20th Anniversary: And This We Celebrate?

It was the Beatles who gave us the line, "it was 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play...." That was an anniversary worth remembering. Here at LCC, next Friday will mark 20 years since this facility was opened and the administration is going all out to celebrate. How odd, they want to celebrate a place where 1 out of 3 offenders ends up cycling back in to the system within the first 12 months of release; they want to celebrate a facility that costs Virginia taxpayers over $27 million each year to house, clothe, feed, and not much else; approximately 1000 offenders, most of which have been through the system at least once before. They want to celebrate their successes, except there are no matrix to measure success.

You know how things run around here--the worst building on the compound is the "re-entry" building. The guys are off the chain and the staff will tell you they have little control over how things run. The state spends over $100k on an "evidence Based" manager of reentry who is regularly cussed out by the residents of his re-entry pod because he isn't a straight shooter. The re-entry programs--which the state spent millions on to a private contractor--are long on touchy-feely “clap for the word of the day" and short on actual drug and alcohol programs and work skills necessary to succeed.

Participants in re-entry can miss school; their re-entry programs are "that important" to the offender's overall "success." Really? Every study done suggests offenders (at least 50% of whom lack even a high school diploma) need more education, more training in real skills for living outside of ere.

But that doesn't matter. See DOC operates as an independent body; there is little government oversight over control. No one, it seems, is looking at the massive expenditures in money and manpower wasted throughout the system. And before you say, "these guys deserve it," LCC is not a high security facility. Most of Virginia's prisons are level 1 and level 2 which means the vast majority of the men (and women at other spots) are within 5 years of release.
Where is the oversight? Where is the independent audit and control? Where is the real effort at "corrections"? It certainly isn't here.

Know why all these prisons are around? Because Bill Clinton, facing public embarrassment and scorn sold his soul to the Gingrich controlled congress and signed the Prison Litigation Reform Act. In it, the Feds gave billions in block grants to the states to build more prisons. And the states did just that. Only it backfired because the fed money dried up, incarceration rates went through the roof and the system became even more bloated and corrupt. Both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich admit today they erred; both now are advocates of criminal justice overhaul.

Anniversary celebration? Celebrate this--entire generations of low income, low educated citizens are cycling through the system and nothing being done in here is either making you safer or correcting the problem. You want punishment, that's fine. But the ramifications of a corrupt system that overwhelmingly punishes
and fails to rehabilitate is anger, bitterness and the likelihood that once released you'll be back.

"Happy" anniversary--hardly. Those folks who live out here know the real score--no other businesses want to locate near the prison. And the staff? They've been busy taking employee surveys to understand why morale is so bad and attrition is so high. Instead of an anniversary celebration perhaps there should be a wake.

Christmas ’14, Part 1 – A Wonderful Life?

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

What am I thinking about? Good question, at least that’s what I tell myself. It hit me, like most revelations I encounter, at the end of a 10K run. It was a cool, crisp fall Saturday, perfect running weather and I managed the twenty-two laps around the hard gravel track with little problem. I was in the zone, fluid, smooth, constant stride propelling me forward. I wouldn’t have noticed the six guys lifting weights until I was asked the time on lap sixteen. I didn’t even miss a breath; I switched from “lap mode” to “time” with a finger push on the Ironman watch and announced, “1:22.” The laps rolled: 2:05 pace; 7:50 miles; it was a perfect run.

The entire time out there I’m singing tunes in my mind’s eye. I’m running through “Let It Be” and “Rambling Man” and “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” There’s a whole playlist in my head and I hear it and summon it on these runs. The words are etched in my mind from years of conjuring them up when I needed just “that song, just those words” to make sense of so much senselessness in my life. I sang and I told God between mind tracks I was doing well; and, I ran. I finished, shirtless and pouring sweat even with forty-five degrees, and drank water. I began to cool down and chill quite soon. Hat and sweatshirt took care of that. Then, the thought.

“A Wonderful Life.” My favorite Jimmy Stewart movie; my favorite Christmas movie, my saving hope during that first ugly holiday away. That was all before … before the filing and the decree, before the letter telling me “I’ve met someone,” before the college graduation, the wedding, the proms, cross-country races, law school, graduation, and finally before the remarriage. “A Wonderful Life.” I mattered to her and our two boys. I mattered to family and friends. This was a short chapter in my life’s book, I told myself. And, I had hope. No matter what would happen out there, eventually it would all work out.

