Category Archives: death

Prison News Round Up

Leave a reply

ANNE

I am leaving for Berlin in two days, so I’m going to review a pile of prison-related articles that I’ve accumulated—over a period of one weekend—that’s how often prison is in the news.  I’ll give you the downers first, then the positive ones.

Ohio is having trouble obtaining drugs used to execute people, so the Ohio DOC has obtained an import license from the Drug Enforcement Administration to buy sodium thiopental and pentobarbital from overseas.  Wow.  Where overseas, I wonder?  They “decline” to name the countries.  I’m thinking China, North Korea, Iran, or Yemen, since these are our fellow members of the death penalty club.  In case that doesn’t work, Ohio legislators passed an “execution secrecy law” (I am not making this up) in hopes it would get small-scale drug manufacturers called compounding pharmacies to sell them the drugs.  These are unregulated companies that have been in the news for sickening people with contaminated pharmaceuticals.  But hey, if you’re trying to kill someone, who cares what the quality of the drug is?

In Wisconsin, there is a prison guard shortage that has prompted two correctional facilities to call in guards from other institutions and pay overtime.  So let me get this straight—we pack our prisons full of nonviolent drug offenders, which costs us taxpayers an arm and a leg, then we have to pay overtime to get guard coverage, which costs us more.  Great system!

Which leads me to this editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Finding solutions for overcrowded prisons.”   I like the opening line: “Either Americans are the most evil-people on Earth or there’s something terribly wrong with their criminal-justice system.”  They mention something that’s news to me: “It’s a stretch to suggest that the bloated prison population is due mainly to the sentencing of nonviolent drug offenders.  It’s not.  Most of the increase comes from locking up greater numbers of thieves and violent criminals and keeping them behind bars longer.  Even if all nonviolent drug offenders were set free today, the prison population of 2.2 million would drop to only 1.7 million … Still, on the margin, granting early release to nonviolent offenders and shortening sentences to better match crimes seems a sensible step….”

This information is new to me, and I wonder why I haven’t read it elsewhere.  Everywhere else, the narrative is that, if we just release all the nonviolent drug offenders, our prison population will be drastically reduced.  But if there are more violent criminals in America than elsewhere, maybe we are the most evil people on earth.

Still, 2.2 million total prisoners minus 1.7 million nonviolent drug offenders is 500 thousand people—not insignificant.  And when you figure it costs (on average) $31,000 a year to keep someone in prison, that’s over $1.5 billion a year.

On the same day, there was this feature article about Damon Thibodeaux, an 18-year-old who was wrongly convicted of rape and murder who spent 16 years on death row before being exonerated and freed, in large part due to the efforts of Minneapolis attorney Steve Kaplan.  Thibodeaux had been raped and beaten on a regular basis by his step “father” since the age of five and so he was easily bullied and manipulated into confessing to the crime.  It’s a heart-rending story, but it has a happy ending.  As I’ve written before, an important element of recovery from anything is feeling that you belong.  And Kaplan has gone the distance to help Thibodeaux adjust to life after prison by including him in family and other social gatherings.

And there was this little factoid in The Week: that every day, on average, a dozen people die behind bars.  The leading cause?  Suicide, in local jails; cancer elsewhere.

Below are some prison-related images.  The bully one made me shudder, because it’s how I felt when I was kicked out of Moose Lake for wearing “revealing clothing.”  It wasn’t about my clothing; it was a power trip.  Related to that is an interview with Richard Zimbardo, who led the Stanford Prison Experiment in which students were assigned to be prisoners or guards.  The “guards” quickly became sadistic.  “I lost my sense of compassion, I totally lost that,” said Zimbardo.

Next time, the good news.

DesktopBully

All Lives Matter

Leave a reply

ANNE

I have been avoiding the story of Sandra Bland since it broke about 10 days ago.  I was afraid it would be too heartbreaking.  I think I’m overwhelmed—a sure sign is that I switched to classical Minnesota Public Radio from the news version.  The case of Freddie Grey, the black man who died of broken neck after being handcuffed, put into the back of a police van, and driven all over town while he was tossed around helplessly, was my (heart)breaking point.

But this morning I switched back to the news and caught this story about Sandra Bland.  It contains audio clips of the interaction between Bland and the officer who pulled her over for not signaling a lane change.  In case you aren’t aware of what happened next, the interchange escalated, she was arrested and thrown in jail, where she allegedly hanged herself.

