Tag Archives: alternatives to prison

Geographic Cure, Denied

We’re having a long, warm, sunny autumn here in St. Paul. I get outside as much as possible. I hike along the Mississippi River or go to a park and sit in my car with the sun on my face while I read or do a crossword puzzle. I even went camping in the middle of the week.

Well, it was cabin camping. A heated cabin with electricity. I went for a long hike along the St. Croix River then made a roaring fire outside the cabin. I drank some wine and read a book. It was soooo quiet. Lovely. It was just what I needed, but now it seems like a year ago.

I love being outdoors and I love to travel, but I am also a homebody. I’ve been trying to not be home as much as possible because things are tense. Sharing 800 square feet would be tough with anyone, but I am living with my grown son. No grown man wants to live with his parents.

And my grown son is newly released from prison and negotiating all sorts of challenges, like maintaining sobriety in the land of 10,000 liquor stores and bars. His time outside the condo is very limited and must be pre-approved. The probation agents have not come to the house lately, unless they’ve come in the middle of the night and I didn’t hear them. Apparently they are now showing up at his workplace and making him take urinalysis tests there.

He is working full time, volunteering, cooking, getting out into nature and exercising, and going to AA. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t ask me for much. I thought things were going relatively well.

When there is something I don’t like, I’ve been direct—asking him to take off his shoes when he comes home, for instance. He always says okay.

He’s been mostly silent for weeks. It’s uncomfortable, but I figured he was going through lots of changes and it wasn’t about me. I figured if he had something to say he would say it. Then I discovered that he had said it, just not to me. Ouch.

I want him to have his say. I want him to speak up. This morning he took me to task for making noise in the kitchen while he was sleeping. His bedroom is on the other side of the wall from the garbage disposal…I got defensive at first, then apologized. I’m glad he said it to me, not to the spectators in the arena that is the blogosphere.

—

I interviewed for a job in London three weeks ago. Typical for a nonprofit, they wanted someone who could do at least three jobs in one. They wanted a researcher, a relationship/sales manager, a writer/editor, a trainer, and a budget/finance person all in one. Ideally, there would be a division of labor by people who are suited to and strong in different skill sets.

It was 10 days until I found out I didn’t get it, but it was 10 days of daydreaming. It was like having a “Move to London” lottery ticket in my pocket. I researched where the office was and looked at flats on Craig’s List. I mentally packed two large suitcases with everything I would need. Vince would, of course, stay behind in the condo and have all 800 feet to himself. We would get along great again, once I was 4,000 miles away. I would use every vacation day to travel, travel, travel. London would be such a great base! It would be so much easier to get to my long-haul bucket list destinations, like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, and all of Southeast Asia. Oh yes, and the job…of course the people would be easy to get along with and they would love my work and it would be cosmically fulfilling. Then after 3-5 years I would come home and semi-retire, just as Vince was getting married and wanting to buy his own place.

Yep, I had it all figured out. I probably dodged a bullet. But now what?

Jew Be a Verb

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ANNE

A story line throughout the third season of Orange is the New Black is the character Cindy’s conversion to Judaism.

The corporation that runs the prison is cutting costs by purchasing brown, lumpy slop in giant bags that they pass off as food. One prisoner figures out that the frozen kosher meals are pretty good, and soon a group of prisoners are claiming to be Jewesses in order to eat kosher.

When the prison notices the uptick in kosher requests, it sends in a rabbi to suss out who is a genuine Jew. Cindy, who is Black, begins to read up on Judaism. At first she just wants to pass so she can keep eating kosher. But then something grabs her, and as she studies she becomes serious about converting to Judaism, and well, this is one of the few happy endings in the series. It wouldn’t be a happy ending to born again Christians, and we Jews aren’t in to converting people, but I am moved when anyone finds meaning.

I heard in this scene many of the same things that led me to Judaism. Like Cindy, I was raised in a faith in which pretty much Everything was A Sin, and fear and guilt ruled the day. You didn’t ask questions, you did what you were told by the men who ran the show, some of whom were molesting your friends. If you sinned, you went to this same man to ask forgiveness and it was granted by him and after I mumbled three Hail Marys.

—

I think there’s a perception that Judasim is just like Christianity, except without Jesus. It’s not.

