Thinking About an eBook

The other night, I read an interesting piece in USA Today about a recent Barnes & Noble eBook “daily special” of Eric Metaxas amazing biography of martyred German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Selling as an eBook for $1.99, Bonhoeffer’s amazing life story sold tens of thousands of copies in a short time and thrust the book to number 19 on the paper’s weekly bestsellers list.

I read (and wrote about) the Bonhoeffer book months ago.  I found it a difficult read, very cerebral, theologically driven, and yet one of the most powerful books I’d ever read.  Bonhoeffer was a brilliant, serious Christian who, I believe, would offer scathing criticism of 21^st century American faith trends.  I wondered, as I read the article, if all those readers knew what they were getting into.

Inside my wall locker I display two small items.  The first is a color drawing of the Archangel Michael.  A friend, and Episcopal Rector, sent it to me shortly after my arrival at the receiving unit.  “Michael is the archangel who protects us,” his letter stated.  I kept “Michael” under my pillow, looking at him daily as I dealt with the filth and inhumanity of DOC’s Powhatan Receiving Center.

The second item is a poem penned by Bonhoeffer while imprisoned by the Nazi’s and awaiting his execution.  Simply titled “On Waking in Prison”, it is a powerful testament to this man’s undying faith in his Lord even as the hangman’s noose drew closer.

Bonhoeffer felt compelled by his faith to challenge the Nazi regime, the status quo.  He became a leader of the Covenant Church movement, separating a number of Lutheran parishes away from the mainline German Lutheran churches which, at best, quietly acquiesced to the Nazi’s rule of terror and, at worst, actively participated in Hitler’s dreams of ethnic cleansing and world domination.

Lest we too quickly applaud Bonhoeffer for his deeds; let’s remember the Nazis were a legitimately recognized political organization.  Hitler’s rise to power came about by the force of political calculation and legitimacy.  There was no government overthrow.  The Nazis entered politics, Hitler was asked to form a government and the German people – a majority at least – willingly followed along as law after law was passed.  There was no coup, there was simple acquiesce by the German people to fear and economic despair and the deep-seated desire to have simple answers to complex societal issues.

And what of Bonhoeffer?  He willingly broke the legitimate laws of his nation because he believed God called humankind to a higher order than the laws on the books.  Bonhoeffer was willing to fight the legitimate government of his nation, challenge the conventional wisdom of his people and be imprisoned and executed to remain true to his God.  An amazing man.  A true Christian.  I wonder how many of us would be willing to do the same; give up job, family, freedom, our lives for our faith.

Bonhoeffer challenged the conventional wisdom of his day – and our day – that found faith to be an easy exercise.  It’s not.  It’s painful and lonely and it involves suffering but you press on anyway because God requires you to do so. You are His child; your eternity is secure.  You are compelled, therefore, to do right even in the face of unwinnable odds.

I wonder what Bonhoeffer would say to modern American Christians; white, upper-income families believing they are blessed because they have two cars, a half million dollar mortgage, a recovering 401k.  What would he say about our reaction to 9/11, to the denial of rights to “enemy combatants”, about our step by step dismantling of personal freedom in the name of security?  What would Bonhoeffer say about the rights call for a wall to “protect” the border?  What would Bonhoeffer say about America’s staggering incarceration number (2.3 million) and supervised probation and parole number (almost 5 million) at a cost of $200 billion per year (criminal justice spending) most of which goes to arrest, try, convict and incarcerate nonviolent offenders?  What would Bonhoeffer say about 46 million Americans using food stamps while our defense budget continues to grow and unemployment exceeds 9%?

I may be mistaken, but I think he would simply ask each believer “What does the Lord require of you?”  As I said earlier, this fast selling eBook will be a difficult read.  But, if we truly believe, we will take heart.  We will get involved.  We will demand justice, seek mercy and forgiveness. 

Ultimately, our power, our future lies not in the military, economic or legal system of this country.   Ultimately, it rests with the Lord who “gives the solitary a home and brings forth the prisoners to freedom”.  What would Bonhoeffer say?  He’d say what I see every morning when I read his poem.  As the psalmist said, “be strong and let your heart take courage.”

Dear Senator Webb

Dear Senator Webb:

I read the recent article from the Daily Beast about your continuing efforts to reform this nation’s broken criminal justice system (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/11/jim-webb-s-criminal-justice-crusade.html ).   As an incarcerated person, currently three years into a fifteen year sentence for embezzlement, I applaud your work.  I speak for tens of thousands of men and women in my situation, and our families and friends, who pray for your endeavors success.  America cannot continue to incarcerate millions of people for billions of dollars especially when, for the vast majority of us being held, our crimes are nonviolent.  We pose no threat to society.

My situation, while somewhat unique, never the less points out the tremendous waste of resources being expended to “punish” me.  I am a former attorney; I freely acknowledge that over twelve years I embezzled over $2 million from my employer.  But that behavior came at a terrible price.  I was depressed, aware of my wrongdoing.  When confronted by my employer I freely admitted my thefts.  I cooperated fully with the investigation, pled guilty to all counts presented and made a significant restitution payment prior to sentencing.

The Court, instead of showing me mercy, sentenced me to serve six consecutive 2 ½ year sentences.  Because of Virginia’s short-sighted “abolishment of parole” legislation passed in 1995, I will serve thirteen years of my sentence.

What have been the results?  For one, the taxpayers of Virginia are spending in excess of $25,000 a year to house me in a low level facility.  My “treatment” plan indicates I am at low risk to return to prison (in other words I am not a recidivism risk).  Because of my educational background (BA and JD degrees) there are no programs geared toward my rehabilitation.  Because of my age (currently 52), it is highly unlikely I will be able to make full restitution after my currently set release date. As a result of my lengthy sentence, my marriage of 27 years has ended.  I am estranged from my two sons.

What I have witnessed and documented over these past three years is appalling.  Virginia’s prison system is hopelessly overcrowded, understaffed and unable to provide meaningful rehabilitative programs for the vast majority of incarcerated offenders.  As my blog has documented, prisons are still places of great violence and degradation.  Simply put, there is no “correction” being accomplished in the department of corrections.  For the vast majority of inmates, prison is a hopeless existence.  Were this only Virginia’s problem it would be bad enough.  That these same problems exist in every state and the Federal Bureau of Prisons is a stain on this nation’s character.