It was really, really hard to listen to, but not for the reason I’d expected.  I had assumed I would feel angry and powerless because yet another African American was dead after an interaction with a police officer.  And I did feel that.

But Sandra Bland reminded me so much of me—specifically my confrontation with a correctional officer that got me ejected from Moose Lake Correctional Facility and banned from visiting Vince for six months.  You can hear it in her voice, and in her pauses.  She is sick and tired of kowtowing.  Bland didn’t lose it as quickly as I did, but she was probably trying to put the brakes on herself since she is black, after all.

I wonder what would have happened to me if I had been black?  Would I have been thrown to the ground, arrested, and taken to jail?

—

I struggle with the race issue.  I know that black men, especially, are arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than white ones.  After a police officer shot and killed a black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Justice Department conducted an investigation which found a pattern of racial bias between 2012 and 2014 violating the Constitution and federal law.   For instance, while the population of Ferguson is 67% black, 93% of arrests were of black people.  You could say, “Maybe black people commit more crime,” but for even minor offenses like jay walking, nearly 100% of the arrests are of black people.  And when whites are arrested for jay walking, they are 68% more likely to have their charges dismissed than blacks are.

—

So why do I struggle with “the race issue” when it seems so clear cut?  It’s not that I doubt that black men are arrested and incarcerated at higher rates than white ones.  It’s that my son—despite the fact that he is white—is still in prison.  He is still serving a way-too-long sentence for his crimes and he is still being exploited for nearly free labor.  We are still paying through the nose for things like stamps, emails, and ramen.  It remains to be seen, but I am afraid he will be released with very, very little in the way of support or resources.  And he’s one of the lucky ones—he’s got me and others who are rooting for him and offering to buy him bedding or pants.

Yes, blacks are incarcerated at higher rates than whites; currently at St. Cloud they represent 31% of the prison population while they represent only 5% of Minnesota’s overall population.  But since whites make up 85% of Minnesota’s population, their numbers in Minnesota prisons are higher—there are 627 white men in St. Cloud, compared with 335 black men.

Do people think Vince shouldn’t be where he is—because he’s white?  Would some people dismiss him as a loser because, being white, he has no excuse not to be a mid-level manager by now with a wife and two kids and a house with a white picket fence in the suburbs?  Do people think all white men have it made by virtue of white privilege, and therefore the only explanation when they fail is that they’re bad seeds?

The Restorative Powers of Kittens

Leave a reply

ANNE

When Vince and I started blogging, I didn’t realize that a theme of redemption would emerge. Vince is transformation is probably obvious. Mine is subtler and has unfolded over many years.

I have been thinking about this lately because in the spring and sumer I get dozens of emails a day from the Humane Society about stray kittens. What does this have to do with redemption?

I signed up to do foster care of kittens a couple years ago. These kittens are born in warehouses or barns or even under car hoods. The mothers, if they survive, are emaciated and barely old enough to conceive. So that’s part of what makes fostering redemptive for me—giving care to vulnerable teen moms that I didn’t receive myself.

I keep these kittens, with or without moms, until they are old enough to be spayed/neutered, then turn them back to the Humane Society. It’s not all fun; I’ve had entire litters die because the mother was so dehydrated. Kittens have been smothered by their litter mates. One lost an eye to the claws of a litter mate. So it’s kind of a nature-tooth-and-claw experience.

People wonder how I don’t get so attached to them that I want to keep them. I think fostering is the ideal set up—I get the cuteness of kittens and the Humane Society pays all the vet bills and provides the supplies. I travel too much to have a permanent pet. When I turn them back in, I know they will be adopted immediately—there’s a huge demand for kittens. And I’m not even that much of a pet person.

So why do I do it, and what does it have to do with redemption? I think it goes back to one of the few memories I have of my dad.

A few weeks before he left home forever, he had been gone for weeks and showed up with a black kitten. I must have been seven, and my three younger siblings were thrilled. I was too, but also leery because I knew my mother was not thrilled. I can see now that the kitten was my dad’s wedge to get back in—if my mother had demanded he turn around and leave, “and take the darn kitten with you,” she would have been the bad guy.

I remember dad telling us to hold her gently and not fight over her because she was a living creature with feelings. He said her name was Surprise! and told us to always say it that way, like there was an exclamation point.

So then dad was back home, and the next day he went out to buy some cat food and kitty litter. He was gone all afternoon and missed dinner. My mom tried to put us to bed early. We did what we usually did, laughed at her and ran in four different directions. But I also can still feel how anxious we all were.

