Category Archives: redemption

Elsee Anne

I have always taken the summer off from blogging, but somehow this summer blurred into fall, and now we’ve had our first snowstorm in Minnesota, with nine inches of the white stuff.

Normally I would be consoling myself by planning a trip. Not this year. My pal Lynn invited me to join her and some other friends in Crete this past May, and that was cancelled thanks to Covid. She’s rebooked it for next May but I can’t work up the enthusiasm to start thinking about it. I did search airfares to Scotland for New Year’s—or Hogmanay as they call it. Fares are about the same as ever but a pop-up informed me that the UK “may impose restrictions on travelers from the US.” Yeah. Forget it.

On the home front, I continue to do contract work for several nongovernmental organizations. Every morning I scan for potential funding opportunities. Here are my Top 9 favorite funding opportunities:

Development of Solomon Islands National Saltwater Crocodile (Crocodylus Porosus) Management Plan and Harvest/Monitoring
Arkansas Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program
U.S. Mission to Turkmenistan: Developing Potential of the Women Entrepreneurs in Fashion Design
Addressing Sorcery Related Violence in Papua New Guinea
Magnetic Levitation Technology Deployment Program
Consultancy for Construction Supervision of Fecal Sludge in Ethiopia
Provision of Civil Works for Fixing a Tarpaulin
Department of Defense, Science of Atomic Vapors for New Technologies (SAVaNT)
Provision of Services for Collaborative Computational Deep Phenotyping of Irritability

I want to know what the US National Institute on Drug Abuse learns about that last one. I think we could all use some insights into the origins of irritability.

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I am also working a couple short shifts a week at the YMCA in the childcare center. The staffing and shifts have already been cut back since re-opening because, who wants to go to a gym and potentially expose themselves and their children to Covid? Actually, it’s so dead there that I don’t worry about catching Covid but I do worry about the YMCA going under and hundreds more people losing their jobs.

My “Friday Fundays” with my two step granddaughters has come to an end with the cold weather. They began calling it Friday Funday without any prompting, so I must be fun! I sure don’t feel fun most of the time. I’m so glad I got to spend the quality time with them outdoors, before Covid began to spike again.

Because …. The big news is that my son Vince and his wife Amanda had a baby girl a week ago! Now I will subject my readers to even more cute kid pictures. Vince turned 42 two days later. Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while, or who have read our book, will know how significant this is for him to go from prison to parenthood.

It’s even more of a big deal for me than for most new grandparents. I have two biological grandchildren I have never met and will likely never meet. I have two step grandchildren—I hate that term—and now I have a bio grandchild who is in my life but … Covid.

—Imagine, being totally oblivious to all the ills of the world. No regrets, no bills, no chores. No Covid, no global warming, no Trump.

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Maybe because I have had so many losses in my life, my brain generates worst-case-scenarios. They come unbidden when I least expect them, and now they involve Elsee. They are deeply distressing, so I am working on multiple fronts to stave them off. I am writing out my feelings and thoughts using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This 10-day Lovingkindness meditation challenge was very helpful. Jewish Family Service got Covid funding to provide three free mental health counseling sessions and I am taking advantage of that. You don’t have to be Jewish to tap into this resource, if you need a therapy “booster shot.”

For some reason I think “I should be doing better” but why? Logically, I know my brain is generating these scenarios in a misguided effort to cope with Covid and all the other distressing news of the day.

I hope you are doing okay!

Local Color

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I’m nearing the end of my Japan narrative. I returned from Japan in July. Obviously there’s so much to write about. Japan’s got it all—natural beauty, great food, art, cultural sites, and Tokyo Disney—in case you’d prefer to feel like you’re in Florida.

I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with my nephew, Charlie, and his little brother. I love kids. For many years I believed I would never be a grandmother. Vince was homeless, missing, incarcerated, or just not a great mating prospect. Even if he had had a child with someone, I figured he would recreate his own origin story, where he had zero contact with his paternal grandparents after age one. I’d be painfully cut off.

