Home > The Diaries > (10)

The Diaries

Eleven months & 14 days in -- good news, bad news, weird news, dream-world news

Previous | Next

(This is a long one, so get comfortable.)

Hello out there in free world land. It’s been more than a month since my last confession (er, diary entry), and there’s much to report. But first, I hope all of you are well and warm as we approach the annual turning-back-of-the-clock (and, hopefully, the turning-around-of-the-country). Regardless of the weather outside and the calendar, the end of daylight savings time is the beginning of winter for me. Time to switch the pile of shorts and short-sleeved t-shirts for jerseys and jeans. Since my halfway house locker can’t hold an all-seasons wardrobe, I will make the switch sometime soon.

This month, there is good news, bad news, weird news (and even some dreamworld news) to share with all of you. Life at the halfway house remains as always, though we have gotten a relatively quiet crowd in-house at the moment. Several new women, many more new men, faces and stories coming and going, the house a revolving door for most folks but me, “Old School” and one other long-timer who will be here twenty one months. Even though things have been relatively quiet, I broke up my first fight between two male inmates two nights ago. Fighting over the fan in their dorm, used as much to muffle the sounds of too many men snoring and farting as to circulate the stagnant air. One guy had just gotten tired of the constant cold and noise that the fan presents and tried to rip the cord out of it and, failing that, to pour water on the fan motor to short it out. When the water hit another inmate, he came to the fan’s rescue. I walked up on them as they were playing tug-of-war with the fan out in the hallway in front of the laundry room, shouting at each other and then – briefly – ending up on the floor, one in a head-lock, the other with the fan cord wrapped around his neck.

Without really thinking, I stepped over to them, unwrapped the cord from around the one guy’s neck and told both of them, “You must know you’re on ‘Candid Camera’ right now – you’re fighting in front of two separate surveillance cameras. If you don’t break it up, you’re heading back to prison.” That was all I needed to say – the boys got up and went in opposite directions. Sure enough, the CMOs (correctional monitoring officers – a long job title for “guards”) had seen the fight and were on the way upstairs as I went down. Much tension in the house for the past two days as the Director decided what to do with our fighters. Fortunately, he gave one of them (the fan protector) extra duty and dorm restriction, but did not send him “back”. I haven’t heard yet what happened to the other guy, but he’s still around – should know more tonight.

The brief fight was witnessed by me and another inmate, who did nothing. After the fight, he told me that in prison, you don’t mess with inmates fighting – to do so would show them disrespect. I reminded him that we are not in prison and that breaking them up was showing respect to both of them – the respect to help them not derail their short trip through this “house” back to the (mostly) free world. I’d do the same tonight in a heartbeat. Just because I am not free to leave anytime soon does not mean that I want others trapped in this limbo any longer than they need to be. That’s what I want everyone to expect “Big Man” (the others’ nickname for me that has stuck) to do -- to do for others when he cannot do for himself. Sure enough, the fan protector thanked me last night, telling me that he is due to leave the house in three weeks, after five years in prison and six months here. He’s already lined up $29,000 in grants and loans to go to college (or technical school, I’m not sure which), and is due to start as soon as he leaves here. “I almost threw away my future, almost fucked it all up big-time. Thanks, Big Man, for waking me up before I lost everything.” You’re welcome.

Now for the news – the good, the bad, the weird and the dreamworld.

The Good News

Since my last diary entry, I have been working full time landscaping the estate in west Nashville that I had already mentioned to you folks. The weather in September was unusually cool and dry for middle Tennessee, perfect for working outside all day. The estate owner (Carla, a politically and socially active, well-read young widow) had a few ideas for what she wanted done, but was also amenable to my suggestions. The estate is on a ridge-top off Highway 70, carved into the hardwoods with little sunlight for the few shrubs and flowers that Carla had around her entrance and her swimming pool. For the past six weeks, I’ve definitely changed that.

