Saturday, August 10th
Had the pleasure of having a long term friend who happens to also be my former Pastor from Portland, visit today. Hadn’t seen him since my sentencing almost a year ago September, but we picked up chatting like we had just seen each other last week! Went from opening at 9 till the end at 2:45, very lucky to go all day for once! He’s coming back tomorrow for Round 2 as well. We definitely covered a lot of bases, from family, prison life, presidential race, faith , retirement and plenty more!
Otherwise just a track workout from 5-6:30 and plenty of reading. Just finished Joh Grisham’s newest book, Camino Island, which I definitely recommend.
Sunday, August 11
Had a nice 2 1/2 hour follow up with my dear friend today as well and then he left noonish to head back to the LAX airport and return home. Really thoughtful of him to come all the way down here just to spend the weekend with me. Hopefully I shared a few things that helped him as well!
Made it to church and at 2-3 a long walk on the track on a sunny afternoon. After lockdown, back outside 6-7:30. Was a great weekend and reminded me while far from ideal, I am still blessed!
Monday, August 12
Day/week started well. First thing 7:30 am I was in Education, getting my guy to type the third BP-9. Just as we were finishing at 9 am, the guard announced Education was closing for the week, so had to head back to the Unit. Ughh….
We had heard that on Tuesday, Education might close for the sprinkler project, so that would leave Monday for folks to prepare, get things done, like extra books to read etc., not 90 minutes!
So looks like a week of daytime in the Unit or cell, as the Yard is shut down due to Units being outside all day while their unit has sprinkler work done. We still have another round of workers for 2 weeks at some point as well, and then again for 6 weeks. Geees…
Guess I’ll have to make the best of it every day. It would be bearable to do writing here in the unit, but the noise is so loud, just seems to multiply from 10 am on as the card and board games begin. These are mainly illegal’s just trying to entertain themselves and pass the day by. Some day I’ll blog about what a shame it is to see all these illegal immigrants only take advantage of the movies, or outside soccer, volleyball or weights, and hardly do anything to self improve or get some form of education. Really an ongoing human tragedy( breaking up of their families and lack of desire for self improvement etc.) and waste of taxpayer money. Hardly punishment to give them 5-10 years(less than Americans fyi) for smuggling drugs(usually shorter as ICE eventually gets around to deporting them), when their life ends up being higher quality than they would otherwise have, and their family got the $10-20k cash for that drug haul to boot. How is this effective policy? Anyways, you can see the tip of the iceberg of a blog:)
Today was commissary, my last one on suspension. My cellmate bought a lot, so he gave our “in unit” chef a sausage, mackerel, rice, fresh onion, cilantro, cheese and they made a fantastic soup for us for early dinner. So I skipped dinner and worked out 5-6. I was at the far end of the Yard, close as possible to the Space X launch pad (still 4-5 miles away) when I heard a rocket engine fire up, and sure enough take off with 30 seconds of a rumble. Always fun to hear, and finally to see up close, though we had fog so didn’t get to see it for long.
Tuesday, Aug 13
Day 2 of what they call “on the flats”. Stuck in our unit, but we can be on the first floor at a table writing or watching TV, or in our cell until 5 pm. Other than lunch for 15 minutes. I thought I was ahead of the game last Monday morning, by grabbing 3 James Patterson’s books at the library. But not. I’m reading one a day for 2 of them, and the 3rd I’d already read and grabbed by mistake….. Could be a slow 5 days till Sunday when Education opens. Plus of course no email:)
I’m pretty productive from 6:30 am – 1 pm or so. After that it gets so noisy I just read the afternoon away. I could do TV, but I really don’t need to hear about Kamala and Trump anymore, so that leaves sports or car show the guys love to watch every day all day:)
Started my final review of my chapters written so far before I begin typing next week and sending in. Actually reads better than I thought, after not reading the first Section(Chapters 1-8) for a few weeks. Not too many edits, and should finish Section III Wednesday, and then I’ll go back to begin writing my final section about the importance of Relationships with Family, Friends, Community, Mentors, etc.
Finally dropped off my 3rd version of the BP-9, seeking immediate medical treatment for my autoimmune issues. Will be interesting to see if they keep blocking it or this new one is “within her procedure”, even though all have been anyways. If nothing else, building a thick paper trail!!
Wednesday, August 14
Another day locked in. The highlight was a mandatory 30 minute video we all had to watch on the First Step Act(FSA). Generally well done I thought,including a rehearsed Q/A filmed at another prison. Having personally just read the law itself 2 weeks ago, there are a few areas where BOP created procedures not in the law itself. One of the main issues is the BOP using lack of bed availability as a reason to keep inmates in prison and not immediately transferring to halfway house or home confinement when eligible. But courts are now ruling that isn’t a criteria of the statute and BOP must immediately release inmates, if not to half way house, then home confinement. It’s beyond me why the BOP wouldn’t want this anyway to reduce the staffing shortage pressure they have, plus costs of housing inmates itself all going away with home confinement. And its a shame inmates have to fight for ther rights like this one!