So when my younger brother had two kids, I was all in. And when you bond with kids from day one, it’s impossible to un-bond.

Then, to my relief and joy, Vince sobered up, got hitched and is dadding two young girls. I’m a grandma after all! They live over an hour away so that’s not easy, but I am a grandma. And a favorite aunt. And I work part-time at the YMCA childcare center. I have an abundance of kids in my life.

I have learned that love is not limited, it is exponential.

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A few nights ago I attended a meeting with some other Jewish Community Action volunteers and folks from other organizations with the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections. We were led into a large meeting room which contained two mock prison cells. This must be where they carry out training for correctional officers. I knew they weren’t real. I have never been locked in a prison cell. But I still felt a pang of panic and repulsion.

I sat with my back to the cells. For better or worse, there were two women at the meeting who have children in prison, and they kind of commandeered the agenda to make their cases to the commissioner for their children being released. I totally understood their frustration. Their calls and letters are never answered. This was their big chance to talk directly to the guy at the top. But I am very glad I am no longer in their shoes and am able to do my small part to better the lives of all prisoners, not just my kid.

I think my ability to feel freedom, gratitude, and joy is strong because I have lived so many sad experiences.

After the meeting, I huddled with the two moms and said, “Just be very careful and don’t get yourselves banned. It’s easy to lose your temper with these people. I was banned for six months from visiting my son because a correctional officer baited me and I rose to it.” They looked shocked and I could see them trying to calm themselves down.

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I also like to encourage everyone to explore their local sites of interest. You don’t have to go to Japan or the UK or Australia to find interesting stuff!

I came across this on one of my late-fall walks.

I had driven past the sign for the Ramsey County Poor Farm hundreds of times. It closed in 1923. Nearly 3,000 nameless souls who lived and worked here are buried in mass graves in this potters’ field.

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Another exciting field trip was to St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, where I joined my cousin for Thanksgiving. We drove past my aunt’s house, which was now sold and vacant. This was the scene at the house next door.

Yes, those are dead deer hanging up outside. I uttered a loud noise indicating disgust. My niece asked, “What’s the big deal? Haven’t you ever seen deer hanging before?” As a matter of fact I have, at Lynn’s place in Scotland. For some reason it seems to fit there, in the wilds of the highlands, but looks savage and out of place in suburban St. Croix Falls.

Our next stop was the fish hatchery, where I elicited groans of embarrassment from the nieces by saying too loudly, “The young guy feeding the fish is nice looking.”

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Speaking of fish, my next post will follow Charlie and me as we visit Shimoda Aquarium.

Thanksgiving and Housecleaning

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Happy Thanksgiving, to those of you who eat turkey today. Or tofurky.

Today I am grateful for my freedom. Of course I’m grateful for freedom of speech and other basic freedoms, but what I really mean is I’m grateful that I have choices.

I spent my first decades feeling trapped because I was broke and had no financial cushion. If I planned a little weekend road trip, then learned my car needed new brakes, the trip would have to be cancelled. I didn’t have an extra $250 or whatever those choices cost back then. I couldn’t get my brakes fixed and take a break.

Often, it wasn’t even a choice between a necessity and a “nice to have,” like a trip. I had to choose between paying my electric bill or my student loan installment. Or between buying a full tank of gas or five pounds of hamburger, which was cheaper per pound than buying one. If I chose the gas, then ramen would have to do.

It was especially hard during the long years it took for me to pay off my credit card debt. I had a chart on the wall on which I marked the amount I paid and the declining total. I had to have something visual in front of me or I wouldn’t have been able to stick to it. Things didn’t get any easier after the card was paid off, because now I had to buy things with real money, which was limited. But what a feeling of freedom.

Somewhere around the time I turned 35, I finally paid off the student loan I’d taken out when I was 20. That thing had been like an anvil I’d been carrying on my back.

Then, when I turned 40, I got my first job where I paid my bills and to my surprise, had a few hundred dollars left over. Wow! I’d like to say I socked it away in savings but I blew it all on clothes.

