Sounds good, right? But that’s not exactly what happened to me. I was laid off from my position as associate consultant for the Senate Insurance, Indemnity, and Corporations Committee in 1982. I believe some dirty tricks may have been afoot.

Some history — I started working for the California state legislature in 1978 when I landed a coveted Senate fellowship position, a paid internship. The application and interview process seemed pretty competitive but I had a great connection with one of the interview panelist. Mike Woo worked for Senator David Roberti, at that time Senate Majority Leader for the California State Senate, and one of my brother’s former roommates at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I’m not sure how much influence Mike’s vote had on me getting selected but I’m forever grateful to him for whatever role he played.

My first position as a Senate fellow was in the office of state senator William “Bill” Campbell from Hacienda Heights, a Republican. His nickname was “Hacienda Fats” due to the obvious. This was not my first choice of assignment but I figured any position in the legislature would be a great learning experience.

Senator Bill “Hacienda Fats” Campbell represented Hacienda Heights

When my immediate family moved from Los Angeles to Sacramento in 1960 one of our first family field trips was to the state capitol. We walked around the ground floor where all the counties had exhibits showing off their attributes like agricultural products grown, tourist attractions, and any famous people from that county. They were like mini chamber of commerce promotional exhibits. Walking around the building I gazed at the beautiful capitol dome, walked around the rotunda (where I would in the late 60s participate in a sit-in protest for fair housing), the highly polished marble floors, and the many well-dressed legislative staff, legislators, and lobbyists. I thought to myself at age thirteen that I’d like to work here when I grow up.

Getting the fellowship was a step toward what I thought in my then thirteen-year-old brain was my dream job. I had already shelved the idea of becoming an architect or veterinarian.

Time passed and there I am. Working for Hacienda Fats. My job description was pretty much as a gopher—picking up the mail in the Senate mailroom; doing errands for the senator and his chief of staff, Jerry Haleva, and just about anything no one else in the senator’s office wanted to do.

Interesting factoid— Jerry Haleva, who was my direct supervisor and Campbell’s chief of staff, looked a lot like Saddam Hussein and played him in the Big Lebowski. Remember the bowling alley dream sequence? That’s Jerry, as Saddam, handing out bowling shoes. Jerry sent me a head shot of himself dressed like Saddam years later. Spitting image. I wish I still had that photo.

Jerry Haleva as Saddam Hussein in The Big Lebowski

Jerry Haleva in front of a plaque of Senator Bill Campbell

One of my main jobs was clipping newspaper articles about the senator’s legislative activities and one of the senator’s pet projects — Laetrile. Laetril, also know as amygdalin or vitamin B17, was derived from apricot pits and had not been proven effective in treating cancer and was associated with serious side effects, including cyanide poisoning. It was never approved by the FDA for cancer treatment and lacked reliable scientific evidence supporting its use. “Hacienda Fats” would have fit right in with RFK Jr.

The fellowship lasted a year. In the interim I had made many contacts in the building. I wanted to continue working for the legislature and was fortunate to land a regular position with the Senate Education Committee as a junior staffer. Right up my alley. I had a teaching credential from the University of California at Davis and had taught in one of the first Head Start programs in Sacramento County from 1969-70.I was paid $3.50 an hour with a teaching credential. Hence I decided to go back to school and get a master’s of science in child development. But that’s another story.

Like most positions I have found over the years, it’s not always what you know, it’s who you know.

It was 1979 before computers and cell phones were ubiquitous. The Senate Education Committee secretary typed up all the bill analyses we staff prepared for the weekly committee meetings and put them into big binders for the senators and staff of the committee to have with them at the committee meeting. The night before committee hearing day we staff sometimes worked late into the evening getting prepared for the next day’s hearing. After helping our secretary assemble the binders we would often have a dinner meeting with the chair of the committee to go over our bill analyses and get questioned by the senator on why we recommended certain actions. It was a free meal but the stress level was often high depending on who the chair of the committee was. A frequent dinner spot for legislators, staff, and lobbyist was Frank Fats on K. Street, walking distance from the capitol. While I worked for the education committee I had three chair (men). Senator Alan Sieroty (Beverly Hills), Senator Leroy Greene (Sacramento) and Senator Paul Carpenter (Orange County).

More about Senator Carpenter to follow.

Senator Paul Carpenter

Other staff duties included writing responses to constituent letters on a variety of educational subjects. Constituent letter writing campaigns would often result in letters on a particular topic arriving in our office by the carton load. During my tenure with the education committee I wrote bill analyses, organized an interim hearing on the summer food program, spoke with lobbyists and other duties as assigned. It was interesting to be up on the most important California education issues of the time. I met with lobbyists from some of the large and small teachers’ unions across the state. One of the founding members and a lobbyist for the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) was Bill Lambert. Bill retired in 2007 and was the longest-serving education lobbyist in California history.

I got “Ganned” and laid off from the legislature in 1983 and was unemployed for eight months. Senator Robbins had to find some staff to lay off per Paul Gann’s Proposition 4 and I was the chosen one in that office. Robbins was not all that keen on women with brains. He was more into so-called bimbos. I see a connection with our current president.

Senator Alan Robbins

I found a job at the California Waste Management Board whose board chair was a Vietnam vet that had been exposed to agent orange and was quite crazy and paranoid.

I ran into Bill Lambert at the Golden One Credit Union one lunch time and he asked how everything was going. I told him I needed to get out the Waste Management Board since it was a toxic environment with the board members sexually harassing all the females in the office —visualize the Mafia combined with the garbage industry. Bill told me about a job opening at the Department of Corrections’ Office of Planning and Construction. I applied immediately and by chance, or not, found that the woman who interviewed me, and would become my supervisor, and I had good friends in common. I got the job. Who you know! Thus began my ten plus years working for the California Department of Corrections.

Back to the capitol. While with the education committee I was offered a position in the powerful Senate Rules committee. I left the Education Committee and was on to what I thought was a bigger and better opportunity. The job in Rules Committee was to assign newly introduced bills to the appropriate policy committee and make that recommendation to the Rules Committee. Sounds straighforward enough. Little did I know that it was a very political position. I was just playing it by the book assigning a bill to the appropriate committee that was germane to the subject of the legislation. I was visited by many lobbyists wanting me to assign a bill to a particular committee where it would be more favorable to their needs and the needs of the organization they represented but often not germane to that committee’s purview. The lobbyist (s) knew they had the votes to get their legislation out of a particular policy committee. It was all wired but I didn’t know that.

Senate Rules staff - I’m in the middle with dark suit, white blouse, short hair

I admit I was pretty naive about all this political maneuvering. When I had questions about what committee to refer a bill to I would consult with those on Senator Roberti’s staff with more political savvy or the Rules Committee secretary who had a wealth of knowledge having served in that position for a long time.

I was finally getting the hang of things when I found out that the guy I had replaced in the bill assignment position, Rick Rollins, was coming back from being out of the capitol for about a year campaigning for Senator Alan Robbins’ senate reelection in the San Fernando Valley area of California.

I was reassigned to the Senator Insurance, Indemnity, and Corporations committee chaired by Senator Alan Robbins. I would again be writing bill analyses and doing committee background work and serving as staff to one of Robbins’ commissions that usually held their meetings in the Los Angeles area. I would fly down and back to LA in one day for their meetings. I was the gopher yet again.

I also interacted with lobbyists. The biggest lobbyist in the insurance realm and one of the biggest in both size and influence was Clay Jackson. More about Clay soon.

Now we’re at the true crime part of this story.

It was now 1986 and I was working at the Department of Corrections in downtown Sacramento for the office that sited new prison locations during the big prison building boom in the mid 1980s. I walked home late Friday afternoon to my cute little cottage in midtown Sacramento. Stuck in the front door was a business card with a person’s name and his title with the IRS. On the flip side in pencil was written “please contact me as soon as possible.” Oy!! Had I screwed up my tax return?

Since it was after business hours on a Friday afternoon I had to sweat it out all weekend until I could call the phone number on the card on Monday morning.

Early Monday morning I reached the person that had left the card in my door. He asked me to come to a building downtown near the capitol to be interviewed. He explained he wanted any information I might have about Senator Alan Robbins, my former employer at the Senate Insurance Committee.

I found the office. I was quite nervous. There were four white men who looked straight out of central casting wearing short-sleeved white shirts, ties, and sporting crew cuts.

They wanted any information I had about Senator Robbins in relation to interactions with insurance lobbyists and any crooked dealings. I knew that Robbins was shady. But I didn’t have anything tangible to give them. I hadn’t kept book on him. While I worked in the Capitol it was well known that Robbins had had sex with underage girls in his office in 1981. The head office secretary, Gladys, an older women who probably knew all of Robbins’ dirty secrets and knew to keep quiet and who sat at the entrance to the office, was known to have arranged for call girls to come to the office for Robbins. He was quite sleazy. That’s an understatement.

Cutting to the chase, a group of legislators including two senators I worked for (Carpenter and Robbins) plus the biggest insurance lobbyist Clay Jackson were all caught up in what was known as Shrimpgate in the press or BRISPEC — the Bribery and Special Interest sting operation. Conducted by the FBI the sting operation investigated corruption in the California State Legislature from 1986 to 1988. The FBI set up a West Sacramento-based shrimp processing company. Then the fake companies lobbied for special-interest legislative bills favoring themselves. In addition money was offered to legislators to see if any of them could be bribed in return for their support. A couple of the bills were actually passed by both the Assembly and Senate but were vetoed by Governor George Deukmejian who was tipped off in advance.

To quote Wikipedia, “(t)he operation resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of twelve public officials, among them were five state elected officials including Board of Equalization member and (former state senator) Paul Carpenter (D), state senators Joseph Montoya (D), Alan Robbins (D), Frank Hill (R), and Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R), who later got an executive clemency from President Donald Trump. In addition Coastal Commissioner Mark Nathanson, insurance lobbyist Clayton Jackson and several legislative aides were also convicted in connection with the operation.”

Clay Jackson, Insurance Industry lobbyist (on right)

Robbins wore a wire and turned state’s evidence and Clay Jackson was convicted of racketeering, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and money laundering for his involvement in bribing a California state senator (Robbins) and establishing a money laundering scheme. Jackson went to federal prison for over six years and served in Dublin, CA and Nellis Federal Prison near Las Vegas. Robbins only served eighteen months in federal prison after being convicted on racketeering charges.

For indepth interviews with Clay Jackson, you can check out Sigrid Bathen’s interviews with him at sigridbathen.com. She is a former writer for the Sacramento Bee and The California Journal. I discovered a lot I didn’t know about Clay Jackson, Senator Robbins, and the Capitol culture during the 1980s. Fascinating!

To close the circle and connect my personal employment dots, I worked for two state senators that went to federal prison behind Shrimpgate and I went on to work as a correctional counselor at a state men’s prison in Susanville, CA. Oh that I wish both Senator Robbins and Senator Carpenter had been on my caseload. What poetic justice!

You can watch the video of Dire Straits playing “Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug” here:

I thought back to when I first heard the title of this song. It was in the early 1990s and I was working as a correctional counselor at the California Correctional Center in Susanville, CA. My supervisor Richard “Dreds” Howell said this to me in passing —“sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug”. I had no idea what he was talking about until one day not long after that I was driving home from the joint a little after 4:00 pm and the local AM radio station KSUE was playing this song.

The song I heard on the radio was covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter whose version has a country music flavor, perfect for Susanville, while the Dire Straits version is a bluesy rock.

Well it’s a strange old game, you learn it slow
One step forward and it’s back to go
You’re standing on the throttle
You’re standing on the brakes
In the groove ‘til you make a mistake

Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re a fool in love
Sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger baby
Sometimes you’re the ball
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re going to lose it all

You gotta know happy, you gotta know glad
Because you’re gonna know lonely
And you’re gonna know bad
When you’re rippin’ and a ridin’ and you’re coming on strong
You start a-slippin’ and a-slidin’ and it all goes wrong, because

Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re a fool in love
Sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger baby
Sometimes you’re the ball
Sometimes it all comes together
Sometimes you’re going to lose it all

One day you got the glory
Then you got none
One day you’re a diamond
And then you’re a stone
Everything can change
In the blink of an eye
So let the good times roll
Before we say goodbye

Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re a fool in love
Sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger baby
Sometimes you’re the ball
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re going to lose it all, I said

Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re a fool in love
Sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger baby
Sometimes you’re the ball
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you’re going to lose it all

I hadn’t really thought about what the title of the song means until today.

The title serves as a powerful metaphor for the ever-changing nature of life.

For me this is specially relevant as I approach my 80th birthday. Reflecting on my long life up to this point I have certainly at times been the bug and sometimes the windshield. Maybe both at once, if that’s possible.

This song title seems relevant to me now in the precarious political situation we face. I’ve been alive long enough to have seen the pendulum swing from one extreme to the other. Here’s hoping we approach a middle way and that we’re the windshield very soon.

I think about the way the State of California has swung from the idea of incarceration to rehabilitation and back and on and on, ad infinitum. Currently the California State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has moved to a more rehabilitation model, as reported to me by a prison public information officer and a current inmate.

Pointing out the obvious, it’s probably just the way things are.

On this beautiful summer Friday afternoon in Medford, Oregon I hope that this weekend you’re the windshield and not the bug. Nothing is permanent.

As we say in Transcendental Meditation —“take it easy and take it as it comes.”

Namaste’

Diane, the other paying traveler, and I had talked on the phone prior to leaving on the trip. There were many details to talk about—what to bring (of course I brought way too much), logistics, meds for altitude sickness, immunizations, and to get to know each other before this big adventure.

We met in NYC and flew together from Kennedy International Airport to Bangkok. We had one night in Bangkok before flying to Nepal. The airport in Bangkok rented small hotel-type rooms inside the terminal for those with connecting flights. The room had two beds and a small bathroom with a shower and including basic amenities like toothbrush, toothpaste, and necessities for a one-night stay. I remember being so jet lagged that I woke up not knowing where I was and felt like I was hallucinating.

We requested a wake-up call so we wouldn’t miss our flight the next morning to Kathmandu.

This was not my first trip to Nepal. I went in 1986 with an adventure tour company based in Angels’ Camp, CA called Wilderness Travel. They took care of all the travel arrangements. We had ten people in our group. We were supposed to trek to Everest Base Camp. Unfortunately that never happened. Our group was rerouted because the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, was flying into the Kathmandu Airport for a big meeting the same time we were supposed to fly to Lukla Airport close to Everest base camp. That airport is now known as Tenzing-Hillary Airport, named after Tensing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first people to set foot on the peak of Mount Everest. I remember being very disappointed. Political concerns were going to prevent me from being near Mount Everest.

As a consolation prize our group boarded a fifteen-seat plane that flew us past Mt. Everest or Sagarmatha, which means “Peak of Heaven” in Nepali, and Chomolungma in Tibetan, which means “Goddess Mother of the World”.

The flight was well worth it. The pilot told us which side of the plane to be on to see Mt. Everest. It was a very clear day, which doesn’t always happen in the Himalayas. Breathtaking is an understatement.

Mount Everest from the plane

The entire trek was about three weeks. The ten of us American travelers had a team of Nepali men that took care of everything: setting up the tents every night, cooking meals, bringing chai to our tents each morning, schlepping the stoves and kerosene, and guiding us throughout the trip. We had one English speaking guide who was a huge help to us in just about everything we encountered.

The trip, which I describe as highlights of Nepal, included lower elevation experiences like the visiting Chitwan National Park where we rode elephants and stayed in lovely little cabins with delicious meals to trekking through Tibetan refugee camps, trekking to higher elevations and walking through small villages, and spending time in the capital Kathmandu, situated in the central part of the country within the Kathmandu Valley.

It was a fantastic trips with many memories.

Back to Nepal 1994. This was an entirely different trip.

