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Edited on Sat Jan-01-11 07:20 PM by Fly by night
Happy New Year, all y'all. Y'all haven't heard much from me lately and there's a reason for that -- something I can celebrate here with you.
As some of you know, I have been writing and posting here for the past six years about a variety of topics, not the least of which is my federal medical cannabis prosecution, including the effort to confiscate my farm. Throughout this period, I have appreciated the positive comments and expressions of support which this DU community has shown me. I have especially appreciated the encouragement that some of you have voiced for me to try to put my experience (and my writings) in a book. Well, guess what ....!
I sent out a message in early December to 500+ people who have received my sporadic halfway house diary entries and other assorted writings. I asked whether any of them would be interested in underwriting my effort to put all of that writing into the first draft of a book ... AND ... to get the task done by Christmas Eve. Two dozen said "you're on!" and I was stuck. Actually, two days after I made that offer, the Navajo Nation contacted me to come interview for an epidemiologist position with the tribe. I asked for a one week extension -- to New Year's Eve -- to pull the book together and my friends and benefactors agreed. (BTW, the interview with the Navajo Nation went well and I hope to hear next week whether I'll be moving to Window Rock, AZ, on the northwest New Mexico border, by February. Keep your fingers crossed.)
Yesterday, I drove into town and emailed the first draft of "My Hollow Tale -- Reflections On A(n Interrupted) Life" to those two dozen friends. The book is 373 pages long, folks. I cannot believe it, but the biggest hurdle of this endeavor (the first draft) is now on my thumb drive.
To thank you for listening to me over the years and providing the encouragement that you have, I wanted to let all y'all know just what you helped unleash on the world. The book is divided into three sections: What it was like, what happened (the raid and my eighteen months in a federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house) and what it has been like ever since.
What follows is a section from the "Acknowledgements" and from two sections at the pivotal moment of this journey -- the last day before I entered the "house" and my first day there. I hope you enjoy this little look at what I hope the book accomplishes, when it is done.
If any of you are interested in obtaining a copy of the first draft, just PM me and I'll let you know how I offered the book to my friends. If you're game, I would be happy to send it to you. Now here's a little taste. Here's hoping something good comes out of this, sooner than later.
FBN (Bernie Ellis)
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From "Acknowledgements":
On this New Year’s Eve, 2010, it is hard to thank everyone who has kept me going for the past eight years, as I struggled first for my freedom and then to save my farm. No one who has ever gone through a medical cannabis prosecution ... comes out unchanged. The depth and breadth of that change certainly depends on where you start and where you end up.
As for me, I started this tale with a broad-based set of neighbors, friends, professional colleagues and family who knew me, and who knew that what was happening to me was disproportionate to my “crime”. They rallied around me immediately and, over the years, they were joined by hundreds (if not thousands) of others who came to know me through my written accounts of my incarceration – swimming laps in a federal Bureau of Prisons cess-pool – and of its aftermath. That army of well-wishers, close by and distant, kept my spirits up and my typing fingers moving from one day to the next, until this ordeal finally came to an end eight years later (if it truly ever ends at all.) I want to thank all of them for every conceivable kindness they bestowed on me.
This early morning, I want to thank a handful of those friends for having enough faith in me to challenge me to produce this book. I was crazy when I issued the challenge to myself three weeks ago (to finish this first draft by today), and those friends remained supportive and encouraging enough to take me up on that challenge and to contribute to keeping the lights on while it was assembled.... My deepest thanks and appreciation to you all.
We all need someone we can lean on. Some of us need more than one someone. My biggest gift in all of this was discovering just how many old and new friends were there for me, every step of the way. This book is for you. It is also for anyone who wonders just why we continue to prosecute over 800,000 people each year in this country for “illegal smiles.” My Goddess gave me cannabis as the safest and most gentle way to change my perspective and to ease my aches and pains. She also gave me the balls to violate an unjust law in order to help others and the mouth to speak up for science, common sense and compassion. My Goddess (through my Garden) has kept me sane and sober for almost seventeen years and She will do so again today.
