Off to Peru

Dear All: I'm off to Peru for a month or so. I hope you all get through January safely and with a good dollop of fun tossed your way. I'll see in February.
Peter G

Happy New Year, everyone!

Well, time to weigh in. What should I say? My daughter Madeleina and I are about to eat prime rib with basmati rice cooked with garlic and a touch of olive oil and seared zucchini and yellow squash with organic scallions and a Roma tomato in pan juices. Not everyone would want that. Most of the people who would want that meal cannot afford it. They certainly could not afford the olive oil, the organic veggies, the touch of excellent blue cheese on the steaks, the spinach under the steaks. They could not afford the pink sea salt or the butcher-ground black pepper or the pans to cook this meal properly. How we did it/do it, I don't know. The pans I'm using were first class and given to me at my marriage to Chepa in 1994. They've got another 100 years in them till their really broken in. My knives have been collected--by buying or being gifted--over 40 years. That means I'm old.
    None of that matters to anyone but me. And me? I'm sad, because my sons and ex and her new babies and my grand baby went to a family party that I was not included in. I'm not included because I won't stay awake till 3 AM. That doesn't bother me. But generally the kids come here for fireworks before the party and so we have a pre-party party. I upped my fireworks stash, which is good, by a couple of hundred bucks today, so it's a very good stash now. But so far they've forgotten to come.
    I guess that's good. I was a rotten son at 30 as well. Payback's a bitch, Gorman! Live with it!
    Past them, I know some of you. We've met or talked or what have you. So what would I like for you this year/ I'd like you to have good food and the time to make it and enjoy it. I'd like you to love the work you do, and if you don't I'd love  you to have the opportunity to change it to something you do love. I'd like you all to wake up every day this year with fresh eyes to see the world in a new way. I'd love you not to be sick, not to have aches and pains and illness that detract from your daily joy. I'd love you to get a raise at work that would give you enough to share $20 a month with the local food bank, or surprise a homeless person or six with fresh fruit now and then. I'd love you to be part of the skein of humanity that makes this world a better place, and we can do that without suffering for it. I'd love you to have shoes that fit so well your feet never hurt. I'd love you to love your haircut and smile every time you see yourselves in the mirror. I'd love you to lose the weight you want lose or decide to love yourself as you are. I'd love it if each of you could forgive one person completely and let them know it. I'd love you to love yourselves and soar as high as you want with the freedom, strength, and will to allow you that. Happy New Year, everyone! We can fix this world with love. And that love starts with loving ourselves.--PG

Quick Note on Taking People Out to the Jungle

I was involved with a discussion group about the need to try to be prepared when you take people to the jungle, particularly for something like ayahuasca. This was a note I posted. No big deal, but i know I'll lose that thread and want to remember this. Here's what I wrote:
       I take people out to the jungle. I've been doing it since 1998. At first I took them to my teacher, Julio. He died in 2007, and my team and I decided that his son Jairo should take over the space. My group is with me five days before we drink ayahuasca. Maybe 20 percent are not permitted for various reasons. I have six of us watching a max of 12 people; but I've got 5 more within 20 yards if we need them.I've got 3 more within 100 yards if we really need them. And I'm still scared to death that something will go wrong! Stuff happens in the jungle and you have to be prepared. Planning will never suffice because what you plan for will never occur. But the act of planning gives you a shot at taking care of things should shit rain down. And while I do not want to jinx myself, I always want my guests to be in the best possible hands. Yes, there are still septic spiders, poisonous snakes, cayman, electric eels, vampire bats and a host of bad things. The trick is to try to minimize those bad things from happening.  

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

To all of you, if I had my druthers and was king of the world, I'd give you peace. I'd share water and food and grazing land and knowledge and invite you to teach me as well. I'd give you health, a sense of joy at the little things we stumble upon daily, I'd give you lovers who never bored you or took advantage of you. I'd give you experiences that took you to the farthest reaches of your capabilities but never more than that. I'd give you sleep when you need it, comfort when you need it, a sense of belonging when you feel like an outsider, a bit of mystery to keep things interesting, and a spirit or three to help you through vexing times with clear guidance. I'd give you the wherewithal to fight through the obstacles that stand between you and your dreams. I'd give you the power to empower yourselves to be who you want to be, shamelessly, proudly, ferociously.
    Merry Christmas everyone, no matter how you say it or think it. And please have a wonderfully joyful New Year!
The Texas Clan of the Gormans

Worrying About My Madeleina

So your kid makes it through infancy, healthy, and you sigh in relief. They make it through kindergarden and elementary school without too many bumps and bruises and lots of papers saying they're good students and you sigh in relief. They make it through high school, there are some tears but they're not bullied, not molested, and you sigh in relief. And then my Madeleina is off to college, just an hour away, and has a good roommate, good classes, good teachers, and all is good. So now she's home and last night was the second night in the last week where she's come home between 3 and 4 AM. What to say? She comes home sober, doesn't go drugs, was just hanging with pals. So I say what every dad says: Nothing good happens after 2 AM. Remember that, Madeleina, and let it go.
    This morning she comes into my office, plumps down on the couch and announces: Dad, I might have a record.
    I ask, What?
    She explains that she and two friends were out in a nearby park. It was just after midnight, the park curfew, when they started walking back to the car. They weren't far from it when three police cars pulled up and told them the park was closed, then asked for identification. They scanned the IDs, asked if they had drugs or weapons, were told no, then were given a warning. Next time they'll get a citation and fine.
    Madeleina was indignant as she told it. We were so close to the car and it was only about six minutes after midnight and I wanted to give those cops a piece of my mind.....
    I reminded her that that's how people get tased or arrested. She said she knew, which is why she kept her mouth shut.
    I said good on her.
    The three then went to the home of the other girl in the trio to drop her off. That's when it got a little spooky, dad, she said. Because there was a man kind of pacing in front of her house.
    Was he on the road?
    No, he was in front of her house.
    Now the young woman's home is set back 100 feet in the middle of nowhere. There are other houses around but they've all got an acre or three, so it's pretty rural, and the road the house is on is very rural, very backwater and beautiful, but not a road someone could stumble on by accident.
    Anyway, dad, we pulled up and asked him who he was. He said he had no car but that his name was Ricky and he needed a ride. He had no phone either, which is why he was in front of the house: He was deciding whether to wake people up to ask to use their phone.
    Madeleina, it was about 1 AM in nowhere. He had no car. He wasn't walking anywhere. But he'd obviously come from somewhere. And if he came from somewhere walking, he could probably return to that somewhere on foot as well.
     Don't worry, dad, Lizzie lied and said we didn't have enough gas to go anywhere. Then he asked to borrow a phone, so we let him and he called someone and when they answered he said Hello, this is Bob. That was weird, right, because he told us his name was Ricky. Anyway, after that he walked away and we all went into my friend's house to make sure he left. And that's why I got home at 4 AM.
     Darling, did your friend L recognize the man from the area?
     Never saw him before, dad.
    So a guy with no car winds up in nowhere at 1 AM and needs a ride home? No. He had a ride. It was probably waiting in the dark just down the road. This guy was going to rob the house, and then signal his friend to come round with the car as he was leaving, so that there was little chance anyone would see the car long enough to get license plate numbers.
    Could be, dad. All in all, it was kind of scary when we got in the house and started talking about it.
    And that's why dads like me worry about my Madeleina.