It’s been good ever since, with a few tight patches. As I’ve written before, I’ve mostly lived below my means and this has given me a lot of freedom and choices. And I’ve said it before but I am super grateful that I found a duplex where my rent, including internet, heat, and electric, totals $1,005.

I am aware and grateful that I was born in a time and place—and of a class and race—which made it possible for me to pull myself up by the bootstraps.

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I’ve been working on “financial hygiene” projects to get ready for my UK sojourn this winter. I’m not in the practice of recommending particular companies, but I just moved my checking and savings accounts to Capital One from my local community bank. I never thought I would leave my local bank for a global mega bank, but I didn’t want to pay foreign transaction fees or ATM fees and I was only earning about .002% interest on my savings. I don’t have a lot of money, so I strive to avoid fees and earn as much interest as possible.

It took me a year of procrastinating, but I switched from ATT to Total Wireless. My bill will be $27 a month instead of $53. I did the research and ordered a UK sim card, giffgaff, that’ll cost $13 a month.

I set up new and stronger passwords on my accounts and tested paying my rent using Zelle. I faced opening my car’s owner’s manual to figure out what the indicator lights on my dashboard meant—I needed new brakes!

A friend gave me a Chromecast device when he upgraded to something else and I figured out how to set it up—he’s a computer scientist and he was impressed! I will take it to the UK and use it there too.

I am going through 22 photo albums, scrap books, year books, and boxes of ephemera and mercilessly tossing out all the photos of landscapes that could be anywhere and ticket stubs for unremarkable performances. I hope to consolidate down to five albums.

I hate all these chores, but grateful I have the first-world freedom to tackle them.

Word of the Day: Death

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I got up this morning to find that one of three kittens I am fostering for the Humane Society was dead. It’s not uncommon for foster kittens to die. The mother cats are stray, barely adults themselves, emaciated and hungry, and/or diseased. It’s a cruel world.

Later today I will attend a funeral where Vince will give the eulogy for his best friend from prison. I don’t know how he died. He was only 34.

For those of you who are new to the blog, I began writing it with my son when he was in prison. As he transitioned from prison and addiction to a healthy, sober life, I was freed to write about fun things like travel.

I still try to contribute to efforts at reforming our US system of mass incarceration. This week I attended a meeting with the new Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

We were there to demand a moratorium on a practice called crimeless revocations. In Minnesota, out of the 10,000 men and women in prison, 24% are not there for committing a crime. That’s right; they are in prison because, after serving their sentence and being released, they missed a meeting with their parole agent or—most commonly—they relapsed and used drugs or alcohol.

So we lock them up, where they sit in prison for four to eight months. They do not receive drug or alcohol treatment or any other services because they are short-termers. They lose their jobs, their housing, and whatever fragile relationships they have started to rebuild on the outside.

The commissioner agreed that this practice is a waste of time, money, and lives. But he said he couldn’t stop doing it until he gets buy-in from all his people. We’ll meet with him again in a month.

Vince wasn’t sent back to prison, but he had all his privileges revoked because he didn’t answer when his parole agent called. He was doing community service work in a noisy warehouse at the time and didn’t hear his phone ring. For a month, he was not allowed to leave the house for anything but work. No AA, no socializing with family or his sober friends. No gym, no runs. None of the things that were going to keep him on an upward trajectory. It was his darkest month.

The prison system is designed to punish, not rehabilitate. One of the worst forms of punishment is to mess with people by setting unclear expectations, catching them on some minor infraction, and coming down on them like a sledgehammer.

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In Japan, as I’ve described already, I stood to one side and observed as worshipers approached the inner sanctum of a temple or shrine. In Tokyo, Nikko, Kyoto, Nara, and Koyasan, they bowed, clapped, threw coins into a donation box, and lighted incense or candles.

I’m not a believer, but I felt something, at times. Perhaps it was because I was mystified by what was taking place. Maybe I was moved by the sincerity of the worshipers, or the atmosphere.