In liberal Judaism, which includes the vast majority of Jews in the world, there is no hell and little emphasis on sin. The idea is to do the right thing today, because it’s the right thing—not to avoid hell. If you screw up, it’s your responsibility to make amends to whoever you have hurt and to make your peace with God, if you even believe in god, because a lot of Jews are atheists. Confused? Well in Judaism it’s your responsibility to study, ask questions, and wrestle with all the big issues to figure out what makes sense for you. No one tells you what to think or do. Rabbis, who include women and gays and lesbians, are teachers and have no authority to forgive you.

Judaism doesn’t prosthelytize. We don’t care if you agree with us or not; we don’t care if you are a Christian or a Buddhist or a pagan. Just don’t try to convert us, thanks.

Instead of using the word charity, we talk about justice. It’s not an option, and it’s not about writing a check. It’s about doing, fighting, and pursuing justice. These principles are one reason why I’ve been able to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from all sides.

Of course there are plenty of Lutherans and Catholics and pagans and agnostics who are also motivated by social justice.

There’s more, but like Cindy, the main thing that attracted me to Judasim was an inexplicably strong feeling of recognition. Like Cindy said, “I feel like I found my people.”

After I had studied for several years with a Rabbi and a group of fellow seekers and yes, learned elemental Hebrew, I converted—which is a five-minute ceremony. My mother attended the Friday night service in which this took place. Just before we left for synagogue, she said, “I guess it makes sense, you converting to Judaism, since your father’s family was Jewish.”

What!? She had known I was studying all along. She didn’t have any details, and since my dad died 47 years ago and we’re not close to his family, and I have no time or patience for family tree research, it will just remain a question mark.

When I told a rabbi this story once, she said that she hears stories like this often, and that there is a theory that all the Jewish souls lost in the Holocaust have sought refuge in the people who are converting, whether they’re in prison (Cindy) or are unwed teenage moms living in subsidized housing (me, nearly 40 years ago).

A Break from Breaking Free

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ANNE

Vince says he’s hit a wall with the blogging, and I need more than 10 minutes notice to come up with new material. After over a year of blogging and nearly 200 posts, I’d say we’ve earned a break.

We’ll be back. If you haven’t yet binge read the thing from the beginning, start here and click on the right-pointing arrow at the bottom of each post to proceed. Feel free to share with others, and thanks for reading.

Camp Heartland

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VINCE

Three weeks before I left prison I went out on my last Restorative Justice program. R.J. is generally the only time we left the compound. Once per week, nine of the 17 in my squad got excited about going out into the community to help those in need. We’ve done everything from cleaning windows in a nursing home, to removing concrete by hand, to shoveling shit after a county fair. So naturally when It was my turn to leave, I was looking forward to a good day. Well I got what I asked for. We packed all of our gear and headed out to Camp Heartland in Willow River.

It is a very beautiful campground. I didn’t know anything about the place until I got there. We piled out of the van and lined up and stood at attention and received our orders for the day. It’s almost always some sort of cleaning detail and that is exactly what the plan was for that day. Then an employee told us who goes there, and why. Originally it was set up as a retreat for children with H.I.V. Now it’s for any child with a life threatening illness. We were given a brief tour in which he pointed out the cabins we would be cleaning. They were small but functional and full of dead and living creepy crawly insects. Nearly all of the beds had a ‘waterproof’ sheet which startled me a little because there’s really only one thing you need that for. Enough said. At that point we gathered our supplies and got to work.

After a couple cabins, the officer in charge came and got me and said there was a project inside I could do, so I followed him in and I ended up cleaning a huge sort of room with a stage, costumes everywhere, and lots of muddy footprints. To back up a little, on the way down to the basement, covering the walls from top to bottom were drawings and kids’ names and dates when they were there. There were thousands of them, and later I would find even more outside. I kept looking at the walls as I cleaned, and I started to notice other things about them. And that’s when shit got real. Next to or on the paintings themselves were little white crosses and dates. I realized what it meant, and I couldn’t believe how many there were. I decided to take a little break and wander around and I just kept seeing more names, more dates. I felt emotion for the first time in a while. I couldn’t believe that all of those kids had been here and left not knowing if they would ever make it back.

