bluegrass bands and line dancers, you can also visit the Dollywood local craft shops where blacksmiths, carpenters and folks practising the age old art of souvenir selling are ready to provide you with a full sized horse drawn wagon or a Dolly Parton fridge magnet. Souvenir-selling aside, the craft preservation area did seem like a pretty genuine set up and even in the tackiest parts of the park it was clear Ms Parton was in no way taking herself seriously. Regan and I agreed t’was a day well spent.
After Dollywood we motored on towards Nashville, home of country music. Again, there’s much to criticise about Nashville – it’s touristy, a bit tacky and the “country” music you hear in the bars is the specially selected “tourists will recognise this” variety. But again, I think it has its charm. Maybe charm is the wrong word, but there aren’t many places where you can spend a day posing with the car from Dukes of Hazzard, wandering round the Willie Nelson museum, learning the real differences between country, blues, bluegrass, rockabilly and folk music before heading to a concert at which Steve Martin is a guest performer on the banjo and then ending up dancing in a seedy bar to Jailhouse Rock. It even has friendly locals who'll give you a ride through the McDonalds drive-thru at 3am when the bemused cashier says she can't sell you a hamburger unless you're in a car. Loved it.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99244&id=510568119&l=08bc1e4246
Ah, Dollywood. Many mocked our decision to visit Dolly Parton’s theme park, but I think they're missing out – it’s great! In between visiting the Dolly Parton museum and seeing her many and varied stage outfits, tour bus, etc, watching the delightfully cheesy musical she wrote about life in the Smoky Mountains (complete with flying Native Americans, I kid you not), eating corn dogs and curly fries, watching bluegrass bands and line dancers, you can also visit the Dollywood local craft shops where blacksmiths, carpenters and folks practising the age old art of souvenir selling are ready to provide you with a full sized horse drawn wagon or a Dolly Parton fridge magnet. Souvenir-selling aside, the craft preservation area did seem like a pretty genuine set up and even in the tackiest parts of the park it was clear Ms Parton was in no way taking herself seriously. Regan and I agreed t’was a day well spent.
After Dollywood we motored on towards Nashville, home of country music. Again, there’s much to criticise about Nashville – it’s touristy, a bit tacky and the “country” music you hear in the bars is the specially selected “tourists will recognise this” variety. But again, I think it has its charm. Maybe charm is the wrong word, but there aren’t many places where you can spend a day posing with the car from Dukes of Hazzard, wandering round the Willie Nelson museum, learning the real differences between country, blues, bluegrass, rockabilly and folk music before heading to a concert at which Steve Martin is a guest performer on the banjo and then ending up dancing in a seedy bar to Jailhouse Rock. It even has friendly locals who'll give you a ride through the McDonalds drive-thru at 3am when the bemused cashier says she can't sell you a hamburger unless you're in a car. Loved it.
The Great Tennessee Road Trip
Follow this link for photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99157&id=510568119&l=2ecae21185
I’ve always wanted to do a road trip across America, and what better way to do it than in a 1979 VW campervan called Scooby? So Regan and I set off from New York en route to Memphis, Tennessee and wherever we liked the look of along the way. The best part for me wasn’t necessarily the places we stopped at, but the drive itself and the feeling of total freedom that came with it. Kinda like Thelma and Louise but without the violence, crime and death. We covered around 300 miles on the days we were travelling, staying wherever we could find a cheap campsite or motel (or on one occasion a Marriott as it was 2am and neither of those options were presenting themselves). We saw a good bit of small town America and it turns out they really do fly American flags outside their houses and sit on rocking chairs on the front porch (well, a lot of them do anway). We met some friendly helpful people who helped us out when we got a flat tyre on the first morning, directed us to the vendor of a replacement petrol cap after we left ours at a gas station and recommended that we didn’t try the Virginia peanut soup. (We tried it anyway, it was warmed up peanut butter). We also spent some time familiarising ourselves with the names of US department stores and supermarkets, as a key feature of US culture seems to be making all of their shops look the same. Imagine a retail park with superstore-sized identical shop fronts for shops called Kohls, Target, Lowes, Harris Teeter and CVS without any pictures or window displays to suggest what they might sell. Now try and guess which one sells pasta sauce. It took us a while, but we did get to entertain several different shop assistants with our “pretty accents” in the process.
