Tag Archives: prison

Toadally at Peace

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VINCE

I lifted weights for the first time in years this morning.  They’re still heavy like a remembered.  Free weights make a guy feel a bit awkward and off balance, but they really do a good job.  My goal was to lift 10,000 pounds, but I lost track after my first set.  I think I did a bit more though.

I saw myself in a full length mirror today.  My body has transformed considerably for just 2 ½ months.  I’ve lost most of my gut, and my chest sticks out by itself.  Most guys in prison stick their chests out to appear more threatening, much like a dog bares it’s teeth.  Now I don’t have to do that!  Either way I pose no real threat.

Today I’m feeling good about myself.

—

Today I left the grounds on RJWC—Restorative Justice Work Crew.  I spent six hours working very hard at a bible camp/retreat/campground sort of place.  My favorite part was being completely unsupervised for about an hour while I groomed a trail in the woods around a pond.

It was quiet.  I was surrounded by nature.  I spoke briefly with a couple toads.  They said nothing back, of course, as most toads and frogs speak little to no English.

The rest of the time I spent stacking wood, and raking up concrete and Styrofoam from an old shuffle board court.  I was with seven others from the India squad and we all sort of moved around to different projects.

It was a very fulfilling and productive day.  I will have the opportunity to be on RJWC every week or so for now, and it’s usually something /somewhere different every time.

—

I miss my dog, Willie.  I think about him a lot, and I wonder if he still thinks about me.

He was with me shortly before I was arrested, which is usually a sign that that person set you up to be busted, but I know he wouldn’t do that to me.  He’s not even a person.  He is, however, probably more loyal than most of the people I know in the meth world.

He is with my dear non-meth-using friends in Fountain, Minnesota.  He’s been living there without me for about a year and a half.  I just got a few pictures of him and my friends and it took everything I have not to break down crying in the middle of the other 5 guys in my barracks.

There’s so much of my life I wish I could do over.

Willie Be Okay?

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VINCE

Continued from Tweaking is the Best Way to Travel….

The aftermath.

I thought the car was filling up with smoke, but it was some kind of dust from the airbag.  Either way I got out quickly.  That was when I realized that I had my dog with me.  Willie jumped out after me and ran across all four lanes of traffic and the median, somehow avoiding every car, truck, and semi on the road.  He appeared to be uninjured as he disappeared across the road.  More on that later.

A car pulled up behind me, the lady jumped out and said, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re alive!”  It turns out she was a nurse at the Mayo Clinic.  I asked her to call 911, she talked with them and said I appeared to be in shock, but otherwise okay.

Looking at the car I first noticed the front, driver side wheel gone, and the engine resting, smoking, on the ground.  Everything “accordianed.”  And that was really all the damage to me and the car.

When the cop came, I sat in the front seat with him and answered some questions.  I was very nervous because my pockets were full of felonies.  But I’m a good liar and he didn’t suspect a thing.

The car I was in had no insurance so I ended up losing my license for a couple years, but I got it back and still have it now.  End of story.

That was the first of three similar accidents, two of which happened more recently, within the last three years.  All related to dozing off while driving.  I do consider myself lucky to have never hurt anybody.

A week after the accident, after calling around various animal shelters, a friend of mine located Willie at the St. Charles veterinary clinic.  He was just fine, and now up to date on shots!  He was so excited to see me I cried a little bit when I saw him.  End of story, again.

Tweaking is the Best Way to Travel

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VINCE

2005 hours

I got a letter yesterday from an old using friend.  I wrote him about four months ago telling him I had made the decision to be sober when I was released.  He was happy for me, but sad to lose a friend.

The letter I got was very sad.  The day before Easter, he fell asleep while driving (very common among meth users) and flipped his vehicle three times.  He doesn’t remember any of it.  He also didn’t remember being saved by the Jaws of Life, but that’s how he got out.

He was air lifted to the Mayo Clinic where he was in the Intensive Care Unit for 9 days.

His collar bone was spider-web fractured from far left to far right.  Femur shattered at the hip socket.  Three broken ribs, two punctured lungs.  Staples and stiches to hold his fractured skull on.

