PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S HANDS

Art Club comes to Okaloosa

It has been several years since they closed down the art department at Tomoka C.I., and most of my art materials, paints, brushes and canvases were pilfered and stolen by guards, and I’ve gotten out of practice with my artwork. But a couple of months ago, here at Okaloosa C.I., the administration instituted an “art club,” fifteen member limit, with an initial launch of colored pencils, graphite pencils, and a sketch pad to get it rolling. I can’t let any creative opportunity pass by, so I signed up early, agreeing to help with instruction.

Although I would prefer working with watercolors and acrylic paints, I’ll settle for what I can get. It turns out that there are several fairly accomplished artists here, along with novices who want to learn.

I’ve done a few pencil sketches just to get back in practice. Included here are two of them. Portrait of the Artist’s Hands is self-explanatory, and the other is Green-eyed Girl. While our sponsor was on strike, and we couldn’t get access to the colored pencils, I began a new portrait using just a Number 2 pencil.

Let me know if you like these.

Thanks,

Charlie

CREATIVE WRITING CLUB

 A Positive New Program that has come to Okaloosa C.I.

Creative writing is a skill with wide-ranging applications in education, employment, and daily life, including the development of critical thinking skills. The Creative  Writing Club of Okaloosa C. I. held its first class November 4, 2013, and has completed nineteen classes in the past four months. Sgt. Worrell sponsors the meetings. Inmate Instructor Charles Norman has conducted a variety of writing programs over the past thirty years.

Classes are limited to about fifteen students, with a waiting list, and are held in the Re-entry Classroom, although inmates from any housing area are eligible to attend. Classes are taught in modules, including Introduction to Creative Writing, Poetry Workshop, Fiction Workshop, Memoirs and Creative Non-Fiction. Students are required to complete weekly writing assignments.

It is a well-proven fact that education reduces recidivism by high double-digit percentages, and the Creative Writing Club fits into the goals of the Re-entry Program. Response has been enthusiastic.

Materials and supplies are donated. The PEN American Center in New York City, an international literary  society that, among other programs,  sponsors prison writing programs in all fifty states, donated copies of their Handbook For Writers In Prison.

The program is ongoing.

Charlie

PRISON MAIL GRINCHES REJECT MAIL

02/27/14

Refused and rejected mail

In the past three months several friends have sent me cards or letters that were refused, rejected, and eventually returned to sender. Although the reasons were invalid and in violation of federal court rulings on handling mail to and from prisoners, nevertheless, most of the cards and letters were refused because they had one or more decorative, adhesive “stickers” on the envelope. This is pure mean-spirited spite by hostile mail room staff who retaliate against me every chance they get, because I had the audacity to file complaints against them for mishandling my mail. I was not notified that the mail was sent back, and only learned of several when they told Libby via e-mail. I learned of two others from a grievance response.

I don’t get much mail anymore, but I treasure what is sent to me. They play games with my mail in an attempt to isolate me from the world, friends and loved ones. I don’t want them to think their evil tactics are working.

Return address labels don’t count, but if you do send me a card or letter please don’t  decorate the envelope with stickers, no matter how innocent. Thanks.

The second excuse the mail grinches have used to reject my mail is if someone addresses the envelope to “Charlie” Norman, rather than the official “Charles” Norman. That is also the subject of a federal legal complaint, but for the time being, please be sure to address any mail to me this way: Charles Norman #881834

                                                             Okaloosa Correctional Institution

                                                              3189 Colonel Greg Malloy Rd.

                                                               Crestview, FL  32539

No matter how much they target  and harass me through tampering with and hindering my mail, I maintain a positive attitude and follow the legal remedies available to me. The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution guarantees every person’s freedom of speech, and that includes prisoners. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against any governmental efforts to restrict correspondence to and from prisoners. Free citizens retain even stronger federal protections of their rights to communicate with people in prison. So if you have had a letter rejected, don’t get discouraged. Just resend the letter with the offending detail removed, and let me know, so I can file another appeal.