Weather wise we weren’t very lucky for the first few days – torrential rain made driving fun, particularly when Scooby’s windscreen wipers gave up the ghost on day 2 (although it’s amazing how far you can drive once you got used to seeing the road and traffic as if underwater…) It’s lucky Regan is such a good mechanic and that she came well prepared for all the motoring mini-catastrophes. When we got to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokies the rain eased up, only to be replaced by fog. Getting up at 4am, driving for an hour and climbing a big hill to watch said fog didn’t make for the best sunrise experience ever, but luckily as we drove back down the cloud lifted and we got to see some amazing views across the Smokies (and pretend we were in Last of the Mohicans).
It wasn’t long before we got our first taste of good ole’ Southern cooking – grits, (a cross between polenta and porridge) biscuits (scones) sausage gravy (white sauce with little bits of sausage in it), and my new favourite beverage pink lemonade (although still not really sure what flavour the pink is…) One surprising discovery was boiled peanuts – soggy and messy to eat, yes, but also really tasty.
Pretty soon we’d driven through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland (stopped for cookies), Virginia, West Virginia (sang Country Roads in honour thereof), North Carolina and were headed for Tennessee.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99157&id=510568119&l=2ecae21185
I’ve always wanted to do a road trip across America, and what better way to do it than in a 1979 VW campervan called Scooby? So Regan and I set off from New York en route to Memphis, Tennessee and wherever we liked the look of along the way. The best part for me wasn’t necessarily the places we stopped at, but the drive itself and the feeling of total freedom that came with it. Kinda like Thelma and Louise but without the violence, crime and death. We covered around 300 miles on the days we were travelling, staying wherever we could find a cheap campsite or motel (or on one occasion a Marriott as it was 2am and neither of those options were presenting themselves). We saw a good bit of small town America and it turns out they really do fly American flags outside their houses and sit on rocking chairs on the front porch (well, a lot of them do anway). We met some friendly helpful people who helped us out when we got a flat tyre on the first morning, directed us to the vendor of a replacement petrol cap after we left ours at a gas station and recommended that we didn’t try the Virginia peanut soup. (We tried it anyway, it was warmed up peanut butter). We also spent some time familiarising ourselves with the names of US department stores and supermarkets, as a key feature of US culture seems to be making all of their shops look the same. Imagine a retail park with superstore-sized identical shop fronts for shops called Kohls, Target, Lowes, Harris Teeter and CVS without any pictures or window displays to suggest what they might sell. Now try and guess which one sells pasta sauce. It took us a while, but we did get to entertain several different shop assistants with our “pretty accents” in the process.
Weather wise we weren’t very lucky for the first few days – torrential rain made driving fun, particularly when Scooby’s windscreen wipers gave up the ghost on day 2 (although it’s amazing how far you can drive once you got used to seeing the road and traffic as if underwater…) It’s lucky Regan is such a good mechanic and that she came well prepared for all the motoring mini-catastrophes. When we got to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokies the rain eased up, only to be replaced by fog. Getting up at 4am, driving for an hour and climbing a big hill to watch said fog didn’t make for the best sunrise experience ever, but luckily as we drove back down the cloud lifted and we got to see some amazing views across the Smokies (and pretend we were in Last of the Mohicans).
It wasn’t long before we got our first taste of good ole’ Southern cooking – grits, (a cross between polenta and porridge) biscuits (scones) sausage gravy (white sauce with little bits of sausage in it), and my new favourite beverage pink lemonade (although still not really sure what flavour the pink is…) One surprising discovery was boiled peanuts – soggy and messy to eat, yes, but also really tasty.
Pretty soon we’d driven through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland (stopped for cookies), Virginia, West Virginia (sang Country Roads in honour thereof), North Carolina and were headed for Tennessee.
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