This makes me so depressed–Poll asks Americans “Who is a journalist?”:

A new U.S. poll reveals that 40 per cent of Americans think Fox News Channel personality Bill O’Reilly is a journalist, compared to 30 per cent who think Bob Woodward is a journalist.

New at Ink Pot–a beautiful flash by the one and only Kathy Fish: Photograph.

The new edition of SmokeLong Quarterly is live for your reading pleasure (and pleased will you be–it is amazing!). By all means, make sure you read the interviews at the end of each story as they are illuminating.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SmokeLong–may you live long and “keep digging beauty”!!!

Looking for inspiration and a kick in the pants, I go to one of my favorites, Annie Dillard, and reread my favorite parts of The Writing Life. Here is one for today:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the weather of late is soupy.

The air is thick with water, pollen. Anything which does not move for any period of time is dusted in yellow. When it rains, the yellow coating froths around the edges, circles at the base of a stone.

The air hangs thickly like stewed meat, waiting to be picked away.

Everything is sticky. My fingers adhere to the keyboard.

And the heat leaves me craving something salty–fried chicken, a bag of potato chips, clam strips.

Thriving are the mosquitoes. This is their time to shine and shine they do, licking their lips as they find that soft spot on my neck, the place I was saving for lips.

I grew up in upstate New York. Way upstate. Just a few miles from the border and on the other side of a rather large mountain from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY. That was just one of the nearby prisons (granted the scariest one, but no one has ever escaped from within its 30 foot walls. Prisonsers have, however, escaped from the connected farm). There were also medium and low security facilities which popped up all over the landscape when I was growing up (my favorite one is in the town of Lyon Mountain, an old boom town. The state took the school, which had been k-6, and shipped the kids off somewhere else and transformed the building into a low-security prison).

Prisons were a large part of my life as a teenager and young adult. My senior year in high school, my psychology teacher took us on a tour of Dannemora. I had driven past the 30 foot walls (they come right to the edge of the road) hundreds of times and always paid attention to them (it’s impossible not to) but had not really thought about what might be beyond them. We entered as visitors and had to empty our pockets and go through a metal detector. We laughed when one of the boys got the condom in his wallet removed. Then we were inside. The walls. The towers. Men with guns in the towers. We stuck close together.

The C.O. (correction officer) who led our tour seemed to take some gleeful satisfaction in telling us the scary bits. “See that guy in the visitors room? That’s the Amityville Horror murderer.” He was, apparently, the one who had committed the murders which unleashed the ghosts.

“Up against the wall, kids. Prisoner coming through.” We had to plaster ourselves against the wall as two guards walked passed with a shackled prisoner. My heart beat quickly. What could he do? What had he done?

Then we were above a large, bright gym. Men were shooting hoops, running. One man played handball against the wall. “See that guy playing handball? He’s Son of Sam.” And he was. I recognized him. I felt I was seeing someone famous. Then I remembered what he was famous for.

He led us into a cavernous room, filled with men at sewing machines. When we walked in, they all stood up. We were looked over, even and perhaps, especially, the boys. No one disguised what they wanted from us. It may have been the single most terrifying moment of my life. The C.O. got us out of there quickly.

He brought us to the yard, where the inmates had constructed a ski jump. There were terraced rows of shacks. He explained the pecking order as it relates to the shacks: “At the bottom are the baby-rapers, the molestors. Everyone hates them. Above them, the drug dealers, then the murders, armed robbers, etc.” At the top, the mafia guys.

Finally he brought us to a cell block for lifers. It was empty. We could look inside the cells and see what life might be like. Then an alarm whined, louder and louder.

“Okay, we might be in a lock down situation.” I don’t remember what happened next other than our teacher got us the fuck out of there. On the bus ride back to school, we were somber and our teacher got us to explore our feelings with him. I don’t remember which one of us said it but we all felt that we would do anything to not end up there.

If I remember correctly, there are 10,000 men behind the walls at Dannemora. The town my school was in had 2,000 people total.

