2:01 p. m. I'm fiddling with my scanner this morning to see if there's a way I can post Jack's letters from prison without having to type them in. Time is melting around me this summer; I need speedier ways to accomplish some tasks I want to do.
The first try was a failure. To scan the letter and post as is -- in spite of Jack's neat handwriting and dark ink -- will cause eye strain all around. So now I'm off to enlarge the first page and then scan it in sections to see if that's readable. If only I had a motion-efficiency expert here to observe and make recommendations.
Results to follow.
2:15 p. m. I tried selecting "darkest" and photocopying the first page of the letter before posting. It was nearly as illegible as the first attempt.
We -- you and I and Jack -- have lots of time to think over the subject of prison and posting and blogging. Jack has more nine years left to serve in Louisiana. He pled guilty to his offense and considers the sentence appropriate.
I'm not sure you people are worth the trouble I'm taking to get his mail online. Why am I doing it? Because my friend Nancy Sehested, who is a chaplain in a prison in North Carolina, once told me that we put people in prison, do everything possible to inhibit their interactions with family and friends, treat them terribly, and at the end of their sentence wonder why they have trouble reintegrating into society.
"Injustice" is the word for such a situation. And so I plan to post Jack's letters (he has given me blanket permission to do with them as I will) because I believe that if one person on reading the letters comes to think of prisoners as human beings rather than as refuse, I will have done something of significance in the world.
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