The first big task was to create a cascading rock garden along the side of her steep driveway. Over the course of a week, I located large limestone boulders on the ridge-top, wrestled them out of the woods, lifted them up on a four-wheel dolly and placed them (carefully) in eight separate settings, about 15 feet apart, down her driveway. I had to back the boulders down the driveway because, otherwise, the over-loaded dolly would have gotten away from me. At the end of the day, it felt like I had been doing leg-lifts at the gym all day, and my bulging calves showed it. But I got the boulders in place, dug them into the hillside, and then worked good topsoil and composted manure around the rocks to prepare the ground for later plantings of hostas, ferns, tulips and daffodils (and maybe some crocus -- crocii(?)). To settle the soil for now, I planted annual rye grass on what will become the flower beds and shade-loving fescue in between, topping it all off with wheat straw. In no time, the new grasses pushed their way up through the straw. I have already had to mow that area once to maintain the lines of the boulders. A good project to start with. And a primer for the big job.

Ah yes, the big job. Carla had a small flower bed below an unused dog pen that her late husband had built for his dead-duck-retrieving retrievers (black labs, to be precise). However, most of that area was filled with dead scrub trees, briars, wild vines and other undesirable flora. Carla and I decided that this would be the best place to create her long-desired flower (and maybe vegetable) garden. After I cleared away the brush, dead trees and debris, I drove Carla around Nashville to see several gardens that had been built with 4X6 rough-cut red and white oak timbers – both the flower beds I had built at the “house” and another very simple yet attractive terraced garden near the Turnip Truck built by a friend of mine. Carla liked the look of those gardens, so the big job was borne.

What I proposed, designed and then carried out was a four-level terraced garden, built with the same red and white oak timbers, each section about fifteen feet wide and eighty feet long, wrapping around the newly cleared area below the dog-pen. My initial plan was to frame each terrace with timbers stacked three high, and to fill in the planting area with better soil than the shale-gravelly ground that was there. So I staked out where the timbers would go with twine, cleared the ground and planted annual rye (again covered with straw) to keep the soil in place, and then called the Fox Brothers sawmill out near my farm to saw the timbers.

The first time I went to get timbers, Carla rented a big U-Haul truck and I loaded (with the help of sawmill workers) 58 timbers from eight to fourteen feet long. This was the third time I had gotten timbers from that mill, and Miz Fox (the matriarch of the mill) wanted to know all about the project. She is a sweet (but no nonsense) country woman, related to the Kelleys who had owned my farm before it was mine. She even looks a bit like Miz (Bet) Kelley, the midwife and quilt-maker who made me feel at home in her holler four decades ago, when I earned the nickname “Tent Boy” from her because I lived one summer in a tent under a spreading black walnut tree where my unused corral is now. As with the other jobs, Miz Fox gave me a bit of a discount, though not nearly as much as she had given when I built the flowerbeds for the “house”.

It took all of an afternoon to unload the timbers by myself out of the U-Haul when I got back to Carla’s, stacking them with enough spacing to let them dry before I coated them with linseed oil. Since they were freshly sawn, they were heavy with sap and water weight, with the eight footers weighing about 90 pounds and the fourteen footers weighing over 150 pounds. Talk about dead weight!! Moving those timbers around the first day gave me a taste for what the next three weeks would be all about. And dead weight was a good description for me at the end of each day, when I dragged myself back to the “house”.

But the work was good, and good for me. Each day, I would tackle another section of the beds, measuring the space to fill and the timbers, cutting the proper angles in the ends of each timber to get it to fit snugly with what was already there, then dragging the timber uphill, greased with linseed oil, scrambling and slipping on the shale-rocked ground, sometimes heaving the timber end over end, until it was in place. Then drilling holes for either the two foot sections of metal rebar, used to secure the lower timbers to the hillside, or for the ten inch landscape spikes, used to attach the timbers to each other. Without the drill bits to start the holes in the timbers, this would have been an impossible task. But with the starter holes, I could pound the rebar and spikes in place, first with a heavy framing hammer and then a sledgehammer. Each timber – whether for the base of the wall or for the upper timbers – requiring between three and five metal bars/spikes to hold everything in place.

