For Martha, home will seem like a world away

THE Danbury Federal Correctional Institution is only about 20 miles from Martha Stewart’s home in Connecticut, but it will seem like a world away from her usual lifestyle.

If Stewart loses her appeals, she will in all likelihood end up at the low-security prison that is home to 1,300 female inmates.

The queen of high-thread-count sheets will get military-style linens for her bunk bed. She will have to trade in her wardrobe for prison khaki jumpsuits. She could get stuck on kitchen detail - backbreaking work that pays about 12 cents an hour and requires inmates to be up before the crack of dawn.

The women at Danbury have been closely following Stewart’s legal saga and anticipating her arrival for the past few months.

“I can guarantee you they’re watching anything or everything concerning Martha,” Joyce Ellwanger of Milwaukee, who served time last year there for trespassing during a military protest demonstration, said Friday. “I’m sure it will be the prime topic of conversation at the table at Danbury.”

Stewart was sentenced last Friday to five months in prison and five months of home confinement for lying about a stock sale that has tarnished her media empire.

A federal judge said he would recommend she serve her time in Danbury. The federal Bureau of Prisons has the final say, although officials try to place inmates within 500 miles of home.

For now, the sentence has been delayed pending an appeal.

Stewart’s living situation will depend on whether she is assigned to Danbury’s barracks-style prison camp or to its traditional cellblock housing. Either way, Stewart, 62, will have to spend her nights in a bunk bed.

“She’s lived a millionaire life. I lived a poor life,” said Dorothy Gaines, 45, who served time at Danbury before President Clinton commuted her drug sentence in 2000. “She’s going to have to live like I lived.”

Inmates can take classes, including crafts. The prison camp has a baseball field, volleyball net and walking track.

The woman who taught America how to decorate will not be able to decorate Danbury’s concrete walls. Inmates can personalise their space only by hanging up to four photographs in their lockers.