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Life Uncategorized

Walking Pneumonia, Plea Deals, and Words to Live By

MUNCY STATE PRISON

September 25th, 2024

Wednesday

1:46pm

Swiper has walking pneumonia and bronchitis. I was sick too with whatever virus caused it, but I got over it without antibiotics. She, on the other hand, is as sick as a dog. It’s alarming to me that her immune system is worse than mine, and I have lupus.

Bambi and Daisy got into a monstrous fight the other day and now are best friends again. I don’t get it. During the fight, Bambi shrieked that Daisy even talks shit about me, which shouldn’t surprise me, but did. Daisy apparently thinks that I don’t have remorse for my crime, but should. Like–what–are YOU the parole board? You’ve been using drugs since you were 14 and abandoned your SEVEN children BEFORE you went to prison, if you want to play the judgment game, miss.

Ugh.

But I don’t want to play. 

I don’t. 

Whatever you need to say to make yourself feel better. 

And she calls Bambi high and mighty.

Whatever.

It doesn’t make me feel any better to sling shit at her. I abandoned my child, too. I’m so tired of this place. Exhausted of it, really. I wasn’t on the callout for that drug and alcohol class today. I can’t believe I’m still just sitting here.

Bambi is apparently jealous of Daisy and I being friends, because she brought it up that Daisy talks to me about her kids and not her, so she’s probably trying to drive a wedge between Daisy and I. 

Well, she wins.

Now Daisy ONLY talks to Bambi.
They have their own Mean Girls Club.

Daisy was distraught the other day because she found out her 12-year old daughter is smoking pot. Her solution was to call CYS on the lady that voluntarily took in four of Daisy’s kids when her mother died. How would that solve anything?? Her kids are going to end up in foster care, and it’s going to be her fault. I helped her write a victim impact statement yesterday because her ex-husband is being sentenced soon for the rape of their daughter. Then I wondered to myself how asking a judge for “the maximum punishment allowable by law” meshes with my own person views that all prisons should be abolished.

Short answer: It doesn’t.

I have to write this book. I have about 20 pages written. I never had trouble writing about myself before, but it seems now that I do. It’s just one terrible life event after another, all strung together. It’s beyond depressing, so I’m breaking it up with journal entries from my time here, blogs, and interviews. I’m going to need some more interviews.

September 27th, 2024

Friday


I have court on Tuesday to get sentenced. I wonder what I’ll get. Hopefully no house arrest.

Daisy told me the other day that Morocco told Bambi that I let Burgundy read the manuscript that Bambi recruited me to write about her life and mostly about her affair with a Baptist pastor that ended badly. According to Burgundy, we were making fun of Bambi after I let her read it. 

Now, this seems extra-hateful.

I did not let her read it, although she did ask to. Why has Burgundy been talking shit about me for six months straight? Doesn’t she have better things to do?? 

Apparently not.

First, I’m racist and I stink. Now, I can’t be trusted with personal information. 

Now Bambi hates me. 

Of course.

September 29th, 2024

Sunday

4:40pm

I’ve been vaping way too much. It’s Sunday, I’m out of e-cigarettes, and I already owe four out on Friday. 

It’s bad.

At least I have the money to pay them back, but it seems that nobody else does, so Zuko’s prices went up.

Sucks.

I guess I won’t have any more this week, which makes me anxious and uncomfortable, especially with sentencing coming up on Tuesday.

Ugh.

Babi hasn’t spoken to me at all, which isn’t unusual for her, but there’s a hostility behind it now. 

Whatever.

Here’s what I don’t get–if she wanted to make her story a book EVERYONE would read, who cares if Burgundy DID read it? Bambi’s the one who wanted to make it public in the first place!

Make it make sense.

October 1st, 2024

Tuesday 

5:07pm

I got sentenced today to six months in the Women’s Center and four years of probation. Another six months locked up, and I won’t be out of here until December. 

That’s another 15 months of my life gone.

Then stupid Daisy attacks me for being upset, blaming me for not taking the plea deal from the DA. 

House arrest would have been better.

It’s like Daisy is so feelings–averse that she can’t stand it when anyone else is upset about anything. She reminds me of my mother. She goes into attack mode. Like–this has literally nothing to do with you, asshole.
Leave me alone.

I’m allowed to be upset.

Then I called Motorcycle, and he said he could hear it in my voice that I don’t want to be with him anymore. 

Like–what??

First of all, am I that transparent? 

And secondly–what??

I wasn’t even talking about our relationship. I was talking about being sentenced to six more Goddamn fucking months of incarceration. Like–this is not how I expected people to react. I told him that it was a lot to ask of him to stay with me through this. 

He said his feelings for me haven’t changed.

I started crying.

 I said I didn’t know if he could visit, because he has a violent crime on his record. He said if the DOC hadn’t picked it up, probably the Women’s Center wouldn’t either.

I don’t know.

I don’t know if I want to be with him anymore.

He didn’t help me when I needed him the most, and it’s hard for me not to blame this 15 months wasted on him. If I had more supportive people in my life, this wouldn’t keep happening to me. The DA even mentioned “holes in the system” that led to my incarceration in the first place, and said he’s in “meetings” to address this problem.
All I keep thinking is “another six months, another six months, I don’t know if I can do this for another six months.

Fuck my fucking life.

Another six months.

I should have taken the house arrest. 

 I hate my life.

5:30pm

They still haven’t cleared count. We’re never going to eat. It’s raining. I messaged Stryder, Paul, and Gem. I wonder what they’ll say about my sentence. So far, Kelly next door has been the only one who said she was sorry when she heard about it, which was nice of her.

Swiper didn’t say anything.

I asked her for a cigarette, and she said no.

 Then she had five or six cigarettes on her bed and was charging them. She could have at least offered me a recharge. She wouldn’t even have those cigarettes if it wasn’t for me.

October 4th, 2024

Friday

1pm


Daisy came up to me later after she yelled at me for being upset and asked me if I wanted a hug. 

I said no, I’m sweaty.

She gave me a hug anyway.
That was nice of her. I told her I feel like I’m not allowed to be upset around her. She said she can’t deal with people being sad or disappointed.

I know this about her.

Really, she’s the only good friend I have here. She told me Bambi’s jealous of my friendship with her. 

I know this, too.

I finished Glorie Steinem’s book “My Life on the Road.” Here’s some excerpts about mass incarceration and organizing ( © 2016)

P. 37 

“I could see then, because the Gandhians listened, they were listened to. Because they depended on generosity, they created generosity. Because they walked a nonviolent path, they made one seem possible. This was the practical organizing wisdom they taught me. 

If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. 

If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live.

If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.”

P. 236

“As a former inmate, he wanted George W. Bush, governor of Texas at the time, to be held accountable for privatizing twenty-six prisons in that state alone.

It doesn’t make long to discover the main endive behind this profit-making motive: the American Legislative Exchange Council–a center of corporate political activism that also opposed tax increases and environmental protections–writes legislation and lobbies for the privitization of prisons. It has helped to elect about 30 percent of all our state legislators. If today’s graduating university students indentured by debt want to find a cause, they can look at most state legislatures, where tax dollars that should go into state universities are put into building and running government-owned prisons for profit…In New York City, the amount spent on housing, feeding, and guarding one person in prison for a year could pay the tuition at Harvard for more than three years.

P. 237

What struck me was not how different women in prison are, but how un-different. Inside, women tend to form family-like groups, blame themselves unreasonably, worry more about their children than about themselves, stelize uniforms to look a little better, need kindness, and want to tell their stories. What’s different is not who those women are but the higher percentage of them who have been abused as children or denied an education for forced to fight back in self-defense and then been criminalized for it.”

P. 241

“I am reminded of Bryan Stevenson’s four steps for creating change, in the secret world of prisons or elsewhere: 

There is power in proximity. Get close to the problem you feel drawn to. 

