Lo-Jack City

This past weekend I went up to an SCA event in Milbrook, Duchess County. The SCA chapter up there is called “The Shire of Frosted Hills” and the name definitely fit this weekend. It was beautiful. It had snowed the night before but the sun was out all day. To get there we drove north from New York City though Westchester County, which looked just as beautiful. With a fresh blanket of white snow, rolling hills topped here and there by a barn or a farm house, it looked like an endless series of picture post-cards flashing by outside the window, and I thought to myself: “Wow! What a wonderful place to be under house arrest for five months!”

Lest we weep for Martha, realize that she is under house arrest on her huge estate in Westchester, and she can leave for 48 hours each week to go to work. The Westchester compound is a 153 acre estate in Bedford, NY. The house is 10,000 square feet. The whole place cost about $16,000,000. She could get lost going to the bathroom. The first picture we saw of Martha after she had returned home was of her frolicking in the snow with her huge horses (which for some reason made me think of Catherine the Great). She strolled her estate, played with her dog, complained that her cappuccino machine didn’t work, and got back to normal. Now she is stuck out there in this beautiful place where she can garden, ride, hike, cook, all the things she loves to do. This is the (incarceration) life.

Let me clear something up here: I think Martha got screwed. I think the feds went after her maliciously, and she didn’t really deserve to go to prison. But I really object to the fuss that’s being made over her now.