Enjoy this hollow tale and vow with me to hasten the time when tales of this sort are no longer told. That time is long past due and, thanks to all of you, that time is coming fast.
My deepest respect and affection goes out to all of you, like sage and cedar on the western wind.
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From: One day before --- Last impressions of the farm
Red hot sauna, the fire built with pine branches and oak boards.
Two broccoli heads for dinner picked from the Garden.
The dogs hovering, blocking my path, pleading for me not to go.
Clothes almost dry on the clothesline, finished up in the sauna,
Prior to being sorted, counted out
7 pairs of socks
7 sets of underwear
14 shirts of all kinds
2 belts
2 coats
Another hot bath, extra water boiled on the stove, quick rinse.
Just long enough to miss a minute of “Survivor”.
I’ve been voted off my Island, being adjudicated into
the federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house.
Awoke at 2:30 am and should have just gotten up.
But I stayed in bed, my bed, fresh sheets from the last night at home.
But to get ready, I got up and covered my nakedness
with sweat pants and a sweatshirt.
Getting ready for (some unknown time of) non-nakedness.
Finally got up for good at 4:30 am, pot of coffee
with the last milk in the fridge.
Four pieces of toast with blackberry jam.
My jam, from my berries.
A few more emails,
a few more posts on Democratic Underground,
reading what my recent “get busy” email had generated.
Letters to the State Election Commission from Thelma and Ed,
to the Scene from Phil.
And then my own letter to the Scene – a “thanks for nothing” letter,
for the shoddy and condescending piece of ass-kissing fluff they had published.
I could have re-titled their article “Attack of the Naïve Newbie –
Hinton shills for ‘vapor-based’ voting.”
Wondering how people are reacting – right now – to that letter.
Wanting to send it to John Gideon with VotersUnite
and Joan Kravitz of VoteTrustUSA.
I just can’t. There isn’t time.
Packing furiously, filling three garbage sacks
with mail and papers that need to be sorted and stacked
or just … discarded.
Throwing my clothes, my three computers
and my books into the truck.
Tripping over Duke, my dog, one more time.
Seeing Annie, my other, laying sad upon her pad.
She knows that I’m leaving … for a long, long time.
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From: One day in – first impressions of the “House”
I showed up 15 minutes early, starting on the right foot (just not sure which one that is). Two black male inmates – just fired from their jobs and needing passes to retrieve their (what?). The desk guard said, “You can leave for an hour.”
White female inmate, hip-wide tattoo on her upper ass, above the belt-line and below the blouse of her EMS uniform shirt. Angry, loud because someone had just stolen $600 from her locker with a broken lock (that she had reported two days earlier.). “Fucker”. “Mother-fucker”. The new “you know” in my new world.
She left mad and crying and then came back in. Called for a ride to work, and sat next to me while waiting. My first conversation inside. She asked how much time I was here for (I said 18 months, she said I’d do six (!).) I asked about her, a NYC criminal, something to do with fraud I think,
unable to work in ways for which she was trained, now picking up drunks and helping shovel them into the backs of meat wagons. Pretty, hard, knowledgeable. “This isn’t a bad place”, she said. The staff are OK, inmates mixed, administrators on a revolving door.” She left and I arrived.
Unloaded my bags, had them searched. My double handfuls of books caught the guard’s eye, quick search, only lost my bottle of hydrogen peroxide (mouthwash for the bitter taste that’s been in my mouth for weeks. In here, a weapon, maybe.) Brought in my soft satchel, more books, more
papers, more looks.
Finally assigned my bunk (bottom, #48) and locker (also #48). A few inmates in bed, some asleep, some just looking forlorn. Back downstairs, watched two videos as my introduction to the “rules”, took a true/false test.
Bone-tired, I ate lunch (two sliced meat – beef maybe – on dry bread (no condiments) and two glasses of Kool-aid.
Then back upstairs to lie on bunk #48, since everyone was sent upstairs so the downstairs could be cleaned. A half hour of loud, aggressive but friendly talk of pussy and ass, of crack and crank, of losing more jobs (thanks to the job counselor here) and of getting an ID. Lots of talk about getting an ID. Who doesn’t have an ID? Well, maybe people coming out of prison after 15, 17, 20 years – my new housemates.