Change the narrative.

Stay hopeful.

Be willing to do uncomfortable things. 

Secrets have power only as long as they are secret.

P. 266

You cannot think yourself into right living.

You live yourself into right thinking.”

–Native Elders

P. 277

“Anybody who is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts.”

8:30pm

Kelly orchestrated an AA meeting in the Day Room, so I attended. It was really nice. 

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Prison Legal News, Prison Blog, and Profound Sadness

September 1st, 2024

Sunday

They’ve started rationing pads here–you have to ask every time you need them. Soap too. And there are no tampons except regular ones, so if you’re a heavy bleeder, you’re out of luck. And it’s not just on BB. Rumor has it that they’re rationing sanitary supplies on E too. The reason is apparently because people are using pads to clean with, but there really isn’t anything else to use. And other units have super tampons, but not this unit. The population on this unit has doubled, and they expect us to use the same amount of supplies as before. There are 77 of us on BB today. Also, they haven’t been calling evening Common ROom until all of the people at Yard are counted, which is much less out-of-cell time available to us at night.

Prison Legal News–Published by the Human Rights Defense Center–August 2022 Vol. 33 No. 8 

Article:

A First Glance in Rearview Mirror at Pandemic” by Kevin W. Bliss, Matt Clarke, Ashleigh N. Dye and Keith Sanders excerpts:

“As to COVID-19 pandemic recedes from the headlines, its full effect on prisoners and detainees is coming into clearer view. One of the first glimpses was provided in a December 2021 report by the federal Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, which showed startling increases in death rates for the nation’s prisoners and parolees in 2020, compared to the year before. The death rate for those incarcerated in prisons jumped 46%. For people on parole, the hike was 32%…

[Wendy] Sawyer (research director for the Prison Policy Initiative) attributed the sharp increase in part to ‘the fact that correctional populations, by and large, have higher rates of chronic illness that would make them more vulnerable to things like COVID.’ Furthermore, prisoners often receive substandard health care, which may not quickly improve after being released on parole. Previous studies have also shown incarceration has a rapid aging effect, reducing lifespans for prisoners by an average of two years per year served behind bars.

That said, Sawyer called prison officials’ response to the pandemic dismal. Prisoner populations fell, but mostly thanks to fewer prison admissions, not more prisoners being released. In fact, the number of releases went down in 2020, indicating it ‘was not any kind of intentional action taken by prison officials to protect folks,’ Sawyer said…

5:30pm

We haven’t gone to dinner yet. People have been wondering aloud if somebody died. The CO said, “I don’t know yet.” There’s no movement, and 4:30pm count hasn’t cleared. Cinnamon said something happened on M Unit. It’s like we’re always on high alert here–always hypervigilant. Always jumping from one crisis to the next.

5:40pm Dinner

6:13pm We’re back. Dinner took all of 10 minutes. Most units just came and got trays and left. They let us sit down and eat, for reasons unknown, but we were the only ones.

8:23pm 

Shayla tried to commit suicide again on M Unit. No word on whether or not she survived this time. 

September 4th, 2024

Wednesday

8:18pm

There was a fight outside the Chow Hall again, where the wheelchair and canes line up to go to dinner. One woman was pounding on another woman, who would not fight back. They both got pepper sprayed, and then cuffed and led to the Hole, leaving only a clump of black hair behind on the concrete. I have a hard time feeling anything but sad about this development, where in this man-made hellscape of a place, our lives are reduced to scrapping on a sidewalk over petty garbage and meaninglessness.

September 5th, 2024

Thursday

3:48pm

Day three without internet, so nobody’s medications are being filled. I don’t have any Mobic. Today I saw “Trump” with a heart on it posted on Lolita’s locker. Why you would be a woman a person of color and vote for Trump is beyond my comprehension. 

In Sarah Kendzior’s second book, “Hiding in Plain Sight,’ she calls envisioning the future today an “act of mental violence.”

Agreed.

BLOG #9

Neither Here Nor There: Musings from the Other Side (of the Razor Wire Fence)

So, in around the Block News, Daisy is learning to crochet, and it took a few tries to get it right, so she had to unravel a whole lot of yarn at first. Instead of telling the truth about the massive pile of yarn on her bed, she said this to Kimberly: “Justine came in and yanked apart my whole blanket like a crazy person, chain by chain, like she was trying to start a lawn mower! Then she shrieked, “Hee Hee Hee!” and jumped up and down on the pile of yarn and called me a White Devil! Finally, her head spun around and she threw up everywhere! When she woke up the next morning, though, she was fine.”

Oh my stars.

In other news, I’m reading, “The Feminine Mystique,” and there’s a whole chapter on Freud and how he thought that all feminists have penis envy. Like–just because I want equal rights does NOT mean that I want a penis, sir, and I mean, I live in a day and age where I could conceivably GET a penis, if that’s what I wanted to do. I wonder what Freud would say about THAT.

Ugh.

I discussed this with Kimberly, and, true to form, her response was, “If I grew a dick, the first thing I would do is helicopter it for an hour.”

Oooooooooooooookay, Kim.

There’s a new woman here that Kimberly and Daisy think looks like an aged, drug-riddled version of me, so now I have an Aunt named Crackhead Chrissy. Her fake back story is that she’s the ‘ole lady of a biker gang who fucked her in, and then she robbed a bank with a plastic gun but got caught.

None of the bikers came to her rescue.

Those bitches.

I owed Zuko some honey, so when I gave it to her, she said she’d been thinking of a song all day– “Bitch Better Have My Money,” except now it goes, “Bitch Better Have My Honey.”

Funny.

Also COVID is going around here, so instead of a “symphony of farts” every night like Daisy says, it’s now a cacophony of combination cough/farts. 

Coffarts?

Ew.

Speaking of farts, every time someone does it, Swiper fairly screams, “I SMELL SHIT!!!” and searches around to see whose butt it belongs to.

WoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOW.

In other disgusting news, I dropped an entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet that I had already peed in and had to fish it out. 

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Also–this is what passes for fun here–Bambi was sneaking around at 9:30pm with a remote wrapped in a napkin turning off people’s TV’s.

White Devil. 

September 9th, 2024

Monday

Prison Legal News–Published by the Human Rights Defense Center–September 2022 Vol. 33 No. 9

California Sheriff’s Pay-to-Play Scandal Reflects Nationwide Corruption Potential Documented in Watchdog Reports by Jayson Hawkins, excerpts:

“That report, “How Sheriff Campaign Dollars Shape Mass Incarceration, jointly published by Common Cause and Communities for Sheriff Accountability, outlines how sheriffs across the U.S. regularly receive campaign contributions from individuals and firms that subsequently benefit from Sheriff’s department operations…

Examining campaign finance records from a sampling of 48 incumbent Sheriffs in diverse jurisdictions across 11 states over the years 2010 to 2021, researchers discovered that about 43% of all campaign donations these sheriffs received came from companies of individuals that stood to gain financially from operations decisions the sheriffs made. The donation came from a variety of sectors. Construction and real estate firms interested in building new jails supplied nearly 27% of the total hauled in by Sheriff’s campaigns. Companies that contract with jails to provide medical, communication and transportation services added almost another 17%.

In most states there are no conflict-of-interest laws to prevent such donations, nor a system of oversight to monitor who gave what to whom. Instead, America’s roughly 3,000 Sheriffs perform their duties–making two million arrests annually; running county jails where roughly 750,000 people are locked up on any given day, nearly 75% of them pretrial detainees unable to afford bail; and providing ‘civil enforcement’ functions like making evictions and, yes, authorizing gun permits–all largely out of the public eye and unhampered by oversight.