As the project began to unfold, it became clear that a three-high timber wall would not be tall enough to hold the new soil that would be needed to make the beds what they needed to be. So, instead, I made the lower wall six timbers high, the next wall uphill five high, the next wall four high and the last wall three high. Given how steep the hillside was, this configuration worked well and was pleasing to the eye. As time went on, I interspersed building the walls with moving the new topsoil and mulch in place. Carla ordered a total of fourteen tons of good topsoil/mulch, piled high on her parking lot roughly even with the flower beds. After putting more straw (and some limbs, rocks and tree trunks) in place at the base of each wall to fill in the new blank spaces, I moved the topsoil in place, two bucketfuls at a time, balancing myself on the sturdy walls. Filling each bucket with ten shovelfuls of good dirt, then moving steadily along the timber walls, dumping the dirt, then repeating the process. For days and days, until the piles dwindled away and the flower beds grew in place. On these days, I returned to the “house” so covered in dirt, linseed oil and sweat that all the other residents whistled and the CMOs threatened to have me hosed off before they let me in.

Because I had underestimated the number of timbers we would need, I had to make three trips back to the sawmill, each time for fewer timbers. The first two return trips, I borrowed a trailer from my country neighbor to haul the timbers. Each of those trips, I thought that my old Toyota pick-um-up truck would make it up Carla’s hill, but the old truck just didn’t have it in her. Backing down the driveway (slo-o-o-w-w-l-l-y-y), I managed not to jack-knife the trailer. I then had to unload the trailer by hand and haul a portion of each load uphill to put in place. The bed of my truck, as rusty and unstable as it is, bent accordion-like from the strain. (And hastened my decision to finally find another truck, which I’m looking for now.) But the old girl was up to the task, this one last time.

Now, as I write this, the walls are in place. All fourteen tons of dirt is in place, the timbers have all received another coating of linseed oil, the new ground has been re-seeded with rye and recovered with straw. And the young green grass is popping through once again, to keep everything in place until Carla’s new roses, and jasmine, and ivy, and clematis, and iris and so much more is planted and in place. As the fall months move into winter, I hope to spend a day or two each month helping do these plantings, watching the timber walls fade slowly to gray, watching the wood hawk glide silently over my head, eyeing my new natural handiwork. That work will be done on most likely on Saturdays, in between the new job I start on Monday, as a landscaper with Nature’s Helpers, a small company that specializes in landscaping estates in the Belle Meade, Brentwood and west Nashville areas. The work, though still outdoors, will be more structured and less solitary. As with all things, that will be both good and bad. I have enjoyed being able to plan and execute what has been accomplished at Carla’s, but the solitary work has been lonely at times. (Lonely enough for me to miss my old co-workers and regular customers at the Turnip Truck.) But it will bring its own challenges and news chances to learn, including the chance to learn some Spanish, since I will be the only Anglo on the crew. More will be revealed, so stay tuned.

So that’s the good news – a beautiful and productive six weeks outdoors in west Nashville, healthy hard work and solitude, something solid left behind before I move on. A chance to revisit and to keep pace with the progress that this evolving terraced flower and vegetable garden will become. Leaving another mark on another piece of land, land that is not my own.

Now for the bad news

1) Two weeks ago, the judge denied my request for the weekly 12 hour pass to go work on my farm. His decision was a long time coming, during which I held out hope that I might once again get to see my home, my dogs, my land. But the judge wrote on our petition: “Given the range of possible sentences available on defendant’s charge and the actual sentence imposed, petition is denied.” I understand that decision and though I am disappointed, I still appreciate how the judge decided my case (at least the criminal side of things – the civil asset forfeiture effort to take my farm is ongoing).