It was then that I really felt guilty about how much of my life I had wasted when these kids were dying off left and right. How could it possibly be fair that I was out dealing drugs and being completely irresponsible in every situation and never got killed along the way while these kids were literally fighting for their lives? I took some time to read a lot of the writings on the wall. Every one of them was positive about their situation; little kids who truly appreciated whatever time they were with us in this world. It is even making me a little misty-eyed as I type this. I don’t ever pray, and I don’t believe in God, but right there, right then, I said my version of a prayer in my head the words of which only myself and they will ever hear. I continued to clean.

For over five months I had been eating only prison food which sounds and tastes exactly like prison food. That day, the employees that were there (there were no kids there when we went) cooked up a feast for us. All things we hadn’t seen since our sentencing. We sat around a table and for the first time in years I sat at a table with people and ate. I ate three brownies for dessert after eating as many fresh vegetables, slices of garlic bread, and I’m drawing a blank on the rest of it but it was amazing, and we all felt like humans that day.

As we were leaving, I saw even more names. These ones engraved in the sidewalk that circled a water fountain. All of the had two dates, and I had to walk away after I saw the name of a four year old that had died the day before his birthday. I can’t waste any more of my life, it’s just not fair to them.

If you ever are looking for a good organization to donate to, I recommend Camp Heartland. Let them show these kids some fun before they leave us way too soon.

BeFUDdled

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ANNE

I am writing this on Sunday to post on Monday, which is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I will go to early services, then spend much of the day outside. I love the High Holidays because, for one thing, the weather is always beautiful—crisp and cool, with the leaves starting to change colors and the sky intensely blue. Even though I no longer believe in god, I feel it’s important to participate in community, so I go to services. Now there’s a new prayer book for my stream of Judaism, Reform Judaism, that acknowledges many people’s disbelief. I don’t know if the synagogue I’m going to has it yet, but I look forward to buying a copy. I think that’ll make me feel more “legitimate” walking in the door.

In the evening some friends will come over for dinner. Vince is looking forward to making a real hearty, holiday meal.

—

Vince has been home for five days. There was so little information available ahead of time that I didn’t clock on to the fact that he’s on house arrest. I don’t know the difference between probation and parole but I thought he’d be on one or the other and would be able to come and go as he pleased, as long as he was doing constructive things like job hunting or going to AA meetings.

But no, he is confined to the house 24/7 except for job hunting from 9-2 Monday through Friday and other things he has to clear with the agents. So for instance he proposed an AA meeting on Saturday night and that was approved but he hadn’t researched how far away the meeting would be or, more important, that there was a meeting at that time—which there isn’t. So he’s looking forward to fine-tuning his schedule.

Yesterday he had a two-hour window approved to go shopping. I thought he would enjoy the farmers market, with all the colors, choices, and people watching. Not to mention, it’s cheap. I dropped him off with some reusable shopping bags and went to park the car. These are the bags.

A few minutes later I got a text from him:

I don’t like it here. There are no instructions. And I’m the only one with purses.

These are the “purses,” aka shopping bags. Do they look gay?

He was overwhelmed. I joined him and explained that everything was “two dallah.” We consulted our list for the holiday dinner and he seemed to relax into the experience. Then we went into the adjacent Asian market, which was even more crowded and full of the smells of live fish. He got a kick out of some of the items:

Last stop, Aldi, also crowded. I am normally a very slow and deliberate shopper but even I was sick of the shopping crowds, so we threw a bunch of stuff in the cart and got back to the house with time to spare.

—

It is definitely a big adjustment for me to live with someone. The condo is 825 square feet, not large by American standards.

This morning we both got up and out of the house at 7:30 am for exercise. He ran, I walked. I stopped in at the nearby YWCA to get membership info and picked up a scholarship form for Vince. I gave it to him when I got home and won’t ask him every day, “Did you fill out that form?” It’s none of my business.

On the other hand, when I walked into the bathroom and saw some clothing tags next to the wastebasket instead of inside it, that was my business.

“Vince, what would they have done at boot camp if you’d thrown trash on the floor next to the wastebasket?”

“Ah, someone would have picked up after me,” he joked. I think he was joking. Anyway, the tags were gone next time I looked. No drama.

So that’s all I have to do for a year—know when to say something and when to bite my tongue. So far there has been no yelling, eye rolling, sighing, or crying.