Thanks, and best regards,

Charlie

BLESSINGS FROM A READER

02/28/14

Editor’s note: We received this note recently in response to Charlie’s entry,  “Keeping In Touch With Your Former Self.”  This blessing so moved Charlie that he wanted to thank our reader for taking the time to send it. Readers like this one are huge encouragement to Charlie, to keep him traveling the right path, especially when times get dark. Thank you, our new friend! and we thank God for you and are keeping you in our prayers.

Libby

Hi Mr Norman. It's so amazing to know that our (the public’s) comments don't get forgotten. Well it says a lot about the blogger who takes the time out to send a personal email to his commentators! (AND HE IS IN PRISON).

 You make me smile and make me see that life is so worth living, if we just see that Jesus Christ is always there for each and every one of us. For you to even mention your commentators in your blog, it shows what calibre you are made of! Pure love, hope and faith, the three elements which The Lord Jesus Christ wants us and all to have! 

I cannot say this enough but you are one 'hell' of a guy! God knew exactly what he was doing when he made you! You are his soldier. Even from the depths of prison, you bring and show people who and what the Lord is. 

Your sheer determination is unbelievable, and seeing you being in such a horrific environment and still striving and still not losing faith and still helping others and still not forsaking Our Lord and still bringing people to the Lord, it just takes my breath away! 

Thanx for being a source of encouragement to me and many people even though we never met, but I know it’s not by coincidence that the Lord put us on a path to 'meet' each other, (via another blessed person). To meet a person specifically chosen by God, is a blessing. Thank you so much! And Thank You, God, for using Mr Norman to bless me.

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR FORMER SELF

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR FORMER SELF

NOTES ON KEEPING A JOURNAL AND CREATIVE WRITING

Every day we change. We are a day older. We experience events that affect our thinking, that make us different people from who we were yesterday. It may be difficult to notice or realize how we have changed in the past days, weeks, months or even years, until we think about it. We are too close, too familiar, too comfortable with ourselves to pay attention to these changes.

The fact remains — we are changing every day, for good or ill, whether we recognize it or not. The question is, how much power do we have to effect positive changes in our lives? Are we going to be sealed, empty bottles that float aimlessly out to sea, to be carried at the whim of wind, waves and tides, or are we going to be swimmers who see an island on the horizon, and set out with strong strokes, with a clear direction and goal that we can accomplish?

Think about how you have changed. Picture in your mind your first day at school, six years old. How did you look? How big were you? Were you big for your age, taller and stronger than your fellow first graders? Or were you small, skinny, picked on, bullied, pushed around? Did you have confidence in yourself, or were you frightened and insecure? Were you smart, and caught on quickly what the teacher presented? Or did you have trouble understanding the lessons? Did you get along with the other students? Were you popular and well-liked? Did you have a best friend? Or not? Just the act of reading these questions is likely to trigger memories and images you may not have thought about for years.

Fast forward a dozen years, to the age of eighteen. Picture that six year old you as if someone had taken a series of stop-action photos of you facing the camera as you grew to seven years old, eight, nine, ten, to your teen years, and your full-grown, adult self. Watch your growth, development  and changes in your physical self as though you were watching a movie, from child to adult, and it is easier to understand, to visualize the process.

It is not so easy to visualize the changes to your inner self, over a period of time, but the inner changes, your knowledge, education, beliefs, fears, hopes and dreams, are inevitably developing in no less severe degree than your outer self. In some instances, the inner changes are even greater than the outer ones.

Are you the same person you were twenty years ago ? Of course not. What about a year ago, a month, a week, a day? Each of us is in a state of perpetual change, from our births to our deaths. Most people aren’t aware of this process until they look at an old photo of themselves, and then in the mirror and ask, “Is that me?”

This brings me to getting into the habit of keeping a journal, writing down one’s thoughts every day, or at least frequently, the process of documenting the changes in ourselves over a period of time.

In our prison creative writing class we began slowly, with simple instructions to observe our surroundings, the events of our days, and write, “DAY ONE, DAY TWO, DAY THREE,” through “DAY SEVEN,” with at least a paragraph, up to a page, recording what we saw, what we heard, and what we thought about the daily experiences.