After we received this decision, I asked my attorney whether it would be fruitless to petition the judge to reduce my sentence after I have served a year (which occurs on November 11). He said no, that it would still be worthwhile to file that petition. So we’ll just have to wait and see. When we file that petition, all the 40+ letters that you folks sent in support of our request for the 12 hour weekly pass will be submitted to the judge – they did not go in with our first petition, at my lawyer’s suggestion.

2) Last Wednesday night, while I was sleeping in the “house”, someone broke into my pick-um-up truck in the halfway house parking lot and stole my canvas satchel containing many of your phone numbers, about $15 in bills and change, my 12 year 12-STEP chip and the Sacajawea dollar I had been given as my only salary for running the Fremont County Alcohol Crisis Center in Riverton, WY for over a year (both my good luck charms), a signed copy of Andrew Gumbel’s book, Steal This Vote, a copy of the latest research update on the therapeutic uses of cannabis and (drum roll please) my laptop computer. I discovered the theft when I was halfway to work, so I turned around immediately, parked at the “house” and wandered the alleyways around the area, hoping against hope that I would find the bag. I did not find it. Instead, I found scores of homeless people, sleeping under truck trailers, behind dumpsters, in doorways, under sheets of cardboard. In every alley and parking lot, around every corner, everywhere. One of them in all likelihood took my bag and, probably, just took the cash out of it and threw the rest away. I reported the theft and ever since, I’ve checked with the police department’s pawn shop unit, have called used electronics stores and even wandered through the long line of the homeless at the large shelter nearby, looking for the bag. No luck.

So, from now on, instead of being able to use my Sundays at the “house” to write all of you and to keep up with my life as I used to live it, I will be left with the others to watch endless football games, to nap, to read. I will miss that private time alone, to write and to think, to stay connected to my profession and to all of you, a great deal. From now on, I will write during those few minutes when I can get access to a computer, somewhere, somehow. Wish me luck. And hope that somehow, somehow, that laptop will surface. Because it has five years of correspondence, of research and references, buried within it. None of that backed up.

Weird news – we got your weird news right here!!

About three weeks ago, I returned to the “house” one evening, still covered in the happy grime of wrestling slippery timbers in place and backfilling them with buckets of good dirt, to find my “house” counselor, the assistant director and my probation officer waiting for me. They filed with me into the conference room and informed me that, in my weekly random urine screen of several weeks earlier, I had tested positive for MORPHINE. I don’t know what reaction they expected from me when they gave me this news, but I don’t think they were expecting loud laughter. But that’s what they got.

What followed that meeting was a tense 72 hours in the “house”, a decision by the “house” staff to impose lots of punitive stuff on me, my immediate appealing of that punishment and -- based on the information I provided to them -- the decision to erase all the punishment and (at least initially) to not inform my judge of the positive test. That last decision was later reversed when I had a meeting with my PO’s supervisor and requested a transfer to a PO who was less excited about apparently catching me in the wrong and more interested in the truth (and my welfare).

The upshot of all of this is that while the “house” has imposed no penalties against me, the judge was indeed informed by my PO of my “positive”, despite all of the information I am about to share with you. What follows are two memos I wrote in response to the revelation that I tested positive for MORPHINE. They will help explain why I laughed out loud at that news. But they will also give you a bit of the flavor for what life is like in this incarcerated world when you are guilty until proven innocent. Read these memos and weep – for all the people whose lives are distilled into a urine cup, overseen by PO vampires and tested by fools.
---------
October 5, 2006

To: Ms. Heidi Stave, Hearing Officer
Diersen Charities
From: Bernard H. Ellis, Jr., Resident
Diersen Charities
Subject: Response to the disciplinary report stating that my 9/15/06 urine specimen
tested positive for morphine

I understand that you have been assigned as the hearing officer for the above-mentioned disciplinary report. I am writing to respond in detail to this disciplinary report, repeating what I told Ms. Rogers and Mr. Carrier on Tuesday evening when I received this disciplinary report and supplementing my response to them with other information I have collected in the meantime from a quick review on the internet. I would be happy to discuss any of the following information with you or anyone to whom I have copied this memo.