Unfortunately there is a major flaw in the statute itself as well. On the one hand it states, you earn credits during your time in prison and halfway house. On the other, it states you must have accrued all the credits necessary before going there to move to a halfway house. Totally inconsistent and allows the BOP to have a policy of relying on accruing all credits before and thus not being able to use earned credits from halfway house time !
This effectively makes all the half wayhouse credits unusable because of the accrual ahead of time. So if I had 2years left on my sentence, 2 years accrued toward halfway house and transferred to a house, I’d still earn one year while in there that I can’t use. If the BOP had let me enter the house with 3 years left, everything would have been used up and I’d been out of prison a year earlier. Basically just letting us use projected credits we will eventually earn to enter the halfway house, but requiring us to earn them to stay there. Will be asking counsel what they suggest here, as in my case its 2-3 years extra in prison! Again, if I were BOP I’d want that to help ease the overcrowding and understaffing at every location.
Otherwise reviewed more of the ABT book, read all afternoon/watched TV for an hour. Good workout 6-7:30 but first really cold evening and its still August!!
Thursday, August 15
Well, nothing like 2 lockdowns inside a lockdown:) We were put in our cells 7-9:30 am, I’m guessing for guard training but not sure. Then at night, 7:30 on again. I was one hour into the James Bond movie this evening in the theatre when guards flipped on the lights and ordered us back to our units and cells. Not sure but guessing something happened in the yard. Sure hope Friday is open yard day as I doubt construction workers will work after yesterday’s day off. Plus there is a big GED graduation ceremony in Education tomorrow morning.
I was in a good writing mood so dug into the new section of the book on networking/relationships. In reviewing Michael Santos’s workbooks, I noticed his concept of tribes, or at least related to it better. Basically keeping scorecard real-time of positive actions taken during prison vs. just writing or verbally saying I will do certain things after release. Seems a good way to build a track record while in prison. I’ll start tracking my efforts and first step will be defining my scorecard. Everything from books read to inmates helped to laps around the track. Given I wrote goals to myself July 1 for Q3 2024, now I need to make them happen:)
Did get a break from the Unit, 12-2 for Bible study. Our farmer/teacher had Covid so we were just 10-12 guys on our own. Interestingly, maybe 1/3-1/2 are Natives Americans and 1/3 Hispanic. It’s so different compared to all my previous Bible study experiences where businessmen meet 6:30-8 am in suits, then go to work in heir nice cars feeling good about having spent time in the Word, only to then get stressed and in a hurry to get things done. None of that here that’s for sure:) Here, one guy is a 2x murderer, one an offender, and has given his life to Christ. Another is a 4x felon, committed to helping those on the street with addiction like he was when he gets out. Having just read Purpose Driven Life, Day 5 that morning which discusses why God tests us on earth so our character is is prepped for heaven and eternity, the group had a dynamic discussion around they’re being in prison, what God was doing in their lives, and how prison doesn’t impact their relationship with Jesus. I posed the question “How do you explain to people who ask, especially non believers, if God is so good, why are we in prison? That’s certainly one way to spark a group discussion! The common thread around everyone’s answer was hat God didn’t place them here, their decisions did, which I thought was interesting.
Later in the day a fellow inmate who’s been in prison for 30 years, ten different times, and suggested I write a book a few months ago, gave me a book he had ordered. Incredibly thoughtful. He saw an ad for it somewhere, it’s a “How to” book on writing a book from prison. Written by a large non profit, Pen America, focused on free speech for all writers, and they have a division focused on prisoners writing, and annual competition for best new books by prisoners. Who would have thought? All funded by small and large donors like Mellon Foundation etc. I found the list of contributors of content to the book to be really impresssive, and I’m sure in some way will be helpful to our book and overall network we want to build. They even offer mentoring to writers, so I think I will reach out for guidance. As they say, God works in mysterious ways!
Friday, August 16
Interesting how some days I find myself not wanting to write in the book, rather do other things. So I find myself researching for the book or writing other things, Guess I’m saving my next power writing session for Sunday when/if I go to the library. Just praying its open! I can also then reload my reading books, as we learned today it will be closed all next week again for sprinkler renovations.
The only saving grace for next week is that I should get email back beginning Monday morning, so at least I can start typing all these past journals and book reports. Hard to believe its been 3 months already, but guess it has:)
Beautiful evening, so I twisted Derek’s arm to go out on the track and I pushed him around awhile until he connected with someone he is mentoring to start law school eventually. He really touches a lot of guys as he is kind of the ” go to guy” for folks in Education needing some form of legal help, plus a good role model for so many inmates.