September 10th, 2024

Tuesday

Ethan’s 20th birthday today. Do you ever get sick of being sad? I’m sick of being sad. I’ve been sad for 20 years. The best day of my life turned into the worst nightmare I’d never imagined. 

Couldn’t imagine.

It had never crossed my mind that my baby would die. They talk about “rock bottom” with addiction and how you have to reach it to start going up in your life out of that black hole, but no one talks about the rock bottom of grief. That black hole goes on forever.

No bottom.

9:52pm

I’m reading Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsider.” She was a Black lesbian feminist who grew up in the 1930s. She talks a lot about racism and sexism, and it strikes me like a slap in the face that nothing has changed in the past 100 years. Black men and women and boys and girls are still lynched, only now it’s legally, by the police.

Men still get paid more than women for the same work, and all of that, but it seems worse now. It’s worse because everybody knows it and we say it out loud, but it stays exactly the same. Before there was always oppression, but it seems like only the few and the brave talked about it. Now everyone talks about it and yet we elect Donald Trump as our President. He made racism, rape, and misogyny okay. Is there that much hate in the world that we want hate to be normal?

It boggles the mind.

Sarah Kendzior said she could deal with it as an adult and as a woman, but not as a mother. 

I wouldn’t know, never having been given the opportunity to be a mother.

I called Tiger today. She wasn’t home again, but Dubra said she still doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t know why I called her today, already a sad day, knowing that she would make it sadder for me still. It’s like I’m so used to being sad that I seek it out. I used to get the urge to call my mother when I was crying and couldn’t stop, all the while knowing that she would just make it worse. 

She always did.

Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. Maybe since it’s all I’ve ever known, it feels like home to me.

That, in and of itself, is profoundly sad.

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Prison Blog, Prison Stats, and Portugal

Muncy State Prison

August 4th, 2024

Sunday

BLOG #8

Neither Here Nor There: Musings from the Other Side (of the Razor Wire Fence)

Welp, in Muncy news, an ambulance came here because while in the Hole, some lady stuck her finger in a hole in the door, and so a hole had to be cut in the door to get it out. 

Holy crap.

Pun intended.

As Kimberly would say, she must’ve been drinking slow juice. 

In around the Block News, Daisy and Morocco are busy doing prison tattoos. Morocco is getting some woman’s name on her finger covered up with a tiny mustache.

It’s not going well.

Daisy’s also working on making her own dream interpretation book. She’s going to call it, “Bitch, Wake Up!”

In other news, Swiper has finger toes that she used to jerk off a man, and Kimberly has a friend with a toe-thumb that he used to finger her. 

Just kidding. 

But I’m not telling about which part.

It turns out that Swiper has some of the old-style colored pencils that you can use as makeup if you soak them in water, so Daisy did her face up like a clown and then jumped out from behind the wall to scare Swiper. Before this, Daisy was going through all of the pencils and Kimberly was competing with her in the style of, “I see your red pencil and I raise you one clicky pen,” or “half a green pencil,” or “one yellow marker.”

Funny.

So, another Jail Urban Legend is apparently that if someone makes you a bracelet and you wear it, then they have permission to anally rape you.

Swiper just called Kimberly a fat pig because she got ice cream tickets, and Kimberly said, “HEY! That’s MISSUS fat pig to you!”

Swiper says that another Jail Urban Legend is that if you have crocheted rings and you walk around the track three times, you’re married. Kimber then chimed in that if you walk backward, you’re divorced and you can keep the dog.

Kimberly also said recently that there’s a CO in the kitchen who karate-chops your vagina during pat searches for fun.

Another CO walked by Kimberly last night, and she whispered under her breath, “Hey, how’d you get your beard to grow in all White Trash like that?”

Other jail terminology you should know are as follows:

“I’m fucked up ‘boutchoo” = I’m going to love you forever and get your name tattooed on my finger. 

“Bulldaggin” = running out to all the shit to see your boo. Ex.: Pushing Orca all the way to the Infirmary in her wheelchair in a snowstorm for a glimpse of your girlfriend. 

“Battleshits” – when you and your buddy are both in the bathroom taking a poop and your serial courtesy flushing becomes a contest. 

And lastly, Kimberly and Swiper think that I light up when Zuko is around. They think we should be together.

So now I’m gay. 

Again.

Well here’s what I have to say about that: I see your finger toes and raise you a tiny mustache.

August 8th, 2024

Thursday

I signed my open plea agreement today and sent it back to my lawyer. I don’t know if they’re going to accept it because they sent it through Florida, so there’s no original copy. I told them to send it through legal mail next time. Like–they act like they’ve never done this before.

Ridiculous.

Gem says that there are no court dates for me on padockets.com.

Units C, E, and G have COVID. 

August 9th, 2024

Friday

In this book, Drug Use for Grownups,” Dr. Carl L. Hart is comparing heroin related deaths to gun deaths and car accidents. He says that every year forty thousand people die from guns, with over have of these deaths due to suicide, while heroin related deaths, at their peak in 2017, were about fifteen thousand. And additional forty-thousand people each year die in car accidents. 

Hm. 

Then there’s Portugal, where drug use was decriminalized, and heroin use subsequently dropped from 100,000 to 25,000. In 2016, Portugal had six deaths per million from drugs, while the U.S. had 312 deaths per million.

August 10th, 2024

Saturday

Cool isn’t doing well. My parents are going to Vermont to see him, although they don’t know if he’ll actually see them. He’s acting bipolar. He won’t get help. I wonder if I should write him a letter.  I’m so worried about him. My mother seems to think he’s on drugs too. And the police did press charges for that motorcycle accident he had a year ago. I don’t know what the charges are, but he doesn’t want to plead guilty to something he didn’t do. 

Join the club, man. 

Join the fucking club.

August 12th, 2024

Monday

Another woman tried to hang herself on J Unit on Saturday, allegedly in Cell 33, the same cell another woman tried to hang herself in. The story is that a Lieutenant was screaming at her for some reason, and then she went in her cell and hung herself. They cut her down, and she survived. No word on her name or any other details.


August 14th 2024

Wednesday

Modified lockdown today. Daisy’s very worried that this neighbor lady of her mother’s who took three of her kids is going to try to keep them. She wants me to help her write a letter to the judge tonight. I’m afraid this lady is going to go for permanent custody and Daisy will have to fight her when she gets out in a  year with no resources to get them back.

August 15th, 2024

Thursday

We keep getting more and more people in here. There’s somewhere around 80 people on this Block now. 

I’m reading Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” and I can relate. When I was married to Dubya, I just couldn’t believe that THAT was all there was to life, this being a housewife and mother. 

The feelings eventually destroyed me, and my marriage.

August 20th, 2024

Tuesday

COVID continues to spread here. When I was at the Infirmary this morning with Ms. Grumpy Crabass for insulin, a nurse came out and said, “You won yourself a mask,” to the woman directly behind me. When she asked why, he told her she tested COVID positive.

Something else that’s going on here is that there’s a rumor that we’re all getting moved to Coal Township near Pittsburgh while they fix all the asbestos and sewage problems here.

In other news, I’m reading the March 2022 issue of Prison Legal News (Vol. 33 No. 3) published by the Human Rights Defense Center, and one of the articles is called, “Department of Justice Reports on Two Decades of Prisoner Suicides” by Matt Clarke. 

Here are some excerpts:

“Nationwide, prisoners are four times as likely to take their own lives as the average American. The deaths are violent, too, with nine of ten people who’ve killed themselves in lockups dying from suffocation by hanging or self-strangulation. 

Even more cruel: Over three-quarters were pretrial detainees who had not been convicted of a crime.

Those are some of the top-line results of a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in October 2021, analyzing prisoner suicides from 2000 through 2019. 

From 2001 to 2019, suicides accounted for 5% to 8% of all deaths among those incarcerated in prisons, and 24% to 35% of jail prisoner deaths.

