Every once in a while I take some time away from Frog Gravy. During my time away from writing this week I once again searched for notes. To my utter shock, I located probably close to another thousand pages of notes. Most are related to the legal case.
Frog Gravy is not even about me. It is about a criminal justice system gone mad. I will try my best to illustrate it with documents, official transcripts and audio YouTube recordings (as soon as I learn the technology).
The Bill of Particulars is a document, sworn to under oath by the prosecution (ie, The Commonwealth) and then filed with the court. It indicates what they intend to rely on in their case.
In my case, the Bill of Particulars was also an offer: were I to plead guilty, they offered me eight years, plus seven days for the no-drug/no-alcohol/no bad driving DUI.
I did not see this document until just prior to my trial, probably because I had made it clear to my attorney at the time, Will Kautz, that I would take no deals whatsoever, even if it were an offer for a Caribbean vacation, and so he did not show it to me. This is probably a good thing, because of the huge falsehood that it contained, namely, that there was “no exculpatory evidence” under Brady vs Maryland, when, in fact, there were two exculpatory lab results that the Commonwealth had had in its possession for, like, a year.
The first lab result, the one that the prosecution hid from the Grand Jury and Deputy Eddie McGuire lied about, was faxed to the Commonwealth four days prior to the Paducah Grand Jury meeting, on 7/24/2006 at 12:32 PM to FAX number 2708247029, as you can see on the document.
The exculpatory drug test result was completed on 9/25/2006.
The Bill of Particuars, stating that there was “no exculpatory evidence” was filed on October 17, 2008, by Christopher Hollowell, who is now a District Court Judge.
Here are the photos:
Bill of Particulars filed October 17, 2008 by Crane-Station on flickr.
The statement: “The Commonwealth has reviewed the material in this case and finds no material which is exculpatory under Brady vs Maryland.”
Sworn under oath and delivered.
The hidden exculpatory lab result for alcohol (exculpatory under Brady)
enlarged.
The hidden exculpatory drug test result (under Brady)
These lab results have been published online in other posts as well.
Amazing coincidence that I received an eight year sentence after my jury trial.
Author’s note: There are a good many saints working in our prisons today, despite the atmosphere and despite the low pay. These people show up every day and essentially minister to the broken and marginalized segment of American society.
I cannot remember all of their names, but they made a lasting impression on me. A few examples are: Miss Heavren, the JCTC Horticulture teacher; Vannessa Kennedy, the counselor who was later promoted to Deputy Warden at Western Kentucky Correctional Complex for Women; The Librarian at PeWee Valley KCIW; the JCTC Carpentry program instructor; the Mennonite men and women of the Galilean Home, who care for babies and children of inmate mothers; the Priest and lay Deacon of the chapel; Mary, the Ridgeview Dormitory ‘house mother’ and her husband; most of the guards at Ricky’s World, including Wendy, who started the Class D road crew program for women; Father Al and his intern Priest at Ricky’s World; the guard I call ‘Sally,’ who was the only person to send flowers to the funeral of Ruthie’s mother and other kind guards at McCracken; and again, the night JCTC Biology instructor; my case worker at PeWee in Ridgeview Dormitory; the behind-the-scenes workers in Inmate Records at PeWee.
As if they answered a calling, these good people are members of the 99, and they should all be making more money than our professional criminal white collar banksters.
Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic Part 2
A tree destroyed by Mountain Pine Beetle, photo by photokayaker under noncommercial, attribution, no derivative works creative commons on flickr.
Beetles are themselves hosts to a blue-staining fungus, that is conveniently delivered to the tree. The fungal spores develop and spread throughout the phloem tissue, interrupting osmotic water movement and decreasing the tree’s natural defense of pitching out attacking beetles.
Unable to circulate nutrients due to fungal infection, dying trees become chlorotic and weakened, their leaking sap stained by blue fungal spores. The combined dual fungal infection and beetle infestation on concert is especially devastating to trees.
Blue-fungal-stained sapwood is problematic to the timber industry, due to public perception that blue-stained wood is damaged or substandard. However, unlike mold or decaying rot, blue stain fungi is harmless to people and can be used in the same markets as unstained timber, with some constraints.
Endemic versus epidemic and conditions that favor epidemic
Endemic means that MPBs ordinarily exist in harmony with, and play a role in, forest health. They are a stand-replacing mechanism. Since they need lots of resin in order to establish their broods, MPBs tend to attack older, larger-diameter, over-mature trees, thinning stands and making way for younger replacement trees.
At epidemic levels, however, tree mortality is massive, overtaking the forest’s ability to mount a defensive response.
Warmer temperature trends favor beetle success by 1) extending its range to higher elevations; 2) increasing the number of beetle growing seasons (broods) from one to two or more per year, and 3) placing the trees in a drought-stressed state, weakening their ‘immunity’ to attack. Also, the MPB seems to have an evolutionary edge in surviving freezing conditions: it begins to expel water in the fall, essentially becoming a bag of antifreeze by winter. At the same time, it enjoys the insulation that the bark provides. Absent a severe, early freeze while the water is still in the insect, it survives the winter cold.
MPBs have natural predators. Woodpeckers feast on the larvae and, when they bore large holes to get the larvae, the infested area aerates, killing the broods. Nuthatches and other insect-eating birds eat adult beetles. Other natural beneficial MPB predators include parasitic wasps and checkered beetles. Other beetle species’ larvae can out-compete MPB for tunnel space. Beneficial organisms provide a natural biological control to an endemic pest, but are ineffective in epidemic infestation.
Bugworm Burn 1 by Ian BC North under creative commons on flickr.
The role of fire
Fire ecology is a complex dynamic and a highly specialized subject that exceeds the scope of this descriptive paper. Forest fores are a necessary and natural disturbance to boreal ecosystems. Some plants have evolved to depend on fore to, for example, disrupt their seed coating and allow germination. Fire is a thinning mechanism, that removes old material and makes way for new growth. Although it seems counter-intuitive, our own past forest fire suppression practices may be partially responsible for thickened, over-mature and drought-stressed pine stands that are akin to a MPB salad bar.
