American Folk and Old-Time Music with Mike Seeger.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JULY 24, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 072401np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Mike Seeger
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Mike Seeger is one of the musicians who helped spark the folk revival of the '50s and '60s. In 1958, he co-founded the "New Lost City Ramblers," a group of middle-class urban musicians like himself who revived the old-time string band music of the rural South.

In the '50s and '60s, Seeger also made many field recordings for Folkways Records. Some of his field recordings from the '50s and '60s that were never released are compiled on a new CD called "Close To Home." We're going to hear some of those recordings and the stories behind them.

Mike Seeger is part of one of America's most famous folk music families. His half-brother is Peter Seeger. His sister is folksinger Peggy Seeger. Mike's mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a composer who also collected children's songs. Mike's father was musicologist Charles Seeger.

The first track on Mike's new anthology features guitarist and singer Elizabeth Cotten (ph). She's famous now in folk music circles, but she wasn't when this recording was made in 1952. I asked Mike Seeger how his family met her.

MIKE SEEGER, FOLK SINGER AND MUSICOLOGIST: I met her at our home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. My mother had met her at a department store in Washington and asked her to help around the house. Elizabeth Cotten worked most of her life in people's homes, helping wash and cook and take care of children. And that was the way I met her in our home one day a week for a long time.

GROSS: Did you know that she could play and sing so well?

SEEGER: Not for four or five years of her being in our household, and it was only after I started playing that my sister Peggy discovered that Elizabeth Cotten could play music.

GROSS: How did Peggy discover that?

SEEGER: Well now, I don't know it from Peggy's side, but Libby (ph) Cotten would say that -- always tell the story on her programs that Peggy discovered her playing the family guitar and that Miss Cotten was really embarrassed because she wasn't supposed to be doing that.

GROSS: Tell us the story behind the specific recording we're going to hear that was made in 1952, I believe in your house.

SEEGER: Yes, well, at this point, we had known that Libby Cotten could play guitar for about six or eight months, and Pete came to visit us, my brother Pete.

And so we asked Libby Cotten after a whole day's work, and for her a day's work was I think at least 10 or 11 hours, we asked her if she would play some for us and Pete, and my father had just brought a tape recorder home from work.

She didn't have a guitar at the time, and she'd been playing the family gut-string guitar. They didn't have nylon yet. And she played a guitar that had steel strings on it that a friend of Pete's had brought down.

And so it -- her touch was a little bit unsure at times, but she was wonderfully solid even then. It's amazing to think of a woman who was 55, hadn't played guitar much for about 25 or 30 years, discovering again that she could play guitar, and playing for us.

GROSS: So let's hear her recording of "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" recorded in your home in 1952.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, ELIZABETH COTTEN, GUITARIST, PERFORMING "IN THE SWEET BYE AND BYE")

Elizabeth Cotten, as recorded by Mike Seeger and his family in 1952, and that recording has been reissued on Mike Seeger's new album Close to Home -- old-time music from Mike Seeger's collection recorded between 1952 and 1967.

Mike Seeger, the field recordings that have been collected on your CD Close to Home span 1952 to 1967. Tell us how you defined your mission in making these recordings back then.

SEEGER: Hmm. I was reared by a family -- by two avant garde musicians, that is, who composed and thought about modernist music; who discovered folk music in the '30s.

And they'd always had a feeling of mission, whether it was modernist music or a modernist approach to folk music. And when I'm talking of folk music, I mean traditional rural music of the working class or agricultural people, folks from -- who are the majority, I guess, of people in the United States until industrialization started.

Anyway, what I want to say is that they gave me this feeling of mission, too. It just wiped off -- it rubbed off on me. And I hear all this music around, or I had heard all this music around me, and I wanted to -- for other people to be able to hear it and to be able to play it and appreciate these wonderful musicians.

GROSS: When you started traveling around, entering people's homes and recording them, were you always welcomed? Did you always already have a relationship with the people whose homes you entered?

