January 20th

January 20th

Hello brother,

It looks like we’re staying in town. No more nightmares of being kicked out of our house, being forced to live out in the outskirts of town. That’s right, it happened! The deal father and uncle have been working on has finally grabbed the attention of a publisher! The publisher operates in the downtown area, very rich from what I hear. When this man signs off on the deal, father will secure the arrangement to draft thousands of copies of the “Tao Te Ching” right in the prison!
By the look of father’s frantic, expressionless behavior this morning, you would have thought he hadn’t heard the good news. He went on like a zombie/madman all morning. He skipped breakfast, treated mother and me as if we weren’t there. He would have forgotten to put his shoes on if he didn’t trip over them. I finished breakfast, grabbed my cleaning supplies for work, kissed mother and stepped out the door to join father on our walk to the prison. Father had already sent word to the prison by messenger, and word got back to father before we had walked out the gate. The last I heard, the prison staff were already getting fathers plan in motion.
Now that the months of planning on father’s part have finally paid off, perhaps things will go back to the way they used to, when you lived here, and we were younger. Who knows, maybe I’ll get more than a 2 minutes to spend with father after work. He has worked very hard handling the training of these prisoners. That’s for certain. Although we haven’t seen much of him lately, he has been doing something very noble and our future will be better because of it. Father has worked day and night to get these prisoners the education necessary to write.
The most promising of the prisoners have been rewarded with a job on the presses, printing these “Tao Te Ching” books. Mother keeps a copy, but I haven’t started reading it yet. I think I might take a look as soon as they come off the presses. I think I remember you taking one with you before you left for the university. Do you continue to read it? Considering it’s the best selling book in the region, there should be no shortage of work for us. If these prisoners are as good at writing as father says they are, we’ll never have to worry about making ends meet again! I miss you brother.

Sincerely,
Ning