The Jail Conditions Letter: Frog Gravy 65

I found this in my notes this morning. This is a letter that I wrote to Governor Beshear in March, 2008, regarding McCracken County Jail conditions. I sent copies to various agencies in Frankfort and Washington DC.

Note what I say about the pregnancy-disaster-in-jail baby’s early brain scan. I initially reported that the baby suffered no detectable oxygen deprivation following his traumatic birth. The subsequent scan, however, revealed some sort of potential deficit (ischemia or otherwise) according to the mother’s report.

At some point after this letter, I did receive an antidepressant in the jail.

I was removed from McCracken County Jail for my letters.

This may fix the prevailing fantasy that warehoused nonviolent inmates spend 23 hours a day in the cement cell. It is 24/7 for months on end.

March 22,2008

To: Governor Steve Beshear
700 Capitol Avenue
Frankfort, KY 40601

Dear Governor Beshear:

On 3-19-2008, I was sentenced to eight years in prison for DUI, possession of 0.144 grams of crack cocaine and tampering with evidence. I had no drugs or alcohol in my blood, nothing illegal on me or in my car, and exhibited no bad driving. Yet, I was convicted of all three. Inmates have subsequently told me never to take anything to trial in McCracken County, because everyone is convicted, but I did not know this, because I am not from here.

-snip-

1. Since January 23, 2008, we have been outside our cell for recreation exactly one time. We have been to the filthy gym for recreation, exactly twice. We wait up most of the nights, hoping to get outside the cell for rec, at night. The only two times we went to the indoor gym were between 1:30 and 2:30 AM. In the night, guards go up and down the hall, banging on the hallway windows and doors yelling, “Rec, rec!”
Each night, they do this. We say we want real recreation, not recreation in a tiny chapel. The guards mark this in a book as a “refusal.” They submit the book to Frankfort, so it looks like the inmates all refuse rec every day. We get maybe one hour of rec per month if we are lucky.

2. The jails such as this one are overcrowded defacto prisons. I may be here until I meet the parole board in 19 months, because I am a nonviolent State inmate.

3. The only reading material allowed is certain types of religious materials. My family sent letters and literature that were returned because they were Catholic in nature. Only after my sister called the jail chaplain and said, “Are you all anti-Catholic? Because if you are, I am calling the Governor,” did I receive a Catholic bible that the guards make fun of.

4. No educational materials are allowed.

5. No AA or NA meetings are allowed.

6. There is no dental care.

7. I was not allowed to continue my anti-depressant medication, even though the conditions are extremely depressing.

8. A social worker tells the NPs what psych meds to prescribe. She is not licensed to prescribe anything, yet they defer to her on dosage and type.

9. The lights are on from 5 AM to 11 PM.

10. First, they said that family could send in paperbacks, news magazines, and newspapers. Then, they refused to give these items to us.

11. First, they said that family could send in self-addressed, stamped envelopes. Then, they refused to give these items to us. Then, they threatened to reseal the empty envelopes, and mail them back to family, instead of placing them in property.

12. The woman next door, six months pregnant, started bleeding. The guards ignored her. All three back cells pounded and shouted. They told us to shut-up and get to bed. They did nothing for more than one hour, then walked the pregnant woman, cuffed, out of the jail. Her placenta was 75% abrupt, she nearly lost her uterus. The baby was breached; his foot was through her cervix, she required an emergency C-section, and the baby was flown out of state. His brain scan does show potential future deficits.

13. The same woman has an incision that is infected now. The jail won’t giver her gauze. They make her use maxi-pads. But, she is on pad watch now. She is allowed three pads per day, including the pus pad.

14. They would not allow us to attend church service on Thursday night, saying that it was 12-step. When we said we were here on drug offenses, they would not let us go to the service.

15. The cells are always cold.

16. In addition to maxi-pad rationing, they now ration toilet paper. Several times, we have had to use our washcloths, or the shower, after toileting, because we have no toilet paper.

17. We get watered down disinfectant to clean the cell.

18. In the morning we get exactly two individual paper towel squares, to clean the entire cell.

19. They have put new restrictions on clergy visits.

20. No textbooks, educational classes, crosswords, number puzzles, logic puzzles, arts or crafts are allowed.

21. In the hole, medical watch, suicide watch, there is no way to wash hands, shower, or brush teeth.

22. The only time we received materials to clean the filthy cell walls and vents was because “the state” is “coming to inspect.”

-snip-

Author’s note: When I mention requests for real recreation, I am referring to requests for recreation in an outdoor cage. When the guards banged on the doors at night to offer rec, their offer was for rec in a tiny chapel that was the size of a medium-sized cell.

There was also an indoor gym in the jail, but this was rarely offered.

Between January and March, we went to the outdoor cage one time, the indoor gym two times, and the tiny chapel several times, although we frequently declined to visit the chapel for rec, because it was little larger than another cell, and it was indoors.

The rest of the letter concerns Judge Craig Clymer’s behavior and actions during sentencing, trial, and on various documents. I will cover this in separate blogs.

Ricky Saves The Day: Frog Gravy 62

Here’s some Sad Sad Larry to lower your day:

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account in Kentucky.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Ricky Parnell is a real name.

Ricky’s World, Fulton County Detention Center, Hickman KY, Summer, 2008.

This cell has driven me over the edge. It is mat-to-mat overcrowded on the floor. The television is blasting BET at a maximum volume of 60. Four of the most egregious human beings on the planet are in a corner, loudly shoving foul-mouthed fuck notes through a hole in the cement wall to the men in the cell next door. One of them stomped on my cricket and killed it in front of me. Another took one of my bird drawings and shoved it through the hole in the wall. A team of sledgehammers has taken up residence inside my skull, and even the towel on my head will not stop the pounding at the back of my eyeballs.

I cannot write. I cannot draw. I cannot hear myself think.

A newcomer is standing next to the steel door near the telephone, and she has such horrendous body odor from the sick of the streets that it distracts even me, and I do not have a good sense of smell. Inmates have gathered outside of her sphere of influence, in small groups behind her back, and they are talking about her. Tracey says, “She stanks. Her pits is kickin.’”