So you want to be a writer? Writers write. Your journal is not a diary, but it could be. It is not a listing of your meals — “I had pancakes and oatmeal for breakfast” — a dry recording of your day, but that could be a part of it. You are the camera, but in your journal you keep track of more than dry facts. You record your feelings, how the events and your observations affected you, what memories were triggered.

Did you remember something that happened to you as a child, an irrational fear that affected your life, that you haven’t thought about for years? Write it in your journal. The very process of writing about the memory may trigger more memories, even an epiphany that you want to preserve before you forget them. One memory could inspire a line that begins a poem or a memoir, or even an idea for a short story or a novel.

Did you have a strange dream? Write about it in your journal before it evaporates. Robert Louis Stevenson awoke from a dream, began furiously writing, and when he stopped he had completed, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

You never know where the process of writing will take you, but be assured that it will take you somewhere. Over time, as you keep your journal, filling it with thoughts, memories, ideas, first drafts and meaningless scribbles, as you go back over what you wrote weeks, months, even years ago, you will discover that you are keeping in touch with your former self, the person you used to be. It is an interesting proposition, one filled with sometimes surprising insights.

In the 1980’s as part of a time management course I took, I began keeping track of my daily hours and activities on, at first, sheets of paper, then with a “Pocket Pal,” or small daily calendar/memo pad that I carried in my shirt pocket, where I would take it out at any time and write brief entries.

1985 was a tough year for me. I was serving the seventh year of a life prison sentence. My father was dying, and I was experiencing a number of personal trials. Making daily entries in that mini-journal gave my life focus and structure, and helped me make sense of what was happening in my life.

Over twenty years later, in the midst of another transfer from one repressive prison to another, going through personal papers I’d been toting from place to place forever, it seemed, I discovered that little pocket journal. I began reading the entries I’d made so long before, and I was immediately transported back to that painful time. I felt those same emotions as I relived those events. I had even made entries of our Jaycees greeting card project sales figures, and I smiled at the recollections of how long-forgotten prisoners carped and schemed, of the things that had been happening outside my inner turmoil that no one knew about as they went about daily prison life.

I was no longer the same person I had been over twenty years before, reading those words. I realized that my old self was sending messages to my present self, messages that said, “I didn’t understand what all this meant while it was happening. You’ve had a couple decades to think about it and make sense of it, so do that.”

And I did. Using those notes, I wrote a memoir, I Wore Chains To My Father’s Funeral, which won a literary award and was widely published, then I wrote a second memoir taking place directly before the time period of the first one, As My Father Lay Dying, then a third, In The Shadow of the Valley — A Christian’s Journey Through Life In Prison.

Perhaps I could have written those memoirs without the journal entries from 1985, but they wouldn’t have had the emotional connections or included the details and context that brought that brief period alive in my mind. It became a major revelation, the importance of recording my thoughts, feelings, and events of my life. I had been doing it for years, writing in journals, without realizing its future significance.

In 2008, a literary mentor, Professor William “Chip” Brantley, in Massachusetts (now at the University of Alabama), encouraged me to expand my writing’s audience. He set up an Internet blog for that purpose, http://charlienorman.blogspot.com/. Almost six years, close to two hundred essays, poems, and journal entries later, several thousand people in seventy five countries have read my blog posts. Receiving messages, comments and feedback from readers all over the world encourages me to keep writing, to continue documenting my life, expressing my thoughts and feelings, and to keep in touch with my former self.

When a twenty five year old single mother in South Africa tells me she’s been reading my essays for several years, that they have been a source of comfort for her, increasing her faith, when people in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, New Dehli and dozens of other places log on to the blog, that tells me that what I am doing is worthwhile, and has a greater value.

The old expression, “If I had known then what I know now…” — have you ever conjectured how you would have acted or lived your life if you had the benefit of hindsight, if you’d known how things would turn out? 

The “Terminator” movies and the TV show, “The Sara Connor Chronicles,” addressed this issue in a science fiction format. John Connor’s father was transported from the future to the present time, which was his past. He knew what would happen, the destruction of the world by intelligent machines. He had been sent back into the past to warn and attempt to change the future to save humanity.