SEEGER: I was very music-centered. I was always that way. And so I usually entered people's homes on the basis of "I like your music" and "I like you." And usually, that communicated. Only once or twice did it not, and it's only when perhaps there were other issues that were preventing it on the other person's side.

GROSS: Were you performing yourself when you started recording other people?

SEEGER: Yes. I started trying to play. My mother got me started, really, when I was in my late teens. And, yes, I could always play a little bit, and I think that interested people. I wasn't dressed very well. I didn't have much money. And I just liked what I was doing, and there was no money involved at all, and there still isn't much.

GROSS: Let's hear another recording that's on your new anthology. This is a 1962 recording featuring Ernest and Hattie Stoneman (ph), and the song is "Gather in the Golden Grain." Tell us something about these performers -- how you met them? How this recording came to be?

SEEGER: I'd heard recordings of Ernest and Hattie Stoneman first on a recording, an anthology called "The Anthology of American Folk Music," edited by Harry Smith, which incidentally is going to be re-released by Smithsonian Folkways in August.

And I went to a fiddler's contest in rural Maryland, somewhere over near Glen Burnie, which is near Baltimore. And they had a lot of rural people, mostly from the South, but some from around in the rural area of rural Maryland, too. Ernest Stoneman was there.

He was there with his own band, and I was so struck by his playing of the autoharp and just by seeing him and hearing him and realizing that this man who had recorded back in the '20s, in the 1960s was still there, that I went and asked him if I could visit him at his home, and -- which I did.

I asked he and his wife Hattie if they would record a couple of the gospel songs, and the old pump organ that she'd given him when they married -- it was kind of leaky, I think, and they could only make it through about a minute of the song. But -- and Hattie was always reluctant to play, so it only lasts a minute, but it's a wonderful little piece of music.

GROSS: That's a wonderful minute. Why don't we hear it?

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, ERNEST AND HATTIE STONEMAN PERFORMING GOSPEL SONG)

SINGERS: Roll out and gather the (unintelligible)
Your toil for Jesus will not be vain for
He will be in (unintelligible) shield
Gather, go gather, go gather in the golden grain
Gather, go gather, go gather in the golden grain

GROSS: That was recorded in 1962. Recorded by my guest Mike Seeger and featured on his new anthology Close to Home: Old Time Music from Mike Seeger's Collection, 1952 to 1967.

You point out in the liner notes that they're singing one octave apart from each other. Is that a common way of singing together in rural country music?

SEEGER: Well, it's an informal way of singing together, and that's the way they sing in church. And it -- in my mind, it's a way of singing that predates the ideas of harmony, which are pretty popular these days. It's considered kind of corny now to sing either in unison or in octaves. So it's a family way, really. It's a family style.

GROSS: I want to move on to another tune collected on this new CD and it features Pearly Grandma Davis (ph), about whom I know nothing. The song is called "It's These Hard Times." Tell us something about her and this recording.

SEEGER: I wish I could tell you more about Grandma Davis. Back in the '50s and '60s, before the mid-'60s, fiddler's conventions in the South had a lot of old-time country people who'd just show up and play a few songs. Quite often, they were songs that would be out of their home repertoire, you know.

And I was very struck by her singing and playing when I saw her -- heard her at the Union Grove Fiddler's Convention about 1960 or '61. So on another trip South with John Cohen (ph) -- we were doing a swing through the South, especially through North Carolina and Tennessee -- we stopped off and saw her and her family.

And she lived in a nice frame house in Roaring River, North Carolina, without electricity. She didn't trust electricity. So we went across the street to one of her kid's houses and had a wonderful evening of music there.

And this is just one song of several that she sang during the course of that evening of us singing and playing for one another, really, because John and I played some, too, for them. We just entertained one another, and she entertained us with this.

