We interrupt the continuation of yesterday's letter

to bring your this late breaking news.

As I was enjoying s lazy morning tucked in tight, the officer taps on my bunk to tell me they have a project for me. I put on my trusty mess hall whites for the first time in about two months and head over not knowing if it was only to fix a data problem or something new.

It turned out to be something new he wanted. He was going to have me work on his computer, which is in the front area of the kitchen as opposed to working in the back office. I mentioned that I needed to get my working directory off the back system since he only had the compiled software on his machine. As he escorts me to the back office, my nemesis, fellow inmate, Darnell Biggins, is hard at work on the computer, playing solitaire. This is around 8:30 AM. Yeah he is so busy on the computer.

Anyhow, I spent the next three hours or so trying to get back into my programming. I need to put a preprinted form on an existing report. After digging around through the help files I ended up using two sub reports, inside another main report to get the end result I needed. Now I needed a way to pass the parameters for the original report, now a sub report.

This was not working out. I had done something similar once before and finally remembered that the solution involved creating a specific query file each time as opposed to just passing a variable that contains the 'where' clause. Tomorrow I get to go in to work right after breakfast to complete this task.

I assume you have been receiving the INC magazine I ordered for you at Christmas time. I just received the June issue. You need to please look at the article on page 114. When you're coding. I was reading this around 11:30 PM last night and when I got to the paragraph where he describes how being interrupted while writing codes is like letting all the balls fall as you juggle the variables and how when interrupted it takes ten minutes to get back tip to speed.

Can you please explain how he makes his money? My limited understanding of open source tells me that any application written in an open source environment is available at the code level to all. Do you still buy the application? Where is the money coming from? Imagine what if a similar enterprise could be grown for medical records?

Can you shed some light on this?

As it is now it looks like I will out of the dorm most all of tomorrow, and so I wanted to type this short note tonight. I will certainly return to your letter on Thursday while celebrating my 53rd birthday.

We interrupt the continuation of yesterday's letter

to bring your this late breaking news.

As I was enjoying s lazy morning tucked in tight, the officer taps on my bunk to tell me they have a project for me. I put on my trusty mess hall whites for the first time in about two months and head over not knowing if it was only to fix a data problem or something new.

It turned out to be something new he wanted. He was going to have me work on his computer, which is in the front area of the kitchen as opposed to working in the back office. I mentioned that I needed to get my working directory off the back system since he only had the compiled software on his machine. As he escorts me to the back office, my nemesis, fellow inmate, Darnell Biggins, is hard at work on the computer, playing solitaire. This is around 8:30 AM. Yeah he is so busy on the computer.

Anyhow, I spent the next three hours or so trying to get back into my programming. I need to put a preprinted form on an existing report. After digging around through the help files I ended up using two sub reports, inside another main report to get the end result I needed. Now I needed a way to pass the parameters for the original report, now a sub report.

This was not working out. I had done something similar once before and finally remembered that the solution involved creating a specific query file each time as opposed to just passing a variable that contains the 'where' clause. Tomorrow I get to go in to work right after breakfast to complete this task.

I assume you have been receiving the INC magazine I ordered for you at Christmas time. I just received the June issue. You need to please look at the article on page 114. When you're coding. I was reading this around 11:30 PM last night and when I got to the paragraph where he describes how being interrupted while writing codes is like letting all the balls fall as you juggle the variables and how when interrupted it takes ten minutes to get back tip to speed.

Can you please explain how he makes his money? My limited understanding of open source tells me that any application written in an open source environment is available at the code level to all. Do you still buy the application? Where is the money coming from? Imagine what if a similar enterprise could be grown for medical records?

Can you shed some light on this?

As it is now it looks like I will out of the dorm most all of tomorrow, and so I wanted to type this short note tonight. I will certainly return to your letter on Thursday while celebrating my 53rd birthday.

How the package thing works.

I am entitled to receive two food packages a month, not to exceed 35 pounds in total. Books, cosmetics and clothing are not subject to any limits. At this point the only food package I have received in the last two years is the one that you kindly reshipped (and added to). So at this point you sending me a food package would not be a problem.

