Finland's Ovi

 

For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.

Many of the self-pay jails operate like secret velvet-roped nightclubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.

“I am aware that this is considered to be a five-star Hilton,” said Nicole Brockett, 22, who was recently booked into one of the jails, here in Orange County about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and paid $82 a day to complete a 21-day sentence for a drunken driving conviction.

Ms. Brockett, who in her oversize orange T-shirt and flip-flops looked more like a contestant on “The Real World” than an inmate, shopped around for the best accommodations, travelocity.com-style.

“It’s clean here,” she said, perched in a jail day room on the sort of couch found in a hospital emergency room. “It’s safe and everyone here is really nice. I haven’t had a problem with any of the other girls. They give me shampoo.”

For roughly $75 to $127 a day, these convicts — who are known in the self-pay parlance as “clients” — get a small cell behind a regular door, distance of some amplitude from violent offenders and, in some cases, the right to bring an iPod or computer on which to compose a novel, or perhaps a song.

Many of the overnighters are granted work furlough, enabling them to do most of their time on the job, returning to the jail simply to go to bed (often following a strip search, which granted is not so five-star).

The clients usually share a cell, but otherwise mix little with the ordinary nonpaying inmates, who tend to be people arrested and awaiting arraignment, or federal prisoners on trial or awaiting deportation and simply passing through.

The pay-to-stay programs have existed for years, but recently attracted some attention when prosecutors balked at a jail in Fullerton that they said would offer computer and cellphone use to George Jaramillo, a former Orange County assistant sheriff who pleaded no contest to perjury and misuse of public funds, including the unauthorized use of a county helicopter. Mr. Jaramillo was booked into the self-pay program in Montebello, near Los Angeles, instead.

“We certainly didn’t envision a jail with cellphone and laptop capabilities where his family could bring him three hot meals,” said Susan Kang Schroeder, the public affairs counsel for the Orange County district attorney. “We felt that the use of the computer was part of the instrumentality of his crime, and that is another reason we objected to that.”

A spokesman for the Fullerton jail said cellphones but not laptops were allowed.

While jails in other states may offer pay-to-stay programs, numerous jail experts said they did not know of any.

“I have never run into this,” said Ken Kerle, managing editor of the publication American Jail Association and author of two books on jails. “But the rest of the country doesn’t have Hollywood either. Most of the people who go to jail are economically disadvantaged, often mentally ill, with alcohol and drug problems and are functionally illiterate. They don’t have $80 a day for jail.”

The California prison system, severely overcrowded, teeming with violence and infectious diseases and so dysfunctional that much of it is under court supervision, is one that anyone with the slightest means would most likely pay to avoid.

“The benefits are that you are isolated and you don’t have to expose yourself to the traditional county system,” said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for CSI, a national provider of jails that runs three in Orange County with pay-to-stay programs. “You can avoid gang issues. You are restricted in terms of the number of people you are encountering and they are a similar persuasion such as you.”

Most of the programs — which offer 10 to 30 beds — stay full enough that marketing is not necessary, though that was not always the case. The Pasadena jail, for instance, tried to create a little buzz for its program when it was started in the early 1990s.

“Our sales pitch at the time was, ‘Bad things happen to good people,’ ” said Janet Givens, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena Police Department. Jail representatives used Rotary Clubs and other such venues as their potential marketplace for “fee-paying inmate workers” who are charged $127 a day (payment upfront required).

“People might have brothers, sisters, cousins, etc., who might have had a lapse in judgment and do not want to go to county jail,” Ms. Givens said.

The typical pay-to-stay client, jail representatives agreed, is a man in his late 30s who has been convicted of driving while intoxicated and sentenced to a month or two in jail.

But there are single-night guests, and those who linger well over a year.

“One individual wanted to do four years here,” said Christina Holland, a correctional manager of the Santa Ana jail.

