Freedom, #65

Monica Wood:

I have to say that I thoroughly believe that the human animal is built for resilience. We just are. And there is no journey we cannot make. That yes, no matter what happens, it's still the human impulse for creating, for preserving our humanity even in the most inhumane circumstances.

Mark Dion:

I think fear drives mostly everything we do. Oftentimes I held back because I was fearful. I wanted to plan everything out. I wanted to make sure that I minimized any potential risk. I forgot to enjoy the leap into something new. There's a certain free fall that occurs in your life, whether it's professional or personal, and rather than fear it, we

Kate Beever:

should welcome it at the beginning. The kids are usually pretty shy, which makes sense because they don't know us so well. By the end of the eight weeks they're singing together and they're working together as a team together to create music that they're gonna perform for people. And you can see how proud they are of it.

John Williams:

We feel so strongly that music is such an incredible vehicle to bring community together that we wanted to make sure that we brought music to all communities that we're able to reach.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast Show Number 65, Freedom and airing for the first time on December 9, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio Portland, Maine. This Freedom show came out of an experience I had early on in my medical career when I was the medical director for the Cumberland County Jail. It also came out of my experience working as a resident on Portland's Munjoy Hill with families of diverse economic backgrounds. In my life, growing up in suburban Portland Yarmouth, Maine area, it wasn't a common thing to have people in your family be incarcerated. What I found when I worked on Munjoy Hill at the time and what I found when I worked in the Cumberland County Jail was that for many families, this was indeed a rite of passage. It was part of the culture, and it's something that I thought a lot about as I was going through my early years as a physician, because I realized that it's not really about us and them. It's not really about people who have been bad and people who are good. So much of it has to do with where we're raised, how we're raised, what we have access to, and the type of resilience that we maybe are born with or maybe develop over the course of our lives. I think that when we look at freedom and how we get into situations and how we get out of them, there are many important lessons to be learned. On today's Freedom show, we'll be speaking with author Monica Wood, former sheriff and current state representative Mark Dion, and John Williams and Kate Beaver of 317 Maine and Yarmouth, who will be speaking about the outreach program at the Long Creek Development center in South Portland. We hope you learn something about freedom as it relates to your life and the lives that we're describing on today's show. Thank you for joining us. Many people come to my medical practice seeking freedom from things that limit them, such as pain, difficulty with weight, chronic disease, relationship problems, and job transitions. One of my first suggestions for self healing is to learn how to breathe. Considering that each of us has been breathing since we were born, we seem to forget how very easy and how important this is. Try this before getting out of bed in the morning. Lie on your back with both hands on your abdomen. Take a deep breath in, counting to five in your head. Pause very briefly and breathe out again, again, counting to five. When you bring the breath deeply into your body, your abdomen will rise and your hands will move toward the ceiling. Practice this for at least five minutes each day. For more help on finding freedom physically, emotionally or Spiritually, contact me Dr. Lisa at TheBody Architect 207-774-2196 or visit our website Dr. Lisa.org. The topic of today's show is freedom, and we're going to spend time with people who represent different ways of looking at this notion, freedom and what it means as an individual and maybe within the culture. So today we have Monica Wood, the author of Any Bitter Thing and also When We Were the Kennedys. The way that I became interested in having Monica come and speak was because she does work with the Maine Correctional center in Windham. And I appreciate your coming in to talk to us today about all the things that you do. Monica.

Monica Wood:

You're very welcome, Monica.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I finished when we were the Kennedys. And I was really struck by the fact that I think there's so much shared culture that you are describing that so many of us in Maine have felt this sort of mill town, Mexico, paper mill. My family's from Biddeford. And I know that this culture was there for us and the Catholicism. Why was this important for you to write about that particular topic?

Monica Wood:

