Transcript:

00:00 Hello, this is Melissa Hale-Spencer, the editor of The Altamont Enterprise here with Dennis Sullivan and our readers know Dennis from his Field Notes some of our most brilliant writing. I myself just know little bits and pieces of Dennis. He came with tomatoes today for Marcello. I know he grows tomatoes. I know he writes poetry. I know he bakes bread. I know he edited a journal on Restorative Justice. I know he's written a number of books and our readers are very familiar with the one on  Voorheesville where he's the village historian. I know that he was a brother once, but really I don't know how any of this fits together, so I hope to figure out as much as we can in have an hour. Welcome Dennis. Hello.

00:00 We have Rose here too.

00:49 Schneider is our tech on this and she's recording our words as we speak

00:53 and who just got a fellowship from John Jay College of criminal justice.

00:58 Yes, she did and we're very proud of her.

00:58 Was that too much editorial,

01:06 so let's start at the beginning. You are from where?

01:07 I grew up in Staten Island, New York, and lived there for the first 18 years of my life.

01:12 And how did that shape you? Staten Island.

01:15 Well, you lived on an island.

01:15 Yeah,

01:18 it'd be like going up in Australia or New Zealand. Everywhere you went. You had to take a ferry boat or bridge

01:18

01:27 Does that make you self reliant? Does that make you close to the other people in your community? What does that do? Living on an island,

01:33 it makes you withdraw from the rest of the world. Took ferry boats to Elizabeth, New Jersey. I took Manhattan. They took ferryboats to  New Jersey. I took ferry. It was a 69th street ferry to Brooklyn . Electric ferry, by the way. So everywhere you went you, you, you really were locked in as if you were as if it were like a, a barrier. Well, what about your family? What were they like? Oh, family. There were six kids in our family. We grew up at a very Roman Catholic Irish slash Polish family and everything. We did see with the to resonate Roman Catholicism, the Catholic school, we went to, all my siblings, my cousins, my parents went to that school and we had a Catholic nuns and priests who all who were very good. Everybody wants to work at bay, goes on a Friday night to be poor, so my days are those school you have a snow day and people who go to school to a cleaner, you're racist for their dogs. We were terribly. I decided to become a teacher when I was six years old when I had those dogs.

02:56 And you followed through with that. So tell us what, what got you off the island and where did you go?

03:03 Well, I at 18 I left and I went and joined. The Christian brothers is deficient and Barry Tell Dior and stayed in a Christian brothers for Ted years.

03:15 You just wrote a book about that.

03:17 Hey, the school I taught her and my brother had joy the year after be it states had years. My brother Jimmy, two years later joely and he stayed for 11 years.

03:26 So what were those 10 years like? What did you do?

03:28 Well, for the first year, the postulancy Trisha, you live like a trappist book. That would be the thing that most of us aren't familiar with that what does it mean to live a life of silos. Had prayer and it's a strange code that exists is for working class, relatively sophisticated. Eighteen year old from Staten Island to go. It'd be reading this book on spirituality by Rodriguez at Jesuit for to set the 16th and 17th century and then in French spiritualists taker, a, uh, and I didn't even have a sense of what emotions were.

04:13 So this silence. Tell me about the silence. How, how many hours a day did you have to be silent?

04:19 Well, starting from the top of the day to the body at 8:00 as an anybody's theory, there's a great silence and you're not supposed to speak at all during the day. If you needed to talk to seller, you would say vga zoo data occur, which was like live Jesus at a loss. And the other press would say, how's your day? Forever? And then you are allowed to speak. It was something important, but you woke up in the morning to 5:00, you were down to chapel. It was body prayer. It was bass breakfast, uh, up until about 8:00 when it was all total silence.

04:58 What does that do for your brain and become very introspective? You become an island yourself and think about things, having ferries to cross you

05:09 do it. It, it, it, it, it changes who you. Obviously, some people rebelled and left the year I would, which was 19, 58. It was like the Hay Day. Still the Hay day for post World War II opportunity. Early sixties you bought histories will bulging at the seams because there was a certain sense that the United States, there was a let down after World War Two and people like Thomas Merton, his famous book, the seven story about that. It was really written a pre post world war two, but he wanted to do mother, sorry to 40 was inspired. A lot of the legit is that many people walked her to the Trappist monastery or the by the service with a copy of that with a paperback copy of that book in their pocket, so it is a tremendous transformation to face yourself at 17, 18 years old and not really having done that before in any kind of systematic way because it was a fight shorto.