We would be trekking in a restricted area and crossing the Manaslu pass which is almost 17,000 feet. Because it is an area restricted by the Nepalese government we had to bring along a government official. He was a tall, serious man in his 40s that trekked and ate with us but didn’t really engage with us. Our group was made up of three American women, the Nepalese government official, and the thirteen Nepalese men that were our crew.

The Nepali government official that accompanied us on our entire trek

The Nepali crew- we started with thirteen and as the trip went on they would drop off as there was less kerosene and food to carry

The night before we reached Manaslu Pass our entire entourage slept in what looked like a sheepherders structure made out of rocks. We were at about 14,000 feet and it was very cold. We slept in all the clothing we had brought and piled up like a pack of puppies to keep warm. The two Dianes and I gave the Nepali crew some of our extra socks, shoes/boots, and sunglasses. They seemed woefully unprepared as far as clothing went. But they were ready for the elevation unlike we Americans. Some even smoked cigarettes in that rarified air. Up until this point many of the Nepali guys were trekking in flip flops or very thin tennis shoes!

We began trekking early the next morning around 3 a.m. before the sun rose. We had flashlights and lanterns but the batteries stopped working at that very high elevation. We had to stay close together on the path so we didn’t get lost or fall off the edge of the path while climbing up the many stair-like rock paths.

We reached the Manaslu Pass about midday. Again the weather was on our side. At the top of the pass were many prayer flags and stupas. The guide told us the stupas marked where previous trekkers and guides had perished when the weather took a turn for the worse, people got disoriented, suffered altitude sickness or all of the above. This was a cautionary tale for all of us. The air at 17,000 feet is very thin and I found it difficult to walk faster than a very slow slog. Our English-speaking guide handed us cloves of garlic telling us this was a good precaution for altitude sickness. We all had our western medicine for altitude sickness but I didn’t use it. I stuck with the garlic. And I didn’t get altitude sickness.

Top of Manaslu Pass 17,000 feet - the three women and three of the Nepali crew

After celebrating at the top of the pass for a few minutes we descended to a lower elevation to set up camp, rest, and stay the night.

When Diane, the stateside organizer of the trip, took off her boots something was wrong with one of her feet. It had swelled up so big she couldn’t get her boot back on. No one knew what to do. Was it an insect bit? Something else? We decided that one of the Nepali porters would run down to the closest village that had a way to communicate with medical people in Kathmandu and had a landing strip. Next thing we know we hear the rotors of a helicopter. They were trying to land at the air strip nearby but couldn’t because of thick cloud cover. The helicopter left. and flew back to Kathmandu. An hour or so later the saw the helicopter flying up the canyon and they tried to land again. This time they were successful. We all left our little camp site and accompanied Diane to the air strip with some of the Nepali porters carrying her since she couldn’t walk. Diane made it into the helicopter and was waving as they took off like something out of the movies. The rest of us went back to our camp site, packed up, and continued our trek down to lower elevations.

Diane, me, and our cook holding rhododendrons growing wild

We trekked for a total of twenty days. During that time we had only one shower and slept in one bed. A village we passed through toward the end of the trip had the promise of a hot water shower. When we arrived, however, the small amount of electricity needed to heat our shower water was off. The hotel we stayed at heated up water manually that they gave us in large brass containers. We did a sponge bath in the shower by pouring water over us, soaping up. and washing the soap off. Still it felt fantastic. That night we slept on a bed, the first bed of the trek. It was hard as a rock yet we felt very comfortable and happy. Small things become very important when trekking in the Himalayas.

A typical hotel you find while trekking

I met a Nepali woman in that same village. I had brought along some photos of home including my house and my dogs. We communicated in a sort of sign language. She asked how many people lived in my house. I replied, “just me”. Her facial expression revealed that she could not fathom that. In Nepal, specially outside the cities, people live with their extended families and some of their animals all in the same small, simple abode.

I saw many water buffaloes, yaks in the higher elevations, lovely children, monasteries, prayer flags, Buddhist monks, and people walking (no cars in this area or any place out of the cities), carrying all manner of things, and women washing their clothes and getting water for drinking and cooking at the village’s central water supply.

Water buffaloes

Yak

The adorable children

Buddhist Monastery

Prayer flags

Man carrying irrigation pipes

Woman getting water at the village water source

Since we were trekking in a restricted area many of the people we came across had never seen westerners. I’m not sure who was more curious about the other. It was a bumping up of cultures. It was very sweet to experience.

I realized often throughout the trek that those with what seems like very little were much happier than some of us with so much.

Namaste!

I was driving north on the 395, coming home from dinner at another counselor’s house. I had consumed half a bottle of White Zinfandel on an empty stomach. All the windows were down, and the radio was blaring KSUE, the only AM rock and roll radio station in the area. I could smell sagebrush, a defining scent of the high desert. Then I saw red and blue flashing lights in the rearview. I pulled over, of course. I’m in law enforcement after all. The officer checked my pupils with a flashlight. Then he asked me politely to step out of my car or, as they like to say, your vehicle. I flunked all the field sobriety tests: walking a straight line, saying my ABCs, and standing on one foot. Three strikes. I was out. He ushered me into the back of his patrol car, put handcuffs on me, and drove to the Lassen County Jail on Main Street in Susanville.

Lassen County Sheriff’s vehicle circa 1990

I told him I worked at the California Correction Center (CCC) as a correctional counselor, hoping he would extend me some professional courtesy. Nope. Not happening. Little did I know there is no love lost between folks that work on the street as cops and sheriffs, and those of us working at the joint. Correctional employees make way more money than street cops. Seeing I would not be getting any favors I felt helpless and scared, holding back tears. Could my job be in jeopardy? Will I get fired? I felt like a two-bit criminal smelling like alcohol and nervous sweat.

We arrive at the Lassen County jail. I exit the patrol vehicle and was escorted into the jail, which in Lassen County in the early 1990s was a very small place with just a few jail cells, a booking area, and an office.

The historic Lassen County jail now on the historic register

First order of business is blow into the Breathalyzer. No surprise I didn’t pass. I blew a 0.10 BAC (blood alcohol concentration). The legal limit in California is 0.08 BAC. Two tokes over the line.

Next the officer on duty took my mug shot. Not my most flattering photo.

I was allowed to make one phone call, just like in the movies. In my inebriated state I decided to call the people I had been with earlier in the evening. No surprise that they didn’t answer the phone. They were drunk too.

Next I called my friend Frank in Sacramento, my former trainer at the gym I belonged to and had dated a few times. He answered. I’m pretty sure I woke him up. He asked, “What can I do? I’m in Sacramento.” Well, of course. I was drunk and had poor judgment. But I had no one else to call. I had only been in Susanville a short time and hadn’t made many friends yet.

I had made my two phone calls and was out of luck. It was now about midnight on a Sunday evening. The officer on duty ushered me into a small cell with a thin blue plastic mattress on the floor and removed the handcuffs. That was it. Nothing else in the cell.

Do the crime, do the time.

I barely got any sleep. Fortunately I was the only person in the cell. Not a high crime night in Lassen County. I tossed and turned worrying about what would happen at work the next day at the joint.

Lots of folks that work in the prison have CB radios and I was sure that many people would hear of my discretion. That was only one of my concerns. I was worried about losing my job. I could see my entire life in front of me. No job, no retirement, no health benefits, lots of embarrassment and feeling like I was wearing an “A” for alcoholic on my forehead. I spent the next five hours in my cell thinking negative thoughts.

Around 5:30 a.m. the next morning I was popped out of my cell and free to go. No further instructions. Fortunately my rental house was about 1/4 mile from the jail. I walked home feeling hung over and filled with dread.

I arrived at my rental house and hugged my dog Buster who had to stay home alone all night while Mom was briefly incarcerated. I fed the dog, changed into my bike clothes, put on my helmet, got on my mountain bike and rode south on Highway 395 to rescue my little blue Toyota pickup truck with the camper shell that I had to leave along the side of the road the night before .

The high desert is beautiful, crisp, and fragrant with the smell of sage brush that early in the morning. It was about 6:30 am. I was relieved to see my truck still there since I was worried it might get towed during the night. I threw my bike inside the camper shell and carefully drove home.

I made some very strong black coffee, took a shower, and threw the grey sweater I was wearing the night before in jail into the giveaway bag. I didn't want to be reminded of that night ever again.

Now came the moment of truth. I called my union rep Bev at work. She picked up right away.”Moss”, she said. She had been a sergeant at San Quentin before coming to Susanville and was a tough cookie and very matter-of-fact. I told her what happened. She said, “You have to come in to work at 8:00 a.m. and we’ll meet with Warden Merkle”, she said calmly with no judgment.

Oh great, I thought. This is not going to be pleasant.

I showered, got dressed, grabbed my ID, key fob, and my coffee and jumped in the pickup.

I drove the 70 mph speed limit out to the prison not wanting to press my luck by speeding.

I arrived at the joint, parked in the employee parking lot, walked through the foyer, into the sally port, across the patio and signed in for the day in the Watch Commander’s office at three minutes before 8:00 a.m., the official start of my shift.

Bev met me at 8:00 a.m.in the foyer and we talked a bit about what was going to happen in the Warden’s office. We walked together into the Warden Merkle’s outer office and checked in with Angie, his secretary. Angie said, “he’s expecting you, just go right in.”

I felt like a kid that was sent to the principal’s office. I tried to put on my game face. Not easy being hung over, sleep deprived, and scared.

Bev spoke first and explained to the Warden that there was case law that said an employee could not be fired, suspended, or have any negative consequences for getting a first DUI while employed by the California Department of Corrections. Bev handed the Warden and me a copy of that ruling.

Merkle was cool. He just listened. That was pretty much it. The meeting ended quickly.

I collected my inmate files for the day from the records office and pushed my cart across the patio, through the large sally port where vehicles drive in, across the Sierra yard, and into the Sierra yard counselor’s trailer.

The other six counselors in our trailer were all working in their cubicles when I arrived. By now most of them probably knew I had been arrested for a DUI. I had to face the music.

I made it through the work day, one of the longest days I can remember.

I had met two attorneys in town through a mutual friend in Sacramento, a married couple named Susan and Rex. I called them that evening and explained what had happened. In retrospect those are the people I should have called from the jail with my one phone call. Hindsight. They said come over and we’ll talk about it. Rex, who had “clients” in the prison took the lead. He asked, “What did you blow?” I said 0.10. He said “there’s nothing I can do for you”. I was clearly guilty of a DUI. The only thing I could do was appear before the judge in court.

That’s what I did. I got my notice in the mail from the Lassen County Court to appear. I represented myself. The process went quickly. I was sentenced to a $1500 court fine, two days performing community service washing fire trucks at the Susanville Fire Department on Main Street along with some other trouble makers, attend six AA meeting and six driver’s education classes where they show you videos of blood on the highway accidents caused by drunk drivers. Ironically Rex, my attorney friend, was the secretary of the AA meeting. He helped me survive those six smoke-filled meetings. Now AA meetings are smoke free.

Susanville Fire Department truck I washed as part of my community service

Over the course of the next month my auto insurance carrier dropped me. I had to find very expensive auto insurance due to my offense. I was considered barely insurable.

Fortunately the court did not take away my drivers’ license or driving privileges. That would have really sucked since there’s no viable public transportation in Lassen County and Uber/Lyft had not been invented. I’m pretty sure one of my fellow counselors would have given me a ride to work and home but fortunately I didn’t have to resort to that.

Lessons were learned. I have never driven under the influence of any substance since that day in 1991. I developed empathy for the men on my caseload that were in prison for the same offense. Most of those guys had racked up multiple DUIs and had even injured or killed someone before being sentenced to the big house. As I got more comfortable with having a DUI on my record (a misdemeanor not a felony) and had paid my debt to society, I sometimes shared my experience with the men on my caseload with DUIs. I think that made me a better and more effective correctional counselor. It can happen to anyone once. Learn from your mistakes.

This was one of the most humbling experiences of my life.

Over the many years I’ve attended the workshop I’ve felt excited to share the joy of attending the workshop with many of my music friends. Sometimes I have taken them with me for their first time. This year I took my friend Anne who plays violin in our piano trio in Medford, Oregon. For the uninitiated, a piano trio is not three pianos playing together but a piano, violin, and cello—my instrument. Anne had a wonderful time and said she is going back next year.

What follows is a description of the workshop and its philosophy from the website that explains it way better than I can.

The Humboldt Chamber Music Workshop was established in 1958 and has been the longest-running workshop in California. Musicians from California and other states gather for a week of music-making.

Each day an assignment is given, each group is coached by a professional coach, and performs a 5-minute segment of the work in a program for the other participants. There are no master classes.

These are mixed instrumentation (strings, woodwinds, piano, horn) ensembles and the music ranges from baroque to contemporary to the occasionally hysterical.

There is plenty of time for freelancing during meals and after the daily program.

All workshop rehearsals and programs are informal.

The participants come from a wide range of backgrounds. Recent college graduates, working professionals, music educators, retirees, and many spouses come along for the week.

Cal Poly Humboldt is located in Arcata, California. Arcata is on the Pacific Coast about 10 miles north of Eureka and 100 miles south of the California-Oregon border.

The workshop philosophy

The workshop has been dedicated to the promotion of chamber music. From its beginning, the staff has endeavored to create an atmosphere where each participant would get together with as many different combinations as time would permit. Further, to enjoy the vast amount of music that is available, participants have been encouraged to get acquainted with and perform the music of all periods and all composers.

If one is to be a true chamber music lover, one would be interested in listening to others perform. The workshop has afforded the players such an opportunity through its daily programs — when the participants play for each other. Hearing each other play not only increases one’s awareness of the literature but helps to satisfy a need felt by the performer. This need has certainly been recognized by the staff. The individual wants to be heard — regardless of frequent and often strong nervous tension.

If one is to promote chamber music, the beginning and intermediate performer must be encouraged as well as the more advanced participant. The workshop purposely accepts players of various degrees of advancement. It is not the intent to have only the most advanced players participate.

Finally, one of the true rewards of chamber music participation is the creation of friendships and the development of a person’s appreciation and understanding of others. Even though this particular means of musical expression is a personal thing, it is yet something that must be shared with others. It is this sharing — the human element — that gives much purpose to the activity.

-- Floyd Glende, 1966

Floyd Glende, I couldn’t have said it better!

Just re-reading this has helped me remember my first year at the workshop. I was not familiar with much of the chamber music repertoire and had played very little chamber music. I was a nervous wreck. Before going up on stage my palms sweat and when playing both my hands were shaking. I finally was offered a beta blocker by a violinist in my group whose husband was a pharmacist. The violinist said she took one each time she performed. I took 1/2 a pill and was astounded that I felt calm, my hands didn’t shake, I didn’t sweat, and actually enjoyed playing the Faure trio written for piano, flute, and cello.

Up until then I played in a community orchestra in Sacramento for twelve years (the Camellia Symphony). Moving to the small, rural town of Susanville in 1989 my musical options were somewhat limited. I played with the Fontana Strings that my friend Carol started for her string students and a couple of adults.

We eventually formed a trio of Carol on violin/viola and Sue on flute, who often played the violin part on flute. I was the cellist. We played weddings, receptions, art openings but no bar or bat mitzvahs. We were in demand!

We became the skeletal foundation of the Susanville Symphony along with those in a local brass quintet, a woodwind quintet, and a rag-tag collection of other musicians in the area. The Susanville Symphony is now in its twenty-third year.

But I digress. Let’s get back to the workshop.

My name tag and my dance card to record my freelancing commitments

The highlights for me were playing a Mozart viola quintet on Tuesday—2 violas, 2 violins and cello. We had an inspiring coach, Hubert Pralitz, who worked with us in his usual emotion-filled way that got the absolute best from us. Our fellow musicians in the audience seemed to be equally thrilled with what we had worked on that day.

Sorry no photo of this group.

