As some of you may know, I am working on editing Frog Gravy at the moment. Sometimes, I have difficulty locating my own posts in this site, because there are many, and lately, many are unrelated to incarceration, so believe it or not, I have to google to search for some of my own Frog Gravy writings.
If you are new, or if you are interested in reading about incarceration, here is a list of a few posts you may find interesting.
Before I begin, I would like to show you the GoodReads statement I made regarding Three Cups of Tea. My GoodReads list is in the lower left part of this site:
This book is controversial because investigations have greatly questioned its truthfulness. In fact, the author has been ordered to pay back some charities, due to accusations of misappropriation of funds and misrepresentations of activities.
The book remains on the list, and it is unrated at this site currently.
At this point, I would like to ask readers what, if anything, you would like to see more of. My site stats indicate that people are interested in incarceration, but also, in topics related to living in poverty. If you have specific requests, please do not be shy about asking. For example, if you once read a Frog Gravy and would like to see it again, but cannot find it, I will try to help with that.
As I said, I am posting this, because the story, Frog Gravy, is sort of lost in this site and takes some searching and back-surfing to find.
Just a brief note on the legal case: It is headed to the United States Supreme Court as a Petition for Certiorari. The United States Supreme Court rarely grants these petitions, and the issues are very specific. Of course, we believe the constitutional issues in this case [insert litany here] are significant, or we would not disrespect or waste the Court’s time in filing the petition, but again, such petitions are rarely granted. I will speak about the next step in the legal case at the appropriate time.
Jail art rendered from an art card that my family sent to me. I am unable to find the name of the original artist, but I loved the card, with the frogs on the tulip.
Jail religious pamphlet, McCracken County Jail.
Internal fixation, right calcaneus- 10 screws and a plate. In the hole, I wrapped toilet paper strips around my ankle to fend off the arthritis from the cold. I also have a healed L-1 burst fracture; arthritis from these injuries was aggravated by constant cold and lack of activity in the jails, particularly in McCracken County Jail, where real recreation in an outside cage was a rare event.
A 52-second long Cannes Film Festival winning short about love, and illness:
Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
Inmate names are changed.
McCracken County Jail, Cell 107, Lenten season, 2008
I have learned that Catholics are disliked in a subtle, ill-defined way in this jail. Some of my family members are Catholic, and it took some, uh, doing before I received Catholic materials in this cell. Look to your left, look to your right. From reading the religious materials in the cell, I surmise that the Catholics are doomed, with the caveat ‘That’s not to say that there are not some very nice Catholics in the world,’ a statement that is roughly akin to the statement, ‘Some of my best friends are gay.’
For the sake of personal survival, I have learned to memorize a few, select, key Bible verses that explain, distill, sanitize and simplify the core mysteries of existence such as: living, dying, loving, creation, faith and parenting. If anyone asks a question about anything, I am supposed to say, “Show me where it says that in the Bible.”
To keep from flying apart at the psychiatric seams, in addition to wearing my terry cloth towel tin foil hat all the time for no clear reason, I compose music and mandalas in my head. To fend off the pain of physical deterioration, I ponder concepts.
I have a copy of the peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, that I read in secret, because another inmate “rebukes” it. She says it is “Catholic” and she “rejects” it, or rather she rejected it with the statement “Get thee behind me Satan,” which was a pretty clear message that I should keep the prayer to myself.
I study the prayer, and decide that hatred leads to injury, injury to discord, discord to doubt, doubt to despair, despair to darkness, darkness to sorrow, and sorrow to regret. And, that love leads to pardon, pardon to harmony, harmony to faith, faith to hope, hope to light, and light to joy. So, without love there is no joy.
But, love also leads to sorrow. In fact, love can lead to sorrow, darkness, despair, doubt, discord and even injury. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy. Complacency. There is no mystery and no magic in apathy and complacency. Love, however, is powerful, and potentially destructive or even violent.
I decide that hope and imagination are connected, and that hope’s unfair close relative is doubt. I cannot describe any of the concepts in the prayer with words- all are part of me and all of us. The more I study the more I learn and the more I learn, the less I know. I decide that I could spend the rest of my life studying this prayer so that when I die, I will know nothing about what living means.
