Skip to main content

Books Behind Bars

I was driving back from Lexington today, a long but beautiful drive up I-81. To pass the time, I was listening to to the Virginia Insights show on NPR and there was a eye-opening and rather moving show featuring a wonderful lady named Kay Allison of the Quest Institute. Her organization sponsors a program called Books Behind Bars which provides free books for prison inmates.

On the show, they mentioned the great need for dictionaries. One thing many of us take for granted is that we have easy access to a dictionary or two. Not so in prison, where these are considered a valuable and prized possession. Here's why: many "on the inside" either have not had (or have not taken best advantage of) educational opportunities. When they arrive in prison and find they have plenty of time to reflect on their lives, some experience the desire to improve their minds and make a better life. So they turn to books. Those who never picked up a book before their time in prison naturally have a disadvantage: they are not familiar with many of the words they read, and so they need a dictionary. One caller, the librarian at the Auburn prison in Virginia, said that they have 15 dictionaries, and they are always checked out.

Among the many other books provided through the Books Behind Bars program, the Quest Institute has provided thousands of dictionaries. They are gratefully received. Check out the Quest Institute's web site and read some of the prisoners' letters. Here are some of the more popular books requested by inmates:

  • Dictionary and Thesaurus
  • Bible, Koran, spiritual material
  • Small business start-up
  • G.E.D. preparation
  • Electrical, welding, plumbing, carpentry and other trade skills.
  • Computer programming and web-design
  • African-American authors
  • Textbooks
  • Medical / Health / Nutrition / Fitness
Labels:

Comments

Eileen said…
We should make a donation, especially at Christmastime might be nice.
October 13, 2012 at 3:05 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Important lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War

My attention for the last few months has been very much occupied by Vladimir Putin's war on the Ukraine. Like many, I have come to feel a deep admiration for the bravery, resource, intelligence and dogged persistence of the Ukrainian people and military in the defense of their country. It has also been extremely gratifying to see European nations put aside their internal differences and full-heartedly support the Ukraine in their hour of need. I have also been struck by the contrast between what we have traditionally thought of Russia's military power and what we are actually seeing unfold in front of our eyes today -- over a million casualties in a war that was intended to last at most a few weeks, but has dragged out over more than four years with no end in sight. We are seeing the hardware of war being destroyed in colossal numbers by drone warfare -- tanks and artillery vehicles in their thousands, entire air defense systems wiped out, even the flagship of the Russian navy,...
Post a Comment
Read more

To Boldly Split Infinitives

This is somewhat a manifesto. English is not Latin. We can put prepositions at the end of a sentence if we want to. And we can start sentences with a conjunction! If we want to boldly split infinitives, then we're perfectly welcome to do so. Why? Because these are all syntactically correct constructs in English; they parse. And even more, they convey meaning to other speakers of the language, which is the real test of whether something is permitted in a language. My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Doane, a throwback to the 19th century prescriptivist grammarians, would no doubt sniff disapprovingly and peer with narrowed eyes over her Far Side-style glasses at such goings on. However, now I have the M.A. in Linguistics and can scowl back with gravitas. And so I will echo those marvelous Churchillian words: " This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put. " But in the end, I must confess that it was Guy Deutscher who freed me from the pointless tyran...
2 comments
Read more

The North-going Zax and the South-going Zax

Yesterday, I was on my lunch time walk and had an interesting experience. It lasted perhaps less than 2 seconds and yet I've been thinking about it on and off ever since. I was trundling along at my usual brisk pace, on the right-hand side of the path. A few yards off, I spied a man walking toward me on my side of the sidewalk, two trains heading toward each other on the same track. As we grew closer, I instinctively hugged the right-hand margin a little closer and he did the same. When it became clear that we were on a collision course, the image of the old Dr. Seuss story about the North-going Zax and the South-going Zax popped into my head. In the story, the two Zaxes meet and stand there for years, each too stubborn to give way to the other, while a city grows up around them. For about a quarter of a second, I contemplated such a pissing contest and realized that such a course of action did not advance my goal of getting back to work in time for my 2:00 meeting. So I swerve...
2 comments
Read more