06:24 We already, the division we learned fridge are, they were three or four times already. They would at least where we say solves and chapel. They were two or three periods in which we had spiritual reading. You were expected to read somebody upstairs, like Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, the for the Catholic worker that, that sort of thing. So you, you left that after two months of postulancy you took the robe, you had to do names. So I took the day brother Adrian Aquinas. And why did you choose that? Well, I had a teacher in high school, brother Adrian, who were the Adrian Talbot, who was wonderful, and I took her quietest because he was a smart guy

07:05 and I felt I needed some help. Why you see, you sent me once a picture of you from that era and there you were in your role and you were playing sax and looking very cool. As a monk. Did you call yourself among the brother? What do you were brother, brother? You live the life of a bug the first five years of nation. So during those five years, it sounds like at least two of the names that you've said, Dorothy Day and Merton or people that have been people that you read that must have affected you, they've kind of been beacons for you because I've heard you refer to them always in conversation. So it kind of set your social direction. Um, what was it lonely or did you have a sense of connection to these writers from different eras that you were.

08:02 It wasn't a, it is because you had to figure out what your emotional makeup wise, uh, you know, here's, here's a correlation between how well you know yourself if you're interested in having a relationship with God, which at that point I thought I wanted one. There is a correlation between how well you know yourself and how the quality of your relationship with God.

08:22 That's what Merton wrote seeds. So what did you find out about yourself in these needs? Her help. It was a little ragdoll but interesting. My editor just looking so paid that the other side is taking it in. I'm absorbing it. Well, fortunate thing

08:49 that for years, the year of division and that the four years of college will also formation. Uh, what happened is I became a scholar. I found a sense of identity and getting good grades. But the fortunate thing for me, which was not so fortunate for other people's. I actually came to love what I was doing. Other people got good grades but they Davis seemed to become lifelog alert is or that it was. So the fortunate thing for me is by the time they got to be a junior in college at the Catholic University I was absolutely love was what I was doing. It studied constantly.

09:36 Anytime we were in chapel or, or Ed dinner or alert you. That's one of the things. And when did you begin teaching? Uh, it 19, 63 after the Fsu graduated from college that you're set to sub school at New York district, which extended from Detroit to Buffalo to Lasalle Institute in Troy to Christian Brothers Academy and Albany all the way down to New York City and newburn and I got assaulted to Newburgh, which was a Dodo because the school only had about a hundred 28 students and it will for teachers who read the high school with a principal, so you would teach, but most teachers as I've written have a hotspot fit out with a dab of racists are. It was a tablet, rolls around and here you're teaching five different subjects. So when I got to this school, they said you have a choice either didn't teach Algebra or biology.

10:35 And I had had one biology class which was my freshman year in high school. So be sort of a little prep school when he got to be a Halloween by ears were boxed in. So our record recall today what over to the Newburgh public library. I took out three arb fulls of books of biology and while I was teaching, while the kids were learning biology for be during the day, I was learning biology for Vietnam. So you are just one step ahead of that. That didn't work out all these kids, as I said in a book, if you teach the Algebra, uh, so that was the choice and the Algebra teacher by the way, who chose that? He got beat up and he had asked the, the, the math teacher. He was an English teacher. So the three, I should say, the three language issues to French, to English at a Latin teacher, all had to pick either a science or math.

11:34 So what was your other subject that you taught? I taught Latin, taught religion, Latin, religion in biology. Yes. That is quite a common. It was forced to be a renaissance man. Yeah. Well, I already was in a way. Uh, and then I will coach you to fall. What did you cross country? I coached in a widow and I coached, track it, a spray. I started the school newspaper. It was actually the secondary bloody stone, uh, of which we failed a 17 issues recently, uh, which, and it was a very, we were, we got to look like a little award for the, uh, the Newburgh a better whatever. We got so caught up in a word. Could you tell us about teaching itself? What was that like? Well, I, I, it, a lot of cages. I should mention by the way, to start further the back.