Friday was a great day. Our assignment was a Rezso Kokai Quartettino for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello. Kokai was not familiar to me. We all enjoyed learning this piece unknown to any of us. Kokai was a Hungarian composer and musicologist who lived from 1906-1962. Carson, our twenty-something coach, had a way of making the piece fun to play and helped us play it with dynamics and energy.

Our clarinet quartet minus coach Carson

Our clarinet quartet with coach Carson holding his violin minus our violist Harry

I freelanced every night after the evening performance. Most evenings it was with friends I already knew from the past. Some evenings Anne, my friend and violinist in our trio, joined us. It’s always fun to play with my music buddies I only see at the workshop once a year.

The last night, Friday, I signed up for a freelancing opportunity that needed a cello. Since I didn’t have a group yet I signed my name in the cello space. I quickly noticed that there were four workshop coaches including the workshop director Terrie in that group. The other two plus me were workshop participants. When I finally found the room they had reserved after schlepping my cello all over the campus, there was the piano coach John Chernoff seated at the piano. John had written a piece specially for July 4th and wanted to get a group together to see how it sounded.

John is a genius. That’s not just me saying that. Terrie, the workshop director and a very accomplished professional violinist herself, plus Ellen Ruth Rose, a professional violist, and one of the workshop coaches, agree. I think everyone at the workshop would agree. “John is known for his capacity to read anything. Musicians and audiences agree that he can play any genre of music. He lights the audience on fire; lights his colleagues on fire as well.” (from the Trinidad Bay Art and Music Festival website)

I can attest to that quote about John. I have never played with him or any of the coaches for that matter. He’s funny, quirky, and loves anything pertaining to music.

It was the last night of the workshop and everyone was feeling tired and pleasantly fulfilled by the five-day workshop — all the familiar and unfamiliar music we had played, the new and old friends we played with, and the wonderful assortment of coaches all with different approaches to coaching.

The piece John wrote was a collection of Americana themes. One sounded like Gershwin. Some were fugue-like. The music wasn’t particularly difficult but it was sometimes hard to count as John changed meters and key signature frequently.

I felt relieved that some of the coaches got lost and asked to start a particular section over. John is so funny and appreciative of everyone’s musical efforts. At one point we were all laughing hysterically. For me it was a perfect way to end a week of playing well with others. And I think John’s piece falls into the category of the hysterical.

Until next year at band camp.

The workshop participants, coaches, and staff

4’33”, a musical composition by modern experimental composer John Cage, was created in 1952 and first performed on August 29 of that year. It was composed for any instrument or combination of instruments; the score instructs performers not to play their instruments throughout the three movements. It is divided into three movements lasting 30 seconds, 2 minutes and 23 seconds, and 1 minute and 40 seconds, respectively, although Cage later stated that the movements’ duration can be determined by the musician.

4’33” became one of the most controversial musical works of the 20th century because it consisted of silence or, more precisely, ambient sound — what Cage called “the absence of intended sounds.”

Sheet music 4’33” by John Cage

As suggested by the title, the composition lasts 4 minutes and 33 seconds. It is marked by silence except for ambient sounds, which is intended to contribute to the performance. 4’33” was conceived around 1947-48 while Cage was working on the piano cycle Sonatas and Interludes.

Many prior musical pieces were largely composed of silence, and silence played a notable role in his prior work. His studies on Zen Buddhism during the late 1940s about chance music led him to acknowledge the value of silence in providing an opportunity to reflect on one’s surroundings and psyche. Recent developments in contemporary art also bolstered Cage’s understanding on silence, which he increasingly began to perceive as impossible after Robert Rauschenberg’s White Painting was first displayed.

Robert Rauschenberg and his White Painting, 1951

John Cage performing 4’33”

John Cage’s 4’33” is still performed today, often in various interpretations and contexts, reflecting its ongoing influence in modern music. The piece continues to spark discussions about the nature of music and silence.

Have you ever been to an art gallery or art museum and heard people around you say, “I could have painted that!"when viewing a modern painting or a modern sculpture. I’m pretty sure that people hearing 4’33” may have said the same thing. I could have composed that! But clearly they didn’t. And that is partially why this piece of music or Rauschenberg’s White Painting are important. They both have made a statement about art or music that has never been done before. They came up with a concept that had never been tried before. And that is why Cage and Rauschenberg are considered trailblazers in art and music, respectively. Plus both creative works have sparked much discussion in college and university classes and continue to be groundbreaking to this day.

I resonate with the Cage and the Rauschenberg works because they represent the intersection of my interest in music, art history (my undergraduate major), and my Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice.

And don’t we all need some silence in today’s world?

One day the lobby officer found my small personal container of mace which I purchased at the uniform store in Sacramento after a day at the academy. The academy instructor for use of nonlethal weapons had recommended we all purchase a personal size container of mace to carry with us at all times because “you never know who you’ll run into on the streets.” I had completely forgotten it was in my purse. I knew better. It was contraband. He had to write me up for an innocent mistake.

I got a souvenir on graduating from the academy: two brass tokens the size of quarters, each with an engraved L and a K, my initials. They weren’t party favors. The fake coins went on to a leather key ring clipped to my personal belt. They would be attached at my side for the rest of my prison career.

Cleared to proceed through the sally port I walked across the patio to the control booth located next to another sally port — this one large enough to drive a vehicle through. The control booth is a small, dark room about 4 x 4 feet with vertical bars where a window would usually be. I could hardly see which officer was working that day. There was a pegboard against the back wall which held keys, handcuffs, and tokens. I exchanged one of my tokens for a set of two Folger Adams keys. Folger Adams keys are heavy, brass keys about five inches long used by correctional staff to open and lock cell and dorm doors. If I were a correctional officer, the other token would be exchanged for a set of handcuffs.

Replica of Folger-Adams prison key

The Folger Adams keys are iconic American-made keys used in all correctional settings. I found them to be a pain to carry because I didn’t usually wear a belt. I had to figure out a creative way to carry them around safely without wearing them on a belt. I always kept my Folger Adams keys in my shoulder purse on me. On the rare occasion when the entire yard was locked down, I had to lock inmates into their dorms on the Sierra Yard or into their cells on the Lassen Yard with these two brass keys.

At the end of my shift, I came through the big sally port and stopped at the control booth and exchanged my set of keys for my token. Keeping control of the keys was a huge responsibility and the procedure for receiving and returning keys is crucially important to the safety and security of the institution. A watch commander’s worst nightmare is a staff member reporting a missing key – the realization that the integrity of one of the most important security safeguards has been compromised. Worst case scenario, the watch commander has to order a lock down of the facility and activate a special response team to search for the missing keys. This never happened while I worked there (as far as I know).

Sally port at California Correctional Center

I never had to use handcuffs on a prisoner. But I learned how to cuff up a prisoner at the academy. I had been cuffed up there myself as part of the training. The cuffs were tight and dug into my wrists. Again, this training was to familiarize us with what to do in case.

When I did workups on prisoners, I sent them each a paper message, also known in prison as a “kite”— the main way of communicating with a prisoner if I needed to see him to prepare their parole plans, make changes to their job, let them know their application to get married was approved, or put them up for a transfer to another prison.

A transfer would happen for several reasons. A prisoner’s custody level gets increased or decreased and our prison was no longer at the appropriate custody level. Or they are gang affiliated and have enemies on the yard and needed to be transferred for their protection and the safety and security of the institution. In rare cases a prisoner requests a transfer to be closer to family. Sometimes they’d request a transfer, and it went through.

One day I got a call from the Warden Merkle’s office telling me to put Bobby Beausoleil up for a transfer right away. I was caught off guard. Beausoleil was a model prisoner and had no disciplinary action against him. I didn’t find out until much later when I searched the internet that the reason for the transfer was, he had married while in prison and was going to be moved to a prison in Oregon that was closer to his wife who lived there.

Bobby Beausoleil, a Manson Family member

Classification committee day was rather upbeat. A few counselors, a supervising counselor, and the program administrator sat around a long rectangular table surrounded by plastic chairs. When the prisoner was called into the room, which was about fifteen by twenty feet, the prisoner sat across from the committee. Each counselor would present their cases in order and then leave the room to dictate his cases and input the results in the computer. The case would be briefly described to the assembled group by that prisoner’s counselor, followed by a recommendation for his work assignment. The committee would usually agree with the counselor’s recommendation. Dreds would joke with the prisoners, and you could feel everyone seated at the table relax. Prisoners were polite and dressed in pressed prison garb.

When I interviewed my counselor friend Ben in 2024, he told me, “I met so many decent inmates during my twenty-five-year career in corrections. I had a great rapport with this one Jewish inmate from Los Angeles – a really smart, well-read guy. But we weren’t supposed to get close to inmates, according to our training. I took that risk. When you work in a prison you work with humanity – all types of people. They’re no better or worse than us.” I felt the same way.

I recall a couple of older lifers on my caseload that came into my office on Lassen Yard and told me,” Ms. Koppelman, if anything ever goes down on the yard, we’ll have your back.” These were the same two prisoners that told me the way they get through their days in prison is they meditate. We shared that we had all read Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda. Sometimes I felt that I had more in common with some of the prisoners than my fellow staff.

When I retired from the prison, I had a manilla folder filled with poems and letters prisoners had written to me. The universal theme was thanking me for treating them kindly and with respect. My mantra had paid off.

Our counselors’ office was in a trailer on the Sierra Yard, a double-wide like you might see in a school when they need additional classrooms. Inside there were eight of us counselors, a supervising counselor, a program administrator, a bathroom, and a large committee hearing room.

The Sierra Yard Counselors’ Trailer (2024) The prison closed in June, 2023

A porter assigned to the counselors’ trailer would empty wastebaskets, clean the bathroom, and sometimes serve as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking prisoners if they were also Spanish speakers and the information being translated was not confidential. Getting to be a porter was considered a good job for a prisoner, and we very much appreciated what they did.

One of our porters, Tejas, an older Mexican guy from Texas, was a convicted child molester. I didn’t know that until much later. He and I would always joke around, and he clearly enjoyed working in the counselor’s trailer. Being a porter helped protect him from potential violence on the yard by limiting his time among the prison population. Child molesters are at great risk of being stabbed or harmed by other prisoners once their crime is known. The prison system operates within an unspoken hierarchy where child molesters, often referred to as “chesters” in prison slang, as in “Chester the Molester”flat, occupy the lowest tier. Among the most despised offenders, they are met with severe hostility from other prisoners, face frequent isolation, and violence. Prison culture places significant emphasis on a criminal code that does not tolerate crimes against children.

When I was preparing for my for correctional counselor interview, I was allowed to visit and sit in on hearings between prisoners and staff. I will always remember visiting the California Medical Center in Vacaville. One section of that prison is devoted to what was then termed, “flamboyant homosexuals” — now of course we say, “transgender”. These male prisoners are going through or have gone through hormonal therapy and identify as female, both in prison and on the outside. The Vacaville staff said, “the flamboyant homosexuals were very difficult to deal with and, (while interesting to me in a sociological way), they would make my life miserable.” The hormonal changes and emotions can be a roller-coaster ride for the inmate and the people who deal with him/her. Correctional staff are not usually tolerant of diversity, especially in this case. I never had the opportunity to find out on my own how true that might in fact be.

I found these guys (gals) extremely interesting. I was drawn to work with this population because, for some reason I don’t clearly understand, I’ve always been fascinated by those who don’t conform.

When I lived in downtown Sacramento during the 1980s, I would occasionally drive by 4^th and T Streets at night, the corner where prostitutes worked. It had a circus-like, Fellini-film feel to me. I was drawn to the lifestyle of those different from mine. That may be why I dated men with such different backgrounds from me. There was the painter, the plumber, the carpenter, the hod carrier, and the biker with the Harley Davidson logo tattooed on his entire back. I dated “bad boys” for many years. Maybe it was because I was never one of the popular girls in high school and didn’t date. Born to be Wildfrom the movie Easy Rider was my theme song.

Harley Davidson logo tattoo

Around the start of my working at CCC a rumor began to circulate among the staff that the reason I had this job was because I was related to the Warden. I suppose they assumed someone like me, an educated white woman, would never qualify or even want to work in a men’s prison.

Everyone seemed to know I had never worked as a correctional officer. So, how could I possibly become a well-paid correctional counselor without paying dues as a guard, unless it was a case of nepotism?

Some staff began as teachers or vocational instructors in the prison. Once a new job classification was developed called a correctional counselor, former officers, teachers, and vocational instructors could move into that position. They seemed to like it better since they got to wear nice street clothes, have a better office, and work normal business hours.

I had approximately two hundred prisoners on my caseload at any one time. That sounds like a lot, but I didn’t see them all at once, and some only once a year. At a weekly classification hearing I would see between ten and fifteen prisoners. We were required to have a prisoner in for classification at least once a year at their annual review to evaluate their custody level, behavior in prison, and request any job changes or possible transfer. I had a lot of support from Dreds and others on the classification committee. After a while the hearings and dictations became routine.

The prison population at CCC was divided into yards: Sierra, Cascade, and Lassen yards. I started on Sierra Yard for about four years and later was assigned to Building 3 on the Lassen Yard for about three years. Built in 1987, Lassen Yard houses lifers, among other more dangerous prisoners. It was a schlep to get from the records office out to Lassen yard with my cart specially when there was snow on the ground. Every day after signing in at the watch office I’d put my box of files onto a cart and trek across two prison employee parking lots to the Lassen yard. To get to my building I had to walk through another sally port with electric fences on both sides. There were two fences about six feet apart on each side that they called “no man’s land.” I had an eerie feeling the first time I walked through those fences. How many birds had been sacrificed for inmate control, I wondered.

Once I got to the only door into my building, I had to press a buzzer to let officers in the building know I was standing outside so they could open up and let me in. These buildings have two stories, each containing sixty-eight cells to accommodate two men each. The counselor’s office is on the main floor. The correctional officers are in an office above the counselor’s office and have a view of the entire building — it was a panopticon — a design originated by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 1700s that allows all of an institution to be observed by a one corrections officer. This without prisoners knowing they are being watched. They have the ability to open and close all cells remotely right from their office. They also have gun coverage of the entire building in order to provide security at all times. Since an altercation and subsequent trouble can happen quickly, officers on duty need to be able to see and control every part of that building. I felt secure knowing that they were above me and would protect me should anything go down.

The building contains a common area where prisoners watch TV, play checkers or chess, read, or just hang out and talk with others. There are four showers with privacy walls, fortunately.

My office was on the main floor of the building adjacent to the men’s living quarters. So, I was in their house. I often felt like I was invading their privacy--the only woman in the entire building. They spent their entire lives here and I came and went freely five days a week. I wonder if that made them angry or had they come to terms with it. When you really think about it, this was a very strange situation. One woman and about 136 men.

The office was small with just enough room for a desk, my chair, and a chair for the prisoner to sit when we would meet. There were windows on three sides, so this was a classic fishbowl room.

One of the “clients” on my caseload in Lassen Building 3 was Bobby Beausoleil, a member of the Manson Family, who had been convicted of first-degree murder. He behaved like a model prisoner and as a reward scored a coveted position as a clerk working in the prison office. Prisoner clerks typically did some typing and filing of non-confidential information for the office, or for the staff they worked for.

I was surprised to find him to be polite when he first came into my office. He was wearing neatly pressed clothes and looked like a regular kind of guy. Sometime later I went to a photo exhibit in San Francisco called “The Summer of Love.” There I saw photos of Beausoleil from his pre-Manson days, living in the Haight Ashbury where he was in a band, “The Orkustra.”

Bobby Beausoleil before he joined Manson Family

Could he have been one of the people I danced with at the Filmore Auditorium in San Francisco in the 1960s? I found out later from an internet search he had acted in softcore porn films. Fortunately, none of those images were on exhibit. Beausoleil is still in prison with a life sentence and the possibility of parole. When he was first incarcerated he was given the death penalty. In 2019 California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order instituting a moratorium on the death penalty in California in the form of a reprieve for all people sentenced to death.