Inmates in Santa Ana who have been approved for pay to stay by the courts and have coughed up a hefty deposit for their stay, enter the jail through a lobby and not the driveway reserved for the arrival of other prisoners. They are strip searched when they return from work each day because the biggest problem they pose is the smuggling of contraband, generally cigarettes, for nonpaying inmates.

Most of the jailers require the inmates to do chores around the jails, even if they work elsewhere during the day.

“I try real hard to keep them in custody for 12 hours,” Ms. Holland said. “Because I think that’s fair.”

Critics argue that the systems create inherent injustices, offering cleaner, safer alternatives to those who can pay.

“It seems to be to be a little unfair,” said Mike Jackson, the training manager of the National Sheriff’s Association. “Two people come in, have the same offense, and the guy who has money gets to pay to stay and the other doesn’t. The system is supposed to be equitable.”

But cities argue that the paying inmates generate cash, often hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — enabling them to better afford their other taxpayer-financed operations — and are generally easy to deal with.

“We never had a problem with self pay,” said Steve Lechuga, the operations manager for CSI. “I haven’t seen any fights in years. We had a really good success rate with them.”

Stanley Goldman, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, has recommended the program to former clients.

“The prisoners who are charged with nonviolent crimes and typically have no record are not in the best position to handle themselves in the general county facility,” Professor Goldman said.

Still, no doubt about it, the self-pay jails are not to be confused with Canyon Ranch.

The cells at Santa Ana are roughly the size of a custodial closet, and share its smell and ambience. Most have little more than a pink bottle of jail-issue moisturizer and a book borrowed from the day room. Lockdown can occur for hours at a time, and just feet away other prisoners sit with their faces pressed against cell windows, looking menacing.

Ms. Brockett, who normally works as a bartender in Los Angeles, said the experience was one she never cared to repeat.

“It does look decent,” she said, “but you still feel exactly where you are.”

HELSINKI, Finland (Reuters)

Finland’s parliament voted in favor of the European Union’s stalled constitution on Friday, clearing the way for formal ratification which the government wants as soon as possible.

The Nordic country, which takes on the 25-nation EU’s rotating presidency in July, is set to become the 16th state to ratify the charter. It must still be approved by the cabinet and formally endorsed in another parliamentary vote.

However, even the most ardent backers say Finnish ratification, expected in early June, will make little difference to the fate of a treaty rejected by Dutch and French voters last year.

Parties in the ruling coalition as well as some opposition legislators in the 200-seat parliament voted for the charter, designed to streamline EU institutions and improve decision-making to cope with the bloc’s enlargement.

Estonia ratified the treaty on Tuesday, but it requires unanimity to enter into force and several countries that have promised to hold referendums are holding off because of uncertainty following the French and Dutch “noes”.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said this week the EU had to win back its credibility before it could think about salvaging the constitution.

While he said he hoped the expanding EU could manage some kind of reform of its institutions by 2009, he did not say if he considered the constitution dead or alive.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, who wants Finland to ratify the constitution before taking over the EU presidency, admitted its fate was probably sealed.

“It is realistic to see Finland’s decision does not significantly change the destiny of the constitution, but it can have a positive impact on the atmosphere in the EU and in the long run also on the content of the agreement,” he wrote in Friday’s Turun Sanomat newspaper.

He said Finland had to decide for itself on the constitution, which provides for a long-term EU president and more say for national parliaments.

“If we didn’t ratify the constitution because of two other countries’ decisions, then we would let them decide for us,” he wrote.

His government is somewhat at odds with Finnish President Tarja Halonen, who has questioned the wisdom of pressing ahead with the treaty. She said this week that states that had rejected the charter were unlikely to change their minds simply because more countries had given it their stamp of approval.

Germany will assume the EU presidency after Finland in January next year and Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear that reviving the treaty will be her chief focus.

By Porter Anderson CNN, April 28, 2007

When the artists of Florence, Italy, swung open the doors of the Baptistery of the Duomo (cathedral) now known as the “Gates of Paradise” in 1452, a new world was waiting on the other side.

