HumanVille
When we take road trips these days our soundtrack is made up of, more often than not, the shared podcasts squirrelled away on our phones.
Which, last week on our way to Gabriola Island, got us to talking about Ear Hustle, a pod that gets intimate about the human lives inside San Quentin prison.
Ear Hustle is one of my favourites but E. noted that you can't binge the thing because the depth, detail and impact of each episode becomes too much to bear when they are piled up on top of each other.
I couldn't disagree with that, but I did have a retort, which was:
"Fair enough, but I could listen to a podcast about Earlonne Woods anytime."
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Earlonne Woods is one of the creative forces behind Ear Hustle who was, until very recently, serving 31-years-to-life for attempted armed robbery on a three-strikes-you're-out abomination.
Late last year, in one of his last acts as the Governor of California, Gerry Brown commuted Mr. Wood's sentence after 21 years.
A few months ago, with roles reversed, Earlonne told his story to Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
Here's a small chunk, but the entire thing is well worth the listen:
GROSS: So something I found really interesting is that the group that is multicultural and not segregated by race or ethnicity is the group that's into, like - the nerds, the group that are into, like, sci-fi fantasy and stuff like that. And, like...
{snip}
E WOODS: Hey - so I always go over to the L - I call them L7s. But I always go over to the fantasy game guys, and I'll just sit there for a minute and try to see if I even come close to understanding what's going on on that table.
POOR: It is a different world over there.
E WOODS: It is - they see something that I can't see. I don't think I have the vision to see it.
GROSS: So their...
E WOODS: I love it.
GROSS: Their brothers are the people who live in a similar world of fantasy as opposed to defining their brothers as being, you know, a skin color or ethnicity.
E WOODS: Right, right. And it's just about - you know, they accept anybody, you know? It's like - I think they're not under the constraints or the pressures to not accept people.
GROSS: Earlonne, how did you learn how to keep your calm and live in the kind of confined situation you were in during the more than two decades that you were incarcerated? You have to be able...
E WOODS: Well...
GROSS: ...To stay sane in a situation like that. And you also spent time in solitary, where it's very hard to stay sane.
E WOODS: Right. I'll say I've - on the second term - so the first term is where I did all the solitary stuff. But on the second term after - once you receive a life sentence, there's no guarantee that you'll ever be released from prison. So I think what kept me sane is that I had the philosophy where, I am going to live to the best of my ability every day that I have left on this Earth no matter where I'm at.
So it be at prison, I'm going to enjoy my day every day because at the end of the day, this is all I got, you know? I don't know what tomorrow brings, but I know what's happening today and right now. So I'm going to enjoy. And I think that's a shared philosophy with everybody that's in prison - is that you have to just deal with what's going on today, you know, and just not let the pressures of prison just get to your core and crush you.
Don't know about you, but I'm not sure I could have gotten to the same place under similar circumstances.
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Image at top of the post is by Mark Murrmann for Mother Jones.
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