Catherine C – Pen Organization 2/5/10

For our second visit, we actually visited the Pen Building, on 588 Broadway. We helped Stacy set up her materials for the activity she would be doing with the Bank Street School (Put out pens and markers on each table, taped up pictures of the writers on the walls, brought out orange juice and cups, set out cards, etc.) The activity was basically them choosing one or two of the imprisoned writers on the lists, based on their stories and which one they felt most connected to, and writing them a letter. There were a few native french speakers who decided they would write their letters to the writer in Syria. Stacy told them some of the stories she knew about the writers before they started writing. One of the stories that I found really interesting was the one about the man who wrote a love poem. He wrote an eight-line poem, and it got published in some sort of magazine for a special Valentines Day edition or something, and then he was imprisoned. He was imprisoned because if you took the first letter of each word, it said something about his General being crazy with power. This was one of the writers that we couldn’t write to, because whenever they received a letter they were punished. After we helped with the activity, we (Danica, Nathaniel, Josh C and I) got to add to the “Democracy Banner” and write/draw about what freedom of expression meant to us. This visit was really fun, and I learned a lot and I can’t wait for tomorrow’s visit.