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Phil G McDonald Bridge – HighestBridges.com

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Phil G McDonald Bridge – HighestBridges.com

The Phil G. McDonald Bridge in West Virginia is one of the most unusual big bridges for it's time period. It's 700 feet above the Glade Creek.

Built in 1987-88, it's the world's highest truss bridge, and America's largest fracture critical bridge, that should a single truss or gusset plate fail, the entire bridge could plunge the height of 70 stories into the ravine. The bridge is carefully inspected on a yearly basis to avoid failure. Generally, since 1970, new large truss bridges are not constructed, ever since the lessons learned from 1967 Silver Bridge Disaster.

Spotlight News – Planning Board and fire district disagree on sidewalk, color of proposed south station

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Spotlight News – Planning Board and fire district disagree on sidewalk, color of proposed south station

Are they really that afraid of sidewalks? Most pedestrians are likely to move out of the way of a fire truck with sirens on. And if pedestrians are such a risk to fire departments, aren't allowing privately-owned cars on the roads -- which are a much bigger impediment to fire trucks -- a serious public hazard that should be banned?

The Global Context 2018

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States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018

"Oklahoma now has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., unseating Louisiana from its long-held position as “the world’s prison capital.” By comparison, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive, but even these states lock people up at higher rates than nearly every other country on earth. Compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime."

Loving v. Virginia – Decided June 12, 1967

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Loving v. Virginia – Decided June 2, 1967

"In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years)."

Prison Trilogy Today

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1972 was a very long time ago, Joan Baez reminds us in her song Prison Trilogy the which turns 46 years old this year …

Luna was a Mexican the law called an alien
For coming across the border with a baby and a wife
Though the clothes upon his back were wet
Still he thought that he could get
Some money and things to start a life

It hadn’t been too very long when it seemed like everything went wrong
They didn’t even have the time to find themselves a home
This foreigner, a brown-skin male
Thrown into a Texas jail
It left the wife and baby quite alone

He eased the pain inside him
With a needle in his arm
But the dope just crucified him
He died to no one’s great alarm