On a Perfectly Selfish Note....

On a perfectly selfish note: How can it be that I've had something along the line of 4,000 people join the group Ayahuasca in My Blood, and have only sold maybe 6000 copies. Not everybody who bought the book would want to join the group. Not even anywhere near two-out-of-three. So, this month, for instance, how did more than 50 people ask to join when I only sold 14 copies so far? Am I nuts or are there sites out there giving the book away for free and people are actually taking advantage of that? No artist should have his/her work used/misused/abused that way. No musician, no dancer, no film maker, no poet, no sculptor, and no writer. As I said, this is a perfectly selfish note. But if anyone has the answer, or an answer, I'd love to hear it.

Life Goes On

Obla-di, Obla-da, Life goes oooonnn, O la la la life goes on....
Been a hectic couple of weeks. I've had 9 visitors to the house: Two young women for sapo, one guy who wanted to meet me because he read my books; one young guy from Houston who brought me a stick he thought was important; two people who are coming on my January Jungle Jaunt, my old friend, Milan, who came by just to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with us, plus a few days; a woman, now a friend, who is a television producer, and an utter stranger who showed up at the door asking if I was Peter Gorman, and if I was, could he talk with me.
   That and a case of walking pneumonia have had me under siege. Not a lot of energy. Now it might be emphysema, which I would have to own, considering how much I smoke, but then that would mean it came on awfully quickly: Two months ago I was never out of breath. The last two months I walk 200 steps and i'm gasping. I hope this is temporary. I'm considering taking antibiotics as I'm coughing up a quart or so of phlegm from my lungs daily. That's a lot of mucous and probably more than you wanted to know.
    On the other hand: Madeleina came home from college exactly a week ago and that has been great: We laugh, yell, argue, laugh again. She's the bees-knees. I've rewarded her by cooking Uncle Clem's Chicken, chicken parmesana, duck breast with pears and port wine; Lime chicken, a hot roast beef sandwich on good sesame french bread with seared organic tomato slices; and tonight chicken breast with bok choy, ginger, daicon radish, scallions, garlic in a sesame oil sauce, over a bed of baby spinach, with a side of broccoli, cauliflower, sweet red onions, tomato, garlic, zucchini, and yellow squash.
   So I have been remiss. I apologize. I've been worried about my January trip to the jungle which will lose $3,400 that i will have to put on a credit card. Darn it. 20 People signed up for it and only four are still with me. That's unusual. I hope something will happen in the next couple of weeks to at least let me break even....
   I love you all for sticking with this loser. Thanks.
PG

New Column

Well, a week or more ago I posted a piece on how fear causes problems. Right now, they are still counting bodies from a mass shooting by what looks to be three murderers who attacked a center for people with learning disabilities. At the moment they are saying 14 dead. How does this happen? Were these foreign born or US-raised terrorists?
    The information remains sketchy, but considering that I expanded on how fear diminishes us in my most recent Skunk Magazine Drug War Follies column, I thought I'd post it here. It's not on the money, but it's part of what explains things like today's mass killing.

DRUG WAR FOLLIES 90

Too Much Damned Pain in This World. What can be Done About It?

By Peter Gorman

I know you all understand that there is a lead-time when it comes to magazine publishing. It’s generally a couple of months. So what I write about today has to still be fresh by the time it reaches you. That’s not always an easy guess for what material to cover. But what I’m writing today, and yeah, it’s serious shit this time, wrapped in sadness, are things that I would give anything to be old news by the time your read it.

    The news right now isn’t good. Yes, up in Canada you’ve had the sense to toss your very Conservative leadership and that’s fantastic for you. Here in the US, we had the great sense to do the same 7 years ago—though our incredibly short-sighted, misogynistic, pro-birth, anti-human, pro-rich, anti-poor, bible-toting, beer-chugging, anti-pot, asshole-stuffed Congress has done its best to hamstring him.

   And yes, there is good news in a lot of states concerning the cannabis movement and with the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration being called out in a lot of quarters for saying that marijuana has no medical use and serves no medical purpose.

   But so much of the rest of the news seems to be filled with palpable pain. We’ve got racial tensions blowing up due to cops killing a lot of people for no apparent reason other than that they panicked and decided to shoot, over and over and over. We’ve got hate groups putting up Facebook pages claiming to be university white supremacy unions. We’ve got ISIS recruiting thousands of disenfranchised kids from all over the world to take part on their insane and apocalyptic war meant to bring on the Endtimes. We’ve got the USA mostly keeping boots off the ground in the on-fire Middle East while our drones hit as many civilians as they do bad guys. We are watching whole countries being bombed back to the middle-ages. Millions of Syrians have become refugees because their civil war, the war that’s been going on for five years now, is being fueled by immeasurable hatred. Millions of Iraqis are being displaced as well as their cities and towns are torn to pieces by half-a-dozen different murderous factions.

   We’ve got a huge swath of Brazil facing starvation and displacement because of a dam collapse that released a huge amount of very toxic mining waste into the Doce River there.

   We’ve got climate change that is causing unprecedented extremes in weather patterns and events.

   We’ve got extremist groups in several parts of Africa that are committing atrocities against humans at astonishing levels of frequency.

   We’ve got planes being blown out of the sky and the Paris attacks and millions going hungry and homeless and left helpless and hopeless in nearly every corner of the globe.

   We’ve even got ego wars raging in the legitimate and legal cannabis business world in Colorado and elsewhere.

   The list of horror and sorrow is long. Too long. Yes, nature, through disease and cataclysmic events will always make life on Earth a bit harrowing, keeping us on our toes.

   But the madness men are creating seems to be escalating once again. The pain and suffering men are causing one another is horrendous.