Especially since my aunt died, and now that Vince’s friend has died, I would like to think there is the possibility of some lingering connection between the living and the dead.

Maybe I should turn the French curio cabinet I inherited from my aunt into a household shrine, complete with photos of ancestors and incense burners.

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Day Two in Tokyo. My sister-in-law’s father, Fred, is retired from a big Japanese company. He has been painting with a group of fellow retirees for years. If I understood correctly, companies support their retirees to participate in hobbies together. Fred is also in an essay-writing group. Today I managed to find the building in which his painting group was holding an exhibition; these are his works. He’s very talented.

I stopped first to get some pastries because that’s what people do in Japanese novels.

I’ve had eight hairstyles since I last saw Fred and Hiromi five years ago. But of course I’m white. He picked me out in the crowded building lobby, hugged me, and said, “Welcome, Anne-san!”

Happy Days

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I have some good news. Last week my son proposed to his girlfriend, and she said yes. Not that there was any doubt. It’s just the latest positive development in his life.

The reason I ever launched this blog was because, five years ago, he was in prison. In addition to the predictable emotions like despair, I felt relief that I now would know where his was, and deep shame. Counterintuitively, it made sense for me to write about it for all the world to read.

He entered prison a drug addled, bloated, overweight, broke, middle-aged chronic alcoholic. This was just the latest in a 20-year string of bouts with unemployment, homelessness, crime, and broken relationships.

It would have been easy for him to use drugs and alcohol inside, but Vince chose to be sober in prison. He also started writing alternate posts for this blog. They were heart breaking, hilarious, and articulate.

He made it through an intensive “boot camp” program, where he worked on self-discipline, attitudes, and thinking processes. He also started running, something he hated but continues to this day.

He came home a little over four years ago and moved in with me. That was rough. He dated a woman but it didn’t work out. He got a job in a laminating factory and moved in with a couple guys who were also trying—some successfully and some not—to stay sober. He started his own blog. He bought my beloved old Mini Cooper from me. He dated another woman but it didn’t work out.

Two years ago, he was offered a cook job at a country club on Lake Minnetonka. That’s where he laid eyes on Amanda for the first time, and it was love at first sight. He moved in with Amanda and her two young daughters. From the start, he has been all-in on parenting. He can now put “expert in potty training” on his resume.

One year ago he bought a house in the tiny town of Silver Lake. He traded the Mini for a minivan. He worked with me to publish the first year of this blog as a book. He applied for better jobs, and in the end was offered a great promotion at the country club.

The girls’ father is under a two-year no-contact order. Vince has supported Amanda as she has courageously fought to finalize her divorce, custody, and child support arrangements. Last month Vince and Amanda were awarded full custody. The three-year-old calls him daddy.

In court, Vince made a statement to the girls’ father—that if and when he gets his act together, Vince and Amanda will work with him to welcome him back into the girls’ lives. The guy thanked him. I was very proud of Vince. A lot of men wouldn’t have done that.

Here they are, at the country club where Amanda works, after the big proposal.

In June he’ll mark his five-year sobriety anniversary. They’ll be hitched in August.

All of this is to say that very few situations are ever hopeless. Similar to my own story, it didn’t happen overnight and it took a combination of working hard as hell and letting go. Vince has plugged away, working his program, trying new things, taking risks, sometimes failing, but mostly moving forward.

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In three weeks I’ll be in Japan. I still feel way behind on the planning. I created a Google docs spreadsheet to try to keep track of it all and it looks a mess. I’ve got six out of eight accommodations booked. I’ve got my JR Rail Pass in hand. I’m finally able to retain some place names from one day to the next.

Progress, not perfection. One of the AA slogans that is good to keep in mind whether one is an addict or not.

Last night as I was reading about Japanese baths again (I worry about the baths and the shared bathrooms), I was struck by how many iconic cultural traditions Japan has given to the world: origami, sumo, haiku, sushi, manga, anime, samurai, geisha, bonsai, and Zen. There are probably more. Is there another country that has created or adapted so many traditions that are recognized worldwide?