GROSS: This is Pearly Grandma Davis recorded in 1961.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, PEARLY GRANDMA DAVIS PERFORMING "THESE HARD TIMES")

PEARLY GRANDMA DAVIS, SINGING:
Sing you a song, a song you should hear
Concerning those boys who lives about here
To tell you the truth boys
You can't a disown
You pull a girl about, like a dog with a bone
And it's these hard times

Girls about here
That work by the hooks
Want for the comfort and it just for the looks
A bleed to my soul, if the boys want to talk
They'd worm so long
They'd take a side walk
And it's these hard times

Girls about here, they'll grin like a cat
They'll tickle and they'll tattle and they don't what it's at
To tell the truth, boys, you can't a disown
You pull a girl about, like a dog with a bone
And it's these hard times

Tell a good girl wherever she'd be
No fresher things on
You never will see
No lazy, no brazes, no such little thing
But a long-tailed bonnet came down to her chin
And it's these hard times

Yonder's a doctor I'd almost forgot
Believe to my soul, he's the worst in the lot
He says he'll cure you for
A hack you persist
And then he'll kill 'ya and take all the rest
It's these hard times

GROSS: Music recorded by Mike Seeger, included on his new CD Close to Home. We'll talk more after this break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with folk musician Mike Seeger. Some of his field recordings from the '50s and '60s are collected on his new CD Close to Home.

Now, I think one of the people who you recorded more than any other is Doc Boggs (ph). What do you think his importance is, musically?

SEEGER: Well, he just had a gut feeling to his music, through his voice, and a certain way of picking the banjo on some of the songs that really just get to you. I'm without words, Terry, because I think it's probably a good idea just to listen to the music.

GROSS: OK. And why don't we do that? Tell us about the recording that you made that's featured on the CD of Doc Boggs.

SEEGER: Well, I went way out of my way to try to find this man because when I was 10 or 11 years old, I heard recordings of his for the first time, and I always wanted to find this man or find out what he was about.

And by asking various different people, I eventually, on a trip from California to home in New Jersey at the time, I found Doc Boggs, met him, recorded three, four new LPs at the time, and got him to travel around a little bit to some of the folk concerts and festivals.

So I got to know him pretty well, and I recorded him at his home. And this was probably -- this was for an LP. Most of the recordings that I made here were not for any idea that they'd ever be released commercially. This one, however, was.

GROSS: This is Doc Boggs recorded in 1964.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, FOLK SINGER DOC BOGGS PERFORMING)

DOC BOGGS SINGING: Well, I got no honey baby now
Got no sugar baby now
All I can do, yes, all I can say
I can't make a living is away
I can't make a living is away
Got no sugar baby now
Got no honey baby now

Later in the shade
Give her every dime I made
What more could a poor boy do?
I got no honey baby now
I got no sugar baby now

GROSS: Doc Boggs, recorded in 1964 by my guest Mike Seeger. And we should mention that Doc Boggs is also featured on that anthology of American folk music compiled by Harry Smith (ph), which is getting reissued now -- a very influential anthology. And there's a chapter on Doc Boggs in Bill Marcus' new book about Bob Dylan, "The Basement Tapes."

Mike Seeger, I'd like to hear more about you and your life in music. It seems to me you're really part of the first generation of country folk musicians who weren't born into that tradition. You're from the urban North, a member of the educated middle class. And the music that most inspired you was music largely played by rural Southerners who didn't have the kind of formal education that you were from.

Did you see yourself that way, as part of the first generation of people who were playing music that was traditional music, but they weren't part of that tradition?

SEEGER: I don't know how much I ever thought about that. I rebelled against formal education, which my parents had so much of. And I learned the music by ear. I just loved it so much. Ever since I was four or five years old, I was singing these old songs. And then when I started playing, I was playing in the style that appealed to me most.

Maybe it's because we didn't have a radio. Maybe it's because I only listened to this kind of music because that's the only kind of recorded music we had at home. But something in me resonated -- or these songs, these sounds resonated to me and it's been the center of my life ever since.

GROSS: Now, you mentioned that you grew up without a radio. I find it very interesting that your parents, who were music scholars and composers and teachers, and -- were probably among the first families to have a tape recorder in their own home, didn't own a radio. Why not?