The test report was in error, and most probably a false positive result for morphine, for the following reasons:

1) The test report from Kroll indicated that I had tested positive for morphine only, not codeine or any other opiate or similar drug (See Attachment A). I have not taken any morphine, codeine or similar drug at any time in the last several years (most likely within the past ten or more years). The reason I know this to be true is that I am highly allergic to morphine, codeine and similar drugs. When I take these drugs, I suffer from serious tachycardia (rapid, heavy and uneven heart rate) which has required me to seek medical attention at emergency rooms on several occasions. If I had taken morphine, codeine or any similar medication, it would have precipitated an emergency requiring immediate medical attention.

2) I am fully aware of this allergy and report it faithfully whenever I receive medical care or give a medical history. This allergy is documented in the physical exam I received after entering Diersen in November, 2006 and is part of my medical record with my personal physician who has been my doctor for the past decade. (I have asked Dr. Jamie Slandzicki, my personal physician in Columbia, to provide documentation that my adverse reactions to morphine and similar drugs has been documented in my medical record for quite some time.)

3) Because of this allergy, I would never knowingly take morphine, codeine or any similar medication. And if I had taken these medications unknowingly, my adverse reaction (tachycardia) would be an immediate sign that I had taken a drug to which I am allergic and I would have to seek immediate medical attention.

4) I never hesitate to inform any medical personnel I receive care from of this allergy so that they will not prescribe or give me these medications by mistake. In my several decades of work with substance abusers, I have never met one person who abuses prescription drugs who would repeatedly tell medical personnel not to give him the drugs he wants to abuse. The fact that I faithfully report my allergy to morphine and similar drugs to all medical personnel should indicate that these are drugs I do not seek out nor would want to use ever.

5) The only medications I have taken while at Diersen are Tylenol PM and dramamine, since I have fibromyalgia and find it hard to get to sleep and stay asleep. I have either purchased these medications myself or been given Tylenol PM by my current employer. I am sure that she gave me Tylenol PM because she poured them out of a Tylenol PM bottle and the pills were labeled “tylenol pm” on the pills. Besides, if she had mistakenly given me any medication with morphine in it, my allergic reaction would have been an immediate indication that I had been given the wrong medication and I would have had to seek medical care.

6) In reviewing how I might have tested positive for morphine without actually using the drug, I found information that a person suffering from either kidney or liver problems can sometimes test positive for morphine without using it. (See Attachment B, number 1 (highlighted)). Since I have learned that I have been taking more Tylenol PM than is recommended and that one of the side effects of doing that is liver inflammation or liver damage, I went to the Waverly-Belmont Health Clinic yesterday and had a physical exam and blood drawn to test for kidney and liver function. I have been having a persistent headache, a metallic taste in my mouth and pain in my side over the past two weeks – all symptoms of liver problems – so I was happy to obtain this medical exam in case my overuse of Tylenol PM and dramamine has caused health problems that resulted in the positive test. I should receive the results of the blood tests tomorrow and I will provide them to you when I receive them.

7) In my review, I also discovered that Kroll Laboratories, the laboratory which conducted the drug screen, is using cutoff levels for opiates for both their preliminary and confirmatory tests which were rejected back in 1999 by SAMHSA, the federal agency which determines appropriate laboratory procedures for drug testing and certifies drug testing labs. Seven years ago, SAMHSA required that certified drug testing labs set a cut-off level for opiates of 2,000 ng/ml in order to avoid the large number of false positive tests for opiates that were occurring at the previous cut-off level of 300 ng/ml because people had eaten bagels, cakes or other pastries with poppy seeds. (See Attachment C, number 1 (highlighted), Attachment E, number 1 (highlighted), Attachment F, number 1 (highlighted), Attachment G, number 1 (highlighted).) According to Kroll’s lab report, it still uses the old 300 ng/ml cut-off level which has not been appropriate for the past seven years.