Since my incarceration began, I have devoted myself to helping my fellow inmates.   I serve as an academic tutor for both adult basic education students and college student earning their degrees in this institution’s “campus behind walls”.  I help the men with grievances and legal questions.  And mostly, because of my life experiences, education and age, I serve as a mentor and sounding board to men who have been abandoned, neglected and counted out.  In a strange turn of events, this experience has strengthened my faith.  I cannot undo the wrong I committed but I can work to improve the chances these men – my fellow inmates – have to succeed.

Senator Webb, there is so much wrong with the current operation of America’s prisons.  The conditions the United States Supreme Court found in the California corrections system (Brown v. Plata) exist in every state.  America needs real prison reform:

1.    Meaningful earned good time credit for rehabilitation efforts by inmates must be created.

2.    Alternative sentencing rather than incarceration must be utilized.

3.    Prisons must be places of treatment and rehabilitation, not places of violence, filth and degradation.

ar I urge you to continue your push for criminal justice reform.  I also ask that you come to Lunenburg, speak with me and the other inmates.  I believe you will see that the vast majority of us can leave here sooner, rather than later, and be productive, contributing members of society if only given a chance.

Homecoming for B.I.

This past Tuesday one of the college students, “B.I.”, left prison for freedom.  He was arrested two weeks before his 19^th birthday.  He left 3 months before his 39^th.  He came in a teenager; he departs a middle aged man.

B.I. was one of the smartest students in the college program.  He was shorter than most guys in here, maybe 5’7” max, but he was bull strong.  He’d spend two hours each day, six days a week, lifting weights.

He was also very bright and well read and very studious.  He would read pretty intense pieces and ponder their meaning.   Whether it was Kant and Nietzsche or Whitman poetry, B.I. always had a book in hand and a pad and pen nearby.

And, he was friendly and outgoing.  He had an infectious smile.  He was polite and kind.  Did I mention he’d spent twenty years in prison for murder?  That’s one of the strange things about prison.  There are guys like B.I. who’ve spent years at low custody (14 of his 20 years).  To see them you wouldn’t know they committed a violent crime.  DOC doesn’t consider them violent – they’re housed at lower levels.  And yet, the years roll by, like water in a stream.

The last week before he left, B.I. became withdrawn, introspective.  He quit lifting weights choosing instead to spend hours by himself walking the track or just sitting outside.  Last Sunday, I finished running and B.I. came up to me while I cooled down.  We talked for a good while.  B.I., a guys who’d seen the worst prison had to offer coming into the system at a high security level with stabbings, rapes and extortion a daily occurrence, was scared.  He wasn’t sure he could make it “outside the walls”.

It reminded me that I’m one of the few who find themselves in this situation who actually lived “normal” society lives.  B.I. never held a full time job, never lived on his own.  Buying groceries, going to and from work, paying rent, buying a car or a house – it’s all foreign to him; so is the Internet, cell phones, ATMs, debit cards.

B.I. came to prison as a 19 year old, living at home with his mom.  He was a high school dropout, selling drugs and carrying a pistol in case things went wrong.  One night things did.  And twenty years later this no longer young man walked out of prison to a world he’s seen on TV but which is completely alien to him. 

The general “thought” in “cultured society” is way too much is spent on inmate education and programs.  “They’ve got it too easy.”  I’ve heard it; I said it before I came inside.  Nothing could be more incorrect.

Prison is a brutal, dehumanizing environment.  It is also a time warp.  The world moves on each day, yet life in prison stays the same.  And for long-term inmates, men like B.I., the transition from an over-regulated environment fraught with violence and filth, to a relatively fast paced free lifestyle, is perilous.

For B.I. his fear was, in part, driven by the fact that he couldn’t “go home”.  His mother lives in federal subsidized housing which prohibits him from living there.  So Tuesday morning he sat, waiting for his “ride” and wondering, “Can I do this?  Can I survive out there?”

B.I. is one of the lucky ones.  As a member of the college IT grant program.  Goodwill Industries took an interest in him.  Tuesday morning, two representatives from Goodwill’s Northern Virginia office came to Lunenburg.  They picked B.I. up, took him to DMV to get a state issued ID.  They drove him back to Fredericksburg and got him lunch, his first meal outside.

And they did more.  They found him housing and lined up job interviews.  They were there so B.I. had a chance to succeed.  Will he make it?  Maybe I’m too much of an optimist, but I believe B.I. will be alright.  He survived hell; he survived a twenty year time warp.  He has support from the good people at Goodwill Industries.  It won’t be easy, but he’ll do it.  He’ll do it because, in spite of his crime, he is a decent human being who will overcome the challenges facing him.  Hopefully folks “out there” will see that in B.I.   He’s paid his debt.  He is entitled to live again.

A Letter A Week

In the movie “Shawshank Redemption”, Andy the banker wrongly convicted of murdering his cheating wife and lover, discovers the prison library is in dire need of books.  “I’ll write the Governor a letter a week until he answers”, Andy says.  For the next four years he writes every week with no answer.  Finally, out of the blue, he’s called to the warden’s office.  Boxes and boxes of books, records and school supplies are there with a $200 check and a letter from the Governor.

“This is for your library.  Please stop writing.”

What does Andy do?  He starts sending two letters a week.

Persistence.  The guys in the college building all know about this blog.  They know one of my “letters” went to Governor McDonnell and a recent letter went to DOC Director Clarke.  “Did anyone write back?”  I’m asked that a dozen times a week.

Eventually someone will.  Eventually someone will listen and understand what it’s like in here.  And things will begin to change.  I believe that.  More importantly, a lot of guys in here who never believed in anything are starting to believe.

Words matter.  Words make a difference.  Words bring about change.

Where are our cups?

This week all the inmates received a small care package from a church outreach group in Missouri.   A small plastic bag was handed out with a bar of soap, small bottle of shampoo, a cup lid and a book of devotionals (weird thought to ponder:  there were six books randomly handed out; as though “predestined”, I received “Devotions for the Brokenhearted”).

Word was already out around the compound:  the guys who unloaded the truck saw cups, bags of candy, toothbrushes and toothpaste.  So, as we lined up for our packages, guys began to ask the building “counselor” (the Orwellian word DOC uses for the guy in charge of our annual reviews) “Where’s the cup man?”

And the counselor told the guys straight:  “Warden wouldn’t let you have the plastic cup or other stuff”.  Here’s my question:  Did the warden send the “prohibited” stuff back to the church group?  I can buy my own plastic cup for 45 cents on commissary.  But why would you not let a church provide a cup to an inmate?

Henry Headed Home

The older guy in the bunk across from me – Henry – went home the other day.  He finished 21 months on a two year bid for probation violation.  He was one of the nicest, funniest men I’ve ever met while locked up; a 58 year old bald black man with a huge, bushy moustache.