Well, you know, it's funny that freedom is the topic today, because writing nonfiction was a big sort of jump out of the corral for me because I am known as a novelist. I've got four novels. Everybody, my editors, my agent, my readers, everybody was expecting another novel, which I mightily tried to do and left it abandoned. I probably will get back to it, but I was in a real trough, not just a writing trough, but a trough of despair is maybe too strong a word. But I'd had two friends, had died, my father in law died. This was all within about four months. And then, I know this sounds silly, but cat lovers will know. And also a very beloved old cat died. And that just felt like the last straw. So it's just one of those places you end up in. In life. Everybody does. It just happened that all these things seem to be converging at once. And I didn't write for a while. I was simply not in a place to do that, Especially something that I was struggling with so mightily. And so I did. Finally. What I always do when I'm in despair is I went home. But I went home metaphorically this time. I started writing about my childhood. And there was something so palliative for me about doing that. It felt good to be back with my family, even though I'm writing about a sad year in my family's life. I was nine years old and my father dropped dead on his way to work at the Oxford Paper Company, which was the mill in town. But there was something about going back and in a way, being back with my family that was extremely calming to me. And I just felt that I'd been drawn back into the bosom of all those things that made me who I am. And, you know, I grew up feeling cherished and special and loved. And so there was that way of getting back to that feeling again. So. But at the same time, there was something a little bold about it because I was working on nonfiction, which I had never intended to do. I thought there was zero audience for this book, starting with my agent, who is kind of the troll under the bridge. You have to get past her to get anywhere else she's wonderful. We've been together for a long time, but we have our moments. So it was. Talk about freedom. I felt like I'd kind of was busting out of a little box that I'd been in for quite a while.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I would think that it would be very different because I've read all of your works of fiction, and that's something that you're creative, you're creating, and something that you're pulling together out of somewhere, your mind and things around you. But this is something that has to come from within you. The nonfiction, the autobiographical aspect. And you're talking about really difficult times. I mean, your father died, and then you eventually talk about the fact that your mother died, and you talk about this sort of rejiggering of the family, trying to understand itself better after sort of what was known to be ceased to exist anymore. So what did that bring up for you as you were writing?

Monica Wood:

You know, people ask me, was it hard to write? Was it. Did you cry all the way through? And I honestly, I never shed a tear. It was probably the most joyful writing I have ever done. And probably because what I'm writing about is a transformation of a family. It was. I cannot even possibly overestimate the blow Dad's death was to all of us. And yet we ended up being this very traditional mill family, just like every other family in town, completely connected to the mill through Dad's work. And then he's gone. And so we're something else. We don't really know what a family of women, four daughters. And my brother was married with children of his own at that point. So here's my mother and these four girls. And in the last scene of the book before the epilogue, I have my sister Ann, who's at the time a 21 year old schoolteacher. And then there's the three little girls. There's my sister Betty, who's mentally disabled. She's 12, I'm nine at the time, and my sister Kathy is eight. And the big thing is Ann getting her driver's license so we can finally get dad's car going. This is a year and a half later and she finally gets her license. And we do. Back then it was just a big deal. And we all piled into the car and we're driving around town and tooting the horn at this one and that one. And it's sort of a culmination of all the things that you've seen in the town and in the story. But at the end, she pulls into the Driveway. And we're singing the car trip song. We had this song we always sang when we were in the car. And the last line is, there is no journey we cannot make this way. In other words, here we are now as this other kind of family and we're going to be okay. Even though the reader knows in not too many years my mother will also die. But it prepares them, even though that's not part of the story, they know we're going to be okay with that too, because we have become this very tight, close family of girls that can manage anything.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And some of the way that your family was able to be okay was through this national tragedy that occurred not too long after your father died.

Monica Wood:

Yes. The Kennedy assassination resonated very deeply in my family. My mother at first, and this I picked up on even as a nine year old child. My sister Kathy teases me. She says, you know, you were the one who was always listening to what people weren't saying, the things nobody else noticed. And I thought, you know, that's pretty much the definition of a child who grows up to be a writer. Every writer I know had that kind of childhood. Kind of anxious, always looking between the lines, wondering, what do they mean by that? So what I picked up from my mother is that she was ashamed to be a widow. So when the tragedy, the national tragedy happened, we have Jackie Kennedy, the most beautiful, glamorous woman on the face of the earth, who has suffered exactly the same tragedy my mother suffered a few months earlier than that. And I could see how watching the televised grace of Jackie Kennedy, showing the whole world that this kind of sorrow can be a. Can be born and can be beautiful. It elevated my mother's status in her own heart, I think, and as a result, mine too. I was mortified to be fatherless, absolutely mortified. And I don't think that's an uncommon feeling. But the idea that Caroline Kennedy also had this exact same thing happen, it was just a funny sort of comforting idea that we weren't. That God hadn't kind of picked us out for this. That these things happen to all kinds of families, including, of all families, the Kennedy family.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this idea of loss carried through as a theme because you talk about the mill and people losing their jobs and things getting reconfigured there, and the sense of some enormous institution that had always been there also having to be restructured.

Monica Wood:

Right. The book really has three threads and three themes. And one is this family that's going through this enormous transition. The nation also, of course, is going through an enormous transition. And also the American manufacturing in the form of the Oxford Paper Company is also going through a transition because that same year, the. The towns were bracing for a protracted labor strike that would change the relationship between the mill and the town forevermore. So that's what's happening in the book. These three institutions on the cusp of enormous change.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you also describe the shoe manufacturing business and sort of how things are pulled together and how things used to be so hands on at that time in Maine history.