   And it is all caused by fear. Fear of not being seen as strong enough; fear that people will discover your penis is small; fear of the other skin colors; fear of not having enough; fear that someone else might have more than you; fear of an unseen god who apparently demands bloodshed in his name; fear of our own shadows.

   That fear consumes people. That fear drives anger and rage and negativity and finally, it drives all of the sickening things that men do to one another.

   And while that fear was once a necessary part of man’s existence—fear of drought, not enough water for everyone’s camels at the oasis, virulent diseases, pestilence, and just being mauled by large animals of prey—it’s become as useless an appendage as an appendix. We can overcome those things that used to terrify humans while still maintaining the fight or flight reflex for things like tornados or wildfires. But to maintain the fear that people had as a safety valve 150,000 years ago, that’s no longer necessary as we’ve conquered most of those negative realities. There doesn’t need to be famine anymore. Or lack of water.

   The question is, how can we eliminate the fear. If we could do that, the negativity would dissipate of its own accord, and the brutality would vanish. Because if we could eliminate the fear for long enough to work in unison with one another, we’d find what we already know in our hearts to be true to be true in reality as well: That there is enough for everyone. There is enough food, there is enough water, there could be enough shelters, there could be enough doctors and nurses and whatever the hell else the human race needs to live.

    If we could work together we cold reforest the Sahara, replenish and refresh the oceans. We could all be sipping on good fresh water and we could all have basic plumbing and we could have a world where people do not have to hide in fear from the next massacre or the next drone bombing or the next fear-fueled teenager killing people in a movie theater.

   It should not be so hard to eliminate the fear. I wish I knew how. I’ve tried to raise my own kids not to be fearful, not to be so fearful that the heart fills with hate and rage. But then my kids were not raised on the US dropping napalm on them, or on Boko Haram slaughtering whole villages or on ISIS’ death wish or any of the other wretched things men do to one another. It will take a lot of work to eliminate the fear not just from the perpetrators of that horror, but the fear that’s been instilled in those who have suffered through it. How well do the Bosnians and Serbians get along after what they did to one another? How much fear and hatred still exists in the hearts of the elderly Jews who saw their families put on trains and sent to the incinerators? How do we eliminate that fear? What do we do?

   I wish I knew. Awareness of it is the first step. Speaking out about it—not me, not just here, but by good men and women everywhere, all the time—would bring further awareness. But how do we get to where we’ve got the mass to allow the changes to begin. Not the numbers: There are already a whole lot more good people in this world than bad ones, the fearful ones. How do we get them together to stand up and point out the fear, to start working to eliminate the issues that cause the fear?

   A lot of you younger readers are going to inherit this world. We hippies thought we would have it all set up and peaceful for you by now, the second decade of the Age of Aquarius. We didn’t get it done, but it still needs to be done. And it can be done. I’m not the guy with the answer. I do see the problem. Fear. Eliminate fear in men’s hearts and the rest will take care of itself. I wish I were smart enough to have the answer.

  Now, remember how I started this? About magazine lead-time and trying not to be dated by the time the reader reads this. Well, I would love nothing more than to discover that every bad thing I’ve mentioned and all the ones I didn’t were gone by the time this hits the newsstand and I was completely outdated. That would be great.

  Okay. Sorry to go so heavy, but I needed to say that. Take a breath or three, fill a bong. Come up with answers and let’s make this world the one we want it to be.

It would all be funny if people weren’t dying and the prisons weren’t full.

Trips Coming Up; Time to Sign on to Change Your Life, Maybe

Everyone: My Jan and Feb trips are sorely needing clients. Please pass the word: I've got a trip in Jan and another in Feb. Both are 9 1/2 day Jungle Intensives. Both are fantastic. There is a lot of Jungle Medicine, from Ayahuasca to local Shrooms to the Matses' medicines Sapo and Nu-Nu. There is also riverboat travel, walks in pristine high jungle and a primordial swamp that might blow your mind; night canoeing on a beautiful tributary of the Amazon way, way deep in the jungle. There is wild food collecting with the Matses, bows and arrows, medicine walks and a whole lot more. It's the best package of fantastic things to do that I can come up with after more than 30 years playing in that jungle. The 9 1/2 days will feel like a year's worth of growth. The trips are costly at $2200, but past airfare and walking around money, which you supply, there are no other costs. And there are a couple of scholarships, which are worth $400, making the trip cost $1800, available for those to whom it means coming or not coming.
    You've got to decide. A lot of you have already been with me on these. You know the value. This is real jungle and no one else is offering it. It's also well protected because the trips are small and my team always outnumbers the guests. So if you've been thinking about ayahuasca and the jungle, or if you just want to see and be in and feel real Amazon jungle, deep jungle, then the time is here to jump in, spend your savings, borrow a couple of bucks on your credit cards and get with the program. These are very unusual and wonderful and eye opening and sometimes life-changing trips. No fooling.
   But if you hesitate, you lose. So contact me at peterg9 at yahoo.com or at info@pgorman.com and jump into it! You got nothing to lose and a whole heck of a lot to gain. More detailed info at pgorman.com under the TOURS button.

Fear Plays Badly with Us

I have been reading what the Republican candidates for the presidency have been saying about President Obama's having agreed to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. They are now, after the terrible and heartbreaking and heart wrenching and punk coward attacks in Paris, all claiming that it would be crazy, or worse, to allow those refugees to find refuge on our shores and soil. Ben Carson mentioned 200,000 refugees; Ted Cruz talked about the "tens of thousands" of refugees; Donald Trump talked about the "Trojan Horse" these refugees could be; Jeb Bush said we should only accept Christian refugees, not Muslims; Carly Fiorina talked about Obama's plan to "unilaterally" allow refugees to enter the US.
    These are phony talking points. Just lies. The plan calls for 10,000 over the course of a year, all carefully screened--which probably means no males between the ages of 12 through 40--not 200,000, and certainly not unilaterally, without screening.
   I recognize the terror that terrorists create. I recognize that several related/coordinated murderous events can make it seem as if the whole world is on the brink of falling apart. But I don't think it is. But I agree with the one or two pundits who say that the entire plan of ISIL is to provoke enough rage at all Muslims that Europe and the U.S and Canada and Australia and others will refuse refuge to the refugees who are leaving everything behind in order to escape the violence in their homelands. If those Muslims can be denied refuge or marginalized into refugee camps, they will certainly grow bitter, or a lot of them will. Some of those will then become terrorists. Others who already have citizenship in the various Western countries will see their refugee brethren isolated or eliminated out of fear sown by attacks like those in Paris and they too might become terrorists. Fear plays into the hands of terrorists; everyone becomes a potential enemy when you're afraid of your shadow. And, of course, the truism remains true: The only thing to fear is fear itself. Fear is what builds up the walls between people. Fear causes isolation, not acceptance. And that, particularly now, would play very, very directly into the terrorists' hands.