He said the worst part was waking up several times upside down, stull strapped in his seat, and passing out from the pain.  Ugh.

On the plus side, he says, “I have decided that the Good Lord saved me for a reson (sic).  I will go to my grave straight and sober.”  I hope he does.  It’s amazing what a meth addict can survive and keep using.

—

About 9 years ago, I had left Winona after selling some meth and was nearing the town of St. Charles.  It was early on a Monday morning, during what could be considered rush hour, heading toward the direction of Rochester.

When I woke up, the speedometer said 68 but the road was green.  It took a split second to realize I was in the ditch.  There was no time to react to what was ahead of me.

Out of the culvert I came at a quick pace, but a gradual incline.  I went airborne and cleared the first driveway by about ten feet.  I landed perfectly straight in the next ditch, and up ahead I saw trouble.  I was headed straight toward a 3 foot cement drain pipe.  Speed unknown, I smashed into it, destroyed it, and once again I became airborne, this time I landed on the driveway and stayed there.

During the impact, the airbag deployed which, in tandem with my seatbelt, surely saved me from death and/or serious injury.  If you ever have the opportunity to see an airbag deploy in your face, pass that up.  It’s so quick and loud, it’s like a glitch in an old black and white film.  It wasn’t there, then it was.

To be continued….

All Those Pizzas

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ANNE

The last post, in which Vince and I recalled Aspen Glen, reminded me of a vivid memory from that time.

Vince came rushing in the door from school; I think he was in first grade so he would have been six or seven.  Before I could turn around from whatever I was doing in the kitchen to say hi, he was out the door again.

About an hour later, he came flying back in and flung himself to the floor, crying pitifully like his heart was breaking.  “What on earth is the matter!?” I asked in alarm.  Still prostrated on the floor, he sobbed, “We have to sell pizzas for a school fundraiser, and I went to every house in Aspen Glen and didn’t even sell one!  How am I ever going to sell all these pizzas!?”

I hid my laughter.  Every unit in Aspen Glen had kids, and they all went to his school.  Why would anyone buy a pizza from someone else’s kid, especially since we were all on food stamps?

—

I think about this story when I’m feeling overwhelmed with work or chores (or the demands of this blog).  I say in my head, “How am I ever going to sell all these pizzas!” and chuckle to myself.  It reminds me that nothing is that important that I need to fling myself onto the floor and sob.

But I do wonder if this little episode is emblematic of Vince’s personality traits that may have made drugs appealing.  I know, this is called “taking someone’s inventory.”  I am only supposed to take my own inventory.  But still.

Another example: Vince bought a pair of roller blades with his bar mitzvah money.  He laced them up, hobbled outside, and 10 minutes later crawled back into the house, ripped off the skates, and hurled them across the room, screaming, “I’ll never learn how to roller blade!”  Of course he was a master of it within a week, skating backwards and doing pirouettes in the street, which made me shudder.

And he often complained of being bored.  Lots of kids say, “I’m bored!” but he was saying it up until he was arrested, at age 35.

Okay I’ll just say it: I think Vince is impatient and impulsive.  He needs stimulation and instant results or he complains of boredom or finds something to fire him up.  Just a few years ago, he took a dare to eat a tablespoon of dry cinnamon.  Dry cinnamon!  Maybe a tablespoon doesn’t sound like that much to you, but try it some time.  No, don’t.  He was sick for days.  Why would anyone do that, if they weren’t looking for a little excitement and they didn’t care if it was positive or negative?

I am never bored, so it’s hard for me to understand.  I am also a high energy person, up at the crack of dawn, on the move, tackling my to-do list—go, go, go.  That has its own downsides.  But that’s why I’ve never even been tempted to try a drug that would pep me up, like cocaine.  I don’t need to be any more hyper.

If it’s true that Vince’s personality traits feature impatience, a need for constant stimulation, and impulsivity, how will he manage when he’s out, when he has every opportunity to relieve his negative impulses?

A Room with View

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VINCE

Today we watched a movie in treatment called 7 pounds.  (The number is shown in that form in the title so I can’t be faulted for not spelling it out.).  It stars Will Smith.  And it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s really sad.  Funny in the right spots.  And at one point in the beginning he says to a man when asked why he was deserving of his help, “Because you’re a good person, even when you think nobody is looking.”

