There isn’t a song she sang, that she didn’t own.

But it was when she recorded this one in 1960, that she became immortal.

My 25-year-old techie son said it well: It hits you hard when a genius dies.

Yep.

Like many, I’m still just sort of staring in shock at my computer screen-–my Apple Macbook computer screen. I made and received calls about Steve Jobs’s death on my iPhone. The iTunes downloaded music on my iPod, is playing as I try to gather my thoughts…..

There are statements, of course, from all the tech-ish sites, some of which are below:

Statements from: Boing-Boing …… Engadget……. Apple …..Wired…Mashable….TechCrunch…

But a particularly good column comes from NY Times’ tech columnist, David Pogue.

Here is the heart of it:

(Apologies to Mr. Pogue for the fact that I excerpted a far bigger chunk than I normally would ever do. I hope, this one time under these singular circumstances, you will forgive me.)

…..the story of Steve Jobs boils down to this: Don’t go with the flow.

Steve Jobs refused to go with the flow. If he saw something that could be made better, smarter or more beautiful, nothing else mattered. Not internal politics, not economic convention, not social graces.

Apple has attained its current astonishing levels of influence and success because it’s nimble. It’s incredibly focused. It’s had stunningly few flops.

And that’s because Mr. Jobs didn’t buy into focus groups, groupthink or decision by committee. At its core, Apple existed to execute the visions in his brain. He oversaw every button, every corner, every chime. He lost sleep over the fonts in the menus, the cardboard of the packaging, the color of the power cord.
That’s just not how things are done.

Often, his laser focus flew in the face of screamingly obvious common sense. He wanted to open a chain of retail stores—after the failure of Gateway’s chain had clearly demonstrated that the concept was doomed.

He wanted to sell a smartphone that had no keyboard, when physical keys were precisely had made the BlackBerry the most popular smartphone at the time.

Over and over again, he took away our comfy blankets. He took away our floppy drives, our dial-up modems, our camcorder jacks, our non-glossy screens, our Flash, our DVD drives, our removable laptop batteries.

How could he do that? You’re supposed to add features, not take them away, Steve! That’s just not done!

(Often, I was one of the bellyachers. And often, I’d hear from Mr. Jobs. He’d call me at home, or when I was out to dinner, or when I was vacationing with my family. And he’d berate me for not seeing his bigger picture. On the other hand, sometimes he’d call to praise me for appreciating what he was going for. A CEO calling a reviewer at home? That’s just not done.)

Eventually, of course, most people realized that he was just doing that Steve Jobs thing again: being ahead of his time.

Eventually, in fact, society adopted a cycle of reaction to Apple that became so predictable, it could have been a “Saturday Night Live” skit.

Phase 1: Steve Jobs takes the stage to introduce a new product.

Phase 2: The tech bloggers savage it. (“The iPad has no mouse, no keyboard, no GPS, no USB, no card slot, no camera, no Flash!? It’s dead on arrival!”)

Phase 3: The product comes out, the public goes nuts for it, the naysayers seem to disappear into the earth.

Phase 4: The rest of the industry leaps into high gear trying to do just what Apple did.

And so yes, there are other geniuses. There are other brilliant marketers, designers and businesspeople. Maybe, once or twice in a million, those skills even coincide in the same person.

But will that person also have the vision? The name “Steve Jobs” may appear on 300 patents, but his gift wasn’t invention. It was seeing the promise in some early, clunky technology—and polishing it, refining it and simplifying it until it becomes a standard component. Like the mouse, menus, windows, the CD-ROM or Wi-Fi.

Even at Apple, is there anyone with the imagination to pluck brilliant, previously unthinkable visions out of the air—and the conviction to see them through with monomaniacal attention to detail?

Suppose there were. Suppose, by some miracle, that some kid in a garage somewhere at this moment possesses the marketing, invention, business and design skills of a Steve Jobs. What are the odds that that same person will be comfortable enough—or maybe uncomfortable enough—to swim upstream, against the currents of social, economic and technological norms, all in pursuit of an unshakable vision?

Zero. The odds are zero.

Mr. Jobs is gone. Everyone who knew him feels that sorrow. But the ripples of that loss will widen in the days, weeks and years to come: to the people in the industries he changed. To his hundreds of millions of customers. And to the billions of people touched more indirectly by the greater changes that Steve Jobs brought about, even if they’re unaware of it.

