Let's face it. Sometimes things seem hopeless. Sometimes no amount of goodness will make up for the bad. Sometimes no amount of hope will be enough for someone to make something of their life. Sometimes one generation can make great strides forward, only for their children to fall back into poverty and despair.

So what do you do when the world seems hopeless? English professor J. Schaap teaches men in prison to write. Sometimes it seems hopeless. And yet, he continues to give the gift of his life. This is his very high calling.

"So the guy comes up to me afterward. A lot of them do. Part of the reason they want to talk, I'm sure, is that they're not all that hot on going back to their cells...

His dad was a teacher, and all the way home last night, I'm haunted by broken dreams: a Lakota college grad becomes a teacher on the Navajo reservation. Maybe it's racist of me, but I'm thinking how terrific it must have been, not only for this guy's father but for the BIA or whoever did the hiring out there in New Mexico, once upon a time, to snag a Native guy, a Lakota, to teach Native kids, Navajos. What a good thing. What a role model.

Today, that man's son is behind bars--that's what I keep thinking. How did that happen?" Read More

Stuff in the Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that matter to him.