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One year, 4 months & 6 days in -- Staying positive

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1) Tickets will be available beginning Monday, March 19, for the April 25 “Save Bernie’s Farm” benefit at the historic Belcourt Theater in Nashville. I am so pleased to have Jonell Mosser and the Mike Henderson Band as the lynchpins for the benefit and I am also thankful that several other musicians are considering participating in this evening of music and mobilization. The benefit will be broadcast in its entirety (all 3+ hours) on WRFN (Radio Free Nashville), on the air ( 98.9 FM) and on the internet (www.radiofreenashville.org). We expect a number of important speakers to join us for the evening, and we are working to generate considerable publicity for the medical marijuana issue on this day. (We also hope to brief the state legislature and conduct a seminar at Vanderbilt on the same day.) There will also be another benefit out in my neck of the woods on Saturday, April 21, at the N.O. Potts auction barn on Highway 7 above Fly. We expect three popular bluegrass, country and Americana bands to perform there.

Tickets for the April 25 benefit (priced at $100, $45 and $20) are available by calling 615/856-3150 or by going on-line to www.belcourt.org. If you can’t make the benefit but would like to purchase tickets for us to help us bring state legislators and hospice patients to the show, you can purchase tickets and reserve them in my name. I am very excited by the many warm hearts who are helping with this effort and I hope you can be there or be involved in some way. As we have more information to share, I will be back in touch.

2) After two passes home to clean my house and prepare to move home on May 10, I realize that there is no way I can have the home place cleaned up enough to welcome company on May 12, my initial date for a coming home party. So I am switching the date to May 19. I hope all of you can come. For those of you coming from a far distance, bring your camping gear and stay a while. It will be nice to sleep around friends and not just fellow felons for the first time in a long while.
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Good evening, all. It is redbud winter here in middle Tennessee, a cold, damp evening that caused me to return to the “house” two hours early, and on a Saturday to boot. But the day has gone well, good work in the country this morning when the sun was still bright and I was still in shorts, then another excellent 12-STEP meeting in Franklin, then the sounds of free speech in song this afternoon that reminded me where I live (or used to). So it was easy to return early, out of the cold, damp but budding early spring and into the noise, light and warmth of the “house”. Lots to be thankful for, but mainly thanks for you.

Today was the first time that I mentioned in my 12-STEP meeting how much time I have left here (around seven weeks, but who’s really counting). I have tried very hard to avoid that countdown process, because I have witnessed just how squirrelly that makes people here. By continuing to think about what has come before, rather than what is left, each day, each week remains just another foot in front of the other, a process, a journey.

I realize how much my writings over the past several months have focused on the positive, on the Joy that all of you have brought into my life by your presence, your heart and your voices. It has been a good place to dwell – in the land of the positive, the land of the possible, the land of the promises. It is where I hope to continue to live once I leave this place behind. At the same time, if I can live like I’ve been taught to walk, I don’t want to regret this time when it is in the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Here’s hoping the same for all of you.

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