I had assumed it was a total loss.  When I moved to Massachusetts I showed the plot to Shannon and told her that if she felt inclined to rip out the weeds and see if she could salvage any produce, she was welcome to.  She didn’t.

Last weekend I went back to Ithaca and slogged through the prairie formerly known as my garden, in pouring rain, to take down my fence and retrieve my hose and tools.  To my joy, I found that my produce had actually produced!  In the absence of any effort on my part for the past three months, I got six stalks of brussels sprouts, a HEAP of basil, and exactly one tomato, which I promptly ate.

It totally made getting soaked worthwhile.

And now, a Las Vegas Judge is working on a solution. He’s established a Sexually-Exploited Youth Court, working with police, prosecutors, public defenders, and social workers to find appropriate placements for children trafficked for sex.  Right now he doesn’t have a great solution, and many of them sit in lockup while waiting for a placement.  What’s even more amazing is that he’s already gotten an architect to design a “safe house” for the children, and the Bureau of Land Management (the government holding company for all the desert that nobody wants) has promised him ten acres of desert for it.  Now all he needs is the funds to staff and build it.

This is not a new idea in the sense that we already have various therapeutic courts springing up all over the place–mental health courts, drug courts, domestic violence courts, etc.  What is new here is that the other “problem-solving courts” are therapeutic interventions for people who commit crimes and have other issues, whereas this is a court that recognizes that its wards are not wrongdoers.  Also remarkable is that this is a project spearheaded by a judge.  It’s not unheard of–Orleans District Mental Health Court was the child of Judge Calvin Johnson until he retired–but it’s unusual.  Judges are used to being referees between adversaries, and many of them are wary of getting into these “social worky” courts–either because they see themselves as unqualified or because they think it’s just weird.

So, kudos to Judge Voy, and thanks to Skelly of Arbitrary and Capricious for first blogging this story.