Showing Up

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Close to home, in real time, I attended a news conference at the state capitol about a bill that would restore the right to vote for 52,000 Minnesotans who have a prison record. That’s right—they’ve done their time, they are out, but they still can’t vote—sometimes for years.

I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go. It was first thing in the morning. It was cold. The parking would be a pain.

But I went, and as usual with these events I’m so glad I did. There were a dozen speakers. I was there with two other Jewish Community Action members, one of whom is an ex offender, and we stood in the back and listened.

The first speaker was a white guy around my age who I assumed—before he opened his mouth—was an elected official. He was wearing a suit. Turns out he is an ex offender who owns a business.

“I pay taxes—a lot of taxes,” he said. “Our country was founded on the idea of ‘no taxation without representation.’ I’m going to pay my business’s property taxes after this but I am not allowed to vote, even though I’m no longer inside.”

An African-American preacher spoke about redemption. The head of a nonprofit that helps violent offenders stop being violent spoke about how that’s possible. A member of the Republican Party’s Independent caucus talked about how this is an issue of freedom.

A fellow who looked like Andy Warhol moved to the podium and introduced himself as “your only State Representative with a prison record.” He had been an addict and was in jail for burglary when he was thrown into solitary confinement and decided to get clean. That was 43 years ago.

Both county attorneys spoke in favor of the bill. So did the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections. Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul told of speaking with a lifelong St. Paul resident in his office. The man said, “You all told me to reintegrate when I came home from prison. You said you wanted me to be part of the community again. But no one will rent me an apartment. No one will hire me, and I can’t even vote. I am shut out of my own community.”

The head of the coalition that’s sponsoring the bill said that one of the reasons it failed last year is the impression that all ex offenders will vote Democrat. Hey, that’s an easy 52,000 votes for Republicans to keep blocked. But 70% of ex offenders live outside of the cities, and rural and suburban voters tend to vote Republican.

There was mention of how African American, Latino, Native, and poor people are disproportionately represented among the prison population, and therefore the fact that they cannot vote is a new kind of Jim Crow.

Vince, my son, was unable to vote in 2016 even though he’d been out of prison for a year. I know he’s looking forward to voting in 2020.

There was mention that North Dakota has the same voting language in its constitution but it allows ex offenders to vote. North Dakota! Similar to how New Yorkers consider Minnesota flyover country populated only with farmers muttering Uff Dah, Minnesotans think of North Dakota as an empty Nowheresville, populated with a few range-roaming, gun-toting cowboys. For North Dakota to have a more forward-thinking policy was like a dare.

Ninety-five percent of JCA members live in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Our representatives are as liberal as we are, so they won’t need convincing to vote this bill up. There’s not much we can do except show up and be bodies at these events.

If you happen to be a Minnesotan who lives in a conservative district, and you “get” the need for this reform, please contact your representative and urge him or her to vote Yes on Restore the Vote.

The event made the evening news, at least on the one channel I watched, but it was overshadowed by much blather over the next impending snow storm.

Explorers, Convicts, and National Sorry Day

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Are you familiar with the Morrissey song, “Throwing My Arms Around Paris?” I hear it in my head sometimes when I am throwing myself out into a city—joyfully embracing as much as humanly possible in however much time I have. The actual song is a downer, obviously—it’s Morrissey after all, the miserablist. But I re-mix it in my head to be uplifting.

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I visited the RBG every day for three days. There’s that much to see and do, and it’s just a lovely, peaceful oasis in the middle of the big city.

On my first day I caught a walking tour. The morning was fresh from a night rain and the sun had not yet burned the heavy dew off the leaves.

My group included some Canadians, Melbournians, and Germans. The guide was giving her first tour and said she was nervous. She was still getting used to holding laminated photos of flowers and referring to them; they were upside down for her. She was doing her best but kept saying, “I’m not sure about that, I’ll have to check it later.”

