ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-29-18)
Last Sunday we went on a fundraising cruise in support of the Sing Sing Prison Museum, a project which is starting to take shape on the site of the legendary correctional facility in Ossining. It will tell stories from many different sides, the ones you've heard and the ones you haven't. "Old Sparky" will be there, Jimmy Cagney will be there, "Son of Sam" will be there. But so will the victims, the corrections officers, the community living alongside it. They've already built one of the exhibits. It was finished in 1828, and the prisoners built it themselves. It was their own cell block, a third again longer than a football field, hewn from limestone quarried nearby.
There are a million stories, a million legends. Did the lights really dim when someone was electrocuted by "Old Sparky?" Probably not, but the first electric lights to shine in Ossining were powered by the prison generator. Did warden Lewis Lawes' daughter paint her pony in zebra stripes and ride it around as a mascot during prison football games in the 1930s? The pony never talked, he may have been a zebra but he was no rat. Did anyone ever bake a file into a cake and smuggle it into prison? Most of my files are on computer now, but they do contain some half-baked ideas.
The challenges of running a museum on the site of an actual maximum security prison are daunting. If you've ever been to Sing Sing you know that getting in is almost as hard as getting out. You can't just bake yourself into a cake, so there are clearly details to be worked out, even though I'd love to talk more about cake.
Philanthropy always makes me hungry, but the food they usually serve at fundraisers is for "foodies." I am not a foodie. If I see the word "compote" anywhere I start to get nervous that I might starve to death. There are very few child philanthropists, so I can't pull my usual trick of ordering from the kids' menu. There are some things I won't eat just because they sound disgusting. The word "haggis" came up in a crossword puzzle the other day, and I told my wife right off the bat I am never eating it. "You don't even know what it is," she said. "I know I'm never eating it, and I'm not eating curds or tripe. And I'm not eating gusset." "Gusset is a piece of material." "See? Why would I want to eat that?"
I needn't have worried, the food was great. I had the Yankee pot roast, and I beamed with pride that my baseball team has a dish named after it. What kind of dish do the Red Sox have? Socks and fine cuisine rarely go together. Not to get off the track, but is one player from the Boston team known as a Red Sock? Or do they travel in pairs? How many teammates have been lost in the laundry?
Anyway, we learned a bit more about the Prison Museum as we motored up the Hudson. We heard about the historic significance of the prison, and its relationship with the community. So many movies were filmed at Sing Sing that Warner Brothers donated a prison gymnasium. The cells in the original dormitory were no bigger than a yoga mat, and they had one laid out to illustrate. It was small and inhumane by today's standards, but at least incarceration would not interfere with your yoga. If you were brave enough to stay in a downward dog pose long enough to finish your kibble you could become a prison legend.
Things are a little different now, and you can't make the prisoners go out and build their own museum, I already asked. Jailbirds ain't thrown in the joint anymore, inmates are incarcerated into correctional facilities. They have a lot more rights, and a lot more syllables. What was really bad once may not be as bad anymore. People currently serving time for marijuana possession will live to see its widespread legalization. Some things haven't changed: there are people who do bad things, and they will and should pay a steep price, some would say not steep enough. But those who thought they could lock them up and throw away the key fail to understand that 90 percent will be back out, and we'll be sharing a society with them. That time they spent in prison is a stepping stone to your neighborhood, a learning experience. Whom do you want as their faculty?
The Sing Sing Prison Museum will also house a criminal justice center, where education and dialogue will increase the awareness of the issues. We motored on, and Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks played big band swing music as we passed by Sing Sing, and the singer sang sang as we dance danced and the flappers flapped. People had come in the costumes of the days when Hollywood made "The Big House" seem vaguely glamorous. We finished our drinks as we docked back in Yonkers. Society has a lot of thinking to do about crime and punishment, but it's free thinking that will keep us free.
Last Sunday we went on a fundraising cruise in support of the Sing Sing Prison Museum, a project which is starting to take shape on the site of the legendary correctional facility in Ossining. It will tell stories from many different sides, the ones you've heard and the ones you haven't. "Old Sparky" will be there, Jimmy Cagney will be there, "Son of Sam" will be there. But so will the victims, the corrections officers, the community living alongside it. They've already built one of the exhibits. It was finished in 1828, and the prisoners built it themselves. It was their own cell block, a third again longer than a football field, hewn from limestone quarried nearby.
There are a million stories, a million legends. Did the lights really dim when someone was electrocuted by "Old Sparky?" Probably not, but the first electric lights to shine in Ossining were powered by the prison generator. Did warden Lewis Lawes' daughter paint her pony in zebra stripes and ride it around as a mascot during prison football games in the 1930s? The pony never talked, he may have been a zebra but he was no rat. Did anyone ever bake a file into a cake and smuggle it into prison? Most of my files are on computer now, but they do contain some half-baked ideas.
The challenges of running a museum on the site of an actual maximum security prison are daunting. If you've ever been to Sing Sing you know that getting in is almost as hard as getting out. You can't just bake yourself into a cake, so there are clearly details to be worked out, even though I'd love to talk more about cake.
Philanthropy always makes me hungry, but the food they usually serve at fundraisers is for "foodies." I am not a foodie. If I see the word "compote" anywhere I start to get nervous that I might starve to death. There are very few child philanthropists, so I can't pull my usual trick of ordering from the kids' menu. There are some things I won't eat just because they sound disgusting. The word "haggis" came up in a crossword puzzle the other day, and I told my wife right off the bat I am never eating it. "You don't even know what it is," she said. "I know I'm never eating it, and I'm not eating curds or tripe. And I'm not eating gusset." "Gusset is a piece of material." "See? Why would I want to eat that?"
I needn't have worried, the food was great. I had the Yankee pot roast, and I beamed with pride that my baseball team has a dish named after it. What kind of dish do the Red Sox have? Socks and fine cuisine rarely go together. Not to get off the track, but is one player from the Boston team known as a Red Sock? Or do they travel in pairs? How many teammates have been lost in the laundry?
Anyway, we learned a bit more about the Prison Museum as we motored up the Hudson. We heard about the historic significance of the prison, and its relationship with the community. So many movies were filmed at Sing Sing that Warner Brothers donated a prison gymnasium. The cells in the original dormitory were no bigger than a yoga mat, and they had one laid out to illustrate. It was small and inhumane by today's standards, but at least incarceration would not interfere with your yoga. If you were brave enough to stay in a downward dog pose long enough to finish your kibble you could become a prison legend.
Things are a little different now, and you can't make the prisoners go out and build their own museum, I already asked. Jailbirds ain't thrown in the joint anymore, inmates are incarcerated into correctional facilities. They have a lot more rights, and a lot more syllables. What was really bad once may not be as bad anymore. People currently serving time for marijuana possession will live to see its widespread legalization. Some things haven't changed: there are people who do bad things, and they will and should pay a steep price, some would say not steep enough. But those who thought they could lock them up and throw away the key fail to understand that 90 percent will be back out, and we'll be sharing a society with them. That time they spent in prison is a stepping stone to your neighborhood, a learning experience. Whom do you want as their faculty?
The Sing Sing Prison Museum will also house a criminal justice center, where education and dialogue will increase the awareness of the issues. We motored on, and Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks played big band swing music as we passed by Sing Sing, and the singer sang sang as we dance danced and the flappers flapped. People had come in the costumes of the days when Hollywood made "The Big House" seem vaguely glamorous. We finished our drinks as we docked back in Yonkers. Society has a lot of thinking to do about crime and punishment, but it's free thinking that will keep us free.
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