Henry did a four year sentence – his only conviction – from ’99 to 2003 for an argument at a family reunion that led him to, as he put it, “straighten up my bum ass nephew”.  He did his four years and went back to his wife and kids with ten years probation hanging over his head.

In 2009, he decided to smoke weed with his daughter.  He hadn’t been urine tested in two years.  That afternoon he received a call from his PO, “come in for a test and we’ll discuss releasing you”.  He went, told the PO what he’d done and faced the music.

So Virginia spent over $25,000 each year for the last two years keeping Henry locked up for a probation violation.  For the taxpayers of Virginia I say the joke’s on you.  Henry had no business being sent back in here.  He and his moustache are home and I’m glad.

Hearing About A Death

One of the young guys in the building – “Lil D” was called to the watch commander’s office the other day after noon count.  He was told “your mom died unexpectedly during chemo this morning”.  Lil D is five years into an eight year sentence for selling heroin and crack.  He’s 24.  People may not approve of what this young man did, but only a cold-hearted person could not feel for him as he struggled to come to grips with his loss.

Prison is not a place to expose emotions – other than anger.  Sadness and heartbreak are signs of weakness.  Yet “Lil D” returned from the watch commander’s office, lay on his bunk and openly wept.  Later that afternoon he went outside to workout.  I was on the ball court running suicides.  He asked me to time him:  4 minutes straight jump rope, 1 minute rest.  We talked.  He couldn’t go to the funeral:  DOC rules prohibit it.  He needed a letter to his mom to be read at her burial and he asked me to help him.

That night we drafted the letter.  It was simple, eloquent and beautiful.  It captured the sadness in his heart and the love he held for his mom.  Death is never easy to come to grips with, especially in here.  Lil D’s mom can be proud of her son for his courage that day.

Better Food

The past month, the diet in here has improved.  We’re not getting steak and shrimp, but starting with the feast ending Ramadan, our meals have gotten better.  The Ramadan feast included real chicken on the bone.  In all three years I’ve been locked up, that was only the second time I’ve actually been able to gnaw on a chicken leg and feel the meat grease on my fingers.

We’ve had fresh, tossed salad with oil and vinaigrette dressing.  Huge slabs of sausage pizza were served the other day.  McDonald's McRib style pork patties on sub rolls with barbeque sauce made it on the lunch tray last week.  Asparagus!  White peaches! Strawberries!

And still, guys complain.  “His pizza’s bigger”; “My peach has a bruise”.  Here’s something I learned about food.   I can eat anything.  Good or bad, I eat it.  Every meal I say a short grace.  It reminds me of the Guatemalan kid I was in jail with.  He prayed over every meal because he knew a lot of people have so much less.

The food is better, but it’s still just food.

Earthquake

Virginia was hit with a fairly significant earthquake a few weeks back.  It caused a panic outside the walls.  Inside, the reaction was a little different.  I didn’t feel it.  I was outside running and praying and oblivious to all that was going on around me.  Guys at school and in the building knew something was wrong.  “The blocks bowed in; the ceilings went up and down.”

The quake set off the motion detectors on the perimeter fence (a daily occurrence here is a guy will throw rocks at the perimeter fence to set the motion detectors off.  Then, they count how long it takes the perimeter truck to race to the spot of the alleged breach).  Within minutes the call went out:  “Rec yards closed; cease all movement; count time, count time.”  Within minutes an emergency count was conducted and we were put on modified lockdown (no rec; no programs).

The earthquake was no big deal in here except for one message it reinforced.  Your life may be regulated and controlled every human way possible, but you still can’t control mother nature.

Pie Wars: and More

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes something completely inane and nonsensical that leads to two guys pulverizing each other that you have to ask yourself “Is this all real”?  Such was the battle witnessed a few weeks back now known in 4A lore as “the Pie Wars”.

The premise was simple enough.  Guys get apples brought out of the chow hall (going rate:  6 apples for a buck of commissary; 100 apples for $20 commissary).  The “pie chef” has small, deep dish pans (from microwave meals we get in special ordered holiday “care” packages).  Apples are chopped, cooked in the microwave with a little apple juice and sweetener packs.  Crusts are prepared with oatmeal and duplex cookies.  The pineapple/orange filling from the cookies is held aside, melted and poured on top the mini pie, then heated in the microwave (hint:  the same process works for peach and sweet potato pie).

Pies are then sold for $1.50 in commissary items.  It’s a great, delicious hustle one guy created.  He makes a ton of money and sells out twenty or thirty pies three times a week.  All is cool until competition shows up.  Another guy decides to make pies.  He changes the process in two ways.  First, he makes a large pie with a bottom and top crust.  This pie is built on a writing board that fills the microwave.  Second, he adds coconut from bags of trail mix to the apples.  He cuts “V” pieces and sells them for a buck.

Competition is the backbone of our American economy, right?  Competition is healthy, right?  That may be so in the real world, but in here it’s not about simple competition.  Imagine “Little Debbie” getting the upper hand by spreading rumors about “Sara Lee” – “Sara’s a bakery slut; she cuts corners on her pies.”  That is precisely how the pie wars began.  On the street, someone disparages your product, you sue.  In here, you put a lock in a sock and head to the showers.  And so began and ended the pie wars.  A few welts and bruises later, and the war was over.

“Let us remember those who gave their all” so guys in here can have microwaved pies from pilfered fruit!

About H.L.

Imagine the unimaginable.  One moment you have everything.  In the next your entire adult life’s work stripped away.  The future is hopeless.  The present meaningless.  It’s all gone.  It doesn’t matter.  I thought about all that as I listened to “H.L.” during a TV interview this week to remember ten years after the towers collapsed.  It seemed appropriate that as I listened to “H.L.” I recalled my daily devotional reading from Job.  Appropriate it seems when we ask why, why God, why.

“H.L.” is Howard Lutnick, CEO of the bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald.  On the morning of September 11 Lutnick – a man admired and feared in bond trading circles, who oversaw a billion dollar trading company – took his young son to his first day of Kindergarten rather than heading straight to his company offices on the 105^th floor of the North Tower.  While at the school his cell phone began vibrating nonstop.  A teacher finally told him, “A plane tore through the building”. 

Lutnick raced to the towers.  What he saw was complete carnage:  people streaming out of the towers; flames and black, acrid smoke billowing up and out, engulfing the floors where his company was housed.  Within minutes the towers collapsed and with them 657 of the 900 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald.