She thought this astounding tree was from South Africa.

After 20 minutes I carved off into an inviting-looking dark path through thick trees. Have I mentioned I was enamored with the trees? I emerged to see this banyan with knobs drooping downward; they would become buttresses for the growing tree.

What I hadn’t expected to find in a garden were story lines about three important populations in Australia’s history—explorers, Aboriginals, and convicts.

There was a garden named for Daniel Solander, a Swede who sailed with Captain Cook on The Endeavor around the Pacific and collected 17,000 species of plants, 900 of them from Australia. Most of those were found around Botany Bay, just five miles from where I was standing.

He did this 70 years before Charles Darwin made his famous voyage on The Beagle. Solander didn’t live to read Darwin’s Origin of the Species; he died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage at age 49.

Next I crossed what appeared to be a dinky, unremarkable bridge over a tiny stream. But no! It was built over culvert of “high cultural significance” built by convicts in 1816 so the Governor’s wife could cross the stream in her carriage.

I turned around to find about 15 placards about Aboriginal history. I already knew about the 1967 vote in which white Australians decided to count Aboriginal people in the census for the first time. I guess it took that long for them to decide that Aboriginals were actual humans.

I didn’t know there had been a Freedom Ride in Australia in 1965, similar to the ones in the US about five years earlier.

I was pleased to see that one of the leaders had a Jewish name—Spigelman. When I Googled him I learned he had immigrated to Australia from Poland as a three-year old with his parents, who were Holocaust survivors. His parents are featured in the graphic novel about the Holocaust called Maus, by his American cousin Art Spiegelman.

Spiegelman was born in Sweden after the war. His five-year-old brother had been poisoned by their aunt, who then poisoned herself, in order to save them from being taken by the Nazis. It gets worse, believe it or not.

I have Maus sitting on my bookshelf. If everyone was required to read Maus, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, I wonder if we would ever have another war.

Spigelman went on to become an Australian Supreme Court Justice and patron of many humanitarian and arts causes including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

It’s no surprise that Jews are overrepresented in human rights causes. But why should it take something as horrific as surviving a Holocaust to motivate people?

Lastly, I was moved to tears to learn that Australia has a National Sorry Day, which “gives all Australians an opportunity to express their sorrow” about the stolen generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families “for their own good.”

Wow, who expected so much sad stuff in a botanical garden?

I hastened toward a more uplifting exhibit, about carnivorous plants.

Thank You

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In real time, Happy Thanksgiving, if you are American. Happy Thursday, if you are not. I have some news items to share at the end of this post.

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Day four in Australia. Day four?! It felt like I’d been here forever, in a good way.

We alighted from our bus for sunset viewing of Ularu. I walked around snapping photos of other tourist vehicles. I have spent many hours in these heavy-duty Toyotas in Kenya and Ethiopia.

There was this crazy sardine-mobile, some kind of motel on wheels. I’m all for budget accommodations, but this beat even the bunkhouse for the claustrophobia factor.

There was this dusty, Mad Max BMW motorcycle.

A group of barefoot Aboriginal women sat on the pavement selling paintings. I felt a sharp, uncomfortable contrast as Meg poured sparkling wine.

But then I was distracted by food. “This is kangaroo jerky,” she indicated, “this one’s emu pâté and this here’s croc dip.”

“The kangaroo is delicious!” I commented. “It’s like venison.”

Heidi didn’t touch it. “I can’t eat it. The kangaroo and the emu—they’re our national animals.”

“They’re animals that can only go forward,” explained Heidi. “Like our country, I reckon is the idea?”

“I guess I wouldn’t want to eat a bald eagle,” I replied. Well, all the more emu and kangaroo for me!

