Bibliomancy Meme

Eszter at Crooked Timber posted an interesting exercise. The task: Grab the nearest book that is at least 123 pages long, open the book to page 123, find the 5th sentence on the page, type the following three sentences, then tag five people. I'm not going to tag anyone, but welcome the three of you who read this blog on occasion to do the same exercise.

I looked above my monitors and the first book on my shelf is, Erving Goffman's Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. Page 123 takes me to the essay, "Alienation From Interaction."

What the individual takes to be immodesty in others may present itself in many forms: immodest individuals may seem to praise themselves verbally; they may talk about themselves and their activity in a way that assumes greater interest in and familiarity with their personal life than the individual actually possesses; they may speak more frequently and at greater length than the individual feels is fitting; they may take a more prominent "ecological" position than he thinks they warrant, etc.

One interesting source of other-consciousness is to be found in the phenomenon of "over-involvement." During any conversation, standards are established as to how much the individual is to allow himself to be carried away by the talk, how thoroughly he is to permit himself from becoming so swollen with feelings and a readiness to act that he threatens the bounds regarding affect that have been established for him in the interaction.

< $50 will get you five and other wisdoms of our criminal justice system

So I'm reading an opinion issued by the West Virginia Supreme court of Appeals. This case involves a young woman who voluntarily relinquished her parental rights to her newborn son (who was born with Cocaine and Marijuana in his bloodstream; the mother's parental rights to three older children had been involuntarily revoked by the Court.

It's standard policy here for the State to petition a court for emergency custody when a parent, previously found to be unfit, gives birth to a new child. The process involves an initial petition, followed by a finding of fact and adjudication. The respondent may file a petition with the court for an improvement period. In this case, the parent was preparing to do so. She checked herself into a treatment facility to demonstrate to the court that she's serious about making changes. However, upon admittance to the treatment program, a background check turned up warrant for her arrest.

The mother had been convicted of check fraud in Virginia. Although she served her sentenced time (the opinion does not indicate how much time she served), she never paid a $50 fine. Accordingly she was arrested, extradited, and re incarcerated. I wonder how much the State of Virginia paid to have her transported from Beckley, West Virginia to where-ever Virginia and then reincarcerated. Certainly more than the $50 fine that they imposed on someone who is indigent. (The reason most people write bad checks is that they lack the resources to pay for goods and services the legitimate way). Well at least justice was served.

I haven't finished reading the opinion, but the from the Syllabus, I know that the Supreme Court ruled against her. While she was incarcerated she voluntarily relinquished parental rights. The appeals indicates that she felt coerced into this decision. West Virginia's Supreme Court concurred with the original decision (that this was a voluntary action).