I liked that.  I want to be like that.

Throughout my life, I have always thought of myself as a good person.  Unfortunately, I haven’t actually acted like one very often.

From dealing drugs to stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down, to abandoning friends and family alike, I’ve done nearly everything possible to be a bad person.

I’ve looked into that a lot over the last two months, done a lot of soul searching, taken my moral inventory.  I can see the harm now in the things I’ve done.  Now I’m starting to build myself back up.  To gain the confidence I never had.  I can be that good person I’ve claimed to be.  I am going to be a good man.

—

Last night at 2100, like every other night, we stood at the POA at our bunks, waiting to be counted.  This time I noticed that it was still light out.  It reminded me of my childhood in Aspen Glen, the suburban subsidized housing complex we lived in until my mom met Kermit.  I remember staring out the window at the other kids still playing outside.  I don’t remember how old I was, or what time I had to go to sleep, but I do remember hours of boredom.

No boredom here.  Today we were allowed to raise our Reebok Step up to ten inches.  Ugh. What a difference.  For 40 minutes, they extra two inches made me sweat like a hog.  (That’s what she said?)  It was a good workout.

[ANNE: I feel myself getting defensive as I read Vince’s memory of Aspen Glen.  There must have been hundreds of kids who lived there.  We moved in when Vince was four.  Maybe he was staring out the window at the other kids because he was four and I actually enforced a bedtime, unlike a lot of the other parents.  There were good parents there, but there were terrible ones too.  And a lot of them, like me, were completely overwhelmed and exhausted with work, school, household chores, and parenting.  Sometimes I couldn’t stay awake past 9:00.  Unlike me, Vince is a night person, so I can imagine he was bored because he couldn’t go out and play and he couldn’t go to sleep.  But it’s not like I kept him locked in his room and slid trays of food under his door—just to be clear.]

Brown Hat, Hurrah!

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VINCE

We finally had our red-hat reviews. A week late—better late than never.

I did about as well as I thought I would. No formal discipline. No major issues in Physical Training, Chemical Dependency, or Military Bearing. I will get my brown hat tonight.

What does that mean? Well, all of us that passed (14 out of 17) will have a higher level of responsibility.

We will be lifting weights now twice a week. And we have to do 30 pushups when we are informally disciplined. It’s time to really step it up. I will.

The three members of our squad that didn’t make it will have a chance in a week to get their brown hats. They accumulated too much discipline over a short amount of time. My prediction: one of them will be held back a month. He hasn’t lost his attitude. But…it’s not my job to worry about him. I can only control myself.

—

We got a new squad in our barracks. There are 12 squads, four in each of the three barracks. Two squads leave and arrive each month. Anyhow, it’s amazing to see the new guys and see how far we’ve come in 2½ months. They are a mess. They have a constant look of fear about them and are totally disorganized. I can’t believe we were like that, but all new squads are.

—

Yesterday I worked KP for the first time. It was nice to be back in a kitchen setting, however I was quite disappointed with the overall operation.

First, for what their labor cost is, it should have been the cleanest place in the world. But I saw obvious signs of neglect. After breakfast, lunch, and dinner service, I spent my time cleaning nooks and crannies using only a large towel. There are no useful cleaning tools (like steel wool or green scrubbers). And we aren’t allowed to spray cleaning chemicals, only pour them on towels.

The worst parts were two equally horrible things:

  1. I have never seen so much useful food thrown away in my life. Hundreds of pounds of cooked, edible food, tossed in a garbage can. They only let the offenders eat a certain amount of food. It’s plenty, but I don’t see a reason to not let us get seconds on things like broccoli, bread, or salad. Or how about doing something cliché like somehow getting the extras to homeless shelters? I dunno. Things like that get to me. What a waste.
  1. The kitchen staff (not state employees) use the power they have to degrade and belittle the offenders. Unfortunately I can’t write more on that, but I will when I am a free man.