The members of our group began introducing ourselves. Trevor and Gwen had immigrated to Australia from Nottingham, England, 20 years ago. They were here with their 14-year-old daughter, Tiffany. Kris and Melanie, a young Swiss couple, never spoke unless spoken to, so I didn’t get to know them at all. Brenden and Stefanie were another young couple, from Canada. Johannes and Sandra were a middle-aged German couple who took elaborate tripod-assisted selfies of themselves jumping for joy in front of every landmark. Mia and Nora were also German; both were around 22 and they were student teachers in a German school in Melbourne. There was a Chinese couple—father and daughter? Lovers? They stood apart and avoided all eye contact. Another couple, Darren and Kylie, were also a May-December pair. They said their names and that they were from Melbourne, then also kept to themselves.

I spoke with James, a 30-something Korean guy who spoke confident but almost-impossible-to-understand English. He was an out-of-work cook from Adelaide, blowing all his savings on a last hurrah in Australia before going home to an uncertain future. He reminded me of Vince. Because he was a cook, but mostly because there was a soulfulness about him.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it doesn’t involve decorating the house inside and out, buying presents, or any Christmas/Hanuka dilemmas. You just eat a lot with your family or friends, then fall asleep in front of the TV watching The Hobbit for the millionth time.

Thanksgiving is about—as the name implies—giving thanks, and I have a lot to be grateful for this year. As I sit here at my writing desk and look out the window at the grey sky and freezing drizzle, I am grateful for a warm home. I am healthy. I have friends and family. I got to spend a month in Australia! I wish I was there now.

And, some big news: I quit my job last week. More on that later, but I already feel 10 years younger.

And another big development: Vince and I started this blog together four years ago. We just published the first year of the blog as an e-book. It chronicles his time in prison, his recovery, and my ride along with him.

Besides providing insight into why people turn out the way they are, we’ve been told by many readers that it’s just a good read, a page turner. So if you’re looking for something to binge read over the weekend, or holidays, consider buying a copy. Only $3.99!

Breaking Free: A Mother And Son Journey From Addiction, To Prison, To Redemption https://www.amazon.com/…/B…/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_AbI9Bb9K1SXQM

Please feel free to share this on social media, and thanks for reading—we know it can be difficult stuff but addiction and all its consequences, including imprisonment, are a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day.

Summer Summary

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Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s as good a time as any to re-start writing. I’ll join some friends at synagogue this morning, then have a free day. The weather is always beautiful on Rosh Hashanah, so I’ll spend as much time outside as possible, doing as little as possible, which is really hard for me.

It’s been three years since my son was released from prison. I saw him yesterday and reminded him, “When I called you the day before I picked you up, I asked if there was some food you’d like me to bring along for you. And without hesitation you said, ‘an avocado…or any fresh fruit or vegetable, really.’”

He laughed, remembering this. I had brought an avocado, and some oranges, and he wolfed them down. Then he had asked to stop at a MacDonald’s, and to buy a lottery ticket. I wasn’t happy about either of those but I bit my tongue. I did a lot of that in the months that followed, as we lived together in my tiny, dark flat over the winter. A couple times I lost my temper and screamed at some inanimate object. Vince would draw himself up to his full height, look at the floor, walk to his bedroom that doubled as a laundry room, and shut the door. It was a very long winter.

Vince now has four years of sobriety. He’s got a job at a country club with good pay and benefits like health insurance—for the first time in 20 years. He bought a house this spring. He has a girlfriend with two young children, and he is thriving at playing a father role.

It’s complicated. I love kids and I am cautiously forming attachments to these two cuties.

It’s been a great summer. As I’ve written over and over, I’m a big advocate of seeking adventure at home. Sure, I would love to travel nonstop, but that’s not in the budget.

This was Pola-Czesky Days, the annual festival in the tiny town where Vince lives. Small town parades consist of marching bands and floats featuring veterans, civic groups, politicians, and other towns’ princesses.

There was also a tractor pull, which I didn’t understand. It was basically just tractors roaring down the street over and over, making a lot of noise and belching out fumes.

As a life-long city person, this type of thing is more exotic to me than London or New York. I loved the classic cars.

Other summer doings: I won tickets to a St. Paul Saints minor league baseball game. They were playing Winnipeg. I don’t know why the Saints mascot is a pig, but hey, never pass up a photo opp with a mascot.

