Carl Strock's Column In Today's Daily Gazette.

I just finished reading Carl Strock’s column in The Daily Gazette. Even though I have other things I should be doing right now, the column was so fantastic, I had to jump on the computer and write about it. If you don’t subscribe to The Daily Gazette, you should go out and buy a copy today. The column was on Jack Carroll’s life in prison. Not only am I impressed with Strock’s column, but with Jack Carroll himself. His self disciplined life, his philosophical acceptance of prison life, even though he wants to be released, are admirable.

Strock’s column is based on a recent trip he made, along with Carroll’s brother and Ernie Tetrault, to visit Carroll at the Washington Correctional Facility. Here is an excerpt from the column.

"When I saw him Saturday neither of us had yet learned that the state’s highest court had just refused to hear his latest appeal, so he was still full of hope, as he always is, that justice was just around the corner and he would go free.

It’s what keeps him going, along with family support and the Spartan discipline he has adopted.

Spartan? Running on the prison’s quarter-mile track, to make sure he doesn’t lose count of his laps and run less than he requires himself to run, he carries a handful of pebbles and drops one each time around at a particular spot so he can always see at a glance how far he has gone.

He reminded me of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn using rosary beads to keep track of the pages he had written in his head."

Anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn is automatically on my list of people I admire. I remember plowing through both volumes of The Gulag Archipelago when I was in high school. I will never forget it. I’ve read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich a number of times.

I notice that Rensselaer County D.A. Patricia DeAngelis wasted no time in issuing a press release on the Court of Appeals refusal to hear Mr. Carroll’s appeal.

By the way, the bulk of the press releases coming out of Rensselaer County come from the D.A.’s office. Out of the last thirty press releases issued by the county, twenty-three came from the D.A. Borrowing from the title of one of Norman Mailer’s books, I believe these press releases would be better named “Advertisements For Herself.” I haven’t had the time to see if any other local district attorneys waste so much ink and paper, but it would be interesting to find out.