In 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address to the graduating students at Stanford. He told them the secret that defined him in every action, every decision, every creation of his tragically unfinished life:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

NOTE: Normal posting resumes tomorrow.

Some things worth reading or listening to.

This American Life has six stories that provide six narrative perspectives of what that day wrought. Today you’ll have to find it on the radio. But tomorrow, Monday, a podcast will be available for download. Whatever the case, don’t miss listening.

TAL also has links to some of their other 9/11 stories.

This NY Times op ed by Jim Dyer is one of the day’s must reads: In Love With Death: Years of grieving and war. But recall, too, the hour of human decency.

The Fire This Time by Reza Aslan in the Los Angeles Review of Books looks at the long-term affect of September 11, 2001, on America, and on the Arab world. I was going to post a clip here, but I’d be doing Reza’s essay a disservice. It’s too good to present piecemeal. Just read it.

This week’s Talk of the Town in the New Yorker magazine is devoted to 9/11 memories and musings by various writers. They are all good, but best when read in a string, for their cumulative weight. I especially recommend the stories by Zadie Smith, Edward Conlon, who was a NYPD officer at the time, Jonathan Safran Foer and Edwidge Danticat (none of which, thankfully, are stuck behind the NYer paywall, for those of you who don’t subscribe.

LA HAS A 9/11 COMMEMORATION EVENT AT USC’S BOVARD AUDITORIUM

The mayor and other dignitaries came, as did approximately 1000 students. (My former Annenberg student Josh Woo shot most of the video.)

Neon Tommy reports on the interfaith commemoration at City Hall.

By the way, the original New Yorker cover above is by Art Spiegelman, and to me is still the only magazine cover that could even vaguely suggest the emotional magnitude of what occurred. Simply representational photographs couldn’t even touch it, which is why art matters. (The 10th anniversary cover is by Francoise Mouly.)

For the NYFD firefighters and the NYPD officers and who died that day.…Your heroism still stuns.

“It was dark, too dark to see, you held me in the light you gave
You lay your hand on me
Then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire…

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love”
–Bruce Springsteen, “Into the Fire”

I hoped—as did many—that she would make it, that her super-sized talent would somehow carry her past the danger. But, as with the others in the bad, sad 27 Club, the big gifts turned out not to be enough.

Rest in peace, Amy Winehouse. You were the real deal.

Bruce Springsteen’s long time sax player and friend of 40 years, Clarence Clemons, died on Saturday.

If Bruce was the obvious heart of the E-Street Band, Clarence was its soul.

We who are longtime fans all have our favorite iconic Clarence moments. The three-minute sax solo in Jungleland, that seemed to grow, if anything, more powerful as the years progressed.

And, during the 80’s, when the band played Thunder Road, after the sax solo that took the song to its feverish end, Clarence and Bruce would kiss. This was no timid guy-to-guy lip peck, but a passionate embrace; a deliciously ecstatic moment that was repeated night after night without its power lessening.

Clarence also has always had a musical life away from Springsteen, as is demonstrated below as Clemons plays with Dr. John, and in his recent presence on two of Lady Gaga’s new tracks, plus his appearance in her Edge of Glory video.

But it was Springsteen and Clemons who were the lifelong musical soul mates.

Part way into every concert The Boss would introduce the E-Street Band. It was always his intro of his sax player that was the most extravagant and that inevitably brought down the house.

Just to be clear, Clemons was a wonderful tenor sax player, but there are those who were technically better. Yet one cannot possibly find a rock horn player more beloved. When he played Springsteen’s music in particular, his affect was outsized, majestic, and deeply emotional. David Remnick of the New Yorker has put it well:

Clemons, who died Saturday of complications from a stroke, was not an entirely original player—he was a vessel of many great soul, gospel, and R&B players who came before him—but he was an entirely sublime band member, an absolutely essential, and soulful, ingredient in both the sound of Springsteen and the spirit of the group. Clemons will be irreplaceable; Sonny Rollins could step in for him and never be able to provide the same sense of personality and camaraderie. His horn gave the band its sound of highway loneliness, its magnificent heart. And his huge presence on stage was an anchor for Springsteen, especially when Bruce was younger, scrawny, and so feral, so unleashed, that you thought that he could fall down dead in a pool of sweat at any moment. At the brink of exhaustion and collapse, Springsteen could always lean on his enormous and reliable friend—an emblematic image that is the cover of “Born to Run.”

