Here Comes the Sun

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 2014.

            It was 1976 and a young folk singer stood with his acoustic guitar at the front of the Vassar College chapel. I was 17 and getting ready for my senior year in high school. We waited. There was the song, that one song we waited for the troubadour to begin. Every word was etched in our collective mind’s eye; eight teens – four young men trying to figure out what manhood really was all about, and four equally young women. He struck the first chord and we knew, we were there with each word.

            “A long, long time ago

            I can still remember

            How the music made me smile

            And I knew if I had the chance

            I could make those people dance

            And maybe they’d be happy for awhile”

            Dreams and ambitions at 17. I wanted the world. At 6, I told my father I wanted to write a book. At 15, I sat in awe as I read a simple book on Constitutional Law and understood how a semi-illiterate man with a pen and paper could change the law. “Dear Supreme Court. My name is Gideon and I was denied counsel.” I wanted to understand law, and God, and beauty. I knew I could do anything I wanted. I knew I had my entire adult life ahead of me.

            “But February made me shiver

            With every paper I delivered

            Bad news on the doorstep

            I couldn’t take one more step”

            You want to see someone completely broken? Arrest a middle-class, middle-aged white guy with a house, two cars, and the picture-perfect family. Lift him out of everything he knows, everything he believes in, and close the cell door. Yeah, and the guy is already on edge. He feels like shit already. He’s eaten up with guilt, drinking five or six scotches every night to sleep. Eyes bloodshot, the left one twitches uncontrollably. Running, the one activity he always felt freed him, now was a struggle. Bloated and depressed he fears death and life. He can’t go on, but he can’t quit. He listens to her breathing at night hoping, praying that in those breathes lies his redemption. But it isn’t to be.

            “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”

            Sentencing and I was numb. Two years, twenty, two hundred, it didn’t matter. I was out of tears, out of hope. I sat in the holding cell with my hands holding my face. Some reason, I heard in my broken soul, music. I hummed “Be Thou My Vision” – I’m not even sure why; I softly sang John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” and Loggins & Messina’s “Danny’s Song.” Over and over I told myself it will all be alright; this is temporary; until thirty days later … and the papers and as broken as I had felt before, I now felt worse. I wrote; she cried; I prayed; the order came in; it was over.

            “Did you write the book of love

            And do you have faith in God above

            If the Bible tells you so?

            Now do you believe in rock and roll

            Can music save your mortal soul”

            It’s receiving and anything I’d seen before pales in comparison. I try each day to just get through. I talk every morning in the darkness to “Michael” my painted card angel sent by a friend to protect me. I am in a rundown, filthy cell with a psychotic, mentally-handicapped gangbanger beginning 76 years for a double homicide. I am who I am, nothing is different about who I am or how I interact with people which confounds and confuses inmates and officers alike. This man can kill me; I don’t care. I read the Bible daily, I write. I hear nothing from God. Later, I’ll agree with Pastor Rick Warren that “feeling God” is just an emotion. God “is” real; God “is” always there, even when in our worst moments we believe we have been abandoned and left for dead.

            There is an incident and my “cellmate” threatens to “tear my throat open and watch me gurgle on the blood.” “Go ahead,” I tell him. Am I crazy? Do I have a death wish? Or, am I tired of the brokenness, the hopelessness? He backs down (amazing!). Moments later he tells me something I will hear more than once:

            “You think you’re better than us.” I respond, “I don’t think I’m better than anyone but I know I’m better than this.” I am better than this. Fuck the judge, and the system that destroys, and my self-delusion and criminal behavior, and the broken promises and broken dreams … I am better than this.

            “I was a lonely teenage broncin buck

            With a pink carnation

            And a pick-up truck

            But I knew I was out of luck

            The day the music would die”

            Running was again freeing, liberating, exhilarating. I run and I hear the music and I keep coming back to that night in 1976 and that young folk singer and singing along.

            “I met a girl who sang the blues

            And I asked her for some happy news

            But she just smiled and turned away

            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.”