I say, “Well maybe we should get a guard involved on this one. That way it will not seem that we are ganging upon her and hating her. She just got here, and she obviously cannot think this through, you know, her life isn’t that cool right now.”

Several others agree.

Another group of loud haters are in another section of the cell, hating on anything that comes to mind. “They ain’t no black Catholics,” one of them says to me to be hateful, referring to my weekly counseling sessions with the wonderful Priest, Father Al.

Father Al also brings with him an empathetic and loving Priest intern, who happens to be black, but I do not bother to tell the woman this because she has a gigantic need to be hateful and so I let her.
Father Al changed my life. I will never forget him and his intern. A shout-out to the Catholics: Man, do they ever do some good work with inmates. This goes for the Priests and Deacons at KCIW PeWee Valley as well. There are some really, really good people in the world after all.

I am starting to feel like Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho scene where he takes an axe to Paul Allen and says, “Try making reservations at Dorsia now, you stupid, fucking bastaaaarrrd!!” I want to beat someone up with my bare hands because I do not have an axe.

I used to get this way when I was drinking. Violent. A completely different person. I received all sorts of feedback about that: You puked in my car; You peed in the kitchen; You nearly killed me; You are scaring me; You hit on my husband; You broke the dishes; I hate you when you are like this; I hate it when you drink.

Right now I am still ‘The Older Lady That Writes.’ Five minutes from now, I am going to be skipping backward across the cell in a raincoat with an axe, talking about Huey Lewis and the News.

I compose a speech in my mind, that I plan to deliver biblically, like Moses, from the top of the steel table. If only we had Moses, Jesus and Paul up in here. All three of them had tempers. Can you imagine being in the cell with those three? None of them would put up with this crap.

Everbody listen up! We are gonna have ten minutes of quiet in the cell. We’re gonna turn the cocksucking television off. The first person in this room that even clears her throat for the next ten minutes, I will kill with my bare hands.

Someone moves her lips and it’s on: Surprise!! Bam bam bambam bam bam…

I am in court facing the new violence charges. The judge says, “Ms. Leatherman, It says here that you nearly beat another inmate to death. How do you plead?”

“Guilty, your Honor. I, uh, slammed her up against the wall, knocked her teeth halfway down her throat and kicked her ass until the guards pulled me off and took me to the hole.”

“Well, then, time served, Ms.Leatherman! She deserved it. (gavel bangs) Good luck to you.”

I am about to climb onto the steel table top and make this whole thing a reality, when the steel door opens and in walks the jailer, Ricky Parnell, with a couple of other High Falutin jail officials in tow.
I am distracted because the jailer never visits the inmates other than the men he works with outside; he has never been to this cell during my stay here. Plus, it is as if a tree walked in the door; the man is enormous. Big, and tall. He situates himself on top of the steel table.

He says, “The men next door have just lost their commissary, their phone and their TV for six months and y’all are fixin’ to have the same thing happen.” His nose grows about a foot (hat tip Scarecrow) because this man is making a fortune on the phones and the commissary, just sayin’.

What finally happens is sheer miracle: the two guards retrieve the four most egregious offenders on the planet and take them to the hole, all to the standing ovation, applause and cheers of other cell inmates.

This man just gained a bunch of points in my brownie point book. Ricky gets it. He puts his inmates to work. He has a fantastic library. He has AA meetings and educational classes, church services and Father Al. There is no screaming mentally ill homeless man being pepper sprayed in his isolation cell. While I was there, he made changes to the diet to make the food better, and he ate the food himself every day. We go outside each day for an hour of recreation. Sure, the jail is an overcrowded dungeon. But it is a dungeon you can actually work with. So, here is a Frog Gravy shout-out to Ricky and his World.

I am still seething with anger at the four obnoxious inmates, and so I join others in continuing to be mean. On our way to and from work each evening we pass by the hole and shout, clap and sing all sorts of obnoxious things, such as “See ya, assholes, see ya (clap clap), and with me singing Jeff Beck, “Goin’ down….down, down, down, down, down….a-kung-kung clap-clap…”

I never knew I had this mean streak in me. But given the right set of circumstances, I can now understand how some people just snap and attack another inmate. It happens more in the men’s prisons, but it also happens among women. I saw someone at KCIW PeWee Valley leave a scene in handcuffs to the standing ovation of the entire prison, for beating someone who needed to be set straight. She delivered a spectacular beating to the deserving inmate, and then put her hands behind her back and waited for the guards. Her victim went to the medical ward. No one was sorry.

Cross-posted at froggravy.wordpress.com.

Size Matters: Frog Gravy 61

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account in Kentucky, during 2008 and 2009, in jails and in prison, that is reconstructed from my notes.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language and descriptions.

Worry not; I got the proper permission before I wrote this over-the-top, hella fuckin’ balls-to-the-wall post.

We figured what the heck, everyone knows everything else about our private life anyway…

The Gift That Keeps On Giving, McCracken County Jail, Paducah, KY, shortly before my transfer to Ricky’s World, Winter, 2008

As you can see from this reply letter that I received from the State of Kentucky, McCracken County Jail is classified as a ‘Class D’ facility, which means that Class D nonviolent, final-sentenced State inmates qualify to serve their entire sentences in such a facility.

The jail receives money for housing Class D nonviolent offenders. There are supposed to be programs, such as work, education and treatment, but in reality, when I was there, I had no work. I even got kicked out of drug class for writing letters to everyone I could think of in Frankfort, Washington DC, and other places complaining about jail conditions and the warehousing of Class D female offenders. Ironically, Frog Gravy would not exist, had I had a job. But since I didn’t, and the men did, I had a glorious opportunity to get a good look at the occasional penis that wandered by the window to the hallway, belonging to a Class D working male who happened to be pushing a broom or a mop.

One such male, let’s call him Greg, had sort of a crush on me, and so one day he wanted to show me his wares. He paused his mopping for a moment at the hallway window, garnered my attention, glanced at the cameras, and then yanked down his orange jailhouse khaki pants a little ways to reveal a very nice, circumcised erection.