Dad made his appearance just as the cat had crapped under someone’s bed. My mom began to reproach him because of course he was drunk and hadn’t brought home any pet supplies.

We kids were giggling until dad roared, “I’ll Get that goddamn cat!” He ripped the kitten out of my sister’s hands, strode to the top of the stairs, and hurled her down the staircase like a fast ball, screaming, “You goddamn piece of shit!” He raced down to the landing, grabbed Surprise before she could get oriented, and sent her hurtling down the second set of stairs to the first floor.

All of us—my mom and the four of us kids—huddled at the top of the stairs. Someone was whimpering but I had learned to be silent, no matter how frightened I was.

That’s when I had the thought that would teach me to never make wishes:

“I wish he was dead.”

A few months later, he was.

Surprise! not only survived but had a litter of eight black kittens six months later.

Much later, there was a (nonviolent) incident involving cats and Vince but that’s his story.

Who could not feel their soul restored by kittens?

IMG_2326[1]

Dying for a Smoke

Leave a reply

ANNE

I’ve written about how I’m so lucky / grateful to not be an addict. However, quitting smoking was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, so I guess that makes me … an addict? Is having a Swisher Sweet cigar once a month a slippery slope? This is something I started in the last year or so.  I don’t inhale. But I must get enough nicotine to give me that instant stress reduction effect. I go down to the river with a beer or a flask of tea and smoke one little cigar and watch the water go by. Is that really so bad? Can’t I just enjoy one vice, once in a while?

—

I tried everything to quit. Setting a quit date. Cutting down. Smoking myself sick so I’d never want one again–until the next day. The patch, the pills (which caused frightening hallucinations), chewing on cinnamon sticks. Willpower. Phone counseling through my insurance plan. Not smoking til after I’d worked out for two hours. Never smoking in public. Never smoking until after work. Meditation.

I quit over and over. I’d quite for six months then cave in. Once I quit for FOUR YEARS! And then I started again after Dr. Wonderful broke our engagement. I was so sick the next day, after smoking one cigarette, that all I could do way lie on the couch and moan. But I started and kept on smoking for another 10 years.

In the end it was a silly thing that got me to quit. I read somewhere that the average age of women who get lung cancer is 42. So I’d had that in my mind for years—that I had to quit by the time I was 42. And I did. But as with the depression that I battled for decades, I think it was all the things combined, plus this final silly thought, that made it stick. That was 14 years ago.

Meditation helped, too. After all, it involves inhaling and exhaling, just like smoking. I still found myself tearing off the nicotine patch so I could have “just one” cigarette, then slapping the patch back on and yelling to myself out loud, “No—NO!!”

I know I can never pick up a cigarette again, not even to have one drag. I know this I went to Jamaica with a friend 15 years ago. She had quit smoking years earlier. But I was smoking, and she picked up one of mine, just to have a few drags—we were on vacation, after all! She smoked all week and has been smoking ever since. My sister smokes. Yes, the one with cancer. Yes, she knows that smoking can be a contributing factor to colon cancer. She tries and tries to quit. Now there are e-cigs, and she says they’re ok up to a point and then she Just Has to Have a Real Cigarette. I don’t blame her. Like I wrote above, they’re an instant stress reliever. Until you think about lung cancer and heart attacks; that’ll raise your stress level.

There has been no smoking allowed in Minnesota prisons for over 20 years. This is good; Vince’s lungs will get a chance to regenerate. But will he light up again the minute he’s out? He didn’t fight to quit, like I did; he was forced. And he wonders why he was so moody the first few weeks he was inside!

Don’t Cry for Me, Minnesota

Leave a reply

ANNE

It’s Memorial Day, so here’s a post about death.

Am I the only one who thinks about death all the time? Bear with me. Honestly, I’m not depressed and I don’t find it depressing to think about death. If you do, maybe you should skip this post.

Death has been a preoccupation of mine since my dad died, when I was eight. When Vince was missing for that first worst year, all I could think of was him lying face up behind a garbage dumpster, eyes staring, with a bullet hole in his forehead. Ok, I also imagined him dead in a gulley, in a corn field, in the river, and any number of other cold, isolated, lonely places. But that’s not the kind of dwelling on death I’m talking about here.

My mother is continually clearing out her house, shifting mementos onto me and my siblings. She had a shoebox of loose family photos that we looked through together. Birthday parties, picnics, and school plays from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. “This is my cousin’s fifth birthday party,” she explained, showing me a summertime photo of small children assembled around a cake on a picnic table in someone’s back yard, wearing birthday hats. Little girls with Shirley Temple curls and elaborate home-sewn flouncy dresses. Boys with bow ties and their hair slicked down like Alfalfa. The cars parked in the background had gorgeous fins.