12:30 I still meet fairly regularly with kids I taught 50 years ago. So you made an impression you made a connection. Yeah, we used to use a little corporal punishment periodically so we had to make it. Uh, but, uh, yeah, it was just a reunion in Newburgh about a month ago and 200 students for that school showed up and you see people that you're talking 55 years ago, but you liked the role of teacher? Uh, yeah, I, I felt like I was a national teacher. So have you got beat up? Say for example, the biology? Uh, by November or December I had sort of Quasar Basad it. I found out how to skin that cat and by the second year of a class of say 33 kids, I 25, we get a overnight either to New York state regions. So, uh, I learned how to skin that cat, you know, at the same thing that lacked libby teaching a foreign language is kind of a strange as you might know because it like teaching bath.

13:42 If the kids who were left behind, they get, they start to get angry at the teacher because they last lost. So you have to deal with it. You have to sort of encourage these kids to sort of stay with it if they get a 65 of the reasons or, or whatever just to get through. But I felt like it was an actual teaching. It, uh, I, I took to Tj, but I was a very offbeat teachers as well. Are I this book I just put together or at our school, which is called the little engine that could. And I invited because the students were very wealthy. It as well about theater sets of the discipline. The academic discipline was strict. I had a strict academic curriculum, but the kids felt very much at whole with us. I was 20. I was going to ask because I taught for awhile. It was at university and what I didn't like and why I became a journalist was you were up there and people were taking notes and you held the power

14:52 because you graded them and they were trying to please you and I much prefer an even field where you're kind of going back and forth with people and you strike me that way too. But this was the kind of school where there were all men, young men. They felt comfortable challenging you and having back and forth kinds of discussions or toy.

15:15 I'll be, for example, for sophomore religion, which I taught, uh, we would take a cyborg cells of silence. A look at what that beds for be a 60 year old, uh, diabetes, 65. Uh, we would look at the, that, uh, that sold Georgy girl. Were you searching inside that? There's somebody there that, uh, so it was, it was really a secular college degree every year. You also taught about Jesus. And it was talking about God, but it was really a, uh, helping these kids is actually 64, three, four, five, six and seven to fly themselves. That has changed a year. Uh, so that,

16:02 yeah, it was an era of great upheaval, teenage years or years personally. Great upheaval. Anyway. So that's a double combination you are dealing with. And I've always, I've always liked teenagers. I feel even

16:15 the dres, they've never really had a ball. I was going to say they didn't bother me, they bother you, but I never felt like threatened. I always felt like I had something to, to help them to do, to move them from point a to point b.

16:33 It was beneficial to their. So you left after 10 years. What made you leave? Well,

16:39 the sixties, the French quarter, the brothers of the Christian school, it was a very conservative freshwater. People will argue arguing over whether you should wear that role when we were talking about or whether you were a Qalo, whether you should wear a sweater. And I said, look, people read killed in Vietnam and you're worried about a DAB collar. This is a ridiculous, but there were a lot of older people who just was, had both sites at all

17:07 of that world. So you left for what you did. What next? Well, I left it

17:13 the third week of the seventh, 19, 67 and I started driving a truck for, well as chucky cubby, which delivered a food for was with the sole distributors of procter, gamble. So I was delivering our bots street had been hacked or the Bronx it Woodridge, New Jersey duck at high cake mix, jiffy peanut butter. Uh, I had already had a class two license because the brothers had three buses and he picked out certain people to drive the buses. Washington DC or Oakdale long island's a back house. We lived in over to the university. Uh, so I had, I already had a class two license, so I started, I was driving a, a truck for a for Wales trucking and like hustle who was working for the New York State Division for youth, Barry Lachman. She said, by the way, they're looking for a ged teacher at this start. So to start, I think stood for short term adolescent rehabilitation tradie, which was for girls 70 girls who live in a house the size of our building here, and it became a ged, ged teacher for those girls.