By the way, those hallway cameras do not show the sides of the hallway. Or the floor next to the cell doors. In fact, I wonder what they actually do show and who watches them, because we got to see quite a few penises off camera. The guy in the broom closet down the hall, for example, who had a crush on Christie, and who was also a talented author, penned the following description for Christie and swept the note with the description under our door, off camera, in case she missed the view. It said:

Make a fist with your left hand. Okay, now make a fist with your right hand. Place your right fist on top of your left fist. Now, extend your right thumb straight up into the air. That’s how long it is. And the fists? That’s how thick it is…

“Nice,” I said, when she showed me the note. “Corn fed and nuclear-plant bred.”

So anyway, Greg is at the window showing off his erection and I say, “Hey Christie, check this out.”

“Nah, he’s got the crush on you, not me,” she says.

“Okay, but check it out. This guy isn’t even in the ballpark with my husband. Limp, even. Not even close. Thickness. That too. Look him up on Google Earth when you get home.”

So now, we are both looking and smiling but Greg does not know why we are smiling; he is just glad that we are.

On the subject of cameras, next time you visit WalMart, count the cameras. WalMart has more cameras than a prison. I swear to God. Probably not as many erect penises, but I wouldn’t bet the ranch. If I had a ranch.

So I got kicked out of drug class in jail. Can you even imagine such a thing? But it’s true. For writing letters. I was told that no one cares, and no one reads the letters, and I was kicked out of jail drug class. But it turns out they did read the letters, because one day, a woman visited from Frankfort to speak to us in our cell about jail conditions. I will not print her words, but she was serious. Maybe it was the pregnancy disaster letter. I am not sure.

Because of my letters, my days in McCracken were numbered. One day, a woman from the judge’s office arrived with some paperwork. She handed me the papers as if she were handing something to a coiled rattlesnake. She smelled like cigarettes. She said, “I am giving these papers to you because you do not have a lawyer anymore and you are going to be going to Fulton County.”

Apparently, the judge had taken away my legal representation. It was just as well because my lawyer, Chris McNeill, was about as useless as a screen door on a submarine, but still.

The woman says, “I spoke to your husband.”

“Well good!” I say. “He’s nicer than me. When is the brief due?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do,” I say.

You may be wondering what sort of letters would cause people to do such things with an inmate?

Well, here is an example. This one is to Professor Robert G Lawson at the University of Kentucky College of Law. Governor Beshear and others received the same or similar letters. Blockquoted due to dead camera batteries; I will take a photo when I can.

April 26, 2008

Robert G Lawson, Professor
U of KY College of Law
Rm 251
620 S. Limestone
Lexington, KY 42003

Dear Professor Lawson:

I have written before, regarding inhumane conditions in jails and regarding corruption in courts.

While we had a very nice chat with Tracey Montardier (Frankfort), nothing has changed. Only 5 women are working in this Class D designated facility. Only FIVE. Only in laundry. No women work outdoor jobs. “Understaffing” is the excuse. Class D women are nothing more than warehoused revenue units. We rarely leave our grave-like cement cell.

Had I killed someone, or committed a violent crime, I would have all the privileges of penitentiary state inmates. But, because I am nonviolent and because I am female, I am punished harder than violent inmates with greater likelihood of reoffending.

All I want is to work and/or attend classes, and maybe go to the outside cage for recreation once in a while.

McCracken County Jail should not be receiving Class D funds from the state for any more than 5 or 6 women. They should not receive revenue for any more. This is a men’s Class D facility. Anything else is fraudulent theft of state funds.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Sincerely, Rachel A. Leatherman

One good thing did happen.

Pregnant inmates in Kentucky are no longer housed in county jails. They are housed in ‘G Dorm’ at KCIW PeWee Valley women’sprison, and this is a very good change, for women and for unborn babies.

Why you Cannot Divide By Zero [Updated with math]: Frog Gravy 56

Bone with a bow, hand-drawn copy of caricature by Crane-Station on flickr. Prison art, colored pencil and ink.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley, Winter, 2008-2009.

Wherever you go, there you are, and you just hope that God sets you down someplace and leaves you with a really good story. Kentucky courts bend over backward to help with this.

I love prison. It is helping me to discover who I am and who I am not. I never realized this before, but I really, really enjoy tutoring, particularly in the subject of basic math.

Growing up I had the best of all teaching worlds. My mother is an elderly retired high school Honors English teacher who taught me to write. If there is a better writer in the world than my mother, I would like to see it. Without her, I could not write my way out of a sack. To this day she helps me. My father is an elderly retired chemist and pathologist who ultimately founded a medical laboratory in the Pacific Northwest. He took his training at Emory, and I have yet to meet a more intelligent, methodical and ethical physician of his word. When I was young I often visited him in the basements of hospitals. Ironically, my mother went on later in life to found a center for addicted and incarcerated mothers to obtain treatment and skills needed for transition to a better life, on the outside. The center is in Portland and it is named after her: The Letty Owings Center. Both of my parents are gifted teachers.

I never thought of myself as gifted at anything. But in jail, and particularly in prison, I discover my penchant for teaching.

Tory is a mother of two who never completed the tenth grade. She loves school and wants to sit for her GED. She is enrolled in Algebra and has asked me to help her.

We sit at a table in the crowded, noisy day room of Ridgeview Dormitory, and begin our lessons.

In my mind, however, I am not in prison. I am in a town called Lake Oswego, Oregon, on the deck of my childhood home with my father. He is patiently teaching me math. I learn math in a place that God created called the Willamette Valley, in the shadow of pre-1980 Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Hood, and with the Willamette River so close you can hear the water ski boats.

My father demonstrates, in a humorous way, that dividing by zero is not allowed. He starts with allowable math, and then slips in the zero, underneath the dividing line and I fall for it. My father is laughing and I laugh too, because I have been tricked. I will never forget that you cannot divide by zero. I will draw a pastel picture of Mount St. Helens, not knowing its fate.

In prison I try to be my father, but I cannot remember the sequence of equations and letters and lines that he set before me, all those years ago and so, I am a poor imposter.

I say to Tory, “Rest assured. This question will be on a test. Look at the answer choices. If there is ever, anywhere, a zero underneath a dividing line, eliminate the answer choice. Here. Try it on the calculator. Pick any number and divide it by zero.”

