Sunday, June 30, 2013

A peculiar morning


**Update**

After a day of archive tweeting, there are still so many more posts that I haven't gotten to, so I've decided to go ahead and extend the tweeting until I bring us back up to the present.

*****

I was awoken this morning, far too early for the sabbath, to the news that the New York Times had mentioned Lost Words in a story about the Texas DCJ's archive of executed offenders' last words. After plodding along posting to the ether for the last two years, primarily to an audience of Russian spam bots and my mom, it was a fascinating surprise to be highlighted in the grey lady and to see @theselostword's Twitter followers increase by 400% (to 40).

To welcome all the new followers, I've decided that I'll be doing some archival tweeting tomorrow, July 1st. Some of these will be notable cases (Karla Faye Tucker, Cameron Todd Willingham), and others will be selections of my personal favorites, some of them maddening, some of them hilarious, and others heartbreaking. I hope you enjoy them.


4 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing these sad and poignant statements.

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  2. Found this blog via the NYT. Very interesting. Would like to point out that the contraction for "you all" is spelled "y'all" not "ya'll".
    As a person who is from Texas, a state that clearly gets a lot of things wrong, I felt inclined to point this out. Plus, you'll be getting a lot more traffic and the fewer mistakes the better! Thanks for your blog.

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  3. As a fellow Texan, I appreciate your comment. I am aware of the alternate spelling "y'all", but as I am contracting ya + all, I will continue to maintain the (correct) "ya'll".

    Thanks for reading- glad you found your way here!

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  4. I have worked with inmates and the only thing they are sorry about is getting caught. Please don't feel sorry for them, which is not to say you should not have humanity. I am Buddhist and am against the death penalty only because it's too expensive to use and not a deterrent for criminals. Life (sentencing) is cheaper and more humane. Life should be 50 years minimum day for day before parole could be considered. If you do the crime, do the time. We also need to get the pedos off the grid. They also do not care about their victims and make excuses for their behavior. People who commit these crimes do not deserve the right to rejoin society.

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