SAMHSA further requires that even labs which use the 300 ng/ml level for forensic purposes use the same level (300 ng/ml) for confirmatory purposes. (See Attachment G, number 2 (highlighted).) Kroll also violates this SAMHSA requirement by using a confirmatory level of 150 ng/ml. Thus, the lab which performed the test that reported my positive test for morphine violates at least two of the SAMHSA current testing guidelines.

8) Many references I found indicate that, if laboratories use the incorrect cut-off levels for detecting morphine, ingesting even one or two pastries with poppy seeds can cause a false positive test. (See Attachment B, numbers 1 and 2 (highlighted), Attachment C, numbers 1 and 2 (highlighted), Attachment D, Attachment E, number 1 (highlighted), Attachment F, numbers 1 and 2 (highlighted), Attachment G, number 1 (highlighted).)

At some time in the past month, I did eat a poppy seed bagel for lunch from a restaurant near where I work. I also ate poppy seed cake provided by my employer at least once. On both occasions, I was not concerned about eating these pastries containing poppy seeds because I was aware (because of my previous work running a substance abuse treatment center and assisting in the establishment of tribal and non-tribal drug courts and jail-based treatment programs) that SAMHSA had changed its testing requirements regarding opiates. Since I now know that Kroll does not follow at least two of SAMHSA’s requirements for certified drug testing laboratories in testing for opiates, it is possible that my false positive test result is because I ate those pastries and because Kroll does not follow proper federal guidelines for opiate testing.

Unfortunately, Kroll did not report the levels of morphine that they picked up in my urine specimen on my lab report, either for the initial or the confirmatory tests, as they should have done. Since the level of morphine they detected would be important to know to determine whether they obtained a false positive (and to rule out the chance that they mistakenly reported a positive test when the levels of morphine that they detected did not even reach the improper and outdated detection levels that Kroll still uses), I would appreciate your contacting Kroll to ascertain what ng/ml levels they reported for my initial and confirmatory tests. (Their phone number is on the attached lab test report.) When you contact them about this recent drug test, I would appreciate it if you would also request the results of the confirmatory test they conducted on a urine specimen from me taken in October, 2005. Both my physician and my attorney are as interested in this information as I am.

Once again, I will provide you my recent lab results from my visit to Waverly-Belmont Health Clinic for possible liver or kidney problems as well as a letter from my physician regarding documentation of my allergy to morphine, codeine and similar drugs as soon as possible. I would be happy to answer questions on any of the above from you or anyone else to whom this memo is copied. Thank you for your review of this matter.
-----------------
And now for my second memo, written after I met with my PO, who informed me that my initial screening test for MORPHINE has tested above 1,100 ng/ml, with the confirmation test testing positive for MORPHINE only at around 170 ng/ml.

To quote Hunter S. Thompson, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
-------
Date: October 18, 2006

To: Roger Carrier, USPO
From: Bernie Ellis
Subject: Additional follow-up on my drug test

Thank you for agreeing to do some additional follow-up with Kroll Laboratories about my recent drug test. As we discussed yesterday, Kroll has told you that the initial (immunoassay) screen showed an opiate level of around 1,100 nanograms/milliliter (ng/ml), but the confirmatory test (gas chromatography/mass spectrometer (GC/MS)) showed only morphine at a level of 170 ng/ml, a level that would be consistent with my having eaten a poppy seed bagel. In order for this lab result to be accurate, we agreed that I would have to have had six or seven other separate opiates in my urine, all with ng/ml levels below 150 ng/ml, in order to reach the level reported in the initial screen and yet have only one opiate (morphine) above the cut-off level on the confirmatory screen. This makes no sense and suggests some problem with either the testing or the reporting of the initial test results.