A great day for freedom

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VINCE

It’s good to be home. After 15 months of incarceration, I’m finally able to type my own words. The first few days have been fairly uneventful. I’ve mostly been relaxing, healing, and setting up my schedule for this week. I took the train down a good portion of University Avenue and back. There were a lot of people everywhere. it’s overwhelming. But I survived. I have a few more posts coming from my last few days in Willow River. Then it’s on to the next phase of my life. Thank you to all our followers, I hope it has been helpful and entertaining at the very least. Here’s the last few posts from prison.

8-2-15 On day two, our first full day of boot camp, we had our initial weigh-in. I had arrived in St. Cloud at an alarming 216 pounds. I did a little better when i got to Moose Lake at 201, with a body-fat percentage of 14.4%. Today we had our final weigh-in. When I saw the numbers appear, I was shocked. 173 pounds and 9.5% body-fat. I succeeded in both of my fitness goals! Then we ran our test-out mile. My entrance mile was 11:14. I shaved off four and a half minutes. One mile in 6:45. I was breathless after i ran but it still felt good.

I feel good about myself in so many ways. I am so ready to get out of here.

OK, that’s all for now. Typing is very frustrating for me. I need to work on that.

Out

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ANNE

I pride myself on being highly organized, but I lost the letter Vince had sent me that outlined the schedule for the day of his release. I called the facility and asked what time I needed to be there. The guy I talked to was very nice, and said Vince was a “great kid” and a “known agate collector.” It was my first positive interaction with the corrections system.

I found out later that Vince received a demerit because I made this call.

—

I left the house at 7:30 am to drive up to the little town of Willow River, population 403 plus 142 inmates at the correctional facility. Here are some photos of Willow River:

I had dug out a long-sleeved, high-necked shirt from my winter clothes so there would be no chance I could get either of us in trouble. After all, this would be their last chance to fuck with me in person. But when I arrived at the facility half the women there for the release of their loved ones were wearing plunging cleavage and skin-tight tights.

We were shown into a gymnasium with a long row of empty chairs in the front facing us. The warden or whoever she was made a short speech, then the two graduating squads marched in. The first one was led by a guy who could be a real competitor on American Idol. There were no cameras or cell phones allowed, which is too bad because he was really impressive. He lead Hotel Squad—17 guys—into the room, belting out the boot camp slogans in an old timey, spiritual sort of call and response.

Then it was Vince’s squad’s turn—India Squad. He had told me that someone else had been chosen to lead them out, but there was Vince doing it! I’m still not clear on what happened to the other guy. And while Vince wouldn’t make it to the finals on American Idol, I was very moved that he was the leader of his squad.

There were various speeches by the head of the chemical dependency and education programs, which no one could hear because of the crying and otherwise-noisy kids in the room. Then each prisoner stood up and stated the length of his original term (between 48 and 100 months), what he had learned (patience was the one I recall hearing most often), and who he had to thank for helping him make it through.

All the guys thanked their families and the boot camp staff. One guy thanked The Lord. Vince mentioned the boot camp counselors by name but didn’t mention me or anyone else outside of the program.

I knew in that moment I needed to:

get myself back to Alanon; and
schedule some weekends away, by myself.

—

An hour later, we were on the road back to St. Paul. It’s no exaggeration that Vince was released with only the clothes on his back, a folder full of papers, and one month worth of medication for his Restless Legs Syndrome.

He asked to stop at a gas station. “The first thing every one of us guys wants to do is play scratch off tickets,” he said.

“I guess it’s better than buying meth,” I said. “And I saw a billboard for gambling addictions on the way up so you know that help is available.” He laughed.

Twice during the graduation ceremony, they had said that this second phase of boot camp–house arrest–would be harder than incarceration. That’ll be true for me, too. My first challenge is, now that I’ve made clear my low opinion of gambling, to let it go. I have a right to state my opinion—once. Saying it over and over would be an attempt to control and manipulate.

More on the day later, but here are some photos of Vince shopping at Walmart.

The End. The Beginning.

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VINCE

Everything seems to be falling into place. Maybe not in the order I want it to, but aligning nonetheless. I volunteered to be one of the two in-house facilitators of the AA meeting, in addition to the NA meeting. It’s been a while since I lead a meeting but it is something I enjoy and have a lot of experience doing. It’s all about service work. Starting it here will not only make me look good with my case worker but makes me feel good inside.