However, retired US Forest Service silviculturalist Wayne Sheppard, PhD, does not attribute epidemic-level MPB outbreak to human fire suppression alone. Sheppard explains that, as far as our brief frame of reference is concerned, the magnitude and scope of this outbreak is unprecedented; however, from an evolutionary standpoint, such devastating disturbances probably occurred in the past.
Increased older, mature tree densities are an initial condition for both fire and for MPB infestation. CO2 is an end product in both decomposing respiration and combustion.
Author’s note: In the next part I will discuss carbon and temperature. In future Frog Gravy posts I will discuss some of the positive, wonderful prison education, work and treatment programs, that seem to be disappearing faster than money in Iraq. Another shout-out to the ’99′ prison workers who stick with God’s work, even in the face of adversity, discouragement, privatization and cuts.
Horses. Jail Art by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil, pen and magazine ink.
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.
McCracken County Jail, Paducah KY, cell 107, March, 2008
Christie and YaYa have just gotten into a loud verbal fight over boobs.
Christie, who looks like Christie Brinkley, has perfect boobs, as she says, “best boobs money can buy,” and we all enjoy looking at them, and so do the Class D men working in the hallway. When Christie is in the shower, YaYa insults her for displaying her wares to the men on occasion, and Christie becomes hopping mad. She’d rather be in general population, she claims, than to be in a cell with YaYa. She pounds on the steel door.
A guard comes to the door and says, “All I can tell you is that this jail is full and I don’t got no time to play Kindergarten Cop, so you’d best kiss and make up because I can tell you that if one of you goes outa here, you’re goin’ onto concrete. I ain’t got no place else to put you, so if one of you goes onto concrete, you both go.”
Things calm down. It is my TV day because I cleaned the cell, and so I adjust the towel on my head, get up from my sheaf of no-shank jail notes and collection of origami cranes, and change the channel to the news.
Down the hall, Harry shouts from his isolation cell, “HELLLLP!! Let Me OUT!!! Helpmehelpmehellllp me. Please! HELP!”
In the cell, Meg gets off the phone with her trick, talking about she “got plenty of bidness,” and she and YaYa exchange family photographs with each other.
Meg, who has nine children, including six-month-old twins, says, “And that baby was tiny, only this big, but his nuts, I’m telling you, his balls hang down to his knees…and this is the older three’s baby’s daddy, and my baby’s daddy of the middle four kids, this is him, he’s 28, and my twins’ baby’s daddy is 24, and this is him. He’s mixed. The other two are black.”
YaYa says, “This is my son’s baby’s daddy, and this is my daughter’s baby’s daddy that stays with my mama, and this baby’s mama is in prison, and, I keep these. This is my family. I have to rely on my own family, you see what I’m sayin.’ You find out who your friends are when you come up in here.”
Lunch arrives, and we eat potatoes, greens, chicken and a cookie (did I mention that the food in McCracken County Jail is actually quite good?) On the TV screen we see that a group of Amish men in neighboring Graves County have been pulled over and cited for not displaying a large, reflective orange triangle on their horse-drawn buggy. They will fight the charges, because they believe the orange symbol on their buggy violates their religious beliefs and practices.
“I heard this story once,” I say. “Horse-drawn buggy got pulled over for a DUI. The driver had been drinking, and his friends loaded him into the buggy. The man spoke German and so did the horse. The man’s friends told the horse in German to go home. Seems to me the horse was sober, and the horse was the driver. Just sayin.’”
“People get DUIs on all sorts of stuff around here,” says Christie. “Riding lawn mowers. That’s common.”
“Huh. Yeah,” I say, “There was that guy in town that was convicted of a DUI in his electric wheelchair.”
After lunch, we watch Jerry Springer on TV and Christie and I get ready for the 7:30 church service with the local faith-based treatment group, Ladies Living Free. I am hoping for placement into their residential program, as a probationary status alternative to a prison sentence. Ladies Living Free takes into account attendance records at their services, and so, Christie and I give ourselves three-and-a-half hours to prepare. We spend the afternoon doing our hair and applying makeup that we manufactured from magazine ink and FireBalls. The magazine ink, truth be told, looks better than some of the stuff I got at Sephora in Seattle, when I had money, back in the day.
Jerry Springer is hosting ‘Hillbilly Games II.’ Which means there was a Hillbilly Games I. On the screen, one obese woman says to another, “I’m gonna kick your ass, bitch,” and then they both strip off their outer clothing and get into a pool sort of affair, that has about four-and-one-half inches or so of Pork-and-Beans in it, and start whaling on each other, shouting obscenities all the while. So now, the TV is beeping a bunch, and two scantily clothed fat women fight in a child’s swimming pool of Pork-and-Beans, while some guy stands on the sideline playing the banjo.
I have seen a bunch of these shows now, during my residence here, and I’ve met people who cannot read or write and neither can their parents or grandparents, and this very jail, in fact, bans education, and no one gives a shit, unless the WalMart is closed.
Finally, in the evening, after an afternoon of meticulous preparation and homework completion, Christie and I stand at the steel door, waiting for the start of Ladies living Free.
But the start time comes and goes, and the other population cells have already been paraded past our cell and into the chapel, but we are not included in the service.
We pound on the door and a guard comes. Christie asks, “Why can’t we go to church with the others? We are going to be late.”
The guard says, “It’s considered 12-Step for ladies.”
“It has nothing to do with the twelve steps,” says Christie. “It’s church!”
“It’s twelve step.”
“Well good!” I say. “We’re here on drug charges, and the only twelve-step requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking and using. They don’t discriminate.”
“You are not allowed to go.”
“Then tell them the jail will not allow our attendance so that they will not be led to believe it is us.”
“I cain’t do that.”
“Bring a grievance form, please.”
Grievance and response. McCracken County Jail, Paducah, KY, March, 2008.
Christie and I file a joint grievance. It says:
We previously had this issue regarding Sgt. Tiffany deciding which cells get to attend church & which ones don’t Once again Are we not allowed the same options as EA and WA?-cells[?] They attend both services in one day yet we are not allowed the same treatment. She doesn’t even ask if we want to go and it is not due to any disciplinary action. I would like a copy to this grievance when your response is noted that is photocopied clearly, please.
The response:
Sometimes church runs late and doesn’t get started on time. Sometimes ministers have things to do and runs short (sic). You are not on disciplinary actions. EA/WA were the only ones that went and it was quick. We’ll address this later.
