letter from new york

I rise at 6am to catch an early train from Grand Central Station. My goal is Sing Sing Prison, one of America’s most famous prisons, and yes, it looks just like it does in all those prison movies –old and gritty. It’s about an hour north of New York City by train, the tracks follow the edge of the Hudson River.  Locally, “going up the river” was another expression for being sent to prison to do hard time. Sing Sing is a maximum-security prison.