Sausage, Pepper and Onions

So I was in the mood to feel like a (pardon me, we used to be allowed to say this when I grew up in Queens, NY) Guinea, someone from Sicily today and wanted sausage and peppers.
    So I went to the store, bought two pounds of fresh HOT sausage, 4 green peppers, 3 red peppers, 2 large onions, 2 large tomatoes.
    I got home, stabbed all the sausage on both sides, maybe 10 times, then put them in a pot of water and put it on high. I wanted to get rid of the excess fat which comes out like a cloud on the boiling water the sausages are in.
    Then I cleaned and sliced three heads of garlic and put it in olive oil. About three tablespoons of oil for all that chopped garlic.
    Then I washed and cleaned 4 large green peppers and three large red peppers and two large red onions.
    I slided the peppers and onions into thin slices--no, not julienne, just thin slices that non-anorexics might use--and did the same with a huge beefsteak tomato and three Roma tomatoes (what I had).
    When the sausage was done, I pulled it, cooled it and sliced it into round sausage pieces. I put that on a hot stove burner in garlic and olive oil to brown both sides. Then I added the onion, then I added the peppers, and finally the tomato slices. Then salt and pepper--sea salt and butcher ground black pepper. It's simmering now.
    I've got rice, nice basmati rice, cooling down.
    When the rice is done, the sausage and peppers will be done. If it needs seasoning, I'll figure out something. But meanwhile, it's a basic, traditional recipe that will not steer you wrong.
Bon Appetit!

New cover story in the Fort Worth Weekly

We've been over-incarcerating for decades in the USA. That's beginning to change. Here's my new cover story from the Fort Worth Weekly newspaper on that subject. It's important, so spend a few minutes and read the thing. Thanks.
http://www.fwweekly.com/2015/11/11/not-another-brick-in-the-wall/

I evidently don't know how to make a live link, so here's the whole darned story:

Not another brick in the wall

After nearly 40 years of stuffing prisons with nonviolent offenders, some states and the U.S. government are beginning to see the light.

0

Posted November 11, 2015 by Peter Gorman in News

Not Another Brick in the Wall? Illustration by Vlad Alvarez.

Jason Hernandez began selling marijuana in his McKinney neighborhood in 1992, when he was 15. At first, it was baggies, but within a couple of years he moved up to moving pounds. From there he moved on to selling crack cocaine, and by his own admission he was good at it.

“It’s what I did,” he said. “It’s what everyone in my neighborhood did at that time.”

And everything was working nicely for him until March 16, 1998, just about a month after his 21st birthday. That’s when the police came and arrested him. His crime? Conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and methamphetamine, along with several other conspiracy charges.

But there wasn’t a speck of cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, or any other illegal drug on Hernandez, who thought it odd that the cops simply patted him down and didn’t search his place or car. “I didn’t have anything, but it turned out I wasn’t really the one they were after.”

Other dealers in the neighborhood had been picked up by the police, and when asked who their supplier was, many named Hernandez.

The feds took the case, and he was offered eight years if he would testify against another dealer. He wouldn’t. He went to trial, and a dozen people testified against him.

Jason Hernandez at age 23 with his 3 year old son. Courtesy of Jason Hernandez.

“I’m not going to deny what I did,” he told the Fort Worth Weekly. “I did sell drugs, but they didn’t catch me with any. It was a dry conspiracy.”

His sentence as a first-time offender convicted of a conspiracy in which no drugs were found? Life without parole. Plus 20 years. And another 20. And another 20. And another 20. And then 40 more years, and 40 more, and then 60 years on top of that, all to be served consecutively. And then eight years of parole and a $6,000 fine, just in case he outlived life without parole and the additional 200 years.

Hernandez’ case is not unique, though the sentence was unusually harsh. Hundreds of people around the country are serving life-without parole for first-time nonviolent drug offenses. Some are serving in state penitentiaries, some in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Hundreds of thousands of other offenders are serving lesser but still harsh sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

Jason Hernandez: “I’ve got to do well out here, so that other people get the chance.” Courtesy of Jason Hernandez

How such harsh drug sentencing came about is a mosaic of fear mongering, political expediency, and the tenor of the times. Its roots run deep, from the first anti-opium laws, aimed at the Chinese population in San Francisco near the end of the 19th century, through newspaper publisher William Randolph Hurst’s relentless war on marijuana that culminated in its being made illegal in 1937. President Richard Nixon declared a war on all illegal drugs in 1971 and then created the Drug Enforcement Administration to fight that war. That same year, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed into law the harshest drug sentences in the United States. Politicians began outdoing one another to appear tough on drug crime. Add to that the federal mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes that was put in place in the 1980s, and several states’ Three-Strikes-You’re-Out laws in the 1900s, and the elimination of federal parole, and by the turn of the century, the United States had become incarceration nation.

Despite having both the highest percentage of its population behind bars and the highest total number of people in the criminal justice system, crime in the United States didn’t slow down at all. The harsh sentences didn’t appear to be a deterrent to drug crimes. The loss of early release on the federal level and the removal of safety nets once prisoners were released — including a ban on food stamps and the use of federally subsidized housing for felons — only caused recidivism rates to rise, which in turn led to prison over-crowding. The vast amounts of public monies being spent on keeping prisoners in prison were cut back on the rehabilitation end of the criminal justice system: In many prisons, libraries, GED classes, job training, and drug and alcohol therapy were frequently eviscerated or eliminated. Prisoners were being released with fewer and fewer options with which to successfully reintegrate to society.

It all came to a head in 2007 in Texas, when the state was faced with either building new prisons or finding out some other way to handle criminal justice. Surprisingly, Texas politicians said no to new prisons and embarked on changing their approach to incarceration. Other states and the feds took notice. In 2014, changes in federal sentencing laws allowed some drug felons to get out a couple of years early. In 2013, President Barack Obama stepped into the fray and commuted the sentences of eight drug offenders. And a bipartisan bill that would allow thousands of offenders to avoid prison altogether is expected to become federal law in early 2016.

“Somewhere in all of this, we, as a country, have modified our thinking and approach to criminal imprisonment,” said Mary Price, general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), an organization fighting to eliminate mandatory drug sentencing. “And that’s partly because we’ve learned that public safety is not harmed when we don’t use prisons to address all these issues.”