EA and WA included the entire female jail population, except for us and the isolation/hole cells.
YaYa emerges from the toilet with a wad of tissue and says to me, “Look, Rachel, a sewer fly.”
“A what?”
“A sewer fly. You know. A sewer fly. They comes up outa’ the sewer.” The squirming fly is about the size of these typed letters, and it is almost translucent. That means there are maggots down there.
So, I guess our disinfectant, that I used to clean the cell with this morning, is not working all that well.
Lighter note. Steve, the lawnmower guy taser DUI lawnmower:
Heart and flower jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Ink, eye shadow, magazine ink and colored pencil.
Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration, first in jails and then in prison in Kentucky, during 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Inmate names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary (KCIW), Winter, 2009
I am standing on the ball field with a group, waiting for med line to be called. I am in the med line before the med line. Since we are officially at rec and not in med line yet, we can still talk and move about. There is a heated conversation going on nearby.
I ask my hillbilly friend in a wheelchair, “What are they arguing about?”
“It’s about some pussy. Ain’t ’bout no dick. Ain’t ’bout no money. It’s all ’bout some pussy.”
The argument continues:
“Your answer to everything is dick.”
“I’m strictly dickly. If there ain’t a dick swinging I ain’t interested.”
“Well, I’ve done had my share of dicks in life and there ain’t no dick that can make you come like a woman can.”
Another inmate chimes in. Using her fist, she grabs an air penis, does and little dance and says, “He teases me and he goes from the clit to the hole and then the clit to the hole until I cain’t stand it and he puts it in. And that’s how we do it in my neighborhood.”
Med line is called and we start the race to get to the medical building. No running is allowed. This is Inmate Special Olympics. Sometimes I ask to push a wheelchair inmate, because, in shopping cart fashion, with the roll, I can increase my speed, just like in real marathons on the outside.
At med call, I am no lomger Bird Lady, or a wife, or a mother or a nurse, or a scuba diving lover or an Old People’s Soccer Player. I am “218896.” When I reach the med line window and call this inmate number, the nurse on the other side of the window will punch some pills out of blister packs. There is the Accept The Unacceptable Pill. Actually there are two of these now, because after speaking with my psychiatrist, the Accept The Unacceptable dose was doubled. And the there is the Fewer Nightmares pill, otherwise known as the Do The Time Don’t Let The Time Do You pill.
I live in a world where women deliver babies and attend their son’s and daughters funerals in shackles. Where family members die, are born, murdered, killed, married, divorced, moved, educated, baptized, enlisted, converted and shipped, while we make up some sort of a life behind razor wire. We are hated, loved, accepted, rejected and endlessly talked about. I have no voice in here, no say or reaction to any of the outside events. I am 218896, about to take some prison-issue Accept The Unacceptable pills, because that way, my world in here is supposed to make sense to me.
Today in school I learned that you can make a whole career out of ferns.
Med line is about an hour long, and we are not allowed to talk. I reflect on an event that happened in med line before the med line. Another inmate had found a baby bird that I had been tending to, in the yard, and had taken it to a guard. The bird was a fledgling. The guard took it to underneath a tree on the ball field and stomped it to death in full view of all of the inmates. He made a point then, of walking past me and grinning, and laughing, as he wiped the gore on the pavement, taunting me.
I briefly fantasized about killing him on the spot. After all, killing in Kentucky brings a less severe sentence that the one I am serving, and I could construct a strong argument, I think, that this person simply ‘needed killin.’
But then I remembered that someone once said that Checkmate is a let down: tormenting your opponent is more satisfying. This bird-killing-and-enjoying-it guard is bespectacled and boyish looking. He was probably bullied. So now he’s just getting a little action himself, although in a chickenshit way, because we are inmates. Behind razor wire, we must restrain ourselves from delivering a good ass-ramming to the guards, and he knows this, and so, he walks around the ball field with that stupid grin and Nazi mindset, figuring out how he can bolster his own weakness by picking on defenseless people. He does this full time.
I came across an article this winter that said that Kentucky is laying off 275 teachers. It said nothing about people such as this guard that are employed full time to torment. It said nothing of the people employed in the prison industry to, for example, go through our mail and confiscate such things as bird feathers (this happened to me) and listing them in documents as potential tattooing instruments. These actions will, Kentucky assures the taxpayers, make Kentucky a safer community.
So, that leaves me, in here, to teach Kentucky’s Left Behind things like their times tables and how to count back cash register change and how to get the “x” onto one side of an equation and everything else on the other, to solve for the “x.” I try to make math fun by saying things like, “By the end of this session, you will know how to multiply or divide any number in the world by ten.”
I am close to the med window now. My friend who used to be my Spades partner in Ridgeview Dormitory comes to the chain link fence. She was moved to the medical building full time, when she was discovered talking to the trees and bushes in the main yard one day. She is in prison because one day, her husband (common law) of many years convinced her to try some crack. She did, and then she slit his throat with a hatchet, called the police, and retired to the front porch to smoke a cigarette and wait for their arrival, while the husband crawled, slipped and slid around on his own blood in the kitchen. When the crack wore off they still loved each other. He died while she was in prison here, and then she went into mental decline and was deemed unfit for general population.
I reach the window and call out “218896,” and out comes the blister pack, and the dose of Accept The Unacceptable, and the dose of Do The Time Don’t Let The Time Do You.
Below is the uncorrected full-text version of “Released On Parole By Mistake.”
Today I found the original sentence as well as the amended sentence, and I looked at the date stamps on the two orders.
Here is the sequence of events:
I lost my jury trial and was remanded to custody on January 23, 2008.
I was final sentenced to eight years, verbally, from the bench in March, 2008, but the written order reflected two concurrent four year sentences. In other words, there was no clarification or order mentioning consecutive four year sentences, so DOC must have read the order as a total of four years.
Om June of 2008, the judge amended the sentence to reflect a “typographical error” correction that reflected two consecutive sentences for a total of eight years.
In October of 2008, I went home on parole, after serving 20% of four years on a four-year sentence and becoming parole eligible (ten months on four years).
On October of 2008, I was rearrested and taken back into custody, to serve the other half of the consecutive four-year sentences. In total, I spent a little more than 20 months in custody, ten in jails and ten in prison.
