Forty Years Later

I read an interesting story the other day about a man, a seventy-something year-old man, whose dreams – if you can call what he’s doing now his dreams from his youth – had come to pass. It may be trite, but as I read his story I thought about patience, and being humble and grateful, even when it appears there’s no logical reason to be either.

His name is Sixto Rodriguez. In 1970 recording executives thought they’d discovered the next Bob Dylan. Rodriguez sang songs with meaning and purpose. His tenor voice floated as he painted landscapes with his words. With expectations for commercial success virtually guaranteed, Rodriguez came out with his first album. It was lauded by critics. But, the listening public ignored it. Rodriguez’s first album was a recording failure.

Not ready to concede that they’d made a mistake, the recording execs sent Rodriguez back into the studio. Again he delivered a masterful, critically acclaimed album. And again, the listening public didn’t buy.

Rodriguez was cut loose. There were no more albums, no more studio work, no more anticipation that Dylan part two had arrived. He returned to his simple home in Detroit, an apt place for failed dreams, and began to live his life.

Life, as is the case more often than not, was not easy for Rodriguez. Detroit was dying and with it most jobs. He became a day laborer, working long hours at physical labor in less than ideal conditions. He somehow managed to raise three children and earn a college degree in philosophy. His music? It was still there. People would see a man walking around the decaying neighborhoods of Detroit. The man had a guitar on his back. “He looked almost like one of the homeless people meandering along the streets,” residents would remark.

Life isn’t easy. And years pass. And strange twists of fate occur. Rodriguez led his life the best he could. He struggled financially, but as he would say, “There’s no shame in being poor. There’s no shame in physical labor.” And half a world away, in the Republic of South Africa, the country was reeling under the strain of its Apartheid system. For young whites, many of them liberal and sympathetic to the plight of their nation’s black majority, Rodriguez’s music became their life blood. In South Africa, he was Elvis in almost any record store in any white shopping area you could be heard playing “I wonder,” or “Sugar Man,” or a dozen of his other tracks.

And then the rumors began rumors that Rodriguez had killed himself – self-immolation – in an artistic-political statement about the conditions of the world. A few fans wanted proof. They searched his song lyrics to find the place Rodriguez would call home and they found him alive and well in Michigan, and oblivious to his South African fame.

In 1998 Rodriguez flew to South Africa to perform a series of concerts. He was feted like the Beatles coming to America. He sang and took in the cheers of the crowd. When the tour was over he returned to Michigan. There was no renaissance interest in his music; there was no money for all the records he sold overseas. There was just the life he’d always lived.

 Things would have stayed that way if his path hadn’t crossed a young European film-maker who was looking for a story. It took years to make “Sugar Man.” The money to make the film ran out. The young film maker was on the brink of financial ruin. He submitted his still unfinished film to Sundance and a miracle happened. Rodriguez, it seemed, was the perfect story. Rodriguez, it seemed, was a voice for a time and a people. Forty years after he was first set to enter the music scene, Rodriguez was in demand.

Twists of fate. Luck. So many words are used when hindsight tries to grasp and make sense of the why. Why now, we ask? Why not back then.

There was a boy, seventeen, and in his dreams he did great things. His dreams angered his brothers who plotted his death. But for a simple twist of fate he was spared. And for thirteen years he survived servitude and imprisonment. He was wrongly accused, forgotten by those he helped, and left for dead by his family. And in another twist of fate, with a nation’s survival hanging in the balance, he was there to save a people from starvation. It’s the Genesis story of Joseph and it should remind us that no dream is ever completely gone. God’s ways are not our ways. And sometimes forty years have to pass before the dreams come to fruition. Was it too long to wait? Not by the smile on Rodriguez’s face or the joy in the hearts of people hearing him sing.

Funding Cuts, Falsehood, & the "Stan the Man" Effect

I’ve had a lot on my mind the past week or so.  Sometimes, your worst enemy in here is your mind.  You find yourself thinking way too much about things you can’t control.  I heard a preacher recently say that you can’t control what others do, you can only control your response.  There’s a great deal of truth in those words.

Shortly before our college graduation, DOC informed the school that grant money earmarked for inmate higher education would no longer be available due to “budget constraints”.  Did DOC Director Clarke tell our graduates that when he showed up at the ceremony to tout his – and the Governor’s – support for education and credit the graduate’s successes as part and parcel of the administration’s re-entry program?  Of course not.  It was up to us to break the news to guys who already lack trust in the system.