Since entering the California prison system Beausoleil has had nineteen parole hearings— the first August 15, 1978 and the last one January 7, 2025. His next parole hearing is scheduled for July, 2026. He’s been incarcerated for fifty-seven years.

Bobby Beausoleil’s arrest photo August 6, 1969

I’ve been a fan of Dylan since I first became aware of him in about 1963 when I was a junior in high school. They played his songs on the local AM radio station, KXOA.

When I went to college in 1964 at the University of California at Davis I started buying his records.

In 1966 I was a junior in college and had started smoking marijuana. I vividly remember sitting on the carpeted floor in our apartment living room, the apartment I shared with three other girls, smoking a bong with some of my other friends, listening to Dylan, and analyzing his songs. I had just started smoking marijuana and it was the perfect collision of weed and Dylan.

He didn’t sing teeny bopper love songs that were also a part of my 60’s experience. His songs were like analyzing poetry, kind of like we did in my freshman English class, English 1A. We were assigned “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot. My freshman English teacher was a very tall, thin, dark haired and bearded male graduate student. He apparently loved this poem and wanted to make sure we all gave it the proper respect. We spent many class hours delving into the poem. “…he measured his life out in coffee-spoons”. I loved that line.

Dylan was influenced by T.S. Eliot, the modernist American poet. Dylan refers to Eliot and Ezra Pound in his song “Desolation Row”.

Both Eliot and Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature — Eliot in 1948 and Dylan in 2016. Dylan was the first musician to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wasn’t there to accept the award, as is his wont. It was accepted by Azita Raja, the United State Ambassador to Sweden.

At the same time I was analyzing “The Love Song of J. Alred Prufrock”, I was also analyzing Dylan’s lyrics. It was a perfect time to be a young nineteen year old college student being exposed to ideas and concepts for the first time. It was all new and so exciting. And I was questioning just about everything in my life and the world around me. Perfect synchrony.

The Love Song of J. Alred Prufrock

“Desolation Row” appeared on the album Highway 61 Revisited

I have now seen Bob Dylan in concert twice. The first time was two years ago in Marysville, CA as part of the “Rough and Rowdy” concert tour. Dylan was on the bill with Willie Nelson, then ninety-one years old, and John Mellencamp. It was at a medium-sized outdoor setting. It was about 110 degrees that day. We decided to splurge on tickets to get seats close to the front. I was beyond excited. As my brother predicted, the first song Bob sang was “Highway 61 Revisted”. Dylan only played piano at that concert. Sometimes it was difficult to understand the words he was singing. Like he had marbles in his mouth. But I didn’t care. It was him in the flesh. He didn’t interact with the audience at all. No repartee with the audience just moving seamlessly from one song to another.

Last night’s concert was at a beautiful outdoor venue in Eugene, Oregon. We had lawn seats right in the middle. A good view even though the security staff made us check our two pairs of binoculars at the lost and found booth before the concert began.

He walked out on stage finally after the drums had been checked out by the tech and a variety of crew walked around the stage making sure everything was ready. There he was in a white jacket and black pants and black boots. He sat down at the piano and pulled up the hoody. No words were spoken. He just started singing.

I couldn’t always understand the words of the songs. But I didn’t care. Here was our troubadour, our sage, the poet for our age. And we were there at the same time in the same place. It felt important.

Dylan was the last one to perform. First was a rocking, punky, folk trio followed by Lucinda Williams. She no longer plays guitar since her stroke several years ago. At times I felt that she may have forgotten some of her lyrics but that didn’t matter. She stood for the entire 45-minute set. She was obviously moved by the welcoming and appreciative audience. She’s playing again tonight in Medford, Oregon, our town. We had actually considered seeing her again tonight.

Between Williams and Dylan’s set I checked out the artists’ merch offerings. I bought a t-shirt with the cover of “Highway 61 Revisited” album on it. I love it.

My new Dylan ti-shirt

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Dylan even played some harmonica last night. The crowd was happy and let him know it.

He played a total of sixteen songs. At the end of the concert the crowd kept clapping with the hopes he and the band would come back out and do an encore or two. Didn’t happen. At 85 years old he was done for the night.

Set List for June 9, 2026 Eugene, Oregon

Watching the River Flow

Man in the Long Black Coat

All Along the Watchtower

I Contain Multitudes

I’ll Make It All Up to You

Black Rider

I Can Tell

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Share Your Love With Me

False Prophet

Soon After Midnight

Crossing the Rubicon

Under the Red Sky

I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You

Nervous Breakdown

I Shall Be Released (First time played since 6/7/2008)

The entire set list felt prophetic and self revealing. But isn’t that just Dylan being Dylan.

Thank you Maestro.

Nokomis is an Ojibwa name that means grandmother or my grandmother and is associated with traditional stories and characters in Native American culture, as the grandmother of the cultural hero Nanabozho and was the name of Hiawatha’s grandmother in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha.

By the shore of Gitchy Gumee,

By the shining Big-Seawater

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis

Daughter of the moon Nokomis.

Dark behind it rose the forest

Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees

Rose the firs with cones upon them

Bright before it beat the water

Beat the clear and sunny water

Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

We grew up singing Camp Nokomis songs around the dinner table. One I remember went something like “Here’s to our Miss Casey, here’s to our Miss Casey, here’s to our Miss Casey, the best in all the land” or something like that. Miss Casey was the camp director. She was an Irish lesbian before that term was even used. I guess she was referred to as a spinster.

The camp was not specifically a Jewish camp but most of the kids that went there when my parents attended were Jewish. It seems that most of our family went to Nokomis. My uncle Alan and aunt Muriel went there; my father’s cousins Robert and Steve went there; and my second cousin Enid and her brother George went there. It was a family tradition.

And in the summer of 1964 I went there too. Somehow my parents must have contacted Miss Casey and asked if I could come out there that summer and be a counselor. She must have said “yes”. I had just graduated from high school at age 17.

I flew to New York City and landed at La Guardia airport. I was picked up by some of my father’s relatives that lived in Brooklyn. It could have been Uncle Dan and Aunt Shirley, on my father’s side. We arrived at their apartment and I promptly had to take a nap. A combination of the heat, humidity and jet lag. They didn't have air conditioning in those days. It was sweltering and humid in the apartment but they did have a fan. I must have slept for hours.

We went to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens. It was fun and had lots of space-aged exhibits.

I saw some other relatives before taking the train from Grand Central Station to Peekskill. Someone from the camp must have picked me up.

Other than knowing some camp lore and some camp songs handed down from my parents, I was pretty green.

Camp Nokomis Lake and Pool

We had a few days before the campers arrived to get oriented. I was assigned a group of ten girls probably about 8 or 9 years old.

My memories of that summer at Camp Nokomis are pretty hazy. After all it was over 60 years ago. But there are three things that stand out.

I met another female counselor the first day. She was very New York— with a thick Brooklyn accent and a brash way about her. We became friends quickly. And she introduced me to my first vice. SMOKING. I had never smoked cigarettes (or anything else for that matter). She and I sat on the cool, sloping lawn outside the campers’ cabins. She pulled out a pack of Larks. You know the ones— with the charcoal filters.

My first cigarette

She taught me how to smoke. It’s definitely something you have to learn since it’s not an innately natural thing to do. She took out her silver Zippo lighter and lit the end of my cigarette. I inhaled and immediately started coughing. I felt like I was going to throw up and felt kind of green and dizzy. I didn’t think at the time why would anyone want to do this. I just wanted to be cool and smoking was one way to achieve coolness.

Both my parents smoked. Pretty much everyone smoked in the ‘50s and ‘60s. They smoked Pall Malls unfiltered. My grandparents Frank and Sadie smoked but not my grandmother Bess Koppelman. She was the original health nut — didn’t smoke or drink and walked everywhere (or took the bus) since she never learned to drive. Maybe that’s why she lived to be 96 years old.

Grandmother Bess Koppelman and me on the golf course

My next coming of age experience was learning how to drink. Up to this point the only drinking I had done was at family Passover seders where we drank Manischewitz kosher for Passover wine, that very sweet red wine. After drinking the required 4 cups of wine, I usually fell asleep on the Passover table.

The counselors that were not on duty that night would walk to a little town near camp called Secor. We went to a local bar there with knotty pine walls, wooden floors, and a juke box. We sat around a big round wooden table and someone ordered a pitcher (or several) of beer. The pitchers of beer kept coming. There were drinking games. I don’t remember what they were but I do remember that I drank a lot of beer. It was so fun and seemed so grown up. The drinking age in New York then was 18. I was only 17. But no one seemed to care about that or asked to check my ID.

We walked back to camp and I guess I was pretty drunk. I can’t remember if I got sick or not but Miss Casey was notified and came to talk to me that night. She threatened to call my parents and send me home. I pleaded with her and promised her this wouldn’t happen again. Boy, I was in big trouble. She never did call my parents as far as I know. But this should have been a sign that me and drinking was not a good combination.

The other memory was being “counselor on duty”. That meant sitting outside the cabins and keeping watch while the campers slept. Nothing much happened. One night there was a big full moon. It was very quiet and still and all I could hear were the crickets chirping. Everything was calm and peaceful. That’s until I saw something black and white walking about 2 feet away right in front of me. It was a skunk. I just froze. He (or she) just kept walking. Thankfully.

My parents met in high school at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and then went to Camp Nokomis in the summers as counselors. Their relationship got more serious at camp. As they told it, they were planning to go get a marriage license on their day off. But they didn’t have enough money to buy the license. I think the license cost $3. They were not even in college yet. I think my mother might have been pregnant and thus the urgency to get married. That was never discussed with us. But years later when I was in my thirties they told me that my mother got an abortion. Abortions were not legal or particularly safe in the forties. I think my mother’s uncle Sol who was a medical doctor helped her arrange to terminate the pregnancy.

I had hoped that I would meet the man of my dreams at camp. Kind of like my mother did. There was a boy named Elliot Davidoff, another counselor, but he didn’t know I existed. I just tried to send out the vibe that I was interested in him. That obviously didn’t work.

On visiting day some of my New York family came to visit me. Steve and Robert Koppelman, my second cousins, and some other former Nokomis campers drove up to see me.

My parents and my younger brother Charles drove across country at the end of the summer to pick me up. First thing I did when I saw them, after hugging them of course, was to bum a cigarette from them. A Pall Mall unfiltered cigarette. They were kind of surprised but played along with me. It could have even been a bonding experience.

We drove back home to Sacramento and stopped in Washington, DC and stayed at a Howard Johnson’s among other tourist places along the way home.

My summer as a counselor at Camp Nokomis was eventful but didn’t quite live up to the reputation and stories of camp that my parents had built up for us over the years. I didn’t fall in love but I did learn to smoke and drink. I guess that’s something.

Now I was ready to start college.

My father, uncle Alan, and grandparents Bess and Charles Koppelman on camp visiting day

My parents Phyllis and Howard Koppelman

Duck was a small, balding man and a heavy smoker. At that time smoking was still allowed on prison grounds for both staff and prisoners. Duck frequently stepped outside our little office to smoke on the patio. It seemed to me his way of avoiding work and chatting up other officers and staff on the patio.

One day Duck walked into our shared office with a cardboard box filled with files for several prisoners. Each file was labeled with the prisoner’s prison number which is assigned to them on day one. Sequences starting with “A” are for those that have been in the system a very long time. While I worked there the highest lettered sequence I saw began with “J.” I wonder what letter the prison numbers are on now.

Duck taught me how to prepare an initial classification hearing workup. You plugged in the appropriate information from the file into a simple form, kind of in a paint-by-numbers picture. My task was to search through each file to find essential information needed for a prisoner’s initial hearing. That hearing determined where the prisoner would work while serving time- school, a vocational trade, porter, clerk, or as one of the lucky ones that would become a firefighter.

Inside the prisoner’s file was information about his crime and conviction, where he served time in the past, gang affiliation, if relevant, tattoos, any disciplinary actions in prison, information about arrests for arson, escape, or sex offense, and chronologies from previous classification hearings. For prisoners with very large files and a long career in prison this workup could take a long time to complete since an inmate’s lifetime in the correctional system was documented in that file.

Counselors evaluated each prisoner for eligibility to go to a fire camp, or to recommend appropriate work or school assignments based on his history. Fire camp is where those who qualify would learn to become firefighters who would eventually work alongside

CAL FIRE firefighters fighting fires all over California. Prisoners with a history of arson, for example, were ineligible for fire camp (for obvious reasons). Sex offenders or escapees were not eligible for fire camp or to work outside the walls of the institution because they were either an escape risk or a threat to the community.

California Correctional Center was the northern California fire camp center. After they passed physical fitness training, they were bussed to one of the eighteen northern California Department of Corrections’ fire camps. Being a prisoner at fire camp was considered a coveted position by. Campers were enthusiastic about their assignment to camp and each one told me so. I had an opportunity to visit Alder Fire Camp #20 in Klamath one summer. I joined a group of campers for a lunch of steak, potatoes, and chocolate cake. “This is the best job you can get while being in prison. You get to stay in shape, feel useful, and make better pay.”

California Correctional Center Fire Trucks

The primary mission of the fire camp program is to support state, local and federal government agencies as they respond to emergencies including fires, floods, and other natural disasters. The Department of Corrections, in cooperation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and the Los Angeles County Fire Department jointly operates 35 conservation camps, commonly known as fire camps located in 25 counties across California. Fire camps provide able-bodied prisoners the opportunity to work on meaningful projects throughout the state. During WW11, forty-one “interim camps” would become the foundation for the camp operations today. All camps are minimum-security facilities and staffed with correctional staff. Fire camp prospects must be physically and mentally fit, as cleared by nursing staff at the Department of Corrections to do vigorous activity, to participate in the program. Each potential fire camper must have minimum custody status, based on sustained good behavior in prison, ability to follow rules, and participate in rehabilitation. Volunteers must have eight years or less remaining on their sentence to be considered. Longer sentences are considered possible escape risks.

Some convictions automatically make someone ineligible for conservation camp assignment even if they have minimum-custody status. Disqualifying convictions include rape and other sex offenses, arson, and escape history. Active warrants, medical issues, and high notoriety cases are also disqualifying. After passing physical fitness tests, they must complete CAL FIRE’s Firefighting Training program. Training consists of four days of classroom and four days of field training taught by CAL FIRE staff. After completion of the program, program participants become certified wildland firefighters and may go on to work with CAL FIRE, United States Forest Service and interagency hotshot crews after off parole. The pay while being a prisoner firefighter is better than any other jobs inside the prison. They can earn between $5.80 and $10.24 per day depending on their skill level. During emergencies, crews can work twenty-four-hour shifts, followed by twenty-four hours of rest. A twenty-four-hour shift during an active emergency would earn at least $29.80 per day. Prisoner fire crew members receive 2-for-1 credits, meaning they receive two additional days off their sentence for every one day they serve on a fire crew. The money is certainly an incentive, but so is the food and not being behind prison walls.

During the serious wildfires in southern California during the winter of 2025, about 800 prisoner fire fighters worked alongside CAL FIRE firefighters. When it comes to fighting fires, homeowners don’t care whether you are a prisoner firefighter or not. They only care that you save their house.

CAL Fire

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation inmate fire crews

Escapes from prison are rare. Just three percent of all prisoners escape, and eighty-nine percent of those attempts are committed at minimum security facilities. Prisoners who escape have often arranged for someone to pick them up just outside of the prison and to bring along a change of clothes. Then they flee the area.

An escaped prisoner usually heads right to where his mother or girlfriend lives. During an escape all staff are notified along with the surrounding community and loud siren sounds. A photo of the escaped prisoner along with any identifying information such as tattoos are circulated in the local area and statewide. The prison works closely with local law enforcement like police, sheriff, and highway patrol. Sometimes they will lock down a nearby school as a precaution for the safety of the children and staff.