SEEGER: Well, actually we -- the tape recorder was only there for one day.

GROSS: Oh.

LAUGHTER

SEEGER: My mother did have a transcription turntable through which I could hear all of these things. That was in the day when you had to sharpen cactus needles to listen to records. And we didn't have any commercial records. We only had field recordings to listen to.

They were determined that I wouldn't be reared on commercial mass media, which was just getting started in the '20s and '30s. And, well, they succeeded.

GROSS: Was their goal in life to make sure you never heard Louis Armstrong or Bing Crosby or Duke Ellington?

SEEGER: Maybe Bing Crosby, out of those. They were not -- I think they weren't impressed by a lot of jazz, even. But they wanted me to -- well they felt that, I think, that this music had been the oral tradition for people for centuries and centuries, and they just wanted it to continue, although obviously within a modern life.

I don't think they ever expected that I would be doing this for a living. They just wanted me to have it in my life.

GROSS: Mike Seeger's new CD is called Close to Home, featuring his field recordings from 1952 to '67. He'll be back in the second half of our show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR, and here is Sarah Carter Bays (ph) and Mother Mabel Carter (ph) from the new CD.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SARAH CARTER BAYS AND MOTHER MABEL CARTER PERFORMING)

SINGERS: I'm leaving you, this lonesome song
I'm leaving you, this lonesome song
I'm leaving you, this lonesome song
'Cause I'll be gone, long gone, someday 'fore long

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with Mike Seeger. His new anthology Close to Home features field recordings he made in the South in the 1950s and '60s. Seeger is from a musical family. His half-brother is Pete Seeger. His sister is folksinger Peggy Seeger. His father, Charles Seeger, was a musicologist. His mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a modernist composer.

When we left off, Mike was telling us that his parents loved traditional music, but the art songs his mother composed were hardly folk music.

I thought I'd play a song that your mother wrote that was recently recorded by Dawn Upshaw (ph). This is a song called "White Moon" and it's a setting for a poem by Carl Sandburg. I just want to give a sense of what your mother was up to.

SEEGER: Well, she -- she had been up to this two or three years before I was born, and basically gave up that kind of music...

GROSS: Oh, no kidding?

SEEGER: ... when I was born or shortly before. And they went completely over into folk music, so that we didn't know anything...

GROSS: Oh.

SEEGER: ... about that kind of music. Well, I had one 78 rpm record of her string quartet, which I enjoyed listening to when I was a kid.

GROSS: Well, let's hear this recording of White Moon then we'll find out why your mother abandoned that kind of song. This is Dawn Upshaw.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, DAWN UPSHAW PERFORMING "WHITE MOON")

DAWN UPSHAW, SINGER, SINGING:
White moon, come sing on a baby (unintelligible)
The shafts across her bed are shimmering
Out on the land, white moon shines
Shines and glimmers against my shadow

All silver, two twisted shadows
Fall across the long road that

GROSS: Well, I think that gives us a sense of the song -- a song written by your mother Ruth Crawford Seeger; a setting for a poem by Carl Sandburg, sung by Dawn Upshaw.

So tell us why she gave up that kind of music around the time you were born?

SEEGER: This was in the early days of the Depression, when there was a lot of soul-searching by modernist musicians; by a lot of people looking for what is Americans; looking for something that would have some social activist -- political activist use.

And they shifted from one avant garde to another, I guess -- from the avant garde of composed music-making to the avant garde of thinking about music that would have social use and also the continuity of musical traditions; and trying to respect American culture as it was.

GROSS: Did your mother feel the music was too intellectualized? Too removed from popular taste?

SEEGER: From everyday reality and from the experience of most people, yes. It has a different use, and I -- incidentally, I think that's the nicest recording that I've heard.

GROSS: Oh, it's a lovely recording. It's Dawn Upshaw, what else can you say? That's really a lovely recording.

SEEGER: But it's just different. My mother was absolutely intrigued with the complexities of rural music-making -- singing, especially.

