Why You Cannot Divide By Zero: Frog Gravy 56

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

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley, Winter, 2008-2009.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why is this?” asks Tory.

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

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

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

Tory tells me she will find out.

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

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

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

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

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

The Embarrassing Conversation: Frog Gravy 55

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.

Bird Lady: Frog Gravy 54

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

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

note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Frog Night: Frog Gravy 51

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

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

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

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

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

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

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

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

I have lost my rocks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Motherfuckers.” I announce.

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

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

At least we enjoyed the rocks, while they lasted.

Reader Update And Bill Of Particulars: Frog Gravy Legal Case

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.

Freaks Share Thanksgiving Dinner: Frog Gravy 45

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

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

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

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

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

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

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

It says:

First Course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to our culinary student.

Second course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last item on this menu is curious.

It says:

“To-go outside later at the buses.”

Prison Life: Frog Gravy 42

My sister’s cocker spaniel Roxi by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art, colored pencil. My sister is a champion at the precise art of weaving, hence, “Weave-On.” A fellow inmate, who was a dog groomer, sat with me and described some of the finer points of cocker spaniels to me, so that I could do this drawing. Hence, the great big feet and the long, pretty ears. Roxi is very sweet. She is also a hot mess! Very wound up.Drawn in Ricky’s World.

Music for this post post is CEBU dancing inmates:

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

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

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

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

PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary, KCIW, Spring, 2009.

At five-forty-five every morning, the fluorescent lights buzz and snap on throughout the penitentiary, and we are awakened with the cheery overhead announcement, “Goood morning KCIW, this is your five-forty-five AM wake-up call,” that sounds exactly like “Gooood morning Viet Nam,” only with different words.

My roommate, Miss Pat, a kind black lady who loves her grandchildren, and I get ready for school. Breakfast is served in the dining hall at around 6 AM, but I usually skip it and study, because early morning has always been my best study time.

I have designed a rather nice imaginary greenhouse for Horticulture, if I may say so myself, for about $34,000. It is a 28′ x 96′ “Quonst”-style, plastic (polyethlylene) covered house, with fan-and-pad cooling, nice heaters, fans and lights, and a bit of high-tech environmental control.

I chose sub-irrigation. The benches are fitted for ebb-and-flow. Water is pumped into the benches, the pots take up what they need, and then the benches drain. I even chose this irrigation method for propagation (germination) over misting, because I think misting can invite fungus problems.

I’ve read that Europe, which is eons ahead of us in horticulture, has switched to nearly 80% ebb-and-flow. In fact, what is growing (so to speak) in popularity over there is flood floors, floor benches, where the whole thing is flooded and then drained. Fertilizer and insecticide can be delivered in this way.

Mealtimes in the prison are very busy, and the dining hall is always crowded. Dormitories are called at staggered time intervals to address the crowding, but often, inmates linger after the next dorm is called in. One chair in the dining hall is elevated and cushioned and it has a sign on it that says, “Reserved for Jackie.”

I am going to burn in Hell like a twig for writing this, but when I see Jackie for the first time, I cannot take my eyes away, because she has no arms, and is eating with her feet. But I can’t help it, I am mesmerized. She can do things with her toes that I cannot do with my hands, let alone my feet. In fact, she does everything with her feet and even does unassisted outdoor work in the yard with strength and precision. Her adaptation makes me feel like a clumsy klutz.

At some point, I ask Christie (who was initially sent here after her drug court denial) why Jackie is here, and Christie tells me that she was convicted of shaking her baby to death on the outside, a case of shaken baby syndrome. At some point, in my room, when no one is around, I try to get my feet to within range of my face and I cannot do it.

I have written to the Kentucky Innocence Project and requested DNA testing for the inside and the outside of the “baggie” in my case, but my request is rejected, because I am not on death row, I suppose.

Back at school, my greenhouse is a production operation, so the benches run the length-of-house. There are five benches, three movable (rolling), so the aisle is ‘floating,’ and the aisle is just wide enough for carts- this maximizes the growing area.

After school, I am picked, for no reason whatsoever, to be the subject of guard/officer Ogletree’s (who I call “Ogre,”) torment-a-white-inmate game. She prods and insults me all the way to main laundry, and forces me to change into clothing fit for a child. Fortunately, I have spare clothing, but I am in tears all of the sudden, because for some reason, this humiliation gets to me. I speak to Officer Kennedy, a kind officer, trained in negotiation, who will go on, I believe, to be Assistant Warden at a different prison after my release. Kennedy is very helpful, and I am able to return to the dorm, to walk through the inmate insult lines and laughs, all the way back to my room.

As I said before, it would not surprise me if Ogletree spoke backward or neighed like a horse, or spoke in a combination of previously untranslated ancient languages, because she is at the least, an egregious human being.

I wanted to say to her, “Bitch, I did not invent slaves. My ancestors were poor. They farmed their own land until they lost everything.” But it would not do any good. She uses her badge to berate, belittle, and humiliate, and grievances go nowhere.

Sometimes I think I am wasting my time with God, and maybe I should just throw in the towel and worship Satan. He is winning, anyway. Why try so hard to search for God, look for the good in people, seek truths, stand up for something, and try to be a better person, when it is so easy to just join in with the Father Of Lies?

McCracken Horror Picture Show: Frog Gravy 41

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:

Med Line: Frog Gravy 40

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.

Prison is not just a circle. It is a sphere.

Lighter note: My Nuts Itch.

Released On Parole By “Mistake”: Frog Gravy 39 [updated]

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.”

“I am, believe me, I am.”

“That’s what I would do.”

“Hardly anyone else would.”