Monica Wood:

Yes, we used to. We had a next door neighbor, Mrs. Gagnon, who we all had a huge crush on. She was absolutely gorgeous. She had this beautiful auburn hair rippling down her back. Didn't really look like the other mothers. She wore kind of that French eyeliner, you know, back then. And just. She was a lovely woman. And she used to take in piecework from the shoe. We call them the shoe shops, the shoe factories from Bitterford. You know exactly what I mean. And she had three little girls, the same age as our youngest three. And my sister Kathy and I used to go over there and help Mrs. Gagnon and her three daughters sew shoes. So she'd get. There was a pickup drop off in Rumford on Waldo street, and she'd come home once a week with two giant cartons with uppers and lowers. They were just loose flaps of leather. And she taught us how to sew the toe end of the shoe with the rawhide pie crust stitch. And we would help her do that. It was my first skill, my first job, and I was very, very proud of it, because it wasn't the kind of thing that you said, oh, well, let's let the kids try it. You had to do it correctly or she didn't get paid for the work. So it was a very interesting thing. And very shortly thereafter, even that went away. The shoe industry was kind of on its last legs already at that point. And by the end of the decade, it was virtually gone. This was a booming industry that within 10 years disappeared entirely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that there's some larger lesson that could be learned from the experiences that you describe in the book? I mean, obviously our country has been going through economic reconfigurations over the last several years, and some people are feeling hopeless, as if it's never going to end, as if nothing's going to change, as if everything that they've ever known has been sort of thrown out the window. And yet you went through this yourself, you as an individual, as a family, as a town, what lessons do you think can be learned from your experience that possibly could be extrapolated to the experience of those who are listening?

Monica Wood:

Well, I don't know about lessons. I'm not a good lesson person. But I have to say that I thoroughly believe that the human animal is built for resilience. We just are. And there is no journey we cannot make, no matter what befalls us. And we see it all the time. You know, the quote tragedy that I suffered as a child is nothing compared to the tragedies that children in, say, Iraq have been suffering over the last 10 years. And yet they too, I assume, have some resilience, some way to overcome what is befalling them right now. And the other thing is the idea of the creative impulse as a way of not curing any of this stuff, but retaining your humanity in the face of something that may feel as if it's about to destroy you. And you think of the in the Holocaust after, when they went and visited the camps that they found poems rolled up in papers stuffed into pipes. And I find those stories like that not only hair raising, but also unbelievably comforting that yes, no matter what happens, it's still the human impulse for creating, for preserving our humanity even in the most inhumane circumstances.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As far as humanity is concerned, you've chosen to work with a group that really is pretty down on its luck. And this was profiled in a Maine magazine story not so long ago. This is work you do through the Main Correctional center in Windham. Why were you drawn to that?

Monica Wood:

