MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM CHARLIE and LIBBY NORMAN

 

12-20-2021

Holidays, especially Christmas, have always been hard on both prisoners and their families. Many prisoners don't have surviving families or friends, and these times are even more difficult for them. I am blessed with family and dear friends who have stayed beside me for decades, and I am grateful to God for their love, which sustains me.

This past weekend, December 18th and 19th, I received the best gifts—besides freedom—that I could get in prison. On Saturday, my brother, Danny Norman, niece Tammy Norman, and aunt Alice Walker came from Tampa to spend the day with me. Tammy was five years old when I was imprisoned, and has spent her entire life visiting me inside the razor wire.

You can have a good time in prison, and the hours we spent together reminiscing and laughing did my soul good.

On Sunday my dear wife Libby drove from Jacksonville to spend a few precious hours with me. I've written about feeding the flocks of birds that hang around the Lake C. I. marshes, and Sunday we had a memorable time with the sandhill cranes. There is an outdoor visitors' pavilion with chain link fencing enclosing it that the birds can approach, with the visitors inside and the birds free to come and go. That's where we headed.

When we walked out of the inside visiting area down the ramp toward the pavilion, we heard the most raucously-loud crane screeches echoing from the surrounding buildings. I couldn't believe how piercing were the crane calls.

A pair of cranes peered into the pavilion, still screeching. One prisoner seated at a nearby table with his frequent visitor said, "Mr. Norman, they're calling for you to feed them."

And so they were.

Libby tossed a few corn chips through the fencing onto the close-cropped lawn, and both birds immediately pecked at them. No more screeching. Suddenly a flock of several dozen sharp-eyed white ibises flew in, followed by a pair of prehistoric-looking wood storks. Dark grackles darted in to peck at chips the cranes had missed. The cranes were not in the mood to share, flapped their wide wings and drove the interlopers back.

We discovered that sandhill cranes love bagels. They waited patiently while Libby and I pitched pieces of a bagel through the fence, scarfing down every chunk.

Finally all the scraps were consumed. The ibises flew toward the chow hall, expecting handouts from lunch. The cranes folded up their long black legs and sat in the sun. Sparrows darted in to scrounge the crumbs. Libby and I went back inside for the last hour of our visit.

The time came for us to go. A brief kiss and embrace is permitted. It's always an emotional parting, but God willing, Libby and I will spend the Christmas weekend together, a few hours at a time.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! We pray you will share as much love and joy as we do. God bless you and yours.

Charlie and Libby

 

                         Charlie, Dan, Tammy and Aunt Alice

                          December 18, 2021

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11-23-2021

Greetings and blessings go out to our families, friends and enemies (we forgive them, too) as the 2021 holiday season commences. The past two years have been harrowing for all of us in multiple ways, We've all been touched by the pandemic, grieving for those loved ones we lost, while celebrating life with the survivors.

Libby and I will share our Thanksgiving in the Lake C.I. prison visiting park, Clermont, Florida, trying to decide what we will eat from the meager selection of sandwiches in the canteen. I am thankful just to be together with my wife.

When I first came to prison at Union C.I., "The Rock," Raiford, in 1980, our families were allowed to bring in home-cooked meals to visits as long as the food was in Tupperware containers and passed through the metal detector. No handguns or hand grenades allowed in the potato salad!

My father and mother, Eugene and Lucille Norman, would make the hours-long trek from Tampa to North Florida every two or three weeks, and my mother insisted on getting up hours earlier to prepare a feast of home cooking for her eldest son. She always cooked much more food than we could possibly eat, fully intending to share it with hungry prisoners and their less fortunate loved ones. Feed the hungry. We made a lot of grateful friends.

The last Thanksgiving we shared before the prison banned bringing in food, my mother planned another one of her holiday feasts. My father struggled to carry in the biggest Tupperware container I'd ever seen, barely holding the roasted bird that could have been a small ostrich, it was so big. My mother carried a large box filled with all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes: cranberry sauce, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, candied yams, salad, rolls, and pumpkin pies. She'd been up all the night before, cooking, assisted by my sister-in-law, Sandy Norman, my brother Dan's wife.

It was a wonderful occasion, even if we shared it inside prison. A number of children and families were treated and blessed by my parents' generosity.

The authorities posted a memo months later on, calling a halt to the family visit food from home, claiming it was to stop the flow of contraband.

That was a lie. The real reason was that visiting park canteen food sales suffered because of the family meals brought in the V.P. Cut out the visitor food, increase canteen sales.

I am thankful for the many blessings bestowed on us, despite the circumstances, and pray that one day we will share our meal together in freedom.

God bless you. Peace, joy and love...

Charlie and Libby Norman

 

Update

 

Greetings from Lake C. I., the only prison with its own alligator! These JPAY people are celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness Month by offering little e-cards on Wednesdays in October. 

Good news--this past Monday we e-filed the last papers in the lawsuit I am pursuing against the FDOC, in the District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee. They give very little credence to prisoner lawsuits in state courts, but we have to go through the mazes to eventually get to federal court. Libby has worked hard getting my documents filed. Now we can take a breather.