[ANNE: I kind of feel like one of the old geezers on Sesame Street, commenting from the peanut gallery on Vince’s posts. But since we only get 13 minutes to talk on the phone every two weeks, we don’t waste time clarifying the finer points of the blog. So. I don’t get why he was so looking forward to getting his brown hat. It sounds like it just makes life more demanding—I mean, 30 pushups? I can barely do three.

I think this goes to show that many of us thrive when more is asked of us. I see this at work with volunteers. The ones whose supervisors “don’t want to overwhelm them” by giving them too much work usually don’t stick around. The ones who we pile work on, rise to it and usually do even more than we asked of them.

I always thought Vince’s problem was that he couldn’t handle stress; that was why he lived in the boon docks, didn’t own a car, never aspired to become a chef rather than a cook. But maybe I had it wrong. He seems to be thriving under high expectations. It’ll be interesting to see how he manages when he’s outside, with just the minimal expectations that he not use chemicals and not break the law.]

Dying for a Smoke

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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!

Red Hat Days

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VINCE

We still haven’t had our red hat reviews yet. This is very disappointing because two squads left today, and we would have been given our brown hats today. Hat color means a lot around here. Without brown hats, we get not weight room, no visits, no phone calls. There’s still time, but it’s kind of annoying. If we were late for anything, they would treat us as if we were idiots. Oh well. Only four months to go.

—

Our red hat review was postponed until Monday. We’ve been nervous about it all week, now we have to make it through the weekend. I’m not actually worried about anything, but a few of my squad mates are. Because, of course, they aren’t doing very well in one or all aspects.

I finished my fourth run today. I’m still amazed at the end. I’ve come so far.

—

Here are a couple things that are difficult, even after two months. The first one is a position we hold briefly before we march that gives us our proper alignment. It’s called “dress right, dress.” Upon the execution command of the second “dress,” we snap our left arm out straight left, and look directly right. Then we all move to touch the fingertips of the guy on the right. If we don’t do this correctly, and somebody wants to be mean, they will make us stand in that position for five minutes, without touching anybody else. You should try it at home. Just put your arm shoulder height, straight left, and see how long you can hold it.

—

Day 60. 1/3 of the way. 120 days to go. 360 meals, 52 runs. However I want to put it, I’m getting there.

Yesterday, 18 of us went out on a mission to plant trees on a Department of Natural Resources tree farm. We walked two miles on dirt and sand in our full khaki uniforms, coveralls, hat and gloves while carrying shovels. It’s a lot of work just to get to a job site.

Along the way, a few of us found a pretty good number of agates, which we tossed back to Mother Nature, as we are not allowed to have any contraband.

The planting trees part was actually quite peaceful. Quiet is what I enjoy most in any prison/jail setting, probably because it is so rare.

So the 18 of us planted 250 1-foot tall pine trees in an area similar in shape to, but twice as large as, a football field. It was warm out, but I hardly noticed anything but nature. It was a good day.

Fit, Fat, Ffffttt

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VINCE

This morning at 0645 hours I finally achieved my goal of completing a run. I ran 4½ miles without stopping. It hurt a lot, especially with some cramping near the bottom of my ribcage, and general soreness in my knees and thighs, but I was too happy to care. I did it.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it every time, but I do know now that it’s possible. On a side note, I started taking a probiotic supplement today. I think it’s supposed to help me with my poops. But for now it just makes me fart a lot. More on that later.

—

Two days later, 0633 hours. My down day, my second least favorite day. Yesterday was tough. For the first time since my arrival we did not go out on work crew assignments. We did, however, practice marching. The worst was from 1415 to 1610 [2:15-4:10pm] when we did half step march (120 steps per minute) up and down the side of the track. Half step is difficult because it’s faster and we have to pick our boots up about 6 inches from the ground every time to keep us all in line. It looks nice, but doing it for two hours hurt.

That wasn’t the worst of it. We had to wear our full khaki uniform and work gloves and a hat. Ugh. So hot. My gloves were soaked by the end. We did a total of five hours of marching yesterday. I’m still alive.