At some point I will provide photographs of these orders.
Train. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Ink, magazine ink and colored pencil.
Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration, first in jails and then in prison in Kentucky, during 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Inmate names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
PeWee (pronounced PeWee) Valley women’s penitentiary (KCIW) near Louisville, KY, my father’s birthday, 1-7-2009
The end of my stay in Fulton County Detention Center (Ricky’s World) came with a notice of parole. I had hoped for this result but not necessarily had I expected it. Inmates had warned for nearly the entire year that parole on the first try is extremely rare. They told me to expect a one-year “flop,” known as a denial of parole and continued detention. Nonetheless, I had maintained a clean jail record, held steady employment, and arranged for job, counseling and a return to my supportive husband, were I to make parole.
In March of 2008, Judge Craig Clymer denied all forms of treatment and monitoring that I had arranged, that totaled nearly six years. He denied shock probation three times and, since I refused to plead guilty in my immediate case, drug court was also denied. He sentenced me to eight years, assuring the concerned jury, who voiced a desire for me to enter drug treatment, that this treatment would be offered “in the penitentiary.” I had never made it to the penitentiary, and the jails had no treatment programs. Judge Clymer’s written sentence reflected that the eight-year sentence be served as two concurrent four-year sentences.
On October of 2008 I received this notice:
On the notice, the requirement to seek sex offender treatment was a mistake. But the rest of the order was real, and I went home to my husband on parole. As I stood outside in the sun waiting for him to arrive, I was struck by the sounds of birds, the touch of grass and the feel of the air. I conversed with another released inmate who also awaited a ride.
My husband wanted to take me out to dinner, but I was afraid to go inside a restaurant so we ordered some take out. We visited the bookstore and I picked up a copy of the 2009 Writer’s Market, because I had already done copious writing in note form, and I wanted to write about the reality of jail conditions in Kentucky.
The next day, I met with my parole officer, arranged counseling, and visited the college to see about educational programs. I attempted to meet with the man who had agreed to employ me, but he was not in. I had a required mental health evaluation. I attended a 12-step meeting.
The next morning I arose at 6 AM and went for a jog. I stayed outside for quite a while because it had been so long since I had been outside. I came home and made coffee. There was a knock on my door.
Two armed parole officers entered my home and held up a warrant, issued by Judge Craig Clymer, for my arrest. They were apologetic and almost embarrassed. One of them said he had never seen such a thing before. I was handcuffed, and I kissed my husband again, for the last time. I was jailed in the McCracken County Jail in EA, one of the two large population cells. A few days later I was shipped to KCIW, or “PeWee,” the women’s penitentiary.
Judge Clymer claimed that, after ten months, he suddenly realized that he had made an error on the written sentencing document that he called a “typographical” error. The typo had excluded an entire sentence clarifying that my eight-year sentence was two consecutive four-year sentences.
On arrival at the prison, I lost my jogging suit and every possession that I had, which was little, except for my husband’s watch that I had worn for my morning jog. Again I submitted to strip squat-and-cough searches typical of any incarceration beginning. This would be my home for the next year. Already, due to my case, I had missed my son’s last play where he was the leading role in a college play, and I had missed his college graduation, and his entrance to law school at Georgetown. My parents were elderly and not doing well and I had not seen them in years. My husband had lost his job because the law school where he taught went under. He had been evicted and moved, all without my help or support.
At the prison, I immediately took an outside job in landscape, and then set about seeing what it would take to enroll in college. Still in jail mentality, I gathered a few art supplies, but I was now busy with work and entrance testing for the college. On a couple of math aptitude tests, I was told that I scored “higher than anyone in the history of the institution,” and that was a perfect score. I scored 99the percentile in other aptitude tests, and my goal was initially to try for the legal aide program, where inmates assist other inmates with legal case work. However, the legal aide training program was eliminated due to lack of funding.
Since I was considered a Class D instead of the more serious Class C, residential treatment was not an option for me, so I signed up to attend AA meetings, twice, but was never notified that my request had been approved for meeting attendance, during my entire stay at the prison. I eventually signed up for the Horticulture program, which was excellent and enjoyable. I also took Biology at night, on a “Canteen Scholarship” that was offered because of my test scores. I became active in tutoring other inmates in math. Again, I maintained a clean record.
Horticulture was one of the most enjoyable programs I have ever participated in. The drawing that I did do now was of plants, mostly, and I drew because it helped me to memorize the plants.
The poppy Papaver rhoeas by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil. Prison art.
Yesterday I met with inmate records and had a conversation about my curious release on parole and then rearrest.
“How could this mistake happen?” I ask. “Why was I released and then taken back into custody with a doubled sentence, when I had work, school and counseling all in place? How could…”
“This happens.”
“I mean, it’s unusual, isn’t it? I have never heard of this happening.”
“It’s not uncommon.”
“So, it’s common then? People just go home by mistake all the time? Please answer correctly because I am contacting the newspaper.”
The inmate records woman looked at me, shocked. She said, “We actually had one who went home, and the judge called and asked, “Why is she out, I ammended her sentence to eight years…”
“Just what I thought. That’s all I need to know.”
“You haven’t heard the rest…”
“We knew. It’s okay. I write a lot, and I wanted to get it right, about what happened here. I have no beef at all with DOC or PeWee. None at all.”
“Where are you from?”
“McCracken.”
“Ohhhhh.” Eyes roll.
“I did not commit this crime.”
“I am not stupid enough to think that, with 30,000 people in Kentucky locked up that some of them aren’t innocent. I will tell you this, though, that an appeal is an uphill battle.”
“I know.”
“But if it was me, I would stick it out until the very end.”
Rose with hymn. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Magazine ink, colored pencil, pen and discarded hymnal paper.
Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account set in Kentucky in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Named are changed.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
KCIW, PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary near Louisville, summer, 2009.
I am seated at a table in the noisy day room of Ridgeview Dormitory, playing Spades with Sandy (drugs), Margo (pregnant, drugs) and Kathy (drugs).