Escapes at CCC, if they happened, were typically from the Arnold fire camp located outside the walls of the prison. Prisoners who are caught have their security level increased from minimum to medium or maximum security, and are charged with another crime, adding time to their existing sentence.

I remember when we had an escapee at the prison. The officers took a blood hound dog to track him down. I saw the pup being walked down the hallway near the records office by his trainer, a sergeant I knew. I never heard whether the pup caught the escapee.

I wanted to know details about the personalities I had to “counsel”. So, reading a prisoner’s file was always helpful, and sometimes not for the faint of heart, depending on his convictions. I read about convictions for rape, child molestation, and murder in my inmates’ files. I had one prisoner that had been convicted of ninety-four counts of child molestation. It was not easy to sit across the desk from him when I interviewed him. I desperately tried to remember my mantra – treat them all the same and with human dignity. A tall order.

Classification hearings are a weekly event. Two to three counselors, the supervising counselor, and the program administrator meet in the large conference room in the counselors’ trailer. Prisoners are brought in one at the time. The atmosphere is casual but feels important. The counselor presents the prisoner’s case to the committee and makes a recommendation about his job assignment, a transfer, or a disciplinary action. The committee usually agrees with my recommendation. Prisoners rarely express dissatisfaction with the result of the hearing.

After a classification hearing each counselor dictates the details and decisions of the committee into a Dictaphone, a machine that you speak into, which records your voice on tape. The tapes are sent to one of the women in records office to type up for a permanent record in the prisoner’s central file. Like firing the rifle, dictation was a skill I had to master. No men worked in the records office. That was women’s work.

California Correctional Center Sierra Yard Counselors

He and my mother waved their goodbyes. As I drove off “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley played on KXOA radio, a local AM rock and roll station.

I was driving east, to Susanville, to start my job as a correctional counselor in a men’s prison. I thought it was going to be fun. Little did I know that working in a prison is difficult, frustrating, disgusting, eye-opening, and sometimes rewarding.

My truck was packed with a road bike and a mountain bike, and clothes to “dress for success” at my new job. The California Department of Corrections was putting me up on their dime for a two-week stay at the Super 8 Budget Motel in Susanville. After a week of new employee orientation at the California Correctional Center I would go to the Correctional Academy in Galt, CA for two weeks of training. There I would learn how to do my job as a Correctional Counselor and, upon completion, become a sworn peace officer. A cop. With a badge. I never would have imagined any of this in the 60s when I was in college. My friends and I had always viewed police as suspect, if not the enemy.

Just like my badge

The moving van was parked in front my little cottage in mid-town Sacramento. Two professional movers carefully packed up all my treasures, including my grandmother Bess’s crystal stemware. They took my belongings and would store them in Susanville until I found a place to live. I had moved many times in the past. It was always a pain in the butt: packing; asking friends with pick-up trucks to help. Now, with the backing of the State of California, I just stood around and supervised the movers.

I drove north up the Central Valley on State Route #70 toward Susanville. It was a hot, late summer day. The road gradually climbs through rich farmland and passes Marysville and Yuba City. I drive by oak trees and as I get up higher, pine and fir. The higher the elevation, the thicker trees became along the road. The winding two-lane road up the Feather River Canyon is a solitary journey. The canyon is hauntingly beautiful. The Feather River Scenic Byway, the first designated Wild and Scenic River in California, is wide and green with cascading waterfalls and wildflowers. Railroad tracks and seven hydroelectric powerhouses make up the “Stairway of Power” and reveal the genius of highway engineering along steep canyons. I drive over the historic Pulga and Tobin bridges, where highway and railroad bridges crisscross over each other. I pass through three tunnels that were blasted through granite. On the right are the remains of a former motel with hot springs that is still being used by locals who know the secret location. I would travel this stretch many more times during my sixteen years living in Susanville.

I wore shorts, a sleeveless t-shirt, and flip-flops. As I drove four hours, from Sacramento to Susanville, I had many thoughts about this dramatic change in career, and my new rural location far from the limited – but still – vibrant culture of the state Capitol. I was leaving behind what made me happy in Sacramento: playing cello in the Camellia Symphony, running or riding my bike along the American River Bike Trail, dancing and drinking at funky downtown blues bars, and hanging out with friends and family.

I reached the city limits of Susanville and took note of the sign: “Population 12,000. Elevation 4,186 feet.”

I had left Sacramento a bit too late and now I needed a gas station in town so I could change into interview clothes. But I waited too long. I would have to go straight to the prison. Being late to the interview would not make a good impression.

I was on Center Road heading toward the prison. It’s a desolate two-lane highway with sage brush, wide-open spaces, and a seventy-mile-per hour speed limit. I had no time to spare so I changed clothes in the cab of my truck. Putting on pantyhose and a suit was a challenge in that cramped space. Little did I know I had parked on a small road leading into the prison where correctional officers in the guard towers could easily see this quick-change with high-powered binoculars. Once I was on the job, and got to know prison culture, I looked back with certainty: they were definitely watching.

Guard Tower 7 at California Correctional Center

As I drove up the entry road into the prison I saw three tall guard towers, red brick walls surrounding the prison yards, and landscaping with lush lawns and flower beds being mowed and attended to by an inmate crew. The lovely landscaping didn’t quite fit with my concept of the starkness of a prison.

Also located in Susanville is High Desert State Prison, a maximum-security prison built right behind CCC. Nearby is the Federal Correctional Institution at Herlong. All together Lassen County had a concentration of prisons which employ at least half of the adult population of the Susanville area. To say that there was a definite “police presence” there would be an understatement. Whenever I’ve gone back there it feels like an ominous black cloud hangs over Susanville.

I walked into the main lobby of the prison administration building. I approached the front desk where a handsome male guard was on duty. I told him I was here for an interview. This was my chance to ace my interview for counselor. The lobby looked like waiting areas in airports back in the 1950s with utilitarian furniture made of Naugahyde and well-worn beige linoleum floors. Photos of the current warden, Bill Merkle, and past wardens lined the walls. There were no photos of women wardens.

Many people walked by and stared at me. I’m sure I looked out of place to them in my business suit and black pumps — a stark contrast to the uniformed staff who passed by.

Regardless, I felt prepared and composed. Prior to this interview I had visited a half dozen other prisons in northern California doing my research, so I had a basic knowledge of correctional counselor duties.

I heard my named called and looked up to see a thin 6’5” Black man with a green, gold, black, and red crocheted Rasta cap covering his dreadlocks. Was he a prisoner or staff?

Richard Howell 2025

He smiled, shook my hand, and introduced himself as Richard Howell, a supervising correctional counselor, and a member of my interview panel. The guard at the desk popped open the sally port, a controlled entry way into the prison yard with a set of doors at each end that open independently to maintain security. Howell was relaxed so I began to feel at ease.

We walked a short way into a conference room just off a patio. There were five people waiting for me, four men and one woman. The room had no windows and was a bit dark and foreboding. We all sat at a rectangular conference table. I was seated in the middle of the table with them facing me. The panel members were polite but not overly warm nor friendly, except Richard Howell. The interview lasted thirty minutes. The panel asked questions about what a classification hearing is, how I would react to having to write up an inmate for disciplinary violations, and what is the mission of the prison. I was sure I answered each question correctly, and with confidence. There were no surprise questions.

The panel people thanked me for coming. Howell walked me back out through the sally port to the lobby.

“If you get the job, I’ll be your supervisor,” he said.

Cool. I felt an immediate rapport with Howell. We were both outsiders. Me a Jew and Howell a practicing Rastafarian.

I walked back to my truck looking around and imagining myself working here. I would find a more appropriate place to change back into my shorts and t-shirt for the drive home.

The next day I got a call from Warden Merkle offering me the position. I asked him if I could think about it over the weekend and get back to him on Monday.

Prior to working at the Department of Corrections, I had several jobs with the State of California. Highlights include working for several colorful senators at the State Capitol. Two were arrested and convicted on racketeering charges and served time in federal prisons. I wish they had been on my caseload.

I found a job at the Department of Corrections by serendipity.

The mission of my department was to find locations for new state prisons. During the mid-1980s California experienced a prison building boom due, in part, to the “three strikes and you’re out” laws that had recently passed. The law dramatically increased punishment for persons convicted of a felony who had previously been convicted of one or more serious or violent felonies. A prior serious or violent felony is commonly known as a “strike”. Serious or violent felonies include residential burglary, robbery, kidnapping, murder, most sex offense like rape and child molestation, and any offense in which a weapon was used. Under the three strikes law, someone could be sentenced to a very long term for stealing a loaf of bread.

Our office was responsible for meeting with small communities up and down the state that had contacted our office with interest in having a prison built in their area. The communities wanted a new prison locally to improve their economic situation. And a new prison might fit the bill because prisons hire a lot of people, the employees are well paid and typically spend lots of money locally.

A team of us, including a deputy warden from an existing prison, and my supervisor, would visit towns such as Independence, Brawley, Yreka, Lone Pine, Crescent City, and Avenal. During our presentation we’d talk about the benefits of hosting a prison.

My first community meeting was in Crescent City, on the northern California coast just below the Oregon border. The meeting was in a lovely, modern conference center with a view of Humboldt Bay. There must have been at least 400 people attending.

I felt nervous and hoped no one would ask me any difficult questions I couldn’t answer. I spoke about the economic advantages residents could expect if they decided to say “yes” to building a prison here. Fortunately, I did not get any questions I couldn’t answer. After many more of these community meetings I knew how things would go and could anticipate any question. But not all meetings were positive.

Once, in Independence, a small town on Highway 395 on the east side of the Sierras, we encountered a dozen people with signs saying, “NO PRISON!!” in the school parking lot. They weren’t exactly hostile, but their message was clear which, by policy, we had to respect. The Department of Corrections would not site a prison if there was not robust community support. Hence no prison in Independence.

Many proposed locations never got off the ground. For years, for example, the Department wanted to build a prison in Los Angeles County. But the political will wasn’t there. NIMBY (not in my back yard) feelings were strong. Legislators and elected officials withheld their blessings. It was easier to site and build prisons in poorer rural areas far from metropolitan areas. But most inmates come from big cities. Didn’t it make sense to build prisons where most of the prisoners committed their crimes? Making it easier for families to visit more often is good for prisoners’ well-being and improves their behavior while incarcerated. Traveling from Los Angeles to Susanville is just about impossible for prison families since it’s almost 600 miles one way with no public transportation.

Once I saw I wasn’t getting promoted inside the corrections bureaucracy I began to think about the idea of working insidea prison. That’s when I got serious and started doing my research and visited a number of prisons, touring the facilities, and, with permission, sitting in on hearings with inmates.

Around the same time, I had visited prisons our work group went to a meeting with other staff from “Cities with Prisons,” an informal group that met periodically at different prisons to discuss community-related issues relevant to those cities with prisons. This group met at a different prison every six months or so. My colleagues Sandy, Jane, and I went to one of these meetings in Susanville. I had never even heard of Susanville.

We first went to a “meet and greet” at a dude ranch called Spanish Springs Ranch near the small town of Ravendale, a 30-minute drive east of downtown Susanville. It was late summer. Hot and dry with a warm breeze. We were greeted by thirty cowboys and cowgirls, all wearing Stetsons, expensive cowboy boots, and lots of denim. This was the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce — owners of some of the largest cattle ranches in the area — movers and shakers of Lassen County as I discovered later.

Barbequed tri-tip and corn were grilling on a massive brick barbeque on an expansive stone patio. Long-neck Buds were plentiful. We mingled with invited guests, including a few prison administrators. The sun was setting over 3,500 acres of grazing land dotted with sage brush and juniper. Wild mustangs roamed among cattle here on the high desert.

During the barbeque I had a conversation with Chief Deputy Warden Mike Pickett. He took me aside and said, “We need to hire another counselor, and we’d prefer hiring a woman.”

He wanted to comply with a Department of Corrections’ affirmative action hiring guideline. At the time there was only one female counselor out of a total of thirty.

My counselor friend Ben Rodriquez later told me, “Chief Deputy Pickett recruited me and said we need diversity at CCC because there are no Hispanic or Black counselors.”

The three of us were staying overnight in a Susanville motel. Around 8 pm we drove back into town. We all felt a Bud buzz and didn’t want to call it a night. We drove down Main Street looking for something to do. There was a neon sign that blinked out, The T & A Saloon. The name was intriguing since it typically means “tits and ass”.

We walked into the bar and scanned the clientele. This did not look like our type of crowd. The regulars sitting at the bar all turned to check us out. Clearly, they could tell we weren’t from around here. We were like fish out of water. An older guy sitting at the bar with full beard, camo shirt, and ball cap shouted out, “Hey girls, come on over here and I’ll buy y’all a drink.” His buddies laughed.

On the drive back to Susanville the next day I kept thinking about the great time I had at the barbeque, recalling the expansive views and magnificent sunset over the sage brush. Why not? My career at Corrections in Sacramento wasn’t going anywhere.

I applied for the counselor position as soon as I got back to Sacramento. Within a few days I got a call from Deputy Warden Pickett. He invited me to come to Susanville for an interview.

I was in a quandary. Do I take this position and move up to cowboy country or stay on at an unsatisfying job in the Sacramento central office. I called my brother Charles and shared the news. He is my younger brother by four and-a-half years, but I’ve always considered him older and wiser.

Charles said, “There’s a lot to be said about living in a small town”. He had lived in Sierraville, a one stop sign town in the Sierra Valley. He had worked at a lumber mill. Jack, my former boyfriend, introduced Charles to the owner of the lumber mill and helped him get the summer mill job.

He said, “why don’t you give it a try – you’ve got nothing to lose, and you might even like it.”

My parents were accustomed to my being impulsive. They listened to my news about Susanville and the prison job. And surprisingly did not try to talk me out of it.

On an early Monday morning I phoned Warden Merkle and told him I would take the job.

Things moved quickly. Merkle connected me with the deputy warden for business services who said the Department of Corrections would pay for my moving expenses and temporary lodging in Susanville. He arranged with the moving company, the Susanville motel, and enrolled me at the Department of Corrections’ Academy in Galt, California. They were making this decision easy.

I had to be drug-tested before becoming a counselor. That could present a problem since I was still smoking marijuana.

I researched what to do to get marijuana completely out of your system and test negative: Drink lots and lots of water and, of course, stop smoking weed. I went for the drug test at the Sacramento County Health Department and peed in the bottle. I sweated it out in the lobby of the health department until a young woman who worked there came out and told me I had passed.

At that point I was having mixed feelings about moving and doing something radically new. I had trepidations about working in a men’s prison, and insecurity about leaving friends and family. But I kept going.

Today’s offerings

I didn’t really know Marcia two years ago. She was just a neighbor to wave to when we walked our dog past her house.

Marcia’s Bakery Cart

Marcia doesn’t advertise. Word of mouth is how she operates. People drive by and slow down to read the white board sign she leans against a bush at the end of her driveway each Thursday to let folks know what she’s baking for Friday. Some people have driven by for a long time before stopping, parking, and walking up to the cart. It seems that once a person stops that first time they become bakery and beach club regulars.

There are regulars that come at the same time each Friday. There is the couple with the big white fluffy dog named Maisie that is there every Friday at 10:30 am. Richard is always there about the same time.

Bill and I walk by every Friday morning and check out the offerings with our dog Jaco. We pick out our selections and Marcia holds them for us behind the counter until we return from our walk to the historic Eastwood cemetery.

Bill buying our treats

Part of the experience of going to the bakery and beach club is hearing Marcia describe each bakery item in great detail. Each ingredient is lovingly spoken of. Orange zest, vanilla drizzle, and candied ginger. Every Friday there are at least two or three types of scones. Bill always picks one of those and tries to pick out the largest on the tray.

She makes poppy seed cake, little tartlets filled with a variety of fruit preserves, and cookies. My favorite is the triple monster peanut butter cookies filled with peanut butter and topped with peanuts. I usually make that my lunch with a glass of oat milk.

