Letters from the Inside, Sarah Pender, #2

Kelly,

Thank you for your letter and the enclosed article you authored. Cute. I am interested in how freelance-writing works. Do you just write and send them into a paper or magazine editor and hope they like it? Are phone calls and connections needed? Do you generally write for small local papers? Is it easier than the more widely circulated publications? You write well and I can see why your stories would be popular for short articles-seems like something for Elle, Allure or Cosmo.

Okay, you keep a blog. I'm not exactly sure what a blog is, since the only time I used the internet, both before I was arrested (8 years ago) and while I was out, but limited it to use or work related website search engines, research, news, weather, tech support, etc. I've heard of blogs and think they are like a space for people to respond to a specific topic or writing. Am I correct? How do people find your blog? Do they subscribe or just go to it? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?

I don't have internet access and am not even allowed to receive info. that's printed straight from the internet. I as given your article, but warned that I had to tell you. If you print anything from the internet, it can't have the header/footer that shows its origin. You can cut/paste it to a word processing program or simply cut off the header/footer. Whatever works. Just so you know.

Basically, I spend 23 hours a day locked in a 6X10 cell. I have a hard pillow and mattress, a stainless steel sink and toilet combo, and a formica shelf bolted to the wall that serves as a writing table, but I use it to store books, papers, etc. There is a mesh door at one end, with a heavy solid outer door, and a double hung window at the other end, covered by a heavy metal screen that looks out over an alley lined by century old houses, often neglected with boarded up windows or graffitti. Stray cats and dogs plague the alley, and forage through large trash cans or litter on the ground. Small children play unattended, drug deals are conducted on the nearby street corner, and other crimes can be witnessed several times a year from this window.

In the hour I spend outside this cell, I shower in a three sided steel shower stall, and I get cuffed and walked to another room with my choice of radio or a TV with like seven channels. I don't' watch TV often, but I like to turn the radio on the college station and listen to classical music while I write. It's my peaceful time away from the cacophony of loud voices yelling and carrying on down our hallway of 14 cells. Obnoxious and loud pretty much sums up the majority of the women who reside in lock. (Downstairs, in open population, things are VERY different. It's also significantly different between prisons.)

Women are sentenced to lock (Disciplinary Segregation) for 5 days to 1 year per offense, depending on the severity of the offense and frequency of write ups. Being in an unauthorized area, fighting other inmates, arguing, being smart or insolent with an officer, theft, having ex, assaulting staff, failing a drug screen or in my case, escape, are all reasons (among many others) women come to lock.

While I am here, everything is restricted, from the cheapest hygiene items, to our phone calls and visits. Meals are served in our rooms on plastic trays three times daily: 6:30AM, 11AM, 4:00PM. Our governor privatized the food service and cut the cost of food per prisoner per meal from 1.41 to .99. You can imagine the quality of our food. Um. Yeah. That's a story in itself.

I spend most of my day writing letters to friends, family, and making new connections that are positive and mutually supportive. I read books, most recently received Long, Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg and am waiting on The Three Laws of Performance by Steve Vanto. a Landmark Forum Leader. Have you ever heard of landmark Education, or the Landmark Forum? I'm working through some of the curriculum with a leader, and intend to put together a proposal to bring the Forum to this prison, once I am out of lock and put into population. I want to help cause the transformation of these women's thinking and limited boxes they live in, to empower them and improve the quality of their lives and raise their goals in life beyond drinking, mooching money off welfare programs, sex, drugs and clubbing. Break out of the labels, the stigmas, the stereotypes. Be something greater.

And I plan to do that right after I write my book. I decided to write it after the first of the year, and have about 130 pages finished. I could write it faster, but I need to wait on some transcripts to get here, line up people to help, (working on getting a typist to type up and email to editor) and waiting on a book about copyright laws, and laws on publishing true crime and autobiographies, as well as I still need to get a book on Getting Published: 101, or something. So it's cool, you felt compelled to write, given your hobby of writing. This is all new to me. All the writing I ever did was in high school and college courses, letters or short stories for fun. I would like any instruction you could give.

Your travels sound exciting! Never s pent much time travelling (mostly because I've been in prison for 8 years) but have traveled to several US cities. I like travel magazines and photos when my friends/family go on vacation. My aunt recently dated an Alaskan cruise captain and went on several cruises up to the snowy state. I wonder if you see the aurora borealis up there? That's one thing I've always wanted to do. It's magical. (Well, I get that it's electro-magnetic disturbances in the atmosphere, but it's still neat.)

Anyone I've ever known from NYC says they fell in love with the city, and the busy-ness of it all. I didn't really understand that until I went to Chicago. Definitely not the same scale, but I get the allure of so much variety in culture, architecture, low and high income homes, big and tiny business, corporate downtown, big shopping, or a little café. There's everything you need right there. I traveled by car, bus and train and found you can get just about anywhere you need to go on public transportation if you do it right and aren't picky about the occasionally smelly person or being smashed in on a subway at rush hour. Always an experience. I invested in an MP3 player and found peace.

Yeah, real estate prices around the country are so low, but they saw that coming for a while. "The housing bubble" would burst, they said. I saw a map of houses that had been foreclosed on just in Chicago and it as staggering! Anyone who has plenty of money would do well to buy now, so when the market stabilizes, they could reap the benefits, at least that seems practical to me. I know high-end real estate is different, though. How many people have an extra 13 million to toss around for a cool pad? A small percentage of the US population. Am I off base here?

Do you like your job?

I agree about karma. A fine example: my escape. The universe blessed me for the good I sent out from my life. Sure, I've done things not worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, but overall, I expect lots of good things and people in my life. and do not shrink back when the storm comes through. Not sure what I think about reincarnation. Possible, yes. Probable? Not a clue.

I'd love to read your published stories, and get to know you. Thanks for reaching out and making a connection.

Sarah