As I study the prayer, a war-like atmosphere of sick, lunatic din surrounds me, and I believe that the prayer may have been inspired by the pain and crisis of humans, who never learn anything. I wonder why humans need pain and crisis to evolve spiritually. Just when we get content, something in our body goes awry, something sad, maybe associated with aging, or actively dying while living, some ache or pain that tells us that we will never go camping again, or see the ocean again, or comfort an animal again, or make love again, or that maybe the best sunrise or the most beautiful sunset is behind us. Things will never be the same.
Regret is never having lived a single day to the fullest because we have never actually stayed in any given single real day.
Regret is knowing that my son may never see me happy.
But, regret brings realization. And realization simplifies: I do not have much, but then, I no longer want much or need much. I would rather cradle a bird than to die with fancy clothes in the closet.
If my son could see me happy, that would be enough.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
-Mother Teresa
McCracken County Jail, Spring, 2008
Christie has been denied drug court for her nonviolent drug-related charges, and issued a 24-year sentence. Her treatment denial was based on one of three counties wanting her to do time, rather than engage in the rigorous monitoring of drug court.
Drug court is not a joke, nor is it a get-out-of-jail-free card. The person must be employed, and available for drug testing on the spot, at any given time of the day or night. The person calls on the telephone, twice a day, to report to a counselor. In-court meetings are required, as are, I believe, twelve-step meetings. Drug court is time-intensive, and heavy with documentation. In order to be considered suitable for drug court, the candidate must plead guilty to her crime, and must agree to serve a lengthy sentence if, for some reason, she fails to follow the rules to the letter.
Here are ten essential components of drug court, from wiki:
The 10 Key Components
Drug Courts integrate alcohol and other drug treatment services with justice system case processing.
Using a non-adversarial approach, prosecution and defense counsel promote public safety. Participants must waive their due process rights to a speedy trial and sign a pre-emptive confession before being allowed to participate.
Eligible participants are identified early and promptly placed in the Drug Court program.
Drug Courts provide access to a continuum of alcohol, drug and other related treatment and rehabilitation services.
Abstinence is monitored by frequent alcohol and other drug testing.
A coordinated strategy governs Drug Court responses to participants compliance.
Ongoing judicial interaction with each Drug Court participant is essential.
Monitoring and evaluation measure the achievement of program goals and gauge effectiveness.
Continuing interdisciplinary education promotes effective Drug Court planning, implementation, and operations.
Forging partnerships among Drug Courts, public agencies, and community-based organizations generates local support and enhances Drug Court effectiveness.[3]
Drug court is notable in the inmate community for what happens to inmates who relapse. They can end up serving more time than they ever possibly imagined, more time than killers, even. For this reason, some inmates who truly want to get clean and sober, but who have a tendency to slip and slide during this process, will choose to do the time instead. I have seen some spectacular drug court failures. Inmates who get served out on a sentence behind drug court failure consistently report regret.
There are also some wonderful drug court success stories. Here is the site with more information. People who successfully complete the rigors of drug court often become mentors in the recovery community.
Shortly after Christie was denied drug court, she was shipped to prison, and while I was happy that she was going to a better place than the jail, her departure broke my heart. Never in my adult life had I been close to women, but in this disaster situation, I came to love Christie (and Tina) like sisters. Later on during my incarceration, after my fake release on parole, Christie, Tina and I will spend time together in prison, at PeWee Valley KCIW.
I cried when Christie left. Such is the nature of incarceration. You exchange the most intimate details of your lives with each other and then….poof. They’re gone. After a while, you learn not to get too close to anybody. People may think that you are arrogant, but really, it is a simple matter of self-preservation.
After Christie leaves, I keep to myself and write. This morning, I did some standing-in-place exercises. Then I read Wisdom 3:1-12. For breakfast we had eggs, one slice of toast, cream of wheat, sausage and half a banana. I write everything down, inane, meaningless stuff, to keep from coming apart with grief. For lunch we had chicken, one slice of bread, corn, peaches and cole slaw.
Harry is screaming for help from his isolation cell and I am having difficulty focusing on my notes.
One time, Christie and I fashioned chess pieces out of scavenged paper scraps from the cell. We drew a chess board onto the steel table with a bar of soap, and then we played chess. That made my day.
A while after Christie departed, she wrote me. Inmates are allowed to write each other, but I have not been allowed to contact Christie since my release on parole (I asked my officer about this). I miss her, and so I have her letter, and I read it over and over, even now.
She starts with: “What the hell? How come you haven’t wrote me yet?”