This is from Springsteen’s own statement about his friend, confirming that Clarence had died:

His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music.

A story far deeper. Yes. Exactly.

And listen: during these days as we allow news of the death of The Big Man to sink in, perhaps the loss can best be explained by the fact that, whenever the E-Street Band played—and collectively sang—what I believe is Springsteen’s most beautiful, and certainly his most mature love song, “If I Should Fall Behind,” when it came time for Bruce to sing the last verse, which he usually performed as part of a duet, he always sang it—not to his gorgeous, red-headed wife Patti Scialfa—but to the 6′5″ black guy with the horn and the dreds, who towered on stage with soulful splendor just to The Boss’s right.

Should we lose each other
In the shadow of the evening trees
I’ll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me

Photo by Eric Meola, shot on June 20, 1975

Clarence Clemons, beloved rock saxophonist, E-Street band member and FOB—Friend of Bruce (Springsteen)— has suffered a massive stroke. At first things looked very, very bad. But after two brain surgeries, there are reports that he is responsive and stable. Reportedly, Clemons was initially paralyzed on his left side, but he has since been able to squeeze his left hand.

Various news outlets are following the story, but Backstreets.com and Rolling Stone are likely the most up to date sources of information.

Sending all possible prayers. We can’t possibly lose the music of Clarence Clemons right now. I’m sorry but it’s simply not permissible.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America were already planning to honor photojournalist Tim Hetherington and author Sebastian Junger at the IAVA’s yearly gala dinner—their Heroes Dinner—that will take place tonight at 7 pm at on the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot. The two are being honored for their work in general, but specifically for their film, Restrepo, which follows one platoon of soldiers stationed in the Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, a location generally considered to the the most dangerous of the Afghan war.

Both veterans and those in active military service embraced Restrepo with an unusual amount of affection. It was a film that really got it, they said, that really showed with no b.s. what it was like to be in combat in the 21st century. The official Twitter feed of the U.S. Army Reserve tweeted in support of Restrepo after it was nominated for an Oscar, as did IAVA’s founder and executive director, Paul Rieckhoff, who had come to regard Hetherington as a personal friend.

Then, on April 20—just a week ago—Rieckhoff got the call that Tim Hetherington had been killed in the Libyan town of Misrata.

Although most veterans have known more than their share of death, still the news about Hetherington was a blow.

Reickhoff posted the following statement online late that same day:

The IAVA family is deeply saddened by the loss today of our dear friend Tim Hetherington. Tim was not only a renowned filmmaker and photojournalist, but also a tremendous leader, advocate and partner to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans everywhere. He was one of the few journalists willing to risk his own life to tell our toughest stories. Tim understood the harshest realities facing troops on the front lines because he stood there right alongside us in the fight. Our community has lost a brilliant journalist and a true brother. From his Oscar-nominated film Restrepo to his involvement with military and veterans charities, Tim lived his life with unparalleled passion, energy and commitment. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Tim’s family and friends. His legacy will live on through his historic contributions to our community and to the world at large. He never forgot us. And we’ll never forget him.

Now, in addition to the recognition of the two filmmakers, the glittery gala will will include a memorial retrospective of Hetherington’s work and life.

It should be a good night, but a bittersweet one.

This weekend the glorious LA Times Festival of Books will be held at its new location on the USC campus, after 15 years at UCLA.

The line up of authors and other intriguing panelists is, as usual, excellent. (You can find the Saturday and Sunday schedules here.)

Both days are filled with more great events than you can possibly fit in.

So to help you with this pesky dilemma, I’ve devised 7 TIPS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE LATFOB

In no particular order they are:

TIP #1: GO TO SEE MY PANEL (Yes, this is a self-serving pitch, but it’s also a really good panel). Specifically, I am moderating a panel on Sunday, at 2 pm at Taper Hall 101. It’s called History: Democracy and Its Discontents, and the LATFOB folks gave me a GREAT threesome to interview: Barry Siegel, Scott Martelle, and Thaddeus Russell—all of whom have written books that tell of crucial yet unreported times in American history that have deep resonances for the health of our democracy now.