The run ended, the cool down lap walked, and the thoughts began. Everyone was better off since my fall. A wonderful life my ass! She was remarried, happy and in love. The boys – those two amazing lives I held seconds after entry into the world, these two breathing, flesh and blood creations who I whispered “Forever Young” to over nine years apart as they let out their first exhales – they had done remarkably without me. The older, he graduated with honors from a prestigious liberal arts college. He’d gone to law school, married his college sweetheart; there’s been law review, awards at graduation, a clerkship. The younger had become an athlete – triathlons, teaching swimming, considering Navy Seals after high school. His girlfriend was gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed athletic. He spent his senior high school year already in college. I had left a slightly pudgy, round-faced little eleven year-old. He had grown in my absence into a man.

The new husband, the new me, he’d taken my place with “the guys,” our collection of husbands from the small band of couples who socialized. “He’s not as funny as you,” one of my buddies who dared stay in touch told me. Still, he was me – or playing me, living in “my” house, using “my” Viking gas grill, sleeping in “my” room with “my” wife … except it wasn’t … mine … anymore. None of it: the house, the beautiful – though complex – soulmate, the sons, the social club. It was all gone and it was as if it never was mine. Everything, everyone had moved past me and I had faded; not slowly over time, no, I had been wiped clear of all their lives in rapid succession. The image overwhelmed my brain. Every breath, every thought as I stood there alone on the track with the last droplets of run sweat fading on my skin, “They are all better off.”

I showered and tried to drown out the words with music. I settled on the Beatles and began to lose myself in tune after tune until “Let it Be” began. I froze. The words from Sir Paul metastasized in my cortex. “Let it be … there will be an answer … let it be … whisper words of wisdom …” Where was my Mother Mary? Where were my words of wisdom? Everything I loved, everything I had ever truly wanted, ever truly valued, was gone. And there was no regret, no comparable loss from those out there. I thought maybe that’s better, maybe that’s good, they are whole, healthy, living. In the back of my mind I heard the whispers, “You’re fooling yourself. Too easy. You never mattered, you weren’t even needed …”

            “It’s a Wonderful Life.” George Bailey delayed everything he dreamt of, everything he wanted, to stay in tiny Bedford Falls. Then the bank examiner, and forgetful Uncle Billy, and criminal charges facing him. George is on the bridge. All is lost. Even God, the Being he prayed to and said “I’m not a real spiritual man, but show me the way …” had – it seemed – abandoned him. He looked at the water below, life insurance contract in hand, and knew he was worth more dead than alive.

            I choke up every time I see Jimmy Stewart on that bridge. I choke up because I know what’s coming. Clarence, George Bailey’s guardian angel appears, and soon it all becomes clear that George’s life mattered. He meant something to more people than he ever knew. I choke up because I know – at least in Hollywood – dramatic arcs come to conclusions and there are restorations, reconciliations, happy endings. Not this day, not the way I feel. There aren’t any happy endings …

            Happy. That’s a word we throw around so nonchalantly. “I want to be happy.” What does that mean? I think of my happiest days – the day I married her; hearing heartbeats on the ultrasounds; holding healthy baby boys. Yeah, happy days … and yet distant memories. All of it replaced; all of it set aside; all of it lost. This isn’t a movie. There’s no brother “Harry,” no “Mr. Martini” coming to my aid. And, “Mary” – she’s gone. Billy Wilder, you bastard! You made me believe I matter …

            “Unto us a Son is given;

            And the government will be upon His shoulder.

            And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace …”

            It’s the next morning, still dark, and I’ve had a lousy night. It’s Advent, expectation and preparation – “God with us.” I went to sleep trying to pray, trying to be hopeful, trying to …

            And the verse from Isaiah is there before me. There is clarity in those words; they make sense. And, the voice quiets. You know, it was a good life … it still is a good life. There are expectations for the future, a good future. And I realize. I was wrong. My watch alarm goes off – chimes – and I never have it on chimes. I think of the movie and little “ZuZu” telling her father, “teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” She might just be right.

 

The Day the Music Would Die …

Backstory:  It’s the winter of 1977, just between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m home from my first semester at college. There’s a benefit concert over in the chapel at Vassar College which is less than five miles from my home. Ah, Vassar College. Recently (in ’77), made coeducational, most of the women dreamed of being the next Gloria Steinman or Betty Friedan. The guys who chose to attend Vassar in those early years were way too artsy and sexually ambiguous for college girls, even Vassar girls, so picking them up was as easy as shooting ducks in a barrel. All you had to do was mention Joan Baez or Judy Collins, be pro-ERA and abortion and you were in. We loved going to Vassar.
           