GROSS: Now, your half-brother is Pete Seeger. Did you actually live with him when you were growing up? I know he is, I believe, your father's son with another -- with your father's first wife, who was not your mother.

SEEGER: That's right.

GROSS: So he has the same father, but a different mother. How old was he when you were born?

SEEGER: He would have been 14. And we didn't live together, no, but we had visits, and they were always high points.

GROSS: Was he somebody who inspired you? Or someone who made you think that you had to stay away from what he was doing because -- just to preserve your own identity?

SEEGER: There are parts of what he did which influenced me a lot early on, and others have stayed with me. The overall ideas of -- how would I say it -- attitude towards music has a lot -- I feel like I've gotten a lot from Pete. Early on, yes, I learned a little bit from Pete -- more than a little bit.

GROSS: When you say you learned a lot about attitude toward music, what attitude are you talking about?

SEEGER: I think it has to do with inclusiveness.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

SEEGER: Of attitude towards other musicians. Of course, some of this came from my parents, too, but a lot of it came from Pete.

GROSS: Your new CD is of field recordings that you made between 1957 and 1962. In 1958, you co-formed the New Lost City Ramblers, which was a group of people like you who weren't a part of that Southern rural tradition, but loved the music and wanted to play it and sing it and keep it alive. Tell us a little about founding the group.

SEEGER: Well, it was an accident. In those days, in the '50s, if you played this kind of music, you knew that there were only about five or 10 people in the cities playing it. And you knew them. And then, we were also aware of the -- well, that this music was dying out gradually in the South, being basically dominated over by contemporary commercial forms.

So we did know one another. We met Tom -- Tom Paley (ph) and John Cohen and myself -- we met in -- well actually, we met separately at various times in the '50s -- but the three of us played together on a radio program, just kind of guesting, and it seemed to work well enough so that John said "well, how 'bout we record for Folkways and how 'bout we do a concert in New York?" And I said: "OK."

And from then on, it's -- we've been a group with one change of personnel in 1962.

GROSS: Let me play a track from the New Lost City Ramblers CD that you recently put out, first recording together in 23 years. And why don't we hear a song that a lot of people will know as an old kid song "Skip To My Lou" -- why did you adults decide to do this?

SEEGER: 'Cause we liked the song. Some people think it's pretty far out to have a song that says "little red wagon painted blue" and it's also just a play -- a playful song and it was also, in its original form, meant for courting -- kind of a courting game in the days when they thought that dancing in the usual way was sinful.

And so this was not meant to be done with sinful musical string instruments. It was supposed to be sung by people in their teens to keep them out of trouble.

GROSS: Oh. I never knew that.

SEEGER: Well that's what the folklore is, anyway.

GROSS: Right. OK. Well, this is Skip To My Lou, Mike Seeger lead vocals, harmonica, and ukelele.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, NEW LOST CITY RAMBLERS PERFORMING "SKIP TO MY LOU")

SEEGER SINGING: Lou, Lou, skip to my Lou
Lou, Lou, skip to my Lou
Lou, Lou, skip to my Lou
Skip to my Lou, my darling

Yonder she comes how do you do?
Yonder she comes, skip to my Lou
Yonder she comes and how do you do?
Skip to my Lou, my darling

Pretty as a red bird, prettier too
Pretty as a red bird, skip to my Lou
Pretty as a red bird, prettier too
Skip to my Lou, my darling

GROSS: Skip To My Lou, that's the New Lost City Ramblers, with my guest Mike Seeger, lead vocals.

It seems to me one of the things you really have in common with so many of the country musicians, old-time musicians whose work you documented over the years is that you're -- you come from a family of music people.

I mean, part of the old-time tradition, I think, is a family tradition where so many bands that were made up of families -- husbands and wives who sang together; the children maybe sang together, too.

And gee, in your family, you had, you know, your parents, and then Pete Seeger's part of the family, and your sister Peggy who's also a singer. I mean, what a great musical family.

