The Joy of Typing And Sending Letters to Those in Jail
And My Letter to Mrs. Beverly Beatty Williams, Imprisoned for Praying Outside an Abortuary
It’s long been my goal to participate in a Prison Letter Ministry, a goal thwarted largely because I wanted to correspond with someone with access to a typewriter. I probably could have participated in my local parish’s letter ministry to the Wisconsin incarcerated if I hadn’t been so hell-bent on the typewriter connection. I tried to back pedal on the typewriter part of my request but so many parishioners want to correspond with prisoners that my request has been put on a back burner so to speak.
I’ve really been disappointed because I love to write letters and I’m active participant in Typepals. I actively correspond with about three other Typepals, one that’s in Ireland. It’s so much fun. I think I have this romantic notion of a prisoner in a facility with access to a Swintec typewriter (an electric machine that’s been used at many federal prison facilities, but has fallen out of favor as prisoners steal machine parts for other uses. Prisons have discovered that replacement parts are no longer available and the Swintec machines have been abandoned, according to Chuck, who formerly worked for the late and great Blue & Koepsell typewriter shop in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.)
Anyhow, the romantic in me didn’t serve me well in my desire to participate in the local Prison Ministry. So when I read that conservative activist Mrs. Beverly Beatty Williams has reported to the Aliceville, AL prison for praying outside an abortuary, I thought this is my opportunity to write someone imprisoned. She posted her prison address and prisoner ID on her Twitter channel. So at long last, I will be corresponding with someone in jail. Will she respond? Maybe not, maybe not. I suspect she will be swamped with letters. She might not be in prison that long since she’s appealing her sentence.
In any event, I hope my letter, which I plan to send today will be a source of solace to Mrs. Williams (and she uses the politically incorrect Mrs. on her Twitter handle and I LOVE being politically incorrect in my Typepals correspondence. The men I correspond with get the MR. on their envelopes). I think for those of who love to get personal letters in our mail boxes have to accept some unpredictability when we send letters outside the penpal/typepal networks. I’m thinking of the letters I wrote and sent to the late Cormac McCarthy. Never got a response. I suspect I’ve held onto my letter to Robert Caro for that same reason. I don’t want the disappointment of not getting a response. I love the idea of corresponding with famed authors but I hold off because I want same kind of relationship, some kind of response. For example, I’d like to write to Verlyn Klickenborg, whose book Several Short Sentences About Writing I admire, but I’m afraid he’d might not respond. I’ll have to go through his agent or publisher to get a response. I know Anna Quindlen responds to fan letters, but while she’s a great writer, we don’t see eye-to-eye (eyeball-to-eyeball?) on key issues, I’m not going to write to her for that reason. Now I did write to Tom Hanks largely because I knew he would respond. And he responded faster than a thought (much faster than a few of my Typepal correspondents!)
That said, here are a couple of thoughts I have about corresponding with someone in prison.
Work with a local prison ministry. You might Google the topic or call local churches. I found about mine through a local parish bulletin. Follow their protocols, attend the orientation. Keep your expectations low. So many people hunger to connect with those incarcerated that my local prison ministry is slowly going through requests to match up requests from local parishioners and those in local prisons. If you do manage to get matched (Alleluia, I say!), keep your expectations low on this side too, especially if you’ve got this romantic notion that your correspondent will respond to your letter on a typewriter. Maybe mention in your initial correspondence how much you enjoy typing on a manual or electric machine and how you hope (pray) that he/she has access to a typewriter, and see if your correspondent is able to respond with a letter tapped out on a machine. You might get hand-written letters at first, while your correspondent tries to find out if a typewriter is available on the premises.
Look online for addresses for those who post their prison addresses online. I found Mrs. Williams’ address because her last pre-prison post was posted to a conservative news aggregator, Citizen Press. I suspect you could search on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram for other prison addresses. I don’t know what search terms you might use to find addresses this way.
Be careful about giving out personal information, home addresses. I know the local Prison ministry operates out of a local P.O. Box, so no home addresses are provided on correspondence. I actually provided my home address to Mrs. Williams because she’s not my part of the local prison ministry. I’m comfortable giving her my address because I don’t fear for my safety and I really really want a response in my mail box. I pray I get one.
Keep your letters optimistic and don’t ask for details about your recipient’s imprisonment. Now Mrs. Williams has shared the details of her situation and its’ been widely reported in conservative media, so I feel it’s safe for me to mention it in my letter. But if you were working with a local ministry, you wouldn’t have those kinds of details available, as least initially. In time, your correspondent would probably provide them. But in the beginning, you’d want to keep your letters focused on keeping the faith (however you define it) and maybe yourself. Introduce yourself and why you’re writing, maybe what you hope to get out of your correspondence. You might even say that you’re keeping your expectations low (you’re only human, after all). Maybe you’ll have a regular correspondent, make a new friend and provide hope in a bleak world. Maybe not. But in a universe that expects an instant response and automatic friendship, it can be frustrating if you love to send and received typed letters as much as I do. So give any prisoner friendship time. Pray for patience!
Enjoy the letter you’re typing right now. Don’t caught up in the future. This probably true for any letter you write because you don’t know when you’ll get a response, if ever. Take joy in the paper you use (mine’s Southworth cotton), the typewriter (Smith-Corona Electra 120), the ink ribbon (gold-and-red bichrome either from Etsy or eBay) and the envelope (Mead standard) and the stamps (Forever stamp, inked rubber stamps) and stickers (Brew City Catholic, so appropriate for a conservative Christian recipient). What fun it was to type that letter and get off my darn laptop, admire the the few outside my window (blue sky with clouds, airplanes criss-crossing above), day dreaming and thinking about future adventures, using my red carbon paper to make a personal copy and my white-out pencil from Black Art Supplies. I got ‘lost’ typing my letters to Mrs. Williams and I will treasure that time forever, no matter what happens (or doesn’t) happen with my future relationship with Mrs. Williams. Keep that in mind and you won’t be disappointed.
Maybe I’ll share the letter I typed some day, if the Mrs. is agreeable. For now, it’s private. But now I’ve got this idea to find other conservatives that are unfairly imprisoned because I love to type letters so much and I adore finding other writers who align my values, although I’m open (somewhat) to correspond with others who don’t agree (as long as we don’t get into hot topics in the actual letters).
My letter to the Mrs. in Aliceville has inspired me to get a fresh ink ribbon for my Electra 120 while my Selectric’s in the ‘typewriter hospital.’ I might actually head to a local business machine shop later today just to get a new ribbon and support local shops (as opposed to ordering online which is so easy to do.) Stay tuned for a Substack on that visit because this shop has typewriters in the window AND a hand-painted sign on an exterior brick wall that’s so photogenic it practically begs for a photo.
Last but not, this is Mrs. Williams’ address for those who might want to write to her while she’s incarcerated.