There’s a benefit for some cause and Don McLean and Harry Chapin were playing; each a solo, acoustic act; each with a few hits already. Chapin wrote and sang the soulful ballad of a father looking back on not being there for his son in “Cats in the Cradle,” and “Taxi.” But, it was Don McLean we were going to see. He had a beautiful ballad about Vincent Van Gough that I found myself humming as I ran on those fall college days:

                        “Starry Starry night

                        picture palate blues and greys
                        look out on a summer’s day
                        with eyes to dark to see …”

It was McLean’s other song, his ten to fifteen minute FM dirge about the death of Buddy Holly that we all wanted to hear and sing along to. We were all young and brash, too brash really. We were middle class kids whose fathers all worked for IBM. We were all in college and had the world waiting on us. We knew nothing of war, disease, or distress. We had all the answers. Problem was, we knew none of the questions. There we were listening to a guy not much older than us tell us about dreams dying:

“A long, long time ago

                         I can still remember how that music used to
                         make me smile.
                        And I knew if I had the chance
                        That I could make those people dance
                        And maybe they’d be happy for awhile
                       
                        But February made me shiver
                       With every paper I delivered
                       Bad news on the doorstep
                       I couldn’t take one more step
           
                       I can’t remember if I cried
                      When I read about his widowed bride
                      But something touched me deep inside
                     The day the music would die …”

And we sang “American Pie” and we thought we knew everything he was talking about. And you know what? We didn’t have a clue …

Fast forward to the present.  It’s Thanksgiving, my sixth one behind bars. I listen to a lot of old music. No offense to “artists” today, but music is all over-commercialized, over-dubbed, and recorded. You want music that matters; you turn to Dylan, the Dead, the Allman Brothers, and Bob Marley. Hell, I sit around now wearing out a Jimmy Buffet compilation and the guys look at me like I’m listening to big band swing music (check that, they don’t know what the big band era was and “swing” music gets a glazed over stare). Still, they gather around me for lyrical pearls of wisdom.

I keep a three ring binder full of song lyrics, close to one hundred and fifty songs. I use lyrics daily; like trying to explain poetry to guys in the creative writing class, I pull out the Beatles’ “Let it Be” –
           
           “When I find myself in times of trouble
            Mother Mary comes to me
            Speaking words of wisdom
            Let it be.

And in my hour of darkness

            She is standing right in front of me
            Speaking words of wisdom
            Let it be.”

I don’t know what Lennon and McCartney had in mind when they wrote that, I just know as I read the words guys who never heard that haunting piano accompany Paul nodded and said, “he’s talking about peace, and patience, and mercy.”

The music. There are a thousand lines that remind me of her, of us. “Time in a Bottle,” sung at our wedding; dancing on our deck as I whispered “Tupelo Honey,” in her ear. There’s holding both our sons mere seconds after they entered the world and quietly singing “Forever Young” as if with those words I was armoring them for adulthood. Funny, but I can’t watch “Parenthood” on TV because they use “Forever Young” as their opening music.

It was the music, the lyrics that kept me going so many times in here. I don’t know how many nights I wondered, “can I get through this?” and a song would come to me. I couldn’t shake Springsteen’s “Reason to Believe” when I doubted my God, my hope, and my faith:

“Lord won’t you tell us tell us what does it mean

            So at the end of every hard earned day people
            Find some reason to believe …”

When I’d try and find it again it was Seger and “Running Against the Wind,” and Marley’s “Redemption Song” and “No Woman No Cry” that helped me click the laps off and find my balance.

Music. I talk music daily with Saleem and DC (old Motown stuff like Wilson Pickett and James Brown; the Supremes, Marvin Gaye), and Craig and Omar (the 70’s and 80’s before disco and rap and techno and syrupy pop sung by Barbie wanna-bes). It was during one of those conversations when a buddy said he couldn’t make it and reach his dreams outside. I looked at him and just hit him with Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” –

            “Well everything dies baby that’s a fact
            But everything that dies some day comes back …”

He looked at me for the longest time and then said, “you’re saying I died in here, but I can get it all back?” “Something like that,” I replied and I watched him roll those words around in his head and find that glimmer of self-confidence and hope he needed to try and get clear of this place.

Sounds stupid, right? Until you remember how Scottish soldiers carried their dead king off the battlefield singing the Psalter “God Our Help in Ages Past,” or churches for centuries beginning Advent Season with “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, Come to Set Thy People Free …”

Freedom. I tried to count all the references in the Bible to God freeing “the prisoners.” The captive, you see, are in God’s loving arms. The music frees the captive’s soul.

            And I keep thinking about Don McLean. He thought the music died:
            “And the three men I admired most
            The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
            They caught the last train for the coast
            The day the music would die.”