SEEGER: We enjoy playing music together, and it's one of the things that we do when we do get together on holidays or just on visits. I feel real fortunate, yes. I feel real fortunate.

GROSS: Well, Mike Seeger, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

SEEGER: Oh, it's been fun, Terry. Thanks for asking.

GROSS: Mike Seeger has a new anthology of field recordings he made in the rural South between 1957 and '62. It's called Close to Home.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Mike Seeger
High: Folk singer and collector of folk recordings Mike Seeger. In the early 1950s he sought to preserve the music traditions of the mountains of the Southeast U.S. through recordings and through his own playing. In 1958 he co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers. Seeger is the half-brother of folk singer Pete Seeger. He has a new collection of music he recorded: "Close to Home: Old time Music From Mike Seeger's Collection: 1952-1967." There's also a new collection: "There Ain't No Way Out: New Lost City Ramblers ."
Spec: Music Industry; Mike Seeger;
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Mike Seeger
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JULY 24, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 072402NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Joseph Timilty
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:42

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Joseph Timilty went from the Massachusetts statehouse to the prison house. After serving five terms as a state senator, running for mayor of Boston three times, and serving on a housing commission in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Timilty was sentenced to four months for conspiracy to commit fraud in a condominium development project in which he was a partner.

Timilty has maintained he was guilty of stupidity, signing a contract he didn't fully understand, but not guilty of conspiracy.

He served his time at a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He secretly kept a prison journal, which was against the prison rules. With the help of Boston Globe feature writer Jack Thomas, he's adapted it into the new book "Prison Journal." The book also includes his recommendations for prison reform.

Timilty entered prison in early October, 1993. I asked him if the prison was mostly for white collar criminals.

JOSEPH TIMILTY, FORMER MASSACHUSETTS STATE SENATOR: No, not necessarily. The prison I was sent to was for first-time, non-violent offenders. The majority of people who were incarcerated there were first-time drug dealers from Spanish Harlem and from New York -- the ghetto of New York -- and Washington.

So white collar criminals were a vast minority of individuals that were there.

GROSS: One of your suggestions for prison reform is to create meaningful work for people who are incarcerated. You had to work while you were in prison, and you, in fact, started working in the library. That sounds like it had the potential to be as meaningful as you can get in a prison. Was it meaningful work?

TIMILTY: No, if I -- what a surprise I got. I asked to go to the library because I thought it would give me an opportunity to further my writing, knowing I was going to do -- at least attempt to do the journal that we now talk about.

So that when I finally achieved my request and got there, I was surprised to find out I was nothing more than a guard sitting behind a desk, making sure that people kept the noise down.

There were no books for them to check out. There were no books, really, for them to read. The only real reading material that you had for 300 men was one or two USA Todays that came in and, you know, maybe a late Time magazine.

And people were asked to check them out so that you'd know exactly who was taking them, and then when you'd look at the book when you came in in the morning to see who checked out the reading material for the last night, you'd see names like Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, Frank Sinatra -- nobody would give their right name.

It was -- the library itself was a joke.

GROSS: You asked to be transferred from the library. In fact, you asked to be transferred to latrine duty and, I don't know, my first reaction is: who in the world would ask to be transferred from the library to cleaning the latrine? Why did you ask for that transfer?

TIMILTY: There was an individual, again, from Philadelphia, who was in charge of the discussion group, which was a group of Catholics and Protestants and Jews that got together every Sunday night. He was a very intelligent guy from the Protestant population. And he had that duty before I did.

GROSS: Which duty? The latrine or the library?

TIMILTY: The latrine.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

TIMILTY: And he knew that -- and he could see because he hung around the library when he wasn't in the latrine. He could see that I was very unhappy with the library duty. And he said to me that he was getting ready to go to a halfway house. In other words, he was getting ready to go out of the prison population and go back to Philadelphia to a halfway house.

He said that job was coming up. I ought to think about it. And the last -- I said the last thing I'd want is to be cleaning up the latrine. Then he says, well you ought to meet me some morning and see how I do it. And I did. And he said it takes you basically about an hour to clean this whole facility up.