Fortunately, the GC/MS confirmatory test should be able to identify the levels of any other opiates in my urine, even if they fell below the 150 ng/ml cut-off point. As I understand, you will check with Kroll to obtain the full GC/MS test result to determine if there were any other opiates in my system and at what level. It might also be good to have them re-check their initial test report to make sure it was not recorded or reported inaccurately.

If Kroll did not find any other opiates at any level in the GC/MS confirmatory test, then it is likely that the initial screen results were wrong or they were recorded incorrectly. If there were sufficient opiates in my urine to obtain the initial screening level they reported, all those opiates should have showed up in the GC/MS. If they found no other opiates in my urine and the morphine level reported for the GC/MS was accurate, then they should not have reported my urine specimen as positive because there were not enough opiates in my system to pass the initial threshold of 300ng/ml required for specimens to proceed to the confirmatory test.

After our conversation, I am more confident that the positive test report was a false positive, based both on faulty testing or reporting procedures and a low morphine level consistent with my having eaten a poppy seed bagel. As we discussed, I am allergic to these drugs and if I had ingested any of them (even accidentally), I would have had a serious and noticeable adverse reaction.

Thanks again for continuing to get to the bottom of this. I am reporting today to the Federal Courthouse during work hours for a urine test because you have reassigned me to Level 1 testing. If it is determined that the test results or the reporting was in error, I hope that I can return to being tested at Diersen, so my work schedule is not interrupted by having to report to the Federal Building during work hours each week for the Phase 1 testing. I look forward to hearing back from you.
----------
To date, I have heard nothing back from my PO, so I will write him again today to request the results of his follow-up with the lab which reported my “false positive” test. Then I will write the judge a letter, responding to my PO’s decision to report this nonsense to the judge. I know I should take all of this more seriously, but I can’t. I do appreciate the decision by “house” staff to drop the whole mess. It confirms my positive impressions of them. But I can only sit and ponder how often someone caught up in this Bureau of Prisons/U.S. Probation Office system gets accused of drug use when they have no medical history or access to the internet to defend themselves. Or to think what might have happened if I had received a “false positive” drug screen on any other drug besides one to which I am deathly allergic. Oh well, welcome to my world. And just in case we all end up being piss-tested in the near future (along with having our phones and emails tapped and our rights to confront our accusers and have our attorneys present during questioning), let me recommend that you drop bagels and poppy-seed cake from your dietary plans.

In closing: a little Dream-world news

Dare to dream – what a life-affirming concept. Since I am (by choice) not medicated with anything stronger than Tylenol PM these days (and certainly not by MORPHINE), I am enjoying an active dream-world life. It is a gentle, exciting, encouraging world that I live in when I am in my dreams. So to end this long epistle on some positive notes, here are my most recent (and most pleasant) dreams:

— I dreamed that I went back to my farm in the bright light and color of Tennessee hollow autumn to find my dogs waiting for me there, a bit thinner and grayer but no less happy to see me. My bed was as I left it, made up and piled with Miz Kelley’s quilts. The front porch was stacked with good firewood, ready for me to warm the house and fire up the sauna. And in my weed-choked garden, there were signs that my Higher Power (Mother Earth) was taking care of things in my absence. There, among the cockleburs, morning glories and young briars, sweet cherry tomatoes, green beans and hybrid gourds (a cross between birdhouse gourds and small pumpkins), purposefully planted last year but now volunteering another year’s bounty in my absence, had all crawled up my garden trellises, waiting there to feed and entertain anyone who might show up to keep watch over my home-place for me. A quiet visit, but all too short. And then, as I tried to drive away fast, begging my dogs not to follow, my path was blocked by a big flock of wild turkeys, unhurried and unafraid, their feathers reflecting copper, blue-black and brown back to me. Saying, with their looks and their leisurely stroll, “Stay a while, won’t you?” My quiet and wildly alive hollow home, my little piece of the Goddess, waiting for me there.

