Excerpt: First Class at Marysville Woman's Prison

At London Correctional Institution it was easier to market my career development and job placement services for male ex-offenders along with the classes I taught. At ORW (Ohio Reformatory for Women), it was a different story: good jobs for female ex-offenders are harder to come by, especially if you are trying to cross-train them from prostitution, say, into available jobs of cleaning, clerking, cooking, or waitressing. For one thing, it’s a drastic pay cut. My class of twenty at Marysville had mixed backgrounds….Teaching female inmates was even more dangerous for a male teacher. The inmates could set the teacher up through more hidden manipulations. Where a male inmate would take pride in tricking a teacher on his own, the female inmates had no shame in their game: they would more readily gang up on a teacher with lies, or trick him with their softer persuasions.

We were warned of many things: Prison teachers are put into a trick bag from jump street, or the beginning, as convicts would say: we are given students—over ninety percent of whom have drug and alcohol addictions, but we are not given this information. We are given students with a multitude of emotional and learning handicaps, but we are not encouraged to look into this, in order to modify our individualized educational programs for each student. We are given students who failed to learn in the public schools and whom the public schools failed to teach, but we are not given the details, so we might know where to begin.

(Editor’s Note in retrospect: Given a whole new headstart and a chance to become educated, many of these female inmates could have cross-trained into respectable and well-paying jobs.)

Celebration of Time

Up on Mount Lemmon, near Tucson, in the visitors' center there is a 300-pound cross-section slab of a Douglas Fir, some six feet in diameter. It still makes a statement. “Sir, I exist!” Each ring says, “I’m alive!” Solid yellow, full of substance and history, the slab has personality, gusto and permanence flowing from it. This tree was 700 years old when it was cut down. We can tell that by counting all the growth rings. The ring for 1492 is highlighted-a big date for us in the so-called civilized world; it was just a tiny blip in the immense history of that tree. Some rings are thick, others are so thin that only an expert can count them. Good years, bad years. The growth rings show a total of 700 trees within that one tree: 700 rings, 700 years, 700 dimensions of time.
We are like a tree with growth rings. Our brain records every sensory experience, every thought or stimulation of the imagination. Our growth rings are in our memory. When certain electrodes are attached to our skull, vivid memories, emotions, even smells, of our childhood are immediately called to mind. Imagine that each ring in our memory fills up with fifty-two more chapters of sensations. Multiply those 52 chapters—one year—by how many years old you are. That's how many rings of you there are. You might have twenty good rings and only one bad ring. Or maybe it's ten good and ten bad rings. Still, it's half good! We cannot get stuck in one ring, live in the past, and suspend our growth. We cannot get stuck in a behavior that keeps us from creating a new ring of growth, flowing forward down Time's river.

NewsHour Interview with Dick Shelton

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer interviewed Dick Shelton concerning his book "Crossing the Yard" and his prison workshop.

The producer, Terry Rubin and his crew went into Rincon Unit of ASPC-Tucson with Dick Shelton, and Dick told me it went extremely well. Then they came to the Poetry Center, where they interviewed Dick at length. Terry Rubin had talked to Ken on the phone twice prior. So I thought he would be the man I should approach.

I took the opportunity, went down to the Poetry Center, stood for an hour and a half fifteen feet away from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Productions, as Terry Rubin, the producer put his crew through each step of Jeff Brown's interview with Dick Shelton and one man handling the lights and camera and the other man the sound system recording.

Jeff knew an art teacher at the Univ. of Az. who came to watch—who knew him back in San Francisco, so after Jeff and Dick and Terry talked, and Dick signed two books to give to Jim Lehrer, who was not there, I introduced myself to Terry Rubin, gave him a signed FREEDOM OF VISION book for Jim Lehrer—with my letter folded in half inside the front cover, and the backgrounder folder inside the back cover. Jeff and the art teacher walked out together, giving me the opportunity to walk out with Terry.

I verbally dedicated the book to the inspiration that Dick and Ken were to a national audience of FOV, as well as the inspiration for prison writing groups here in Arizona. I then went to my briefcase, got out a second copy of FOV, signed it for Terry Rubin, saying THANK YOU for coming here and for giving the public a chance to see another side of prisoners. I walked him all the way out to his car, and told him about Gordon Grilz, and Ben Gastellum, and others who rehabilitated themselves and shared their growth and their vision via their writing. Terry was very pleasant and was happy to get a book for himself as well, and I talked enough so that he had images and details from me to go along with the two books. He peeked inside to get a sense of both the letter, and the backgrounder. I was glad I took the chance.