Ultimately, though, many of the boys on that bus with me ended up in one of the prisons. Although, not as a prisoner, rather a guard, a C.O. It’s a good job for the area. You don’t need a degree and it pays well, with good benefits. It’s nothing to scoff at, but it does or can do strange things to people. Divorce, depression, suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse rates are all high for C.O.’s. For many years, I had a boyfriend who was a C.O. at a medium security prison. He hated the way the other guards treated prisoners and visitors. He tried to treat people–prisoners, their visitors–with respect but he was also aware that there was a fine line and if he crossed it to flagrantly, his life would have been hell.

The thing is that all of the guards, they are in prison as well.

It is not good, our penal system. But it’s the one we’ve got.

Told in a matter-of-fact, unsentimental way Stewart O’Nan‘s latest novel The Good Wife tells the story of one family and 25 years of their lives as they work through the New York state penal system.

Tommy Dickerson does something stupid. He follows his friend Gary’s lead and ends up involved in a murder for which he (and not Gary) pays the price–25 years in prison. At the time of his arrest, his wife Patty is pregnant. This is her story.

We see through her eyes the frustration of the poor as they try to work the system. Everything is against them, including, it seems, the public defenders. Then as the wife of a prisoner we see Patty at the mercy of the system again–as items are confiscated and her husband transferred from prison to prison (moving farther and farther away–to Dannemora and farther northwest, to eventually Bare Hill in Malone) as she is left to make due as a single mother.

Though they do not thrive, their marriage survives and their son makes it through college and ends up with a great job. It’s at the end when Tommy is released and they are together again as a family (like they never were before) that we realize that all of these years have been not just a sentence for Tommy, but for all the rest of them as well.

Yes, Tommy was guilty of a crime. Even if the didn’t commit the actual murder, he was there and could have stopped it. But the key to this story is not his guilt or innocence, rather it is about what happens to the family, the extended family, the friends of those imprisoned. What is the world like through their eyes. And you walk away from the book asking yourself, what would I do if my loved one was in jail? Would I be able to persevere as Patty does? Would I be such a good wife?

It’s a fascinating, quick read and if you have not read O’Nan before, you should know that he is great. He has a no nonsense approach to telling a story that is utterly engaging and in this book, he has succeeded in doing just that.

I’m wondering if maybe Russel Crowe did it on purpose?

American Heritage has an absolutely wonderful, funny, and poignant piece by Gerard Meister in their latest issue, My V-J Day–It was nothing like Eisenstaedt’s (scroll down on the page to read the story).

Is it only me, or does anyone else think Dancing with the Stars is a really weird idea for a show?

My pal Randall Brown was kind enough to interview me recently about reading and critiquing. So much thanks to him and the generous folks at Smokelong Quarterly for this article: Ten Essentials of Reading for Writers.

Kevin McIlvoy’s collection The Complete History of New Mexico is wonderful*–especially so is the three part novella, which holds the same title of the book.

The Complete History of New Mexico tells the story of Charlemagne J. Belter (or Chum as he was poignantly called by his best friend), his father, his stepmother Bet, his teacher Mrs. Betterson and his beloved friend Daniel and his sister Marty. The story is unusual in that it is told in a series of research papers (each receiving a failing grade) written by the 11-year-old and typed up by his “stepmother”, Bet. Within each paper, an alternate history of New Mexico is revealed (as told by the people who populate Chum’s life) as well as the tragic lives of Daniel and Marty. Somewhere along the narrative, Daniel is killed after trying to stop something from happening (never overt, it seems that Marty and perhaps even Daniel was being molested by her father) and Marty disappears. The mystery of what happened to Marty is revealed in the final section when Mrs. Betterson tells Chum what happened.

I love a writer who takes a risk and I love a writer who takes a risk and succeeds at it even more. In his unusual way of telling this story, McIlvoy succeeded in making this history as real as real can be. He did exactly as Chum hopes, provides us with an alternate history we can but our faith in:

You can try but you can never run out of History. After you run out of Faith you have got History which people put their Faith in who are not religious at all.

There are many other great stories in this collection, but my heart lies with Chum and his engaging spirit.

* DISCLAIMER: I know it seems I love every book I write about here, but to be honest I only write about the things I love or like because I don’t have the time to read or write about things I don’t like. I’m not a critic. I’m a reader.