— I dreamed that I was allowed to spend time with my Nashville friends, those proud and concerned Americans worried (as I am) with the future of our nation, working to rescue us from the tendrils of unverifiable voting machines and election-stealing thieves. In my dream, I was proud and happy to see them all, to exchange greetings, hugs and news, to cement anew our common bonds, our love of country.

In that dream, I got to watch snippets of David Earnhardt’s exceptional documentary, “Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System”, based in part on our National Election Reform Conference held in Nashville in the early spring of 2005, five months after our White House was high-jacked again. The dream was filled with the voices of three high school angels, singing “We Shall Overcome” and “Let It Shine” in perfect harmony, framing the voices of young and old Black leaders reminding us what righteous struggle looks and sounds like. (You can share this dream with me. Just go to , go to “clips” and watch them. Then order the DVD – it’s the freedom-loving thing to do.) In that same dream, I also got to watch “The Right To Count” (by Richard Van Slyke) and “Stealing America: Vote by Vote” (by Dorothy Fadiman) in their entirety and to realize that our humble election integrity efforts here in the Orange State eighteen months ago had borne such poignant and powerful fruit.

In that dream, I also met Andrew Gumbel (the author of “Steal This Vote”) and heard him place our local efforts in the context of a national (even international) struggle for free, fair and verifiable elections. When Andrew held out his hand, I instead grabbed him and gave him a big hug, saying “This is how we do it in the South.” And then, in a later dream, to hear Andrew say (on public radio’s “Democracy Now”) that Tennessee voting rights activists “... have got it together ...”, that we know and understand the big picture and are working to make it better than it has become. Boy, did I wake up smiling from those dreams, though really wanting to know how those dreams will end.

— I dreamed that my gardens at the Turnip Truck now live on without me, that the summer tomatoes and corn have been replaced by broccoli, kale, kohlrabi and cabbage. That the small gardens there, though mostly untended, are still fed by the smiles of the workers and the customers of that east Nashville landmark, fueled by their memories of my hands in its dirt. And I dreamed that one of my last acts at the ‘Truck was to bring a bouquet of faded flowers from there to the “house”, rescued from the dumpster only to give them to a fellow inmate and a shy but proud father to take to his young daughter for their first face-to-face together time in years.

— I dreamed that my old “drinking and using” dreams had been replaced forever by the sweet and sober memories of my friends, the “friends of Bill”, who gather together daily in a Franklin church basement, saving a seat for me, one that (in my dream) I filled fleetingly and not too often on the way to my “approved trips” to the doctor and dentist.

— I dreamed that my hard and sweaty work in the west Nashville woods was balanced by access (early on) to a cold and refreshing swimming pool and (later) to the warm and fragrant waters of a jacuzzi at near sunset, cleansing me and gently molding my muscles back into their proper place.

I dreamed that I met one night with nurses and lawyers, patients and proselytizers, national and local leaders, to discuss working together to re-establish Tennessee’s medical marijuana program. To share my story and to hear theirs, to generate hope that our uncommon efforts might mean that the faint and infrequent smiles of the sick and dying in our state could someday no longer be illegal ones.

— And, finally, I dreamed that I visited my smiling now-brown-haired beauty unexpectedly one early fall morning, brought my own smiles and good news, shook her tow-haired son’s hand and stayed awhile as she fixed her boys’ sack lunches and shared her latest swing and sway, her latest star-turn story in front of more bright lights and bright eyes of her many new and old fans. To soak up her warm and lingering greeting and goodbye hugs, to hold on to them for just a little while.

Ah, what sweet dreams I have had, what warm and wonderful memories I hold on to that fuel them, what worlds co-exist, side-by-side, in both all y’all’s real world and in my dream-world. May we, and they, meet and meld together again soon.

Until next time, my waking and dream-world thoughts are with all of you. Work hard, play safe and don’t leave the driving (of our ship of state) to anyone else.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Previous | Next