In the mere wisp of a minute, Lutnick lost his brother, his closest friends, entire divisions of his company, almost every business record the company possessed.  Cantor Fitzgerald owed $75 billion in bonds bought and not yet paid for.  He had no way of paying the debt, no company.

He was covered in dust, bewildered, frightened, numb.  Imagine – six funerals every day for over 100 straight days.  He called his wife to tell her he was alive and learned she had spoken to his brother only minutes before the building collapsed.

What do you do when everything is gone, everything you worked for destroyed?  Lutnick couldn’t get home that night.  He walked to a friend’s home – one of the few executives at Cantor Fitzgerald who survived - and knocked.  His friend answered.  He had somehow survived, getting on an elevator before the attack.  He was covered in blood.  “Are you hurt?”  “No”, his friend said.  “It’s not my blood.  I don’t know whose it is.”

So that night these two men talked.  They had lost everything in their professional careers and the people who were with them and believed in them were slaughtered.  Lutnick made a decision.  He could fail, he could die penniless, but he wouldn’t let the lives of those people not count for something.  That night, amidst the carnage and despair and fear of 9/11, Cantor Fitzgerald was reborn.  Against impossible odds, tears, setbacks, funerals, Cantor Fitzgerald rebuilt.  They became a stronger company after 9/11.  And Howard Lutnick?  He became a better man.

“What does that have to do with prison?”  You might ask.  Prison breaks you.  It tears you apart.  I look around this compound and see the men – so many, too many – who have given up.  They believe in their heart that it is hopeless.  Their lives are and always will be defined by their crime, their screwed up childhoods, families, and loves.  They have been letdown by friends, betrayed by spouses who said they loved them then left when things got tough.

And then there are the ones who fight back, who find meaning in their imprisonment and a reason to go forward.  They will succeed in spite of what their families think; in spite of the bias and prejudice they encounter.  They will overcome.

Howard Lutnick is a hero. He’s no saint.  He was and is a hard-driven, perhaps arrogant CEO making way too much money for what he does.  But when he stared into the abyss of his future on 9/11 he found faith and courage, two qualities that too often are in short supply.

Dr. Martin Luther King said,

“Faith is taking the next step when you can’t even see the stairway.”

For me and so many other inmates, King’s words, Lutnick’s actions, are motivation for us to overcome.  In everyone’s life there comes that day where evil is thrust upon you or your sins catch up to you and you confront the mystery that Job saw.  You can ask why or you can take the next step forward.  Faith, redemption, begins with that step.

Conspiracies Everywhere

I was an unwilling participant to a conspiracy conversation the other day which got me thinking about failures in the nations corrections philosophy that are so prevalent today.  A couple of the young black college guys were debating the “real causes” of 9/11.  All three of these guys had read a revisionist “historians” (the guys not really a historian) take that the CIA and White House led the attack.  When I challenged their “research” they claimed I was too gullible.  “America’s the shit Larry.  Don’t you know that after what you’ve been through?”

Ignorance is alive and well in the inmate population.  Guys will buy any conspiracy theory – join bizarre prison created “religions” with off the wall theories.  I used to find it mildly entertaining.  But, like the rapid rise of another group of conspiracy believers – the Tea Party crew – I’m feeling a great deal of unease.  Prison spurs kooky views.  It’s up to the corrections professionals to address it.

When I was still held at the Henrico Jail I met an early twenties white kid who was an amazing artist.  He could draw anything – portraits, scenery, cars, you name it.  He was also covered in Nazi tattoos.  One morning around 5:00 as was my custom, I was drinking coffee, writing in my journal.  The kid sat down with me with a pained expression on his face.

“Mr. Larry, you’re a nice man.  I’m afraid the darks are gonna hurt you when you get to prison.  You need to join the Aryans.”

I thanked him for worrying about me but politely told him I didn’t need a white supremist group to keep me safe in prison.

Then I get to prison and I run up on Aryans, Hispanic gangs, a half dozen black gangs, Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, and a host of other fringe groups who each espouse a philosophy built on a corrupt power elite beating down on them.

Ask the average inmate to consider the real cost (in dollars) to taxpayers to keep them locked up and they will tell you prisons make money.  Why do they believe that when the evidence overwhelmingly shows the financial drain corrections has become? “If you were right Larry it’d make no sense to keep us locked up without early release.  Only a fool would run a system like that?” (Are you listening Governor McDonnell?).

Black inmates are suspicious of white inmates.  Two groups:  NOI and Five Percenters (anti-white) are recruiting members in droves.  Why?  Because they offer simplistic explanations for the despair that permeates the lives of inmates.  It is easier to accept your station in life believing “white America is a racist country bent on destroying blacks through prisons and drugs” (and one need only look at the extraordinarily high percentage of blacks incarcerated to see why this gains traction) than to engage in an in-depth study of this country’s racial schizophrenia.

As I tutor guys in History, English, Philosophy and the Social Sciences I am constantly surprised how little these guys know.  They have very little knowledge of history and are unable to synthesize events as they develop across historical/sociological lines.  Every event can be boiled down to some knee-jerk neo-Marxian theory of power and suppression of people.

So, what I do is, when asked, I state the truth.  I let the facts speak.  Does it change some things?  Sometimes.  Guys hunger to know why.  Prison should be a place of honest reflection.  Instead, it is a jungle of lies, anger and ignorance.  And the system feeds those three.  Courts aren’t “blind” arbiters of justice; sentences are disparate, even when crimes are similar; race and money matter in too many convictions and sentences.  Prisons become dumping grounds with too few programs, too little educational opportunities and sadistic guards and inmates vying for supremacy.

Men lose hope and without hope there is nothing.  In one of the most moving scenes in “The Shawshank Redemption”, Andy, sorting records in the warden’s office, barricades himself inside and takes over the prison speakers.  He puts on an operatic aria and the prison suddenly stills as the men listen to two women sing in Italian.  He is caught and goes to the hole.

The next scene, he is in chow – thirty days later with his friends.  They sit and stare in amazement at Andy looking fresh after such a long period in the hole.  “How’d you do it?” they asked.

“I listened to Mozart the whole time.” 

“You had music back there?”

Andy pauses, “In my mind.  They can physically keep me here, but in my mind I’m free.  I still have hope.”

There’s a reason hope lives even in a place as dehumanizing as prison.  Hope is about truth, and beauty, and love.  Too many men in prison have given up on hope.  They look for simple explanations; they see nothing but time.  Until prisons become places of hope, conspiracy theories will thrive; anger, despair and hatred will have homes; and fringe groups will flourish.