—

I’m sitting in study hall, nice and quiet, when a man starts banging loudly on a table, starts crying, and leaves the room. I finally saw somebody snap. That’s the only explanation. He’s been here as long as I have, I hope they don’t kick him out. He’s a good guy, but this place can make you revisit some pretty bad places in your head.

—

What a day. Restorative Justice has a way of making me feel good, even with seven oozing blisters on my hands from shoveling tons of wet sand.

After breakfast (which is after aerobics), nine of us donned our reflective vests and hopped in the van, trailer in tow, and headed for Hinkley. We love riding in the van. And we were treated to a 40-minute trip. We were told we would be working hard, and that we were going to work on a house for Habitat for Humanity. Both statements were true.

Essentially we dug a four foot moat around the 30’ x 60’ house, two feet deep, four feet wide. Then we put blue Styrofoam insulation down to guard against frost. Then, after three hours of shoveling the sand out, we shoveled it back in. Ugh.

In the middle of the operation, I did get a side job of varnishing six wooden doors. That’s something I have some experience with and enjoy and, well, it’s way easier. But I still ended my day with load after load on the scoop shovel. Each scoop no less than 50 pounds. Our uniforms were destroyed. We were bleeding. We were hungry and tired.

And after all of that, the man in charge gave us a tour of the house and said it was being built for a single mother of three who had been working for five years taking care of mentally and physically disabled adults, but couldn’t make ends meet and was now homeless. A tear came to his eye when he thanked us for our work. There may have been some tears in our eyes too, or maybe I just had some sand in my eyes.

He told us how generous Wells Fargo was to donate the property. 3M paid HFH for the opportunity to have volunteers come and insulate the entire house. Whirlpool donates appliances to every—every HFH house. And an un-named source donates the highest quality and efficient furnaces, water heaters, and air conditioners. And countless people donate their time in any way they can.

For their house, the soon-to-be-owner must put in 260 hours of her own time on the house, put $100 down, and pay a mortgage of $300 a month, interest free.

Yeah, I feel good because I worked hard for somebody who is in need. I’d like to do more things like that when I get out.

[ANNE: This will be Vince’s last post from inside prison because … he is being released today! As you read this, I will be in Willow River watching his graduation ceremony. Then he will walk out the door, with the clothes on his back and about $300. I will have an avocado in the car for him. We’ll drive straight to a 1:30 pm appointment in St. Paul with his ISR agent. Then I will bring him home. I got the landline phone, as required. Thanks to friends pitching in, I’ve got a bed for him and toiletries and some books and a few clothes that won’t make him stand out as an ex con. I am so excited. So happy. We’ll post a report on how it went, with photos, next time.]

Froggie Went a Courtin’

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VINCE

I just came back from a lawn mowing where I took the life of an innocent frog. It was a cold-blooded murder in the most literal sense. Wait. Are frogs cold blooded? Hmm. I may be wrong but it sounded funny in my head.

I don’t like to kill things, so I felt bad for a few minutes. I didn’t do it on purpose, but when his (her?) severed head was staring into my eyes, I could still see life and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Now that I’ve written about it, I can let it go.

I once killed a deer, for meat, and I once killed a deer with a Pontiac Sunfire. Oh, and some squirrels, which I also ate.

—

After months of no formal discipline, I got an intervention today. That is my sixth in five months, not bad. The guy with the most discipline in my squad has 21 and three Learning Experiences (LEs).

An intervention is basically a military gig, not a rehab intervention like you might see on TV. Mine was for not sleeping under one of my two sheets. It’s very petty. If I do it two more times which I won’t, I will get an LE.

—

I redeemed myself today for killing the frog. I saw him/her just in time while I was pushing the Frog Killer 2000 over the grass, and helped him along into the garden. Oh, yea, there were two of them. So if I ever kill another frog, I’m even.

—

We’ve been working lately in CD on the “ripple effect” of our crimes. Well, most of us have. The guy who shot at somebody several times but missed still claims his offense has no victim.

I never denied that selling drugs hurt society, people’s lives, families, and of course the children. I’m sure the money given to me for meth could have been better spent on food, clothing, and shelter.

My criminality has affected my family as well. I didn’t directly try to bring harm to them, other than stealing some money from My Mom years ago, and borrowing money more recently without, so far, paying it back. But I see my Mother, now in her 50s, still beautiful, energetic, kind, and unbelievably patient, without a husband, and I wonder if I am indirectly or directly responsible. Is that where the shame took hold? Am I such a black sheep that she didn’t even bother?