            17 and my life all ahead of me; 55 and more alive than ever. I knew he wrote the song about Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash, during a blizzard, on the way to a concert. But it also was about my crash, my broken dreams, my American dream fractured and bleeding and imprisoned and … resurrected. The music didn’t die. It was always there; it was, it is, it will be.

            I often think of Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor, gentle man who told the world there is meaning to be found in suffering, or as CS Lewis put it, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” The music, like spring, always returns, always blossoms. I run and hear a new song, one of hope and thanksgiving:

            “Little darling

            It’s been a long, cold lonely winter

            Little darling

            It feels like years since it’s been clear

            Here comes the sun

            Here comes the sun

            And I said

            It’s alright”

Three Men

If you ever wonder about what's wrong with this place, two men's stories this week will answer that. If you want to know about change, there's a third.

Ziggy, a guy I've written about before, has diabetes. He has significant pain and is prescribed Naprosin. Naprosin is not a narcotic. The doctor here prescribed three doses daily. A few weeks ago, they changed his dosage--twice daily and lower doses (and, every time the prescription expires he goes almost a week waiting on the renewal). So, Ziggy goes to medical to see the doctor--only the nurses won't let him discuss it with the physician (talk about gatekeepers!). The nurses say, "we know what's best and you only need Naprosin twice daily." Ziggy's a big fellow--kind of looks like Baloo the bear in "Jungle Book." He says, "you aren't my doctor--you clearly aren't my ortho; I want to see the Doctor." What happens that afternoon? Ziggy is called out to the investigators for a "routine" urine test and he's asked if he has a drug problem. Funny but there isn't anything "routine" about an investigator call (I know from my own experience with the blog) and they don't "piss test" midday. That's just their way of saying, "we decide medical."

Then there's K--his jacket says he's a gangbanger (because his brother was affiliated). He isn't and the investigators know it. They tell him "we'll get around to fixing it...soon." But, soon isn't anytime "soon." Meanwhile, he goes home in 6 more months. No one wants that label on them, especially when they aren't involved. But, that's how it goes in here--they take their time doing things and then wonder why no one respects "the system." The system is corrupt, badly mismanaged and isn't doing what the taxpayers think--it isn't cost effective, it doesn't rehabilitate people, and it wastes money.

That's a hell of a trifecta!

Then there's the good story--Mr. Rodriguez. He's a thirty-year-old El Salvadorian. At 12 he joined MS 13; at 14 he was arrested as part of a homicide; he ended up at Sussex at 16; he had a 5th grade education and had never read a book. That "lost refuse" is now a reader and completed my computer class. He is a changed man... not because of this place but because he used his time productively. I reread Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, the other week--and it is clear: you can overcome anything (even the idiocy of the VA DOC system) if you have hope and believe.

It took Mr. Rodriguez a while to figure that out--life in the projects wasn't easy and he did some bad things, but he is a survivor and he is becoming a better man, in spite of this place.

Three men, three stories; unfortunately these stories play out everyday in here with the system dragging its feet and few overcoming.

Letter from Long Ago

I found myself spending a good deal of time this week reading over the Apostle Paul’s letter to the citizens of Rome. Commentators note that at the time this letter was written it didn’t receive much notice. After all, it was a letter from a prisoner, a citizen of Rome, who in exuberance decided to explain to his countrymen what “God is up to.” Pretty heady stuff, even when ending a sentence in a preposition!

            Paul couldn’t shake the world-altering events from thirty years earlier when time – in his mind – went from “before” to “after.” It meant something profound, something life changing and he wanted to understand it; he wanted to explain it. He had quite literally, seen and talked to God. And that conversation, that moment on a desert road on the way to Damascus changed everything for him. This letter penned to his Roman compatriots was his way of explaining what that moment – that first Easter Sunday was to mean to every man and woman. What is God up to? Paul tells the Romans in passionate prose.