Oh, my gosh, Lisa, this is I honestly can't answer it, except to say that I started out, I was asked to visit a book group that a volunteer was running at the Main Correctional Center. And this is in the women's unit. There are about 80 women in the unit out of a prison that holds about 600 inmates. Most of them are male. And they were reading one of my books, Ernie's Arc, And I went into the she called me through or emailed me or something and asked if I would come and visit their group. And I said sure, went over, walked in, and the second I walked in that room, there were 12 women in the group, all in their blue prison garb and this volunteer. And the second I walked in there, something just came over me. I can't explain it. I've never had this experience about anything, including writing in my life. But I thought I completely belong here and I have to come back. So I had a wonderful two hours. It was the best book group I've ever visited. It was all about the book and the characters and the stories and very insightful and interesting and funny. And so I left and I immediately wrote up a proposal for something. I brought it over to the Maine Humanities Council and they gave me money to buy books. And I started this program. It's called Meet the Authors. And I kind of dragooned three of my women writer friends into doing this with me. Hannah Holmes, who's a science writer, and my friend Amy McDonald, who writes for children. And that first time, and it was Betsy Scholl who at the time was our poet laureate. She's a poet. And I asked them if they would do this with me. And so the format is it's 12 weeks. I'm there every week, and we talk about the writing of the writer who is about to come in and visit. So we have two sessions. We read the book, talk about the book, and then the writer comes in for a Q and A and a little like a mini workshop on that type of writing. So Hannah had them doing close personal observation of human beings as basically an animal species, which was hilarious, to say the least, because they're, you know, these are caged animals, really, who have territory issues and all kinds of stuff like that. So her work really resonated with them very much. And she's also hilariously funny, so they appreciated her. And also has no. When I choose people for this, I have to think in terms of three things. One is, will their writing resonate with the women? And I want to pick somebody who has very few barriers, you know, very, very open people. And also somebody. Somebody with not even a whiff of noblesse oblige. You know, people who are just there to meet some great gals and have some fun and do a little teaching and some back and forth. So it's worked out really, really well. I had never done anything like it before. I didn't know whether it was going to work. And I have to say that I made very few adjustments the second time around. I've done it now three times, and I'm about to start a new one. And what I have found is what we do in the. This is, I guess, about freedom. You know, your prison is not an easy place to live. So we're in this room, and the first thing we did, I thought this was going to be. I thought this was going to go over like a lead balloon. I thought, well, I'll just try it. And so I had us all raise our arms over our head and create a metaphorical bubble around us. And that inside this bubble, our only identity is as readers and writers. That's it. And they completely went with it. And in fact, if I forget, they remind me. And we also did. Sometimes a guard would come in to do something, or the education director would come in just to sit in for a little while, and we would say, well, I'm sorry you have to come inside our bubble. And they were so disarmed by it, they'd just say, well, okay, and they would do it. But it gave the women not only autonomy within this circumscribed metaphorical place we had invented, but it gave them a little bit of authority that you can't come in here unless you do this. It was very, very interesting. And the writing they've produced has been sometimes utterly astonishing. And the interest, you know, I have a friend who's a DA and, you know, we obviously have very different views about prisoners. And what I tell him, though, is that the person that he prosecutes in court is not the person I see coming into my class. That person is now clean and sober, for one thing. And that. That's huge. A lot of these horrible crimes were committed under the influence of very bad drugs. And again, you know, those are all choices. But, yeah, I'm not saying it's an excuse for behavior, but it is part of the package. And so the women that I'm seeing are clean and sober. And you're a different person when you're clean and sober. You're more the person you might have been or hoped you would be before all of this happened. So it's really given me. I mean, I never thought at all about people in prison. I wasn't interested in them. I didn't give a thought to them in any way. And now I think about them all the time. I think about them all the time. You know, if I'm having a glass of wine in the evening, I joke to them, I said, you know, I think I could do okay in prison because I actually like small, spacious spaces, and I like structure. They're the ones who told me, they said, you know, you'd do great in here. I said, I would do great, except I couldn't stand going without a glass of wine in the evening. That would be my worst thing. And lousy coffee. So. But I do think of them sometimes. I think, well, here I am in my house with my glass of wine, and I know exactly where they are at that same time, because everything is so regimented. But most of them are getting out, you know, sooner or later. Some sooner, some much later. And so I think that if. If I can have any role in sending them back out there with their creativity ignited, then I think that that can't be a bad thing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Monica, how can people find out about the work that you're doing, about the books that you're writing and the things that you're out in the world contributing?

Monica Wood:

Well, I have a website, monicawood.com and I try to keep it up. I'm on Facebook, and anybody can friend me on Facebook if they want to see what's going on there. And that's about it. I don't Twitter, tweet, whatever at all. I just, that's all. I mean, Facebook is enough of a time suck as it is. So I try to keep as low a profile as I can while still fulfilling my obligations of book promotion, et cetera.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we are so grateful to you for coming in and being part of what we're trying to do with encouraging people to find their own creativity and perhaps use this to engage in their own freedom activities.

Monica Wood:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So thank you for coming in and talking to us today.

Monica Wood:

You're welcome. I really enjoyed myself. Lisa, thanks.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In the studio with us today, we have former Sheriff Mark Dion, who's also the current state representative from District 113 here in Maine and a friend of mine from, I think maybe about a decade back when I was working at the Cumberland County Jail and you were the sheriff for Cumberland County. You've had so many different lives before that point and since that point. I'm really glad that you're here today to share some of those experiences.

Mark Dion:

Well, thanks for inviting me and I hope our conversation is helpful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I can't imagine it wouldn't be. I mean, even when I met you, I was the medical director for the Cumberland County Jail. And I think that anybody who's never been inside a jail setting, there's just no way to completely describe it, but it's like its own little society, its own little universe with its own little set of rules, and even from a medical standpoint, its own.

Mark Dion:

It's a village behind a fence. And I think a lot of the general community would like to hope they don't need to know about it. But it exists and and it has consequences for the broader community in terms of how people leave that village, what state they're in, and moreover, why we send people to live in that village for predetermined sets of time. So I always thought I was the mayor of a unique community.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and you've had a chance to be a member of many different unique communities. You grew up in Lewiston.