Scones, cookies, and hand pies

Bill saves his scone for Saturday morning to have with his latte.

One morning Jaco our dog jumped up with his paws on the counter and grabbed Bill’s scone in the bag. He quickly ran out the dog door with the scone and that was that! It was so disappointing after looking forward to having the scone the next day. We have now learned to put any baked goods in the fridge to avoid scone stealing by Jaco.

The most important thing that has happened since Marcia started her pop-up bakery is that neighbors now know their neighbors. People make an effort to get up and get out on Friday mornings to get to Marcia’s and get their sweet treats before their favorites are sold out. Many stay and sit down in the array of chairs she has set out with little tables and beach umbrellas. Marcia even has coffee which I don’t think she charges for. She has created a safe space and a welcoming scene for the neighborhood.

She’s even open in the winter when it’s cold and raining. Richard bought her a restaurant style heater— the ones on the tall pole. That has been a game changer for the die-hards.

Last week there were two young women who walked up and had sheer delight on their faces. They had discovered something new in the ‘hood. They told me they were walking around the neighborhood looking for little free libraries. They both bought something and I’m sure they will become regulars too.

Marcia has figured out how to get more sleep on baking night which is Thursday. She prepares some things in advance that can stay in the refrigerator or freezer until she’s ready for them. In the beginning she pulled some all-nighters. Now she gets a lot more sleep and is much happier.

After the morning crowd disperses, Marcia has a little chance to have lunch and rest up for the afternoon crowd which is mostly children stopping by after school. The bakery and beach club is definitely kid friendly. She has chalk and last week one of the kids wrote “Marcia’s Sweet Treats” in large block letters on her driveway. Marcia loves each and every one of her customers, no matter their age.

One neighbor stocks up on scones before their camping trip.

Tarlets, scones, and cookies oh my!

Some neighbors put in special orders for special occasions.

Around the holidays Marcia bakes pies. Those require special ordering.

She always uses antique china, cut glass cake plates, and vintage tablecloths to best display her creations.

Some people stay for an hour or more. This is the social event of the week for some people and the scones and cookies are just the vehicle for making it happen. But the most important ingredient is Marcia. She loves every customer and knows everyone’s dog’s name. And we all love Marcia.

Marcia’s Crown Avenue Bakery and Beach Club has made our neighborhood the place to be. Everyone looks forward to Friday to catch up on the latest gossip, sit in the sun, and admire Marcia’s beautiful gardens (she is a master gardener too), and treat themselves to something yummy after the long week.

After the terrible ICE issues and murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis she held an evening candlelight vigil in her front yard. Bill and I went to the first one. We lit candles and put them in brown paper bags - luminaries. We sat out in Marcia’s driveway bundled up in our coats scarves, and gloves. She was out there at 7:00 pm every night for about a month whether anyone showed up or not.

Marcia has created a microcosm of what is possible when we get out of our houses and our comfort zones and meet other people. Whether they agree politically or any other way doesn’t matter. What matters is that we all live on the same street and want to make some human connections.

Whatever Marcia’s original goal was, I’m sure she has surpassed it in many ways even she didn’t anticipate. We are all so grateful.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow to see what yummy treats will be on the white board.

And getting a hug from Marcia and telling her I love her.

But what does this have to do with me and bass players?

Well, probably not all that much.

Bass players as a group have similar personalities. They tend to be laid back, calm, talented, yet under appreciated musicians that don’t like the spotlight. They are patient, understanding, adaptive, aware, and mature.

A good bass player is hard to find. Kind of like a good man.

They tend to leave their ego behind, have the best grasp of musical theory, and are the glue that keeps the band together.

How do I know this?

I have known and dated at least four bass players in my life. And I am married to a bass player.

I met the first bass player, Joel Drucker, at Cazadero Music Camp, located in the Sonoma County redwoods near the Russian River. Somehow my mother found out about “Caz” when I was in high school. Most of the campers were students from Berkeley and Berkeley High School. I think I was a sophomore in high school my first summer at Cazadero. The camp is located in a beautiful spot along a subsidiary of the Russian River. Campers slept outside and had tents for their belongings and instruments. We practiced under the towering redwood trees. Staff and coaches for the camp were members of the San Francisco Symphony. I played in the camp symphony and string chamber music groups. One of the most memorable pieces I played was Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Our coach was the principal oboe player for the San Francisco Symphony. He made the piece come alive for us teenagers. It is still one of my favorite pieces ever.

Cazadero Music Camp Staff and Campers

Me- 3rd row 3rd from the right

Joel Drucker - 2nd Row 4th from the right

Cazadero Band Shell

The Creek at Cazadero Music Camp

Joel played string bass (upright bass), bassoon, and piano. He was equally proficient on all three instruments. Joel was a very tall, thin guy with a kind of awkward presence until he started playing any of his instruments. Then he came alive with confidence. We both became counselors in training (CITs) the next year we were at Caz.

It wasn’t all music all the time at Caz. There was swimming in the creek, a canoe trip on the Russian River, singing around the campfire, and dances. That’s where Joel and I kind of hit it off. We remained friends and I visited him in Oakland where he lived with his parents. We parked in the Berkeley Hills near Tilden Park. He took me to a party in East Oakland. It was very exciting. We were the only white people at the party but Joel obviously fit in and knew people there. We walked into the party and heard some cool R & B music playing on the record player. People were doing the jerk, the fly, and all the dances popular at the time. There was a sweet smell wafting throughout the house. I’m pretty sure it was marijuana.

I lost track of Joel and often wonder what happened to him. He was a very talented musicians but I suspect he suffered from some mental health issues because his mother once wrote me a letter when I was a freshman at the University of California, Davis asking me to reach out to Joel because he was having problems. That’s the last I heard of him. My attempts to locate him over time have failed. He was a very cool cat.

Jerry Eddleman, my kind of high school boyfriend in senior year, was a bass player in the Sunland Blues Band in Sacramento. But while we were in high school Jerry didn’t play music. In fact he had been kicked out of Christian Brothers High School and ended up at Encina High School in my Civics and American Problems class. He arrived in a black leather jacket and jeans and slicked back dark hair. And rumor had it that he wanted to meet me, the girl wearing matched sweater sets and a virgin pin popular in the 1960s. I couldn’t really believe it. We talked on the phone every night even though we didn’t have much to say. He even dedicated a song to me on the AM radio station, KXOA.

We reconnected when I was at UC Davis several years after we graduated high school at a concert in Freeborn Hall. The band Pablo Cruise. Jerry had recently returned from a 2-year stint in Vietnam and had lots of stories to tell. We hooked up for a while. He told me he played bass and was in a band. I was surprised since he had never shown an interest in playing music when we were in high school. I got to hear the band since they were pretty popular in the Sacramento blues scene. Much later I found out that Jerry had moved to Kentucky and we actually had a phone conversation. I found out later that he had died from cancer related to agent orange exposure in Vietnam.

Jerry Eddleman in Sunland Blues Band

I met Jack Benham on a bike ride with the Sacramento Bike Hikers in the 1980s. And he was my neighbor in midtown Sacramento. He was a bass played in a the Blue Flames blues band in Sacramento. It seems that he and Jerry Eddleman’s paths must have crossed in the blues band scene in Sacramento. They didn’t play together but played with some of the same cats. Jack and I dated for a while and I convinced him to try out for the Camellia Symphony on his upright bass. He did and we carpooled to rehearsals. We also did a seven-day bike trip with the American Lung Association down the Oregon coast. We had fun while it lasted but he found love somewhere else.

Interesting small-world story. Jack’s ex-wife Reggie and I both worked as correctional counselors at the prison in Susanville, CA.

Jack passed away in Sacramento within the last ten years from leukemia.

Jack in back with black t-shirt with the Nate Shiner Blues Band

I saved the best bass player for last. I met Bill Fischer in 2006 after moving to Ashland, Oregon. We met on an online dating site and clicked over our love for music. Our first date was sushi and hearing Mickey Hart’s Global Drum Project, one of the drummers with the Grateful Dead. We had a nice time but it wasn’t love at first sight. Our second “date” I went to hear his band “Quasi Mojo” playing at a bar in Ashland. Now I saw Bill as his true self in his element. Playing music was his passion and it showed. Bill was shy and when the drummer in the band asked “aren’t you going to introduce us?” as I was leaving the venue, he was quiet. Our third “date” we went to see Gangagee, a local guru that I had seen on public television. That ended up being our last date and we’ve been together ever since. We got married in 2007.

I have seen Bill play in several bands over the years. We even played a couple of times together - he on the stand-up bass and me on cello. We played for a New Year’s Day party at our house with another cellist friend and played at a hippie wedding at a place in Cave Junction with many tree houses. A tree house resort. We played with another cellist friend.

Tree House Resort in Cave Junction, Oregon

Bill is a rock-steady bass player and many of his band mates have commented to me that he’s a great bass player. When I relay these compliments he just shyly acknowledges in his quiet, yet confident way.

Bill at his most recent gig with “Cooler Heads”

Us at the gig

We both play in the bass clef and that’s a strong connection. After all, it’s all about that bass.

We named our new dog Jaco, after Jaco Pastorius, one of the most famous bass players in the world.

Jaco

Army-Navy ammunition cart

It was the winter of 1969. I had recently met and moved in with Jack Patitucci, AKA the “Christmas Tree Man”. It wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven but more like two brothers, my brother Charles, who worked on the Christmas tree lot near our house in Sacramento, and my high school art teacher, Joe Patitucci, Jack’s older brother by two years, deciding that Jack and I should meet and go out on a date. Jack was thirty-five and I was twenty-two. A huge age difference.

We finally made it to the cabin after much crying and whining on my part and much laughing on Jack’s part. That should have been a sign.

The old wooden cabin was part of the Patitucci family’s gold mine claim going back to the 1930s. The claim included 160 acres of land, the maximum for an association placer. The gold mine was a placer mine which includes all forms of deposit excepting veins of quartz or other rock in-place. A sluice box would be used with water to extract the gold nuggets and flakes. The other type of mine is called a lode mine which involves extracting gold directly from solid rock deposits (like quartz) rather than from loose materials like sand and gravel.

The Patitucci claim land was also used by a neighboring sheep rancher that brought his flock up to the Sierra to graze during the summers under a grazing lease with the Patitucci family. Old man McFerrin’s (as Jack referred to him) home base was Oroville near the Sutter Buttes where he grazed his sheep in the other seasons of the year. One day McFerrin invited us over for dinner. We drove the jeep over to their place not far away from the cabin. He was married to a Basque woman who didn’t speak much English. They grilled lamb over a huge outdoor BBQ on a slate deck. Before dinner they served Picon Punch, a traditional Basque drink made with Amaro liquer, soda water, grenadine, a lemon twist, and a bit of brandy. It was delicious and quite alcoholic. Jack and I weren’t drinking alcohol or doing any drugs those days. Both us us had given up alcohol, drugs (me), and cigarettes. At dinner we also had a hearty red wine. They had two little girls who were a lot of fun. That night was probably one of the most fun times Jack and I had together.

I loved to sit on a log outside the cabin and brush and dry my hair in the sunlight and watch the sheep graze near me. I felt like Heidi in the Alps. This was the most peaceful part of my day.

Me in 1973 near Lake Berryessa

Over the 4 1/2 years that Jack and I were together, I spent many weekends at the cabin. I was either teaching summer arts and crafts in Sacramento or attending University of California, Davis so the weekends were the only time I had to be in the mountains. I would drive the 2 1/2 hours from Sacramento to Gold Lake. Once I got off of Interstate 80 it was a beautiful drive. I would always do some grocery shopping before I left town since there were no grocery stores near the cabin.

The cabin was rustic with rough hewn wooden floors. We would keep the dust down by throwing hot water from the kettle onto the wood floors. There was a large wood stove in the kitchen area that we cooked on. I had to learn how to light and keep the fire going long enough to cook the meals. The cabin had only recently, before I arrived on the scene, gotten an inside toilet and shower. We had no phone but did have limited electricity and also kerosene lanterns. This was all new to me and felt very 60s and free-spirited. My summer arts and crafts classes were making God’s Eyes, also a 60s artifact. We hung the God’s Eye over our bed.

God’s Eye we hung over the bed

I learned how to fish in Church Creek (or crick as the locals say) that ran through the property. Or should I say I learned how to put the worms on the hook. I don’t think I ever caught a fish. But Jack was always successful catching the limit of ten fish every time we went out. And we ate all the fish. Delicious.

Jack was a very good cook and taught me a lot. I learned to make fried chicken, pork roast, and spaghetti, among other things.

During the summer we pruned the silver tip and white fir that grew naturally in the forest on the property. Since we were over 7,000 feet elevation the growing season was slow so the trees only grew a couple of inches or so each year. I came to love the pruning process and to this day I love to prune my fruit trees and roses.

After I had been with Jack for a while the Patitucci family bought a piece of property on the eastern side of the Sierra near a small town called Vinton. It was drier on that side and the trees grew faster. But it was much steeper terrain and more difficult to cut and haul the trees. I got pretty good driving the old Willy’s jeep circa 1940s. I taught Jack’s son Tony to drive the jeep there. One day I got the jeep hung up on a large boulder and couldn’t get off. I tried rocking the jeep forward and backward and finally got it loose without damage to the jeep.

When we first started doing trees there we lived in a very small trailer and I mean VERY small. Jack built a cabin on the property that was very nice but very utilitarian. The walls were not completed so the framing was visible. But it was large, two stories, and could accommodate more people comfortably.

The jeep looked something like this one only more worn out

In the early fall as soon as the first frost came the Christmas tree crew would start cutting the trees, hauling, and loading the trees to be stored on the truck in Truckee, CA, one of the coldest places in California. The crew was small and consisted of Joe, Jack’s brother, Gary who lived down the street where we lived in Sacramento, and Jack. I was the cook. Those guys could really chow down. I made Jack’s famous spaghetti sauce and many other hearty dishes. Breakfast was filling as well with pancakes, eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. Cutting and hauling trees worked up a man-sized appetite.

The trees from both locations would stay on the truck until it was time to drive down to Sacramento and set up the Christmas tree lot. Opening day on the lot was always the day after Thanksgiving. Setting up the lot consisted of setting up the little shack where the customers paid for their trees, nailing wooden stands on all the trees, pricing the trees, setting up the lot lights, and bringing in the trailer where one of the Patitucci kids would sleep overnight to prevent tree stealing.

The Christmas tree lot shack

It was really kind of funny that my brother and I were both in the Christmas tree business with the Patitucci’s since we never had a Christmas tree growing up. Our mother insisted that that wasn’t our holiday since we are Jewish and that we had our own holiday, Hanukkah. But of course many Jewish people have Christmas trees (Hanukkah bushes?) because for lots of folks the holiday is not religious but a secular, seasonable celebration.

The Patitucci’s Christmas tree lot was a Sacramento institution. Many families had been buying trees from them for a couple of generations or more. Their father Tony had started selling trees in that location many years before.

Jack invented a special, unusual tree that had two trees coming out of one trunk. This special tree was designed for Corti Brothers Market in Sacramento. This high end Italian grocery store had it displayed front and center when you first walked in. They proceeded to have a double tree for many years.

Tree flocking was another specialty for the Patitucci’s. Jack had a designated space in a building near the tree lot where he did the flocking. Basically it’s spraying a synthetic mixture of adhesive and cellulose fibers blown on with a special machine to create the look of a snow-covered tree. He and I delivered some very tall trees in perfect shape to car dealerships in Sacramento along with a few trees to the Crocker Art Gallery in downtown Sacramento for a special event. We delivered trees to some of the large, expensive homes in the area.