The overall U.S. share of deaths due to suicide, by comparison, was just 1.7%…Jail suicides were concentrated in the largest jails, of those reporting no suicides, the median bed count was 110 beds, while for those reporting one suicide it was 305 beds, and for those with two or more suicides, it was 1,296 beds.

While over half of jail suicides happened within the first 30 days of incarceration, the majority of prison suicides were committed by those who had already served over a year of their sentence.

In both jails and prisons, most suicides occurred in the prisoner’s cell or room during daylight hours…

The predominant demographic to commit suicide behind bars was non-Hispanic White males…

In prisons at both the state and federal level, the highest rates were recorded among the newest prisoners, declining with the length of time served. 

Over the 20-year period covered, the report documents nearly 6,200 prisoner suicides, emphasizing the need for improvement in suicide prevention among the incarcerated. 

This could start with more humane treatment of prisoners in general–especially those newly arriving in local jails.”

Here’s another article from Prison Legal news (same issue) on recidivism:

“Justice Department Releases Ten-Year Recidivism Study”

Follows a half-million state prisoners released in 2008 by Matt Clarke excerpts:

“From 2016 through 2019, the last years for which reliable data are available, about 10.5 million arrests were made in the U.S. annually.

Averaged over a decade, that’s less than one arrest for every three people. But a new study shows how previous incarceration increases those odds many-fold: Ten years after release, 82% of state prisoners had been arrested again–an average of nearly SEVEN ARRESTS EACH.

The majority of those prisoners, 62% had also returned to prison…Around 43% were arrested within a year of release and 66% by the end of the third year…But age was strongly correlated to arrest rate, with the youngest releases being arrested at twice the rate of the oldest.

Drug crimes accounted for 30.3% of the released prisoners’ most serious commitments offenses, compared to 29.6% for property crimes, 24.5% for violent crimes, and 15.7% for crimes against public order…

Males were more likely to be arrested within the first year than females, 44% vs. 34%…

During the first year, Blacks (45%) and Hispanics (44%) were arrested at similar rates which were higher than that of Whites (40%)…

What this study lays out in stark terms is the fact that an arrest is the strongest driver of a future re-arrest. ‘Repeated arrests,’ as noted by the Prison Policy Initiative, are related to race and poverty as well as high rates of mental illness and substance use disorders. There are far better ways to address these social, economic, and health problems than through incarceration.”

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Daisy’s Mother, Crystal Leschner, and Chasing Liberty

Muncy State Prison

July 26th, 2024

Friday

6:47pm

I’m just going to take the open plea to the judge and see how that goes. I’m not going to do any better with that fucking DA. I can feel it in my bones. I called my mother and told her. She seems to think it’s the right decision. I asked her about Lilly. She said she’s going to Alaska next week with her Dad. Daisy and Morocco are busy doing prison tattoos. Morocco is getting some woman’s name on her finger covered up with a tiny mustache. It’s not going well.

July 27th, 2024

Saturday

An old Black lady grabbed my arm as I walked past the other day and exclaimed, “Oh my, honey, why is your arm so bruised?” I looked down at my arm, confused. “Oh. That’s where I used to shoot up,” I said flatly. “Oh!” she said, and gripped me with both hands, “Lord Jesus! Please heal her!”

I muttered thank you, wrested my arm away, and vacated the area as quickly as possible.

Jesus Christ.

July 28th, 2024

Sunday

7:52pm

Daisy’s mother had a stroke. This is a disaster for many reasons, not the least of which is that she is responsible for five of Daisy’s children. She was talking gibberish, so Daisy’s 16-year old son called the ambulance, but they said she was stable and didn’t take her to the hospital. This doesn’t make any sense to Daisy or me. Isn’t a stroke a life-threatening emergency? I’m worried that the five younger children will end up in the system, in foster care, and Daisy won’t get them back. She still has over a year to do in prison. She cried when she said, “I just don’t know what’s going to happen to my kids,” with both of her hands on the sides of her face in a gesture of helplessness and despair. “And HE gets to get OUT!” she said, talking about her abusive ex.

The unfairness is profound, and hung in the air between us like a wall of broken glass. She angrily sorted through the things in her shower bucket. I was getting out of the shower and she was getting in. “Her mother died of a stroke when she was fifty,” she said. 

I’ve never seen Daisy look so pale and in shock.

I impotently asked her if she wanted a hug. “No, I definitely don’t want a hug,” she snapped. Zuko asked if she could at least pray for her and her mother and kids, and she relented and said yes.

Later, it turned out that her mother, Mary, had refused to go to in the ambulance. I feel helpless, too. It’s not like you can say, “What can I do?” when in reality, you are in the same boat and can’t do anything at all.

July 29th, 2024

Monday

10am

I called my lawyer. He said an open plea is what he was going to suggest. He said he’ll ask if I can plead and be sentenced on the same day. So now I have to sign paperwork, get sentenced, then see what parole is going to do with me.

4pm

Daisy got called back from the sewing shop. Her mother went to the hospital and went into cardiac arrest. She survived, but her muscles are deteriorating from non-use and poisoning her. She’s in intensive care. It sounds really bad. Daisy had to give CYS permission to place the kids. They all went with someone they know, which is good, and the two youngest are together. So much for that CYS appeal that I wrote for her. Now they have to be involved.

July 30th, 2024

Tuesday

Daisy’s mother died last night.

They said she went into organ failure. I feel completely useless. Daisy says she feels the same way. Bambi got her an e-cigarette, at least. Daisy’s sister is driving from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to deal with her mother’s affairs.

Daisy said that her mother was sitting in her own urine and feces on the couch, and the house was infested with bedbugs. Nobody knew how bad it was. 

Daisy said that her mother was her best friend.

She asked me if I would think less of her if she testified in a federal case to the the fuck out of here. 

“No.” I said.

Of course not.

The woman has seven children, five of whom need her badly. The neighbor lady went to the courthouse for temporary emergency custody of the three youngest ones. Daisy doesn’t even have her phone number. I wonder if she’ll have to fight her in court to get them back. I can’t help feeling like the nightmare is just beginning for her.

The father of two of the kids is dead, and the father of the rest of them is in prison for raping and sodomizing their daughter. I wonder if she’ll get custody of any of them back. 

Then I feel terrible for even thinking that.

July 31st, 2024

Wednesday

4:11pm

Daisy seems a little better today, and hasn’t cried as much. She decided that she doesn’t want the neighbor lady (who now has custody of three of the kids) to have the kids. She might have to be shipped back to Somerset County to fight that case. Daisy also got a message from Little Man, the ex-boyfriend who repeatedly tried to kill her. He sends his condolences. And his “love.”

Ridiculous.

She’s serving this sentence for hindering HIM. And now her mother died. Yesterday, she said, “This puts the last nail in the coffin of the Little Man thing. I’m here because of you! And my mother DIED!”

I hope she’s right.

She didn’t respond to his message. I have told her before about Crystal Leschner, whose boyfriend stabbed her to death, and then cut up her body and put it in a suitcase in a shed in his backyard in Pittsburgh. 

That was the first story I covered as a reporter for the local newspaper. I interviewed her family. 

It was awful.

Crystal had said that if she ever went missing, he would be the reason.

She turned out to be right.

August 2nd, 2024

Friday

8pm

I talked to my boys. They were playing a game with their cousin where the floor is lava, they each own different territories, and cheese is money. They each get five cheese for pushing each other into the lava.

I got a book at the library today called, “Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear,” by Dr. Carl L. Hart.

Sounds like a good read.

August 3rd, 2024

Saturday

1:30pm

Kimberly is talking to a Lieutenant because Officer Kibbe (yes, I’m naming names) is doing invasive pat searches. According to Kimberly, following one such search last week, she said, “Oh! You just touched my coochie lips!” 

