Letter from Prison Pete

If you have read my blog for a long time now, you know that I read a blog written by a guy named "Prison Pete." For those of you new to my blog, let me give you some background. I found Pete's blog randomly one night. I clicked on recently updated blogs and found it. It is written by a guy that is in prison. How is this done you ask? He has a friend on the outside that he sends letters to and the friend posts them on a blog for him. It is done via snail mail so there is a delay between the postings and when the things actually happened. I found it very interesting, fascinating and disturbing to read. So of course I kept reading. Pete is a very intelligent man that has an eclectic taste in music and is an avid reader. I asked him what he was in prison for early on and he evaded the question. But I kept reading because it was interesting to get an idea of the life of a prisoner. I also developed a friendship with his editor through email. Then one day I got this idea to suggest his blog as a blog of note on the blogger main page. Until then I was about his only audience. After I made the suggestion it literally exploded. It went from a few hits a day to thousands. Because of his blog traffic, I ended up with more traffic on my blog and one of the reasons I've gotten a few people that read my blog. Well I opened a can of worms that I didn't expect and it through his editor into a fit, but he kept publishing it and the hysteria eventually died down. I met his editor last fall when I went to see Marty. His editor lives in the northeast and was only about an hour drive from Marty so I went and had lunch with him. He's a very nice guy and I'm glad I've gotten to know him.

Pete is a prolific writer and his editor has found it difficult to keep up with the workload of it sometimes. For a while he had some of his faithful readers, myself included, helping to type some of his handwritten letters. Then at one point he was going to quit doing the blogging for Pete altogether, but finally decided in the end to keep it up, but no longer send Pete copies of other peoples blogs or deal with reader comments. At that point, Pete decided he would open the door to others writing him directly. I debated about whether I should or not. I still didn't know what Pete was in for and I suspected it was pretty bad given his sentence and guessed at it being a sex crime. When I told the editor I wanted Pete's address, he offered to tell me what Pete was in prison for and I told him I would like to know. And yes, it is not a very nice thing and most people upon hearing the story would say they couldn't bring themselves to write to him. And maybe I shouldn't, but in getting to know Pete through his blog, I figured he is still human and decided to write anyways. This does not condone his actions in any way and if he was a random guy I would never have written to him. But in getting back into church I decided that it's not for me to judge him and that is between Pete and God. So I wrote him a letter while I had down time during speech camp.

I got his response today. He is still a long-winded writer as he sent 17 pages handwritten. I guess being in prison you have a LOT of extra time on your hands. It is interesting to have a kind of one to one dialogue that isn't written for his blog. And I will probably keep writing to him once in a while.

I won't be posting Pete's letters as that is what his blog is for. But if he says something that bears repeating I may write about it.

Is it scary for me to be writing to a prisoner? Generally I would say that it is something I would find a bit unnerving, but because I've gotten to know his editor who has known Pete since they were kids, I got a good deal of background about him. I don't feel he is one of those dangerous guys that would come after me. But writing to one is something I never imagined myself doing. But I've since done many other things in my life that I never imagined either. So it will be interesting to say the least.