prison blog

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Dearest Jodie: It was a tremendous visit with you on Sunday morning. I am so proud of you for doing such a great job speaking at Hempfest. I know Jeremiah is uploading the videos of your speeches to Youtube (found here), then shared on the Cannabisculture.com and FREEMARC.ca websites. I can't wait to hear the feedback!

I had a challenging week as you know. The no-flesh diet they give me is so terribly poor, of the 14 meals I get here weekly, 5 of them substitute the meat of the others with a packet of peabnut butter, that's it. And as you know, I don't eat peanut butter. So I go hungry 5 meals out of 14. Then on two of the other remaining nine meals, they give me a 5-spoonful carton of cottage cheese. The other seven have soy or cheese substitutes, almost always very poorly prepared and simply reheated. It's so discouraging. I eat all the apples, oranges, bananas I can get, sometimes the other inmates give me theirs but I have to eat them right away because we are not allowed to have food from the "kitchen" in our rooms, which causes a massive amount of waste as so much fruit & food is just thrown out because if you don't eat it in 15 minutes at sit-down, into the garbage it has to go. The rules are absurd and cause so much waste and, in my case, hunger and malnutrition.

 

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Today I was told I would get less time on the computer to send and read emails because there was griping by some of the inmates about my use. Admittedly, it is about 3 hours a day, but I line up like everyone else and there are others that use it even more frequently and for longer times than I. It seems I have aroused some to complain. So my use will be in the early morning, in the afternoon around 4:30 pm, and at night, for less time in total.

I will have a hard time finding the time to type & email out the chapters of the proposed book I'm writing, so I may have to just send you my notes in long hand, which is how I do my first draft anyway. I'll just edit it and rewrite the second draft more neatly and forward it along to you by mail rather than using up valuable computer time. The chapters are much longer than my editor specified, but there's so much to tell that I thought I'd put it down and leave it for you and him to edit. It's better to have too much information as opposed to too little.

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Dearest Jodie: A miracle occurred today! For dinner I received the most extraordinary meal, this great salad plate with five fresh green pepper slices, three cauliflower pieces, four broccoli pieces, lettuce, four real tomato wedges, dressings, medium cheddar cheese (grated, the real thing), and three hard boiled eggs. It was spectacular! The first real vegetarian meal I've had.

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Dear Jodie: I am now aware of a disturbing series of occurrences with my mail in and out of the prison here at SeaTac Federal Detention Centre. A number of items I send, and that I am due to receive, have gone missing without explanation so far.

You know that for our 4th wedding anniversary on Friday, July 23th, I sent in the mail on Wednesday, July 14th a beautiful envelope decorated on both sides in colour pencil, with a hand-done calligraphy-style written page inside. I sent it in the mail here at SeaTac FDC nine days early so you would be sure to get it in time, for you were to visit me on the day of our anniversary, arriving the Friday evening at your hotel in Seattle just down the street from my prison.

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Dear Jodie: What a wonderful day-after-our-4th anniversary visit! After we kissed goodbye, I went into the anteroom where I get stripped down and take all my clothes off, I'm asked to riffle my fingers through my hair, open my mouth, move my head from side-to-side and bend my ears, show my underarms, lift up my “sac”, turn around and show the bottoms of my feet and – there's no other way to say it – spread my ass cheeks, to make sure I have not taken any contraband from you (though it would be impossible). My clothes and shoes are checked, and then I'm clear to get dressed and I'm brought back to my unit, Delta Bravo as it’s called, or DB.

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I've been keeping myself very busy since being let out of solitary confinement on June 24th. I have many books, magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and letters to keep me occupied, so the days sometimes fly by as I read and write back to people.

 

Inmates here who have family come visit from out-of-state are allowed to apply for extended visits, of 3 to 5 hours (visits are normally 2 hours long). It took a while for me to get a response from my application to have Jodie get extended visits, since she comes from out-of-country, but I finally got a response on July 14th; I can have an extended 5-hour visit with Jodie one day every month, but only if I don't have any other visits for the rest of the month. Well, I'll certainly take two two-hour visits every week instead of one 5-hour visit a month! Read more »

At 6:00pm on Thursday, June 24th, I was finally released from solitary confinement after three weeks of isolation.