            As I said, I found myself thinking and reading Paul’s words a good bit this week. The A/C unit broke in our building last Sunday. Even with fans running 24 hours a day, it was hot and sticky. The temperature inside hovered near 90°. The air hung heavy with the smells of 76 men crammed together. And guys new to the system whined and carped and bitched. Me? It wasn’t as bad as receiving so I just took two extra showers each day and laughed it off. I learned early on in this adventure to laugh in spite of any of it.

            And a few things had me thinking. One, I was in a meeting with a college person I highly regard. We discovered a problem – VA benefit problem – that is – with a few of our students. I was explaining to her and her associate that men in prison believe the worst. Everything is a lie, a con, a plan to screw them. “There is no optimism in here,” I said. “There are a lot of injured, broken people in this place.”

            Her response caught me off-guard. In a soft voice, she said, “there are a lot of injured people outside.” I thought of Paul. People have a hard time. They screw up; they’re let down; life becomes disillusioning. Paul says, “Shake it off.” God pays no attention to what others say – or think (or even what you think) about you. He makes up His own mind and He always keeps His word, even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. “God,” Paul says, “always sets things right.”

            So often we focus on our failings, our hurts, our wrongs. Life seems hopeless. And the hopelessness, the hurt builds and breaks us even further. Paul says that isn’t what God sees. We criticize, we condemn, we suffer, and God still loves, God still saves.

            What’s all this about? I’ve been thinking a good deal about my future. What I’ve learned through all this is God got me out of the mess I was in. He didn’t do it in the way I wanted – the deus ex machina way where He’d show up and I’d be delivered without consequence – no, He broke me and then He restored me, and He put me where He needed me to be.

            Paul says we learn to shout praise even in the midst of our troubles and trials because we learn troubles build patience and patience forges virtue and virtue keeps us alert to God’s next message. And I get that; I get seeing the positive even in our difficulties.

            Like I said, there are a lot of injured people: people injured by others and themselves. Prison is a reality and a metaphor. The reality is, I’m in prison. I’m doing a sentence for breaking the law and I knew the ramifications of my actions and have to accept the punishment. Fair? Maybe, or maybe not. But, I did the crime, I must do the time.

            Prison, however, is also a mindset. So many are in prison due to hurts, wrongs, and regrets from before. And that prison overwhelms, and stifles, and destroys. The psychologist Viktor Frankl understood that. He saw it in the Nazi death camps; he saw who survived and who gave up. “Meaning,” he found, mattered. Find meaning in your life, in your suffering, and lift yourself beyond the prison. Paul – another Jewish intellectual – must have been smiling. After all, Viktor sounded like he’d read the letter.

            As I started this, the building had cooled. Things were back “as they were.” I was thinking about a picture of her. I haven’t seen her in almost six years. I’d been afraid to; I wasn’t sure how seeing a photo would tear at me. Then the photo came in the mail. She’d aged since we last saw each other (who hasn’t). But I looked and realized, it was ok. The hurt, the anger and frustration, it was gone. I saw a pretty woman and I was able to smile, say “Ok,” and move on. For the first time in years I felt good, just like Paul said I would once I understood.

            Almost 2000 years ago a Roman prisoner penned a letter about God being reliable, a message of hope in a time of despair and difficulty. This week, I finally understood what he meant.

A Day in the Life

A friend I hadn’t seen in over three years came out for a visit the other weekend.  I think he was a little embarrassed at first that it took so long to get the courage to come out here.  But, he sees my ex every week at church and, I think, there is a difficulty for folks dealing with me while she is in their midst.  So, I end up being placed in exile.  I’ve come to accept that.

He asked how I was “doing it.  How do you pass the day, not lose your mind?”  I had to laugh.  If I think too much about what I’ve lost, think too much about my memories of my ex, our kids, holidays, travel, I would go crazy.  Instead, I told him, I focus my attention on what I do in here.  Days roll over to new days, but I keep the same schedule.

What’s a day like in here?  For every guy, it’s different.  There are the disciplined guys, the guys who work, set schedules, seek books and hobbies to keep their minds fresh.  They seek meaning in their confinement, redemption for their lives.