He says you have the rest of the day to yourself. You're your own boss, and as long as the place is clean, nobody's going to bother you because nobody thinks that anybody can keep this clean. He says I've been able to do it.

He says, this is something you ought to think about, because even though you're sitting all day long in the library, this gives you a whole host of more freedom, plus it's not a hard thing to clean. All you need is a pair of gloves and some Lysol.

Well, after seeing what he was referring to, I volunteered for that duty. And I was so glad to get out of the library. It was one of the best things that I had done. It gave me much more time to move around the facility.

The place was easy to clean. It gave me a chance to kibbitz (ph) with all kinds of prisoners that were coming by that -- because the latrine was in the hallway of the administration building. It gave me all kinds of access to different individuals.

So, he was right. It was a great move for me.

GROSS: Let me ask you: while you cleaning the latrine, if there was another prisoner inside who had a grudge against you, would he dirty the latrine to get back at you?

TIMILTY: Sure. Sure. Your level of intelligence within the populations there was not, you know, Harvard on the Charles. Yeah, sure, there were some people who would try to do that.

If I had my gloves and my -- armed with my gloves and my Lysol and my brush, I mean, how much damage can they do to a commode or a urinal or the floor? And if they did that, you know, I'd have to reciprocate in some like manner, and they'd never do it again.

GROSS: Well, what could you do to reciprocate?

TIMILTY: Well, I did a whole host of things -- make sure that the next time they came needing the latrine, it would be closed for repair; making sure that there were -- the next time they came looking for the latrine, that there was no toilet paper. A whole host of things that you could do to meet the demand.

GROSS: Now, you were in a prison for nonviolent first offenders. Was there much violence inside?

TIMILTY: They frowned on violence.

GROSS: Whose "they?" The prisoners? The guards?

TIMILTY: "They" -- no, the authorities, and anytime they witnessed any violence whatsoever, they would react immediately by pulling that person out of the population. But violence was always like a, you know, a coat of paint. It was like right under the surface all the time.

And I was warned when I first got there -- I was warned of a lot of things, but one of the key things was -- that was suggested to me: Joe, stay out of the TV room. If there's a fight, it's going to happen in two areas, either over the TV or over chow.

In the -- for example, in the TV room, there was always a great debate as to what station people were going to watch. There was a whole -- you know, the first time I had ever been introduced to it, by the way -- there were a whole combine of Trekkers -- people who were absolutely addicted to "Star Trek." And anybody that would try to change the station at a time when Star Trek was on, there was going to be a fight.

GROSS: My guest is former Massachusetts State Senator Joseph Timilty. His new book is called Prison Journal. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with former Massachusetts State Senator Joseph Timilty. His new book, Prison Journal, is about the four months he spent at a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, serving time for fraud conspiracy related to a real estate development in which he was a partner.

Give us a sense of what your daily schedule was like inside.

TIMILTY: I'd get up earlier than most because one, I found that I could do my wash at that time. The washing machines were empty. So I'd get up around 4:30, realizing everybody else would get up around six.

And I also did that because I could get into the bathroom and clean a sink and clean an area -- that's the way I was brought up. And then I'd have a head start on the day, and by the time six o'clock came around, when everybody else got up and the chow line opened, I'd be one of the first people over there.

And I found breakfast was a pretty good setting. I would be at the breakfast hall for maybe an hour, having a cup of coffee, just sitting talking to the other inmates.

Then I would open up the latrine, clean it, be out of there without a rush by 9:30. Then I'd go find someplace to write, and that's the end product that we have here. After that, about 11 or 12 o'clock, I'd find a way to get to lunch, and then after lunch, I'd work out -- workout for an hour. I'd work out for an hour and a half, two hours. And then clean up again, and then go back to my writing.

So it was basically like everybody else, it was make work; find something to do; occupy your time. The main thing I wanted to do everyday was to write my journal and also to get a workout, so that I'd sleep at night.