18:33 Well, and I was seeing as a friar to a trucker to working with troubled adolescent girls, getting their high school diplomas,

18:42 do peds, need supervision and people who would judicated jds by the state of New York. And while I was doing that, a flyer came across and I was also looking at a phd in Greek or Latin at Columbia and Nyu and a flyer came across the desk of the director of the program, a clinical psychologist, and she's, Oh, do school, criminal justice is opening at the state university at Albany, Greek and Latin. That's it. You know, that's just ridiculous. That's all those programs are closing. Now. Criminal Justice at the Aldi was cry patrol. Bill had just been passed or it was just being password 18, 68. She said, got to go to this. This is the next wave. So I wound up getting into university at Albany with, with a fellowship, without even having accept the paper I had, I had it, I had to said the papers. It ultimately, but a telephone calls with aid. I was. So I wound up getting a phd, criminal justice

19:44 and what? Tell us about that field, why I know you have a lot on restorative justice and it's dear to your heart. So we don't have a lot of time. But why is that? Why is that important? Why is that central to you? Well,

19:58 uh, happy grown up with Tavis burden, a heavy grunt with Dorothy Day. But having grown up with parents who were very keenly aware of social justice, they were uh, we did grow up in a well to do household. My grandfather had a lot of buddy, but

20:13 there was only the one that you wrote about the APP still produce, for instance, your parents do what?

20:20 My father worked for the bail Davey artists, a packer. And my mother was a whole Baker. My grandfather owned five houses in the neighborhood. So his first three daughters all boobs into those houses. So that your parents had a real sense of social justice. Absolutely. We slip is always. There was always a sense of, of, of like, yeah, there was like a compassion for people in the world, you know. So I picked up early, uh, I picked it up at the parish, but also I picked it up with the readings of Thomas Merton. Dorothy day, people will reach already talked about. So when I went out, when I finished, I finished the PhD program, uh, that uh, but I wanted to teach at University of Illinois at Chicago and uh, with a colleague there, we wrote the first criminology book from an advocacy perspective. Uh, the only person who had written anything from an editor's perspective really having to do with delinquency. Crime was joyous sex person who, who, who's, uh, he's escaping be a cop.

21:29 I know the book, the joy of sex title from the joy of cooking. It was kind of this manual. It was, but I don't understand what your book was, how it was it like that.

21:40 He's already. What other book had ever touched upon issues of crime, criminology justice from an advocate's point of view. So we. That book was called the struggle to be human and we couldn't. We were Larry Tifton. We were rejected by 25 publishers here. It was finally publicity, Orkney islands by Britain, by Stuart Christie, Britain's most notorious anarchist and we went over at wellpoint in Asia. They said $500 for, for Stewart's legal defense filed because I mean if you go, you're evil or you google. So with Christie advocate or somebody he gives up, but he was at the wireless. We were. We were passing this. So it's interesting. He got ahold of the checks. Eddie, he bracket is a piece as he said, like, well, if this pass this piece of work, he says you should really adopt a couple of people over there. So we saw the final piece that he did that in a couple of places, not only a couple of places. My goodness. So

22:47 wrote this book without any sense of a publisher in mind. You just cared about this as a topic. It was the name of it. Again,

22:55 is instructed to cry, criminology, and so because we were having such a difficult time, 1878, which was the most conservative point except for download history, I mean Reagan was good at committed two years later that that sort of a hiatus between Dick's is residing at 880 with Reagan, but things were very, very conserved. That's where the box was criminologists box of sociologists. Not to flood into universities as a response to that, but we were personalis, you know, that that we were looking at, you know, we weren't walks this letter, this looking for social revolution. We were personnel's looking for either communitarian values, a community. So because we're having such a difficult time getting that book printed, published, I say, well, I'll write a book of my own and then a textbook and then we'll sell that. It will use those funds to publish it ourselves.

23:59 So I wrote a book, a call the basket of love, a corrections in America, which really had to do with the American correctional system from an advocate's point of view. Why the mask of line? Well, that people who worked in bureaucracies and for the stays, we're really relating to people or the face to face basis that they were related through this role of like a facade facade. It was there. So it was a bass a or a year that, uh, you know, let me, Dorothy Day Catholic worker, she was providing houses, hospitality for people that, that there's no batch there, you know. So anyways, so that I got published right away. And while that was being published, a Sui Christie, the orkney islands, he said, I'll take the other ones. So the two books came out with two months of each other. And do you feel they made a difference?