I have an answer. The answer is, it is just too painful. All of this. It’s just too much.
Anyhow, I did get a kick out of her description of some of the men who responded to her trick ads:
…some interesting individuals- one in Oregon, NM, Colorado, Maine- is very interesting. He is a marathon runner. Speaks Italian and French- very smart. One from Texas. He looks like he came straight out of that movie “Revenge of the Nerds…”
In prison, Christie, Tina and I discussed Frog Gravy at length. This memoir would not exist without these two wonderful women. Disaster brought us together. Disaster taught each of us a little more about love, and how it feels to lose something that matters to you. It is probably safe but sad to say that disaster taught us each a little more about being women. And I am grateful for the lesson.
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!
You can click on this music, and listen to it while you read the post-you do not have to focus on the video, although it is quite nice.
Enigma-Return To Innocence
Ducks, jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil and magazine ink.
Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr with comment:
For Dad. Wild Turkey. We have these beautiful birds here. I was not really able to finish, because they turned the lights out, and because I do not have the correct colors (such as rust). Turkeys have been nearly wiped out by unrestricted hunting and land development. Some programs are bringing them back. They roost in trees, but like to run on the ground.
note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
McCracken County Jail, Cell 107, early 2008
The social worker tells me that I am angry, and that I need to not be angry, and that I need to accept my situation like every one else does, and I need to stop writing, because no one reads anything that I write anyway, because no one cares. She is referring, I assume, to the many letters that I write regarding jail conditions. I listen to her for a bit, and then decide that I would rather be back in the cell. I end the meeting. I continue to write.
I keep my writing to myself and I quit talking about the letters.
In the cell I wear a towel on my head and babble to myself endlessly, in my mind. Maybe the towel keeps others from hearing these conversations. The other me, the one I babble to, is elegant and strong and graceful, and says all of the right things to all of the wrong people. This such as ‘I respectfully disagree,’ and ‘No, thank you,’ and ‘I am sorry but I cannot support you and your commissary habit in here,’ and ‘I will continue to write because it gives me meaning and purpose at the moment,’ and ‘Excuse me, do you think you could quit screaming for just a few moments, because I am finding it difficult to concentrate.’
However, it is not the other me that is in jail. It is me.
“Never take anything to trial in McCracken County,” says the new arrival, Sirkka, to me, after introductions. “Everyone knows that.”
Sirkka is tiny, just 4’8,” and she drives me nuts in an endearing, pathetic sort of way. I want to hug her. I want to kill her.
She does not want to put clothes on and strolls about the cell half-naked, in bra and panties, talking at an indecipherable speed. Sirkka has an eating disorder. It reminds me of what I used to be and so, maybe this is why she annoys me. Her behavior is actually good for me because it reminds me of the horror of food binges and scamming for food at every opportunity. For a while, she convinced the staff she was pregnant because pregnant women get extra trays, but when the staff figured out that she was not pregnant, they placed her in the hole for a bit, and then back in the cell.
Today at breakfast, before I even sit down, she says, “Are you gonna eat that?”
“Here. take the whole thing,” I say.
Down the hall, Harry screams from his isolation cell, “Somebody help me! Pleeeease! Let Me out! HELLLP! HELPmehelpmehelpmehelpme, PLEASE!”
Sirkka collects six sausages, five pieces of toast, two milks, and three servings of Fruit Loops. At lunch, four corn dogs, two helpings of corn, and three pieces of cake. The only thing I asked her for was one serving of applesauce but she would not give it up. She weighs 105 pounds, and has gained 30 pounds to get there; that is a 30 pound weight gain in a month. At this rate, she will be obese by May. That can happen in here. I met an inmate who gained 150 pounds in a year in jail. She had given up.
On one of the rare occasions that we do get to visit the outside cage for recreation, I cannot believe this, but Ruthie and I are the only ones who want to go outside.
Christie and Joyce both claim that going outside briefly is actually more depressing than staying in the cell. I am worried about Christie. She stays on her bunk and cries all the time now. She says, “I just can’t help it, I just feel so bad inside.”
“Come on Christie, let’s just get out for a minute,” I say. “You’ll feel better. Tina, you too. Come on you guys. We’re going out. It’ll be all right. You’ll see. When we get back we’ll watch ‘Lost.’ I’ll even comb your hair Christie. Come on, we can do this.”
