Tag Archives: Meda Chesney-Lind

Today’s blog preempted by a flight home

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With any luck, we’re on a United flight this morning from San Francisco to Honolulu.

The past two days were spent at a hotel in the Berkeley Marina, where the Western Society of Criminology was holding its annual conference.

This year was special, as they presented Meda with the first Meda Chesney-Lind Award, a new award which will carry her name. It is for significant contributions on the intersection of women and crime.

Aha! Forget the Oscars…make way for the Medas!

A number of her current and former graduate students were able to attend, so Meda got lots of support. When I get home, I’ll post the video of the presentation and Meda’s brief comments.

Here’s the view at dawn when we arrived in Berkeley a couple of days ago. The fishing pier is maintained as part of a state park.

Berkeley Marina

We’re looking forward to freeing Duke and Silverman from the vet’s, where they have been boarding, and then getting home to see all the rest of the feline family.

April is still tornado season in Oklahoma

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April is not a good month in Oklahoma, unless you’re a storm chaser.

The news today is full of stories about the latest string of deadly tornadoes that swept through Oklahoma and on to Arkansas.

These are close to home for Meda. As an infant, she survived one of Oklahoma’s deadliest tornadoes in the state’s history. We usually pause on the anniversary to reflect on the event. This year, we forgot.

What still ranks as the deadliest tornado to ever hit the State of Oklahoma, and one of the worst in U.S. history, swept up from Texas on the evening of April 9, 1947, striking the town of Woodward at 8:42 p.m. with the power of an F5 storm. At least 107 people were killed and nearly another 1,000 injured in Woodward alone. Over 100 city blocks, and more than 1,000 homes and businesses in the city were destroyed.

House destroyedMeda was just a few months old. Her father was working as a geologist in the Oklahoma oil fields. Meda and her mother were at home in Woodward when the tornado struck without warning.

Click on the photo for more pictures of their house.

They were lucky. When the house started coming apart, a wall fell down over them, protecting them from other flying debris. They were later able to get out of the rubble and were then found and rescued by a neighbor. A family photo made the pages of the Daily Oklahoman, and was later distributed by AP.

Meda’s mother wrote a long letter home about the ordeal, which you can read here.

Meda, of course, has no recollection of the tornado, but it was a huge part of her family’s history.

Ms. Meda’s NYT op-ed, bowing to the gamblers, modernizing the environmental review process, and the news debate goes on

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Meda made it into the NY Times today with an op-ed, “The Myth of Mean Girls“.

It tracks some of the issues raised in her book, “Beyond Bad Girls“, published back in 2007.

Her one-sentence bio in the NYT managed to include a mini-plug to her forthcoming book, “Fighting for Girls“, published by SUNY Press.

I was surprised to see that in a year where money is so scarce, legislators are preparing to pass SB 2834 SD1, which restores tax deductions for gambling losses. The bill is awaiting a final vote in the House. Since it has not been amended in the House, it would then go directly to the governor for her signature.

A bill digest prepared by the Tax Foundation of Hawaii includes this comment:

As there is no hard data on this deduction, it is difficult to ascertain whether there was any revenue gain when the wagering deduction was suspended during the past year. However, lawmakers did believe that in taking away the provision that allowed the deduction there were additional revenues to be had. Unfortunately, their gambling happy constituency did not think it was fair and apparently lawmakers heard the loud protests.

Think about it. Losses for gamblers are obviously income/profits for the corporations that control the gaming industry.

So it appears that while lawmakers won’t vote to legalize gambling here in Hawaii, which could capture some of those gaming revenues for the state, they’re ready to subsidize the Las Vegas gambling industry by offering tax deductions for losses of Hawaii residents.

So we’re sending off all those local families to Vegas, encouraging them to hit the slots, and then refunding part of their gambling tab at public expense via tax deductions.

If you ask me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. But no one’s asking.

If we’re going to subsidize vacations with tax deductions, wouldn’t it make more sense to give a tax break for interisland travel by Hawaii families? Let’s use public funds to promote our own travel destinations rather than exporting those tax dollars to Las Vegas and other places where gamblers might travel.

Dan Nakaso had a pretty good story in yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser on the effort to rewrite Hawaii’s environmental review laws.

If you’re interested in such things, you might want to look at the UH report to the legislature that provided the substantive background for the effort, as well as the “Assessing Hawaii’s Environmental Review Process” blog.

And don’t miss the reply to Dave Shapiro by Hawaii News Now news director, Chris Archer, as well as the comments it drew. All very interesting.

Saturday…Advice for writers, DNA tests, Duke Bainum reports from Arkansas

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Here’s my favorite quote of the week, attributed to Dorothy Parker, found at the tail end of a National Public Radio story on the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Elements of Style”.

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Searching for that item first led me to a W.S. Merwin poem that was part of yesterday’s Writers Almanac, in which William observes, “…the world still seems to come one at a time one day one year one season….”

That describes my feeling every morning as we walk at dawn. History is being made somewhere, but it all moves forward, from here, as the sun finds its way back from night, sometimes fighting its way through clouds, sometimes present only by reflection, sometimes slyly sneaking up on us, but always there, one day at a time, something you can count on even without knowing what each day will bring.

Did you notice the dramatic change in weather Friday evening? It was the first warm night in months. Warm enough to generate swarming termites when we left an outside light on. I was genuinely surprised.

Here’s a bit of potentially useless information. You can now order up your own DNA tests from Ancestry.com, ranging in price from $79 to $328 depending on the type of test.

Begin matching with genetic cousins…

Connect with others who share your ancient origins.

Participate in DNA Groups…

I guess that I’ve got to read more of their sales pitch to understand the thrills of trolling for genetic cousins.

Meda was quoted this week in an article in the Canadian magazine, Macleans.

[text]And I received this note overnight from City Council Member Duke Bainum regarding the recent tornado that hit the small town of Mena, Arkansas.

I am returning today to Hawaii from Arkansas. Our bank’s roof got torn off (see part of roof in tree) — but compared to the rest of the City we are fine.

Hard to see how only three people died given the severity of the damage – reminded me of Iniki. County Judge said that thirty minutes warning was the difference.

131 homes totally destroyed. 601 damaged.

I am no longer CEO/President of the Bank- but just wanted to take a quick 3 day trip to show my support for our staff and the City. Our bank employees are grilling hamburgers and hot dogs and delivering to shut-ins and workers. Next week will be passing out cookies.

I knew Duke would be actively concerned about the bank’s employees and the people in the community it serves. (Oh, my. Was that an endorsement of sorts?? It could be read that way, I suppose.)