Wiki Law School

This past weekend, I was fortunate to spend time with MacArthur Foundation fellows.

Before going there, I had joked to others, Im going to be the stupidest person there.

Well, it turns out, I was right, and I loved every minute of it.

I met some of the brightest and most talented people on the planet (and none with egos about it).

Mark Roth is a biomedical scientist whose work might save your life one day. He and his company are now perfecting a technique that sounds like its from a science fiction movie: suspended animation.

By carefully administering a small dose of a normally toxic gas (hydrogen sulphide), suspended animation is induced, hopefully helping trauma and heart attack victims survive long enough to be treated.

Heres a video of him talking about it:

James Longley makes moving documentaries about people living in the Middle East. The one we saw, Saris Mother, is about her valiant attempt to make her way through the medical labyrinth of Iraq to get care for her sick son.

John Ochsendorf is a structural engineer and architectural historian who is not only preserving historic structures but borrowing ancient technologies for contemporary use. He has studied the hand-woven bridges used to span the deep ravines of the Inca Empire.

He has also studied the tile vaulting system used in the 19th century by Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino (and has written a book, Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile).

Using some of these ancient building principles he has helped design energy-efficient structures using local materials, including a museum in South Africa, which was named the World Building of the Year in 2009.

Beth Shapiro is a biologist writing a book called The Race To Clone the Mammoth, a battle between Japanese and French scientists over who can find enough DNA from frozen carcasses to clone the woolly mammoth.

Dr. Holmes Morton is a country doctor whose clinic in Strasburg, Pa., treats Amish and Mennonite children suffering from genetic diseases.

By getting DNA from his patients from the start, he is often able to diagnose and treat diseases, including life-threatening ones. He is saving the lives of kids, and I have little doubt his philosophy toward diagnosing disease is something that will eventually spread to clinics everywhere.

Brian Tucker is a seismologist and the founder of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to reduce death and suffering when earthquakes strike the worlds most vulnerable communities.

Padang, Indonesia, is due to be hit by an earthquake and tsunami before 2030, he said.

Despite an advance warning of 25 minutes before the tsunami hits, the estimated death toll would be between 300,000 and 400,000, he said.

Tucker is working with local officials to get them to build elevated parks where people could flee after the earthquake hits.

Spending time with them and the rest of the MacArthur fellows who continue to make a difference in this world truly inspired me.

Its a weekend Ill never forget.

Curling up with a new book is a great way to spend the day.

While Ive enjoyed many great novels (Moby Dick, All the Kings Men and Plainsong to name a few), its the nonfiction books that often steal my heart (Hiroshima, Survival at Auschwitz, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Angelas Ashes and The Liars Club to name a few).

There are two new books Im anxious to read. The first is by Erik Larson, who has the ability to take historical figures and to turn them into real flesh and blood characters.

In The Devil in the White City (a terrific book if you missed it), Larson brings to life Daniel Burnham, the architect who created Chicagos famous Worlds Fair in 1893, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who took advantage of the fair to lure victims to their deaths.

In his latest book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitlers Berlin, Larson tells the story of William E. Dodd, who  becomes Americas first ambassador to Hitlers Germany. It is through the eyes of Dodd and his family that events unfold.

The second one I want to read is Among the Truthers by Jonathan Kay.

Kay explores conspiracies of every sort from 9/11 to vaccines to the John F. Kennedy assassination to President Obamas birthplace, pointing out that conspiracies naturally follow tragedies.

So what books are you anxious to read?

A new book is telling the story of Duncan Gray Jr., one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement.

Author Araminta Stone Johnson will speak at noon today (May 11) at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building, 200 North Street, in downtown Jackson, Miss., and sign copies of her book, And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray Jr.

Signed copies are also available at Lemuria Books.

Lemurias website gives this summary of the book:

From one perspective, Gray (b. 1926) would seem an unlikely spokesman for racial equality and reconciliation. He could have been content simply to become a member of the white, male Missisippi club. Gray could have embraced a comfortable life and ignored the burning realities around him.

But he chose instead to use his priesthood to speak in unpopular but prophetic support of justice and equality for African Americans. From his student days at the seminary at the University of the South, to his first church in Cleveland, Mississippi, and most famously to St. Peters Parish in Oxford, where he confronted rioters in 1962, Gray steadfastly and fearlessly fought the status quo. He continued to work for racial reconciliation, inside and outside of the church, throughout his life.

Heres a video interview with Gray:

Mississippi will now have its own Freedom Trail, designed to commemorate dozens of historical events during the civil rights movement.

Photographs of Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Miss., in 1961

“The Mississippi Freedom Trail is an enormous opportunity for our state to commemorate the bravery and courage of the men and women who fought for freedom and justice and to educate the public about Mississippi’s Civil Rights heritage,” Leland Speed, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, said in a statement Thursday. “With this year’s reunion activities of the 1961 Freedom Riders, now is the ideal time to unveil this important cultural initiative.”

The announcement coincides with the legislation spearheaded by Gov. Haley Barbour that resulted in $38 million in bond funding to create both a civil rights museum and a Museum of Mississippi History.

“The Mississippi Freedom Trail will be an outstanding educational attraction that will honor those from around the country who contributed to the civil rights movement here,” Barbour said in a statement. “Many people travel to Mississippi hoping to learn more about our history. This trail will be a great resource for visitors touring our state.”

Tourism officials selected 25 initial sites for the trail from more than 300 submissions from communities around the state.

At 3 p.m. May 18, the first of the five pre-selected markers will be officially unveiled in memory of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. The marker will be located near Bryant’s Store in Money, Miss. Members of Till’s family are expected to attend.

Four other markers expected to be unveiled include:

• Monday, May 23, 3 p.m. Medgar Evers’ House in Jackson;

• Tuesday, May 24, 11 a.m. Greyhound Bus Station in Jackson;

• Wednesday, May 25, 2 p.m. Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville;

• (no date yet) Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Tourism officials say they plan to eventually have a virtual tour of the trail on the department’s newly redesigned website, VisitMississippi.org.

Jeff Steinberg, founder of Sojourn to the Past, said the markers will augment civil rights tours he leads each year through Mississippi and the South. High school students already stop at Medgar Evers’ House on those trips.

Last week, President Obama honored survivors of the sanitation strike in Memphis — the final campaign of Martin Luther King Jr. before his 1968 assassination.

Sanitation workers strike in Memphis in 1968.

On Friday, the President met with eight of those survivors, who famously held the signs that declared, “I Am a Man.”

A statement released by the White House declared, “As workers across the country continue to face challenges to their rights, the issues for which these men fought continue to be relevant and the President remains committed to the causes for which they marched.”

Also Friday, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis announced that the 1,300 workers who took part in the historic strike would be inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame.

After the deaths of two sanitation workers, employees went on strike, seeking better job safety, better wages and the right to bargain. King backed their effort and joined them in their marches.

On April 3, 1968, King spoke at the Mason Temple in Memphis.

“We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he told the crowd. “But it doesn’t really matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live — a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The next day, King was assassinated outside his room at the Lorraine Motel (which has since been transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum).

Four days after the assassination, Coretta Scott King marched with civil rights leaders and union leaders in memory of her slain husband. On April 16, 1968, negotiators reached a deal, permitting the city to recognize the union and pay better wages.