Flocked Christmas tree

The Patitucci Christmas tree business expanded to Oregon to a small town called Elmira about fifteen miles from Eugene. Their partner, Tom Calmus, an economics professor at the University of Oregon, wanted to build a house after living in a small apartment in Eugene for years. He and Jack built the house on about five acres of property. They decided to plant trees in a plantation type set up— in rows. The best tree in that area is the Noble Fir. It’s a perfectly formed tree with lush, dark green foliage. I got to help plant the seedlings using a small Kabota tractor with a tomato transplanter attached to the back. I would place a seedling into the arm of the transplanter and then the machine would dig a small hole, drop in the seedling, cover it with soil and water it. A couple of times I put the seedling in upside down so the roots were sticking up where the tree should be.

Me in rain gear in front of the Kabota tractor in Elmira, Oregon

The Noble fir fetched the highest price on the lot. They were just perfect trees and lasted a long time in the house. How did we knew that? We brought one of each tree variety into our house and placed them right in front of the heater to see how long it took before the needles started dropping. Noble for the win!

One year Jack purchased a surplus fire engine from the Fair Oaks Fire Department near Sacramento. It was a white truck with no roof— a convertible fire truck. I got to drive it up from Sacramento to Gold Lake. Or that was the plan. I started up Donner Summit on Interstate 80, a steep climb. Something wasn’t right. Smoke started pouring out of the back and then the truck just stopped in the middle of the highway. I tried to pull it over to the side of the road. Jack was behind me following is his International pickup. We had to leave the fire engine there. Eventually it was fixed and brought up to the cabin.

The gold mine was not large but had an ore cart and railroad tracks leading into the mine. I didn’t enjoy going in there because it was pretty claustrophobic. One day I was at the cabin cleaning up after lunch. Jack had gone down to the mine not far from the cabin. All of a sudden I heard a huge boom. I knew that he had many sticks of dynamite down there he used to blow out some of the earth to make headway into the mine. I freaked out and went running down there thinking he had blown himself up. I got there and he was sitting outside the mine on a rock laughing. Apparently it was a jet flying over that created a sonic boom. Not funny!

Jack got some “color” or gold flakes and small nuggets out of the mine. He had the jeweler Fred Mayes in downtown Sacramento make me a gold nugget ring from some of the gold. When we parted ways I gave it back to him. I wish I still had it.

Jack Patitucci at the Vinton cabin

Jack and my brother Charles at the Gold Lake property (1976)

Being part of the Patitucci family was more than just the relationship that Jack and I had. I knew his brother Joe well and his wife Lucille and their six children. I knew all of Jack’s four siblings and his mother Carmela. Now only Jack and his sister George Ann are left. Although it was only a 4 1/2 year relationship the tentacles go deep and wide. Jack and my brother traveled to Israel together and lived on a kibbutz for a month or so in about 1976. The Christmas tree lot closed many years ago but my brother and I still talk about the opening of the tree lot. Life with Jack was sometimes difficult but looking back it was a significant and meaningful chapter of my life.

* Thanks to Jack and Debbie Patitucci for some photos and fact checking.

I asked the Search Assist (AI) about Frank E. Bly. This is what it said: “Frank E. Bly was a notable furrier in New York during the 1940s known for his craftsmanship and high-quality fur garment. His work contributed to the fashion scene of that era, reflecting the luxury and style associated with fur fashion at the time.”

New York fur store

I don’t know about all that.

What I do remember is that all the females in the family and the extended family had furs. My mother had what looked to me as a child like a leopard skin coat. And she had a mink stole. My grandmother Bess had a Persian lamb wool coat which was black with tight curly fur. I eventually inherited that coat in my early thirties. The coat had huge shoulder pads and the inside lining was engraved with her initials — BLK— Bess Levine Koppelman. I wore that coat often although it was a bit warm for Sacramento, CA winters. But it was very stylish. And it was very heavy. I wore it until it started molting. I even went as far as to color in the patches where the fur had come off with black marker pen.

My mother (left), great grandmother Sadie Michalover (middle), grandmother Lillian Bly (right)

Frank Bly (left middle row), mother Phyllis Bly Koppelman (center), great grandmother Sadie Michalover (middle), great grandfather Michalover (middle top), cousin Enid (next to great grandmother), and cousin George (bottom) at Camp Nokomis visiting Sunday

This was all before the PETA movement. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was founded in 1980 and focused on advocating against the cruelty associated with fur farming and promoting alternatives to fur clothing. You may remember during the 1980s that people would throw either blood or red paint on people wearing fur coats. This never happened to me or anyone I knew. But it did change the acceptance of wearing fur coats and fur clothing.

My paternal grandfather, Charles Koppelman, was born in Brooklyn, NY. He was in the schmata business too. He made pearl buttons from mother of pearl. I never met him. He died when my father was in his late teens. But we had (and I still have) brooches and napkin rings made from mother of pearl that some of his customers had made for him.

Grandmother Bess, Grandfather Charles, my father Howard, and uncle Alan

Mother of pearl necklace, mother of pearl brooches with marcasite

Mother of pearl napkin rings - one with the letter “K” for Koppelman

My paternal grandmother’s father was also in the schmata business. He made girls dresses. I think these dresses below were made by him or someone he knew in the schmata business in Brooklyn.

My grandmother’s sisters - sister’s name unknown (left), Esther (middle), and Bess, my grandmother (right)

I remember growing up in Los Angeles my mother had a friend named Howard Fox. He was a traveling shoe salesman who lived in New York. They were friends from high school in Brooklyn and went to the same high school — Erasmus Hall High School. My father also went to that high school. Howard Fox would come out to the west coast annually for the shoe business and always made a visit to our house and brought shoe samples. My mother always complained about her big feet — she wore a size 9 AAA— long, narrow feet. Howard would come by the house and bring boxes and boxes of shoes for my mother to try on. She always found something she liked. My mother was quite fashionable. I remember when my parents were getting ready to go out to a Hadassah (the Women’s Zionist Organization of America) function in Beverly Hills and watching my mother get dressed. She had many lovely evening dresses. One dress in particular I remember was a gold brocade sheath. I would get to help her pick out her earrings and necklaces to go with her dress. And of course she wore a pair of the shoes she had gotten from Howard Fox and her mink stole.

Why were so many Jews in New York in the early 1900s in the schmata business? Many Jews faced significant barriers to employment in various sectors due to widespread discrimination and antisemitism. Political hostility in their home countries forced many Jewish immigrants to seek refuge and new beginnings in places like the United State and the United Kingdom. Jewish immigrants often had limited resources upon arrival, but many possessed sewing skills, which became essential in the garment industry. Many worked in sweatshops. The schmata business, which refers to the clothing trade, provided a means for these immigrants to earn a living and support their families. Despite the challenging working conditions, the schmata business offered a pathway to economic stability and upward mobility for many Jewish immigrants.

My grandmother Bess Koppelman would always tell me when we went shopping for clothes to make sure to buy the union label. During those years many clothes were made in Japan, not in China like today. She was a proud Teamster who worked as a bookkeeper for a liquor distributor in New York and then in Los Angeles when she moved to be close to her son Howard and family. When she died my brother Charles asked for only one thing— her Teamster union card signed by Jimmy Hoffa.

Brooklyn, NY garment section 1900s

A famous 1951 Broadway musical, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, memorializes the New York schmata industry. It is about an ambitious fashion model who leaves her job to start her own dressmaking business in New York City’s garment district. It was brought back in 1962 with a nineteen-year old Barbra Streisand singing “Miss Marmelstein” with Brooklyn-accented frustration and thereby landing her first Tony nomination. Interesting factoid — Streisand went to Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, NY, the same high school where my parents met (at a much earlier time).

Playbill I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962)

My parents - 1940s

I saw that there was a Democratic Central Committee office across from the post office on North Lassen Street in a vacant store front. I went inside and was greeted by Zellamae Miles and her husband Herald. They were the only people there. I said I was interested in helping. They were going to register people to vote and set up some places in the community where we could do that. In total there were just a handful of other volunteers.

Someone donated a used television, some chairs and tables for the office. We had some political handout materials spread out on a table. Zellamae and I bonded over our love for politics and spent a lot of time together down at the headquarters located in historic uptown Susanville. We watched with disbelief throughout days of counting hanging chads, butterfly ballots, dimpled chads, pregnant chads and other horrifying aspects of the ballot recount in Florida. Gore may not have won (but he actually did!) the election of 2000, but Zellamae and I became fast friends.

Zellamae Miles-Great Granddaughter of Susanville Founder Isaac Roop and ardent Democrat

Sometime after the election of 2000 and we were still licking our election wounds, we heard that Senator Barbara Boxer, one of California’s two Democratic senators, both women (the other being Dianne Feinstein) was going to do a tour of her district including Lassen County. She had a safe election coming up and had the time to visit the hinterlands and frontier towns of her district. A location was needed for her meet and greet. I volunteered my house, an historic Victorian house in uptown Susanville. A couple of days before her scheduled arrival her team of advance people showed up at my house to make sure everything was going to work out for her, specifically her safety and comfort. Senator Boxer is very short (maybe 5’1'“) so the chair I had placed in front of the large picture windows in the living room wouldn’t work. Her feet wouldn’t even reach the floor. We found something that would work better - a rocking chair with a box for her feet to rest on. After they toured the entire house and found nothing else to be wanting, we made sure all the Democrats in the area knew about her upcoming meet and greet.

I spent the next couple of days cleaning my house like royalty was coming to visit. Well, in a sense, Senator Barbara Boxer was Democratic royalty. I dusted, vacuumed, moved furniture, wiped down the walls, swept the front porch and even dusted and washed the front door. I only had this one time to make a good first impression.

My house in historic uptown Susanville

I decided to wear a black jacket, white blouse, black slacks, and black pumps. Senator Boxer wore a deep red pants suit and black heels.

We had many people offer to make desserts. There were brownies, cakes, and a wide variety of home-made cookies. I set them all up on the kitchen table.

I notified the Lassen County Times about the event and they said they would send a reporter. I found as many chairs as I could scrape up and people helped set up the living room. Over 50 people attended, many sitting on the floor and overflowing into the kitchen. That’s a huge turnout for a town that is probably 90% Republican.

I got a phone call from her advance people that she was only 20 minutes away. The excitement was building. Assembled were most of the liberal or progressive folks that lived in Susanville and the surrounding area including the towns of Westwood (one of many towns that called themselves the home of Paul Bunyan), Janesville, and Milford. We had one county supervisor from the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, Jim Chapman, my pals from the Lassen County Democratic Central Committee, and a collection of other folks that I knew. Of course Zellamae Miles was there.

A reporter from the Lassen County Times was there and in the next issue of the weekly Lassen County Times was a photo of Senator Boxer and me standing in front of my house with a nice story that also included my address. I didn’t really appreciate that they used my address since there were plenty of locals that didn’t really like Senator Boxer or Democrats in general. The expression “libtards” had not yet entered the lexicon. But I was concerned that there could be some conservative backlash toward Senator Boxer. Thankfully there were no negative repercussions from that newspaper article.

Senator Barbara Boxer

Senator Boxer talked for an hour about what she and other Democrats were doing to help us and our remote, rural area. She fielded many questions from the crowd. She was very well received. Truly a love fest.

She didn’t stick around to partake in any of the abundance of refreshments lovingly assembled in my kitchen.

She and I had a chance to exchange a few words at the curb before her staff drove her to the next meet and greet. We referred to each other as mensches, a Yiddish terms which roughly means a good person or a person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague. I said it was great to know we had a mensch representing us in the Senate. After a few handshakes and photos she was off to the next small California town in her district, Alturas in Modoc County, the most north-eastern town in California.

Everyone else stayed after and partook of the desserts and chatted. Senator Boxer definitely brought an infusion of positive energy to the Democrats of our area.

Twenty-five years later I returned to Susanville to conduct some interviews for a book I am working on about my time working in a California state men’s prison and living in a prison town. Between interviews I had time to drive around town. It was September 2024— two months before the 2024 presidential election. One neighborhood in particular was interesting to me —it was nicknamed “correctional heights” because most of the homes were owned by people that worked as correctional officers at one of the two state men’s prisons located eight miles from downtown Susanville—the California Correctional Center (where I worked) and High Desert State Prison, known as a “super max” prison.

Me and my fellow correctional counselors in front of our trailer (in the 1990’s)

My drive around the neighborhood did not disappoint. I saw many Trump flags and banners of all sizes, many on very tall flag poles in front of the house, “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, and a smattering of confederate flags.

Political signs in correctional heights, Susanville (2024)

Trump won the presidency in Lassen County by 76% over Harris 22%.

Leonardo in his rental car

He spoke no English and we spoke no Chinese. But thanks to Google Translate we were all able to communicate. He brought us a gift from China, a refrigerator magnet of a character from the Peking opera.

Peking opera refrigerator magnet

He had driven up from San Francisco where he had flown into from China. He was pretty tired and hungry. He had purchased all the ingredients for noodle soup in San Francisco and asked if he could cook the soup on our stove. He was happy to share his dinner with us.

Leonardo was very excited to be at our house. He scurried around taking photos of everything in our house. He explained to us that he was a web developer and was on his way to Las Vegas to attend a tech trade show. But he was also a tattoo artist with his own studio back home in China. And, he said, he had brought along his tattoo equipment.

Leonardo posing with the string bass

The next morning he asked if I was interested in getting a tattoo? I already have two tattoos and thought this would be a great opportunity to get another one in the comfort of my own home. It didn’t take me long to decide I wanted a hummingbird on my right shoulder. I love watching the hummingbirds fly around and eat at the feeder right outside our dining room. We found a drawing of a hummingbird on the internet, increased the size, and printed it out. Leonardo apologized for not having any colored ink, just black. I said that was perfect.

He went out to the rental car and brought in all his tattoo equipment. He had everything he needed — gloves, masks, ink, and needles. He asked us for some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. I changed into a sleeveless top. We all sat down at the dining room table. First he put on his mask and gloves. Then he traced the outline of the hummingbird on my arm.

Leonardo went from being quite energetic and talkative to being very focused and quiet. It was time to get to work.

Leonardo with his tattoo equipment

He worked with intensity, speed, and accuracy. Bill took photos of the whole process.

A work in progress

Tattoo completed

The tattoo turned out great. It wasn’t painful at all. I actually enjoy the tattooing process and I think the adrenaline rush helps minimize the pain. Leonardo didn’t ask for any payment for the tattoo but he usually charges $300. All he wanted was for us to make him an American lunch before he left on his journey. We weren’t sure what an American lunch meant to him but we made a big salad filled with all kinds of veggies, avocado, cheese, and chicken for all of us to share. He seemed very pleased with that.

Leonardo getting ready to leave

We love being Airbnb hosts. And this is just one of many memorable Airbnb stories we have experienced over the past eleven years hosting. When we first started as Airbnb hosts many of our friends were concerned that we were going to open our home to strangers. Weren’t we worried about having people we didn’t know staying in our home? Weren’t we concerned a guest would steal something valuable. Nope,not really. Although we have had some unusual guests (stories for another time) we’ve never felt concerned for our safety. Nothing has been stolen or broken (well, maybe accidentally broken but fixable).

We have hosted guests from all over the world. Some have become frequent guests. And some guests have become friends. We had one couple that stayed with us for a week. They were both retired librarians and had come out from Chicago looking for a place to live that was close to their adult children. They checked out houses near us and eventually bought a house on our street. They are now our neighbors and friends.

The serendipity of Airbnb has brought the world to us as well as memorable experiences and unforgettable people.

Twiggy 1967

Mama Cass Eliott 1967

I was never thin growing up and at my best was average weight. Even though it was the 1960’s and the peer pressure to look a certain way was not as extreme as it is now, I felt the pressure. My parents, especially my mother, were laser-focused on my weight from the very young age of two years old throughout my teenage years. I was put on many diets starting as young as two years old when my pediatrician, Dr. Herb Kerr, a well-respected pediatrician in Beverly Hills, put me on thyroid pills and Dexedrine. This I discovered one day while looking through my baby book that my mother had carefully compiled which documented my early years. In the baby book I found a prescription for thyroid pills and Dexedrine, which was a popular diet pill during the 1950’s. It was a trend to use stimulants for appetite suppression which has since raised concerns about safety and addiction. Two years old seems rather young to be prescribed a drug for weight loss. Couldn’t I just have outgrown my baby fat!? But welcome to my world!

