EARN A COLLEGE DEGREE GEORGE BUSH STYLE

This in my email today:

A UNIVERSITY DEGREE CAN BE YOURS!

A prosperous future, increased earning power, more money and the respect of all is within your reach!
No required tests! No classes! No books!
Get a Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate (PHD.)
All the benefits of a university graduate can be yours.
No one is turned down.

Prose Power

A good turn out for my second class at KSR last night. Twenty students read aloud from their papers assigned last week that included their most intense moments and thoughts on Mongo Bear Wolf's "Man in his Cocoon."
     I was told when I first started teaching at KSR that the prisoners were secretive and would not want to read their papers out loud to their class mates. Quite the contrary. In three years I've had only a couple of students who complained. It really is a catharsis for most of them. And once they get started look out.
     Last night two of the men actually wept during their readings. One fellow wrote about his beautiful wife who died of cancer in front of him and his two children. Another wrote about his dead mother who he adored. The others wrote about their crimes or seeing their children born. All of the writing was heartfelt and all the men listened in respectful silence.
     What they witnessed was the power of prose. Carefully written, emotional descriptions of the their lives that at times approached poetry.

Boots and Cowboys

Twenty-one new students in my class last night at KSR. Thursday night the class is split between regular and Tech students. I seldom can tell the difference. I'm always amazed at how deferential they are during my opening "lecture." And when I give them their first writing exercise, "Take 30 minutes and write down your most intense life-time experience. That moment when you felt most ALIVE," they go nuts. Sometimes I feel like the most intense moment in their lives was when some crazy professor asked them to write down and then read out loud to their fellow classmates their most intense moment.
     One older, gray haired man in a wheel chair kept looking at me while the others were writing. Finally he said, "Your wearing cowboy boots. Do ride a motorcycle or a horse." "Neither" I said, I just find them to be comfortable. "Yeah I know, I used to wear them every day before I went to prison," he said.

School Days

"I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see."
                           Walker Percy
                           "The Moviegoer"

     Nineteen students showed up last night for my class at KSR. Let's see how many stay when they find out they'll have to do a two page paper after each meeting, plus read it aloud to their class-mates. I explained to them that my classes are like jam sessions and everyone will have a chance to solo.
     Walking by the large, imposing brick building with broken windows that serves as the "hole" at the prison last night. One of the inmates yell's at me "Hey, you a preacher man?
In a way, I guess I am.