Article: Real American friends.(Karl Zinsmeister)

TARKIO, MISSOURI -- Several years ago, I found myself in a maximum-security women's prison interviewing a convicted murderer, and the discussion turned to her lesbian lover. At about that point, I asked myself the existential question shared by philosophers and people of a certain age: Uh, why am I here? It was, of course, Karl Zinsmeister's fault. He'd organized a coterie of TAE writers to descend on southern Florida, and invited me to write about its prisons, because, as he said: "You are the only person I can think of who would know how to talk to the prisoners." Years later, I still wonder exactly what he meant by that.

I first met Karl when he was doing a ...

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