Hernandez was one of 21 people granted clemency by Obama in November 2013. Of those, 13 were full pardons for people who had already finished serving their sentences, mostly for minor drug crimes. The other eight, which included Hernandez, were all sentence commutations for people serving at least 20 years — mostly life without parole — all for crack. Hernandez, who was serving time at the medium security federal penitentiary in El Reno, Okla., was overjoyed.

“I had written to so many people about my case and about eight other inmates who were in prison with me,” Hernandez said, “almost all of whom were serving life without parole for nonviolent first-time drug offenses. Most people wouldn’t believe we were all serving those sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.”

One who did was Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Alexander connected Hernandez with the ACLU, with whom she had worked for several years with the Racial Justice Project in Northern California.

“The ACLU really led the charge for me,” Hernandez said. “And then I got the notice that my sentence was being commuted to 20 years, plus my parole and the $6,000 fine. I held that paper with President Obama’s signature on it for two days. I wouldn’t let it go. I was afraid it would disappear.”

Hernandez was moved to a halfway house in Hutchins, Texas, for a year and then released on August 11, 2015.

“I was the lucky one out of the El Reno group,” he said. “None of the other guys got their sentences reduced.”

Obama has since upped the ante on commuting sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. He commuted eight more in December 2014, and then 46 more in July 2015. All of them had served more than 10 years in prison. Many, like Hernandez, were due to die behind bars.

But before Obama began commuting a handful of the unduly harsh sentences levied against first-time non-violent drug offenders, several states had already begun making changes in incarceration policies for the same type of criminals. Surprisingly, the state that’s led the charge is Texas.

 ******

“Texas has certainly led the way,” said Holly Harris, executive director of the Justice Action Network, a national nonprofit devoted to reforming the criminal justice system. “What has been found during the decades of mass incarceration is that being tough on crime does not make us safer. The opposite is true. And Texas is the gold standard on this. Since they began implementing reforms in about 2007, most of Texas has the lowest crime rate it’s had since 1968.”

Douglas Smith: “Incarceration has decimated entire communities in Texas.”

Douglas Smith, a policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes smart justice policies in Texas, knows that mass incarceration is not the answer.

“Incarceration has decimated entire communities in Texas,” he told the Weekly. “We’ve got over 700 people per 100,000 in our prisons in Texas, about seven times the incarceration rate of the U.K., which has the highest incarceration rate in Europe. But Texas recognized that it went too far.”

In 1993, a tough-on-crime penal code went into effect in Texas, which saw the number of people behind bars in the state skyrocket from 64,000 to 156,000 in 2007. That year, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice asked the legislature for $523 million to build three new prisons to account for the anticipated influx of new prisoners by 2012. It seemed like a no-brainer. The Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, John Whitmire, a conservative Democrat from Houston, had helped usher in those tough-on-crime codes. In the House, Jerry Madden, a Republican from Plano, was chairman of the House Criminal Justice Committee.

“But they surprised everyone and didn’t do it,” Smith marveled. “They didn’t build the prisons.”

What they did, according to Governing.com, a website covering state and local governments, was team up and convince the legislature, Governor Rick Perry, and Lt. Governor David Dewhurst “to spend $241 million on treatment, mental health, and rehabilitation instead.”

Among the changes implemented with those funds, Smith said, was providing funding to county drug-diversion courts that try to steer people with nonviolent drug felonies toward rehabilitation rather than prison.

“Texas lawmakers also expanded the number of substance abuse and DWI treatment beds in the in-prison therapeutic communities, particularly for the longer treatment programs,” Smith said. “And then they also increased the number of halfway houses for those prisoners on release and increased after-care for them once they were released from the halfway houses.”

The result of those changes was a 30 percent reduction in parole revocations.

“We are still sitting on about 150,000 people in Texas prisons,” Smith said, “so we’ve got a very long way to go. But that might have been more than 170,000 by now if those changes hadn’t been implemented. Add to that vocational training, helping prisoners earn their GEDs, [and] helping them get jobs on the outside, and the result is less crime and fewer people in prison.”

What needs to happen next in Texas, Smith said, is to address the probation system in the state.

“Probation revocation is absolutely one of the drivers of mass incarceration in Texas,” he said. “Why? Because if you are poor, unemployed, a drug addict, or faced with overcoming mental illness, you don’t stand a chance on probation. The demands are simply too great. You have to pay for probation itself, pay a portion of your monitoring costs and a portion of your own classes. Too many probation departments in the state rely on those fees to pay the salaries of the people in those departments.”

Probation, Smith said, is supposed to be a time to partake in community service, address the reasons you committed your crime, and think about ways you can change your behavior.

“Unfortunately,” Smith said, “a major part of the probation meeting is ‘Did you bring the money?’ not ‘How is the job search going, and can I help you with anything?’ ”

While Texas still has a way to go, according to the Justice Action Network’s Harris, 30 other states have implemented Texas’ reforms and have seen similar successes –– and only eight years after Texas’ plan got underway.

The federal government also has begun to move in a similar direction.

“The first major change in the federal system involved the Inspector General of the Department of Justice placing the reduction of federal prison overcrowding on a short list of management challenges three or four years ago,” said FAMM’s Price.

“What was happening was that lawmakers realized we were spending money to lock people up that could be better spent on deterrents to those crimes. Every dollar spent on incarceration was a dollar that could not be spent on prosecuting really bad guys or keeping people out of jail. And we know now that it’s bad for public safety if everybody just gets locked up rather than dealing with drug offenders by getting them off drugs. We needed to spend our criminal justice dollars more wisely.”

Marc Mauer: “Not everyone who is applying is getting approved.”

The first major policy change in that direction occurred in 2014, when the Sentencing Commission, an independent agency in the judicial branch of government that sets sentencing guidelines and policies for federal courts, made a key alteration in drug sentencing policy. While the commission could not reduce mandatory minimum sentences below the 5-10-20-year structured plateaus, the group was able to eliminate some sentencing enhancements that gave someone with five years a seven- or eight-year sentence.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit working for reforms in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration, explained: “Only the enhancement guidelines are affected. You cannot go below the mandatory minimum in your case. But if you had a 10-year mandatory minimum, and it was enhanced by two years, it can now be dropped back to the basic 10 years.”

Shortly after the commission made the change, the group made it retroactive. The result: Roughly 46,000 drug offenders in the federal prison system will be eligible to apply for early release — most will get one or two years, but some might get a four-year reduction — in the next several years. A little more than 6,000 of those offenders were released over the weekend of October 30 and November 2, with another 8,550 up for release by November 1, 2016.

