Blog
LouAnn Hanian
One of the editors who helped me with The Honey Locust Tree wrote this about an early draft of the manuscript: “The strongest approach to revision would be to make this about your quest to find light in everyone, with the school as the propelling factor for...
The Three Silences
I tried many times to describe silence in The Honey Locust Tree, but I always failed. So little happened in a Quaker meeting. Worshippers entered the meeting space, sat in a pew, closed their eyes, and only spoke if they felt moved. In an effort to remedy this...
How Many Characters Can a Memoir Handle?
Halfway through writing “The Honey Locust Tree,” I realized that the list of people who had a role in the memoir was getting long. How many characters was too many? Where did I draw the line? The number became so lengthy that I created a document where I listed the...
Swimming Against the Current
In writing The Honey Locust Tree, I realized that my memories of prison ministry had some gaps, so I got in touch with two people who I hoped could help me. The first person was Per Bykstra. He was the drug counselor from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, who had...
The Students Ask to Have a Lock-In
Just before lunch, two eighth-grade girls appeared at my office door. The tall girl was slender and tipped forward from the weight of her backpack. The short girl wore a pink headband. The tall girl said, “Can the middle school have a lock-in?” “Come on in.” Students...
On How We Recover From Our Mistakes
A central theme of the memoir I’ve written, The Honey Locust Tree, has to do with mistakes. How do we recover from our mistakes? Do we need help—from a parent, friend, society, a prison—to recover from our mistakes? Who can doubt the pain, and the power, of a major...
An Inmate Shows Sympathy
We’d just sat down in the medium security chapel when Ralph Maloney, an inmate who never missed a Quaker Meeting, took two envelopes out of his pocket. He looked at the six inmates sitting in the circle of chairs. “Chaplain Medina’s mother died recently. Can you guys...
A Few Thoughts on Memoir
The Canadian writer Jean Little wrote: “Memoir is not the whole head of hair, but one or two strands of the hair.” When I started writing The Honey Locust Tree, I thought it would be easy. Pick a few strands of my own hair and proceed. How naive. First, there was the...
On Some Unexpected Parts of Prison Ministry
I wasn’t surprised when my prison ministry colleague, Tim Putnam, told me that a guard wouldn’t join us in the minimum security chapel. He said minimum at the A.C.I.—Rhode Island’s state prison is called the Adult Correctional Institutions—didn’t have a lot of locked...
On How The Memoir Started
My wife and I are driving from our home in Providence, Rhode Island to the airport. We pass the exit for Route 37. Years ago, I used to take Route 37 to get to Pontiac Avenue. Pontiac led me to the state prison. From 1994-1997, I was part of a group that conducted...