Mark Dion:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you were just saying before we got on the air, you grew up at the same time as Governor LePage in Lewiston. And Lewiston is its own little unique community. What are some of the things you learned about growing up in Lewiston?

Mark Dion:

Well, growing up in Lewiston, family was central. This idea of bilingual community was core to who we were. I grew up in a Franco American household, and English was seen as a secondary language. French is what we spoke at home. There was this idea. There was us and the Americans. There was an idea of my parents and their generation, especially their parents, that whatever was going on in Lewiston was temporary, that eventually we'd return to Canada. So we sent resources to Canada and we had to make our annual pilgrimage there to be reminded that was home and Maine was temporary. And then by the time our generation grew up, we saw ourselves as the true American generation. So I see that same parallel occurring now in other communities. Whether it's families from North Africa or Southeast Asia who've come into Maine. There's a transition. It'll take three generations. You know, you have Cambodians in America, and then you'll have Afghan Americans, and then eventually you'll have Americans who say they're of Somali descent. There's a journey there, and it comes with black blessing and frustration because the broader community expects that transition to be sometimes more quickly achieved than what's possible.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me about some of the friction that can take place when this journey, when you're undergoing this journey, whether you're an individual or a community.

Mark Dion:

Well, I think it surfaced in the recent comments by the mayor in Lawiston, which is this idea of when do you adopt one culture and abandon another one? And I think if he were asked for my opinion, I would gently suggest to him that it's a melding, it's transformation. His culture will never be the same, and neither will theirs. There'll be a new culture in Lewiston that will incorporate elements of both, and he should do what he can to encourage that, because I think it'll give Lewiston a better worldview of itself and others.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that one of the reasons that people hold on to Whatever they grew up with is a fear, a fear of moving into something unknown in the future.

Mark Dion:

I think fear drives mostly everything we do. I mean, to be honest, whether it's having to do with culture, even your own individual growth. You know, if I look back on my life and I'm absolutely honest with myself, oftentimes I held back because I was fearful. I wanted to plan everything out. I wanted to make sure that I minimized any potential risk. And I forgot to enjoy the leap into something new. There's a certain free fall that occurs in your life, whether it's professional or personal. And rather than fear it, we should welcome it. So when I go to Augusta, a lot of the conflict there is fear based, trying to hold on to something that feels safe and comfortable. This resistance to change and being torn by the idea that some part of your brain and your heart recognizes change has to occur. It's a real struggle. So when you mention fear, I think it's one of the driving elements in how we see ourselves and how we engage others.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My experience with you when I was the medical director at the county jail and we were going through a lot of difficulty with financing the medical care for the inmates because it was expensive and probably still is expensive, but there was a lot of friction at that time, is that you always maintain a very pragmatic yet positive view. I mean, really, I always had the sense that you weren't kind of locked down in your thinking, that you were open to trying to bring people in and experience their thoughts. Is that part of what's enabled you to be successful?

Mark Dion:

I think so. I mean, I think success is something I judge internally. So I feel if I can bring as many people to the issue as I can and we all learn something from that process, then that's success. And I don't try to get caught up in stereotypes. I mean, part of the problem with the jail was the idea that everybody should be punished. And everybody's got consistently evil. Makes it easier to say no, as opposed to saying, look, these are fellow human beings, they have needs. We have to meet those needs. We have to demonstrate the very behavior that we suspect is non existent in them. And in these 30 years dealing with, and I'll put in quotation mark, criminals, I found that bad people can do incredibly good things. And good people have done some incredibly bad things. Things evil moves like an infection, back and forth across many different individuals. I'm not so quick to judge. I think in 30 years I would look back and say, thank God I've deferred to her to judge. In the final analysis, my job is to try to respect and engage, and I may learn something, and they may learn something in the process, too. So fighting or advocating for proper medical care, whether it was for physical disease or mental health, seemed to be what my duty was. It's how you define responsibility. And once you do that for yourself, you get a lot of clarity. But that's something that really bothers me. And, you know, from our prior lives at the jail, I mean, we're quick to build jail cells. We're not so quick to build therapeutic beds, or we're really reluctant to define many of our problems as they truly are, which are public health issues and not necessarily crime issues. We want to punish. We want to believe that people that are in the grips of addiction have a choice. Yet if you put the timeline of an addict, there comes a point where rational decision making went out the window. It's not fun anymore. They don't want to do what they're doing, but they're absolutely compelled biologically and psychologically to do that. We don't recognize that. And I'm not sure that a jail or prison is very therapeutic in the way it approaches those problems. So if I was king of the world, for every jail cell, we need 10 beds in a hospital or medical setting. I mean, that truly looks at what's going on out there. If we want to stop crime, we need to control and provide reason resources for addicted individuals. It's the same with mental health. We put a lot of people that are mentally ill in jail, and we think that'll work. And, you know, and I know it doesn't work. It aggravates the situation. But some parts of our community feel there's been a victory there. So we need to discuss with them and challenge them to revisit their thinking. And again, it's fear. I'm not like that. I don't want to be like that. I want to make sure my children are not exposed to that because they may become that. You see, these are all. This is not a place that's comfortable for them either. They're as trapped as the addict. One is trapped by chemistry. The other one is trapped by their own thinking. We need to break it down on both sides.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, my experience is that if you really dig deep, it's more the fear that they are like that that drives them or that they are, as John McCain has said multiple times and he has done work at Long Creek. And we had another interview where people were talking about those are just the people who get caught. So my experience with people is that it's their fear that they're just one step away from getting caught, that there's something underneath. Many times that they're worried that they already are manifesting.