As you know I manage to feed myself off the food that is available from the commissary. While the items are supposed to be priced at a wholesale level, but the current supplier has jacked up a lot of the prices. The deal is they do put the contract out for bids, but the winning bid only has to hold the prices for thirty days. Then he can raise them to allegedly reflect his increase in cost. For example we are now paying $1.60 for a 16 ounce can of mackerel and one of the catalog companies (Bust a Move) sells it for the some price.

Why is any of this relevant to you? Well I used to be able to buy enough food to feed my self for two weeks, and even purchase extras like a daily dose of chocolate. Lately, and last week in particular I has just enough available spending limit to buy what I consider my basic three meal a day requirement. We are limited to spending $55 per biweekly shopping trip. This limit used to include tobacco products but they have since removed them from that limit. That was a boost for those that smoke, but since I do not smoke, it did not change my limit.

Wah, wah, wah. Okay so now the package option becomes a source for items that are not sold in the store or for buying treats that I can not fit in my $55. On the one hand the $55 limit is a forced saving mechanism. Since I receive $15 a week from my job, plus the $100 a month from my mom, I can not spend more than $110 every four weeks. The limit does not include postage stamps.

There is one inmate who gets a package every few weeks from a store, which is paid for by his family. Included in the packages were four ounce bags of beef jerky. The first time he sold me two packs of the jerky for one box of Kool cigarettes. The Kools cost me $4.50, so I certainly get the better of that deal.

The point is I really do not physically need any more food. I have gained a few pounds, and that means I am not starving. But emotionally sometimes the diet of oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, and tuna fish just becomes too much. Ironically most of the time the "pressure" for something different passes. If I were on the street I would jump out to the local pizza parlor or maybe the grocery store and buy something special.

I used to have Mom and Dad send me some items every few months just for the sake of variety. I recently received a catalog from a company called J&E Warehouse. They have a 5 -- 6 pound block of mozzarella cheese for $20.00. Now that is what I am looking for to go with the can of anchovies you sent. They used to sell an 8 ounce package of shredded mozzarella, but now it is that artificial all oil, non milk product that does not melt at all like the real thing. So the point is that once in a while some variety is nice.

Of course the irony is that for the first eight and a half years between my time in the various county jails and Club Fed, I was not able to have any packages sent in and I survived. This is one of those no right answer life questions.

One of the guys near me, who is going home in a couple of months, just got a humongous food package with real chickens, real sliced American cheese and all sorts of goodies. What is the right thing? I guess it depends on who your friends are.

Now I do not mean that to reflect at all on you as my friend. I am not expecting you to send me anything. I am grateful for all your support and true friendship. The point I was thinking of is what I just was sharing with Ray Carlton, you have to be willing to acknowledge that different people will offer their help in different ways. So if you were to send me some jerky it would be a great gift, give me a taste of something I read about in the Times and we have been kicking around for how many letters. Does any of this make sense?

I just spent the last hour talking with Ray. His wife came to visit him yesterday with her mother. It turns out his wife has a bunch of different cancers flowing in her that make treatment options next to impossible. She has been given xx amount of time to live. Her mom tells Ray that she is going out to the car now, he has the next three hours with her daughter and then he is done. Mind you this is not how his wife feels.

And if that was not enough, his mom is suffering from cancer too and was in the hospital for the last month with a collapsed lung. His family kept making excuses for her when he called saying she was out at this or the other place when he called. On top of that one of his brothers has MS and he is only around 18 and his medical provider has said he has only a year or two left. Yeah sometimes life just keeps coming at you.

Meanwhile my neighbor Tyrell wants to stomp on Ray because Ray apparently claimed some fish filets he was supposed to bring back from the mess hall were taken by the officers, when in fact they were diverted by Ray to an alternative inmate. Life is fun here at Camp Run-a-Muk.

It is now almost 2:00. I am going to jump in the shower and get ready for my 3:30 ART (Aggression Replacement Training) class. This is finally the last week. Only four more classes. Yeah. Depending on what I "feel" like when I return at 5:30, this might be the last page of the letter, or page three of a longer letter.

How the package thing works.

I am entitled to receive two food packages a month, not to exceed 35 pounds in total. Books, cosmetics and clothing are not subject to any limits. At this point the only food package I have received in the last two years is the one that you kindly reshipped (and added to). So at this point you sending me a food package would not be a problem.