We go. In the outside cage Sirkka strips down to her bra and stands at the door, hoping a Class D male will walk by. Christie sits in a chair, silent. Tina takes a book and seats herself next to Christie. I stand in a corner and look up. The sun is shining. I shield my eyes.
Before you read this post, take a look at this letter from DOC and bear in mind that I have an eight-year sentence:
Roxi, my sister’s Cocker Spaniel, jail art by Crane-Station on flickr:
McCracken County Jail, after the hole, January 2008
“You have to understand that you’re in jail,” says Garrison, a high-ranking McCracken County Jail officer. Garrison is wearing a crisp, white shirt. His good looks have probably assured him status in all the right cliques, from high school (football I assume) days to the present. Garrison’s soft-spoken, understated manner makes him an effective officer, I think. His demeanor commands wide-spread respect from inmates.
I have requested placement into one of the smaller cells at the back of the jail rather than one of the large overpopulated ‘population’ cells, and cited several psychiatric diagnoses to support the request.
He says, “Now, if you didn’t want to be here you shouldn’t have done all those crimes, I read the charges. This ain’t the Marriott, this is jail, and we don’t make special exceptions for anyone. We provide a safe environment with three meals a day and TV and that’s a lot more than a lot of people have on the streets…”
He is going to place me in a large population cell, and my heart sinks because I am not sure I can handle dueling screaming asylums: one in my head and the other in the environment around my head. The synergistic pitch alone could lead to a violent hemorrhagic event that would leave me bleeding from my eyeballs.
There are many Garrisons out there, who wear white shirts, because they are in the business of pest control. Where to warehouse and entomb the vermin? Where to stash society’s lower companionship? Such decisions.
However, God smiles this day, and guard Sally leads me to Cell 107. What a blessing. My prayers are answered.
I begin writing down everything I see and hear. Most of what follows is verbatim, from my notes, pages 9 through 14.
(Private joke: God divided by zero and got my notes.)
The cell is the size of a tiny garage. The bolted steel door has a hinged metal flap that is opened from the outside. After the steel door closes, I notice that a previous occupant/artist has penned three verbs that make newcomers feel cozy and right at home: “Kill. Fuck. Die.” in no-shank pen block letters. Below that a verb, then an article, then a noun: “Fuck The World.” As I have explained, the artist then outlined the small window in the door with a border to make the window look like a TV, and even added a rabbit-ear antenna. The ‘volume’ knob is labeled “valium,” and the maximum setting is labeled “10 mg.”
Three bullet-proof glass windows face the hallway. The rest is standard fare for a kennel: six people in a four-person tomb sharing one steel toilet; a lingering smell that is typical of jam-packed humans; no view to the outside; so little room that you can only do a few standing-in-place exercises or push ups against the cement wall; fluorescent lighting 24/7; ice cold that re-triggers traumatic arthritis; maniacal laughing and shouting all hours of the day and night; a man screaming, “PLEASE!!! Help Me! Let Me out!! HELPmehelpmehelpmehelpme Help!” all hours of the day and night, with the whole Daliesque, grey cement landscape dotted with focused, albeit narrow, religious pamphlets, bibles and study guides.
photo by jef safi (writing) under creative commons on flickr with the explanation:
slεεp oƒ thε paranoıa-crıtıcıst rhızomε . .
Dream Caused by the Feverish Flight of a Concupiscent Pigeon Around a Daliesque Girona’s place One Second Before the Nightmare of Awakening.
I can hear in my mind, horsemen on the horizon, Ka-ka Kunk, Ka-Ka Kunk, Ka-ka kunk.
I spot an ice water thermos on a cement ledge at the entrance to the toilet. I get a drink of water. I see an M and M bag that seems to have been abandoned. I pick it up, empty out what is left of the M and Ms and eat them.
A while later, Leese is in the toilet and there is an ear-piercing shriek: “Who took my M an Ms!!! Oh my gawwwwwd, my M and Ms, they are gone, they were just here!” Leese is hysterical, on the verge of tears.
“Um,” I begin. “Man, I am so sorry, I ate them. I did not realize they were yours.”
“You fucking old-ass bitch!” she shouts. “They were my makeup! You ate my fucking makeup!”
A round of snickers in the cell.
Color me Scarlet Letter. I am now, officially, the lowest of the lowest of the low and much less. In a record-breaking ten minutes I am close to being voted off of Inmate Island. Another way of putting it, in urban slang: I am going down.
