I spent the 12 years I was locked up
working in the classroom teaching men things like, well,
appreciation for nature but also math.
And the GED program, I worked quite extensively
with guys trying to earn their GEDs.
We would have these--
they had a radio in the classroom a--
walkie talkie the cops carried, and we'd hear little events
going on around the yard.
Sometimes there'd be something like,
there's a report of a rattlesnake down
at one of the tent sections.
And I'd see my students look up and I'd look up
and we'd, go field trip.
[LAUGHTER]
And off we go.
One of my students, Corey Black, great, big Black man.
Wonderful guy.
I took him outside--
we had a desert willow tree outside the education building
and there would be these-- during the spring and fall,
there'd be this migration that would come through
and once in a while, I'd see warblers in there.
And once, there was this yellow-rumped warbler
that came, and it stayed around for a few weeks.
And I pointed it out to some of my students and to Corey,
I said, look, there's a yellow-rumped warbler
in that tree.
And he looked at me and he said, if somebody
called me a yellow-rumped warbler, I'd have to hurt him.
[LAUGHTER]
So I'm going to read just a short little scene
about the classroom.
"Last night during class, Oscar, my Mexican national friend,
brought me a large male tarantula
he found outside the building.
'Ken, I have a present for you,' he said,
the unshaven non-compliant spider clinging to his arm.
Oscar complained about an irritation
on the inside of his forearm after I
took the spider from him.
'Tarantula hair,' I said.
'You don't want to get it in your eyes.'
After an impromptu classroom show and tell,
the spider quietly rode on my shoulder for the evening.
I considered leaving it in a desk drawer
as a locked and loaded present for an officer who's
been snooping around lately.
But decided it wouldn't do to find
him dead on the floor in the morning, the officer.
My wife is right.
I'm not devious enough to be a proper criminal.
She says I'm misusing my knowledge
about nature and weeds and bugs, that I should be doing more.
'Like how two entomologist brothers,' she says,
'both in separate prison camps, treated their captors during
the Vietnam War with lice, and assassin bugs, and mites,
and ticks, and fleas they'd collected and slipped
into their clothing.'
'Their fellow prisoners thought they were crazy,' she explains,
'until they realized what the two were doing.
Then everyone joined in the bug hunting,
helping the guards with their jackets, shaking their hands.'
Karen would make a better criminal than me.
She would do so much more than show and tell."
And one last little piece.
This is poetry--
I'm going to quote a little bit of poetry from my daughter,
but this is also a little bit of politics.
I moved into the politics section of the book.
"My 13-year-old daughter, Melissa,
spent yesterday at the Capitol, having
brunch with legislators, former governor Rose
Mofford and Governor Jane Hull.
Melissa was among about a dozen students
who won a statewide poetry contest focusing on an Arizona
theme.
She won first place for her junior high division
with her long poem called "Arizona Deserts," which
begins 'creosote sings its scent to me,
the desert stills under the warm touch of the sun.
Here, the wind has no purpose except to buffet and pound
on the silent rocks, shaping their solid bodies.
Karen told me that during the event,
Rose Mofford mentioned to her that she has much
to be proud of.
You have no idea, Karen thought.
We've talked about the many ironies in our lives.
How our youngest daughter writes a poem glorifying
Arizona's wilderness, winning an award ceremony
with Arizona's governor, while her father
sits in an Arizona prison.
No one has any idea.
Many children of prisoners follow
the example of their parents.
I've taught literacy to a father and son in the same class.
It's a prison class.
But here's what's really crazy, poetry contests aside,
recently, our Republican governor, Jane Hull,
spoke about Arizona's public schools,
listing problem after problem.
She was aware of them all.
But, she said, she would not increase funding for education.
Arizona would remain dead last in the country
for school spending.
The prisons bulged at the news."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]