Hopefully, it will change.

Playing Soccer

So last week the gang unit came through on their annual visit.  Every man, stripped down to boxers, standing at the end of their bed to be examined (i.e. stared at) by gang unit members for telltale “tats” indicating your affiliation status and rank.  Like so many things in prison:  the strip searches (“lift you sac, squat and cough”), the urine testing with an officer so close observing you can feel his breath, you learn to shrug off the daily indignities and violations of your person hood.  After all, you’re an inmate.  You brought it on yourself; you have no rights.

The search ended and the rec yards reopened and the building soccer team needed to get ready for a game.  Big S – the team captain – came at me with Goat and Jordan.  “We need you.  None of our subs have any wind.  You run every day.”  I hemmed and hawed a bit then figured “what the hell”.

I found myself out on the soccer field chasing around a bunch of guys young enough to be my sons.  The oldest, Big S, is only 31.  Most of the team is 24 to 28.  I ran and kicked the ball and ran some more.  It was exhausting yes, liberating and fun.  Here I am 52 years old, and I’m playing a kids games with, well with kids my older son’s age.  I was drenched with sweat.  My legs ached.  Still, two hours running on the field felt amazing.

There are many days when I wonder “does any of this really matter?”  I ask myself what use my adult years have been.  Thirty years ago I had my life in front of me.   I had prestigious graduate and law schools wanting me.  My entire life was set out in my mind’s eye.  I took a different path.  I followed my heart and it didn’t end as I expected.  Bad choices (through good intentions) and I find myself alone in prison.

I think of Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”.  Heartbroken, he confronts his brother who, for a few quick bucks years earlier convinced Brando’s character to “take a dive” in a fight.  “I coulda been somebody Jimmy.  I coulda been a contender.  Now I’m nuttin but a bum.”  Tragic words.  But that “bum” found his courage – the heart of the champ.  The movie ends with a powerful heart-in-throat scene as Brando, broken and beaten, crosses the union line to work the docks.

So I ran the soccer field with a bunch of 20 year old convicts:  drug dealers and other societal misfits.  And they rooted me on and I did the same for them.

That night, I had an American Lit review session.  The guys were reading one of Thomas Paine’s immortal pieces.  It began “these are the time that try men’s souls”.

Ironically, those were the first words of the only letter my older son has written me in the three years since my arrest (and in another ironic twist, they are the last words of a letter I sent him on the exact date he wrote me).  As I was explaining Paine’s meaning to the three guys gathered around, my mind drifted back to soccer practice.  It was just a bunch of guys running, playing ball, having fun.

Does any of this matter?  Apparently, it does.  They asked me to play soccer because I belong.  I’m part of these guys’ lives in here.  I am the “father” figure, the guy to bring your questions to.  And for me, at this stage, that’s enough.  I matter to these college guys.  I’m a part of the team.

Ten Years After (2)

It is one week until the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack of 9/11, “the day that changed America”.  As I sit here in this prison dormitory I recognize how much my own life changed.  On 9/11 I was an in-house attorney for a large, Virginia headquartered property and casualty insurer.  I was “happily” married to my college sweetheart.  We were the stereotypical upper income, white American couple with two “perfect” sons, a “perfect home”, a “perfect” life.  After the attack, all that would be tested.  I was sure what our country needed to do.  I was equally sure what I needed to do.  Ten years after, I confess I was wrong on almost every count.

Just as I sold my soul to prove some vague, abstract point about love, commitment and family, so too did America after 9/11.  We are not a better nation for our reaction to 9/11.  America has lost its moral framework.  We were wrong in our reaction to the evil foisted upon us; we are wrong for our behavior – at home and abroad.  I fear the lives lost that day and in the years since in Afghanistan and Iraq will be for nothing.  As Judy Collins mournfully sang, “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”

Luke, in his Gospel, recounts Jesus speaking to the multitudes.   Over and over the Savior says “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you; give to everyone who asks you… “He calls on his followers to forgive, show mercy.  And then He brings forward these words:

“You call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do what I say.” 

In other words, we talk a good game, but we don’t put our money where our mouth is.

 A few years ago a deranged gunman broke into an Amish schoolhouse and shortly thereafter brutally murdered a number of young Amish girls.  What was the reaction in the Amish community?  They prayed for the dead gunman and wrapped his family in compassion and mercy.

I was all in favor of obliterating Afghanistan.  I bought into the doctrine that you are either “with us or against us”.  Arrest foreign nationals and hold them without trial?  No problem.  Torture to get information?  I’m OK with that.  Kill thousands of men, women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq – “collateral damage” – in the name of winning the war on terror?  Small price to pay for “safety”.  That was all “PI Larry” (pre-incarceration Larry).  Now I see my country:  the one $17 trillion in debt where 46 million people need food stamps, where over 2.3 million people are behind bars, the vast majority of which are locked up for nonviolent crimes – and I ask what of our founding declarations that all “men” are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  Wonderful words, but just words if we are willing to sell our collective soul for safety and fail to show mercy.

Politicians get standing ovations for demanding that the Ten Commandments be posted in schools and offices to remind us of our “Judeo-Christian” heritage.  But, I wonder what would Jesus say about our reaction to 9/11?  What do we make of His Sermon on the Mount, His call to forgive “seven times seventy”?  We talk a good game but we fall way, way short.

On 9/11, as I detailed in other blogs, I consoled my then wife as she sobbed, worried our sons would be drawn into some worldwide conflagration.  We made love that night, two people trying to cling to innocence in a world seemingly gone mad. Shortly after, in an attempt to “prove” our life would be better after the attack, I began stealing increasingly larger sums of money.  I had stolen before – then always to gain some psychological response of love and appreciation from my “soulmate” who deep down – I knew didn’t feel for me what I felt for her.  After 9/11 I was determined to have it all!

Ironically, as I sit in here I see the same convulsive behavior in my country.  Why did they hate us so?  We asked after 9/11.  And then immediately we retaliated, launching attacks aimed at eliminating the danger. 

But danger can’t be totally eliminated.  We will always face the risk of someone – anyone – trying to do the unthinkable.  Much like I had to learn that I couldn’t make someone feel what I needed, we need to learn there is not absolute safety.  There is pestilence, natural disasters and the occasional sociopath lurking.  But if we truly believe in God, then we know we are called to be strong and courageous.  We are not to fear, though “the mountains fall in the sea”.  God is our help; not B1 bombers, not drones, nor laser technology.  We can’t violate our own core principles in the name of security.

