This is not a story about me, because my story is only remotely related to the sad and yet inspiring tale of Jacob Breton. I am merely the person who fortuitously discovered his journal while I myself was a political prisoner at the Oregon State Penitentiary in the 1970s. It's true that Jacob's journal has had an important impact on me, connecting me to the past, connecting me to something larger than myself, and especially comforting to me during the years of isolation I spent in the Underground.

Although this is not my story, it is important for me to tell you a little bit about myself, how I came into possession of Jacob Breton's journal, and why I have chosen to tell his story. I suppose my personal story starts when I went to the University of Oregon in Eugene. I didn't expect to be politicized when I first started attending the University in 1969, but the war in Vietnam was raging, right after the height of the civil rights movement, right after the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. I suppose a young man of my sensibilities could not help but be radicalized by these two overlapping resistance movements that arose at that time, one resisting the war, the other resisting racism, but both representing my idealism, my own hopes of social justice.

I think I became desperate as a revolutionary, when I sat downstairs in the basement with a bunch of the boys from my dorm in the Walton Complex at the University of Oregon to watch the selective service lottery on TV, where the drawing of your birthday determined when, and perhaps if, you would be drafted into the military to serve in Vietnam'probably. They said there were going to be no more student deferments. The lottery would now determine in a more equitable manner who would go to Vietnam and who would luck out, stay home, and go to college ' and who would be left to live. The dorm boys innocently approached the lottery as if it were a festive event. We were young and invincible, even immortal. I had barely sat down with my popcorn and cola, and was laughing, because one of the guys authoritatively announced, 'So here's where we find out: Who's going to fucking die?' I plopped down on a crowded couch, spilling some of my popcorn, which someone then chucked a few pieces of it back at me.

Then the drawing began. On national TV, in front of all of America, the first birthday drawn in the lottery was mine. Of the 365 birthdays that could have been drawn, mine was first.

I felt something snap in my head. I felt something tumble in my stomach. I stood up and realized I was dizzy. I sat back down. I could barely sense that people were congratulating me and slapping my back. Their jovial laughter seemed unreal and inappropriate in this time and this place. I was adamantly opposed to this war, and now I was going to be in the first batch of draftees. As soon as I was able, I left the room, feeling like I might throw up. A bunch of guys threw a hale of popcorn at me, and someone said, 'This time next year, sucker, those could be bullets flying at your ass.'

Legitimate protest, marching, shouting, writing letters against the war no longer seemed sufficient. Soon thereafter I was arrested and served time for setting fire to the ROTC building at the University of Oregon. Although I will now admit there were others involved, I was the only one who was caught and served time, and I'm fine with that.

It was while I was serving time at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem that I discovered the journal of Jacob Breton. I wanted to escape and get the hell out of there. One day I started pawing at the soil in the prison yard, not really seriously considering that I was going to dig my way out, but the dirt gave way much easier than I thought it would. Soon I found myself scratching desperately at the earth with no plan. Suddenly I hit something solid. As I dug more, I realized it was a small chest. I dug it up. It amazed me that no one seemed to notice what I was doing. The box was not locked. I opened it and found a journal which I decided to keep, secretly. I left the box behind and never heard anything about it. Now hiding the journal would be a challenge.

Once I started reading the journal I became quite attached to it and began to fear that it would be found and taken away from me. I began to feel obsessively protective of the journal. It was then that I decided I had to escape, with Jacob Breton's journal.

I don't want to go into detail on my escape, because like I said, I don't want this to be a story about me. Besides I don't want to reveal to the FBI everything before I've spoken to a lawyer. I know that once this story of mine is completed and made public, I fully expect to receive a visit from the FBI or police. I don't know what that will mean. I don't know what I will still be held accountable for, or how the statute of limitations, and just the passage of time, will affect my case. Like I said, I haven't talked to a lawyer yet and don't really plan to until I think it is absolutely necessary.