Sandy is my card game partner, and she is seated across from me in a wheelchair. Sandy is 48 but looks 60, and is serving a 12-year sentence for “trafficking,” which amounts, in her case, to selling some pills on the outside. At med line, Sandy tucks her pills under her dentures, or ‘cheeks’ them, and trades them for commissary items with other inmates. She is indigent and receives no state pay for work because her disability prevents her from working. Sandy has been a frequent guest in the hole for her entrepreneurial ventures. She is a self-described proud hillbilly from Pike County, in eastern Kentucky coal country.
Margo will have her baby in captivity, and the baby will be taken and cared for by the Galilean Home, a Mennonite-run orphanage for disabled and unwanted children, as well as children with indigent incarcerated mothers. It is a wonderful place, with a loving environment. Once a week, the Galilean Home women bring the babies into the prison, to a nursery in the chapel building, for a visit.
Kathy is serving eleven years for two counts of drug possession and one count of possession of a methamphetamine precursor. She is in love with and obsessed with another inmate here named Nancy, who is very butch and, for the most part, annoyed with Kathy’s over-availability and self-destructive obsession.
I can see from the hand I have neen dealt that Sandy and I will easily win this card game, and I try hard not to burst into laughter. Prison card game rules change as often as ways to kill a vampire, and we are playing by ‘Joker-Joker-Deuce’ rules. The two jokers and the deuce of spades are the highest cards in the deck for this game, and I have all three, plus all of the relevant face cards I need. The large joker that I now hold in my hand is labeled in ink, “Big Pimpin.”
I tell Sandy, “I’ll make ‘em and you rake ‘em.” She smiles.
We are all half-seriously discussing a plan to ask to be shipped to Otter Creek, the privately owned prison in an eastern Kentucky coal town called Wheelwright.
The discussion started when Kathy, who is miserable with unrequited love, decided that distance will cure her of the Nancy situation once and for all, and said, “Let’s all drop notes to go to Otter Creek.”
“Rough place,” I say. “I hear that lizards don’t even live in the yard.”
“Biiiitch,” says Sandy, in a low, toothless purr, “Pot. Cigarettes. Drugs. They don’t give a damn.”
Kathy asks Sandy about an inmate who was shipped to ‘The Creek.’ “How’s old One-Tit Barb? She get out yet?”
Sandy says, “It’s DOC not letting you out. One year at a time. That’s slow walking. Slow walking is like saying, I’ll get you tomorrow. The check is in the mail. I promise I won’t come in your mouth. These people are slow walking you.”
“Aren’t there problems at Otter Creek though?” I ask. “What’s going on over there anyway?”
“Guards is fucking the inmates,” says Margo. She adds, “And a guard brought a loaded gun into the place and blew her brains out.”
Sandy says, “There are perks. You go up for parole a month early. They sell craft items on commissary. You’d like that, Bird Lady.”
“Sounds cool,” I say.
Margo says, “They almost killed an inmate with a medication error.”
The inmate rumors about the famed private prison Otter Creek will turn out to be true. After investigation, the facility will be closed to women and converted to a men’s facility. The Hawaiian inmates that were housed stateside in Otter Creek will be returned to Honolulu, but we do not know this yet.
Sandy suddendly says to me, “Bird Lady. When you git out I want you to come to Hillbilly Days!”
“To what?”
“Hillbilly Days! It’s a celebration, started by a couple of Shriners from Outhouse Clan. That’s where you see ‘em all come out. Barefoot and pregnant. Straw hats. Overalls. Corn cob pipes. Moonshine.“
“Moonshine? Isn’t that a dry county?”
“Wettest damn dry county you ever seen. Oh hell yeah. Bathtub bootleg.”
“You’re joking.”
“No I ain’t. And biiiitch. Them hillbillies ain’t stupid. You fuck with ‘em and they’ll shoot you and throw you in the hollar. Or the waller. It don’t make no damn differnce to them. You don’t have to worry none about Hillbilly Days though. They don’t allow guns. Hell, they don’t even allow the kids to shoot each other with squirt guns.”
“That sounds cool,” I say. “I’ll bet it’s a blast.” I then address Kathy and Margo with a comment about the card game. “Y’all are fucked,” I say.
“I can see that,” says Kathy.
“I ain’t got shit,” says Margo.
Kathy says, “Let’s all drop notes at once and ask to go to Otter Creek!”
“They’re going to think I lost my mind if I do that,” I say.
“You can feed you birds there,” says Sandy. “They don’t give a damn.”
“You got a point,” I say.
Lighter note:
Steve The Lawnmower Guy Domestic Arrest:
Cardinal couple. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. colored pencil and magazine ink.
Frog Gravy is a non-fiction account of incarceration in Kentucky, first in jails and then in prison, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Inmates names are changed.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
KCIW, PeWee Valley women’s penitentiary near Louisville, 1-29-09
We have been on lockdown in Ridgeview Dormitory for a couple of days now, due to an ice storm. Ice has weighted down the razor wire, the power lines, and the trees. This morning, a few of us made our way through the ice wonderland to the dining hall for breakfast. Ice-laden tree branches rattled, like dry bones. Every few minutes there was a loud crack, followed by a thunderous crash, as large oak and maple branches gave way.
After the ice formed, it snowed, re-misted, re-iced and snowed again. The cracks and crashes interrupt a beautiful silence.
The inside of Ridgeview Dormitory resembles a huge assisted living disaster zone. Inmates from Pine Bluff Dormitory, which houses honors-status inmates serving lengthy sentences, have been moved to the floors of Ridgeview Dormitory, because Ridgeview has power and Pine Bluff does not. In fact, Ridgeview and the recreation building are the only buildings with heat, and so the entire campus has been moved into these two buildings, and placed on lockdown.
No “movement” is allowed during a prison lockdown. Inmates must stay in the dorms at all times except during meals. Prison lockdown is an infrequent occurrence. The prison is locked down, for example, when an ambulance comes onto the campus, or when an inmate is unaccounted for. In this case, the lockdown is for everyone’s safety.
During the course of the ice storm, an inmate had a heart attack. Another had a seizure. Then, there was a fire in cell block, the disciplinary segregation dorm (fire in the hole!), so they added the cell block inmates to the Ridgeview mix as well.
The dayroom floor in my wing is wall-to-wall inmates on the floor. We have many pregnant guests, as well as disabled women in wheelchairs who cannot care for themselves, and they sit, drooling, looking out through marbled eyes. We also have diabetics and epileptics that need medicine. Medical staff is short.