I found a photo of me and my cousin Jeff at his bar mitzvah in Los Angeles where I was lighting some candles as part of the service. I was twenty years old. My immediate family was now living in Sacramento. I had a very short haircut, ala Twiggy, and was wearing a patterned dress in black, white and beige. A basic tent-style dress but very trendy. It was 1967 and we were smack dap in the middle of the short-lived flower child/psychedelic period. I found this dress at a little dress shop on J. Street in Sacramento owned by the Landgraf sisters, Cathy and Christine. I knew them from Encina High School. They were part of the art crowd, and they lived in my neighborhood. They were artists and designed and made all the clothes in the back room of their little shop. Their entire family were artists – John, their father, and their mother, Helen, were both artists and ran a detective agency. Helen taught painting in Sacramento. Their brother John was also a successful artist.

Me (center in patterned dress) at cousin Jeff’s Bar Mitzvah 1966

I was thrilled with the dress they made for me. I guess I didn’t realize how unflattering the dress was until I saw that photo of Jeff and me many years later. I was probably close to 200 lbs. But I never weighed myself during those “fat” years. On the rare occasion that I looked in the mirror, I only saw myself from the neck up. A person with a head and no body. I was in total denial about my weight and how I looked.

My own struggle with weight and self-concept continued. After years fighting with my mother over my weight (a couple of times she actually took food out of my mouth when I was a teenager and denied me a frozen banana covered with chocolate while on a family vacation in Laguna Beach, CA),

I finally took control of my own weight loss journey. This was not a decision foisted upon me by my parents, doctors, or peers. Two transformative things happened: I read a book called “Aerobics” by Kenneth Cooper published in 1968 which was recommended by one of my graduate student friends. The book talked about the new concept of aerobic exercise including running, walking, cycling, rowing, and cardio fitness. The concept was getting your heart rate up high enough to burn fat. The book made some amazing promises about what would happen to a person both physically and psychologically. I was intrigued. My graduate school friend said she was running a mile a day. I told her I probably couldn’t even walk a mile. I decided I would try to walk/run a mile. I was still smoking cigarettes at the time. I bought some Nike flats, shoes with basically no support that were worn by serious runners. There weren’t the amazing array of running shoe choices we have today. I measured off ½ a mile from where I was living. I chose a route through a lovely residential neighborhood near where I lived. The first day out there my lungs were burning, I got a stitch in my side, and my legs felt heavy and uncooperative. I walked/ran the ½ mile out and back. I felt miserable. The next day I could hardly walk because my legs were so sore, but I went back out and did it again. I was going to make this work! After a week or so my lungs stopped burning and my legs were feeling lighter and more energetic. I decided now would be a great time to ditch the cigarettes. The other thing I did was find a Weight Watcher (WW) meeting near my house. I drove over and filled out the paperwork and got on the “metal monster” (the scale), a term I picked up from one of the WW lecturers. I weighed in at 182.5 lbs. I looked behind me to see if someone had their foot on the scale. How could that be? I guess this was possible since I hadn’t weighed myself in at least 5 years.

I attended the Weight Watcher meetings religiously once a week. The first week I lost 4 ½ pounds. I stayed for the lecture after weighing in. All lecturers were Weight Watcher members who had reached their goal weight and were now sharing their personal stories and knowledge with us. They were funny, inspiring, and successful at losing weight and maintaining that loss. I looked forward to going each week and seeing how much I lost. But more importantly I was learning how to eat and learning the skills necessary for the long haul. My WW goal weight was 136 pounds. I was going to be in the meetings for a while.

Not only was I losing weight I was meeting fellow travelers along this weight loss journey. Some of these new friends became life-long friends.

I was now running regularly and increasing my mileage to 3 miles a day and signing up for fun runs. I wasn’t the slowest female running but was always pretty close to the back of the pack. But I didn’t care. I was running, losing weight and my self-esteem was improving. I kept increasing my mileage and signing up for races. Eventually, I completed a full marathon on my 39th birthday on December 8, 1985.

By this time my mother and other family members could see that I was definitely changing. I was getting thinner, had more energy, and was smiling. My mother even asked me for advice on how to lose weight. But her approach still felt somewhat antagonistic. She’d ask, “Is that (fill in the blank) allowed on Weight Watchers?”

This “fat” period of my life would later inform the research for my masters’ thesis in human development at the University of California at Davis. Our research professor Emmy Werner encouraged us graduate students to pick a subject that would hold our interest for two years or so. My life up to that point was obsessed with diets, weight, and body image. This was a topic that could definitely hold my interest- after all I had been consumed with it my entire life. After floating several ideas related to my personal story of weight, I came up with perfect title -- “The Effect of Body Composition Change on the Self Concept of College Women”. This would end up being the story of my life as a former fat person who became an average weight person that ran, biked, and swam and completed several sprint triathlons in my 60’s.

I spent hours at the UC Davis library pouring over research on the medical, psychological, and exercise physiology aspects of obesity, self-concept and body composition. This was decades before the internet. Research was done by perusing the card catalogue, finding source material, and making notes with paper and pen on 3x5 index cards. I loved the process.

I had to select a few professors to be on my thesis committee. Dr. Jack Wilmore, the head of the Human Performance Laboratory at UC Davis was an easy choice. He and his students were immensely helpful doing the measurements to determine the body composition of my subjects in both my experimental and control groups. Each subject was dunked in the tub, which looked like an enormous wine cask. Then calculations were done to determine the percentage of fat and lean of my subjects. I even got to be dunked. My body fat was 25% which at that time was considered normal for a woman my age. Today, that would be considered borderline overweight.

I administered a battery of psychological tests to my subjects, which were chosen to determine their self-concept. The most interesting one to me was a series of seven drawings of the same woman from very thin to very fat. The task was for each of my subjects to pick which picture looked most like them, and which one looked most like how they would like to look. This would measure real versus ideal self. The closer the two selected pictures were to each other was a measure of a better self-concept with, conversely, a larger spread between the two pictures being an indication of a poorer self-concept.

Ironically the thinnest picture looked a little like Twiggy, and the fattest picture looked a lot like Mama Cass. When I took the test, I chose the middle picture as both my real and ideal self. Had I finally found my place somewhere between Twiggy and Mama Cass?

Self Portrait 2026

Each prison employed a chaplain. The first one I knew at CCC was Father Paul, a Catholic priest. He was well-liked by the inmates and employees. Easy to talk to and accessible.

After his two-year stint at CCC was over the next chaplain I knew was a Jewish rabbi. Chaplains rotated throughout the prison system. The rabbi had come from Folsom State Prison on loan to our prison. He was an eastern European Jew with a heavy accent. But the most memorable thing about the rabbi was the prison number tattoo he got from the Nazis at Auschwitz. He made a point of showing people the tattoo on his arm.

When the rabbi found out I was Jewish he invited me to the prison Passover seder. It was held inside the prison walls in the chapel during dinner time. We didn’t even have a minyan, a group of at least ten Jewish individuals who come together to form a prayer quorum for certain religious rituals. There was the rabbi, a male correctional officer, two inmates and me. Two Jewish inmates out of a prison population of over two thousand. But that didn’t matter to the rabbi. He had a mission to serve his flock, small though they were.

He had asked the prison procurement officer to order some commercial Seder plates which he was able to obtain. And of course there was matzah, boxes and boxes of matzah. But no wine (of course). We had grape juice. But one of the inmates could have easily provided “pruno”, prison wine made from yeast, “borrowed” from the institution’s bakery, some fruit, and water in a sealed bag.

Prison-made pruno

The actual Passover menu was not that memorable. After all the chicken and other dishes were prepared in the prison kitchen, not by your bubbe (grandmother). But the symbolic seder plate was complete with a hard boiled egg, some parsley, a shank bone (no, not that kind of shank), some charoset (a mixture of grated apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and wine or grape juice), a lettuce leaf, horseradish, a cup of wine (grape juice) and matzah.

The symbolic Seder plate

But the fact that I was participating in the sacred holiday of Passover in a prison was quite memorable. The rabbi had the Haggadahs, the text recited at the Seder on the first two nights of Passover. We took turns reading. We read the four questions: Why is this night different from all other nights of the year? On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah, why on this night do we eat only matzah? On all other nights we eat all vegetables, why on this night do we eat only bitter herbs? On all other nights, we don’t dip our food even once, why on this night do we dip twice? On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, why on this night do we only recline? It felt like a very solemn occasion, more so than any other seder I had ever attended.

I was dressed in simple black slacks and a white shirt, the correctional officer was in his uniform having just come off his shift, and the two inmates were in their nicely pressed blue chambray shirts and blue jeans. The rabbi wore what he wore to work – a long-sleeved shirt and slacks and a yarmulke. He brought yarmulkes for all the men at the seder.

When I arrived that evening for the seder I walked through the sallyport and onto the patio, across the patio and into the chapel where the seder had been set up by the Rabbi.

It’s now exactly thirty-six years later. I think that the Passover seder inside the prison was symbolic of the Jews escaping their oppressors. Aren’t we all prisoners in some way—either literally inside a prison, or a prison of our own making, or under the thumb of some authoritarian ruler.

A well-known part of the Haggadah says that Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let My people go, so that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’”

This statement resonated with the situation I found myself in at the prison seder. Were we all searching to be released from our own personal prison? Was this rag-tag group of free people and incarcerated men gathered around the seder table inside the prison actually recreating what had happened thousands of years ago in the desert? Each person will interpret this in their own way.

The seder always concludes with this prayer or wish—next year in Jerusalem!

I left the seder with five boxes of matzos given to me by the Rabbi. There is no expiration date on matzah.

Boxes of matzo suitable for Passover

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM!

California Department of Corrections Badge

Our studies included employee benefits, required dress code (absolutely no blue jeans), policies and procedures, and sexual harassment awareness training. I found the classes pretty boring since the instructor usually read from a book, rather than share personal stories of what actually happens in prison. Those stories are what made it exciting for me.

Mid-week I noticed an item in the syllabus, “Games Criminals Play”. That got my attention along with a book by the same name, which I purchased. I read the book every night in the motel to get ready for whatever tricks inmates might play on me.

Cover of “Games Criminals Play”

Inmates (or prisoners), I read, exist to make your life miserable and pull fast-ones on you. This part of class meant to scare the bejesus out of us newbies. Or, as the book puts it: “This book is designed to help law enforcement professionals develop a greater understanding of criminal thinking and behavior by describing a series of subtle steps, called a ‘set-up’, used to manipulate prison staff. A set-up can lead police and correctional officers into breaking the law.”

The teacher expanded on that point: “Don’t ever trust an inmate. Inmates are up to no good.” But as I found out several months into the job, it wouldn’t be the inmates dressed in blue I shouldn’t trust. It would be men and women in green uniforms, the sworn peace officers.

On Friday, after a week of orientation at the prison, I drove back to the Super 8 Budget Motel, packed up my belongings, and drove back down the Feather River Highway to Sacramento where I spent the weekend before starting the academy. I arrived at my parents’ house in time for a cocktail and a late snack.

I could have stayed in dorms provided on the campus. Since my parents lived in Sacramento, I decided to stay with them, commute twenty minutes to and from Galt, and sleep in my bed in my childhood bedroom. I felt reassured and protected being home with my parents for the weekend surrounded by familiar things like the piano, the familiar art on the walls, and my parents’ dog Ginger.

I had no idea what the academy training would cover. When I arrived at the classroom, we were all given 3-ring binder covering everything for the week’s training neatly divided into color-coded sections. Topics included communication and de-escalation techniques, physical fitness, arrest and control or how to use handcuffs, how to write reports (and there were lots of reports to write in prison), and the use of firearms and chemical agents.

I grew up in a family that never owned guns or weapons. The only time I ever shot a gun was when I was ten years old, shooting a BB gun at targets inside the “sheriff’s office” at a summer camp which had formerly been a stage set for Westerns produced by Paramount Studios.

Now, in 1989, I was loading, unloading, cleaning, and firing a .38 Special and a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle. Paper targets pinned to bales of straw were in the shapes of male heads and upper bodies. Surprisingly, I could shoot the .38 Special revolver well enough, right from the hip, as the saying goes — meaning there was no need to look through a sight — just aim and pull the trigger. I hit the target every time.

.38 Special

The Mini-14 was a different story. It’s a lightweight semi-automatic rifle that weighs about six and a half pounds. The effective firing range is 200 yards. It’s used by military, law enforcement, and corrections personnel and civilians in the United States and around the world and it’s the primary weapon used by the California Department of Corrections.

Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle

I evenly divide between doing things with my left and right-hand — mixed dominant is the term. So, I had to decide which eye to use to look through the scope, and which eye to shut. I went with my left eye for sighting.

The recoil from a Mini-14 rifle is so powerful that when I first pulled the trigger it felt like I had broken my shoulder. In my repeated attempts to hit the target I was so distracted by the increasing pain that my aim got worse with each shot. I had one week to master this. Otherwise, I would have to come back to the range and pass. Otherwise, no counselor job.

The next day was all about chemical agents. I had never been teargassed in the 60s, though some friends had. I attended the University of California at Davis, which is smaller and less politically radical than the Berkeley campus an hour or so away. UC Davis was a relatively peaceful and moderate place to go to school. There were no riots or takeovers. No reason to teargas the students.

One day the orientation instructor said for us to arrive tomorrow in clothes we didn’t mind getting dirty or ruined. This was alarming. What was going to happen to our clothes I wondered. My anxiety level increased.

Despite the term, tear gas is not a gas. It consists of solid or liquid chemicals in the form of a spray or powder. Once discharged, the substance reacts with a body’s moisture to cause pain and irritation. That is why tear gas, or CS gas for example, affects the eyes, mouth, throat, and lungs.

Tear Gas (Mace) CS Gas

We got hit with both kinds of crowd control gases, CN and CS, which are more commonly known as mace and pepper spray. We took turns being tear gassed while running through a gauntlet of fellow students. They wanted us to know what the prisoners would experience if gassed or what we would feel like if caught in the crossfires of a gassing event. I teared up, my nose was running, and I could feel my face turning red. Still, all this was less stressful than my failing to hit a target with the Mini-14.

Flash bangs and flash bombs! These less-than-lethal chemical agents are used to control crowds and individuals by causing temporary blindness and deafness and creating a diversion to support high-risk entries by peace officers (and counselors) during a riot. Being told that correctional counselors were probably never going to be called on to use firearms or chemical agents was just a little reassuring. A Lieutenant told us at orientation that the prison would have to be in an all-out riot before they would send correctional counselors like me up to the roof to help take control. But the possibility was always there. Why we were sworn peace officers. Though it didn’t sound like too peaceful a situation to me.

Each year we had to re-qualify our capability with weapons at a rifle range on a hill behind the prison. It became a recurring joke among the counselors when I had to re-qualify. “Hey Koppelman, it’s time to get back up to the rifle range” one of my fellow counselors yelled. Some years I did fine and passed easily, hitting enough targets to establish my marksmanship.

One time I hit only 4 of 10 targets so I didn’t qualify on my first day. I went back up that hill the following week. Still, I didn’t hit enough targets. I had to go back to the range two more times.

Target used for target practice on the rifle range

The range master was a tall, older, dignified-looking former Army officer, and he was patient with me. I finally passed with eight out of ten shots. The range master congratulated me and shook my hand. I kept that target for a souvenir. That was the last time I’d have to endure the agony and possible defeat of qualifying at the range. I haven’t shot a weapon since and have no plans to.