The Prison Next Door
In 2001, Don and Bo Sosebee picked a spot for their house on a small hill overlooking a pasture where their horses and cattle roamed. They spent the next three years building a one-story cabin there. Don hauled in 6×12 logs from Mount Juliet, Tennessee, for the frame. He lined the interior walls with lumber from his old barn and nailed white pine across the ceiling. In the front of the house, he hoisted a metal roof atop columns of tree trunks to make a covered porch. It became the background for their friends’ family photos, and where Don hosted his daughter’s wedding.
A quintessential cowboy, even at 83, Don still puts on his uniform each day: a denim long sleeve Wrangler button-up shirt with dirt stains on the sleeves, jeans, boots, and a tan cowboy hat.
He tells stories in a slow and sure drawl. One he enjoys telling is how he ended up in Franklin County, Arkansas. As it goes, in 1918, his parents climbed into a covered wagon and rode north from West Texas to northwest Arkansas, after three years of drought made it impossible to run cattle. They settled one town over from where Don lives now. Growing up, his family had no electricity or running water, instead using kerosene lamps and suspending food into their well in buckets to keep cold.
Don’s father knew horses and passed along his knowledge to his son. Patience, Don learned, was the key to winning their respect. As a kid, he earned $10 a month breaking neighbors’ horses. He learned to make his own horseshoes, too—a necessity after the town blacksmith was shot dead by his mistress’ husband (another story he likes to tell). Don fell in love with ranching and by age 20, he started buying land on nearby Mill Creek Mountain—locals describe it as more like a large hill—to ranch and train horses.
Since then, Don has acquired around 300 acres. He’s given some of it to his son, Cody Sosebee, a renowned rodeo clown, and his daughter, Shannon McChristian, who runs a daycare 30 minutes away in the small city of Fort Smith. He’s filed plans to build a cemetery, and intends to pass his land down to his great grandchildren.
https://boltsmag.org/arkansas-prison-franklin-county/
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In a different context though..about a Sidewalks Lab or Noom style smart city implementation shouting down environmentalists/lefties of my specific type. I am sick of the private sector in tech here thinking it can just hijack private spaces, cause accidents with force, implicit extortion and creepy snooping. Whether it’s about health, immigration, education or tech these are the worst imaginable solutions and so crass and myopic. And entertainment doesn’t exist formally in my life and never will.
I am tired of the capture of my real world space by sleazy for profit corporations and a crappy narrative.
I use marijuana medically so I don’t like intrusions on seclusion that too by people who could have histories of sexual harassment etc. I never meet such people irl but opaque systems invite such people not anyone decent. It’s a strain on doctors, scientists, decent businesses like my small medical MJ company.
I feel bad for the ceo of my medical MJ company, my oncologist, the delivery men who deliver to my house and well…anyone I know..a lame and blah, but constantly (vaguely and directionlessly) saber rattling MeToo sympathetic feminist in a Tower of Babel can’t be fun to know 
.
Somewhere in there are some creeps in serious denial whom I never come across. What else could justify such a creepy implementation of tech ignoring reality for anyone except the very wealthy and powerful. Fuck these guys.
I don’t take any of their stuff and they can’t have any of mine. My life has been glass half empty and half full but it’s not half full because I am a sucker who falls prey to sleazebags. It’s half full because neither my parents nor I exploit people. Yeesh….this sort of bogus conservative and self serving brilliance with a hardluck narrative and low rent slum pushing sleazily…ugly fucks.
What makes real life “not a spectacle” is the absence of real conflict (except in boring ways you can’t commodify) and of real life that’s hard to exploit to get something for nothing. We need a Lina Khan where I live preemptively cracking down on tech companies, influencing, the entertainment industry etc. A MeToo plus Lina Khan powerhouse that could totally work where I live. I really would hate my street and home and city to go the way of this crass city where my former workplace was located. The entertainment industry where i live is notorious for sexual harassment.
