Marta is one of the excellent team who supports our Jails Program. One of her roles is filling requests. The meticulous matching of request slip to material has paid off!

We received an enthusiastic "thank you" for materials supplied to an inmate on the Max Side who is teaching social studies to a small class of inmates in his cell-block. "This hidden university...appreciates your concern of us not wasting quality time. That is essential in enlightenment of the mind. 'The mind is a terrible thing to waste' was the most powerful commercial ever made...." The Russian novelist, Dostoevsky, expressed the same thing after seeing all the vitality and intellectual capacity of the men incarcerated around him going to waste.

This guy likes to instruct the young about political issues. He doesn't shy away from controversy or complexity. Some months ago, he was exercising in the outer yard--each inmate gets some solo "solar" recharging--and I offered him a book about the "Authoritarian Personality."

I hope he continues to discover and share mental freedom with his "cellies." It is imperative in a jail--which teaches adaptation to order and routine--to knock the authoritarian monkey off our backs! Our aim should be to return citizens who understand self-control onto our streets, not automatons who merely follow orders. And thanks to great library service, we will.