I read a piece in the September issue of “Esquire” concerning a Sudanese man captured and held at Guantanamo Bay for ten years.  He was held chained and naked in a freezing cell for days on end; hands chained above his head, hands and feet chained to the floor; denied access to counsel.  Is this justice?  Is this an appropriate response?  Should this be tolerable in America?  This alleged “mastermind” (who coincidentally is uneducated and speaks no English) was eventually given a 34 month sentence (that’s right – 34 months).  

I have witnessed firsthand the barbarism and unjust circumstances of prison.  A just, compassionate society can do better.  As I sit here, I wish we as a nation had done things differently.  I wish I had acted differently.

There is a Bible parable I return to often as I struggle to make sense of my life.  At the end of Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount he records the savior telling His followers to hear the words and act on them.  They will be “like the man who dug his foundation on the rocks. And when the flood came and the torrents burst against the house” it could not be shaken.

The part that so intrigues me in the story says “when the flood” comes, not “if”.  Faith is like that house on the rock.  Troubles are inevitable in our individual and collective lives. But by faith, we are sustained.  My marriage, I realized, was not built on a strong foundation.  Love and commitment were mere shifting sand.   The rule of love, opposition to torture?  Those deeply held “virtues” of America’s psyche were also cast in sand.

Ten years later and what have we learned?  Is war ever justified?  Is torture ever acceptable?  Does safety trump freedom?

A poet/songwriter once wrote a piece comparing America, his America, to a wayward love.  She was breaking his heart because she couldn’t see how beautiful she was; she didn’t understand how her behavior was killing him.  Ten years after 9/11, divorced, alone in prison, I look at my country and I understand what he meant.  The past ten years have not been kind to her.

The Summer of George

I’m a huge fan of the TV sitcom “Seinfeld”.  One of my regular TV habits is watching episodes of the show which somehow magically appear for hours each afternoon and evening - Monday through Sunday.  There’s a core group of “Seinfeld” aficionados in the building and we banter back and forth with lines from the show (recently, a new Hispanic, gay inmate arrived on our side of the compound whose speech and mannerisms immediately led to him being id’d as the “ribbon guy” – an obscure Seinfeld character).

About a month ago I received my regular weekly letter from my “blog manager”.  In the letter, she apologized for falling behind on blog postings.  At the time of her letter she had 32 postings to type.  32 – who would ever think I’d write that much?  But, I have a great deal of time on my hands and words just seem to pour out.

I wrote her back and assured her I would never get angry over blog postings.  I also offered to speak to her husband about hiring her an assistant.  Instead, I told her I’d take a month or so off from new blogs.  Just like the Seinfeld character, George Costanza, when losing his job, I enjoyed “the Summer of George”.  I sat in my boxer shorts, ate a block of cheese, and watched the world go by (proverbially, of course).

During the past six weeks I found peace, discovered a good deal about myself and others, reconnected with lost friends (some going back to my high school days), and realized that storms come in everyone’s lives.  But, God is closest to us at our weakest moments, in our darkest days.  I met the Director of Virginia DOC – albeit briefly – and am more convinced than ever that even in “tough on crime” Virginia, real prison reform is close at hand.  And, I collected notecards full of stories about the men who do their time here and quotes by both the famous and not so famous.

“The Summer of George” recharged my battery and gave me renewed optimism for the future.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be putting down on paper what I’ve observed, felt and learned this summer.  In my mind, it has been the most startling few months of my life.  I have thought and wrestled and ultimately gained peace with many issues and I’m convinced it wouldn’t have happened had I not been in this place at this time in my life.  Like Joseph or Paul finding joy in a prison cell, I can honestly say this summer has taught me that God is indeed good; His steadfast love endures forever.

The write Charles Bukowski said two profound things. 

“It’s alright sometimes to pee in the sink.”

           and

“If you want to know who your real friends are, pull a jail sentence.”

The first quote is pretty straight forward.  Sometimes you have to buck conventional wisdom and do what you think regardless of social convention.  I lived that.  I’ve been criticized and castigated by well-meaning people:  friends and family – for admitting to everything and giving everything up to my ex.    Could I have fought my charges, embarrassed my employer, tied my ex up in property battles?  Yes.  Would people have been so supportive of me if the situation was reversed?  Probably not.  I did what I thought best and would do it again, even knowing the results.  I’d rather have the same sentence and be able to face myself in the mirror, rather be divorced and know what I know about my almost thirty year marriage, than any other result.  I peed in the sink.  And, it was worth it.

As for the second Bukowski quote, no truer words may have ever been written.  For so long I bemoaned the loss of a spouse and supposed friends who disappeared when the cell door closed.  But I’ve realized over the course of these past three years how truly blessed I am.  I have family who wrap me in love and concern that is unimaginable.  And I have friends, real friends, that write and visit and in the quiet of their homes pray for me.  They are few in number, but their care for me is humbling beyond words.

So the “Summer of George” was good, very good.  And I have a lot to write about.  It’s time to get back to work.  If you’re reading this, I leave you with a final request.  As the writer of the Book of Hebrews stated,

“Remember the prisoners as if chained with them” (13:3).

Dear Mr. Clarke

I want to thank you for your recent visit to Lunenburg.  You won’t remember me, but I was one of the dozens of nameless men that had the opportunity to meet you during your tour of the compound.  I’m one of the college tutors you saw as you passed through the programs/education building.  There were a fair number of things I wanted to say to you, but I instead just said hello and shook your hand.  Perhaps it was concern that the warden and operations officer wouldn’t appreciate my comments or maybe I just wanted to get a feel for the type of man you are, but I didn’t say some things that should have been said.  Here goes.

You have a tough job.  You are point man on a rusting old barge headed in rough seas toward the rocks.  I believe you are a decent man who sees the possibilities that exist for good in most of the men doing time in here.  But, you must know the current system Virginia has in place, denying imprisoned offenders even a rudimentary opportunity for early release, breeds a sense of hopelessness and distrust in the corrections system that is reflected in this state’s stagnant recidivism rate. 

Contrary to what the politicians tell the voters, abolishing parole has been a colossal failure.  You know it, I know it.  Anyone with an ounce of sense knows it.  Virginia is spending $1 billion a year to house almost 40,000 inmates.  The recidivism rate has actually crept up since 2000.  The vast majority of men and women behind bars are nonviolent offenders.

Prison doesn’t make a person better.  Prison – even at this low custody level – is dangerous, and dirty and not an environment conducive to change.  That some do, in fact, grow from this experience is a testament to their character.  Prison breaks a person; prison destroys.

