Barbed Wire

Until 1996, members of the news media could conduct one-on-one interviews with inmates in California prisons, giving the public a deeper understanding of what went on behind the barbed wire. This did not please the administration of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, which was disgusted by the way some inmates abused this privilege to promote themselves - calling in to radio talk shows to complain about their treatment, or appearing on TV to plug their books or movie deals. So reporters were barred from holding in-person interviews.

Until 1996, members of the news media could conduct one-on-one interviews with inmates in California prisons, giving the public a deeper understanding of what went on behind the barbed wire. This did not please the administration of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, which was disgusted by the way some inmates abused this privilege to promote themselves - calling in to radio talk shows to complain about their treatment, or appearing on TV to plug their books or movie deals. So reporters were barred from holding in-person interviews.

Question: In my travels throughout the Southwest, I've been able to collect dozens of patterns of barbed wire. Where do the so-called "Meriwether" pieces fit into the history of barbed wire? I may have a chance to buy some examples of this wire, but the person selling the stuff has put a hefty price on it.--B.V. Answer: The reason you may have to pay premium dollars is that the patented smooth wire produced by W. H.

In "War Horse," there's a scene in which two soldiers, one German and one British, tread uneasily into No Man's Land — the nightmarish killing field between the trenches that defined World War I combat — to work together to save a horse named Joey that is trapped in barbed wire. For director Steven Spielberg, the scene — which is tense but also laced with humor — is a pivotal moment: "It was a selling point for me in the sense that when I saw the play there's [a similar]

A new weapon against graffiti has been added to the standard arsenal of sandblasters and paint brushes--barbed wire. Under a pilot project by Caltrans, about 50 large freeway signs have been cleaned of graffiti and ringed with barbed wire and razor wire, a flatter, knife-sharp version of barbed wire. The wire is being wrapped around freeway sign poles and woven through catwalks in an effort to discourage graffiti vandals. So far, transportation officials said, it seems to be working.

After three weeks in the United States, secure in a relative's comfortable home, To Cam Thi Tran still is jolted awake each night by memories of the past seven years, spent behind barbed wire in Malaysia.

Sitting along a lonely stretch of highway in the Texas Panhandle, McLean isn't so small that you'd miss this hamlet in the blink of an eye. It would take probably five or six blinks to blow through this town, which has never recovered from being bypassed by Interstate 40. McLean's heyday coincided with Route 66's, when a seemingly endless stream of vehicles sped through. Each day, thousands of motorists drove by a large cinder-block building on the south side of the highway.

Outside a classroom window, a breeze swept past trees across a lawn and over the adjacent road to a distant cornfield. Between the lawn and the cornstalks, however, was a high fence, surveyed by patrol towers and topped by ominous, thickly wound barbed wire. At the California Institution for Women, Frontera in San Bernardino County, everything past the barbed wire is called "the outside world."

The title phrase in "Barbed Wire Under Your Armpits" comes from the instructions a ballet teacher gives her students in the play--to maintain proper position by imagining they're trying to keep their arms above prickly balls of barbed wire. But for the 10 women of various ages and occupations who make up the class, it's an image that resonates far beyond the dance studio where they gather once a week for a reprieve from the chaotic pressures of modern living.

As a Jew, I am outraged by the decision to warehouse Haitian asylum-seekers in what amounts to detention camps, as in Guantanamo. As a professional immigration-policy analyst, I believe that my outrage has a solid foundation in an objective assessment of the camp strategy. When I was in Haiti in June, 1990, I met people who had been jailed, beaten and intimidated by the military. This fear has increased dramatically since the coup that deposed the elected government.

The builder of Osama bin Laden's last lair was a polite but taciturn man who kept the neighbors at arm's length and prying eyes from discovering the identity of his boss. Known here as Arshad Khan, the stocky Pashtun with glasses and a tuft of hair under his lower lip bought up plots of land on the outskirts of this garrison city. Then, he built a sprawling compound anchored by a three-story building that would serve as sanctuary for the world's most wanted man. The CIA says Bin Laden lived there for five years before he was finally tracked down.

Marie Massa calls the gardeners together for a meeting, and so they amble over, removing gloves and shaking off dirt as they form a half-circle. The group's treasurer, Garrett Broad, reports that their finances are good and they can afford a new 8-foot fence behind the tool shed. Kids have been hopping the old one to smoke marijuana when nobody's around. Pot smokers are not as destructive as the opossums, Broad says, but still ? Geraldo Martinez is there with his wife, Marlene De Leon.

Yikes, alert the media! Oh. Wait. I was shocked, shocked, I tell you. There, not only on the front page of the Sunday Times, but on the front page of the Travel section as well, a color picture showing a huge Christian cross on a German mountain top ["In the Alps, a Saving Grace" by Susan Spano, June 6].The cross evidently symbolizes the village of Oberammergau's Roman Catholic ties and heritage. Egads! Christian symbolism. Prominently displayed in a U.S. newspaper no less. Oh, the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Sitting along a lonely stretch of highway in the Texas Panhandle, McLean isn't so small that you'd miss this hamlet in the blink of an eye. It would take probably five or six blinks to blow through this town, which has never recovered from being bypassed by Interstate 40. McLean's heyday coincided with Route 66's, when a seemingly endless stream of vehicles sped through. Each day, thousands of motorists drove by a large cinder-block building on the south side of the highway.

She is the political wife who bucked tradition. When scandal struck her husband, the governor of South Carolina, she did not stand by his side. Instead, Jenny Sanford packed up her things and their four children and moved out of the governor's mansion for the family's home on Sullivan's Island. On Thursday she issued a letter supporting another "principled, conservative, tough and smart" woman in the crowded Republican primary to succeed Mark Sanford. (You may recall that the governor, who once had presidential aspirations, went AWOL last summer, telling his staff he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail while he was actually in Argentina visiting his mistress.

Four Mexican soldiers crossed the border and held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico, authorities said. The confrontation occurred early Sunday on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, about 85 miles southwest of Tucson, in an area fenced only with barbed wire, said Dove Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Border Patrol.

If you had wanted to visit with John Witzel one recent warm and cloudless day, you would have driven 20 miles outside town, along a dusty ranch road here in the high desert of southeastern Oregon, then jumped on a horse. You would have ridden five miles through the bull thistle cactus, juniper trees and lupin that dot the brown hills.

When Israeli paratroopers in 1967 broke through the golden-gray stone walls and conquered the Old City, sacred ground to three great religions, Israeli leaders vowed that Jerusalem would never again be divided.

Waiting in their cars or on broken sidewalks, the blue-jeaned crowd has turned out for a parade. But they could pass for mourners at a funeral. They line up along the main drag in front of empty cafes and shops and rusted mining equipment fenced off with barbed wire. Passing time, some press hands and foreheads against windows of stores that went out of business so many years ago that it's hard to remember what they sold. Two graybeards stand near a telephone pole, watching for any sign of action in front of Susie's Thrift and Gift.