For instance, I’ll be asking my brilliant pal Barry (Siegel) about his book, Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets, which reads with the depth and pacing of a novel as it relates how the American government began its obsession with state secrets—starting with the Supreme Court case that jump started the now, it seems, ever-expanding habit of hiding away any paperwork that might prove inconvenient to those in power.

And then there is Scott Martelle and his book, The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, which just came out this month and tells the story of the 1949 trial of 11 of the mouthpieces of the then minuscule American Communist Party.

The third panel member is Thaddeus Russell, who I’ll ask about his outrageously original A Renegade History of the United States, a book that tells of many of the unlikely people who affected the course of American cultural and political development, but whose tales of influence rarely seem to turn up in most history books.

It’ll be a dynamic exchange, I promise. So y’all come on down.

Okay, now that the personal pitch is out of the way, here are the other six tips:

TIP # 2: GO TO SEE ANY AND ALL PANELS THAT INVOLVE TOD GOLDBERG. Tod is moderating two on Sunday, and he’s on a third one on Saturday. I don’t think anybody except for LAT book reviewer David Ulin is on that many panels. There’s a reason for this. Tod is fantastically entertaining. By “entertaining” I mean, eye-leakingly funny. Plus he’s really, really smart and…really, really….you know…. literary.

TIP #3: GO TO SEE FATHER GREG BOYLE on Sunday at 11 am at Bovard Auditorium being interviewed by LA Times columnist Steve Lopez. Father Greg is really as good as it gets as speaker. Last year at the FOB, Warren Olney interviewed him and, during one of Greg’s stories, Warren started to tear up, with a quiver in the voice, and all. Most of those in the audience were teary too. But Warren Olney’s a pro’s pro, so you’ve got to really have something unusually moving to say to get Warren to cry.

TIP# 4: GO TO SEE EGGARS AND SMITH—TOGETHER AT LAST. On Saturday, David Ulin will interview musician Patti Smith and writer/novelist/publisher Dave Eggars. at 12:30 at Bovard. No, I have no idea why in the world those two are being interviewed together, but it’s a weirdly inspired idea. I’m betting the combo will alchemize something that you will miss at your own peril. (Yes, I know alchemize isn’t a verb.)

TIP #5: IF YOU’RE A DAVID FOSTER WALLACE FAN (or even if you’re not), GO TO SEE Ulin again at 4 pm on Saturday, this time moderating a panel on DFW and The Pale King with Bonnie Nadell, Wallace’s longtime agent, DT Max, the guy who is writing a book about Wallace (and who wrote that heartbreaking New Yorker piece), and Michael Pietsch, DFW’s editor and the guy who had to knit together the piles of incomplete and fragmented manuscript pages that Wallace left after his suicide, into a….book. (This will be sold out, so get a ticket now, or show up on Wednesday and just camp out for three days. I really don’t think this is too extreme a plan.)

TIP #6: GO TO ANY PANEL FEATURING SOMEONE NAMED AMY. It’s a good basic rule. The Amy strategy will, for example, get you to a couple of panels with the fabulous Advice Goddess and author, Amy Alkon, or with witty Texas grrrll novelist, Amy Wallen, or with the soulful and gifted nonfiction writer, Amy Wilentz, or with the incandescently talented poet, Amy Gerstler.

Alternately, I recommend going to any panel with the word MYSTERY in its title. So Cal has produced some fine mystery writers from Raymond Chandler forward, a vein of literary genre gold that continues to get richer, and the array at this year’s LATFOB is a satisfyingly bright and shiny one—Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, T. Jefferson Parker, and more.

TIP # 7. WALK INTO ANY PANEL RANDOMLY. Seriously. I’ve done this many times over the years and never been disappointed. There are so many wonderful conversations that will take place in front of microphones over that two day period, it’s hard to go wrong.

