Mr. Librarian, remember me?

"Of course," I said to the aging inmate, "Mississippi!"

Two years ago, I was setting up our bookcart to serve the 300 men in a Minimum security house and he was on the work detail to clean floors and distribute food. Since the workers in a house are usually out when we arrive and on the good side of the deputies, they get first dibs on our library books. M. always held back and let others pick books first. That day, however, I really scored when I handed him a "True Crime" book about murders in Mississippi. I guess he'll never forget me, though I hope my notoriety wasn't gained for promoting True Crime!

Why distribute True Crime books to criminals, you ask? Incarcerated folks have the keenest sense of justice of any people I've met, with the possible exception of my older sister during a board game. Like the vast TV audience of shows like Cops, these inmates want to see punishment meted out for crimes worse than ones they have committed. Secondly, most inmates who've done time in the State Penitentiary have had to stay out of the way of serious criminals at one time or another so they are VERY interested in learning about the minds of people who make it into an Ann Rule book.

Back to my pal, Mississippi. I had seen him all over the jail during the past five years and was not thrilled today to see him chilling in Maximum Security. He seemed more suited to "the other side," where the crimes were less severe and the population more likely to be released. M. sat at the metal tables watching us distribute books to the men of his house--190 brawny or scrawny men, vying for one of the payphones or trading the books and magazines we'd just delivered. He said wearily that his work felt a lot like babysitting, which was an accurate assessment, considering the age difference between him and the large number of twenty-year olds locked up there. The energy in the cell block was palpable. Mississippi could have been tired from rising at 4 a.m.; but there is a more profound reason he may have felt worn out.

How many inmates face exhaustion from life, itself; from disappointment, from the depression that comes from aging behind a 12-foot fence, strung with wire? How does our library service help a tired pod-worker "keep his hand on the plough," moving forward. I think we select books and keep returning for a very simple reason. "We are all one spirit, we are all one name." This is how Peter Yarrow told the story in his song, River of Jordan (1972):

I traveled the banks of the River of Jordan
To find where it flows to the sea.
I looked in the eyes of the cold and the hungry
And I saw I was looking at me.
I wanted to know if life had a purpose
And what it all means in the end.
In the silence I listened to voices inside me
And they told me again and again. 

The is only one river. There is only one sea.
And it flows through you, and it flows through me.
There is only one people. We are one and the same.
We are all one spirit. We are all one name.
We are the father, mother, daughter and son.
From the dawn of creation, we are one.
We are one. 

Every blade of grass on the mountain
Every drop in the sea
Every cry of a newborn baby
Every prayer to be free
Every hope at the end of a rainbow
Every song ever sung
Is a part of the family of woman and man
And that means everyone. 

We are only one river. We are only one sea.
And it flows through you, and it flows through me.
We are only one people. We are one and the same.
We are all one spirit. We are all one name.
We are the father, mother, daughter and son
From the dawn of creation, we are one.
We are one.

Nope, I'll never forget Mississippi.