Dear Nora "Trust Me" Capron,

What grade did you give Allen W. Lee for his now-famous "free writing" essay? Doubleplusungood?? Maybe you should ask the students in your creative writing class to read and discuss the following works:

• Stephen King: On Predicting Violence
• CrimethInc: Days of War, Nights of Love
• Phillip K. Dick: Minority Report (short story)
• Phillip Glass & Rudolph Wurlitzer: In the Penal Colony (opera, based on the short story by Franz Kafka)

Just don't expect any of your current or future students to believe a word you say to them for the rest of your career.

Dear Principal Susan "crimethink" Popp,

Any comments about exactly why you decided to call the police, rather than have a rational face-to-face discussion with straight-A-student Allen Lee and his skittish English teacher, Nora Capron? Where was Cary-Grove Guidance Councelor Matt Berg? Busy eating donuts with Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio and McHenry County State's Attorney Louis Bianchi, perhaps?

Tonight's school board meeting (5pm Monday April 30th @ D155 office, 1 S. Virginia Road, Crystal Lake, IL) should prove to be a spirited debate. Can someone please bring a camcorder and post the event on the web?

The outrageous injustice of this case has motivated me to make unsolicited donations to:

• the "Support Allen Lee" defense fund, Fifth Third Bank, 750 Northwest Highway, Cary, IL 60013, phone: (847) 516-5000
• the American Civil Liberties Union

Dear PEN American Center,

Any comments about this case? Your silence is deafening.