On Saturday Janet Fitch talks to T.C. Boyle; Robin Abcarian interviews Andrew Breitbart; Garrett Graff of the Washingtonian, Eric Alterman of the Daily Beast and the Nation, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Nation’s editor/publisher all talk about Obama; Jennifer Egan and other fictionistas talk about breaking boundaries in fiction—and I have only slightly dented the surface,

On Sunday, the LA Times’ Carolyn Kellogg moderates Publishing: the New Shape of the Book. featuring Tom Lutz, the editor/publisher of the about-to-launch Los Angeles Review of Books, along with Ethan Nosowsky, editor-at-large, Graywolf Press, …..and…. Oh, you get the picture.

Just plan to go, whatever you do.

We can talk about non-literary news tomorrow.

THE LA TIMES BELL REPORTING TEAM & TO LAT PHOTOGRAPHER BARBARA DAVIDSON FOR THEIR WELL-DESERVED PULITZERS

I believed and hoped that the Bell series would win. But one never knows. The committee can be quirky.

Barbara Davidson’s win for her strong and heartbreaking photos was a welcome surprise.

It was also nice to see that Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad” won for fiction, although it wasn’t a huge surprise since she already won the National Book Award, and one could feel the wind has been blowing her way, what with the Franzenfreude still running so hot and heavy that he didn’t even get shortlisted. But hers is a wonderful book. A satisfying winner.

However, speaking personally, I think the choice of Joseph Rago from the Wall Street Journal for editorial writing was a bit weird. But okay.

Here’s the full list.

AND A CONGRATULATORY BOUQUET TO THE LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS, WHICH HAS JUST LAUNCHED A TEASER VERSION

The LA Review of Books is the first major book review to launch in the 21st century, and it’s an exciting prospect that you can read more about here. (I’m delighted to say that I’ve got something in the works for LARB myself.)

Ben Ehrenreich has written about The Death of the Book, for this soft launch moment.

Expect lots more great things soon!

PLUS A CHEER TO RODGER JACOBS FOR SNAGGING THE RUNNER-UP POSITION IN PEN’S SHORT FICTION CONTEST

You’ll remember writer Rodger for his essays about struggling with homelessness.

His short story opens thusly:

“It’s the damnedest case of Bluebeard Syndrome I’ve ever seen.”

Detective Spellacy lit a cigarette and stared at the police psychologist for a beat through an acrid haze of blue smoke. “Doesn’t Bluebeard Syndrome have to do with matricide?”

OH, GET A GRIP, MAUREEN!

Maureen Dowd wrote an exceedingly dopey column in the Sunday NY Times about how Bob Dylan has betrayed himself and us and, I don’t know, music and, like, the movement or whatever—by playing two concerts in the People’s Republic of China.

Bob Dylan may have done the impossible: broken creative new ground in selling out.

More specifically, Dowd doesn’t think he should have played China unless he publicly denounced the government’s policy against dissidents.

But mostly it seems to be the fact that Mr. Zimmerman didn’t play his 1964-released song, “The Times They are a Changin’” that has put Dowd into a state of righteous fury.

The idea that the raspy troubadour of ’60s freedom anthems would go to a dictatorship and not sing those anthems is a whole new kind of sellout — even worse than Beyoncé, Mariah and Usher collecting millions to croon to Qaddafi’s family, or Elton John raking in a fortune to serenade gay-bashers at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding.

Aside from the laughable nature of that last sentence, Dowd has failed to fact check.

Yes, reportedly, the Chinese asked Dylan to submit songs for approval and two out of his gigantic cannon got knocked out, The Times They Are a Changin’ among them.

What Dowd does not mention, one guesses because she doesn’t know, is that Dylan did play other equally if not more subversive songs like: The Ballad of the Thin Man, A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, Like a Rolling Stone and Gonna Change My Way of Thinking.

Thankfully, not everyone agreed with Dowd. For instance, here’s a column on Dylan, the China trip AND MoDo by the Atlantic’s James Fallows:

Maureen Dowd, writing from Washington DC, is wroth about Bob Dylan’s failure to stand up to The Man in his concert in Beijing this week. “Bob Dylan may have done the impossible: broken creative new ground in selling out,” and so on. I see from the world of Twitter that this outraged/ disappointed interpretation is sweeping through the U.S. commentariat.