—

I completed the run again. 4½ miles. I even felt great afterwards. This is especially good because our brown hat review is in a few days. It’s the second of four big reviews. We will have a meeting with our case manager, counselor, squad officer and physical trainer. We will go over everything positive and negative from the past month. If all goes well, we get upgraded from red hats to brown hats. That means our seniority goes up, and we have more responsibility. More on that later.

We had our monthly weigh-in this morning. I went from 194 pounds and 13.4% body fat to 189 pounds and 11.2% body fat. That’s pretty good for a month. It means I’m turning fat into muscle, I think.

[ANNE: Eleven percent body fat!? That’s so unfair! I signed on with a personal trainer for the first time in my life about a month ago, and she measured me at 34% body fat. Ugh. I’ve always loved weight training, and she has added all sorts of cardio, which I hate because I hate sweating. But I am doing it. And after three weeks Ta Da! Still 34% body fat, no weight loss, not an inch lost. Again, ugh. She told me not to be discouraged, to keep it up. I mentioned that Vince is at 11% and her jaw dropped: “That’s really, really good for a 36-year-old man,” she said. Skeptical analyzer that I am, I wonder if the devices at the Y and in prison are different? Maybe I could find some way to have them test my body fat when I finally get to visit Vince? No, that’s crazy thinking. Now I understand why there’s such an obsession with naming thing “boot camp,” if it gets those kinds of results.]

 

Nodrinkalotine

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ANNE

There seems to be all sorts of momentum to reform drug sentencing, to reduce mass incarceration, and to make it easier for ex-offenders to make it on the outside.

There was a full-page article in my favorite magazine, The Week, entitled “Opening the prison door: A new, bi-partisan movement is challenging the notion that jailing millions of Americans makes the U.S. safer.”  You have to be logged in to see it, otherwise I’d share it.  It cites the stats: taxpayers spend $80 billion a year to keep 2.4 million prisoners locked up.  It examines what’s going on in various states, including the reddest of red states, Texas. I never thought I would admiringly quote Texas Governor Rick Perry, but he said, “The idea that we lock people up, throw them away forever, never give them a second chance at redemption, isn’t what America is about.”

Current affairs geek that I am, I enjoy watching 60 Minutes on Sunday evenings.  I hate it when it is delayed for some stupid sporting event, like football.  ANYway, a few weeks ago they did a story on TED Talks, and one of the TED talkers they featured was Bryan Stevenson, a public-interest lawyer and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is full of related articles.  One is about a couple of drug reform bills that failed to pass.  Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman is quoted: “Those people who possess large amounts [of drugs] for sale suffer from the disease of greed, and the answer to their problems isn’t treatment, but the big house.” The big house? Is he living in a Jimmy Cagney movie or what? Regardless, most people in prison on drugs charges, including Vince, were busted with small amounts of drugs.  Sigh.

There an article about how the DOC has succeeded in banning journalists from taking photos or video inside prisons.  To me, this sounds very much like the DOC has something to hide, and also like a slippery slope toward becoming more like North Korea or Iran.  I mean, freedom of the press is a pretty fundamental part of democracy, and nowadays visuals are so much more vital to reporting than ever.

There’s an editorial, “Restore voting rights to former felons.”  This is a hot button issue for me.  Because Vince was convicted of his first felony shortly after he turned 18, he wasn’t allowed to vote until he’d cleared his record–when he was 30.  It so happened that this was the year Barak Obama was elected, and Vince was jubilant.  “My team won!” he exclaimed.  I was so happy for him.  Now he’ll start from square one.

At work, I see all sorts of funding opportunities for studies of addiction. These are just two that I saw in the same day: “Second Chance Act Strengthening Families and Children of Incarcerated Parents” from the Department of Justice, and “Human Studies to Evaluate Promising Medications to Treat Alcohol Use Disorder” from the National Institutes of Health.

So there really does seem to be a movement to end mass incarceration, and there is promising research being conducted to get at the root causes of addiction. Someday maybe, when you take your 10-year-old kid in for his annual exam, the doctor will run some routine genetic tests. “Mr. and Ms. Jones, I’m afraid your son has inherited your family’s gene for addiction. The good news is, we can tweak is DNA, or put him on a course of Nodrinkalotine. Let’s discuss the pros and cons of each….”