Writing in your daily journal will not likely save humanity, but it could ultimately hold answers to questions that have burdened you, and provide you with an opportunity to re-evaluate the events of your life from a fresh perspective, in the light of heightened maturity gained through experience. A mental image from childhood that has affected you for years, once it has been re-examined rationally in the present day, may not seem so painful or fear-inducing as it did when you were six.

No one can stop the process of change in their evolving lives. But when we are aware of the process, how we are affected by it, we can actively influence the changes in a positive, not negative manner. Keeping a daily journal can not only make you a better writer, but also a better, more self-aware person, better equipped to deal with life’s challenges.

Can you send a message to your future self, tell him, “Pay attention! This is important to me. Try to figure it out, make sense of it.”

Who knows? Perhaps your future self will answer you back.e had been sent t

Charlie      
January 4, 2014

CHANGE IN PHOTOS

   ABOVE: Scene from prison 1984;
  BELOW: Scene from prison 2014

PRISON JOURNAL CHARLES PATRICK NORMAN

12/13/2013  

The “Transition Class” for those prisoners getting out soon ended today. My “neighbor,” assigned to an adjacent bunk, a young man who had a very limited outlook for success in society, came back in the dorm, showed me his certificate, and said, “I talked about you at graduation.”

“What did you say?”

“I told them that before I met Charlie Norman my only plan for release was to get out and start another meth lab, make as much money as I could, so I’d have enough money to last me for the next few years when I came back to prison.

“He told me that was b.s., an he showed me these books he read about crops, farming, and the Mother Earth News magazine. He had these seed catalogs, and I began reading everything, including a big book on organic farming. I felt that I could do that. I’m from the country, people I know have land I could use, and I began to believe, because of Charlie Norman’s encouragement, that I could make a successful living doing organic gardening. I began writing things down, making plans, looking forward to the future, for the first time. He said when I get out, I should go to church, meet some decent people, and not associate with the losers and dopeheads that I hung around with before. I’m gonna do that.”

When this young man moved into the re-entry dorm, he told me that he would be getting out in a few months, but had six years probation to do. He knew he would never complete six years “on paper,” that he knew he would violate and return to prison, and his plan was to get out and make $10,000 by any means necessary, so when he came back to prison, he would have enough money put away to be able to live on during his imprisonment. Starting a meth lab was his only release plan.

After the class graduation, the instructor, an outside employee, told my neighbor that if he needed help obtaining information on what he planned to do, she would use the computer to find it. He discovered what I learned years ago, that if you showed good intentions, good people would try to help you.

I’ve been serving this life sentence since before this young prisoner was born. I have known thousands of men over the years who were virtually interchangeable with him, and I have despaired at the waste and cost — to society, to those young men, and the loved ones who suffer along with the men at their failures. Working in dozens of programs over the years, I’ve found that many prisoners suffered from a lack of vision, unable to picture a future law-abiding, successful life in free society. They are untrained, uneducated, unprepared to be good citizens. They cannot visualize themselves getting a decent job, earning a paycheck, having a family, living the American Dream. Instead, they live the American nightmare.

What I’ve tried to do over all these years is to paint pictures different from the prison failure vision, the only future they could otherwise see, and help them realize that there were other choices they could make. Poor choices, impulsive choices, wrong choices — prisoners are plagued with bad judgment. When faced with a life-altering choice, so many prisoners seem doomed to choose the worst alternative, time and time again. In this instance, if my influence caused one future meth lab to be eliminated, then something positive for society and the life of one young man was achieved.

I am pleased that I’ve been able to positively influence many hundreds more men who got out of prison, led law-abiding lives, and never committed another crime. You don’t hear about the success stories. The failures are the ones the news media pay attention to.

This latest example only strengthens my resolve to continue speaking out to these impressionable young men, doing what I’m obligated to do for my fellow man, in the worst possible circumstances, despite being unable to help myself.

To paraphrase Tennessee Williams, I depend on the kindness of strangers, friends, and family to speak up for me.