“My cousin and another child got sick after the party and they both died the next day—it was meningitis.” Her finger traced the circle of five-year olds. “I don’t remember who the other child was. We had to be quarantined, so they ran a yellow QUARANTINE tape around our yard. We couldn’t leave or have visitors for a week. Mr. Goldenberg, who owned the five-and-dime at the end of the block, would bring a box of food, set it near the back gate, and run back down the alley.”

Let’s face it, all these photos will be pitched into a dumpster when she dies. I won’t remember who any of the children are.

And so it goes. We are born and, if we’re lucky, someone loves us and takes care of us. Lots of photos are taken to celebrate our milestones. When we enter adulthood we are so focused on achieving goals that we don’t realize we will never be this healthy, energetic, or attractive again.

Now at 55 I have dozens of photo albums that will go into a dumpster when I die. I have thousands of photos on Facebook that will likely sit in cyberspace as long as servers exist, of interest to no one except maybe some future social anthropologist.

And so I—my whole life—my loves and dramas and losses, my story, all my brilliant ideas and daydreams and real dreams, my travels, my elaborately decorated dining rooms for dinner parties and painstakingly tended gardens, the thousands of miles I have walked and millions of repetitions I have done at the gym, my friends far and near, the millions of dollars I’ve raised for good causes, maybe even those good causes and their organizations themselves—will disappear.

We’re all on a conveyer belt. We move along it, conscious of it or not. We can’t get off, we can’t go back, and we don’t know when we’ll reach the end of the belt and fall off into … ??

A lot of people are sure they know the answer to that but I’m not one of them.

Again, I don’t find any of this depressing, or feel sorry for myself—I just find it intriguing. So what should we do while we’re here? The only conclusions I’ve reached for myself, after 55 years of armchair philosophizing, are: 1) it feels better to do good things than bad ones; 2) it’s important to have fun while you have the chance; and 3) if I ever stop seeking the answers to life’s imponderable questions, I’m as good as dead.

Appeal Denied

1 Reply

ANNE

I got a postcard from Vince.  Don’t ask me why he addressed me as “Ms. M.” and not mom.

Ms. M: 

Well, I made it.  Everything is a bit stressful and overwhelming at first, but it’s all designed with our success in mind.  I’m picking up bits and pieces here and there but basically I have no clue what I’m doing yet.  But it will come.  I won’t be to be able to talk to you for two months but I will be able to write more than I thought. 

I’m more excited than nervous or scared.  This is going to be really good for me, and everybody that knows me! 

I’ll write more soon,

Love,

Vince

—

My appeal of the visiting ban was denied.  The warden wrote that she found “no compelling reason” to reverse it.  I assumed it would be denied but it still made me furious when I opened the letter.  And for some reason, the fact that the warden is a woman made me feel even more disgusted.

Vince cannot call me for two months now; that’s a boot camp policy that has nothing to do with me.  I can’t call him, as ever.  By the time I am allowed to visit him, it will be seven months since we’ve seen each other.  He thought he wouldn’t have time to write but now says he will.  That’s good.  I can still email him.  I am so grateful for that DOC email system.

—

Yesterday my sister had the left lobe of her liver removed.  She had endured two months of chemo to shrink the tumors in it, and her doctor recommended they remove the affected part of the liver just to be on the safe side.  Once she’s recovered from surgery she’ll have to go back on chemo.

In the movies, people get cancer and the next thing you know they’re on their death bed having a tear-jerking good-bye talk with their loved ones before they peacefully slip away.  I did not realize that cancer can go on and on and on and on and on, with years of chemo, surgery, radiation, side effects, financial problems, and emotional highs and lows.  I’m so grateful my sister has made it through so far, and I really hope this is it—that the cancer is gone for good.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?  Bullshit.  It makes you miserable.  Well, check back with me in a year.  My sister is a lot more of a naturally positive thinker than I am.  Maybe she’ll bounce back to her rose-colored glasses, in-the-moment state of being if she can catch a break from cancer misery.

—

A friend emailed to find out how I was.  “How’s all that drama with your son and your sister?” he asked.

Drama?  Drama is turmoil you create on purpose to draw attention to yourself, or to deflect attention away from yourself, like when you want to cover up something crappy you’ve done.