Tory punches in some numbers, and the word “error” appears.

“Why is this?” asks Tory.

“It’s just one of those things that is not allowed. You cannot divide something by nothing. You can come close. If you divide something by something small, very close to zero, the number will be very large. But divide by zero and there is no number. There’s not even nothing, because it is just not allowed.”

My explanation is insufficient on its face and I know it. I have insulted my father and I am ashamed.

The lesson continues and I say, “Here is another neat trick. Pick a number. Any number in the world. By the end of this lesson you will be able to multiply and divide any number in the world by ten. You will be able to eliminate some of the answer choices this way. And eliminating multiple choice answers is half the game on a test. The process of elimination will increase the chances that your guess will be right. Are you penalized for guessing on that test? Do you know?”

Tory tells me she will find out.

We continue. I explain how to call an unknown number by the letter ‘x.’ “The object of the game,” I say, “is to get the x onto one side of the equation and get everything else onto the other.”

Turns out Tory is a natural at Algebra. She quickly understands the beginning steps to every problem, no matter how convoluted it looks on paper.

At the end of the lesson, Tory says, “God divided by zero. And he got the universe.”

I begin to wonder if someday, when all of this is behind me, I can return to prison, to teach.

note: Tory was shipped to Otter Creek Prison, just one class shy of sitting for finals and completing her coursework. I received a thank you letter from her while I was still residing at Ridgeview Dormitory. Her spirit was not broken; Even though her schooling had been interrupted and she had to start all over, after she was shipped, she immediately looked for classes to enroll in, at the new location.

Update: Here is what my father taught me all those years ago. I spoke to him yesterday on the phone for Thanksgiving, and he walked me through it. I would like to share it with you here, because of all of the explanations and demonstrations and teaching tricks I have seen and heard, this is the best one.

This is a gem, and if you are teaching algebra to your children or to others, you may want to jot it down.

Let’s start with a simple equation. The quantity on the left is equal to the quantity on the right.

a = b

What we do with one side of the equation, we must do to the other side, so let’s multiply both sides by a:

a squared = ab

Subtract b squared from both sides of the equation:

a squared – b squared = ab-b squared

Now, we can factor this. Here is what that looks like:

(a-b)(a+b) = b(a-b)

Now divide both sides by (a-b):

a+b = b

Okay, now let’s assume that a is equal to b, and substitute:

b+b = b

Well, b plus b is 2b, so:

2b = b

Now, divide each side by b:

2 = 1

But wait! This does not make sense. What is wrong here? It appears mathematically sound, right? Well, our answer tells us that the problem is not mathematically sound, and that there is a fallacy or a false statement somewhere.

The two starting quantities are equivalent, and so a minus b equals zero.

The flaw occurred when we divided by a minus b, or zero. When we did this, it was downhill from there.

One way to teach this is to present the problem like this:

a = b
a squared = ab
a squared – b squared = ab-b squared
(a-b)(a+b) = b(a-b)
a+b = b
b+b = b
2b = b
2 = 1

And simply ask the student what is wrong with the problem.

A round of applause and gigantic hat tip to my father for helping me remember this fun math problem!

Letter From A Priest: Ricky’s World: Frog Gravy 60

The music for this post is Perpetuum Jazzile- Africa
You can click and listen while you read, or open in another tab and read.

Tulips and Frog Gravy notes by CraneStation on flickr. Jail art. Notes are from Ricky’s World.

Roadrunner, Turtle, Bluebirds, “Do turtles really have eyelashes” Prison art by CraneStation on flickr.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Fulton County Detention Center [Ricky's World], Hickman Kentucky, May 21, 2008.

I have not seen a flower since last year sometime, and so I draw a picture of tulips and send them to my family in Seattle, where there is a tulip festival every Spring.

I do not yet have any work. There are no classes. There is an outdoor cage that is less than twenty steps around. We sometimes go out there for an hour of recreation- a dozen or so inmates crowded into a tiny, filthy space. We are not allowed to use the toilet while ‘outside,’ so we often squat and urinate on top of the drain in the concrete floor.

This jail limits toilet paper allotment, to force us to buy toilet paper from commissary at an inflated price. When I run out of toilet paper, I use a prayer book that the priest gave me because the pages are tissue-thin, like the Phone Book.

A couple of other women on their periods were using floor rags, because they did not have pads, nor could they afford them; the jail sells ten menstrual pads on canteen for four dollars.

The cell I have been moved to is a tiny, six-person dank cell with no view even to the hallway. The shower is slick with black mold.Thankfully, the lighting is dimmer in this jail than it was in McCracken County Jail. Also, this jail actually turns the lights off at night. I can draw here because the jail allows colored pencils and so, this jail is an improvement over McCracken County Jail.

The women in the cell are all State inmates- we are segregated from county inmates. This segregation eliminates some of the acute mental illness and noise. However, the women are very mean. It is a level of mean that I do not understand, and have never been exposed to. Unlike McCracken County Jail, where women frequently beat the hell out of each other, the meanness here is of a female backstabbing variety, which is, to me anyway, the worst kind of mean.

Another inmate in this cell, a nurse, of all things, is mean to me because I am a nurse, and she busies herself talking behind my back nonstop, to the point that I am in tears. A guard offers to move me to a different cell. I tell her I will be okay because the woman will go home soon, but that I am not accustomed to this level of hate, and I do not know what to do.

Other inmates tell me to be mean in return, to confront and start stuff, but I am not like this. Plus, I do not want to get an assault charge, so I stay on my bunk and try to write and draw, and make up my own Sudoku puzzles, which sometimes works but usually not, because I can never fool myself into forgetting the answer grid that I made up.

Six months ago I lost a crown on a bottom incisor tooth. I told the judge and asked if I could get it fixed before starting a sentence, but he refused and ordered me to begin my sentence immediately after my trial and before ‘final sentencing.’ I have quit eating solid food and only eat a little commissary cereal and cookies. There is no dairy, or fresh fruit or fresh vegetables here because some inmates like to make hooch and so, I order a few things I can break apart. I have diarrhea, I guess from the malnutrition or the starch and grease, although I am not sure of the cause.