I went to Irish Festival, which always has great music and strange performances involving little girls wearing curly wigs, Irish dogs, and men in kilts hurling things and playing bagpipes. Then were the Christians at the gate. I already knew I was in trouble so their Good News wasn’t news to me.

I went to Wannigan Days in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, the highlight of which was human foosball. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good photo so you will just have to use your imagination.

There was a memorable happy hour at Lake Monster Brewery sponsored by Jewish Community Action, with which I am still doing my very small part on their campaigns to reduce mass incarceration and injustice against immigrants.

Inspired by the Great British Baking Show, for my nephew’s birthday I made a cake with layers of sponge and crème patisserie covered with whipped cream and fruit. It slid sideways in the car on the way to the party but it still tasted good.

I hung out in the backyard of my apartment, which is wild and secluded. I have come to love where I live, but then I love anywhere in summer.

My summer summary will have to be continued, as will an update on my Australia trip, which starts in two weeks.

Broken, now Free

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I thought it might be difficult to not write. After nearly 600 posts since September 2014—and many streaks of every-other-day posts, I pledged to (mostly) take the summer off from writing.

And it’s been great. I have no problem sleeping in instead of leaping out of bed at 5:30am to knock out 700 words.

But yesterday was a big milestone, something worth writing about. The reason I ever started this blog in the first place—my son going to prison—is gone. Yesterday, after spending half his time in prison and half on supervised release, my son’s sentence is over. Over! He wrote a post about it on his own blog, if you’d like to read it. I liked this line:

“I am free to roam about the country or world as I please. I am free to register to vote, and I will. I am free to drink alcohol, and I won’t. I am still not allowed to own a gun, and I don’t care.”

For me, the low point was the day I was ejected from Moose Lake prison without seeing Vince because I was wearing a “low-cut shirt.” Then I went off to the Middle East for work, where I got to hear stories of people being tortured in prison. When I came home, there was a letter waiting for me, informing me I was banned from stepping foot on any correctional facility property in Minnesota for six months.

Corrections employees have nearly complete discretion, and impunity, to do whatever they want. And so they do whatever they want.

I feel like I am walking out into the sunlight after several years under a cloud. I transitioned the blog to writing mostly about travel a while back, but I’ll still write about prison once in a while because … there are still 10s of thousands of people in prisons. I don’t just care about my son; I care about my whole community, my state, my country.

Sigh, my poor country. What a mess we are. It’s like a nightmare where we are all living on the Jerry Springer Show.

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I had never given a thought to prison, prisoners, or people whose loved ones are in prison. Why would I? Prisons are far away. You can’t go inside them without permission. Only bad people are in them, so why would you want to go inside, anyway? And if a single mom is on her own because her man is in prison, then she and her kids are probably better off, right?

Boy, has it been an eye opener. There are some bad people in prison, for sure. But mostly they’re regular people who messed up. Have you ever messed up? Of course you have. You just didn’t do something illegal, or you didn’t get caught.

I am grateful to my son for doing the hard work it took to change his life. He had been under arrest before. He had been homeless. I suspected he would die early due to liver failure or a car accident or a drug deal gone wrong.

Ironically, it was prison that set him free. He always says he needed to go to prison. So for all my idealistic fellow campaigners on prison reform, keep that in mind when you propose repurposing prisons into artists’ retreats or organic garden centers.

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I have made little progress planning for Australia, except to decide that I will limit myself to Australia and not attempt to also visit New Zealand, Fiji, Borneo, or Papua New Guinea.

Heidi and I spoke for over an hour yesterday on What’s App, and we agreed it’s crunch time. Time to figure out how we’ll get from Sydney to Melbourne, time to book flights to Tasmania and maybe a train ride to Alice Springs. Time to book accommodations in the Red Centre. The pressure is on.

And yet it is summer, and it’s Sunday. I think I’ll go sit in the garden and read the paper.