So, I lie.  I tell them people really do care.  “You matter.  You getting an education, going out there and raising your kids, being a good father, husband and taxpayer, that’s what everyone wants.”  I used to believe that.  Now, I think “they” like sending guys to prison.  After all, 13,000 state jobs rely on having full to capacity prisons.  And companies that sign exorbitant contracts with the states to provide “prison services” make great profits for their shareholders and they pay huge contributions to politicians’ campaign funds.  It’s a vicious cycle of money, ignorance, and crime and I’m beginning to realize it’s more powerful than mercy, common sense and real justice.

Falsehood.  I heard a former NFL coach make the following statement as the news about Lance Armstrong, or Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, or some other athlete broke.  He uttered the old adage, “The truth will set you free.”  “We all mess up; some worse than others; but the lie, the lie does you in.”  He’s right, so very right.

I know in my own situation I lived a lie rather than face the fears – the truths really I knew deep down about myself and my relationships.  And, the lies caught up to me.  So I came clean, landed in a place I abhor, but now sleep soundly at night.

The funny thing is, I see guys all around me pretending to be something they aren’t  Every small drug dealer wants me to think they’re Tony Montana (a/k/a “Scarface”) or Pablo Escobar; every two-bit thief wants me to believe they stole the Hope Diamond. They can’t admit they can’t read, can’t admit they had nothing.  They lie, and they keep on lying, and they stay imprisoned forever. 

I’m not a schadenfreude guy anymore.  I don’t relish another’s short comings.  I felt for Lance Armstrong.  And, I see and understand a lot more about the folks “outside”.  They really aren’t that different from the guys in here.  We all keep secrets, things that would embarrass us if they got out.  The truth is, they have nothing to do with who we really are.

It struck me in an ironic way, all these celebrities and athletes with their mea culpas, and the lies the government peddles about prisons, and crime and punishment, and then I hear Stan “the Man” Musial died. Stan is a Baseball Hall of Famer.  Twenty-two seasons with the Cardinals.  One of the greatest players ever and yet, because he played in St. Louis instead of New York, he never got the notoriety he deserved.

But that was OK with Stan.  He loved his wife of seventy-one years; he loved his family, St. Louis, and baseball.  By all accounts, he was one of the most decent men you could ever meet.

He passed away at age ninety-two, a year after his wife.  A few years ago, a baseball writer asked him to tell his secret for baseball longevity and success.  He said he jogged one mile every day.  He occasionally smoked cigars so he didn’t have to inhale.  And with a twinkle in his eye added, “And it didn’t hurt to hit above 300 all those years.”

I love that.  Two out of three times he came up, he never reached base.  But, he stayed the same – consistent, decent, hardworking.  There’d be less need for prisons, less public embarrassments, if more of us emulated Stan Musial.  And, I think Mr. Musial would tell you not to be like him.  Be yourself.  Be honest, and kind, and try even when you make an out.

I started this blog bemoaning Virginia’s short-sighted approach to educating the incarcerated.  I was ticked off and discouraged.  But, thinking about Stan Musial’s advice, I know these guys will get another time at bat.  And, they’re due for a hit.

 

Missing the Message

The nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day the other day.  In a strange twist, it fell on the same day that the nation’s first Black President celebrated his inauguration and the beginning of his second term.  Living in a place with such a large percentage of Black men you would assume the day resonates with them.  Unfortunately, there is a great deal of ambivalence among the young, incarcerated Black men in here.  And in the white ranks, it borders on contempt.  Much of it arises from ignorance, from missing the message.

There is an old political story from the days of Ronald Reagan’s election.  A well-off Park Avenue liberal was bemoaning to her friends that Reagan won a landslide reelection.  “I don’t know how”, she said.  “I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”  And so it goes for most of the young Black men I know in here.

“I don’t know anyone who respects King,” said Will, a normally very bright studious twenty-eight year old.  “He sold out.  He isn’t a leader of our community.”  As he spoke, three or four other equally young bright Black men nodded in agreement.  “White people like King.”  I could only smile.