My husband brings me some clothes. He brings shorts and sweatpants and white t-shirts and shoes and socks. They do not issue shoes or socks here.

I sleep on a steel bunk.The television is on 20 out of 24 hours a day and sometimes more. It goes off at 4 AM and comes back on at 8 AM.

I quit attending the church services because the attendees are so hateful, and I just work one-on-one with Father Al, the priest.

I also quit attending because some of the things I have seen and heard confuse me. One of the churches (I will not name it) puts money onto inmates’ books and then takes them out back, to a horse trough to be baptized after they are saved. I have also heard that, according to the Bible, everyone who is saved will have a chip implanted underneath their skin, by the government. In order to buy groceries or get gas you will be ‘scanned,’ but only if you have been saved and house an implanted chip, can you live in society. All others will be considered to have ‘the mark of the beast,’ which means they are damned because they are sinners and so, they are condemned. Condemned to what I wonder, but I never ask, because I am already in Hell. A trip to Hell, marked with the Beast would be redundant, I think.

Although I am not Catholic, Father Al becomes my weekly counselor. He helps me to navigate the hate and the arbitrary nature of tragedy. He helps me to find and appreciate gifts in the worst of society’s places. When he is unable to visit, he writes. In July I receive a letter from Father Al. It reads:

…I have a large group of men that I visit and this keeps me busy. I have only had one opportunity to visit with you after 3 PM…

I had a man the other day who came to see me in the night. I was finishing some yard work on my day off. He has spent 14 years in the US Army, and with the fireworks of 4th he was having some real pain and wanted to go to confession. He has and will continue to have his difficulties in adjusting. The adjustment to that lack of freedom is torture for anyone…

The letter continues. I say a prayer for the man who lives with real pain, brought about by war.

Why You Cannot Divide By Zero: Frog Gravy 56

Bone with a bow, hand-drawn copy of caricature by Crane-Station on flickr. Prison art, colored pencil and ink.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley, Winter, 2008-2009.

Wherever you go, there you are, and you just hope that God sets you down someplace and leaves you with a really good story. Kentucky courts bend over backward to help with this.

I love prison. It is helping me to discover who I am and who I am not. I never realized this before, but I really, really enjoy tutoring, particularly in the subject of basic math.

Growing up I had the best of all teaching worlds. My mother is an elderly retired high school Honors English teacher who taught me to write. If there is a better writer in the world than my mother, I would like to see it. Without her, I could not write my way out of a sack. To this day she helps me. My father is an elderly retired chemist and pathologist who ultimately founded a medical laboratory in the Pacific Northwest. He took his training at Emory, and I have yet to meet a more intelligent, methodical and ethical physician of his word. When I was young I often visited him in the basements of hospitals. Ironically, my mother went on later in life to found a center for addicted and incarcerated mothers to obtain treatment and skills needed for transition to a better life, on the outside. The center is in Portland and it is named after her: The Letty Owings Center. Both of my parents are gifted teachers.

I never thought of myself as gifted at anything. But in jail, and particularly in prison, I discover my penchant for teaching.

Tory is a mother of two who never completed the tenth grade. She loves school and wants to sit for her GED. She is enrolled in Algebra and has asked me to help her.

We sit at a table in the crowded, noisy day room of Ridgeview Dormitory, and begin our lessons.

In my mind, however, I am not in prison. I am in a town called Lake Oswego, Oregon, on the deck of my childhood home with my father. He is patiently teaching me math. I learn math in a place that God created called the Willamette Valley, in the shadow of pre-1980 Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Hood, and with the Willamette River so close you can hear the water ski boats.

My father demonstrates, in a humorous way, that dividing by zero is not allowed. He starts with allowable math, and then slips in the zero, underneath the dividing line and I fall for it. My father is laughing and I laugh too, because I have been tricked. I will never forget that you cannot divide by zero. I will draw a pastel picture of Mount St. Helens, not knowing its fate.

In prison I try to be my father, but I cannot remember the sequence of equations and letters and lines that he set before me, all those years ago and so, I am a poor imposter.

I say to Tory, “Rest assured. This question will be on a test. Look at the answer choices. If there is ever, anywhere, a zero underneath a dividing line, eliminate the answer choice. Here. Try it on the calculator. Pick any number and divide it by zero.”

Tory punches in some numbers, and the word “error” appears.

“Why is this?” asks Tory.

“It’s just one of those things that is not allowed. You cannot divide something by nothing. You can come close. If you divide something by something small, very close to zero, the number will be very large. But divide by zero and there is no number. There’s not even nothing, because it is just not allowed.”

My explanation is insufficient on its face and I know it. I have insulted my father and I am ashamed.

The lesson continues and I say, “Here is another neat trick. Pick a number. Any number in the world. By the end of this lesson you will be able to multiply and divide any number in the world by ten. You will be able to eliminate some of the answer choices this way. And eliminating multiple choice answers is half the game on a test. The process of elimination will increase the chances that your guess will be right. Are you penalized for guessing on that test? Do you know?”

Tory tells me she will find out.

We continue. I explain how to call an unknown number by the letter ‘x.’ “The object of the game,” I say, “is to get the x onto one side of the equation and get everything else onto the other.”

Turns out Tory is a natural at Algebra. She quickly understands the beginning steps to every problem, no matter how convoluted it looks on paper.

At the end of the lesson, Tory says, “God divided by zero. And he got the universe.”

I begin to wonder if someday, when all of this is behind me, I can return to prison, to teach.

note: Tory was shipped to Otter Creek Prison, just one class shy of sitting for finals and completing her coursework. I received a thank you letter from her. Her spirit was not broken; Even though her schooling had been interrupted and she had to start all over, after she was shipped, she immediately looked for classes to enroll in, at the new location.

Bird Lady: Frog Gravy 54

Nikko, our Humane Society rescued African Grey Parrot, by Crane-Station (as masonbennu) on flickr.

Teddy Bear, Bee, Bluebird, Snowflakes. Prison art by Crane-Station on flickr.

note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley women’s penitentiary, 1-20-09.

