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Baton Rouge Selects CRAZY To Read

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I have exciting news! The City of Baton Rouge has chosen, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, as its One Book, One Community  selection this summer.

In 2006, Baton Rouge joined more than 400 American cities that participate in this national reading program. In a letter informing me that CRAZY had been chosen,  Abby Hannie, a member of the Baton Rouge’s program  steering committee, explained:

The One Book, One Community initiative was formed to promote a common city-wide reading experience to increase intellectual and cultural dialogue among readers and to exchange ideas for the purpose of raising awareness and visibility with regard to a particular community issue.

The idea is to get everyone in a city to read and discuss the same book. Two of the most popular selections chosen since the first program was launched in 1998 in Seattle have been  To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

That’s pretty heady company.

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Death, Friends and Political Memories

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A funeral this week was yet another reminder that time moves on. I used to go to weddings. Now I am entering the funeral age.

It actually was an unnecessary third reminder.

The first was the death in March of David Broder,the Pulitzer Prize winning, Dean of Washington political writers. I knew him when I worked at The Washington Post, although we were not close friends. Every workplace has a pecking order and Broder sat on Mount Olympus. I was on a ledge much farther down.  

Despite that, Broder stopped by my desk shortly after I was hired and spent several minutes talking to me about Oklahoma p0litics. He had heard that the Post had hired me away from the now closed Tulsa Tribune. I was the newspaper’s lone Washington correspondent and had covered the state’s two senators and five representatives for three years.  I was shocked that someone as famous as Broder would take time to    introduce himself and even more stunned by how much he knew about Oklahoma politics. Not only was he familiar with the state’s congressional leaders, he also asked me about several county commissioners. I later learned that Broder was that well-versed about every state. Like most other young staffers, I thought he walked on water. But he was never arrogant and that was not something that could be said about several of his other Mount Olympus colleagues.  

The second death that caused me to feel nostalgic was the passing of Geraldine Ferraro, the first female candidate from a major political party to run on a presidential ticket. I had met Gerraro through an Oklahoma congressman named Mike Synar who was the only politician whom I ever covered who I considered to be a personal friend.

First, a bit about my pal Mike.

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Norman Mailer, Prisons and Me

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I first read, In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Abbott when I was spending a year as a reporter inside a maximum security penitentiary doing research for my book, The Hot House: Life Inside Leaven worth Prison. If you are not familiar with the Beast book or Abbott’s story, here’s a brief review. 
The son of an Irish-American solider and Chinese prostitute, Abbott had spent nearly all of his life in jails and prisons. In 1977, he learned that Normal Mailer was writing a book about Gary Gilmore, the first prisoner to be executed in 1977 after our nation re-started the death penalty ending its short constitutional hiatus.
Mailer’s book about Gilmore, The Executioner’s Song, won the Pulitzer Prize and helped revive his career.