Kibbe responded, “That’s okay, because I bought your dinner.”

Disgusting.

We’ll see what happens. 

Probably nothing.

Kimberly is effectively off work until the “investigation” is over.

In this book, “Drug Use for Grownups,”  it says that 70% of people who use drugs do not become addicted to them. 

The author, Dr. Carl L. Hart, tried a whole bunch of drugs in his research for this book, even becoming (on purpose) physically dependent on heroin so he could experience the withdrawal symptoms.

Interesting.

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Life Uncategorized

Hanky-Spanky, Broken Vaginas, and Revirginization

Women’s Center

December 15th, 2017

Friday

Day 165

11:30am

Now we’re having an anti-bullying meeting because Chantilly is bullying Elaine apparently (again). She seems to be hell-bent on having this abusive co-dependent relationship with Elaine where she tells her that nobody likes her so that she feels bad about herself so that she depends on her more, which is mean. Of course, it doesn’t work, because Elaine goes around being depressed and crying about how nobody likes her, and gets a lot of attention for it. Of course Chantilly just lies her way out of it because she is a compulsive liar.

Ugh.

At least it makes Pink feel better, who, ironically, is the person calling the meeting. A couple days ago she’s calling her lawyer to leave because Elaine farts near her, today she’s defending her against bullying. I don’t know whether that’s personal growth or bipolar disorder. I ate too much for lunch. Now we’re watching “28 Days” again.

December 16th, 2017

Day 160

Saturday

11am

Going to a meeting in Wellsboro with the gang. Nickolai is back! She’s not happy about it but I am. Haven’t heard about the job but I did hear from the Presbyterian Church about my grief group–they okay’d the first and third Wednesday nights at 8pm for my group. I’m going to start it January 17th so I can get the press release out and everything in time. I guess Nickolai finally told her Sugar Daddy about her pregnancy with another man–he didn’t care! Wow, I’m shocked and glad for her. At least she’ll have some options about places to stay if she gets out. I don’t get to see the kids this weekend. I have to get that court paperwork to Coudersport this week. My mother’s going to flip shit. 

Oh well.

Let her.

She started it. 

We’re going to be late to this meeting. Tex and Chantilly start work tomorrow. Tex says she’s going to act like she doesn’t know Chantilly. I read two AA stories in the back of the Big Book–I need to read more before I see my sponsor tomorrow. Hopefully it doesn’t snow so she comes. I can’t believe how loud Pink is. She is a good cook, though. And she writes good poetry–I’m going to transcribe some of it here, if she’ll let me. She made stuffed French toast this morning, it was good. Then we had to do Community Service at Mr. Big’s Church, then chores when we got back, now a meeting–what a Saturday.

Pink calls sex “hanky spanky.”  

Funny.

“Roxanne” is playing on the radio–Pink is head-banging to it. She’s so high-energy–good for entertainment value. Nickolai thinks she’s going to be at the Center until she has the baby. Pink has a toothache even though she has no teeth–phantom pain she says. 

Hm.

Let’s see what my Parenting book says.

1pm

Meeting was good. Tori says her pants are wet because one of the dudes there had giant feet and a tongue ring. 

Hm. My vagina is broken, I’m convinced. I think I’ve been re-virginized. I don’t even have sex DREAMS anymore. I still have dreams about doing drugs, but not sex. 

Hm.

Slammy says she’s going to get me a pair of winter boots, so that’ll be good. Classic rock on the radio–blech. The rest of the stations are Christmas music, which Tex hates, and she’s in charge of the radio. I only have to go to Crossroads on Thursdays now, so no more Tuesday group. I’m not at that “level of care” anymore, according to Mr. Big. He took yesterday off. Must be nice. I wish I could take four days off. I’m so sick of being at the Center. I’m considering asking for early release if I get this Senior Resident position. I have to try not to gain weight over the holidays, I’ve been doing good at least maintaining my weight lately and not gaining–155lbs. I ate too much candy yesterday–the Candy Man comes to meetings three times a week now. Tex just told Pink she’s going to punch her in the clit. That should be interesting. Pink is wearing stretchy pants with dream-catchers on them and Tex was making fun of her ass, saying that she was catching everybody’s dreams. It was funny.

Red got news that her probation officer wants her to stay at the Center for 4-5 months and then go to in-patient rehab after that, but she only has until February 2nd to “get her shit together” and get her kids back, or else she has to sign adoption papers. 

5pm

Now Tori, Nickolai, and I are watching some horrible movie where this 10-year old goes around killing people with a clown mask that’s based in the ‘70s. 

Gross.

Now he’s in a sanitarium. The mother still goes to see him. I don’t know what I would do if my child killed a bunch of people. The mother in this movie ends up killing herself.

God.

What a fucked up movie.

Nickolai just got a phone call from the State Police wanting to make good on her bench warrant, which she says she paid yesterday. Hopefully they can find a record of it.

Boy, this guy just keeps on killing people. I can’t handle this movie. I’m going to take a shower. 

I talked to the kids–all three at my parent’s house because they have my mother’s side of the family’s Christmas tomorrow. They were doing well–watching a movie and eating snacks like I should be doing with them. I’m so jealous. Henry said, “Mommy, I miss you when we don’t come to see you.” I told him I missed him too. I hope my parents are listening and that they don’t keep them from me when I get out of here, but I have a feeling they will.

8pm

Now we’re watching Fred Claus. It’s about Santa Claus’ bitter brother.

December 17, 2017

Day 167

Sunday

No visit today. I’m bitter today. And ridiculously tired. Good thing it’s Sunday and I can sleep. I have a head-cold. Sometimes I get so down here that it seems there’s nothing to look forward to. I can’t even call the kids because I know my mother won’t answer her cell phone. She said she would consider bringing the boys Wednesday, but she didn’t know. That probably means no.

December 18th, 2017

Day 168

Monday

1pm

I got a lot of rest yesterday, that was nice. Women’s Health group right now. Breast cancer–being a woman, growing older, having a close blood relative with breast cancer, having breast cancer in one breast already, bla bla bla.

Oh my goodness, the Women’s Health lady had a son that died this past summer (suicide), so I gave her a flier for my group. Poor woman. 

Group over.

Ha! Now we’re making up words–Red thought that Kegel exercises were pronounced Queegle, so they decided that Queegle means queefing when you’re doing your Kegels.

Funny.

5pm

Watching Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2–it’s funny. Joey got everybody personalized water bottles–mine has cats on it and Tori’s has poop on it! Funny!

Omg.

Elaine just called Pink the Wicked Witch of the West. She had to go to the doctor because we both went for the ball in volleyball the other day, and she ended up with a jammed finger. Now she has to wear a splint for a while.

6:30pm

Now Pink is crying and freaking out–saying Brystal is a totally different person when Kat is not around. Now she wants to talk to her kids and she’s bawling her face off. Oh boy, now Brystal, on of the Residential workers, heard her call her a fat fucking bitch and she’s writing her up and she can’t go to the meeting tonight. And she has to go to her room when she gets off the phone. Everything is fuck this and fuck that and she wants to go back to jail.

Dumb.

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Cinnamon, Blow Jobs, and CYS

Muncy State Prison

July 6, 2024

Saturday

I had a wonderful dream last night that I was back with Dubya and happy. 

Very happy.

Daisy has been very unhappy. She’s here for at least another year and her mother isn’t doing well. She’s very sick and vomiting every day and doesn’t know why. She has five of Daisy’s seven kids, and Daisy is worried. She’s trying to get her two youngest to go to the Milton Hershey School, but now they don’t want to go.

Good quote:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

–R. Buckminster Fuller

INTERVIEW

“Cinnamon”

38yrs

White

Four children, ages 21, 18, 16, 12

Trauma? 