I stay in my room and study. I am enrolled in the Horticulture program, and I am designing a greenhouse as well as a small business. My business, I decide, will be a container gardening business that I will call “Little Eden.”
So far, my fantasy greenhouse is even-span, on one to two acres with room to expand. It has an aluminum frame, trusses and purlins, a roof ventilator, two natural gas forced air unit heaters, two horizontal air flow fans, two exhaust fans and polycarb or rigid acrylic glazing. Later, I will choose an evaporative cooling pad and investigate solar power options.
I need to decide on a crop for my fantasy greenhouse. I am thinking about roses, because when I suggested tulips, my teacher looked at me like I had just arrived, by way of martian ray gun, from outer space. Also, my mother loves roses. They like 63 degrees and may do well in ground beds, but this would require drainage tile and an irrigation system.
Poinsettias will be a group project for the entire class, next year. Poinsettias are a huge cash crop in this country. The flowers are actually modified leaves. Poinsettias take months of advance planning, and they are “forced” to bloom like they do at exactly the time that they do. For this to happen, the entire greenhouse must be completely blacked out like a photography darkroom. Poinsettias bloom in response to short day lengths and any interruption in the blackout can be disastrous to a poinsettia holiday greenhouse crop. Our teacher told us a story of a poinsettia grower who lost the entire crop, because a curious neighbor sneaked into the greenhouse at night with a flashlight to look at the plants.
As I study, I also worry about the birds outside. Today I saw a crow surveying the situation but that was it. I have a small collection of bread slices so that, when we are allowed outside, I can toss the birds a few morsels.
As I am studying, another inmate stops by and I help her with an algebra problem.
I take a break and walk down the hall to use the restroom. Alecia is in the restroom, struggling with the faucet. Alecia is in her forties, and she has the worst case of OCD I have ever seen in my life. She stands at the sink, pants rolled up, clutching a wad of toilet paper that she uses to turn on the faucet. She says, “This place is filthy. Nasty-assed, trifling filthy bitches.”
I look at the bathroom. It is spotless.
Alicia unrolls half of a roll of toilet paper for the faucet, then produces her own bar of state soap, and ritualistically, painfully washes her hands that are chafed from so much constant scrubbing. She leaves the faucet running full stream, lifts up and holds her pant legs off the floor, and tip-toes back to her room, cursing all the way down the hallway.
We have sort of learned to live with Alicia and her severe OCD. We avoid touching or brushing against her. She has been known to assault people who accidentally touch her. She has been sent to the hole for such attacks, and I shudder to think how she fared mentally in the hole, where it is virtually impossible to wash your hands.
Most inmates just leave the faucets running full stream, because they have given up the faucet battle with Alicia. So, any hour of the day in this wing, both the upstairs bathroom faucet and the downstairs dayroom faucet are running. Somehow the running faucets bother me. I guess I am not used to it and so I wait for her to retreat down the hall and then I turn the water off.
I return to my room and look out the window to the field outside. The scene is white and peaceful. This is the field where the turkeys and the deer and the fox live. I look for birds.
The field with the ice and the white and the silence is perfect. There is no chaos.
Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration in Kentucky, first in jails and then in prison, during 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Inmate names are changed, except nicknames that do not reveal identity.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
I also post Frog Gravy at Firedoglake.com in the MyFDL diary section.
McCracken County Jail, Cell 107, sometime in February, 2008
Horse. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil, magazine ink.
On the way out of visiting, I stop in the booking area to wait for a guard to take me back to the cell. On the wall in this area is posted a laundry list of jailhouse offenses that can get us more time than we already have. I scan the list. Then I see an address in Frankfort for grievances.
My hand flies to my pocket, and I fumble for a no-shank pen and paper. I jot only crucial numbers, street names. I commit the zip code to memory, quickly.
The guard approaches and says, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you writing the address to Frankfort?”
“Yeah.”
“They don’t do nuthin’ for you.”
“I want to get to PeWee as soon as possible.” (PeWee, or KCIW is the penitentiary for women in the Louisville area)
“I mean, even if you work for them they won’t do nuthin. C’mon now, let’s go.”
“…next bus. PeWee…”
“PeWee? You been final sentenced?”
“Yes.”
I think the guard was concerned that I might write a grievance to Frankfort, explaining some of the jail conditions. Which is exactly what I do. There is absolutely nothing else to do, in fact, but write Frankfort. I write everything down, names, times, dates, events, including the pregnancy disaster, and run it all in to Frankfort.
In the cell, back in my own insanity, I fix the towel back onto my head. I find myself in a very unusual situation. I am all alone in the cell. And I have tobacco. And a lighter.
I am so gonna smoke.
In honor of one of the religious in-cell handouts that pictures a multi-headed beast and labels it “The beast of Revelation 13:1-10 symbolizes the papacy,” I have chosen, from a pocket-sized book of rolling papers labeled “The New Testament” and placed in plain view on the windowsill, a page from St. John’s Revelation, to roll the tobacco in and smoke it.
I am seated at the steel table alone, with a towel on my head, surrounded by notes, papers, and origami cranes. Some of my notes are just random, the sort of thing that an insane, entombed person might write:
“Purest of gold walks through the hottest of fires.”
and
“Israelites’ journey in the desert has to do with poisonous snakes, their bite caused death. People complained to God. He told Moses to fashion a bronze snake- anyone bitten who looked at it would be cured. Modern symbol of medicine.”
I scan the hallway for traffic as though I am about to rob a bank, and seeing no one, I flick the lighter. Nothing happens. Flick flick click click flick click fuck FUCK.
My memory banks kick in. I recall bits of some early conversations in the cell about how to light things.
“…two double A batteries on a steel table and…”
Nope. No batteries.
“…ghost lighting. Guys do it all the time. Just roll the lighter backward….”
Here I sit, in an orange jail suit with a towel on my head, trying to roll a lighter backward on a steel table to create a spark, only the little roller thingies are stuck and they don’t even roll, forward or backward. I hold the lighter up to the light, turn it upside down and focus. There is no fluid in this lighter.
This is starting to suck.