Charlie

NOTE 01/23/2014: This young man got out of prison last week, picked up by his family members. At the time of his release, he was still intent on his new plan and determined to follow through with it. Time will tell, but we’re praying for him and hope for the best. (Libby)

SOMETHING HAPPENED IN PRISON YESTERDAY

 DATELINE: Christmas Day, 2013

Two years ago I wrote an article, “A PRISON CHRISTMAS PARTY WITH THE LOST BOYS ,” about how we put together an special event at my previous prison. Prison, like society, can be characterized  by the haves and have nots, prisoners who have families and friends who provide for them, and those who do not, who have little or nothing. Since close to ninety-five percent of prisoners do not receive family visits, Christmas is an especially  difficult time for prisoners separated and estranged from their families. Men get even more depressed and short-tempered under such conditions, and the people in charge do little to deal with the situation.

About a week before Thanksgiving, I approached a number of fellow prisoners in my housing area, and asked them to read the lost boys article. The follow up conversation with each one went something like this:

            “What did you think?”

            “It was very good. I wish I could write like that.”

“I meant the Christmas party idea, those with money chipping in to feed everyone in the dorm, everyone together.”

            “That was great.”

            “If we put together a Christmas program for re-entry, will you help and participate?”

            “Sure.”

            “Some men in here have nothing.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Can you pledge money to help pay for the party?”

            “Will five bucks help?”

            “It’s a start. Would you volunteer to join the Christmas carol singers?”

            “Sure.”

So it began small, talking to each one, one-on-one, seeking agreement and commitments, In prison, it is better to speak to individuals face-to-face, rather than making broad announcements. I made a list, and onl had two men out of seventy-two say they weren’t interested.

            “I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“That’s okay. You eat, don’t you? You are welcome to join in. We’ll have enough food for everyone.”

            “I doubt that.”

            “Wait and see.”

Three men volunteered to cook three separate offerings, to provide a choice, and put together teams of workers led by a Mexican, a black man, and a young white man. Another man volunteered to make a prison cake out of honeybuns, cookies and hot cocoa mix. The haves began purchasing cases of Ramen noodles, crackers, cheese squeezers, tuna, sausage and bags of chili from the sparsely stocked prison canteen. The Christmas carol singers practiced.

I went to the security sergeants who supervise the dorm, told them our plans, that it would be a positive occasion, building Christmas spirit and good feelings. They approved it.

Things began coming together. Libby generously obtained a stack of Christmas carols, made copies, and sent them in. One night after a practice, the Christmas carol singers returned to the dorm, pumped up, laughing. I asked one why he was so excited.

            “We sang the 12 Days Of Christmas.”

            “How did it go?”

            “We nailed it!”

            “Great.”

A few doubters and naysayers scoffed.

            “It’s not gonna work.”

“It’ll be the same as usual. The guys with money will have a big party, and we’ll watch them eat.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “You’ll see.”

This re-entry program I am in consists mostly of prisoners who have four years or less before release, and volunteered to take part in the State of Florida’s attempts to provide transition from prison to free society. Most prisoners are ill-prepared for return to freedom, uneducated, unskilled, poor or absent work history, unresolved drug problems, no family support, no place to stay, no job prospects. The odds of their return to criminal life and prison are high.

In theory, providing programs, counseling, and options that will better prepare these men to become law-abiding, self-supporting citizens will not only salvage otherwise wasted lives, the human costs, but will also save the taxpayers millions of dollars a year in incarceration costs.

In fact, the prisoners who volunteer for the programs re-entry offers have a significantly better statistical chance of getting out of prison and staying out, as opposed to those who refuse to participate in self-improvement and self-awareness programs. To some extent, that is due to the “self-selection process,” prisoners who want to change their lives, who want to break the cycle of incarceration, who realize that what they’ve been doing didn’t work, have a much better prognosis for success than those who intend to get out when their sentences expire and return to drugs and crime. They are “self-selecting,” too — choosing failure.

Not all the prisoners in re-entry are “short-timers.” A small core group of “lifers,” men with long sentences, mostly older, more mature, some having served decades in prison and getting out one day, while others may never get out. These men act as mentors to the mostly younger men with short sentences, providing a calming influence, father figures to some extent.

What is lacking in most prisons is a sense of community and responsibility — not just being responsible for oneself and his family, but also the prison community the man has been cast into. In some small way, something as innocuous as a Christmas program can jumpstart that process and change men’s lives.