In the first group of 6,000, roughly two-thirds were sent to halfway houses or placed under house arrest. The other 2,000 are foreigners, who will quickly be deported. Almost 600 of those prisoners were released in Texas, leading some people to bemoan the fact that our streets will be overrun with criminals. But Smith scoffs at that.

“I believe 578 of those released are returning to Texas,” he said, “but the Texas Department of Criminal Justice releases more than 70,000 per year, so the difference won’t be noticed.”

Smith does concede that with reentry resources extremely limited and with no new federal programs in place to help those released early, any additional influx will strain the community. “But the number is so relatively small,” he said, “I don’t think it will be a huge issue.”

Surprisingly, there has been little pushback against the reformed guidelines. New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has voiced his concern that the mass release will put dangerous criminals on the streets. On a recent radio broadcast with John Catsimatidis, Bratton said, “One of the issues of concern is when people go to jail, oftentimes they go to jail with negotiated charges, if you will, so that somebody that is in jail [who] seems like they’re a nonviolent drug offender may in fact have crimes of violence in their record.”

Bratton pointed to the case of Tyrone Howard, a young man with a record of 28 arrests who shot and killed New York City Police Detective Randolph Holder on October 20. Howard had been arrested for a shooting in 2009 — he was not indicted for that — but he was sent to a drug diversion program rather than prison for a recent drug bust.

The Sentencing Commission is hoping such horror stories do not play out now. To avoid any potential problems, each prisoner will have to apply for his or her sentence reduction. Their histories will be evaluated.

“Every one of these prisoners has to be approved by a judge,” Mauer said. “And not everyone who is applying is getting approved. Thus far, about three out of four have been approved, but that other 25 percent has been denied. So they are getting some scrutiny.”

The early release of some drug offenders is a very good start, Mauer said, but it’s only a start: “It’s symbolically very significant because it’s the federal system, but it’s also only a start because it only affects the federal system. We need to do it in every state as well. And then the mandatory minimum issue needs to be addressed as well.”

Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership, an organization working to eliminate private prisons, agreed with Mauer’s assessment: “It is a very good start toward drawing down the extremely punitive way we’ve treated people for drug offenses. Drug issues are representative of how we lock people up for so many things in our society, from addiction to mental health issues, to poverty. But we’re going to need changes on the state and local levels as well as the federal level.”

 ******

The bill is largely based on the Corrections Act that Sens. John Cornyn (above) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced earlier this year.

The biggest change in the federal approach to sentencing may arrive in early 2016. Authored by Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 recently made it out of committee and will likely be voted on early in the 2016 session of Congress. According to a press release by Texas Senator John Cornyn, the bill is “largely based on the Corrections Act [that] Sens. Cornyn and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced earlier this year that builds on successful reforms implemented in Texas that reduced crime and saved taxpayers more than $2 billion.”

Among the bill’s provisions, it reduces enhanced penalties for repeat drug offenders and eliminates the three-strike mandatory-life provision for all but offenders with serious violent priors. It also will allow low-level drug offenders, even ones facing a 10-year minimum, to be placed in treatment rather than prison.

Just as importantly, the bill will require the Department of Justice to “conduct risk assessments to classify all federal inmates and to use the results to assign inmates to appropriate recidivism reduction programs, including work and education programs, drug rehabilitation, job training, and faith-based programs.”

Those prisoners who complete those programs can see their sentences reduced and spend as much as the last quarter of their sentences in home confinement or a halfway house.

Libby Hambleton, Cornyn’s deputy press secretary, told the Weekly that the bill “will make it mandatory for federal prisoners to be offered vocational training, schooling, and a host of other programs that will make their transition to the world outside of prison a less turbulent experience and one which would arm those former prisoners with better tools to help succeed and lower recidivism.”

With the backing of a wide swath of conservatives and liberals in Congress, as well as the blessing of both the ACLU and the Koch brothers’ political arm, ALEC, the bill is expected to meet little resistance on its way to passage. If passed, it would be the first real chink in the mandatory minimum wall.

Matt Simpson, an ACLU attorney, sees the bill as an important step: “Pulling people from their community and incarcerating them creates reentry problems for them down the road. But if you can keep them on probation or in a treatment center and in their community, it will sidestep undermining their social support network. There are major benefits to avoid incarceration.”

One of the key elements to the bill that struck Smith deals with reintegration: “The bill says the prison has to work with someone for at least six months prior to their release to plan on their reentry into the non-prison world. That’s the most crucial time if you want to prevent the person from coming back to prison. You need to help them plan for the transition because they’re about to face major barriers with housing and employment while they’re trying to reintegrate.”

Jason Hernandez knows he’s one of the lucky ones. His mother and father were still alive when he got out in August, and they welcomed him home. “Having a place to stay is so important,” he said. “If I didn’t have them, I’d probably be living on the street. And if you don’t have a place to stay, well, they can revoke your parole.”

Hernandez doesn’t claim the world is perfect for him: “It’s not like life is going beautifully for me, because it’s not. I have my down times. But compared to waking up every day for the last 17 years thinking I was going to die in prison, it’s great. But there’s lots of jobs I can’t get, and some girls who won’t date me once they find out I’ve been in prison.”

Hernandez said that some of the people getting out of prison, even with good tools, are going to reoffend. “But what’s the solution? Just letting them die in prison? It’s hard to get back into life, and not everyone is going to make it.”

The absence of safety nets for former prisoners bothers Hernandez a great deal, although even that is beginning to move in a positive direction: while food stamps were federally banned for drug felons in 1996, most states have since loosened those laws, but the SNAP benefits generally come with strings. In Texas, first time drug felons regained the right to receive the benefits on Sept 1 of this year, though a parole violation gets them suspended for two years, and a second drug conviction reinstates the lifetime ban. Federal educational grants have become available for most drug offenders as well, but come with qualifiers that many cannot meet.

  

“Look, we’re all but banned from getting Section 8 housing. And if you don’t have a place to live, you’re in trouble,” said Hernandez. “And we often owe 10-15 years of back child support on top of whatever fines we have to pay. There are some churches that might help you out, but other than that there is basically nothing. You’re on your own.”

He was particularly happy to hear Obama say that he was banning the box on applications for federal employment that asks if a person has ever been convicted of a felony: “I didn’t get a single interview from any application where I checked that box. It was only when I got to meet someone face-to-face, and he said, ‘Hey, you look like a pretty good guy. I’ll give you a chance,’ that I got a job. Banning the box is fantastic. At least get to meet the person before you find out they have a prison record.”