Yes–domestic violence as an adult, sexual abuse as an adult

Substance abuse?

Yes, cocaine–started in 2021 to cope with abuse

Arrested 1/2022 for attempted homicide, aggravated assault

What happened?

Cinnamon and her fiance had a store, fiance’s ex-girlfriend came over to hang out with his son. Ex-girlfriend ended up giving fiance oral sex. There was a fight, Cinnamon got a gun and shot ex-girlfriend, who lost a kidney, but survived.

Sentence?

6.5-13yrs, has been incarcerated for 2.5 years

On mental health meds, denies any mental illness

“If the incident didn’t happen, I would have overdosed or he would have killed me. He overdosed and died 10 months after my arrest.”

Is prison rehabilitative?

“I think I’ve changed a lot, I’m learning to cope with anger. In County I completed the TC (Therapeutic Community) Program. I never had rehab or trauma therapy. I don’t want to go back to doing drugs. Jail kind of saved me.”

What do you do for fun?

“I love to read, play cards. On the outside I’m always with my kids, hiking. I’m not the person they portrayed me as in the news. I have remorse. I’m a good person. I’m a soccer mom. The media said I was a menace to society and the court treated me like I was a monster.”

July 7th, 2024

Sunday

It is stiflingly hot and humid out. I’m glad for my $10 fan. I’m reading “A Grip of Time: When Prison is Your Life” by Lauren Kessler. Everyone here–or nearly everyone–is about to get their periods, and most seem miserable.

2:53pm

I talked to Paul. I’m so glad he’s my friend. Even when he’s depressed, he still cracks jokes and is very funny. And he cares about me. Sometimes I feel like there are very few people on this planet who actually care about me, but he’s one of them.

Earlier, CO Monster stopped by our cell and told us a lengthy story about how his 16-year old lifeguard son saved a 3-year old from drowning the other day. It was strange to be talked to by a CO like a regular person. When he left, Swiper said, “I think he likes you, Justine.”

Weird. 

July 10th, 2024

Wednesday

4:27pm

Daisy is losing her shit. Yesterday, Bambi and I got into a heated argument over who deserves welfare in this country, and Daisy got involved, and I thought she was going to come up off her bunk at Bambi. Bambi is a self-righteous, entitled asshole who stole almost $1 million from her work and knows nothing of being on welfare. She has no remorse for her crime and even stole from a second company while out on bail working for them.

Anyway, Daisy heard that some woman is putting money on her boyfriend’s books, and she also feels like she’s losing all contact with her children. This, combined with her mother’s failing health, is wearing on her something fierce, and she says she simultaneously feels helpless and wants to scream.
I can relate.

July 11th, 2024

Thursday

That reporter from Spotlight PA messaged me and wanted to know if she could use my name in her article. I told her she could. The article is about roasting in prison. It might be reckless to let her use my name, but I feel like it’s the brave thing to do. The prison might retaliate. 

We’ll see what happens.

July 12th, 2024

Friday


There’s an inspection here today, so there are even more rules than normal. No clotheslines hanging up, no smoking on the housing units, etc. I saw a couple of guys in suits when I went to Commissary. They must be sweltering. It’s got to be in the nineties outside. Daisy wants to make hooch since they’re supposed to be giving us plums, nectarines, and peaches this week. Sangria, she says. 

Hm. 

I’m not going to the Hole for that. They gave us green plums yesterday. 

Gross.

July 13th, 2024

Saturday

4:23pm

Daisy gave up on the idea of hooch, thank God. I dissuaded her. A bunch of people here, myself included, have a stomach virus. Diarrhea for everyone. 

Kill me.

Today I had to go to some wheelchair pushing certification class where we had to demonstrate that we knew how to do three things with the chair and that was it. We didn’t even have to push anyone in the chair. That and some stupid handout that told us to take ramps backwards, which is impossible here because the ramps are too steep. This after I’ve been pushing a wheelchair for four long months now. Some say we get a raise after the class, others say no. I don’t even know how much I get paid right now, I only know that it comes to $30/month. I’m guessing 20-some cents an hour.

My stomach hurts.

7pm

News–

Assassination attempt on former President Trump

July 16th, 2024

Tuesday 


Kimberly got paroled. She’ll get out at the end of November. I’m happy for her. I have court a week from today. I have to push Ms. Grumpy Crabass around all day today and tomorrow in 100 degree heat. 

Fun.

Swiper had gastric bypass surgery and two bowel obstructions in the past, plus cancer, and now all she eats is Ramen noodle soups with juice packets on them. She doesn’t even take her thyroid medication or vitamins and then wonders why she’s tired. Daisy and I tried to have an intervention for her yesterday, but she just doesn’t seem to care about her health.

In other news, a woman here named Justine recognized me from Quehanna. I didn’t recognize her, but she remembered all kinds of things about me, like I’m a writer and I have twins…then she asked me for a dead e-cigarette.

Ugh.

8pm

Justine is getting bullied because she’s overweight and walks slowly, apparently. I stood behind her in Med Line tonight, and I asked her how her day was, and she told me about it with tears in her eyes.

People are so mean here.

Swiper got an alert from Medical that her bloodwork shows that she has iron-deficiency anemia. I’m not surprised. In fact, I AM surprised that she’s not more sick and functions as well as she does with no nutrients in her body.

I wrote an appeal for Daisy’s case with CYS. She doesn’t want them in her mother’s home, because her mother is already under enough stress and all they do is cause more trouble and offer no help.

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Homicide, Diarrhea, and Assassinations

Muncy State Prison

July 6, 2024

Saturday

I had a wonderful dream last night that I was back with Dubya and happy. 

Very happy.

Daisy has been very unhappy. She’s here for at least another year and her mother isn’t doing well. She’s very sick and vomiting every day and doesn’t know why. She has five of Daisy’s seven kids, and Daisy is worried. She’s trying to get her two youngest to go to the Milton Hershey School, but now they don’t want to go.

Good quote:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

–R. Buckminster Fuller

INTERVIEW

“Cinnamon”

38yrs

White

Four children, ages 21, 18, 16, 12

Trauma? 

Yes–domestic violence as an adult, sexual abuse as an adult

Substance abuse?

Yes, cocaine–started in 2021 to cope with abuse

Arrested 1/2022 for attempted homicide, aggravated assault

What happened?

Cinnamon and her fiance had a store, fiance’s ex-girlfriend came over to hang out with his son. Ex-girlfriend ended up giving fiance oral sex. There was a fight, Cinnamon got a gun and shot ex-girlfriend, who lost a kidney, but survived.

Sentence?

6.5-13yrs, has been incarcerated for 2.5 years

On mental health meds, denies any mental illness

“If the incident didn’t happen, I would have overdosed or he would have killed me. He overdosed and died 10 months after my arrest.”

Is prison rehabilitative?

“I think I’ve changed a lot, I’m learning to cope with anger. In County I completed the TC (Therapeutic Community) Program. I never had rehab or trauma therapy. I don’t want to go back to doing drugs. Jail kind of saved me.”

What do you do for fun?

“I love to read, play cards. On the outside I’m always with my kids, hiking. I’m not the person they portrayed me as in the news. I have remorse. I’m a good person. I’m a soccer mom. The media said I was a menace to society and the court treated me like I was a monster.”

July 7th, 2024

Sunday

It is stiflingly hot and humid out. I’m glad for my $10 fan. I’m reading “A Grip of Time: When Prison is Your Life” by Lauren Kessler. Everyone here–or nearly everyone–is about to get their periods, and most seem miserable.

2:53pm

I talked to Paul. I’m so glad he’s my friend. Even when he’s depressed, he still cracks jokes and is very funny. And he cares about me. Sometimes I feel like there are very few people on this planet who actually care about me, but he’s one of them.