“…pop the socket. Just take a piece of foil, or metal, hold it with tissue, stick it in the socket, and it creates a spark….”
I am a madman. By miracle, I find a paper clip and straighten it out.
“…or you can unplug the TV a little, then touch metal to the metal on the TV cord. See how the TV plug is damaged? Some jails paint the plate but not this one…”
Just about the time the TV wall socket plate parallaxes into my insane view and I begin to formulate a plan, the steel door opens and in walks Ruthie.
I look like the cat that ate the canary. She says, “What are you doing?”
I spit out a canary feather, adjust the towel and ask, “Do you have any idea how to pop the socket? Because if you do, I’ll share this with you.”
Ruthie is beside herself with giddy excitement. “Hell yeah I know how to pop the socket I seen it before! Hahahahahaaa, we gonna smoke!” She runs to her bunk, gets a cup, then goes to the toilet and fills the cup with water, brings the cup to the steel table, sets it down, and says, “Here. You’ll need this.” She also produces a length of toilet tissue and says, “and this. You’ll need this too.”
I ask a question that made sense at the time: “What do you do with the water? I mean, I don’t really think it mixes too well with electricity.”
“Yeah,” says Ruthie (I swear to God), you wrap the paper clip in tissue, then dip it in the water, and then jam the wet part into the socket.”
I think I am actually living inside of a Roadrunner cartoon, where there is always something that you want but cannot get, so you are always hungry and pissed off, and in the end there is always an explosion where you die and everyone laughs. The steel door opens again. In walks Christie and Tina. Christie says, “What are you guys doing?”
“We were just about to pop the socket.”
“God dammit, I thought you were smarter than that! Y’all are going to kill yourselves!” says Christie.
“Don’t ever use God’s name like that again,” snaps Tina.
“Yeah, Christie. Use motherfucker instead. It’s more polite.”
“I can’t believe you guys,” she says.
“Well, quit runnin your dick sucker and show us how to do this right, then,” I say, “Before two more people walk in and then we gotta share this thing with six people. This is not a six-people cigarette. And I’m not cutting it with banana peels again, so don’t even go there.”
“Okay,” she says. “But keep the water. You’ll need it.”
“What for?”
“The explosion.”
“What explosion?”
Christie addresses me as if I am a child. “When you pop the socket, it creates a huge spark. You catch it on a Maxipad. The pad catches fire. You will need the water to put the fire out.”
“You cannot possibly be serious.”
She is.
“And stick that paper clip into a plastic no-shank pen sleeve,” she adds.
We partially unplug the TV, lay the clip across the prongs and there is, quite literally, a huge popping sound, a spark, and a Maxipad fire.
But there is more. We have knocked out the television to all of the cells in the hallway for the entire weekend and, of course since everyone knows who the idiots were, the guards were not at all amused, so they just went ahead and left our TV off for, like ten days.
The yells start coming: “MotherFUCKER!!”
And Harry, down the hall in his isolation cell, “Let me out! Helpmehelpmehelpme HELP!”
While the TV is off and I am coming up with insane plans because there is nothing else to do, I decide that a TV show called, “How To Survive Jail Hellhole.” Today we will discuss all of the uses for toothpaste, tomorrow, we will make dominoes out of toilet paper, and the next day we will be popping the socket.
I do this all the time. That guy flying out of the window? That’s me.
Barn during storm by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art, magazine ink, ink and colored pencil.
Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a depiction of daily life during incarceration in Kentucky, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
Names are changed, except for mine, which is clear in the documents below, and the social worker’s, also clear.
PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary, near Louisville, KY, 3-18-09, with a note about some animals on the grounds, penned on various dates and consolidated.
Before I enrolled in school, I worked recycle, breaking down cardboard boxes from the prison commissary, with a very shy woman named Roxi, who had the misfortune of being present in a home, when her boyfriend decapitated someone.
From our work area, we can see the large dining hall and the back entrance to the kitchen.
One day at work, I noticed a large, well-fed possum wander out of the kitchen area, where there is also a sewer, weave his way drunkenly led by pink snout, to the dumpster.
“You see Bob?” said Roxi.
“Who?”
“We done named him Bob. The possum.”
“Oh! He is so cute!”
“Yup. And we done fed him. A hot dog and a bologna sandwich.”
I look at Bob and think, well I’ll bet he never wants for anything.
If this weren’t real, it would be funny.
There were also a couple of prison calico cats that the inmates loved to feed and take care of, even though this was technically not allowed.
And then there was the baby bird that I was keeping warm and nursing back to health.
At the time I did not know any of this, but the prison staff would eventually kill Bob as well as the cats. They would ship Roxi, without notice to Otter Creek the private women’s prison, in Eastern Kentucky, a place where, according to some, “Lizards don’t even live in the yard.”
A guard will stomp my baby bird to death in front of me and then wipe the gore onto the pavement next to me, laughing.
If there is a place in hell…
Underground Education
I enroll in the Horticulture program, and immediately involve myself in the business of tutoring others, not in Horticulture, but in math, English, and Biology. I enjoy teaching because it is rewarding and sort of akin to clinical psychology.
Cricket never learned her times tables, but she wants to prepare for her GED, and so she asks for my help She is a mother of three small children, and when she got convicted, her hair fell out. She shows me some ‘before’ pictures. She does not have cancer, and doctors say it is not true alopecia either, because she still has eyebrows. Other inmates that live with her vouch that she is not pulling her own hair out.
Inmates are not allowed to teach.
My path crosses another inmate, Daffy, who also loves to teach, albeit under threat of the hole (or cell block, as it is called here) and we discuss strategy. My contraband teaching is difficult to prosecute, because, hey we were just studying together, right?
Daffy, however, who has a Master’s in Theology, has a following of inmates that are interested in learning more about Catholicism.
Daffy’s mother was Jewish, but she was raised Pentecostal, and later converted to Catholicism on her own. Her grandmother raised her on English literature.
We discuss our dilemma on the ball field.
Daffy says, “If someone just happens to find themselves out here on the ball field during recreation, say Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and they wish to join a few others…”
“For a discussion,” I add, “What’s to stop them? I mean they can discuss anything they want to, right?”
Contraband teaching. The truth is stranger than fiction.
One day, it all ends.