Mark Dion:

I don't disagree with that. I think we are most fearful of those individuals that display the very weakness that we have within ourselves. And there's a recognition of that. So we're repulsed by who we are, not necessarily who they are. And that's why I'm saying they don't feel safe. The accuser doesn't feel safe to look in the mirror either, but damn, they want to make sure the offender does. I'm okay with that, but we need to turn the mirror on the community and start asking hard questions and give them a way to find an answer so we do get justice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And my experience also was that there is, I would say, the vast majority of people that just made bad choices and really, you know, had bad family situations and had addictions and things going on. And there was this sliver of people that I encountered that I was truly concerned about. I really would not have ever wanted them out in the community because I think I did say that there was some strange biological or psychological evil that existed that something could turn in their brains. Is there room for that thinking in your paradigm?

Mark Dion:

Sure. I mean, I'm a realist. There is a small number of men and women out there who pose a real risk to themselves first by their decision making and to all of us in the general community. And unfortunately, we may have to contain those individuals. And that's a whole other talk and how we do that. But the vast majority of people don't fall in that category. Here's an example. A few weeks ago, I went up to the state prison to visit with the men who were part of the hospice program there. And when I walked in, one of the volunteers is somebody I helped put in prison many years ago. So it was like a reunion. And I saw immediately he had had a dramatic change. We would have said back then, he's a sociopath, had no conscience, no feeling for others, and a true predator in every sense of the word. And I've helped put men like that in prison. And I felt that I'd done my job at the time, so I'm conscious of that. We spent some time talking and the change that I saw is these different. Developed a capacity now for empathy. He by seeing dying and actually embracing the reality of our own individual mortality, he's come to appreciate what life is and how sacred it is. And that's done more for him being in this process than the idea that he's got to do 10 or 15 years in a cage. We achieved not rehabilitation because there was no good to bring him back to because of the trajectory of his life. But we have achieved with the hospice program, I think, a transformation. So there's always hope. You see, it reinforced in me that even when I've concluded somebody is bad, you know, incorrigible, that speaks to my own failing, that I'm still not willing on some level to taunt the possibility that there is hope. And this program provided hope and has provided some substantial transformation for this gentleman. All the men in this were there for heinous crimes, once serving a 62 year sentence. So we know the community said, you're irretrievable and we're going to put you in this box forever. But in spite of that, he has found a way to connect with humans on a level many of us will never connect with. And because of that, I think has been granted a gift that we can enjoy in terms of appreciating what life is. And he's learned that in a cage. Maybe there's a lesson there for us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It does seem very interesting that sometimes in order to find freedom, we have to be first confined.

Mark Dion:

Yeah, they are free, those men. I mean, it's. They had some, they formed a little band. That's how they decompressed from dealing with the sick and dying in prison. And their lyrics spoke to that. Their soul is connected to something greater than those walls. And we can't contain that. You can't punish that, you can't restrain it. And they know it. And I think they walk much more erect emotionally than when they walked into that building the first time out. I think it's a blessing for them and for the institution. The institution could learn a lot from them. They had some PhD in nursing studied them and some men who do similar work in Louisiana. The consequence for the patients and for them were better than those we paid to do the work out in the free world. Because out in the free world on many levels, it's just a job. And even though you're committed to the job, you go in, you're done, you go home, you shut it down for most of those types of professionals or employees. But these men live it. These are men that they're caged with. And the connection and the bond goes on forever. They will stand at the graveside at the prison farm and put them in the ground. It was very powerful. I felt good. They made me feel good. So I went to a place where we think evil lives to learn something that was very, very good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate your spending the time talking with us today on the subject of freedom and the things that it is meant in the different iterations of your life. We've been talking with former sheriff and current state representative and attorney Mark Dion. Thank you for coming in.

