VINCE

Sunday brunch: “Egg bake.” Made with frozen hash browns (not made by a 25 cents per hour employee, shredding whole potatoes), grey ham, and overcooked eggs. Inedible. A packaged blueberry muffin, even though the facility has all equipment necessary for a fully functioning bakery.

Hell, they could even teach people how to bake. Then they could use that knowledge on the outside to be a productive member of society.

Canned “tropical” fruit. A bowl of water (aka oatmeal), a small container of apple juice that was still frozen, and milk. On the container of milk there is a slogan. We use it a lot around here. “You can taste the difference.” It’s true.

—

Please do not buy a pillow from Pillow King (not its real name) based on the commercial you may have seen on TV. Just so you know, they are made here in our prison, by people making roughly $1 an hour. I suppose some could say that’s better than outsourcing…but is it? They pay for slave labor. We get no stock options. The prison gets the money. Money they don’t have to use to pay our cost of confinement. Nope, you are all still paying that. Ugh. I’m sure my information is wrong. I’m done on the subject.

—

Every day getting closer to boot camp scares me. Every day I feel as if I do not want to go. True, it will save me 18 months of prison time. But I don’t think I can make it through all of the physical activity. I’ve not come close to running over a mile. I’ve only run a mile two times in a month and a half. I haven’t done one push up since I arrived. And I have absolutely no desire to do the tape. None.

I also think I’m afraid of what will happen when I’m released. I don’t have a home, a car, any money, no clothes. Nothing. It’s all provided for me here. I hate my brain. I sometimes doubt its decision making.

[ANNE: I checked into Pillow King, and they have a deal going where you pay only $115 for two.  A hundred and fifteen dollars for two pillows?  Are they stuffed with down from the golden goose or what?]

VINCE

Dear Blog:

I decided to take a “mental health” day away from work. Although I have weekends off, everybody else was off too, so I can’t accomplish much. Today is my chance to catch up on laundry, sleep, reading, and yes, writing.

I do not recall where I left off as I have sent everything I have written since my arrival in Moose Lake to my Mother for print.

Not much has changed. I haven’t been running because it’s been too cold for the outside track to be open, and there are only two working treadmills for over 1,000 prisoners. I have been doing the tape more often. And as impossible as I thought it was going to be, I am actually getting better at it.

I’m also active in wolleyball and pickle ball. A friend and I were in the pickle ball tournament this past weekend. We lost all four games and were eliminated on the first day. But we tried.

I also try to lift weights when I can. I don’t even bother most days, as the workout room is full, and I am not the type of person that fits in with that crowd. I will just leave it at that.

I submitted a list of ten puns into a contest for the prison newspaper to see if one of them could win me a little money. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

—

Hot dogs. To quote myself, “All of our meals are hot dogs. It’s just a matter of what shape they’re in today.” Prison food is far worse than any institutional food. I see so much waste. I see huge wastes of your money, our time, and our “food.” Simple things like giving us single-serve packets like ketchup and dressings vs. making a large batch of dressing then paying somebody 25 cents per hour to put individual portions on a tray. Over 1,000 trays, three times a day. That saves a lot of money over time. And that’s just one idea.

ANNE

As I wrote in an earlier post, Moose Lake is the former State Hospital for the Insane, built in 1936. “Early treatments used there included insulin and electroshock, hydrotherapy, and physiotherapy. In the 1950s lobotomies were used on some patients.” As you can probably tell from the stilted writing here, this is taken off a historical document; I always assume things were at least twice as worse as described in historical documents.

“When the Sandstone State Hospital closed in 1959, its program for inebriates [Inebriates! I love it.] was transferred to Moose Lake. By 1961, treatment of alcoholism was a specialization of Moose Lake. In 1966 a program for adolescents was begun, in which some of the participants attended public school and gained high school credits. Also in 1966 all of the hospital’s medical/surgical wards were closed.

“The hospital closed as a psychiatric facility in 1995. It has since been owned and operated by the Minnesota Department of Corrections. The facility maintains a small treatment unit for drug/alcohol problems, as well as a sex offender treatment program.”

The name was nice-ified to Moose Lake Regional Treatment Center at that time.

A “total of 1,060 adult offenders are under the Case Responsibility of Minnesota Correctional Facility – Moose Lake with a total of 1,044 adult offenders currently on-site at this facility.”

I won’t throw all the numbers at you; you can look at them yourself if you have nothing better to do. Moose Lake has a slightly older population than St. Cloud, maybe because it’s where they house a lot of sex offenders who are locked up for life.

At St. Cloud, 126 inmates were in for Criminal Sexual Conduct (let’s just call it what it is: rape), average sentence: 106 months. It’s more than double that number at Moose Lake, 271 rapists with an average sentence of 137 months. In case your math isn’t any good, that’s over 11 years.

425 men are in Moose Lake for drug offenses, and the average sentence is 64 months. That’s Vince.

The next category is domestic assault (120 inmates, serving an average of 24 months). Then there’s just regular assault, with 73 inmates serving an average sentence of 54 months.

Other crimes with interesting nomenclature include Crimes against Government, Escape/Fugitive, Counterfeiting/Fraud, and Harassment/Stalking/Bias.

While there was only one murderer at St. Cloud, there are 70 at Moose Lake. So yeah, it’s a bit more of a serious place.