In time, we heal the relationship. I replace her Max Factor M and Ms. One day, Leese hands me a poem she has written. The poem is four pages long. She says, “Here. Put this in your book.”
The poem is titled, You Paid the Price, But it Couldn’t Be Bought.
It reads:
Sick of the darkness, sick of the light
Sick of the day, sick of the night.
Sick of the quiet, sick of the noise
Sick of the games, sick of the toys.
Sick of the shoes, sick of my feet,
Sick of the cold, sick of the heat.
Sick of being happy, sick of being sad,
Sick of doing good, sick of being bad.
As I read, I can feel tears form. The tears are warm. They drop onto the cement. And the poem continues…
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.
cartoon bird with flowers by Crane-Station (as masonbennu) on flickr.
Frog Gravy is a Kentucky nonfiction incarceration account.
Frog Gravy contains graphic language.
KCIW PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary, my dad’s birthday, 1-7-09.
I finally got glasses. They are not the right strength but they will do for now. After nearly a year in the jails, in the constant fluorescent lighting, my vision, both near and far, is compromised, but with each passing day in the sunlight, my eyes are healing. I am not yet sure what my baseline vision will be.
Since I left the recycle job to attend school, I notice that the cardboard boxes that I used to break down have been piling up and piling up, into a huge mess. Another inmate that I used to work with tells me that the boxes area never looked such a mess when I worked there, and this is true. Not only do I enjoy work, particularly outdoor manual labor, I am also curious. When I worked with the boxes, I wanted to see where each box label came from, and so I always completed the pile of boxes set before me, no matter how large it was.
I mailed quite a few cardboard box labels directly to my family in Seattle for safekeeping, with notes that said things like, “You won’t believe this. This beef comes from Brazil,” and “The commissary handkerchiefs that inmates use in America are made by other inmates in other countries.”
I ask my former boss, Officer Osborne, what happened with the recycle area, and why it is such a mess, and he says, “A little of this. A little of that.” Which means that someone was fired, or sent to cell block (the hole) or both.
I miss seeing Bob, the fat friendly possum. But now I have my birds.
I spend most of my time in school now. Horticulture is a wonderful, diverse and fascinating field. My dream bird-sanctuary-of-all-time has now evolved into an aviary/ornamental horticulture dreamland. Maybe someday my dream life with birds will be fulfilled.
Since Kentucky is footing the bill, I decide to take full advantage of it. I am in school every day from 8 AM to 3:30 PM, and I am taking a wonderful night Biology class. I sign up for mammogram. I visit the eye doctor, the psychiatrist and the dentist. I draw and write. I visit the state-of-the-art gym and do aerobics. I speed-walk the ball field and talk to birds. I attend Sunday mass. I read Mother Goose and Space Books and everything else I get my hands on. I read The Adversary: A Story of Monstrous Deception by Emmanuel Carrere, which is the best true crime book I have ever read; I check out Naeem Murr’s The Boy(from inter-library loan) , which is the most hair-raising, poetic commentary on good and evil I have ever read, and read that twice. I make friends. I play cards.
I do not have to worry about the bills. Life is good. Writing about it is even better.
As I am leaving school one day, I encounter an inmate who is from McCracken County, where I am from. She says, “You’re from McCracken, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Small world, you know. I took my case to trial and lost.”
“Never take anything to trial in McCracken County,” she says. I have now heard this from many inmates, in various unrelated settings.
“Oh, that,” I say. “Hey, no worries. I love to write, you know, and…”
“So I heard. You’re the inmate that writes.”
“Yeah, and I mean, McCracken is the gift that keeps on giving. Did you hear about the inmate who got pregnant in the shower stall of her own cell? I thought that was effing hilarious.”
“Oh I heard all about it.Uh Huh. That was my husband, that got her pregnant.”
What?!
“Yeah. The guy that was having sex with her in the shower is my husband.”
“Oh my God, I am so sorry, I had no…”
“It’s okay, it’s not you,” she says.
“Man. That’s tough,” I say.
“Yeah, and wanna know the kicker?”
“You mean there’s more?”
“Oh, yeah. I get here, to PeWee, and the bitch finds me. She comes up to me and points to her pregnant belly and says, Your husband fucked me in the shower and now I am carrying his baby.”
In my mind, aside from the image of two people having intercourse in a jail cell shower stall, I collect some sociological data: a husband and a wife and a husband’s girlfriend and an unborn baby, are all locked up. Wow.
