Martha Stewart is being sent to Alderson Federal Prison. I used to live in Alderson. My doctor brother “dodged the draft” by being a prison doctor for two years with the Public Health Service. One of those years was spent at Alderson.
That was about 1956. Two of the prisoners there were Tokyo Rose, a Japanese-American who had broadcast from Japan during World War II, and Axis Sally, a German-American who had broadcast from Berlin during the same period.
They used to hold plays, and in one play Axis Sally played the part of George Washington.
Alderson is a lovely place, very near White Sulfur Springs Resort.
It was off season, and my Austrian bride and I happened to be in White Sulfur Springs. It was my wife’s first Thanksgiving in America and I asked where we might get some turkey and so forth. She told us to go to a certain country club.
It turned out that one of the members of that country club had been a traveling salesman. Many times he had been away from home on Thanksgiving. So he had retired to his home town and every Thanksgiving he set out a spread and drinks for absolutely anybody in White Sulfur Springs.
We ate, we got drunk, we met everybody.
As for Martha Stewart, if she had not said her conviction was a “right wing conspiracy,” I would be on her side.
I have seen a lot of prisons from the inside. Alderson was the best of them.
A rich liberal deserves much, much worse.
#1 by Richard L. Hardison on 10/02/2004 - 8:23 pm
These days, like much in West Virginia, White Sulphur Springs is pretty run down. The Greenbrier area still looks halfway decent, but that’s about it. I’ve never seen the prison, and hope I never do. I’ll probably end up in the racist wing of a supermax in the cell next to yours.
#2 by Joe Megacrapper on 10/02/2004 - 8:44 pm
No your “doctor” dammit — your physician. Doctor is an educational status, not a job, any damned job, and certainly not the job of medical tradesperson.
#3 by Joe Megacrapper on 10/02/2004 - 8:46 pm
You idiot — you absolute idiot. Brother is a generic status, not a job. Similarly, you damned asshole brother is idenitified as ” doctor”. That’is nice, just damned nice, but that is gneric status which does not say a thing about job. Is the jackass a PhD, ?Ed,D, D.V.,M. , Th. D. ? Doctor is an educational status, not a damned job.
#4 by Don on 10/04/2004 - 4:12 pm
Perhaps he is a doctor of psychiatry, in which case he needs to hook up with Joe soon.
#5 by Bob on 10/04/2004 - 8:36 pm
Actually, Joe, the title “doctor” is from the Latin doceo, docere, “to teach.” Generically “doctor” means “teacher.”
Generically, doctor has nothing to do with a degree. Use has made it the title of a degree and the title of a profession.