Earlier, CO Monster stopped by our cell and told us a lengthy story about how his 16-year old lifeguard son saved a 3-year old from drowning the other day. It was strange to be talked to by a CO like a regular person. When he left, Swiper said, “I think he likes you, Justine.”

Weird. 

July 10th, 2024

Wednesday

4:27pm

Daisy is losing her shit. Yesterday, Bambi and I got into a heated argument over who deserves welfare in this country, and Daisy got involved, and I thought she was going to come up off her bunk at Bambi. Bambi is a self-righteous, entitled asshole who stole almost $1 million from her work and knows nothing of being on welfare. She has no remorse for her crime and even stole from a second company while out on bail working for them.

Anyway, Daisy heard that some woman is putting money on her boyfriend’s books, and she also feels like she’s losing all contact with her children. This, combined with her mother’s failing health, is wearing on her something fierce, and she says she simultaneously feels helpless and wants to scream.
I can relate.

July 11th, 2024

Thursday

That reporter from Spotlight PA messaged me and wanted to know if she could use my name in her article. I told her she could. The article is about roasting in prison. It might be reckless to let her use my name, but I feel like it’s the brave thing to do. The prison might retaliate. 

We’ll see what happens.

July 12th, 2024

Friday


There’s an inspection here today, so there are even more rules than normal. No clotheslines hanging up, no smoking on the housing units, etc. I saw a couple of guys in suits when I went to Commissary. They must be sweltering. It’s got to be in the nineties outside. Daisy wants to make hooch since they’re supposed to be giving us plums, nectarines, and peaches this week. Sangria, she says. 

Hm. 

I’m not going to the Hole for that. They gave us green plums yesterday. 

Gross.

July 13th, 2024

Saturday

4:23pm

Daisy gave up on the idea of hooch, thank God. I dissuaded her. A bunch of people here, myself included, have a stomach virus. Diarrhea for everyone. 

Kill me.

Today I had to go to some wheelchair pushing certification class where we had to demonstrate that we knew how to do three things with the chair and that was it. We didn’t even have to push anyone in the chair. That and some stupid handout that told us to take ramps backwards, which is impossible here because the ramps are too steep. This after I’ve been pushing a wheelchair for four long months now. Some say we get a raise after the class, others say no. I don’t even know how much I get paid right now, I only know that it comes to $30/month. I’m guessing 20-some cents an hour.

My stomach hurts.

7pm

News–

Assassination attempt on former President Trump

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Thing 1, Thing 2, and Mr. Big

TWO MONTHS MISSING

(No date)

6pm

The Big Boss gave me the okay to apply for online classes, so that’s mildly exciting. I say mildly because there’s a serious downside–now I have to beg for money from everybody and their mother. I started the application for the WISP scholarship through A Way Out, which helps abused women. Brystal said she would be one of my “recommenders,” so that’s really helpful. It turns out she’s not so bad after all.

I’m watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory–the Johnny Depp version–it’s super weird. 

No word from Medplast–the place I applied to work. I have so many things hanging in the air that it’s making me a little stressed. Kat gave me a bunch of bras, so I’m handing them out–they’re brand new. Not fancy, but a bra’s a bra. Those bitches are expensive. So I made some people happy.

Group on spirituality:

  1. Experience the healing and empowerment of love–from others, self, and an ultimate source.
  2. Experience renewing times of transcendence–expansive moments beyond the immediate sensory spheres.
  3. Have vital beliefs that lend meaning and hope in the midst of losses, tragedies, and failures.
  4. Have values, priorities, and life commitments centered on issues of justice, integrity, and love to provide guidance in personally and socially responsible living. 
  5. Discover and develop inner wisdom, creativity, and love of self. 
  6. Develop a deepening awareness of oneness with other people, the natural world, and all living things.

Pink says she was a model. Huh. Now I’ve met a model. She’s popping her teeth in and out right now and saying that she’s gained weight so her teeth don’t fit right. Maybe she needs a pair of skinny teeth and fat teeth like jeans. 

Haha.

She looks like Thing 1 and Thing 2 right now because her pink hair is all crazy and sticking up all over. And I thought my hair was bad. She had cornrows in her hair and took them out, that’s why it’s a mess. Omg we have to stay here until 7:30pm–blech. Half an hour of nothing left. 

Pink is telling everyone now that if she gets written up, she’s leaving. How dumb. An escape charge versus a write-up? 

Duh.

I wish it was bedtime. We’re not going to a meeting again tonight because of the weather. The roads are untouched by snow, but no matter. The Weather Channel predicts inches, so that’s that. So no seeing Ken this week. He hasn’t written me either. I doubt he will. When he asked me if I thought my friends were right, and we were destined to be together, I told him I didn’t think I believed in destiny. I’m not quite sure how true that is. I mean, is the Women’s Center my destiny? And if it is, WHY??! The time is craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawling. 

7:12pm

There are four women crammed on one couch–Tori, Tex, Joey, and Pink, and they are talking about how the angelfish in the fish tank is  anorexic. He does seem to spit out half his food. Maybe there are fish eating disorders. This spirituality packet says about journaling: 

“Journaling is another, often overlooked, contemplative practice that can help you become more aware of your inner life and feel more connected to your experience and the world around you. Studies show that writing during difficult times may help you find meaning in life’s challenges and become more resilient in the face of obstacles.”

7:26pm

In the history of all of the galaxies, time has never moved so slowly.

December 13th, 2017

Wednesday

Day163

9am

Group on Refusal Skills. Repeat of last week’s group. 

Fun.

So Mr. Big yelled at me for going to the meetings at Harbor on Tuesdays. So, I go to Crossroads an hour early, go to group for two hours and then sit there for another hour while Tori is in her individual session. Well, instead of sitting there, I was going to a meeting at Harbor for the second hour. Well, I guess I’m not supposed to do that.

Huh.

So he talks down to me and assumes I’m lying and being devious somehow, when in reality, I thought that’s what I was supposed to be doing!

WTF!!

9pm

I felt terrible today–half-asleep for most of it. I didn’t even go out for a cigarette between 11am and 7pm, I just didn’t want to be cold. It’s about 20 degrees outside. Even the Candy Man asked at the meeting if I was sick. Mr. Big bothered me all day and chastised me for not being a role model. Fuck that. Somedays I just feel like crap! I can’t help it!

Whatever.

No one could ever live up to his standards anyway. At the meeting tonight Pink got yelled at for laughing by Annie, who is usually very light hearted and soft spoken. She fairly shrieked, “I take my recovery very seriously, and if you don’t, you can leave!” It was uncomfortable for everybody, especially because it was at the very beginning of the meeting. 

Oh well.

I don’t know about her. Kat was telling me that she was going to talk to Mr. Big about her attitude. She’s always shouting and swearing about something. Off to bed.

December 14th, 2017

Thursday

Day164

1pm

Just got back from the dentist. Tex is upset because somebody on the street saw her and called her “healthy,” which, she says, is just another way of saying, “Wow you’ve gained some weight!”

Wow, my mind just got blown. Maybe there is hope for Pink. Comes in like a fuckin’ hurricane and now I find out she writes poetry!

Awesome!

And she’s writing poetry about staying clean! 

Double awesome! 

I met with the Parenting Classes lady for the second time today. She gave me a book called, “The Incredible Years.”

Today was a good day. The people at the church finally called me back and said that I can use their room the first and third Wednesdays of every month for my grief support group, so that’s awesome news. I’m going to start it January 17th. The meeting was good–it’s my home group and the one Mr. Big attends. He didn’t come to work today because he has a man-cold, from what I gather, which, as  everybody knows, are about a thousand times worse than any other type of cold.
I can’t wait to read this new book the parenting lady gave me–it looks really good. I have some reading to do in the AA Big Book too, before Sunday.