St. Cloud is somewhat more white and Latino, and with fewer Natives and African Americans. Whatever that means, if anything.

I scanned the religion column and saw that 58% were Christian, 3% Muslim, and a third had no preference.  There are 10 pagans, 7 who called themselves “Eastern,” 4 Atheists, and again, as in St. Cloud, one Jew. That must be scary, given what Vince has told me about the Skinheads and the Nation of Islam members talking about how they’d like to kill them some Jews.

Nothing about dwarfs.

VINCE

I saw the doctor today. They told me they have to switch my medication because insurance won’t cover it. I’ll be going on something called Cinnamon, or Sinamet, or some such shit. I was really happy with my Mirapex: no side effects and it did the job. But it would appear as if it is not my choice.

Orientation was boring, but not as boring as sitting in my cell doing nothing. We got to watch the PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) video again, which I still find hilarious. I’m sure if ever there was one thing that would completely eliminate prison rape, it would be a half hour video tape from the late 80s, in which men with mustaches talk about blowing their cellies for candy bars. Have some dignity, guys. Hold out for a bag of coffee or something.

In the 10 days that I’ve been in general population, I have learned everything that they spoke on in the orientation. And anything that wasn’t covered could be found in the handbook we received the night before. So for nine days, we had questions that needed answers. We found answers, in one way or another, to questions that all could have been avoided by giving us the God-damned…. Sorry, mounting frustrations.

It would appear that this prison, like St. Cloud, is run by 200 people in 300 different departments. And none of them seem to want to deal with prisoners.

Today I found out I got the one open industry job in the garments factory. Or, garments building, I don’t know. I’ll be making the clothing for inmates in all Minnesota prisons. I’m excited not only because I got the best and highest-paying job out there, but because I will no longer be on room restriction as of Monday. Until now, I’ve been stuck in my room after noon every day. I couldn’t go to the gym except for on weekends. Now I can really begin my training.

I haven’t been able to get on the treadmill since Sunday. So I’m sure when I get back on it Saturday it’ll be just like the first time.

—

Am I just lazy? Mybae. Smotemies I relay dn’t want to erxecise. I have gnoe to the gym ticwe in the past two dyas, walkeld one mlie, then lfet. I couldn’t even stay for an hour. Ugh.

—

Today, I said I would do it.

Today, I said I would not give up.

Today, I succeeded.

I ran a whole mile. In 10 min, 36 secs. Not bad.

VINCE

I am currently in a six-man pod, sort of what I think a dorm room might be like.  Right now, I am the only person in it.  I feel like any moment, a tumble weed will roll on by, just passing through, like all my roommates thus far.

This is the only six-man pod in the unit.  It is where everybody goes their first day.  People move or SRD (Supervised Release Date) all the time, so there is quite a turnover in this room.  No, not the pastry.  I happen to be next in line to move, and there are five people on the way here from Brainerd, but for now, I’m all alone.  I will be moved to a two-man room as soon as one becomes available, probably tomorrow.

—

Ouch!  The ladders on the bunks are on what was the foot side of the bed at St. Cloud.  I hit my head on the sharp steel foot step.

Song list, cont: Rastaman Chant, Busta Rhymes; End of the Line, Traveling Willburys; Love, Reign Over Me, the Who; Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You, Sugarloaf; Flash, Queen; and Flower, by Moby.  That’s the song from the opening credits of Gone in 60 Seconds.  I don’t know any other Moby songs, just to let the ladies know.

—

For about three years, my routine in Lanesboro rarely changed.  I would occasionally leave town and go as far as Fountain, about eight miles, to hang out with my good friend Seth.  We had known each other since I moved to Fountain three years earlier.  We were non-gay soulmates.

I took my excessive drinking farther than anybody in my friend group.  Start early, go late, every penny of my disposable income went to drinking, weed, cigarettes, and gambling.  I had a perfectly good driver’s license but thankfully, no car.  So that was it for that three years, then I got fired from the restaurant, lost my apartment, and pretty much everything like my mom wrote, and eventually had to move in with Seth in Fountain, where I was able to secure jobs at the two restaurants in the town.

I moved out of Seth’s after about a year and got my own place again, right across the street from work. After a while I was full time at the Bent Wrench, where I was allowed to have a tab.  Oops.

—

[ANNE: My organization played a lead role in the release of what’s referred to as “the torture report” on the CIA’s interrogation activities post 9/11, in which they water boarded people, left them soaking wet in cold cells, suspended by shackles, or given “rectal feedings”, which are really just a medieval torture, according to a medical doctor on our board of directors who has literally written the book on physicians’ complicity in torture.

Why do I mention this? Because 50% of the American public still thinks torture was necessary and acceptable. So why would they give a shit about someone like Vince? If they think it’s okay to water board some guy in Gitmo, why would they care one iota about Vince—a self-confessed druggie–rotting in solitary, or being denied family visits, or other minor but repeated indignities?

It seems to me that Conservatives love their families and friends and forgive them anything, but are harshly judgemental of strangers, while Liberals love strangers but can be indifferent to their family and friends.

Rodney King had it right when he asked, during the LA riots following the acquittal of the LAPD officers who had beaten him, “Can’t we all just get along?”]