The music didn’t die. It was always there, always with words giving meaning to the confusion that too often is our life. So the guys come around all the time and ask questions – I get bombarded with questions – and I try and give straight answers. Somehow, to make my point, to close the case, I hit them with a lyric. And a light goes off, and they get it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about music during this Thanksgiving season. I’ve learned a lot in here, and there are blessings even in difficulties. The music keeps playing and I keep going.

            “Well it’s all right, even if they say you’re wrong

            Well it’s all right, sometimes you gotta be strong
            Well it’s all right, as long as you got somewhere to lay
            Well it’s all right, every day is Judgment day”
            “Well it’s all right, even when push comes to shove
            Well it’s all right, if you got someone to love
            Well it’s all right, everything will work out fine
            Well it’s all right, we’re going to the end of the line”
            “Well it’s all right, even if you’re old and grey
            Well it’s all right, you still got something to say
            Well it’s all right, remember to live and let live
            Well it’s all right, the best you can do is forgive.”

I think the Traveling Wilburys had it right. 1977, Vassar College, and I heard that the music died. Thirty-six years later with failures and disappointments a mile high and I feel more hopeful. And, the music still lives; the words still give meaning even in here.

            “Yes my guard stood hard when abstract threats

            To noble to neglect
            Deceived me into thinking
            I had something to protect
            Good and bad, I define these terms
            Quite clear, no doubt somehow
            Ahh, but I was so much older then
            I’m younger than that now.”

                                                        Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages”

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.

The Law

I’ve been giving a good deal of thought to the notion that we live in a law-abiding society and yet there’s not a big difference between the guys in here and “good, decent people” going about their daily lives.  Almost every day this week the newspaper had a blip about some group here or there wanting to put the Ten Commandments up in classrooms to restore America’s “morality”. 

I have a stack of letters from well meaning people who remind me that I am a law breaker and they are “good” people.  I’ve spent months thinking about our reliance on “the law” to determine who is good versus who is bad. This blog will probably draw its fair share of criticisms but that’s OK.

John Mellencamp was onto something when he sang “I fought the law and the law won”.  The law always wins and we – fragile, broken, sinful human beings that we are, always lose.  I have to smile when I hear people wax self righteously about the Ten Commandments.  I’m no theologian, but I’ve developed a relationship with my Lord, and what I’ve come to realize is God’s law – those Ten Commandments we like quoting so much – are absolutes, and no one can live up to God’s laws.

That’s why Paul kept telling the new churches (and especially the Romans) the law is death.  No one is free of sin.  Each and every day we break God’s law.  Think I’m wrong?  Consider the following “absolutes”:

·         A prohibition on idolatry (remember that the next time you wave your flag or put anything ahead of your relationship with God)

·         Divorce is prohibited (except for adultery)

·         Envy

·         Gossip

·         Working at any activity on the Sabbath

·         Lust

This list is just a few of the things each and every one of us does day in and day out.   And it’s precisely because these God made laws are absolutes that we can’t live up to them.  The “law” always prevails.
And that is what I’ve discovered is so wonderful about God.  He knows we can’t live up to His requirements, but He tells us “I love you anyway”.

I find myself thinking about grace a great deal.  The entire idea that “you were dead in the law but alive in God…” just overwhelms me with a deep sense that with God at least, there are always second, third and even fourth chances.

All the men in here wear the clothes of lawbreakers.  Yet, we’re all lawbreakers, even the “good” people outside.  I think that’s why I’ve drawn so close to my faith recently.  God doesn’t expect us to be perfect.  He just wants us to treat each other with kindness and mercy.  He just wants us to forgive and love.

There’s a wonderfully sweet Eagles song called “Love Will Keep Us Alive”.  It’s a song that brings bittersweet memories for me.  I can’t help but think of a young girl I fell in love with as a young boy and how much I miss that girl, that feeling of love.  But as I recently read the lyrics, I couldn’t help but think there’s more to it.

“Don’t you worry

Sometimes you’ve just gotta let it ride
The world is changing
Right before your eyes
Now I’ve found you
There’s no more emptiness inside
When we’re hungry love will keep us alive

I would die for you

Climb the highest mountain
Baby, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Beatles were right:  all you need is love.  Love, God is telling us, overcomes a myriad of our sins.  Love overcomes the law.

Every day people are convicted of breaking the law.  Some, like me violate the criminal code of Virginia.  Others live outside a state of righteousness.  But, I’ve come to realize, the law may punish and people may refuse to forgive, but God forgives, God shows mercy, God loves.

Perhaps, just perhaps, God’s trying to tell us something about our reliance on the law.