The birds know me. The inmates know that the birds know me, and everyone calls me Bird Lady.

As if by unwritten rule, many prison inmates are assigned nicknames; most often the names are apt. Pickles, Bam-Bam, One-Tit, Wheels. You can sort of get an idea where the name came from, if you know the inmate. I suppose fellow inmates changed the gender of the Bird Man of Alcatraz, dropped the Alcatraz part and left it at Bird Lady. At any rate, this is my name at PeWee. Many people will never know my real name. Since I am an ‘older lady’ by prison standards, some of the inmates combine a respectful Southern greeting with the name and call me “Miss Bird Lady.”

The incarceration experience is a bit like being a passenger on a train, in that people enter and exit my life like ghosts. I will learn the most tragic and intimate details of women’s lives, and they will learn mine, but then they are gone, and I will wonder if I imagined the whole thing. The woman whose nineteen-year-old son died in a boating accident and she attended his funeral in shackles. The woman who moved during count and was taken to the hole, where she labored alone and birthed a baby son. The passing parade of women in the overcrowded jail cells, who sometimes spent years warehoused in cement. Lasting impressions. Fleeting.

Over and over I am told to ‘do the time, don’t let the time do you.’ The prison birds, who do not have to be here, help me with this.

Starlings are very smart, and when I come up the path at 5 PM every day I whistle at them. They must know my walk or something, because they come when they see me, but not other inmates. Lately it has been bitter cold. When I come up the path the birds wait on the fence for me. They wait on a stretch of fence topped with coiled razor wire that serves no purpose.

The fence is a wall within the walls of the prison. You can walk around the end of it to get to the other side. The razor wire on top of this non-barrier barrier adds to dramatic effect and reminds me that I am in prison. If the fence could talk it would say, “You are a scumbag. Haha, of course no one would ever dream of climbing over an open-ended fence. I am here to snag the occasional bird, and remind you that you are a scumbag.”

The birds on top of the purposeless yet dramatic non-fence fence say different things to me. They say, “Bitch, look. We are here to show you that you are one of God’s children, but dangit, we’re hungry. Toss us some crumbs and we’ll show you a good time.”

A mockingbird who has graduated to the top of the utility pole gets my attention when he shouts, “Ebert!! EbertEbertEbertEbertEbert. Eeeee-bert!” He launches himself into the air like one of those cliff divers, does a perfect back flip, and returns to his perch. He acts as if this day in prison is the happiest day of his life.

Acting as if. As if life is good. As if all of the world is a perch, to dive from. I have heard that if you suit up and show up for long enough and act as if, that sooner or later your attitude will change, and you will be in the heaven of possibility and not in the hell of your own making. (I heard all of this on the outside, in twelve step meetings. In here, I am unable to attend meetings.) I begin, in earnest, to look for the good in people, and examine the irony that tragic events often bring out the good in people who would likely never mix in any other setting, or at least the sense that such events are an effective leveler.

My birds help me find my own humanity, but at the same time they must eat like everyone else, and so other inmates bring cornbread crumbs and other treats to the central distribution hub: the waistband of my khaki pants.

Starlings work together in a cunning glossy flock. Crows plot and plan and also work together, although they post up separately and communicate. Sparrows are my sweet scavenger; cardinals are the royalty; mockingbirds are the clowns; bluebirds are shy; woodpeckers act like they own the pole.

None of them have to be here, and all of them contradict the message of the fence.

Worth the watch. Nature By Numbers with hat tips to Kelly Canfield and Mary McCurnin:

Three Frog Night: Frog Gravy 51

First, since my camera batteries are dead today, here is Breaking: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere:

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of Kentucky jails and prison in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmates names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity. My name is real.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are all here: froggravy.wordpress.com, although to get to older posts will take a bit of backward scrolling through the “older entries” instruction.

This post is for Silverback66, who may be my editor someday but he does not know it yet. He races motorcycles, writes like a poet and he has a parrot, and there are pictures to prove it.

It is also a shout-out to jail and prison librarians, including McCracken County Jail librarian Jack, who made fun of me early on, saying “Pay attention to this one. She isn’t awake yet.” Well, Jack, I was awake actually so back at you, and thank you ever so much for keeping those law book pocket parts up to date. Also, the law librarian at KCIW PeWee Valley: you continue to make life better for a lot of people, every day.

KCIW PeWee Valley Ball field, sometime in winter, 2008-2009

I have lost my rocks.

I am on the ball field during recreation with the rest of Ridgeview Dormitory, walking laps at a quick pace because we are not allowed to run or jog. With each lap I select a small rock from a gravel walkway, carry it about fifty feet to a cement grate, and set it in a pile. At the end of recreation I count the rocks. This way, I know how much I walk each day, and can meet at least one personal goal during my stay here: keeping fit.

I am wearing khaki, with white Nike tennis shoes and a khaki knit cap called a “toboggan,” that is a cap and not a sled. On the outside you might mistake me for a lost hiker.

I have crumbs for my birds rolled and tucked into my cap and into my elastic band of my khaki pants. Birds follow me all around the field, even the one whose leg was amputated on razor wire.

But now my rocks are missing, and I have already spotted the guilty party, a picnic table of six friends who look just exactly like the cat that ate the canary; they can hardly contain themselves, seeing me notice my missing rocks. They want to laugh so bad, and so do I. I make a sadistic decision to take a couple of more laps and pretend not to notice the missing rocks. A couple of my friends might actually wet themselves with giddy anticipation of a confrontation with the non-confrontational Bird Lady.

The women’s penitentiary is eighty percent pathos. Even funny situations are laden with sadness. Almost everyone exhibits some form of mental illness- severe depression at the very least. Women’s prison is very different from men’s prison. The women’s penitentiary is not scary. It is pathetic, in a real sense. It actually matters to me that these women would include me in their fun. That they noticed my rocks becomes important to me because I actually mean something to someone.

During the torture laps, I study my notes that I also carry everywhere now. Thanks to the wonderful prison library, which has, by the way, inter-library loan, I am teaching myself Spanish and feeding my longstanding addiction to Mother Goose. I mean, try even finding “Fatty, fatty two-by-four” these days. The three little kittens they lost their mittens. The Little Red Hen. The Three Pigs. This library has it all. Absolutely fabulous. I am in heaven.

