The abandoned Western State Hospital, c. 2004, since renovated into the Blackburn Inn. Image: Kipp Teague
Elizabeth Catte’s new book examines how Virginia progressives believed the forced sterilization of poor whites would pave the way to a bright future and how their legacy endures in national parks and prisons.
Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia
Elizabeth Catte
When Elizabeth Catte began researching
Pure America, her new book about the history of eugenics in Virginia, her first act seemed, on its surface, like a non sequitur: she spent a night at a new luxury hotel, the Blackburn Inn, in her hometown of Staunton, Virginia. What interested Catte was that, in its former life, the building that now houses the Blackburn Inn had been the Western State Hospital or, as it was better known upon first opening in 1828, the Western State Lunatic Asylum. It was where many Virginians deemed “feeble-minded” were incarcerated under the directorsh
We asked writers from left, right and center to offer creative ideas for the next president not necessarily the obvious policy measures at the forefront of political discussion. Plus: 7 artists illustrate their own proposals.
ILLUSTRATION BY NIKKI VIRBITSKY
On July 5, 1996, the world’s first cloned mammal was born in a lab at the University of Edinburgh. The lamb, carried to term by one ewe and carrying the cloned genetic code of another, represented an epoch-shifting scientific breakthrough. The scientists named her Dolly. She had been cloned using DNA harvested from a mammary cell, and, as the embryologist Sir Ian Wilmut put it when the news was announced, “we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.” So thorough was the country singer’s punch line status at the time so strong was the association between her curvy physique and the very concept of breast tissue that not even a scientist announcing the crowning achievement of his own career could resist a little verbal squeeze.
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Hanukkah is about resistance. Let’s resist this COVID spike through mutual aid December 10, 2020 2:13 PM CDT By Rabbi Brant Rosen
In this May 12, 2020, file photo, Laura Porras, right, prepares bags of fresh vegetables as Justin Ruiz, 17, left, and Porras niece Ana Karen Porras, 14, help in the vestibule at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. The effort is coordinated by the Brooklyn Immigrant Community Support mutual aid group who saw a need for emergency food aid for undocumented immigrants, who couldn t apply for or receive government assistance in the wake of shutdowns caused by concerns over the spread of the new coronavirus. Kathy Willens | AP