24:58 The books know we could go to go to Harvard, Cambridge, Cambridge University, Oxford, we could go to Australia, but books would always library. So I, I don't know, uh, the book, one of the books that Larry Tips that I wrote or to restorative justice, uh, we got a call, a email, a two emails I guess as a call from somebody in Iran. I say that they wanted to translate that book. It's a Farsi and it didn't make any difference whether we said yes or no because they did recognize its additional proprieties are rights, but it didn't make any difference. He said, of course you wouldn't get any royalties, but that was not our interests. Royalties were not. We did write those things for buddy trying to spend your philosophy. You could write textbooks. I mean, I could write a textbook, get of it tomorrow night, so he could read.

25:51 He could read the next week. This request from around came and went here. I went, sorry. When, when was this request to translate it into Farsi? About eight or nine years ago. I had found out from the, the, uh, one of the restorative justice readings we put together a was published in the UK and I had found out from our editor there again, I got a great, great person, a rock and roll, a German, a German bread. He became, he didn't become a Brent Bailey. He was a rock and roller. He hit a rock band of Germany for years. He's just a wonderful person. A the. I lost my train of thought. What was the question again? I got my own logic. No, I'm going, I'm trying to see. Maybe if you just

26:44 describe the heart of the philosophy of restorative justice, what it is and how it does or doesn't relate to our prison system.

26:54 It would be the way criminal justice operation somewhere hurts somebody else. The state steps in and says we'll take, we'll take charge of it. Well, the relationship between the person who's done the hall, but the person who's been left out of the picture. So the state is essentially stolen the correctional, the person face to face, personal correctional process from to community. Uh, restorative justice says if someone has been horrible and they don't feel they're going to be revictimized and what to talk to a person who's holiday, then it, they see that as a restorative process. So for example, in restorative justice and sentencing circles, for example, a, sometimes 25 people will get together to deal with a hub situation. It could be the families of both people to evolve. It could be community members who were involved. Uh, so it's, it's, you see it as a, it takes a lot of time, but it's also a very effective way to, to make things right.

28:00 And are there places in the world where this is working? Well? Shoot. Your Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, for example, was a restorative justice program. The kichacha I Rwanda was restorative justice program, the restorative justice programs in a United States, for example, a bit of soda and many states have adopted it, but there's small. The David Suarez ran on a ticket of restorative justice and he, uh, he didn't, he, we didn't say the action. So I say he, we, Fred bore of the Catholic worker and art, uh, I wrote a letter to David. They called the Bob and said, uh, I don't say it. He actually, yeah, the way I like to get together and talk to you about, uh, how come you dragging your feet? So Fred by with it was office and we talked to him about why, what were the county wasn't, are responding to what David has said.

28:55 It is a platform. Well, they, they, they, nothing really has happened except boards. After that I got a call. David's right here at Baird, at that point was a fellow by the name Dela Sandro, and he called me up. It was a little program in the city, a little program for a while, and he called me up because sub yoke fellow who went to CBA, Christian Brothers Academy in Albany, which is out by the airport now, had to beat up by some fellow students and the mother of this child, a teenager, uh, wanted to have a bed with the kids who were involved. They, the school to be involved. CBA had denied that the school had anything to do with it. And whether we say, uh, they felt that there was a culture, it is skewed, happened to be African American by the way. And the kids who got involved in battery, who were white. And so I would add that with Alice Angio and the two, the two parents, two women who, uh, so, so we started to set up that program. It was a way where we could get the school evolve, did fail. We, the kids involved, the families of the kids involved and try to restore the relationships would maybe create a sense of justice where people would feel you owe some satisfaction.

30:28 Yeah, I can imagine it working very well in the school setting. The American prison system is so bureaucratic. It's hard to fit it, but we got off the linear track. That's my fault. We left you in Chicago. As I said to somebody this morning that does sacred Torah is highly underrated. It's true. But what happened after Chicago? You wrote this book. You finally had these two published. I,

30:55 we, I ran into a little trouble there because, uh, my colleague Larry Tiff, that'd be a lot of colleagues with colleague had fred was denied tenure. People had said what a wonderful teacher. He was a what? A good thinker. He was, but they died. It's head you. So I wrote a letter to all the faculty, a two page single spaced letter. It gave it to all the faculty. There were sort of restorative justice way each of those faculty face to face and say, you know, not to say did you vote this guy down or whatever, but I tried to smoke about a little bit and I quit the job it protest, so my academic career got stymied and I was married and had a child. So

31:44 miss that. We miss that. That's an important chapter in Georgia. How did that happen? That was. I was married for several years to pat before Georgia. Georgia.