It's when I escaped that I changed my name to Steve Modée and entered the Weather Underground. These were the most boring and stressful years of my life. Living communally in what would now be called a sleeper cell, we waited and waited for the leadership to tell us what to do. It was apparent to us by our placement around Kalispell, Montana, that our action would involve Anaconda Aluminum, but we never received word. For me, the Underground came to be years of hiding, waiting, just hiding, and that was it. Besides hiding my identity and associating with felons, I never broke any other laws while I was underground. I never committed any acts of violence or destruction of property. I was never involved in bank robberies or bomb-making. None of the stuff that you think of when you think of the Weather Underground. I just lived and waited. Lived and waited. Waited. And waited. And in the end, nothing happened.

This is about all I want to say about my own life and my political activity. I'm sure more details will be forthcoming upon my arrest. Let's leave it at that.

I have now read Jacob Breton's memoirs several times. He was not a professional writer and as a whole it is not well-written, although once in awhile he nails it just perfectly. I'm not a professional writer either, but I'm going to give it a try anyway. I decided early on that the journal was not a publishable work in itself. But I thought that I could take the information and his interesting perceptions of the times he lived through and give them an interpretation that would be valuable. At first I approached it as a serious researcher, checking facts, trying to fill in gaps, and correcting factual mistakes. I even spent a few days in the archives in Jacksonville in Southern Oregon, looking at really old documents. I became more and more frustrated that Jacob Breton's facts were not consistent, and that some events he reported seemed to be complete fabrications and delusions of reality. Finally, I decided the hell with it. I'm going to tell his story from his point of view. Who's to say anyway that a more factual approach to history will get us any closer to understanding the truth? I found a truth in his writing that is beyond the facts. That is the story, the truth, I want to tell

Before I start the story of Jacob Breton, I would like to discuss an issue with the pronunciation of his name. I am not sure how he pronounced Breton. Did he pronounce it as did the French surrealist Andre Breton, nasalizing the last syllable, or had he Americanized his name by accenting the first syllable and then swallowing the last syllable, as though it were almost not there? I don't know, and I'm not sure there is any way that a person could figure it out, since that kind of information would have died with him.

One reason this even comes up as an issue is that coincidentally I had a similar circumstance where I did not know the pronunciation of my own name. I had taken on a nom de guerre before going underground. I had found the name of someone about my own age on a gravestone and then requested a birth certificate, which then helped me get all the new documentation I needed for my new identity. His name was Steven Arthur Modee. He was killed in a car accident while attending the University of Oregon. As I came to find out, he was quite the runner, on an athletic scholarship. He had grown up in Eagle Point, Oregon, a small town in Southern Oregon, not far from the town of Lavaland where this story takes place. He had entered the University at the same time as, and was friends with, the running legend Steve Prefontaine, who himself would die in a famously tragic car accident a few years later. I assumed that Modee was pronounced with a French pronunciation with the last syllable being said like 'day,' probably because I had been taking French in college, so it was natural for me to sound it out that way. However, I don't remember how I found this out, but I came to discover that the name had been Americanized by the Modee family, and they said the last syllable with a long 'e.' I stuck with the French pronunciation. I even returned the accent to the name and said it French style: Modée.

So I understand the confusion that can arise with the pronunciation of a foreign name that might have or might not have gone through the process of being anglicized. I guess I will never know for sure how he said his name, but I think I myself will Americanize it, since I got it wrong the first time when I was confronted with this issue over my own pseudonym. Plus, if I Americanize the pronunciation, it will be my way to say that Jacob Breton and his father Adam Breton were Americans, good Americans, although I know there would be many so called 'patriotic'? Americans who would dispute this portrayal. You may make your own choices about the pronunciation of Breton, because who knows which pronunciation is correct. But I'm going to put the accent on the first syllable and then mumble the last syllable.

It is here that I should give all my thanks to those who have helped me with this book. But when it comes down to it: no one has really helped me. I did use the archives in Jacksonville, Oregon, to be able to write my interpretation of a translation of the Dragonfly myth of the Katelmac people. That was helpful. On the other hand, I could make a long list of all the people and circumstances that have made it difficult for me to complete this book, not the least being myself and my own weakness of will in completing this project. But to thank anyone for helping me would ring false to me, and I want this story to be true, even if the facts are not. To tell you the truth, once I threw away the notion of writing a historical document, I was left with the journal and myself, and that is all. It's Jacob Breton's journal and me. That is all. So . . . let the story begin.

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