I then pointed out that according to surveys among Black Americans; Dr. King is the single most revered figure in American history.  No other person even comes close.  Whites, on the other hand, hold mixed feelings, partly out of the battle over enshrining his birthday as a national holiday and partially over the ugly strains of prejudice that somehow continue to lie just below the surface.

“How can that be?”  My young friend asked.  I don’t know anyone who likes him.  I thought of the wealthy liberal in New York who couldn’t grasp that her view wasn’t the norm.  And I wondered how so many could miss the true meaning of Dr. King’s words, how so many miss the message.

Imagine a young Black man who graduates college in his teens.  He comes from an educated family of ministers in the segregated South.   He heads to Boston to begin graduate studies in Theology, and he discovers the words and works of a half-naked Indian lawyer named Gandhi.  King reads Gandhi’s words and sees in Gandhi’s message of peaceful, nonviolent protest the Christian response to oppression. 

All during his time in Boston King honed his message of using a nonviolent response to evil.  At age twenty-six, King earned his PhD.  He and his young bride accepted a call to a church in Montgomery, Alabama.  It is difficult to imagine America, the South, back in the 1950’s.  Most of the young men in here are quick to use the term “Jim Crow”, but they know nothing of it.  Theirs is a world of Rap singers being number one on the charts, of interracial couples, of a Black President winning a second term.  They know nothing of “colored only” bathrooms and water fountains.  They can’t fathom that you could be arrested for sitting at a lunch counter in a public restaurant or refusing to give up your seat to a white person on a public bus.

This was the world Martin and Coretta King ventured into in Montgomery, a world of separate but woefully unequal.  King preached nonviolence, and forgiveness, and mercy while his flock was regularly embarrassed, humiliated, or worse by their white counterparts.  It didn’t take long for King to find an issue to rally the Black community.

It came in the package of a petite, quiet Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery public bus to a White passenger.  When asked year’s later why she subjected herself to arrest and death threats, Rosa Parks simply replied, “I was tired.”

“I was tired.”  Tired of indignity, and disrespect, and disobedience to the laws of her God, that all men and women are God’s precious children.  In those three words the Civil Rights movement found their direction and Dr. King became the movement’s Moses.

Dr. King led marches and boycotts and protests – always nonviolent protests – to challenge the conscience of a nation.  So often he and his followers were met with arrest and violence, horrible violence.

“You must love your enemy,” he would tell anyone who would listen.  Loving your enemy, seeing the Godliness in the most evil of men, is usually easier then liking your enemy.  It’s tough, he would say, to like someone who is beating you, or opening up a high-powered fire hose on you, or lynching you.  “Love your enemy.  Do not return his evil with evil.”

No American orator or writer captured the affirmative duty of a man of faith to nonviolently challenge evil – even to the point of death – as Dr. King did.  His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” stands as one of the great written statements of Christian faith in action.  His, “I Have A Dream” speech eloquently captures the Biblical dream of America as a land where all God’s children are truly free. 

Freedom.   I watch these young, Black men miss the poetic beauty of freedom.  Freedom isn’t about purchasing power or the ability to say and do whatever you want.  Freedom is a peace that is given by the Almighty that no tyrant, no nation, can suppress.  Dietrich Bonheoffer knew real freedom even as the Nazis hung a noose around his neck.  Martin Luther King knew freedom even as he understood his life would be cut short.

“You have to fight back.”  “We need to live separately.”  Over and over I hear these young men utter the same words Dr. King faced from his own community.  Violence, he knew was never the answer.  We are called to be better, to be merciful even when confronted by evil.

And Dr. King provoked anger.  He condemned America’s involvement in Vietnam.  War is never the answer he courageously argued.  Inmates who are confronted each day by violence and “might makes right” just shake their heads in bemused wonder.  “He was so foolish”, they’ll say, and I can’t help but think he was the wisest man alive during my lifetime, a man whose vision of America and the world was so much closer to God’s view than most of our national leaders.

This is not to say he was without faults.  King, like all men and women, had foibles and sins and failures.  But the mark of a man is how he behaves in the worst of circumstances.  In that, King proved himself heroic.

So it was with this year’s MLK Day.  They showed a documentary on his life, his legacy on our internal movie channel.  I noticed many TV sets turned to his story.  A few of the guys came by afterward.  “Did you know all that?” they asked.  I did.  And I gave out my dog eared copy of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, so a few could read it and understand the message.  It’s always been about the message.