Society, Hernandez said, should offer everyone coming out of prison the basics: food, housing, and a chance at a job. He has a full-time job as a welder and works part-time as a kitchen mentor at Café Momentum in Dallas, whose owners hire only formerly incarcerated youngsters and train them in all aspects of restaurant work during a year-long program. Hernandez also talks to at-risk kids about his life experience.

“I know how lucky I am,” he said. “And I know I’ve got to do well out here, so that other people get the chance.”

Others will get the chance, FAMM”s Price said: “I think the momentum from impossibly harsh sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes has changed. I don’t think we’ll go back to the way we did it again.”

Cover Story Due, Thinking Meatloaf, Making Chicken...

You know, I had this freaking great cover story due on the 25 of November. I started collecting my info, making my "people to call" list, doing a few interview. Nice and easy. Started to prep my office/living space for painting with a nice new bright pink and then I get notice that my story has been moved up two weeks and can I get 4500 words down on paper for a cover in 5 days. HAHAHAHA! Yeah, sure.
   But of course, yeah, sure. I'm a freaking gunslinger when it comes to getting good material out and I love to be challenged. This story is about the changes to our approach to incarceration and sentencing that have been happening for a couple of years on the state and federal level. And though lots of writers have taken on one or two of the key elements, I have not seen any story that takes on all of them. That's the beauty of being a weekly: We get to look at the story from a distance since we're not competing to get the scoop generally. Our vision from that distance makes its own scoop.
   So I kicked butt, made the calls, made more calls, typed the phone interviews till my fingers were falling off and then today, the day before the story is due, and the day before it's going to press--there is no margin of error here--I was back on the phone at 8:30 AM and then again at 9AM. All good. Got what I want in the bag. Problem? How to turn the 14,000 words of interviews with 15 people plus the six official government papers, plus the 27 newpaper and internet clips into a story in less than 24 hours.
   So what could I do? I volunteered to drive Madeleina to school 90- minutes away, which killed three hours but gave me time to ruminate. Then I sat down and plunked out 1,400 words, the opening section, and outlined the next three sections and the end.
   Then my sister wrote to say she was making a meatloaf lover a meatloaf and did the recipe she took a picture of measure up? It was a good recipe, actually. But then I gave her mine, with all measures in general common sense. If I say garlic and onions minced and sauteed, obviously, for 2 1/2 pounds of meat I mean about 4 tablespoons of minced garlic in olive oil and one large red onion, maybe 12 ounces. Common sense, right?
So this is what I gave her:
My basic meatloaf:
Beef and pork, mix. About 1 1/2 pounds of ground chuck; 1 pound of ground pork (I used to do veal until I stopped using veal)
Saute pan: chopped garlic, onion and two sticks cerely; saute in olive oil if you have it; salt and pepper, add two diced roma tomatoes and cook thoroughly, then add all to the raw meat in a bowl.
Add breadcrumbs—maybe a cup or so—two whole eggs, some ketchup and a bit of Worstershire. Mustard or mustard powder if you like. A little sage or fresh parsley (chopped) if you like. Mix all thoroughly. Check for salt and pepper.
   Put in baking dish, cover with three/four slices bacon, put in oven (on silver foil so it won't drip into oven when it rises).
   Bake at 350 for about 70 minutes, turn down to 300 for last 20 minutes. pull from oven, pour off fat, let cool a bit before slicing and serving with mashed or boiled potatoes and a good green veg.

Of course, now that I'm starving for meatloaf, I'm making simple chicken thighs, dressed in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, served with a bit of basmati rice, a salad, and broccoli. It's gonna be good, but not as good at the meatloaf. And I hope my editor doesn't see this or he'll think I'm goofing off!!!! I think of it as meditation time.
Bon Appetite!

Keystone XL Denied

On Friday, Nov. 6, President Obama gave the word that the Keystone XL pipeline, intended to carry tar sands bitumen from Alberta, Canada to Cushing, OK, would not be approved. In announcing the decision, President Obama, speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House said simply: “The State Department has decided that the Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the national interest of the United States. I agree with that decision.”

The pipeline would have carried the bitumen from Canada to Cushing, then on to Houston’s refineries and from there to Port Arthur, a tax-free zone, for shipment to China and other foreign ports. TransCanada, the energy giant, has acknowledged that the tar sands bitumen was slated for overseas markets, and that once the pipeline was built would produce only 35 or 40 permanent jobs in the U.S.

Environmentalists around the country and world cheered the pipeline rejection because of the dangers the pipeline. The material is almost impossible to clean up and the line would have passed over the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies fresh water for the breadbasket of the U.S. Others cheered because the pipeline would have given a foreign company the right of eminent domain for profit. Still others cheered the line’s rejection because the pipe would have produced nothing—fuel or jobs or taxes—for the U.S., while TransCanada and the Koch brothers, who have a potential $100 billion windfall invested in Canadian tar sands, would have made enormous amounts of money at the risk of U.S. taxpayers who would be responsible for any spill clean up.

Despite all those drawbacks with no upside, Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan called the decision by the State Department and President Obama “sickening”.

Two days prior to Obama’s announcement, TransCanada had asked that their request for the pipeline permit be suspended, which would have allowed them to activate it at a future date. Secretary of State John Kerry denied that request. That denial is significant: it means that if TransCanada decides to pursue the Keystone XL in the future, it will be starting from ground zero in the permitting process.

So Tired of Being Fat

I am so tired of being fat. I am serious. I spent my life as an athlete. A mediocre athlete, but an athlete none the less. I was playing street handball till I was near 50 (before we moved to Texas and there are no damned courts here) two hours, twice or three times a week. I rode my bike on NYC streets 10 miles daily. When I gave that up I fast-walked five miles daily. I played shortstop for the High Times Bonghitters and we won the journalism softball league two years in a row. I did sit ups, pushups and basic stuff.
    Then my body went nuts: intestine exploded, setting me back a lot; then the septic spider bite set me back for months; then the freaking flesh-eating leg disorder came around and set me back again. Now I'm fat. And I'm gonna be on television in January or December and I'm gonna talk and be cool but I'm gonna be fat!!! And I don't like it. I just drink too much wine. My food diet is great. Even last night, when I felt like indulging, I had 1/2 of a rib eye steak sauteed in garlic with onions, grilled tomatoes, salad with a balsamic vinagrette (2-1 balsamic vinager to oil), and mushrooms in the pan juice. No starch. C'mon, I'm not supposed to get fat from that. I had three glasses of wine for goodness sake. I didn't eat in the middle of the night.
   I know it's my fault, my doing. If I cut out all alcohol, cut out sweet and low with my coffee, and added an hour or two of exercise I'd lose weight. But I've already cut out candy--years ago--Ice cream is a once-a-month thing, I have starch maybe 3 times a week--generally basmati rice or potatoes in a dish, with bread once a week. I have almost cut out mayonaise entirely. So it must be the wine. But I'm not even drinking enough to get high! So I object!
   Worse, I'm gonna be subjected to being on tv as a fat pig in the next couple of months. Rrrrrrrrrrr. Time to do something about that.