I talked to the boys tonight–tried to call Tiger but no answer–and they told me about sledding and how much they missed me. It’s so painful to hear that some days that I just don’t feel up to calling them at all. It just hurts so much. I was talking to Red today, who also has twins, and she said that she would put a bullet in her head if her parents refused to give her twins back.

I know the feeling.

Categories
Uncategorized

Justice, Murder, and Insanity

May 15th 2024

Wednesday

1:35pm

I called Motorcycle–he went to a choral concert at Tiger’s school in Port Allegany, and he saw her. He said she’s growing up to be “quite a little young lady.” He says she has my nose. I think her whole face looks just like me, but whatever. He said she was wearing a puffy skirt and a jean jacket.

I miss her.

But she doesn’t want to talk to me and she won’t reply if I write her. I can’t do anything about that.

May 16th, 2024

I don’t believe this. My mother says that she might pay for an attorney for me. I’m floored. She says he has to accept the case yet, so she’ll find out within a week. I’m speechless. I called Motorcycle to tell him and he was happy for me. I hope it works out. Her exact words were: “We might pay the fee for TJ. I called him and he and I commiserated about how Potter County deals with mental health cases. He seems nice.”

4:40pm 

My mother sent me another message saying that Paul’s sister is on a cruise, and that she’ll do my taxes when she gets back. Um…I gave her that paperwork in January. Ugh. Whatever.

I just read in “Unfair” by Adam Benforado that about 10 percent of people who are convicted of crimes in Germany and the Netherlands go to prison, and that number is 70 percent in the US. Also, in Norway, no one is given a sentence of over 21 years, no matter what their crime. 

Here’s what John McCain had to say about solitary confinement after he spent more than two years in isolation: “It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

Also, according to the Department of Justice, over 200,000 inmates each year are raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in custody. And here’s some stuff about mental illness in prisons: There are upwards of three times as many mentally ill people in jails and prisons as in mental health facilities. Of these people locked up, only a third have received mental health treatment since they became incarcerated.

11am

So, I went to a group this morning, and they were talking about how Muncy was on the 10pm local news about the two women who hung themselves. I guess their families were on the program. I wish I had the internet. I’m assuming that both of the women died–nobody seems to know about the second one still.

Next, this book is talking about brutality inside jails and prisons. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney General in 2013 reviewed how the teenage population (692 inmates) at Rikers was faring, he found that 44 percent of them had been beaten by the guards at least once. 

These beatings resulted in serious injuries, such as lacerations requiring stitches, facial fractures, and head trauma. It’s the same across the country. 

Between 2010 and 2014 in Georgia, 34 people were murdered inside INSIDE state prisons.

Another interesting finding was that putting people in jails and prisons actually makes them less likely to follow the law, because people lose their respect for the law. Also, we now spend more on incarcerating people than we do on higher education, even though education prevents crime.

“There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.”

–Justice Hugo Black

5:43pm

We haven’t eaten dinner yet. I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to make my 6:30pm phone call. The rumor is that they put somebody in a restraint chair and put her in the Hole. The 4:30pm count still hasn’t cleared. People are talking about eating each other. I didn’t eat lunch because it was fish. Nobody can use the phone and they’re pissed.

5:52pm

Count clear. We finally get to eat.

7:05pm

I talked to Gem earlier–she says that Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia qualify for an insanity defense in Pennsylvania, and that I should take these cases to trial. She doesn’t seem to realize that taking cases to trial is very expensive and might mean that I have to stay in prison longer than if I took a plea deal. Then again, if I won and was acquitted of the charges, I wouldn’t have three resisting arrests on my record. And two disorderly conducts. But if I lost, I could get a sentence of two to four years on each resisting arrest. Would it be worth it to fight the charges? If I had unlimited resources, yes.

But I have essentially no resources.

I talked to the boys, they went to see the movie “Migration” today. They both liked it. Superman tested positive for Lyme again and is on Amoxicillin. He had headaches for a few days and stayed home from school and my mother took him to the hospital for a blood draw. He was very brave, she said. She insisted on Lidocaine. I wonder what this new thing is for her that she is advocating for my kids. And for me. She never does that, especially for me. Maybe she’s had a change of heart. 

Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

It’s very confusing, though. She’s spent so long fighting against me, it’s hard to imagine her caring about me or being nice to me. 

Anyway, I talked to Motorcycle and he got my dirty blog. He said, “It sounds like you girls need some dick.”

Truer words were never spoken.

I wrote Gem, Motorcycle, Paul, and Superman and King.

Categories
Life Uncategorized

Farts, fists, and minivans

May 11, 2024

Muncy State Prison

Saturday

Blog #4

Neither Here Nor There: Musings from the Other Side (of the Razor Wire Fence)

Welp, still here at Muncy, and because I feel like it, here’s an entire blog of dirty and/or inappropriate stuff. It’s ribbed, for your pleasure.

You’re welcome.

Daisy is measuring her release  date time by her menses. She has 15 periods left before she gets paroled. Raja, on the other hand, is having her period, and just remarked that there is a serial killer in her underwear. Jason Kelce was recently quoted in People magazine about not wearing underwear with, “I find it unnecessary and problematic to the freedom that my boys like to enjoy.”

Fun fact: Daisy doesn’t wear underpants either.

In other news, I’m gassy and it’s gross. 

Ever farted in front of 50 people? Everyone looks around and tries to fine the culprit  like they’re in kindergarten–”EW! Who farted??”

Over here. It’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.

Meanwhile, the neighbors are insulting each other again. This time it’s: “You look like my ass without lotion,” and “You look like a long-titty-no-nipple-havin’-ass-bitch!”

Oh my stars, as Kimberly would say.

In other news, Daisy and I were talking about dating Black men, and I recounted a story about the first Black man I dated, when I was 19 and in college. He had the whitest name ever–Robert–and he sold a magazine where I worked as a bookstore clerk. He would buy me Boone’s Farm drinks and I would get drunk at his apartment where there was black shag carpeting and an entirely glass coffee table. When I broke up with him, he couldn’t believe it. He looked at me, aghast, and said incredulously, “But I licked your butthole!” I had no idea that asshole lickery had bonded us for life. I thought the man had just lost his way.

Silly me.

When Daisy dated her first Black man, they went to see the Exorcist, and to hear her tell it, the theater was so cold that her nipples were hard so she tried to cuddle up to this guy, but she couldn’t get too close because his breath was so bad. “He had a turd in his cheek!” she shrieked, and then fell over on her bed laughing. “Never again,” she declared.

This started a sex-story-athon, so next, my first husband apparently thought I wasn’t very good at blow jobs, because he bought some DVD when I was 20 to teach me the ABC’s of giving head.

The nerve!

It featured real couples and also featured some of the least sexy sex I had ever seen. Some of these couples had to be 60 years old, with mom-bods and beer guts galore. “Oh, that’s hot,” I thought, and proceeded never to give him a blow job again.

 Daisy then told me about some porn she saw where a woman had a ton of sex toys up in her vagina. She was like, “She had the Mary Poppins of pussies! Like–just when you thought she was done, out comes another one!”

Then she asked her boyfriend, Wizard, to look up Urban Sex Positions for entertainment while she was incarcerated, and he came back with “The Minivan.”

Soooooooooo….you’ve heard of “The Shocker,” right? Two in the pink and one in the stink? Okay, so this one is two in the front and FIVE in the back, like a freakin’ minivan!

“What, you just punch them in the butthole? I asked, mouth agape. She shrugged and said nonchalantly, “Some people like being fisted.”

Ew.

Then we got into a conversation about men on meth who want to fuck for six hours straight with their “al dente” dicks and to butt stuff, but never get off.

Boy, do I not miss THOSE days.

*sigh*

Good times.

Like I said, you’re welcome.

And who farted?