Twenty feet tall and weighing three tons, this single work is considered the gateway to the Italian Renaissance, an upheaval so fundamental to how we see our world and think of ourselves that centuries later no Western culture is left untouched by it. ( See an audio slide show with curator Gary Radke )

Legend has it that Michelangelo himself is the one who dubbed these doors the “Gates of Paradise.”

And as the High Museum of Art opens its exhibition of three of the doors’ 10 gilt panels on Saturday, the conservation effort that brought them here will have lasted 25 years — just two years less than it took to make the work itself. ( See a gallery of images from the set-up of the High Museum’s exhibition )

Once the High showing closes on July 15, the exhibition travels to the Chicago Institute of Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The panels — depicting the biblical stories of “Adam and Eve”, “Jacob and Esau”, and “David and Goliath” — then will be moved back to Florence to be reassembled in the original doorway for permanent, hermetically sealed display at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. They are expected never to travel again.

Exhibition curator Gary Radke of Syracuse University says that the special alloy of bronze developed in the 15th-century workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti for the doors had resulted in a corrosion that had dulled the dull surfaces of the square relief-sculptures and other gilt ornaments on the doors.

The danger in trying to reclaim such works, of course, is that chemical treatments can damage the bond between the gold and bronze and take away more priceless, irreplaceable material.

So it’s thanks to a specially developed laser-and-distilled-water technique that what you now can see on display is not a restoration — not new gold leaf added, or reconstructed bronze modeling — but the same metals Ghiberti worked with himself.

“These ‘Gates of Paradise,’ think about it,” Radke says. “They’re on the doors of the Baptistery in the center of downtown Florence, where you have walking by every day, people like Michelangelo, people like Donatello, people of all important eras, going, going there. And they (the doors) are really the school of the Florentine art of the mid-15th century, of the Renaissance. … They’re there, all day, every day, at night, under the moonlight, under the sunlight.

“Think of how many people have been through that piazza and have seen these doors. I remember them being relatively clean — I went as a student, then went as a newlywed and thought what was on the work was dirt.

“We found out it wasn’t just dirt but was actually chemical reactions between the surfaces of the gold and the bronze.”

The genius of the master metalworkers of Florence had caught up with their work at last and intervention was required to save them.

Ghiberti (”gee-BARE-tee,” pronounced with a hard “G”) is, in a way, the artist behind the masters. Born in 1378, he won a competition to create the north doors of the Baptistery at a time when Radke says Florence was spending more money on its cultural expansion than its military endeavors.

By the time that commission had led to the “Gates of Paradise” job, Ghiberti’s workshop had become the place in which Donatello, Masolino, Uccello and other key artists of the era would be trained. Ghiberti died in 1455 — 20 years before the birth of Michelangelo.

One-time U.S. tour

Now housing the reliefs in special transparent oxygen-free cases — so no humidity can generate a galvanic reaction among the salts in the metals — the display at the High Museum is designed not only to give you a very close look at three of the 31.5-inch square panels themselves, but also a sense for context.

Patrizio Ostricresi of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence has worked closely with the chief conservatory on the project, Annamaria Giusti. While overseeing the assembly of the protective cases for the priceless pieces in Atlanta, he points to the “David and Goliath” panel’s patches of brown that show through the gold.

“Look at this,” says Ostricresi. “The mountain in this scene, the helmets” on the centurions in the crowd scene, “and the David, himself. You see how the gold has been rubbed off? Removed? I will show you why.”

He walks over to the full-size photographic replica of the doors the High has produced for the display. “You see, the ‘David’ panel was placed by Ghiberti here, at the bottom of the door. This is why the Florentines could take the gold. It was low. Within reach. But if you look at the ‘Adam and Eve’ panel? Perfect. It has lived for 500 years up high on the doors. Too high to reach.”