As you know I manage to feed myself off the food that is available from the commissary. While the items are supposed to be priced at a wholesale level, but the current supplier has jacked up a lot of the prices. The deal is they do put the contract out for bids, but the winning bid only has to hold the prices for thirty days. Then he can raise them to allegedly reflect his increase in cost. For example we are now paying $1.60 for a 16 ounce can of mackerel and one of the catalog companies (Bust a Move) sells it for the some price.

Why is any of this relevant to you? Well I used to be able to buy enough food to feed my self for two weeks, and even purchase extras like a daily dose of chocolate. Lately, and last week in particular I has just enough available spending limit to buy what I consider my basic three meal a day requirement. We are limited to spending $55 per biweekly shopping trip. This limit used to include tobacco products but they have since removed them from that limit. That was a boost for those that smoke, but since I do not smoke, it did not change my limit.

Wah, wah, wah. Okay so now the package option becomes a source for items that are not sold in the store or for buying treats that I can not fit in my $55. On the one hand the $55 limit is a forced saving mechanism. Since I receive $15 a week from my job, plus the $100 a month from my mom, I can not spend more than $110 every four weeks. The limit does not include postage stamps.

There is one inmate who gets a package every few weeks from a store, which is paid for by his family. Included in the packages were four ounce bags of beef jerky. The first time he sold me two packs of the jerky for one box of Kool cigarettes. The Kools cost me $4.50, so I certainly get the better of that deal.

The point is I really do not physically need any more food. I have gained a few pounds, and that means I am not starving. But emotionally sometimes the diet of oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, and tuna fish just becomes too much. Ironically most of the time the "pressure" for something different passes. If I were on the street I would jump out to the local pizza parlor or maybe the grocery store and buy something special.

I used to have Mom and Dad send me some items every few months just for the sake of variety. I recently received a catalog from a company called J&E Warehouse. They have a 5 -- 6 pound block of mozzarella cheese for $20.00. Now that is what I am looking for to go with the can of anchovies you sent. They used to sell an 8 ounce package of shredded mozzarella, but now it is that artificial all oil, non milk product that does not melt at all like the real thing. So the point is that once in a while some variety is nice.

Of course the irony is that for the first eight and a half years between my time in the various county jails and Club Fed, I was not able to have any packages sent in and I survived. This is one of those no right answer life questions.

One of the guys near me, who is going home in a couple of months, just got a humongous food package with real chickens, real sliced American cheese and all sorts of goodies. What is the right thing? I guess it depends on who your friends are.

Now I do not mean that to reflect at all on you as my friend. I am not expecting you to send me anything. I am grateful for all your support and true friendship. The point I was thinking of is what I just was sharing with Ray Carlton, you have to be willing to acknowledge that different people will offer their help in different ways. So if you were to send me some jerky it would be a great gift, give me a taste of something I read about in the Times and we have been kicking around for how many letters. Does any of this make sense?

I just spent the last hour talking with Ray. His wife came to visit him yesterday with her mother. It turns out his wife has a bunch of different cancers flowing in her that make treatment options next to impossible. She has been given xx amount of time to live. Her mom tells Ray that she is going out to the car now, he has the next three hours with her daughter and then he is done. Mind you this is not how his wife feels.

And if that was not enough, his mom is suffering from cancer too and was in the hospital for the last month with a collapsed lung. His family kept making excuses for her when he called saying she was out at this or the other place when he called. On top of that one of his brothers has MS and he is only around 18 and his medical provider has said he has only a year or two left. Yeah sometimes life just keeps coming at you.

Meanwhile my neighbor Tyrell wants to stomp on Ray because Ray apparently claimed some fish filets he was supposed to bring back from the mess hall were taken by the officers, when in fact they were diverted by Ray to an alternative inmate. Life is fun here at Camp Run-a-Muk.

It is now almost 2:00. I am going to jump in the shower and get ready for my 3:30 ART (Aggression Replacement Training) class. This is finally the last week. Only four more classes. Yeah. Depending on what I "feel" like when I return at 5:30, this might be the last page of the letter, or page three of a longer letter.

I wrote that I wanted to get back to writing

and this morning as I pulled out my monster Webster's Dictionary your latest letter popped out. It is now 11:15 AM and I have had my morning breakfast; oatmeal, and one toasted English muffin, and instead of lying down and disappearing in to a book I am going to respond to your letter.