Best to all. Peace, joy and love... 

Charlie

SNITCHED OUT BY SANDHILL CRANES

It's my bread. 

They serve three meals a day, and some sort of bread appears on every tray. It may be two dry, hard, cold biscuits, almost inedible, or dry, crumbly cornbread that bursts into pieces when you throw it over the razorwire, or two slices of white bread that, when squeezed into a tennis ball-sized lump, can be thrown farther, to the waiting seven-foot alligator, Wally, on the shore of the weed-choked pond. 

So why should there be an issue when a dozen or so prisoners filch their bread from the chow hall and toss it to the waiting white ibises, grackles, sparrows and sandhill cranes? It's our bread, given to us by the State.The birds appreciate it more than we do. We can eat the tasteless oatmeal, the cold, lumpy yellow grits, or the semi-cooked potatoes instead.

I am an animal lover. Always have been. Everyone in my extended family loves animals. If there's a hungry animal, I'm going to feed it. Is it such a sin that I sneaked out a chunk of cornbread to share with the birds, bread that otherwise gets dumped into swill barrels to feed some local farmer's pigs?

This is what happened. Along with at least a dozen other men, I tossed a handful of bread pieces over the razorwire fence to the waiting birds. The sandhill cranes, beautiful gray-plumaged creatures with bright crimson crests, close to four feet tall, crowded to the front past the smaller birds. Some braver souls would hold the bread on the palms of their outstretched hands. The cranes would reach through the chain-link fence with their fearsome pointed eight-inch black beaks and peck at the bread. I wouldn't risk it. I threw my bread over the fence.

A few years ago, at another prison, I saw a man hold out a chunk of bread on his palm to an approaching sandhill crane, that promptly speared the bread, and his hand, driving that sharp-pointed beak through the palm. Ouch! It is better that I toss the bread over the high fence or through the chain-links instead. Safer.

It was late, five-thirty p.m. Supper. We were at least a hundred yards from several guards standing in front of the chow hall. We tossed our bread scraps to the birds and alligator and returned to our dorms. Fifteen minutes later a guard came to get me.

''Come back to the chow hall, Norman.''

''Am I in trouble?'' I asked. It's always a good idea to try to find out what's going on before you get there, to form a defense.

''Do you know what my two pet peeves are?'' he asked, as we walked past the scene of the crime.

''I've never spoken to you,'' I said. ''I have no idea.''

''Not wearing socks, and feeding the birds,'' he answered his own question.

Now I knew who he was, the guy who watched the line of men on their way to the chow hall, staring at their Crocs. If they didn't have on socks, he sent them back to the dorm to put on a pair, or miss the meal. "Sockboy," some called him. I didn't know his name. 

I always wear socks, so it must be feeding the birds. Did he have binoculars, to pick me out of the distant crowd? Why do these people even know my name? I try my best to maintain a low profile.

I resisted the impulse to reply, ''If I were a guard, my pet peeves would probably be sharp knives, staff smuggling drugs, and gang activities, rather than petty issues like socks and birds,'' but I listened to my wife Libby's advice to keep my mouth shut. I also heeded McGarrett's advice from ''Hawaii 5-0'' in the 1960's--''You have the right to remain silent,'' and I exercised that right. Let them do what they were going to do, and get on with it.

He turned me over to the chow hall guard to work awhile, who wasn't interested in silly games, but went along with it, handing me a broom. I swept the chow hall. Took half an hour.

An inmate cook was preparing a couple dozen hot grilled cheese sandwiches to take back to his dorm to sell, along with a stack of at least a half-dozen sandwiches for the guards. I smiled at the irony -- you can't feed the birds, but you can feed the guards. Render unto Caesar. He offered me a sandwich for a dollar.

I wandered through the kitchen eating my grilled cheese and drinking my iced tea, offered by another kitchen worker, to the open back loading dock where workers were stacking cardboard and feeding the birds loaves of stale bread left over from supper. I counted over fifty white ibises, their long, downward-curved pink beaks pecking away at a plethora of manna. I couldn't count all the grackles, blackbirds, or sparrows. The regal pair of tall sandhill cranes parted the flocks of lesser minions as they filled up on bread. They knew where the action was. I thought, that guard would have a heart attack if he came to the rear of the kitchen and saw this.

''You wanna feed the birds, man, just come back here after chow, every day,'' another worker said. ''We load 'em up.''

The days went by. I continued to feed the cranes. When they spotted me coming from twenty or thirty yards away, they would stretch out their long black legs and run to me. I had flashbacks of velocirapters in ''Jurassic Park.''

''They know you, Norman,'' someone said.

A few days later, the cranes and a dozen ibises had flown in and landed right in front of the chow hall exit door. I walked out into the sunlight. The cranes spotted me and ran forward, stopping right in front of me, silently demanding some bread. Another guard laughed.

''You've been snitched out, Norman,'' he said, ''By birds. Go ahead, feed 'em. I don't care.'' He turned around.

I tossed my bread to the cranes. Several ibises ran over, squawking. I threw some bread to them, too.

Charlie

09-23-2021