I am a unique inmate.  I came from a life of privilege.  I was well-paid, well-educated with both college and law degrees.  I broke the law and deserved punishment.  But, sending me to prison will not make me a “good citizen”.  People will tell you I was that before.  Prison for me is a huge waste of taxpayer resources. 

But, I have grown in these three years.  I have met men who did not have the chances in life that I did and have watched them struggle through adult basic education class and earn their GED.  These men, largely forgotten and disparaged by “law abiding” society, well up with tears when they are handed their diplomas.

My friends ask me during visits why I wear my emotions on my sleeve for these men, why I work so hard tutoring in basic ed and the college classes.  It’s simple.  I believe everyone is redeemable, everyone deserves a second chance.

I know your faith is important to you. Mine is as well.  I urge you to meditate on Hebrews 13:3 -“remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them”.  My faith teaches me that no one is beyond redemption, no one who doesn’t deserve forgiveness and mercy.

You can make a difference.  You have the power and the faith to transform Virginia’s correction system.  Be courageous.  Be honest.  Let the Governor know there are better ways to manage corrections.  Push for increased earned good time. Money needs to be directed to education, alcohol and drug treatment and mental health care.  And, let offenders capable of working and contributing to society do so by looking at alternatives to incarceration; and remove the stigma of the “Scarlet F” (felony) from non-violent offender’s records.

You have a unique opportunity.  The men – here at Lunenburg at least – are willing to have faith that you can make a difference, that you’re not like all the other DOC directors and administrators who’ve come down the road selling the false “lockem up” mantra that has led to the dismal results we now see:  40,000 incarcerated, $1 billion spent per year.

You are in my prayers.  Trust your faith.  Make a difference. 

The Cost of Doing Nothing

I watched with mixed emotions as the country went through the seizures of defaulting on the national debt.  Part of me was deeply amused.  Every cable news outlet had their “breaking news” and a countdown clock to debt Armageddon.  Both parties – and the president as well – played simple, false sound bites.  The “Tea Party” pushed demagoguery to a new limit.  Ah America, “God shed His grace on thee.”  And Virginia’s Governor?  He did more creative bookkeeping than I did to land myself in prison.

Governor McDonnell touted a $500 million surplus, except, he forgot to tell people he failed to meet the payment requirements to the Virginia Retirement System.  There is no surplus.  VRS is almost $17 billion underfunded and the Commonwealth still has an IOU outstanding to VRS for the prior year’s budget debacle.  And McDonnell has the brass set to go on CNN as a “possible VP” nominee and tout Virginia’s economic well-being.

A pox on both their houses!  As “The Economist” noted in an OpEd piece on March 19, 2011: 

“…despite all the rhetoric from the tea partiers, big government is not just the fault of the self-interested bureaucrats and leftist politicians.  Conservative voters…have kept on demanding the state do more…the right has built prisons, announced wars on drugs and terror, and indulged generals, farmers, and policemen…”

What we have seen in the recent economic unraveling is that everything costs.  And the bill for America’s love affair with “tough on crime” mass incarceration policy has come due.  Governor McDonnell can lead or he can step aside.  But, the time for change is now.

As states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Kentucky have realized, there are more effective and less expensive ways to handle most non-violent offenders.  These states are employing alternatives to sending someone convicted of a crime to prison.  They utilize home incarceration and day center reporting versus prison.

This isn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” approach.  Conservatives such as former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, drug czar William Bennett, Newt Gingrich and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist are pushing for prison reform.

Where is Virginia in this discussion?  Not even involved.  Virginia will spend $25,000 to keep me housed in a low level facility this year and the costs continue to climb.  I am unable to pay restitution for my embezzlement while in here; I do not pay taxes; I do not help raise my youngest son.  Three years I’ve spent behind bars.  If Bob McDonnell was really the politician he claims to be, he’d look at my situation and the thousands like it.  He’d let us “do our time” outside the walls; working, making restitution, being productive citizens.

As the "Sentencing Project" reported recently, lawmakers in Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York adopted significant policy changes to reduce prison populations.

“In each of these state a range of policy changes were adopted, including sentencing reforms, alternatives for ‘prison-bound’ people, reducing time served in prison, addressing parole release rates and reducing revocations”

23 states have made significant changes in the way sentences are handed out and the length of time an inmate serves – Virginia is not one of those 23.

Bob McDonnell and the Virginia General Assembly can make a difference.  $1 billion a year to house 40,000 inmates is enough reason to try.  They need to enact a real “earned good time credit” system that aggressively rewards inmates who seek to change and improve.  Early release should not just be a goal, but the mission of corrections.

Virginia can no longer afford to do nothing.  Virginia needs real solutions, not “creative” accounting.  The economic realities that showed their true colors this summer prove that government must make smart choices.  No longer can the U.S. with 5 percent of the world’s population, keep 25 percent of the world’s inmates behind bars.

Perhaps Governor McDonnell will finally get it.

This Past Week

Every week in here the monotony somehow gets broken up by slightly off-kilter conversations and events.  Opie has developed a strange habit of not going outside (avoiding rec) except on weekends.  He bought into the prison logic that the more you sleep, the quicker your “bid” goes by.

This past week temperatures hit the century mark (with a heat index topping 106).  I went out and had a leisurely run and Opie, he decided to forgo his sleep regimen that day and “get a little sun”.  You guessed it – Opie got sunburned.

Now Opie is a big, muscular kid.  He’s a kid who grew up in the prison system.  He’s been in fistfights, beaten with locks, belts, and shanked (stabbed) twice while locked up.  But, when it comes to things like colds and sunburn he is, well, he is a little kid.  All day yesterday he whined and moaned “my sunburn hurts”.  He tried to go to medical even filing an emergency grievance to “get some salve.  I’m in pain damn it!”  But, his request was turned down (most emergency med requests are turned down.  “It isn’t life threatening.”)

So Opie has sunburn.  He’s been locked up, disrespected, beaten, stabbed, ignored, had good time taken away and he never batted an eye.  But his red chest – the world was coming to an end. ____________________________________________________________________

Against the backdrop of Opie’s sunburn, there was Paulie’s legitimate med emergency.  Paulie’s an ex-marine:  two tours in Iraq; was in Fallujah during the “bad run”.  Paulie’s doing four years on some ridiculous grand larceny case and a prescription pill addiction.  He’s mid-twenties and he has bleeding ulcers.

