Travel,
Friendship
"Halfway to the coast,
Genny announced that she hadn’t brought a gun. I glanced at the glove
compartment of the Toyota Corolla with a sting of surprise and relief. Her
nephew had given her shooting lessons for her last birthday, when she’d turned
76, but apparently she’d decided not to take up the offer of a pistol for our
road trip. “They say you shouldn’t have a gun if you have any doubt whether you
would shoot it or not,” said Genny, turning her eyes from the road to look at
me. “I don’t own a gun, but the one thing I do know is: I would shoot.”
We were only two hours
into our trip, and I was already nervous about what else I might learn about
Genny on our way. We had been pen pals since a chance meeting in North Carolina four
years ago; she was an avid reader and a curious soul, and our shared love of
books and meeting new people had kept us corresponding after I returned home
to England. But Genny
rarely talked about herself. The idea that she—at five feet tall with white
hair and impeccable Southern manners—might be the Thelma to my Louise had never
occurred to me.
Outside the passenger
window, the yellow wash of South Carolina’s soy
fields gave way to clouds of cotton, ready for harvest. I considered what I did
know. Like me, Genny had lived alone in a city most of her life—Charlotte in
her case, London in mine.
Like me, she had never married. Our shared circumstances had forged a bond that
made us feel, instinctively, that we would be good traveling companions. So I’d
asked Genny if she’d take a trip with me, and we’d chosen the coast of South
Carolina, a place she knew and loved."
Puerto Rico,
Disaster Relief
"The five living
former presidents put aside politics and appeared together for the first time
since 2013 at a concert on Saturday to raise money for victims of devastating
hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin
Islands.
Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Republicans
George H.W. and George W. Bush gathered in College Station, Texas, home of
Texas A&M University, to try to unite the country after the storms.
Texas A&M is home to the presidential library of the elder Bush. At
93, he has a form of Parkinson’s disease and appeared in a wheelchair at the
event. His wife, Barbara, and George W. Bush’s wife, Laura, were in the
audience.
Grammy award winner Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance at the concert that
also featured country music band Alabama, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer ‘Soul
Man’ Sam Moore, gospel legend Yolanda Adams and Texas musicians Lyle Lovett and
Robert Earl Keen.
The appeal backed by the ex-presidents has raised $31 million since it
began on Sept. 7, said Jim McGrath, spokesman for George H.W. Bush."
New York City, Libraries, Children
"Library books are free, until they
aren’t: Patrons who rack up $15 in late fees at the city’s public libraries are
blocked from taking out more books until the fine is paid.
Among those with suspended
privileges are 160,000 children, most of them from the city’s poorest
neighborhoods, who cannot afford to pay.
“Learning is a right. Reading brings
you to new worlds,” said Octavia Loving, a 17-year-old student at Special Music
High School, as she stood amid the stacks at Countee Cullen Library in Harlem,
one of the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of children with
blocked cards, according to library officials. “They shouldn’t block us from
reading because of money.”
On Thursday, the city’s three
library systems — the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, the
Bronx and Staten Island; the Queens Library; and the Brooklyn Public Library —
will forgive all fines for children 17 and under and unblock their cards. The
one-time amnesty is being underwritten by the JPB Foundation, a philanthropy that
supports civic causes, which will make up $2.25 million of the shortfall in
revenue from the forgiven fines."
Criminal Justice, Poverty, Bail
"In May 2016, Maranda Lynn O’Donnell, a waitress and
mother of a 4-year-old girl in Harris County, Texas, was arrested for allegedly
driving with a suspended license, a misdemeanor offense. She did not have
$2,500 to bail herself out, so she was locked up in jail for two days, unable
to go home to her daughter. The same day, Robert Ford was arrested for allegedly
stealing cosmetics worth $100, also
a misdemeanor. He too was sent to the Harris County jail, where he remained for
five days, unable to shell out $5,000 for bail. The day after that, Loetha
McGruder—who was pregnant with
two children at home, including one with Down syndrome—was arrested and detained for falsely
identifying herself to an officer. With bail set at $5,000, she remained in
jail for four days.
All three of the
defendants are plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that aims to overhaul the
bail system in Harris County, Texas, home of the nation’s third-biggest county jail system.
The suit, filed in
May 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, calls
bail setting in the state’s largest county a “wealth-based detention scheme”
that punishes defendants accused of misdemeanors for being poor and encourages
them to plead guilty to avoid jail time.
In April, Chief Judge Lee H. Rosenthal
decided in their favor, writing that it was
unconstitutional to jail people because they can’t afford bail. Rosenthal ruled
that Harris County would have to ask defendants about their financial
backgrounds and release them if they didn’t have enough money to pay their
bonds. The county challenged the
decision, and the case now sits with the 5thU.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, known as one of the most
conservative courts in the country. In light of this setback,
the plaintiffs and their lawyers have been searching for allies to support
their case. They now have a powerful group on their side: religious leaders
that say they have a duty to fight for the poor."
Aging,
Adventure
"A Pennsylvania woman has celebrated her 94th birthday by
going skydiving along with her granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
Williamsport
resident Eila (AY’-lah) Campbell says she figured she might not “make it for
another year” at her age, so she took the 10,000-foot (3,048-meter) plunge on
Sunday at Hazleton Regional Airport."
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