Many of my Chinese and Western friends, writing from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Nanjing, are wroth about Dowd and what they call her misunderstanding of Dylan, China, and the current alarming wave of crackdowns there…

Fallows goes on to quote a string of people who have written him to point out the uninformed nature of Dowd’s noisy opining. (Evidently they are people who both know China and have bothered to listen to a broader variety of Dylan’s music.)

Then Sunday night, Sean Wilentz was rather more caustic in the New Yorker about Dowd’s idiocy.

Dowd isn’t angry that Dylan performed in China. She is angry that he apparently agreed to do so under certain conditions, that he didn’t sing “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and that he didn’t take the opportunity to denounce Chinese human rights policies.

I don’t know exactly what Dylan did or did not agree to. (I don’t think Dowd does, either.) But whatever the facts are, Dylan knows very well—as I tried to tell Dowd when she interviewed me for her column—that his music long ago became uncensorable. Subversive thoughts aren’t limited to his blatant protest songs of long ago. Nor would his political songs from the early nineteen-sixties have made much sense in China in 2011. Dowd, like Mr. Jones in “Ballad of a Thin Man,” is as clueless about all of this as she is smug.

Dowd fumes that Dylan should have sung verses like:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall

That would have really riled the Chinese—once they’d figured out what a senator or a congressman was.

Instead, Dylan opened his concerts in Beijing and Shanghai with a scalding song from his so-called gospel period, “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking.”

I’m gonna change my way of thinking
Make myself a different set of rules
Gonna put my best foot forward
Stop bein’ influenced by fools

FYI: Here are the two set lists from the Beijing and the Shanghai performances.

PS: Azar Nafisi has an equally know-nothing-driven column in Monday’s New Republic.

TIRED OF THE SHADOWS, YOUNG DREAM ACTIVISTS “COME OUT” ABOUT THEIR ILLEGAL STATUS

The LA Times Richard Fausset has this story, but it’s clearly been a trend. I’ve had both my USC students and, then this last quarter, a UCI student, profile college students who, after hiding their illegal status for most of their youth, now are coming out about it in the hope of helping to precipitate a change.

They also hope that by making their situations public it will be, in a way, prophylactic.

But it also a risk, as former UC Irvine literary journalism student, Antonia Rivera, found out last year.

ERIC HOLDER AND TRYING KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED

Jane Mayor of the New Yorker has a story in next week’s issue about the details of the fight over where to try self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

It’s an excellent window into how we arrived at this dispiriting pass in which we now find ourselves as a county regarding these military commission trials.

On a more cheerful note, the LA Times reports that the CIA says it’s “out of the detention and interrogation business.”

Well, for the most part.

CONSERVATIVE LAWMAKERS GO TO PRISON, GAIN COMPASSION

Justin Elliott of Salon observes that when Republican politicians wind up in prison they often become champions of the twinned realms of prison and sentencing reform.

To further explore the topic, Elliott interviews my favorite expert on such things, Ohio State U law professor Doug Berman.

Here’s how the story opens:

Last week, disgraced former congressman Duke Cunningham wrote a letter to several media outlets from the federal penitentiary where he has resided since 2006. In it, Cunningham, a conservative Republican who pleaded guilty in a public corruption case in 2005, waxed eloquent about an unlikely topic: prison reform.

“The United States has more more men & women in prison than any other nation including Russia and China,” he wrote. “The largest growing number of prisoners, women — 1-34 Americans are either on probation or in prison. The 95% conviction rate reached by threats of long sentences, intimidation, lies and prosecutorial abuse has got to be reckoned with now, not later.” Cunningham also promised he would dedicate his life to prison reform.

We’ve seen transformations like this before. Cunningham is the latest in a string of conservative political figures to see the light on prison reform following a stint behind bars.

THE RIGHTNESS OF WRITEGIRL

The LA Times profiles the nonprofit, WriteGirl, a totally kick ass organization that which pairs professional woman writers with at-risk girls—with life-changing results. If you don’t know about WriteGirl (or even if you do), take a look.

THE PROS AND CONS OF CONS HAVING CELL PHONES

Prison officials say that inmates are using cell phones to commit crimes. However civil libertarians say that most cell phones are just used to talk less expensively to friends and family, but the CDCR is primarily mad because the cell phones mean millions in lost income for the prison system and its pay phone concessionaires.

The LA Times’ Jack Dolan has the rest.