Spider-man (or Spidey as the inmates call him) – a tattooed tall white guy whose whole face is a spider web – the loudest but no longer the most frightening. One or two more, quieter but with more toughness in their voices – no nonsense violence. They were not looking for trouble, but
they were willing to dish it out in a heartbeat. Mother-fucker.
Whites using one room downstairs, blacks another. Now (after no rest), I sat writing in the day room, the only place to write. TV loud – some stupid sitcom. Three people sitting passively, reading. There are exercise bikes, coke machines, someone beating on the front door – no one
answering. I’m ready to leave.
Ten hours later: Things I’ve learned already
When someone asks you to tell someone else what you’re in for, it’s not about your crime – it’s about your time. Everyone here I’ve spoken with can’t believe my sentence here – 18 months. They roll their eyes and act surprised. When a few asked where I came from and I said my farm, they paused – because they expected the name of some prison. Or that I’m a parole violator. To be sentenced directly here – and for so long – is not what they expect. And soon after, several have said “You’ll be on home detention soon. Six months, maybe more, maybe less. You won’t
do 18 months here. At least I hope not.”
The women are friendly, as they usually are. No prison dyke stereotypes here. Just heavy-set young women, the tattooed New Yorker, a pretty blonde who’s just done eight years and a bald and scarred black woman (Frances) who fell down (getting off a bus) and who sat with me in one
of the TV rooms, slowly feeling worse as the goose-egg on her forehead throbbed. I offered to get her ice, not knowing if I would be able to. But she said, "No, my coke can helps some." ”And then she got up and went to bed.
Other things I’ve learned: the sunsets can also be beautiful through shuttered blinds, and even better when I pull the blinds up and away. An amazing bright-blue/orange/red/white sky, with the contrail of a single jet flying straight up, through waves of sunset clouds and sky. All by itself, but making its mark.
Other lessons: There are periodic calls to congregate and be counted: 3:30, 5:30, 7:30. Ten minutes of waiting to prove to them that we’re still here. Yes, we are.
“We”? Boy, how quickly I bond.
In between the bed checks and the dining room checks, I found a Lewis and Clark special on PBS and was graced with ten minutes alone, the Wind River vistas, Crow Heart Butte, the river, the snow-capped peaks, the beautiful Indian women in full shell and bell dresses. I could tell the
others there that I knew the place and the people – though that didn’t matter to anyone here. A young black man approached and asked, “Are you watching that?” Because he and his friends had a DVD they wanted to watch – American Psycho.
Found out that my AT&T phone card doesn’t work, after spending two hours yesterday making sure it would. So I could not call anyone or collect my messages. The internet was at least a century away.
Good news though. There are two computers and one of them has MS Word. Now to find a disk and start this diary on a computer. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. I may be able to be visited by Dana (my sister) and Zach (her son) – maybe not. About to leave a message for Jonellie – sorry I
can’t be there – sing a sweet song for me.
Sitting in a room full of convicts, watching “How to Lose a Man in Ten Days”. A bet going on as to whether the man will fuck her senseless or stuff her yellow-dressed skinny-ass self into a garbage bag.
Enough writing – I know it is isolating, protecting me. Smearing fingerprint ink on this page. Hope I will be able to sleep tonight and to speak in another day or two. Need to slow down, need to relax, need to read “When Things Fall Apart” and “The Prayer of Jabez”.
My horoscope in today’s paper:
“Your assignment is to be as agile in your dealings with people as a circus contortionist…. The unity you sow now will bring you unforeseeable benefits in 2006.”
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Again, thanks DU, for giving me a place to put words to all this, and to put those words in front of you. If you're intrigued about this behemoth first draft book, PM me and I'll give you the skinny.
Otherwise, it's time for a few more logs in my Tennessee deep hollow cabin wood-stove, followed by a long, slow soak in the clawfoot tub.
It's all good.
Peace out.
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