Cricket comes to me, in tears, and says, “I don’t need your help any more. They’ve done eliminated the GED classes.”
Others report the same thing. I make an appointment with my case worker and ‘out’ myself.
“What in the god damn,” I say. Some of the people I tutor are telling me that classes have been eliminated.”
“Thant’s right. The jails are complaining that they are not getting enough money because you guys are taking it all. Class D education is being eliminated; looks like inmates will be shipped back to the jails. I just wiped out an entire Life Without a Crutch class.”
My caseworker examines his computer screen.
“But Life Without a Crutch is a drug treatment class,” I say. “A good one, and most Class D’s are non-violent drug offenders.”
“I know.”
“There aren’t any educational programs at all in the jails, unless it is SAP (Substance Abuse Program) and you have to be a Class C (serving ten years or more for crimes such as trafficking and not simple possession) to even get into SAP!”
“I know.”
And so it goes. Inmates that were trying to do something, anything, to improve things with education and treatment were kicked out of school and out of treatment, in the name of money.
No educational materials allowed. This is a jail kite to the social worker in the McCracken County jail, requesting educational books. The request is denied.
A second request for educational materials is also denied by the social worker.
Author’s end note: I do not know the status of the programs today.
Frog Gravy posts are also at Firedoglakecom in the MyFDL diaries.
Saguaro, jail art with colored pencil and magazine ink by Crane-Station. Chosen today for Robert Alexander Dumas
Frog Gravy is a depiction of daily life during incarceration in Kentucky in 2008 and 2009, first in jails and then in prison, and is reconstructed from my notes.
Names have been changed.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
Frog Gravy posts are always originally posted at Firedoglake in MyFDL in my diary section. Please bear with me at this site. I am not very good with technology, so I am just figuring out what categories are. I am trying to sort posts accordingly. When I got out, for example, the cell phones were completely different.
Ricky’s World, Fulton County Detention Center, Hickman, KY, 9-14-08, just prior to the Presidential election.
When I found out about McCain’s running mate, I wrote a brief note to my son, and said, “WTF?”
His reply, as well as an update on what he is doing as I sit in Ricky’s World in Hickman, KY, is dated 9-14-08.
“Dear Mom,
“I must apologize for missing last week’s letter. I am still establishing an efficient study schedule, but if this letter stands for anything, it is for the fact that my plan is working. I managed to knock out all of next week’s reading this weekend. My friends and I came up with an apt description for the pressure of law school. It’s a bit like jogging in front of a slow moving steam roller. If you fall even remotely behind, it is a death sentence.”
“My plan is to do all of my reading on weekends while everybody else is partying. The problem is this: this week our professors laid it on a bit heavy. I think we totaled about 150 pages of reading on the week…a lot, but completely manageable. But we also have writing assignments. So, when everybody else is juggling writing assignments with the class reading the next morning, I will be able to address these writing projects free of any burdens. People will claim that pressure motivates them to work harder and more efficiently. That fact was true for me at certain points in college. The stakes are too high for that kind of pressure to be manageable. And anyway, I need the time to review black letter law books during the week.”
“My curriculum is a bit different than for standard 1Ls. I may have told you…I opted for an alternate curriculum that, to my knowledge, is only offered here at Georgetown. The curriculum is supposed to teach students not just the “what” of law, but also the “why.” We read cases and then supplement them with bits of history and philosophy. So far, the extra supplementary materials have given our readings a scholarly flair, but the one characteristic that I like most involves people. From what I understand, the curriculum attracts a more politically involved, open-minded student body…”
-snip-
“My roommate and I chose to take a few hours today and visit the Air and Space Museum. We had originally planned to see the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but the Archives are closed on Sunday. Nonetheless, having seen, among other things, the first plane to propel the Wright brothers into history, the first plane to break the sound barrier, Sputnik, the Spirit of St. Louis, samples from the surface of the moon, Skylab, a lunar space module, a V-2 rocket, several space craft and aircraft of all shapes, sizes and speeds, I would hesitate to cal the day unsuccessful. Furthermore, none of the aforementioned was a replica. I was doubtful at first, and so I asked a museum attendant who assured me, that when I was looking at the Bell X-1 jet that propelled Chuck Yeager past Mach-1, I was in fact looking at the Bell X-1 jet that propelled Chuck Yeager past Mach-1.”
“I see you took notice of McCain’s running mate. All that can be said of her has been said in every venue aside from the media. In the first week after McCain announced his decision, the only thing I heard about Palin had to do with her pregnant daughter. It was maddening. Rather than take note of her spotty education and lack of experience, people seemed to be fixated on Palin’s views about her daughter’s decision to avoid an abortion. My roommate and I compared it to a situation in which an elephant lands in your living room, and everybody focuses on the fact that the elephant has a green toenail, while you stand screaming in the background that it’s a fucking elephant….aaaaaaahhh!!!“
“I listened to a radio talk show host who said that the decision was evidence of political aptitude on the part of McCain. Even in the insulation of a campaign he realizes he is losing this election. Rather than go the standard route and opt for Mitt Romney, essentially conceding defeat, he throws a hail Mary pass and picks Palin.”
“The thing that is so maddening about this situation is the fact that people cite one of her merits as involving the fact that people can relate to her….that she’s just another one of the crowd. People fail to understand that the qualities that entail good leadership naturally set people apart. We elect people because they stand out, because they presided over the editing of the Harvard Law Review and led a successful political campaign as a minority figure in a major metropolitan area and carried on their resume a whole host of other unique accomplishments…not because they had the wherewithal to drive their children to hockey practice each day like the rest of us. This election is not really about McCain anyway. He’s the “other guy.” The question in this election is whether we will elect Barack Obama or whether we will not elect Barack Obama…..I count myself fortunate enough to be in close proximity to the steps where he will take his oaths if elected.”
My son ends the letter with “Much Love.” A photograph is enclosed. I apply State-issue toothpaste, the universal jail house glue, to the back of the photograph, and stick it to the cement-block wall above my bunk. The television is airing Black Entertainment Television (BET) at maximum volume.
I return to the steel table and continue to work on a drawing, with magazine ink and commissary colored pencils that were manufactured in Indonesia by, I am fairly certain, people in an outsourced sweat shop who do not have the time or supplies to draw.