31:54 Been together for 40 odd years, but. So I had a hustle up the University of Wisconsin. Milwaukee, you get a job or how do you get a job? So we pay the rent, the lights for the body for that. So why Wisconsin? Yeah. So I went up there and then after that year I came back. I came back the I say a little more complex and we don't have time for that now, but I've told that story of anybody's toes, but so then it came back into this area and I took the job. I opened up a bookstore. Troy will call bail, bad books. They have to debate basketry because I print the little prince Baobab juice. Yeah. That may have your trade, because I love that book because the tree is a tree of mutual aid either way because animals that don't get along outside that tree cupboard and they share that space together in a friendly or could be old by the way.

32:58 So bookstore. So did you deal in old books, new books, used books. He said, you know, it's a really nice book. So I'm sitting at a window one day of this book stores that I had one fourth street. Enjoy a. There is a fellow walkie by Bob Sullivan who was the director and acting director of the New York State Division of probation. He looks at Egos. Dennis. I said Bob. So he keeps his. And I said, hey, I said, the bookstore is like struggling a log here. So what do you got over there at the State Division of probation? Uh, he, he's, well, he says something is opening up. He says, I think we could use, you know, it took a little while because the director of that program, Walter Dark Bar, had had a heart attack, a was involved with Russ Oswald, it advocate, and I always had the heart attack. He see he had the heart attack cuddy grass, the Lord, and I said that was the case because as you cut the tops of the blades of grass, blood for the ADDICO flown all the way underneath the ground. It shot up out of the blades of grass and he had a heart Lord. Anyway, I was hired by the New York State Division of probation on a grant and they're, one of these analysts was Georgia Hamilton Gray.

34:22 I'm 41 years later. You're still writing your beautiful power. And so you. What was your job there? What did you do? Well, it was a, uh, an analyst a. and the job was to create a task for the probation officer, New York state, a sizable grant. Nineteen 76, 250,000. It'd be like three quarters of a billion dollars. Now I looked, I read the, I write the grant, and they thought somebody said that she was going to be a star. Whatever happened to me, I said, I ever stole. Look how bright I am a. and uh, I said this, this study was under California, it parole. I said, this is. I said, I'll take care of this study. So we went out and interviewed people and things of that sort. I said, I'll write the final report. So 30 people were started late. The grants, it three welled up because we essentially Jedis as the grid is the grid progress.

35:25 I said I would write the final report, which I did. So what was the center of the final report? The final report was that probation officers who were most successful were people who were divorced themselves for the bureaucratic role. They were involved in a curry lay to the probations or the personal face to face basis. So it has, again, to do with removing the mass. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And so the, the state, it was unhappy with the echos. They will looking for quantitative study and this was a quantitative result. This was a qualitative and the people there were very unhappy because I had written victim bay who was the [inaudible] of silver service at that's r and p are, you know, I didn't know what the rules for government work, but I had written a New York state division of probation stationary, a two page letter to the Commissioner to arguing for the equalization of salaries with New York state and the people at the doe it power were like unhappy with it. I know you were supposed to use the organization stationary for that sort of thing, but it was a good letter. You know, I have a copy home somewhere.

36:54 What happened next? And I can see now why you liked the non sequitur because your life is kind of this. It didn't have a straight path. It was you were in a bookstore. Someone walked by. I had a series of events that have set your course. So whole life is good luck.

37:10 It's just a. it's just luck. You know? There's no other word for it is, but it has always been. I've always been for 40 years now, I've been a writer, a poet, writing poetry for 47 years.

37:27 Tell us about that. Why do you write poems?