“Man, I am so sorry. I did not mean to hurt you even more. What an awful story.”
I feel terrible for saying what I said to this woman. I want to take my words back. I want to disappear.
We speak for a few more minutes and then go our separate ways. I never see the woman again.
Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like without birds.
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:
Ahem. Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account that contains graphic plants.
I would like to give a shout-out to Miss Heavren, the amazing JCTC Horticulture instructor for her stellar teaching and saint-like patience, as well as her dry sense of humor. One of her sayings remains with me: “Well, in a perfect world…”
This post is for Stan.
Barn. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. colored pencil and magazine ink.
Daffy. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. My favorite cartoon character. Colored pencil, ink, magazine ink.
Pine Bluff Dormitory Study Room, KCIW PeWEE Valley Women’s Penitentiary, Summer 2009.
I am in the study room of Pine Bluff Dormitory trying to design a soccer field for one of my Horticulture classes, and my friend Lindsay is helping me.
Lindsay is serving out a sentence of fifteen years and will be released in 2016. She is a delightful woman, full of energy and really smart. Lindsay is an honor inmate who is now a literary braille translator working on maps (this may be called tactile translation) and, since she already completed the Horticulture program and remembers the content of the classes, she is invaluable to me.
I am trying to design a soccer field, which pales in comparison to one of Lindsay’s previous golf course projects, and I am jealous of her, floored really, in the same way that Patrick Bateman is floored when Paul Allen’s business card is shown in the American Psycho business card scene.
Turns out that golf courses involve complicated design and maintenance, particularly the green, but even the fairway, which is why golf course superintendents make a lot of money.
I have chosen a soccer field because I love soccer, and played on two indoor and three outdoor teams in Seattle at one time. Old People’s Soccer is a sport for heathens who dish out a stunning variety of bad behaviors on a nightly basis, and then, the next morning, show up for work and blend in with the passing public. I used to carry an extra ACL knee brace in the trunk of my car, to the brutal coed indoor games, so that someone else could borrow it.
As an aside, I think that Old People’s Softball may be even more brutal than Old People’s Soccer, if that is possible.
I want a grass field because turf makes the game so fast. Lindsay helps me with the drainage design.
After a long stay in Ridgeview Dormitory, I requested the transfer to Pine Bluff Dormitory because Pine Bluff, which houses honor inmates and others serving lengthy sentences, is quieter and softer on the psyche. I miss my roommate from Ridgeview, Miss Pat, and I did not really want to leave her, but I was beginning to slide into depression at Ridgeview just because of the constant chaos.
I do not qualify to apply for honor status because I go up for parole at the end of the summer, but still, being housed with inmates in the honor dorm is much better. The study room we are in, for example, is quiet, and I can concentrate. While I earned A’s in Horticulture ultimately, it is a wonder I did not flunk out of school while I was living in Ridgeview Dormitory.
After we study, Lindsay goes to a bookshelf and retrieves an encyclopedia and opens it to the topic of The Riviera.
She explains to me that she has a male pen pal who is also in prison, and they write each other about all of the wonderful imaginary trips that they take, all over the world, on a regular basis. To take a trip, Lindsay uses the encyclopedia, and writes to her pen pal, the details of the coastline they see, the food they eat, and the side trips they will take.
Lindsay’s imaginary trips make an impression on me because she is so happy when she describes them, as if she is actually in these various beautiful places.
A few days later, I check out from the prison library The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. It is, without a doubt, the most poignant and inspiring memoir I have ever read. Author Jean-Dominique Bauby was working as the editor of the french Elle style magazine, when he suffered a devastating stroke that left him with a rare condition called ‘locked in syndrome,’ where a patient is fully aware and awake but cannot move or talk.
If ever there was a prison, this author was in it. He could communicate only by blinking one eye. A speech pathologist constructed a chart of the French alphabet, in order of the most-used letters first. A communicator would point to the letters as they appeared and Bauby would blink at the letter that he wanted to use, and so, letter by letter he wrote his story.
In his story he takes trips to beautiful places where he tastes his favorite foods, all in his mind, and he is thus freed from his devastating physical incarceration.
After release I obtain my own copy. Lindsay’s imaginary trips and Jean-Domonique Bauby’s memoir will change my view of prison.
That is, there need not be walls to make a prison, and there are no walls in the mind.