I quickly reread the letter I typed to you yesterday before sending it out and was pissed off at the spelling errors. This typewriter has a great spellchecker and it beeps at wrong words.

Unlike the SmithCorona, there is a different beep for the end of line and spelling errors therefore there is no reason for misspellings. The spellchecker even has an option to look up possible corrections.

Since it is fairly comprehensive I have taken to looking in the thesaurus or the dictionary if it beeps at me and cannot find a suggestion. So misspellings are just the result of plain laziness and inattentiveness (even that word is in the spellchecker, however spellchecker is not). Hold on; let me look that one up in the big Webster’s. Stand by. Okay it is listed as two words

Let us skip the name calling, and see if we can figure out what it means to be friends. I am always lifted up when I read any of your older letters, and just a few weeks ago I was sharing some of the jokes from one of your letters and had him laughing.

Abby has been sending me cards and or letters at the rate of two or three a week, but then it will taper off for a week or two. I can trace the lull to a gap in me sending out letters a couple weeks back.

This raises two thoughts. One: do not feel you have to answer an entire letter from me. Hopefully there will be one or maybe two thoughts that rise above the rest of the minutia that is my existence that are worthy of a response from you. Then what might happen is that we will develop some continuity.

That is what I think worked in the past. Yes I tended to try and comment on each paragraph in your letters, but with Abby, what ends up happening is that the issues that are more relevant to both of us rise to the top and get the most ink.

You and I have some things in common, some things that one of us likes to know about the other, and some things that are not as important, and in an effort to budget the time we have to write might not merit the full head on attack of more than a sentence or two. Not that these lesser issues are unnecessary, they do provide context and sometimes come back to the forefront later on. For example I do enjoy hearing about your cycling adventures, and feel like an insider when that subject turns up in the paper. I can then read something that I would normally pass over.

Damn, this is exactly what I mean. Your opening paragraph is only three lines and I take off and give it a half a page.

One last point, I would say that volume wise I put more words on paper than Abby, but that again is part of the budget thing. I do have somewhat more "free" time, but it is also a function of who I am. I tend to "need" to explain things to the nth degree.

One way I may be able to work on that is based on your shorter letters, reading them carefully for context and learn what things I write that either have no impact on you, or things I just put down way too many words.

I wrote that I wanted to get back to writing

and this morning as I pulled out my monster Webster's Dictionary your latest letter popped out. It is now 11:15 AM and I have had my morning breakfast; oatmeal, and one toasted English muffin, and instead of lying down and disappearing in to a book I am going to respond to your letter.

I quickly reread the letter I typed to you yesterday before sending it out and was pissed off at the spelling errors. This typewriter has a great spellchecker and it beeps at wrong words.

Unlike the SmithCorona, there is a different beep for the end of line and spelling errors therefore there is no reason for misspellings. The spellchecker even has an option to look up possible corrections.

Since it is fairly comprehensive I have taken to looking in the thesaurus or the dictionary if it beeps at me and cannot find a suggestion. So misspellings are just the result of plain laziness and inattentiveness (even that word is in the spellchecker, however spellchecker is not). Hold on; let me look that one up in the big Webster’s. Stand by. Okay it is listed as two words

Let us skip the name calling, and see if we can figure out what it means to be friends. I am always lifted up when I read any of your older letters, and just a few weeks ago I was sharing some of the jokes from one of your letters and had him laughing.

Abby has been sending me cards and or letters at the rate of two or three a week, but then it will taper off for a week or two. I can trace the lull to a gap in me sending out letters a couple weeks back.

This raises two thoughts. One: do not feel you have to answer an entire letter from me. Hopefully there will be one or maybe two thoughts that rise above the rest of the minutia that is my existence that are worthy of a response from you. Then what might happen is that we will develop some continuity.

That is what I think worked in the past. Yes I tended to try and comment on each paragraph in your letters, but with Abby, what ends up happening is that the issues that are more relevant to both of us rise to the top and get the most ink.