The Disciplinary Hearing Officer was very gracious (in so much as I was in solitary for 21 days) and agreed that the phone use infraction – the podcast to supporters that was never released – was minor in the big picture. He made it a "397" which involves no loss of good time (the discount of 15% a year on my sentence). He also said "Everyone here knows you are famous and it was a shout-out to your supporters that was not harmful, and we know you didn't criticize the Federal Detention Centre, but you can't do third-party political lobbying over the phone." So lesson learned. I don't have phone access until July 25th, but at least I can "email" Jodie through CorrLinks and have visits in person, instead of the cruel "video visits" they've recently designated for inmates in solitary confinement.

The staff here are acknowledging me more than before as a "famous" person of repute. I was always friendly and polite to the guards, never hostile, angry or sarcastic. I always said "thank you" when they brought me food or un-handcuffed me. Eventually they said, "you're welcome" in response. 21 days in the hole toughened me up, made me appreciate things. I have no interest in anger, defiance or protest from within these prison walls. I was totally polite and along with the program all my time in solitary. I am not interested in breaking rules or causing trouble in here. I'm just so relieved not to be in the torturous SHU unit. That's plain mind-bending, being in isolation...

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I am very pleased to report that I am in good shape, sleeping well, and very busy getting some good work done. Today, Tuesday June 1st, I received six letters from individuals, and about 25 or so from our amazing activist friend Chris Goodwin and supporters at Vapour Central in Toronto, where Chris is manager. Jodie sent me a bunch of photos, which I'm really happy to have! The guys here are impressed by pictures of me with Tommy Chong, ZZ Top, and Sean Paul.

I received today's New York Times... today! So I'll get that the day it comes out, which is wonderful, unlike the Seattle Times which comes a day or two business days later. So my mail today was huge: 4 newspapers, one book, an envelope of photos, and about 30+ envelopes with various newspaper clippings, reprints, and letters. I haven't even had time to open all the mail! Getting photos from Jodie was the most exciting, followed by the fact that I will get the New York Times during the week on the day it's issued (weekend copies arrive Monday). Other inmates are looking forward to reading the newspapers too, and my books and magazines when I finish them. I'll bring knowledge and information with me wherever I go!

Send Marc mail in prison!

The meals have actually been very good for the last three days, and I'm looking forward to having the salad on Thursday. Today both lunch and dinner were excellent and I devoured them. Quesadillas for lunch with salsa & beans, they were very hot (physically warm, not spicy), and an excellent ricotta cheese-tomato sauces & spinach lasagna for dinner that was also very fresh and tasty and warm. My no-flesh diet is a great improvement.

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I've been busy today (Friday, May 28th). I got up at 5:30am as usual, started reading "Parting the Waves", the Martin Luther King and civil rights movement story. Excellent book. My day is the same thing over & over again each day: I read, I write, I eat poor food, I see no sun and feel no fresh air and can't sleep, its like Groundhog Day (the movie) unless I get stuff in the mail, or photos, or articles, or anything that has some substance that changes my day.

Had a physical exam at the doctor. Then I got interviewed by US Immigration for my return to Canada, whenever that happens. I'm going through media withdrawal, so I hope people send me updates about the outside world. It's very isolating and boring here.

(Please click here to send Marc mail!)

I did a second interview with Robert Henry, my subject for the piece I'm writing (he's an African-American prisoner whose life of hell started when he was forced to go to Vietnam at 18 years of age). That's exhausting, but I'm doing a thorough job documenting his life story. I'm also moving along with my book report on the book "Worse Than Slavery". I got 4 more letters today from supporters, so I have 8 to answer to. I got the Buddy Guy book "Damn right I got the blues", that's great.

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