She’s had boyfriends over the years but they didn’t stick. I see myself in the same boat. 37 with no wife and kids, no girlfriend waiting for me out there. Maybe together, we emit a powerful toxic odor that that repels potential mates. Hmm…I hope not.

The point is, even if I am not responsible for her mating habits, I am seeing that my choices affect more than just me. And it can ripple a long way out. I’m not just staying clean for me, I’m doing it for the whole pond.

[ANNE: My heart sank when I read this. Vince is in no way responsible for me being one of the 7% of American women my age who have never married. Take out the lesbian women who couldn’t marry, and I am part of a really small club. I always wanted to get married. I assumed I would. I wrote a blog post about dating years ago that demonstrates the effort I put into finding a mate.

Like a lot of things, it’s complicated. I wasted my 20s and 30s—the years when most people marry—on Kermit and other alcoholics, abusers, and just plain jerks. Then I took a break from dating to figure out how to stop doing that. Then came Vince’s lost year, when I was too distraught to think of anything else. Then, the older you are, the harder it is to meet people. So it was a combo of bad choices, bad timing, bad luck and yes, Vince was a factor but far from the only one. Being single is far from the worst fate, so now I claim my spinsterhood as if it was my plan all along.]

An Exception to the Rule

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VINCE

I remember working at the Kemps Ice Cream plant in Rochester for roughly a year. Possibly significantly more or less, I have no idea.

I worked in the wrapper room. Seven lines of different flavors, brands, and styles would come through a Plexiglas wall from the production line and into one of the various machines to be individually wrapped, then bundled in four or six packs, then shrink-wrapped together before going into the deep freeze for several hours.

I worked a machine called an Amerio. Sort of a recycling freezer. 31 levels high, the ice cream would be pushed in from the front and out the back came the now frozen bricks onto a conveyer belt that flowed down to a separate room for wrapping.

I worked with a guy I’ll call Bill. Often we worked 12 hour shifts in the summer time. We got to know each other pretty well. We joked around a lot, had some serious conversations, and once we even went out for a beer (just after I had started drinking again after five years sober).

Very shortly after that I lost my job and never saw or talked to him again.

Years later, while looking at the Olmsted County Sherriff’s Office In Custody roster online, looking for anybody I knew in the meth world, I saw his name. Just below his name was a charge that even criminals despise.

It turns out Bill had a fairly long standing relationship with a 12 year old girl. The police had letters he had written to her, and her to him, describing, in too much detail, their love.

I sit here now and am a little upset that I ever spoke to him, not that I knew anything about it. I would like to write a lot more about it but I can’t. I will someday, when my mail won’t be read before it’s sent out.

—

I had a one-on-one with my CD counselor just a moment ago. We talked for a half hour about my worries and wants and my thoughts about employment upon release. His advice, go out and live life. He said he had full confidence that I would be good at being sober, but he wanted me to go out and be a good person.

Then he threw me a curve-ball. He thought I could make a great CD counselor within five years, by which time I would have gotten my Bachelor’s in Social Work and then on to a LADC or something like that. I tend to daydream and space out a lot even if they are really important. But he made me feel like I was really capable of doing something with my life, even if it takes a while. So, I have that going for me.

—

Today our squad had our re-entries. What’s that? Where we go into a room and one by one we talk to our CD counselor and case manager. It’s really scary for the people that have not been doing any hard work. All my counselor said to my caseworker was, “He’s doing exceptional work, and he facilitates the NA meeting on Friday nights. No worries.” She smiled (nobody has seen her smile) and told me I was also the exception to the rule on her end. I have been approved to move to St. Paul upon my release! No more worries. I was the only one in my squad to be approved so far.

[ANNE: I felt nervous when I read that last paragraph. I say I’m not superstitious but I am a Midwesterner, and we have superstitions that go like this: 1) “Never saying anything good about yourself because you’ll sound like a braggart, and everyone will look askance at you but not say anything” or 2) “Never say anything optimistic because that will immediately bring back luck down on you.” Or was it that I’ve known a lot of addicts and alcoholics, and they tend to be Janus faced in many ways—in this case grandiose today and ripping themselves to shreds the next? In know!—I think I’ll just be proud of how well he’s doing.]