The other night – 2:00 am – Paulie collapsed in his cut, coughing up blood.  Medical was called and he was wheeled out and transported to the hospital.  Two days later he was back.  “I’m on a bland diet”, he told me (who isn’t?).  I only have a year left.  They said I can get it fixed better when I get out.”  That is prison medical care.  Lock people up, push pills rather than proper treatment, and put band aids on serious problems.  Medical costs are skyrocketing in prisons.  The solution is, let the non-dangerous inmates go.  That, it seems, is too obvious.

______________________________________________________________________

The dorm political debate the past week focused on New York State passing a law recognizing gay marriage.  Prison is a funny place.  Guys are in here – many back for a second and third visit – and rules don’t matter to them.  Except when it comes to homosexuality.  Then, everyone (well, almost everyone) becomes a member of Focus on the Family.

There is a well-defined group of gays in prison and they are extremely flamboyant.  The dirty little secret is they all have boyfriends.  Associating with gay inmates is almost as bad as being a snitch – except for gang leaders.  Then, it’s business (they serve as “mules” – sneak contraband in).  There is this fear that permeates the general population that these “she men” can turn you.  It’s a clear lack of understanding about human sexuality and your own sexual orientation.  It also helps explain – in part – the ultra testosterone charge guys exhibit in here.  Every compliment has to include the catch phrase “no homo”. 

So, New York passed same sex marriage and the dorm went nuts.  “It’s disgusting.”  It’s immoral.”  “It’s against God’s law” (funny, so is murder, theft, tattoos).  “The children suffer.”

The irony isn’t lost on me.  The guys most upset are the ones who routinely talk about the four babies’ mommas they “ain’t payin’ to support”.  Having multiple offspring by multiple unwed partners is somehow better than two people in love raising a child when the two are the same sex.

A couple of guys asked my opinion.  I’ve changed.  I used to be anti-gay marriage.  I thought marriage vows were sacred; that the mystery of God’s love for us was expressed in a man and woman pledging fidelity and love “no matter what”.  Then, I felt the pain of rejection.  Those vows – always a loophole available.  Marriage is the ultimate commitment.  You lay everything on the line for your spouse because God lays everything on the line for us.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of us are too self-centered and too unwilling to go through the valleys – “the worse” – and bail when the “betters” dry up.  Commitment and love aren’t defined by your sexual orientation.

I reminded the guys of a U.S. Supreme Court case from the 1960’s.  It overturned a Virginia law that made it illegal for blacks and whites to marry.  It seems to me we’d do better focusing on love and commitment and less on how people look.

The last three years I’ve come to some startling revelations about myself.  One that I think about quite regularly is that I was a racist.  I know, we’re all a little racist.  But being a minority in prison has opened my eyes.  White Americans don’t know how tough it is to be a young, black man in America.  Here’s a simple truth:  blacks account for 12% of the population and close to 60% of the inmates.  Yet, drug use in the black community and white community is at the same level.  Fact is, if you’re a young, black male chances are a criminal charge will land you in prison.  The same can’t be said for white kids.

There are a lot of reasons for this discrepancy.  I don’t think the law intends to be racially biased.  I think it just happens.  You have a young, poor, black kid and he gets an overworked public defender or worse, a court appointed lawyer who just wants to get the file closed.  So deals are made, corners cut, and these guys come to prison in record numbers.

In my last three years I’ve been treated with deep respect by young, black men whom prior to this experience I would have shunned.  I have developed friendships with guys like DC, and Ty, and Saleem; men from world’s far removed from mine.

Will we ever be able to not see color? I’m not sure.  You can’t help but notice when someone looks differently.  But, it took prison for me to realize people are all pretty much alike.  We all really just want to be loved and appreciated.  We’re more alike than different.

Randy – the workout guru – had 31, mostly young, guys on the rec yard this morning working out.  Lunges, sprints, calisthenics; on and on they went through this routine.

I was jogging on my own, stopping for reps of dips and pull-ups and some interval sprints.

Later in the day, Randy stopped by my cut, cup of coffee in hand.  He’d just returned from the watch commander’s office.  Seems the tower witnessed his group workout.  Prisons hate crowds.  No groups of inmates numbering over four are allowed to congregate unless it’s an organized church service or program.  It is a series 100 charge (and you will get shipped to max security) for an inmate to organize any work stoppage or protest (ironic huh, in the “land of the free”).

Fortunately for Randy, the watch commander knows he’s just leading a workout.  Things that you take for granted outside are a big deal in here, like who you hang out with.

I’ve got a whole group of guys hooked on “House”.  Frankly, it’s probably the best written show on TV.

Two things from recent episodes.  A friend sarcastically told House “so the great Doctor House doesn’t deserve to be happy?”  He’d been beating himself up for decisions he’d made, relationships that ended.  His friend was right.  House deserved better.  Not everything was his fault.  I understood that.  I’ve dealt with a lot these past three years and beat the hell out of myself for everything.  I made a good many mistakes, but I’m a decent, loving guy.  As Big S and a lawyer buddy from the street have told me, I deserve better.  And I’ll get it eventually.
Lastly, I rewatched the House episode where his love, “Cuddy” broke up with him.  She couldn’t stay with him after learning he’d slipped and taken Vicodin again (House, you see is not just a brilliant, sarcastic doctor; he’s also addicted to prescription pain pills).

House begged Cuddy “don’t do this to us.  I’m doing the best I can.”  Her reply, “that’s not enough”.  Not enough.  I felt those words.  Love, even when you’re broken, is supposed to be enough.

My friend Craig told me his closest friend from the street let him know he was going through a divorce.  “Larry, he’s one of the nicest guys in the world.  She came home, told him she met and fell in love with someone else and she didn’t love him anymore.”  I told Craig my divorce weighs on me more than anything.  There was, frankly, no loss, no pain that hurt more.

“That’s not enough”.  Sad, searing words.  Damn fine writing.

GED tests are being given this coming Wednesday and Thursday to those students who earned passing scores on our recent placement testing.  Three of my guys are going for their GEDs.  One – Hayward – I’m thrilled for.  I met Hayward my first day working at the school in December 2009.  He’d had no success in school or with tutors during his bid.  Reading and math were at third grade levels.  Yet, he is an amazing artist.  He uses a pencil in both hands writing words and math problems with both simultaneously.

In one of those weird things that only can happen in a place like this, we hit it off.  He started improving, gradually at first.  Last week’s placement test results confirmed what I’d been seeing:  he was high school grad material.

Guys in here occasionally ask me why I work so hard and smile so much.  All I needed to keep motivated was the look on Hayward’s face when he realized he succeeded.