GROSS: Now let me ask you this -- it sounds like it was an experience with a lot of potential for being meaningless and empty. On the other hand, it doesn't sound like you were suffering terribly within that daily regimen -- you know, breakfast, an hour of cleaning, a workout, writing.
I've heard a lot worse.

Some people criticize these minimum security prisons for nonviolent offenders for being like country clubs. Do you think that's a fair criticism?

TIMILTY: No, it's not a fair criticism. I mean, the big thing with me was I was a prisoner and I was restricted from being with my family. That, to me, was the total loss. Now, I don't care whether you have me in isolation for 24 hours a day, or in the scenario that I just outlined for you -- I still don't have an opportunity of being with my family.

At night, I stay there. I'm frozen into space for a period of time. I'm restricted from the thing that was most important to me, which was my freedom and my family.

GROSS: If you could have sentenced yourself to something. I know you think you shouldn't have been found guilty in the first place, but let's say you're found guilty and you had to give yourself some kind of sentence. How would the sentence you gave yourself compare to what you were actually sentenced to?

TIMILTY: I'd find some way to have me live at home on some kind of bracelet, and provide public service to community groups, nonprofit groups in the area of expertise that would have them get government grants and be able to get -- to do government applications for the quickly-vanishing federal dollar for community improvement. It'd be one of the ways that I could have helped them.

And then if I did that, I'd have to pay for the bracelet myself. I wouldn't have a disruption of the home life, which in a lot of cases is devastating to families.

GROSS: But I think the public wants to see a white collar criminal suffer for his crime; to be punished in a way that hurts.

TIMILTY: Well, then I think that we look at the outcome. First of all, for a white collar criminal like myself, the day I was indicted my reputation was through for the rest of my life. Doesn't make any difference if they sent me away for five days or five years. Doesn't improve or deprove my reputation. It's already gone.

The day I'm found guilty, by a jury, I'm devastated as a white collar criminal. Now, from a banker, that means I'm never able to bank again. If I'm a lawyer, that means I'm never able to be a lawyer again. If I'm a doctor, that means I'm never able to doctor again.

So I mean, how much punishment do you want to have affected? Why punish the taxpayers, along with the individual?

GROSS: After your four months inside this minimum security prison, you were sent to a halfway house. Now ironically, this was a halfway house that you helped establish in spite of protests by residents of the community who were afraid that the halfway house would bring a kind of criminal dangerous element into the neighborhood. Tell me, first, why you supported this controversial halfway house?

TIMILTY: I have always believed in alternative sentencing. And if you're going to have those kinds of alternatives, then they should be located within the community. I mean, you can't isolate them.

The place that we're referring to was an old Mariner Hotel (ph) that had seen better days and was in disrepair. It seemed to me to be a perfect setting for a halfway house. It was across the street from the YMCA. It was downtown Boston. It was an availability of jobs.

It had all of the kinds of assets that you'd want for a population that was trying to get back into society.

GROSS: You had mentioned that you feel, as soon as you were convicted, that your reputation was ruined and much of your professional life was over. What kind of work are you doing now?

TIMILTY: I work as a lobbyist. I represent clients at the statehouse in Massachusetts.

GROSS: So your professional life was not totally ruined, but -- by the conviction.

TIMILTY: Well, let's let your listeners decide that. I was an elected official for somewhere around 18 years. I put my name on the ballot and most of the time I was unopposed. And now my life has changed, so that I now represent racetracks at the Massachusetts legislature. Now I think that's a far cry from being an elected official.

GROSS: I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

TIMILTY: OK, Terry.

GROSS: Joseph Timilty's new book is called Prison Journal.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Joseph Timilty
High: Former Massachusetts State Senator Joseph Timilty. In 1993 he was indicted for conspiracy to commit fraud in a condominium development project. He refused to plea bargain, was arrested and spent four months in prison. His new memoir is of those four months: "Prison Journal."
Spec: Crime; Books; Authors; States; Massachusetts; Prison
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
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End-Story: Joseph Timilty
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