Mark Dion:

Thank you, Lisa, very much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Last spring we had on our show two very talented individuals who are connected within the community, doing good work in the area area of music. And we called the show Healing with Sound. We were joined by John Williams of 317 Main in Yarmouth and music therapist Kate Beaver. And we're so fortunate to have them back in the studio today to talk with us about an interesting program that came up. Well, I'm going to let you tell us a little bit about it, but the reason I knew about it was because John McCain, who is our audio guru and also musician within the community, started teaching with this program. So thank you for coming back and joining us. John and Kate, thank you.

John Williams:

Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And the program that you're doing is with the Long Creek Youth Development center, which has been out in the community a long time. Known as something else, I can't remember, but it was always sort of more of a, we thought of it as more of a sort of a prison kind of place for children. But what we're learning more and more is that this is a stage that doesn't necessarily have to be perpetuated. Children can get out of the system and can move out into productive lives. And you're helping them do this through music.

John Williams:

That's correct, yeah. That's correct, yeah. No, our understanding is that it has been around for a long time and I believe it's the only correctional facility in the state for kids and they've really gone through a transition in terms of how they're working with kids. And absolutely that's a good goal, is to give these kids opportunities to see that there are other ways to live their lives and be productive in society.

Kate Beever:

The facility is really structured. So it's kind of a good thing for them to go in and get an education in a safe space and do some sort of therapy work in addition to their learning.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me for those who haven't listened to the interview that we had with you, Kate, which of course they're all going to. Everybody's going to go back now and listen to the welcome to the podcast on Healing with Sound. This is a great podcast. Tell us a little bit about music therapy, Kate. Give us background and why is this helpful for kids?

Kate Beever:

So music therapy is a way to use music as a way to heal in sort of an indirect way. So it addresses non musical goals. So if you have goals of trying to grow as a person or regaining speech, if you've been brain injured or general therapy goals, just trying to sort of improve your well being, you can do that through music. So instead of trying to address things verbally, you address things musically.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well. Give me an example of something that you might do with somebody that can help them.

Kate Beever:

So I'm trying to think of an example from Long Creek. One thing that we did is we would find out what kind of music the kids like and we'd choose a song that they knew really well and then we would teach them to play it on an instrument, but then we would change the words so they would write their own words to that song. So even though they weren't comfortable yet, just making up a song on their own, this was kind of an easy way for them to express themselves through music, just by changing words to an already familiar song.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

John, why did this fall under the umbrella of 317 Maine? You offer, I know, a lot of lessons. You do group lessons, you have Henry Fest every year. But this is something where you actually take Instructors, including John McCain from our radio show and others from your school into Long Creek. Why was this an important thing to do?

John Williams:

So we've been around for about seven or eight years now with our teaching facilities up in Yarmouth and we also have a teaching facility in Portland. We feel so strongly that music, music is such an incredible vehicle to bring community together that we wanted to make sure that we brought music to all communities that we're able to reach. Our facility up in Yarmouth, we have about 400 people that come and join that community and take Lessons and participate in music. We wanted to really figure out other populations that we could serve in the greater Portland area that may not have access to music. Music in the same way that may not be able to come to a weekly lesson, per se. And we were given an opportunity to go into Long Creek working with the folks at Seeds of Independence, another nonprofit in the area that works with at risk youth. And this was about a year and a half or so ago, and we went in and talked to folks at Long Creek, and the more we talked to them and the more we kind of heard what their philosophy was, we felt that there was a great possible fit between what we could bring in terms of music and community building and personal growth and what Long Creek is trying to do with the kids that are there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So Seeds of Independence, why has this become a hot topic of late?

John Williams:

I think that there are those that have seen these kids and, you know, every person has their special part. And there are a number of kids in southern Maine and probably throughout the state, I'm sure, as well as throughout the country that don't have the same opportunity and same privileges as other kids. And the folks at Seeds of Independence really saw that. And their goal is to, even if they can, help one or two kids find a way out from. From the situation that they're in, that's their hope and their target for doing that, I'll have to say. One of our early visits to Long Creek, we brought a couple of our musicians and we were given an opportunity to go into five different pods. They called the different units at the center pods. And we weren't quite sure what to expect, but we asked the kids, did they like music? What kind of music did they want to hear? And it was very quiet. Most of the kids had a fairly distant look in their eye. Not really sure why we were there or what this was all about. So we just started to play some tunes. And it was one of the most amazing things I've ever observed. It went from kind of a complete, expressionless, almost lifeless look to full engagement, interest and engagement. And. And it was so powerful that it was so clear to us at that time that music really is this amazing thing that can reach people's hearts and can be a real vehicle to awakening inner self. That that's what really made us realize that this was a great partnership and something that we wanted to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Kate, describe what the program is actually like.