37:30 Well, uh, I, uh,

37:38 yes, it's, that's a very difficult question. A while though. Steve is as a function of the poet is alleged to his or her imagination to the community and so that the community can reconfigure ways to be in which people would be more Uba. And I think that's very much related to what I, what I write or have written these disorders, social tracks, you know, these political, economic or social tracks that I've written over the years. You know, even the book I just finished the little engine that could really is critical of the Christian brothers for failure. The ambition to Newburgh five blocks from the school, from, from here to the old enterprise office. Newburgh had a community of black people who were poor, downtrodden from that, that, that, uh, that Mitchell who was the city manager for awhile, a, the Christian brothers never took an eight black. They'd never had a black suitor. The school. And I kept saying, I thought the Bishop, the Christian brothers was to teach the poor gratuitously and here we teach you the poor. We're taking these kids from beacon, New York at the wizard who are well healed, add smart without really responded to. We're not really smartly to those people.

39:09 Well, you also like to share writing. I mean, I know you run a memoir group at the library. You've had discussions which had an edge of controversy. And when it came to woody Allen's movies, I mean, what is it about gathering people together to either write or talk about writing or talk about art? Why? Why do you do that? Well,

39:36 uh, I read the poetry group at the library to the every other Thursday poetry group for 12 years. I started the group called the third Saturday Posey cafe with six people. I started the Sunday for poetry open bike. Uh, I started trading $78. I don't got to reserve my juice for other things. And it, of course we had dismissed havard poet laureate.

40:08 Yeah. But I'm asking why so few people pay attention to poetry these days. Well, why?

40:15 That's beside the point, uh, you know, Dan Berrigan was said, you, whatever you do, you do you ever look for the results? He said that at all. But he had to at the best western conference we brought him up. Was to talk to the, uh, this, this I, I should say too, I started a journal called the Contemporary Justice Review, which routledge publishes in the UK. So that started in 18, 87. So I was the editor in chief of that for 11 years. I was on editorial. I it because they were disgruntled people evolve it, criminal justice, social justice, who said they, they, they were, they were, they couldn't get to what they wanted to say published because the journals are criminal justice was so conservative or that the journals that will so to speak, progressive will box space. So there really was no personalist, atticus passivist face to face. A Journal or a journal would take those cards. So what particular fellow dentists log by? He would use the white all the time about like a akt published. So I started this journal. I said, that is now shut up. You got zero and he never said, well, I interviewed him once because he used to hold during the death penalty when people were executed, the checks was here. We go to st the Twelfth Street with a candle and I interviewed him. It is general, but also people said that the was already criminology.

41:56 The American Sociological Association will all too conservative, so I started an association called the Justice Studies Association and it's still going and that started in [inaudible] 87, which is a very. Was a very progressive, very progressive group. So I. There I started. I'll be asking you a question because I created two Forbes, no different from Saudi. The school newspaper, the 18, 63 St Patrick's creating four hubs in which people could feel at home, which is what, while to see if it says his poetry. You create a place where people could feel at home. The mayor's youth ways, how they, you know, by next call will be on Urso liquid. That's what she did it at, at, at, at our books. You wrote a great d, 76 to dispossessed. He was always looking for these utopian societies or ways to have societies of which the ds of all people are bad. If you look through my columns that you've edited the ball, you'll see that they all have to do it with subway or other people's needs being bad.

43:04 I'm thrilled to hear that because I've often tried to find the common thread. I love your columns, but I hadn't seen a common thread so we're way past our time. But you mentioned your 78. I find that surprising that you have to save your juice for the important stuff. What is the important stuff?

43:21 What? Uh, I live the life they know that I did when I entered the Christian brothers. Contemplative. Yes. Reading, thinking. Oh yes. If I have icall a little loose here, which, you know, we spent a lot of time, but as you can see in writing poetry at it, reading a. But the stuff that I read, uh, you know, it's, it's, you have to, you have to sort of take a picket accident terabit of bottom. Think about the bad guy.

44:06 No leisure reading for Dennis Sullivan. Well, I thank you so much. I don't know if you have a closing thought if you do, it's yours.

44:15 I, I, uh, the uh, let's fake. We tore think is pretty sacred. Tour is highly are the ratings. So, so, uh, we saw that it was compensation. How we went from ADB to disease are at the back of getting to know students when I taught at the university. We go Dr Sullivan. You, uh, you went for the add that here he will only around for 50 event minutes. And I, and you actually answered the question but you know, it's like a little subway ride. All right. Thank you Melissa. Thank you rose.