Well, I just talked myself out of a good gig...

I don't always operate in my best financial interests. I tend to make enough to get by, then give it away as fast as I can. Finish the mortgage and you'd think I'd have that extra $1400 a month in my pocket. No chance. Give some to my wife/ex-wife; give a bunch to my beautiful daughter Madeleina so she's got spending bucks at college. Bring a lot of people into the house and feed them hysterically well and refuse any recompense. There goes that $1,400.
   That's just one example of thousands. I'm still drinking my wine, so I'm obviously not giving it all away, but probably more than I have to give away.
   And over the last week or two, I gave away a possible gift horse. It was the right thing to do, so I'm not going to regret it, but there are little pangs running through me like razor blades this second.
   What's going on is that two friends who have been on trips with me to Peru decided to start a business there. During conversations with them I suggested that a restaurant with me at the helm might help bring clients to their other businesses and keep a cash flow going. They liked it and liked the restaurant I've been secretly planning for some time.
    I made a couple of other suggestions as well, all as adjuncts to their plans--and no, I'm not going to go into their plans here cause that's nobody's business but theirs.
   Then they went their way and I went mine.
   The two of them showed up at my house about two weeks ago. They were excited, full of moxy and energy and ready to go with a business plan that would revolve around Peter Gorman. There would be the Gorman restaurant; a Gorman club, some Gorman products; Gorman tours; Gorman executive trips to the Amazon--all sorts of all things Gorman. It sounded very sweet and was a tremendous ego stroke.
   Until I realized that I had to be straight with them. I said that everything I'd suggested would work in conjunction with their plans, but that given my experience in Peru, none of what I suggested would individually or even aggregately pay for 4 gringo salaries, space rental, space preparation, apartment rental for those four gringos, etc. No business in Iquitos can do that. I pointed to the successful restaurants in Iquitos that serve tourists and Peruvians with enough money to pay for high end food: Three are owned by gringos who are married to smart Peruvian women; three are owned by Peruvians. None of them have to support four gringos, and none of them could. Their restaurants pay for themselves and make a nice living for the owners but none could do what our restaurant would have to do to support itself with that many gringos feeding at the trough.
   I gave them numbers. I had them use calculators: The end result was that our restaurant would need more dinner clients than any of the successful tourist-aimed restaurants currently serve. And with Iquitos being charming because it's difficult to reach, your tourist volume isn't going to get any bigger with walk-ins.
  It took me several days of going over different aspects of Gorman world and how each project I proposed was part of a puzzle that would succeed, but each would succeed on a limited scope because of the potential number of clients in town at a given time. Iquitos is not New York City with 100,000 people walking past your doors daily.
  And they concluded that I was right. And so the work I was going to start next week was canceled. And they were smart to do that. I've lost a good opportunity. I did the right thing, and I will sleep better knowing that I didn't talk my friends into spending money they could not recoup. And I'm glad I did, but it somehow still feels like I gave myself a raw deal.

All Hat, No Cattle

Okay, I admit it, I wrote this on FaceB and then realized I should have written it here. I was reminded of the old Texas description of a dumb cowboy: All Hat, No Cattle. So here goes:
Last few days I've gotten several pics of President Barack Obama and his wife with the general title of: "Only 15 more months till they're gone. Like if you agree. Let's get a good Republican in there."
My response is to write HAHAHAHA! Lincoln and Roosevelt (Teddy), are long gone. And even Goldwater would not be accepted by the current crew of zanies. Who do they want? Dimwitted Carson who looks to be on so many meds you WANT to forgive him from being so completely stupid on every stinking issue; You want Trump? The New York loudmouth who functions well in NYC but would have this country in hot water with 30 countries in a week if president, and then would try to send national guard into the homes where suspected illegals live. Wow. Or completely crazy Cruz, who is proof positive that affirmative action occasionally fails with his Harvard presence; Rubio? The little Cubano whose father fought WITH Castro but talks about how his father escaped Castro in order to capture the Miami Cuban votes? Maybe Fiorina, whose claim to fame is running two companies into the dirt, killing tens of thousand of jobs, and walking away with a pile of money the companies gave her to disappear before she did more damage. Or Santorum, whose name on the internet perfectly describes this utterly phony Catholic; Or do they want Christie, who has never resisted an impulse in his life, to have the red phone at 3 AM if someone calls to interrupt him while he's eating a bacon and mayo sandwich? Let's go with Jeb Bush, who destroyed Florida and is trying to convince us that his brother kept us safe by invading Iraq at the behest of Dick Cheney and Haliburton? 
I would not invite any of these people to a block party, much less to a presidential debate. Hell, Lindsay "I'm not gay, just effeminate" Graham, is better than all of those people. And effeminate is his best feature! Hell, even Kasich, if you don't look at his religious-right belief, sounds better than all of them. YIKES! What the hell are republicans thinking with this motley crew of absolute dumb ass losers? They are certainly not thinking about the well-being of this country!

Crazy World

So I was thinking about some things today, some serious stuff, when the cover of my book, Sapo in My Soul, popped into my head. It probably popped into my head because an Italian publisher is going to print a copy in Italian and he'd asked for the photo files.
    When this thought popped into my head, I had to write to Morgan Maher, the designer of the book and a guy who has several of his photos in the book, including the cover picture. (To see it, go to amazon dot com and punch in Peter Gorman in books and the cover will pop up.) And this is what I wrote him:
Morgan: Crazy, right? Some things just pop into my head insanely. Like this: You are probably the first person in the history of the world as we know it who has ever put a picture of a stretched out frog while it was being milked for its venom on the cover of a book. 

   First person in the history of the world. Whew! We waited 6-8-40 billion years for you to come along and do that. And there you were and did it. Another first in a world where people don't think there is anything new under the sun. HA!

Gor

   There is lots of new stuff under the sun. Go out and be part of it everybody. It's a damned exhilarating feeling!