And when High Director Michael Shapiro looks at the “Adam and Eve” panel, what he notices is a feat of astonishing relief work. “This angel’s wing,” he points out, “comes right out of the piece.”

Sure enough, there’s light behind the central part of the wing on one of the many angels feathering the skies over Ghiberti’s glowing Eden.

Shapiro has become known in the industry for his liaisons with European art centers. Still in its first of three years, the Louvre Atlanta series of exhibitions currently is on view, its latest additions the “Decorative Arts of the Kings” show and the recent arrival of “Et in Arcadia” painting of Nicolas Poussin. ( Read more about the High’s decorative arts show from the Louvre )

And in 2003, Shapiro brought Verrocchio’s “David” to the museum, the first effort in the particular laser conservation technique deployed in the “Gates of Paradise” reclamation.

As might be expected, that effort in conservation involves the international cooperation and study of many experts. The High convened a special workshop in February 2006 in Florence with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (which also underwrote the show’s catalog) and resulting in a commission to have the digital-art library ARTstor create a major photographic study of the “Gates.”

The completion of the restoration of the bronze doors has been facilitated by special funding from a non-profit organization, the Friends of Florence.

SCHAGEN, Netherlands (AP)

The massive central door in the side of Noah’s Ark was thrown open Saturday — you could say it was the first time in 4,000 years — drawing a crowd of curious pilgrims and townsfolk to behold the wonder.

Of course, it’s only a replica of the biblical Ark, built by Dutch creationist Johan Huibers as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible.

Reckoning by the old biblical measurements, Johan’s fully functional ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 20 cubits wide. That’s two-thirds the length of a football field and as high as a three-story house.

Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold.

“The design is by my wife, Bianca,” Huibers said. “She didn’t really want me to do this at all, but she said if you’re going to anyway, it should look like this.”

A contractor by trade, Huibers built the ark of cedar and pine — biblical scholars debate exactly what the wood used by Noah would have been.

Huibers did the work mostly with his own hands, using modern tools and occasional help from his son Roy. Construction began in May 2005.

On the uncovered top deck — not quite ready in time for the opening — will come a petting zoo, with baby lambs and chickens, and goats. And one camel.

Visitors on the first day were stunned.

“It’s past comprehension,” said Mary Louise Starosciak, who happened to be bicycling by with her husband while on vacation when they saw the ark looming over the local landscape.

“I knew the story of Noah, but I had no idea the boat would have been so big.”

In fact, Noah’s Ark as described in the Bible was five times larger than Johan’s Ark.

But that still leaves enough space near the keel for a 50-seat film theater, where kids can watch the segment of the Disney film “Fantasia” that tells the story of Noah.

Another exhibit shows water cascading down on a model of the ark. Exhibits on the third level show ancient tools and old-fashioned barrels, exotic stuffed animals, and a wax model of an exhausted Noah reclining on a bed in the forecastle.

Genesis says Noah kept seven pairs of most domesticated animals and one breeding pair of all other creatures, plus his wife, three sons and three daughters-in-law together on the boat for almost a year while the world was deluged.

Perhaps it was only logical that the replica project would be the brainchild of a Dutchman: Fear of flooding is ingrained in the country’s collective consciousness by its water-drenched history.

Lois Poppema, visiting from California, said she thought the Netherlands was exactly the right place for an ark.

“Just a few weeks ago we saw Al Gore on television … saying that all Holland will be flooded” by rising sea levels, she said.

“I don’t think the man who made this ever expected that global warming will become (such an important) issue — and suddenly having the ark would be meaningful in the middle of Holland.”

Under sunny skies Saturday, Huibers said he wasn’t worried about another biblical flood, since according to Genesis, the rainbow is the sign of God’s promise never to flood the world again. But he does worry that recent events such as the flooding of New Orleans could be seen as a portent of the end of time.

Huibers said he hopes the project will renew interest in Christianity in the Netherlands, where churchgoing has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years. He also plans to visit major cities in Belgium and Germany.