Sunday, January 24, 2010

A blog about prisons

I've been in a number of prisons, not as a prisoner, but as a visitor primarily following the same guy through the system until after seven years or so he was "shock parolled" after his 5th wife was murdered by her boyfriend leaving a baby to raise. I guess the parole board thought he was the guy to do it. The reason he had a baby was that he had escaped in the prison garbage truck and they left town together.

Yesterday the Conestoga group met at the Ohio Historical Society (now open only on Saturdays due to budget cuts by the state) to hear David Meyers talk about the local music scene. Wonderful presentation with great photos. David has over 4,000 pages of manuscript on this topic and a huge rare record collection--that's sort of what a fascination with local history can do. But he has also written about Ohio's prisons, and his latest book is out. While checking that web page I came across his blog, Central Ohio's Historic Prisons. Because of Dave's encyclopedic interests in music, records, film, prisons, local history (he also worked on Columbus Unforgettables series now out of print), screen writing, religion and family, he somehow manages to merge all of them in his blog--with photos. See the record labels about the great Ohio Penitentiary fire, April 21, 1930! And did you know the Professor of psychology at OSU who coined the term "moron" was once the coach of the USC Trojans? It's all on Dave's blog. Ah, a blogger after my own heart.

He's also on Facebook, and a member of UALC for you locals.

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