You and I have some things in common, some things that one of us likes to know about the other, and some things that are not as important, and in an effort to budget the time we have to write might not merit the full head on attack of more than a sentence or two. Not that these lesser issues are unnecessary, they do provide context and sometimes come back to the forefront later on. For example I do enjoy hearing about your cycling adventures, and feel like an insider when that subject turns up in the paper. I can then read something that I would normally pass over.

Damn, this is exactly what I mean. Your opening paragraph is only three lines and I take off and give it a half a page.

One last point, I would say that volume wise I put more words on paper than Abby, but that again is part of the budget thing. I do have somewhat more "free" time, but it is also a function of who I am. I tend to "need" to explain things to the nth degree.

One way I may be able to work on that is based on your shorter letters, reading them carefully for context and learn what things I write that either have no impact on you, or things I just put down way too many words.

Smuttynose Builds its Dream House - Part 4 - Newmarket Mills (a)

In July, 2003, my partner Joanne and I took a drive to Newmarket, where our friends Peter Hamelin and John Pasquale were developing their plan to purchase and reopen the famous Stone Church music club. Located about twenty minutes from Portsmouth, Newmarket is an old mill town situated on the Lamprey River, a tributary of the Great Bay. Compared to other thoroughly gentrified communities up and down the Seacoast, Newmarket has always been refreshingly, even defiantly, down-to-earth, populated with a diverse mix of people: folks with roots that go back generations, along with recent immigrants; working-class people, professionals, college students, artists and random bohemian types. It is both well-grounded and artsy in an appealingly unpretentious way.

Although Joanne and I were in Newmarket that day to hear about Peter & John's plans for the venerable Stone Church, the conversation eventually drifted to our own vague ideas for a new facility for Smuttynose. John, who lives in Newmarket and was involved in local politics, asked if we would consider looking at the mill buildings that dominate the center of town. He told me that they were vacant and that the town was actively looking for someone to come in and develop them. In August, 2003, we took our first tour through the old, abandoned mills and we were astonished by what we saw.

Newmarket's mills are a relic of New England's early, water-driven industrial revolution. Built from quarried split granite between the 1820's and the early 1900's, these massive structures were originally used to mill cotton. Later uses included shoe manufacture (Timberland got its start in the mills next door), hydro-electric generation, distilling, and most recently, the manufacture of sheet mica and electrical insulating material, but regardless of the use, they have always been the economic heart of the region, employing thousands at their peak. By 2003, the mills on Main Street housed a single small manufacturer; the mills across the Lamprey River had been converted into residential condominiums; but the bulk of the space - over 70,000 square feet in buildings in a picturesque setting alongside the river - had been vacant for more than a decade.

It is easy to see how seductive the idea was of breathing life back into these beautiful structures, especially with a traditional manufacturing use such as artisanal brewing. Walking through their vast, empty spaces, you can imagine when these buildings were filled with workers operating clanking machinery and pulsed with energy. And although these buildings did not perfectly meet the criteria outlined in the previous post, the notion of transforming these historic mills had an irresistable appeal. John introduced me to the Newmarket Community Development Corporation (NCDC), which owns the mill property on behalf of the town, and we embarked on what would turn out to be a two year-long journey that ultimately did not bear fruit.

Our plans generated a considerable amount of excitement in the community and the region, with a fair amount of positive press. Here's an example from the Exeter Newsletter in June, 2004, shortly after we signed an option to purchase the property. Here's another from the Portsmouth Herald on the same topic. It's obvious that everyone was swept up in the possibilities at this point. We had over sixty thousand square feet of buildable space to work with, even after removing large portions of floor to make room for our two-story high brewing vessels. And because of the location, in the heart of Newmarket, our

plans evolved to encompass more public uses than we have originally envisioned, including not only a new brewing facility and a pub, but other uses that these buildings and their location seemed to call out for - a cafe, office and studio space, and even a small boutique hotel. Conceptually, it all made sense, with all the parts fitting together to form a whole.

But the hard work or making all those pieces fit into the larger scheme of things was just beginning. We had hired an architecture firm in Boston to help us do a feasibility study, and we commissioned some early engineering studies of the site. Over a two year span, I attended countless meetings with various parties who had an interest in our project, and was met with a consistently high level of enthusiasm. Yet, in retrospect, there were clear signs from the very outset that our plans to redevelop the Newmarket Mills were doomed, if only I had been able to recognize them.

Next post - things fall apart...