I suspect the reason that Mother Goose and other children’s books are so readily available in the women’s prison library is that illiteracy is over represented in Kentucky’s incarcerated population. To be clear, Kentucky locks up women who cannot read or write. There are no programs to correct this issue, but at least, thank God, the prison librarian has bent over backward to make these books available to women who choose to self-teach.

This excellent library has graduate-level literature as well. If you choose to wade through Chaucer, you can. The only thing missing is the internet, and I will exit prison two years behind everyone else in internet and cell phone technology.

The guilty friends with the stolen rocks are on their feet well in advance of my approach to the picnic table. I must choose my greeting carefully. I use a prison word that is used as different parts of speech: motherfucker.

“Motherfuckers.” I announce.

Comes the reply: “Bitch. You ain’t rocked that much.” Out comes, as if from vapor, a hand full of rocks. A round of laughter. High-fives. More laughter. The rocks are returned.

But the guards notice this bit of fun and ban ‘rocking.’ Because they can, I will no longer keep track of my laps with rocks.

At least we enjoyed the rocks, while they lasted.

Freaks Share Thanksgiving Dinner: Frog Gravy 45

Umbrella Cockatoo pair by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art from Ricky’s World. Colored pencil, magazine ink and ink.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of women’s incarceration in Kentucky jails and prison, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for my own, and for nicknames that do not reveal identity. My prison nickname was Bird Lady.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are gathered in one place at froggravy.wordpress.com, and, to get to older posts may take some backward scrolling through the “Older Posts” instruction.

Pe Wee Valley Women’s Penitentiary (KCIW) near Louisville, KY, Thanksgiving, 2008.

After my release, I continued my compulsive note-taking, but since I was unemployable I could not afford to buy paper, so I dove a dumpster and retrieved a spiral notebook with blank paper it it, and in the side pocket was a beautiful restaurant menu composed by, I assume, a culinary student at the local college. The chef is anonymous, but I would like to hat tip him or her and say that I enjoy the imaginary dinner from time to time in my mind.

It says:

First Course

Lobster and Maryland Crab Timbals
Fresh Maine Lobster and Jumbo Lump Crabmeat
Presented in a tower with mango pearl couscous,
strands of orange zest, sprigs of fresh dill and infused lemon oil,
presented with cucumber and radish pearls, blood orange slices and fresh lobster claw

At approximately the same time the student was composing his culinary opera, I was having Thanksgiving dinner with Lexie, Olivia and Sarah, in the penitentiary, compliments of the State of Kentucky and Aramark. I have no idea what a timbal is, but let’s say for fun that we had timbals of turkey, with unsalted mashed potatoes resurrected from a storage unit in a foreign country most likely and congealed, pearled gravy that reminded me, oddly, of either ZZ Top or my high school days in the backseat (or was it the front?) of a car. They serve everything with gravy on it, even KoolAid. /s

For the strands of orange zest, I went ahead and ate the entire orange, including the peel, because I had not had a fresh piece of fruit in nearly a year.

It took us quite a while to get to the penitentiary restaurant, where we did not have reservations, because I had to push Olivia in her wheelchair, and Olivia is surprisingly heavy. Olivia is diabetic, and had a stroke while she was in jail. The jail staff claimed she was faking it, and so she laid on the cement in her own drool and urine for like, three days, before she made it to prison. But first, they shackled her and prodded her to an awaiting van, just as they did me for my Hannibal Mammogram, only Olivia, who is eighty years old, is not quite as spry as I am, and so she fell getting into the van and permanently injured her knee.

Olivia has little use of her right side, so she cannot push her chair or bus her tray. She relies on inmates to get to and from appointments and meals, and since she is housed in the same dormitory as I am, which is Ridgeview Dormitory (the farthest dormitory from the dining hall, I might add), I will push her to this wonderful meal of thanks that we share.

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go. Past all the inmate chit chat such as, “Oh yeah. She done got sent to cell block for mailing pussy hairs to her boyfriend,” and “…bitch just starts hittin’ me for no reason.” La-la la laaa. Over the river and through…

Olivia has no teeth. Her face droops from the stroke, so it’s a little hard to understand her. She is in prison for forging a prescription for a dying friend, and I ask her what medication it was, and she says, “I think it might have been some red pills.”

I help to push and serve Olivia, and make sure she gets her evening diabetic snack to take back to Ridgeview Dormitory. She is indigent and cannot afford hard candy, so low blood sugar is just a risk she lives with, in prison.

Back to our culinary student.

Second course

Herb and spice roasted tenderloin
Tenderloin of beef rubbed with a blend of fresh rosemary, thyme, garlic, bay leaves, shallots, orange zest, sea salt, black pepper, nutmeg and cloves, slow marinated, roasted, sliced and served over pearl onions and button mushrooms with a pan reduction sauce finished with red wine, brandy and butter. Green and white asparagus and oven roasted tomatoes; small potato ramekin with yukon potato, sweet potato and sweet onin with parmesan cheese.

Good grief. It’s Whole Foods on steroids. Here in prison we are on our second course: stuffing. Stuffing and cranberry sauce are the best part of Thanksgiving, and I am truly thankful because we have both. Plus, the stuffing even has flecks. If you mix the cranberry sauce with the orange peel in your mouth, you are as good as in your childhood home, with your mother’s unrivaled cornbread stuffing, made in an iron skillet with bacon grease. And oysters. I could eat a whole skillet of that, and then retire to an afternoon of walking in the woods, followed by watching college football.

Lexie is about my age, and she is mostly deaf, so you have to face her directly to speak with her, so she can read your lips. She seems to have a thyroid disorder that makes the eyes protrude a bit, the name escapes me, but it adds to her overall anxious appearance. Lexie got kicked out of drug court and is serving out a ten year sentence. Her addiction of choice was gambling and not drugs, and her original charge may have been for petty theft, but I am not sure. At any rate, during her drug court days, someone spotted her on the boat. I had no idea why it would matter that she was on a boat to start with, but apparently, in this area, they have river boats that people gamble on, and so someone called in their observation to the police, and her drug court was revoked, and now she is serving more time than she could have ever imagined, and that is, I think, ten years.