Kate Beever:

So it's an eight week program and we have six to eight young adults join our group. And each day we try A little bit of a different kind of music. So a lot of the kids tend to like hip hop music or rock music, but we try to introduce them to some other genres. So folk or indie, folk, classical music, jazz. Just things that they might not have listened to yet. So each week we learn a little bit, and then we also try to do some improvisation activities. So the kids will choose an instrument and just kind of make something up on it. And we try to show them that that's a comfortable way to play music. They don't have to already know anything about it. And then we also do songwriting. So a lot of the kids already are fairly introspective, and they write poetry or they write in a journal. So we take some of their writing and we try to turn it into songs that they can later perform for people.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And how many sessions have you now had?

Kate Beever:

Oh, gosh, three, I think. And we have three more coming. So just last night, John McCain and I went and introduced ourselves to the kids and did the same thing you're talking about where we played for them. And it was the same result where they got really excited and interested, and we sort of showed that we could just make something up on the spot, just improvising together. So our next session starts two weeks from today and goes for eight weeks.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And are you finding that the numbers of kids who are signing up are increasing?

Kate Beever:

Mm, definitely. Last session, we only had one to two girls each time. And this time we had almost all the girls sign up. So we might actually be doing it right in their pod. There's just one female pod.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are the changes that you see in the children between the beginning and the end of the time that you spend with them?

Kate Beever:

That's a great question. At the beginning, the kids are usually pretty shy, which. Which makes sense because they don't know us so well. And they're very quiet and kind of tough acting. Although you get to realize that's kind of just a front that they're putting up. But they act sort of rough and gruff, and they tease each other and they don't really want to participate as much. But then by the end of the eight weeks, they're singing together and they're working together as a team to create music that they're going to perform for people. And you can see how proud they are of it. Last time, we had some of our donors come in and some of their volunteers come in and listen to their songs that they had written, and the kids were just really excited to be doing it for them and sort of talked about the process and talked about what their song meant to them and there were a lot of tears in the audience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do people find out more about the work that you're doing with the Long Creek Youth Development Center?

John Williams:

We'd love to have anyone who was interested in to learn more to come and just check out 317 come by and speak to me, talk to Kate or John and we'd be happy to talk about it. Long Creek is always looking for volunteers and I think if folks out there are interested in learning more and perhaps volunteering if they have an interest in music, there's always stuff to be done. So by all means reach out to us and we can put you in touch with the right people.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Any parting thoughts for those who are listening about the power of music?

Kate Beever:

Kate I think I was thinking a little bit when you were just asking about how teachers feel about it. It really is a different sort of thing than just giving a music lesson. So you have to be prepared to sort of deal with whatever is going to come up because these kids are going through a lot and it can be a really powerful thing to see the changes that come through them and what they bring out of themselves in their music making.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So music is powerful to the individual, but also to the person who's teaching the individual and sort of the reflection back.

Kate Beever:

Right. We learn from them as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us. We've been talking with John Williams of 317 Maine Music therapist Kate Beaver. I encourage all of our listeners to go back and listen to our Healing with Sound podcast to find out more about 317 main and also music therapy and get in touch with the people at 3:17 Maine about the long Creek Youth Development Development center program and the work that's being done. Thanks for coming in.

Kate Beever:

Thank you.

John Williams:

Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 65, Freedom, airing for the first time on December 9, 2012. Today's guests have included author Monica Wood, former sheriff and current state representative Mark Dion, and John Williams and Kate Beaver of 317 Main in Yarmouth discussing the outreach program at Long Creek Development center in South Portland. We anticipate that many of you who are listening have some experience with incarceration, whether it be an actual incarceration of yourself, a family member or someone you know, or maybe it's a mental or emotional incarceration. We also know that people have experiences with freedom and the idea that even though you may be confined at some time in your life, physically, emotionally or socially, there is a way out. We hope that some of our guests have provided you with insights as to how you may find your way out of your own incarceration. In fact, we know that some of our guests will be able to positively impact you in this area. For more information on these guests, Visit doc to torisa.org be sure to like our Facebook page, send us a note and let us know what you think of our shows. Also, we hope that you'll take a moment to thank our sponsors and let them know that you heard about them on our show and you appreciate their financial support because without them, none of this would be possible. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.

Kate Beever:

Sa.