I made up a flyer advertising the Christmas party on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2013. There are too many distractions on Christmas Day. The flyer served as a daily reminder that something would be happening, and everyone was invited to attend.

There is a large whiteboard on the dorm wall, perhaps five feet high and six feet wide. At the top, in colored letters, are the words, “RE-ENTRY CHANGES LIVES,” with a couple of cartoonish convicts in striped uniforms holding out unlocked handcuffs. This whiteboard is underutilized, often having anonymous, ungrammatical and misspelled adages and quotations from unknown sources posted on it, intended to uplift and encourage. I decided to wipe off the board and start something new.

Libby donated dry erase markers for use in the creative writing class I am teaching, so I started out with a large, calligraphic-style red “Merry Christmas,” at the top, with a border of green holly leaves and red berries. A Christmas tree filled up the left bottom corner. The prison doesn’t put up Christmas trees anymore, perhaps to placate atheists, but the majority of men in re-entry go to chapel services of one denomination or other. Christmas trees are part of our American tradition and culture, and even the small minority of Muslims, Jews and Hebrew Israelites expressed their approval of the colorful tree. It helps that I can draw.

A Christmas card that Libby sent me had a nice silhouette of palm trees and three wise men on camels leading off into the distance, so I reproduced that, with a star overhead. A dove, a symbolic Bethlehem in the distance, “Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward Men,” the first stanza pf “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” a “Feliz Navidad” for the Hispanics, and the blank whiteboard had morphed into a Christmas spirit generator. Prisoners admired it, and guards came to see it. No dissents.

Another prisoner said he had made a Christmas tree last year out of cardboard and construction paper. The “Merry Christmas” board inspired him to do something to contribute. He asked me what I thought.

            “Do it.”

He did, with the help of several other men, and then took a cardboard box, turned it sideways, and made a redbrick “fireplace,” with red, yellow, and orange flames. Then they made a garland of colored paper connected in rings, and hung them up. In just a few hours the drab “dorm” had been converted into colorful Christmas displays.

About forty men, the haves, contributed over three hundred dollars of food so everyone, about seventy men, would be able to share a Christmas meal.

The time came for the program to begin. We asked everyone to make a circle. This was the tricky part. Would everyone circle up, or would some “hard-heads” refuse to participate, jeopardizing the intent of the program? This is also the amazing part. Two female officers in the glass control booth watched in amazement as the men circled up and spontaneously gripped each others’ hands. One man asked for prayer requests on this special day. Most prisoners’ requests followed a similar theme:

            “Please pray for my family, that they be safe.”

            “Pray for my mother. She has been sick.”

            “Pray for my daughter.”

            “My wife and children.”

            “Pray for the staff.”

            “The homeless, and those who have less than us.”

            “Our service men and women, protecting us.”

            “Please pray for our leaders and our country.”

            “Please pray for me.”

And he did. Five minutes later, after a fervent prayer followed by the Lord’s Prayer, the Christmas carol singers picked up the pace with “Silent Night, Holy Night,” Joy To The World,” “12 Days of Christmas,” and by popular demand, “Jingle Bells,” which everyone joined in.

A few men asked to speak to the group.

One man was visibly moved with emotion and spoke in a loud voice. “I’ve been in prison a long time, and I have never, I have NEVER seen or experienced anything like this in prison. Look around you. Every man in this building is standing in a circle together, quiet, listening to prayers, singing Christmas carols. Some of you may not realize it, but this doesn’t happen in prison. This is something I will always remember, and I hope you do, too. This tells me that we can be united, as a community, like we are supposed to be. That’s all I have to say.”

Then the food was passed out and shared by everyone, the haves happily serving the have nots. Someone plugged in an MP3 player and several men began an impromptu dance contest, to cheers and clapping. The officers alternated coming out and watching. Smiles, laughter and joy. It was amazing.

A little later, a Puerto Rican man approached me. “I’ve only been in prison five years, but this has been the best Christmas I’ve ever had. I know you put it all together, or none of this would have happened. I want to thank you for doing it. I’ll be out next year, and I’m going to send you some pictures of me on the street. I’m not coming back to prison.”

“Good for you,” I said.

That made it all worthwhile. Merry Christmas.

Charlie