Wow (plus quotes)

Wow--shout-outs to both Hayley and Sara for thoughtful postings, below...I DO love to listen to y'all think out loud...

I picked the quote I'll use on Friday (and which I offer here as a source for black-out poetry making):

Governor Thomas Dewey granted clemency to Ruth Brown, enabling her to be set free....She left Bedford Hills at age forty-five after being locked up for twenty-one years. She was supposed to be on parole for the rest of her life.

Two years later, she was imprisoned for not obeying the rules of her parole....She had been a prisoner for so long that she felt more at home inside Bedford than outside it....

For years to come, the story of Ma Brown was passed down from one generation of Bedford prisoners to the next. Her story was part history lesson, part cautionary tale. Nobody wanted to lose all contact with the outside world like Ma Brown had...Nobody wanted to discover that by the time they were finally permitted to leave, they had lost their desire to be free (83).