Then, there are the sleepers.  They waste away, sleeping twelve, fourteen, even sixteen hours a day.  To them, prison is an exercise in passing through with the least exertion of energy, the least amount of thought.  Nothing is different.  They sleep, eat, watch TV and perhaps lift weights.   They plan on going back out, picking up exactly where their lives stopped on their arrest.  There is no redemption; there is no growth for these men.  They feed the system.  They go out and come back.  Prison, by its very organization, leads to a majority of its prisoners fitting into the second group.  These are the hustlers, the predators, the prey, the refuse that makes up so much of the prison class.

I’m in the first group.  From the day I decided that I wouldn’t quit, that I would fight and hope and believe, I created a schedule.  I live each day on the same schedule.  Disciplined living, I’ve found, can overcome the despair of this experience.

So I told my friend I get up each morning at 3:55.  No alarm clock, I just wake up.  A quick trip to the bathroom to shave, teeth brushed and then yoga.  I then read the Bible and pray and meditate for 45 minutes.  5:15 shower and writing until breakfast at 6:45.  I get another hour to write before 8:15 work call.  Three hours every Monday through Friday I teach adult basic ed.  Every afternoon, after lunch, I workout for an hour.  Then, its college tutoring or college classes.  Dinner, reading and at least two nights a week of college classes until 8:30.

I always go to sleep after 10:00 pm count, ending my day with prayers.  It’s a regimented lifestyle.  Other than an hour or so at night – and the morning sports and news – I avoid TV.  A couple of books and magazines read each week.  Each night, the “USA Today” and a crossword puzzle.  There’s music.  Guys are constantly exchanging CDs.  I have the “old stuff” – Marley, Dylan, The Eagles and Allman Brothers.  I’m the go to guy for classical music and jazz.

There was a time when I couldn’t bring myself to even listen to music in here.  So many songs, so many lyrics, reminded me of, well of her and us and our life together and our kids.  The upside of having a strong memory is you remember.  The downside is the same.  Now, I hear “The Band Perry”, or “Lady Antebellum” sing about love and whispers of what was cross my mind. But I can handle it now.  I jot down the lyrics, I write what’s on my heart and I maintain the regimen.

Dr. Victor Frankl, in his remarkable book “Man’s Search for Meaning” chronicles his survival in the Nazi concentration camps.  Finding meaning, in your circumstances, he argued, gives you freedom.

My schedule, how I do my time, get through each day, in spite of my circumstances, helps me find meaning in here.   Victor Hugo, in his masterpiece “Les Miserables” wrote:

            “Liberation is not deliverance.  A convict may leave prison behind, but not his sentence.”

Hugo understood more about prison than he realized.  The path to liberation rests not in the opening of the gate but the disciplining of the mind.

The Boxer

There’s been a Simon & Garfunkel song that has been rolling through my mind the last week.  Two week’s after 9/11, Paul Simon, alone on a stage with just his guitar sang “The Boxer” to a hushed Saturday Night Live audience.  It’s a song about being pummeled and beaten down, yet finding the strength to stand back up.

“In a clearing stands a boxer

A fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every blow that layed him down
Or cut him til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
I am leaving, I am leaving
But the fighter still remained…”

Three nights ago EL, a young college student, was called to the watch commander’s office at 1:00 am.  The Captain on duty informed him his mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly earlier that evening.  He was allowed to make a collect call to his sister and then requested that he be placed in the hole for a few hours – to grieve – because you don’t cry in prison around other inmates.  He returned later in the day to attend class.  He’s not allowed to attend the funeral.

“Li la Li
Li La Li Li Li La Li”

What makes us keep trying, keep hoping, keep believing when the rational part of our mind, when everyone around us tells us it’s hopeless?  I think often about Dr. Viktor Frankl’s thoughts in “Man’s Search for Meaning”.  There he was confided to a concentration camp, being starved, witnessing the worst in humanity because he “broke the law” (we forget, yet Dr. King pointed it out in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, the actions of the Nazis were carried out according to properly passed laws).  He was sustained by the memories of his wife and their life together.  He would not learn until after the war that his wife had been executed early after their arrest and separation.