Lexie cries all the time, and she becomes so upset that she cannot complete Thanksgiving dinner with us, and so Robin, the inmate that swallowed razor blades upon admission to the prison, accompanies Lexie back to her dorm.

Sticky toffee pudding with caramel sauce
An individual moist dense dried fruit pudding with a
crunchy toffee crust served with caramel sauce, macadamia
nut toffee brittle shards,
spun sugar, served with dolce de leche ice cream.

You know what. This guy deserves an A, don’t you think?

Pass passion fruit, white pepper and tarragon dark chocolate truffles.

Sarah and I enjoy our desert of pumpkin squares, and I am planning Thanksgiving dinner for my birds as well, so I squirrel away some crumbs for my beautiful little bird troupes, and this will be the highlight of my Thanksgiving. Had I not come here, I would not have these birds to share thanks with.

Sarah killed her brother-in-law in a car accident where she was driving. Her blood analysis showed just about everything but the kitchen sink. Sarah and I will become close friends in prison. She is the one whose father will commit suicide the day after Christmas, but I will not get to spend much time with her because her sentence, three years, is so brief compared to mine.

The last item on this menu is curious.

It says:

“To-go outside later at the buses.”

The Dentist, And A Bit More Frog Gravy History: Frog Gravy 44

At some point I am going to upload my entire dash-cam arrest video to YouTube (although the stop is so long I will have to break it into parts), but in the meantime, there’s this:

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of women’s incarceration in Kentucky jails and prison, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for my own, and for nicknames that do not reveal identity. My prison nickname was Bird Lady.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are gathered in one place at froggravy.wordpress.com, and, to get to older posts may take some backward scrolling through the “Older Posts” instruction.

Mountain and Stream. Jail Art by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil. Drawn at Ricky’s World. I abandoned this drawing because I became frustrated with the poor quality and lack of quality control in the made-in-Indonesia colored pencil set from the jail canteen.

PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary (KCIW), sometime in winter, 2008-2009

I am randomly called to see the dentist, and so I am sitting in the dental clinic waiting area of the medical building with some other inmates who have also randomly been summoned.

Apparently this is some sort of a screening process that the prison does, because the inmate next to me says, to no one in particular, “Why am I at the dentist? I ain’t got no motherfuckin’ teeth.”

I am fantasizing about the prospect of dental care, which I rarely get these days on the outside. The last time I saw a dentist, I was in Ricky’s World; a veneer had come off the year prior. Only when the tooth was nearly unsalvageable did I get an appointment, which took all of five minutes and cost eighty-eight dollars, but first, forty-five dollars was extracted from my books for some sort of bogus protocol, where I went to the nurse and told her to please make me a dental appointment with an outside dentist.

Other than my fake release on parole and my actual transport to Ricky’s World, the trip to the dentist had been my only venture into the outside world. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be in the dormitory in this prison that is actually located outside the gates and outside the fences. The dormitory is like a halfway house really, and it is for minimum security, community-level custody inmates, but inmates serving sentences all the same.

Counterintuitively, there are few escape attempts from the dormitory outside the gate, although during my stay at PeWee, one inmate did just that. She took a few steps to the nearby street, got into an awaiting vehicle, and simply left the prison one day.

There was sort of a hullabaloo about this inmate who took a left turn outside the front door of her dormitory instead of a right turn, and took a few steps to freedom instead of taking a few steps the other way for the privilege of waiting in a long line of inmates waiting to be searched and then allowed to enter the confines of the razor wire and condensed madness.

They found her a couple of days later, at the mall, shoplifting Victoria’s Secret underwear, which, if you read Hannibal Mammogram you will know would be the very last place they would have found me.

At the dentist, they only count, and record, the number of rooted, viable teeth we have. I have something less than 32, I think, but to be honest, I could care less because there is nothing they would do if I had a problem with the number of teeth in my head, unless something was rotting, in which case they would pull it, stuff the bloody hole with gauze, and send me back to my job on the prison yard. Turns out though, that the prison population has a lot of rotting teeth that get pulled, and it is usually all of the teeth.

At any given time, you can see inmates walking around with mouths full of pink gauze. State dentures cost $188.00 and entail a long waiting period, so many women adjust to eating and functioning without teeth. State dentures often do not quite fit properly, and I once heard that an inmate got a tomato seed stuck in her state dentures…and it sprouted.

I am in the habit, or compulsion really, of writing everything down, and I always carry notes everywhere I go, so that at times such as this, when I am waiting for nothing to happen somewhere, I can jot things down or read and decipher. I have this note in my pocket:

The random notes are:

Spade game rules change as fast as ways to kill vampires

and

O, no you did not just play the race card

and

Butt hanging out reminds me of the trap door

and

disrespecting

and, circled, and penned in blue are the words:

frog gravy

As you may know I wrote this after overhearing some classmates in Horticulture talking about the finer points of road kill preparation one day when the conversation turned to frog legs, frog drippings (honest to God) and Frog Gravy in an iron skillet. After my release, I went to the internet because if it’s on the internet it must be true, and I saw recipes for this stuff actually.

There is also the name Jason Ison and some case identifying information, and the statement “women can’t get along so some become men.”

But there’s more.

In my pocket is another note labeled “How To Cook A Worm”

1. Go out in the yard and dig up the biggest, fattest, juiciest worm you can find.

2. Wash the worm thoroughly.

3. Filet worm.

4. Soak in meat tenderizer for approximately 30 minutes.

5. Fry in an iron skillet, and add soy sauce, and garlic salt.

6. In other pan, cook side dish of mixed vegetables fried in garlic butter.

7. When worm is done, lay worm on plate, remove vegetables from stove and lay next to worm.

8. Douse worm with A-1 steak sauce.

9. Bon Apetit!

You cannot make this stuff up, I swear to God.

Now I know, at this point, that Martha Stewart is about to release her prison memoir, but I guarantee she does not have this recipe in it.