My sister’s cancer is not drama.  Vince being in prison is not drama.  Their situations may be a bit dramatic, but that’s different.

Drama is just what it sounds like: entertainment on the stage of life that distracts us or others from boredom, loneliness, inadequacy, or guilt.

Cancer and prison are horrible realities for real people who I love.

—

Woah, what a downer of a post!  You might think, from reading them, that I am a morose, miserable person but in fact I am quite content.  My life is stable, my work is interesting, I am never bored, and I even have fun from time to time.  Thing is, it’s my dramatic experiences, probably, that have made it possible for me to appreciate what is good, but writing about how la-la-happy I am wouldn’t make for very compelling blog reading, would it?

Happy New Life

Leave a reply

ANNE

I am tempted to rebut each of Vince’s “clarifications” in his last post. But one of my favorite self-help slogans is: “How important is it?”

I’m glad to leave 2014 behind and hopeful that 2015 will better, or at least not worse.

I spent Christmas Eve in an emergency room with my poor sister, who has stage four colon cancer. She was feeling pressure in her chest. Apparently chemo can cause blood clots. They administered nitro by pill and patch, did an EKG to rule out a heart attack, and killed her pain with Dilaudid, which is seven times stronger than morphine.

Her worst fear is that she will die alone in the hospital. I stayed until they admitted her and she fell asleep, about seven hours later.

—

Three years ago, I hit bottom. I had lived with depression for as long as I could remember, but then….  I had to have a tooth pulled—boy, will that make you feel old! Then during a Christmas Day blizzard my car was towed and I spent four hours waiting in line outside at the impound lot to pay $300 to get it back. I then drove to Fountain to visit Vince. The trailer he shared with Seth was full of guns, beer cans, and smoke. I figured what the heck, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, so after he assured me that none of the guns was loaded, we posed for photos that became my holiday cards to my friends in the UK, where they had a good laugh over us gun-crazy Americans.

Vince (7)Vince (11)

Due to the blizzard I spent the night in Seth’s 5-year-old daughter’s bedroom; she was at her mom’s. Here’s a tip for parents who smoke: Keeping your kid’s door closed doesn’t keep smoke out. I couldn’t open the window and after tossing and turning until 5am I slipped out and drove home. On the way I started itching. Great—now I had bedbugs!

—

I contemplated suicide. I leaned my forehead against the screen of my 20th floor window. I had turned 50 the year before. Thinking about being depressed every day for another 30-40 years wasn’t real appealing.

—

Here are the things I had tried to manage depression and anxiety:

Meditation

Medication

Prayer (including begging, pleading, and bargaining)

Acting normal

Abstaining from drinking

Cutting down on coffee

Self-help books

Alanon

Exercise

Getting outside every day

Appreciating beauty, be it fine art, nature, music, babies, or kittens

Gratitude lists

Avoiding negative people / avoiding unnaturally happy people

Running away to other countries

Denial

Journaling

Telling myself, “At least I’m not a refugee / amputee / blind / fill-in-the-blank.”

Psychotherapy

Retail therapy

Sleeping, drinking, and movie binges

Reaching out to friends, even when that was the last thing I wanted to do

—

I thought that jumping out of my window would be exhilarating, until I hit the ground. I had some leftover pain killers from the dentist, and my prescription for Restless Legs. I googled an overdose of the two and learned that they wouldn’t kill me, but that I would likely need a liver transplant. I decided to keep living.

—

That spring, I visited Vince again and this time, made a reservation at a B&B.  On the free-book-shelf there, I picked up a tattered copy of, “Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy”, by David Burns, MD. I read it and did what it told me to do, and I stopped being depressed. For good.

The book was about Cognitive Therapy. I had been instructed to use it at least twice in the past, but I’d been too stressed out to do it. Basically, you write down your negative thoughts and then argue with them rationally until you’ve de-fanged them. Writing it down is important; if you try to do it in your head you’ll end up down a rabbit hole.

So was a lifetime of depression cured overnight by one book? No. I think it was all the other things I had tried over the years—the good things, anyway—and then I added this on top of them and together they all added up to a breakthrough.

I still feel sad sometimes–there’s plenty to feel sad about–but I’m not depressed and I’m committed to living.

Sorry for the long post but, if you’re struggling, I want to encourage you to keep an open mind, keep plugging away, and keep trying new things.

PS: I didn’t have bedbugs after all.  I think I was just itchy from the smoke and dry air.  Living with addiction can turn you into a drama addict.