I live amongst criminals.  With few exceptions, (Big S being the only guy who is factually innocent) the vast majority of men here broke the law.  But, for an equally vast number, the punishment bears no relationship to the crime.  Yet for the vast majority of these men, they remain hopeful.  They believe something better will come to them.

The writer H. Jackson Browne, Jr. wrote:  “Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.”

When Paul Simon performed his song, New York City and the country were still in a state of shock.  Where once stood the trade centers, there was a ten story pile of smoldering rubble.  The death toll was still not calculated “but the fighter still remained”.

I love that line.  I love the image it creates.  Everyone one of us bears scars of hurt and shame.  We all feel pain.  We all suffer loss.  At times, we all want to give up and quit.  But, like Simon’s boxer, we stand back up battered and bruised and vow to fight on.

This blog isn’t about anything in particular that occurred.  It may have come about over the past few weeks as a group of students I hadn’t worked with before started coming to me for help.  As I worked with these guys invariably one of them would ask “Is it true you haven’t heard from your kids?” or “Your wife divorced you?” or “You really got fifteen years for embezzlement?”  Maybe it was the two officers last weekend reminding me how many lies were printed about me in the paper after my arrest and then officer H saying “you’re a decent guy; you deserved better”.

I asked DC, a great boxer in his teens, if he was ever put on the canvas.

“Yeah”, he said.  “Guy beat me senseless and I hit the deck.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Got up.  Can’t stay down.  No matter how bad it hurt, I couldn’t let ‘em beat me.”

Couldn’t let ‘em beat me.  The fighter still remained…

POSTSCRIPT:  In an ironic twist, USA Today columnist Craig Wilson wrote a piece two days after I penned this on the same topic.  Aptly titled “You can’t turn back now…” it included the following lines from poet Annie Johnson Flint:

“Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life.

Where, in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back.
There is no other way but through?”

Wilson then concludes:  “Getting down that path isn’t always easy.  We stumble.  We fall.  But we get up and march on.”

Amen to that.

Searching for Meaning

I was asked to teach an advanced writing class for the guys who completed the introductory writer’s workshop. The faculty advisor and I decided to put a summer reading list together of classics. We chose The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Call of the Wild, and about eight more. One of the only two non-fiction books we chose was Dr. Viktor Frankl’s amazing book Man’s Search for Meaning. I read this book as a senior in college writing my undergraduate independent study. It made somewhat of an impression on me then; it is seared in my conscious thought now.



Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist living in Vienna, Austria during the Second World War. He ended up surviving Auschwitz and three other camps. His pregnant wife, his parents, and a host of other family members perished at the hands of the Nazis. He somehow survived and found meaning in his suffering. He also found the inner strength to fight to live and later, to love and forgive.


He wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”


He watched as seemingly healthy young men gave up, surrendered and died. Yet, there were others, suffering terribly, they still remained eternally optimistic.


I see the same thing and understand what Dr. Frankl meant. Men in here on their second, third or even fourth “bid” who lie around on their bunks, wasting their minds, their futures, away. Then, there are the men who enroll in college, read everything they can get their hands on. They strive, not just to survive prison, but overcome it. These men understand who they are. They accept the punishment handed down for the wrongs they committed. But, they challenge the illogical conditions of this environment.


“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”


I have a young friend in here who tutors with me. Corey is 25. He is completing the final 18 months of a five year sentence for reckless driving resulting in death. Corey went drag racing against two friends. His girlfriend – a passenger in his car – was ejected from his vehicle when he lost control and crashed. She died at the scene.


Sending Corey to prison has done nothing to make him a “reformed person”; it’s done nothing to bring the girl back. He struggled for the first three years of his imprisonment, without therapy, to deal with his guilt and remorse.


Does Corey deserve condemnation, punishment, or forgiveness? A person whom I love dearly – more so after my incarceration, wrote me saying “I prayed you would die in jail”. Her anger, bubbling on the surface, led her to utter this prayer. Should I cry out and condemn her? I can’t.


