• Among the promotions
offered by New
York City’s upscale
Marmara Manhattan
hotel is a “birth tourism”
package exploiting
the US Constitution’s
14th Amendment.
For about $35,000,
a foreign expectant
mother with a visa can
spend her delivery week in luxury accommodations
(including medical care) — and assure her
baby automatic US citizenship. (That child could
then become an “anchor,” subsequently making
it easier for the parents to acquire “green cards.”)
Also, the Washington Post reported in July that three agencies in China, with US affiliates, offer similar packages to their affluent citizens, whose primary concern seems to be providing their children access to a US education as an alternative to China’s expensive, competitive system. (Historians agree that the purpose of the “citizenship right” in the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was to recognize former slaves as citizens.)
More Tales of The Miracle Drug
• (1) A naked, 47-year-old man was taken
to an El Paso, Texas burn center in July after
“friends” won a bet and got to set his prosthetic
leg on fire, and it spread to his body. The man
admitted to police that he had lost fair-andsquare,
by downing “only” six beers. He was
treated for several days and released.
(2) In June,
two 34-year-old men in Horsham, Australia
underwent surgery as a result of a plan hatched
during a drinking bout. They had both wondered
if it hurt to get shot and thus obliged each other.
Cultural Diversity
• Black magic failed to secure the World
Cup for Africa this year, but on the other hand,
the weak host team, South Africa, managed an
opening round draw with Mexico and an upset
victory over France. Sangomas (traditional
“healers”) spreading muti (powders, potions,
animal bones, especially from speedsters like
horses and ostriches) had been out in force.
World Cup stadium security was tight, but in
African league soccer games, it is not uncommon
for sangomas, pre-game, to bury animal
parts on the field, or to have players urinate on it
to improve the karma.
• British safety ninnies: (1) Britain’s head
constable told a police chiefs’ meeting in June
that they were being “buried” under a “telephone
directory”-sized (6,497 pages) compilation of
rules and regulations telling street bobbies in
massive detail such things as how to apply handcuffs
and ride bicycles.
(2) The local government
that runs the Ebdon Road Cemetery in Westonsuper-
Mare, England ordered the removal of
the small cross marking the grave of Rosemary
Maggs, who died in May. The local council has
prohibited crosses in the cemetery, citing safety.
• Things you didn’t think happened: (1)
Although 85 percent of Americans are covered
by health insurance, the figure in Rwanda is 92
percent. In that country’s 11-year-old system,
everyone pays $2 a year — obviously just for
basics. However, Rwandans’ main problems are
more easily treatable — infections, malnutrition,
malaria, unsafe childbirth — and not expensive
diabetes, obesity, cholesterol-clogged arteries.
(2) In Israel’s West Bank, Palestinians have a
highly competitive race-car season, and one
team on the rise this year is the sexism-fighting
female squad led by driver Suna Aweida. “Driving
is driving,” she told BBC News in June.
• In July, acknowledging pressure from local
Asian activists, officials at the Exchange mall in
Rochdale, England said they would remove the
toilets from two of the facility’s restroom stalls
and build “Nile pans,” also known as “squat toilets”
— also to Westerners referred to as “holes
in the ground.” The officials said they were trying
to serve the many Pakistani and Bangladeshi
immigrants living in Greater Manchester.
Latest religious Messages
• One of Britain’s 200 or so “consecrated
hermits” might soon be homeless as the owner
of her cottage in rural Shropshire County has
listed it for sale. Karen Markham, 44, lives by
rules set down by St. Benedict, the founder of
western monasticism, that require her to rise at 4
a.m., pray and chant for three hours, then contemplate
in silence. For recreation, she weaves
rugs using wool from local sheep, according to
a May report in the Daily Telegraph.
• American sangomas: (1) In July, a fifthgrade
teacher at Jacox Elementary School
in Norfolk, Va. resigned under pressure after
administrators discovered she was rubbing
“holy oil” on students and their desks during
school.
(2) Teachers Leslie Rainer and Djuna
Robinson were removed from teaching duties at
Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach,
Fla. in March after they were seen sprinkling
“holy water” onto a colleague, a self-described
atheist. Other witnesses disputed the details, but
the two were charged under the school’s “antibullying”
policy for aggressiveness toward the
other teacher.
QuesTionable JuDgMenTs
• At press time, the city council of Barre, Vt.
continues to debate extending its pet “leash” law to cats, following a woman’s complaint that a neighbor’s cat continues to foul her yard with droppings. In the few towns that try to enforce leash laws on cats, a main rationale has been to protect friendly birds. (The late US statesman Adlai Stevenson, when he was governor of Illinois, once rejected such a law, terming leashing “against the nature of the cat.”) • Hard time, hard luck: Harry Jackson, 26, was in jail in Woodbine, Ga. in March, on several minor charges such as driving on a suspended license. However, acceding to pressure from fellow inmates, brought on by the jail’s nonsmoking policy, Jackson agreed to break out, steal cigarettes at a nearby convenience store, and break back in, undetected. “[D]on’t come back empty-handed,” one inmate supposedly warned him. Jackson was apprehended climbing back in over a fence. In May, a judge sentenced him, for the earlier charges plus the escape and subsequent burglary, to 20 years.
THe WeIrdo-amerIcan communITy
• John Mark Karr burst onto the national scene in 2006 when he famously, falsely, confessed to murdering little JonBenet Ramsey 10 years earlier, but since then, his life has been even more bizarre. He has spun through a series of romances with JonBenet-like youngsters, the latest with Samantha Spiegel, who was 9 when they met and is now 19 and recently got a restraining order against him. Karr is currently known as “Alexis Reich” in preparation for his gender-reassignment surgery, which Spiegel says Karr wants only in order to make it easier to befriend, and seduce, younger and younger girls. According to another ex-girlfriend, Karr asked her to solicit little girls to join a cult he was starting called “The Immaculates,” to fulfill fantasies including taking baths with young girls.
redneck cHronIcles
• From Florida’s Panhandle region: (1) A 24-year-old man was arrested in Crestview, Fla. in April after he allegedly removed a window air-conditioner and crawled into a house in which his wife was staying. They had recently separated, and he told police that he had not “gotten any” in three weeks and was going to “get some.” (2) In June in Okaloosa County, passenger Courtnea Bradley, 21, roughed up the driver while the car was moving, making it swerve wildly, thus allegedly endangering her baby in the back seat. At the subsequent traffic stop, a defiant Bradley allegedly told officers, “My [expletive] family is one of the richest around, and we will have y’all’s [expletive] jobs.”
a neWs of THe WeIrd classIc (augusT 1991)
• In May (1991), 19 members of the Michigan House of Representatives (led by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee) introduced a resolution designed to deal with obnoxious social problems, but without creating expensive regulatory programs. The resolution would establish, at the State Archives, a “Registry of Bothersome Practices,” on which people could contribute to an official list of complaints about such things as elevator music and magazine blow-in subscription cards.
2010 Chuck Shepherd. Universal Press Syndicate