This past week, a drunk driver – an illegal immigrant – struck and killed a nun and seriously injured two others. While the newscasts raced against each other for interviews with prosecutors and immigration advocates politicizing this tragedy, the driver’s parents travelled to the sisters’ convent to offer their apology and explain their son’s raging alcoholism. The sisters prayed with them. They prayed for the young man, and forgave him. Remarkable, yet the exact right thing to do: God’s gift of grace in action. Could any of us do the same? Should any of us accept less from ourselves?


“Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered the gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Sherma Yisrael on his lips.”


We are capable – each of us – of self-centeredness, of recklessness, of not caring, not being kind, not loving or forgiving; yet, we also can love, can forgive, we can endure.


An amazing man; an amazing book. All the reasons to hope, to endure, to find solace and meaning in your darkest day.


“Et lux in tenebris lucet.” And the light shineth in the darkness.

Classification Blues

Every inmate in the DOC system is basically nothing more than a number, or a series of numbers. Numbers mean everything in prison.



When I arrived at DOC receiving in August of 2009 I was immediately given a six digit number and told I needed to “use it on all transactions”. That meant: calls-press in your ID number; order commissary – write your number on the sheet; have a request, an inquiry, a grievance? Need to see medical? Place your number on the form.


By November ’09, DOC came out with “new numbers” – a seven digit number to replace your six digit one. “Begin using your seven digit number on 11/2” the memo announced. Problem was, the phones weren’t converted by that date so a second memo came out – “use six digit for phone; use seven digit for all other transactions”.


By the first of December the phones were converted. But, not the accounting system. So, inmates use their six and seven digit numbers for accounting requests. We still use our six digit number for school (Department of Corrections Education), but we now use our seven digit number for commissary. Who knows when DOC will get it fixed. They prove, day in and day out, the old adage “anything that can be done half-assed can be done by the government (there are a couple of Obama digs I could slide in here now, but I’ll let the reader fill their own in)”.


Numbers matter. Every guy talks in numbers: “I get out 6-1-11” (I wish!); “I earn at 4 1/2 .” “Really? I’m under the old system. I earn 30 for 30” (good time credit). Guys still under parole – pre 1995 convictions earn good time at various rates up to 30 days good time for every 30 days served. Inmates convicted after 1/1/95 – like me – can only earn a maximum of 4 ½ good time days per month).


Then, there is your security level. DOC has 4 security levels (there is fifth level, but that is reserved for the worst of the worst, like guys who kill corrections officers while in prison). Level 4 inmates are maximum security. They are “under the gun” (officers patrol the catwalks with loaded weapons). I’m at a level 1 to 2 prison. My classification (based on categories of violence; age, education, employment history) is 1, 1 – security level 1, good time credit level 1 (4 ½ days per month).


DOC is under a severe budget crunch. No wonder. They abolished parole so inmates now stay incarcerated substantially longer. Add to that judges who sentence with significant years. Then, DOC has been forced to close a number of facilities the last few years (8 at last count) with another level 2 and two level 1 prisons slated for closing in this budget cycle. You have a system beginning to collapse under its own weight.


What does DOC do – beside spend over $27,000 a year just to keep an inmate locked up (after all, as DOC Director Gene Johnson has finally acknowledged, the $1 billion DOC budget is insufficient to provide rehabilitation programs)? They decide each week to transfer level 2 inmates – well behaved, decent guys, to other level 2 institutions. There’s no rhyme or reason to who moves. Corey – enrolled in college under a federal grant program and working as a teacher’s aide – is on the transportation list. Yet, other guys who don’t work, don’t go to school, aren’t on the list.


It’s all the luck of the numbers. Your life in prison, every movement, is nothing but numbers. Cost is irrelevant (it is expensive to move an inmate). Count every inmate six times a day; make sure every bed number is used.


Viktor Frankl wrote that the Nazis reduced every prisoner to nothing but a number. Thank God we’re not like the Nazis – or are we?