Click images for desktop size: "Alone in the World" by Unknown Feeling worn down today. Been sort of off the past three days. Sick, flu like off.
I think it has to do with my body re-adapting to the meds that the prison medical care, (the finest available according to some idiots with agendas). My illness corresponds pretty exactly with the side effects of one of the heart attack drugs.
Good news is that Reina, my puppy's mom, is doing some better. Her gums are pink and she's livelier. The results of her blood test should come out today. I keep worried and hoping.
I'm worried also about getting my puppy home to me. Less than a thousand miles away but I'm bewildered. I miss her and it causes me pain. I hope she's different and not stressing.
I'm still job hunting. The only positive note so far is that my old boss wants to meet with me next week. One can only hope is the thing.
There were no new ads in the paper today or on any of the job sites I keep checking. I don't want this to let me down.

I've gotten a few emails wondering if I approve of the way the Canadian prison system runs. I guess because I'm just trying to relate facts and avoid editorial opinion it could lead people to wonder. Also that I find the facts so abhorrent that I presume anyone else would too.
The system I experienced is insane. For people with mental illness to be housed with convicts and people on remand is wrong. A civilized society would not accept it.
The MAXSEC (maximum security) system might have a purpose but to use it on shop lifters and immigration detainees is insane, cruel and vicious. Agin, no civilized society would tolerate it.
To use that onerous system for people on remand, people who are not guilty of anything is sick and beyond unfortunate.
To take a violent young man and to dump him in this system for 18 months and deprive him of a
Click images for desktop size: "Ava Gardner" chance to educate himself is sick and dangerous.
This mid twenties offender is on the dole, broke and bored he seeks release in drugs and alcohol. He gets violent and causes great distress. Now putting him in a place run by a corrupt authority and the guards are corrupt in my experience, an authority that derides, dehumanizes and insults at every opportunity is merely creating monsters that will reenter the fringes of society and reek and experienced hate filled havoc on society in general. THe havoc will be fueled in ignorant violence, the education given in a Maplehurst is to hone and improve the violence, to make it more devastating, permanent and overwhelming.
What rational being would expect different.
I've worked with young people who were already so marked by the system. They were hate filled, rage fueled and already written off. The game I teach and that I love taught these young men self respect, self worth. It gave them a place in society and once having a place they wanted to improve themselves and in improving themselves they sought and did improve society as a whole. They became politicians, professors, cops, firemen and happy working stiffs.
If the violent offender on the dole is taught a trade that he can excel at, where he can earn money to improve his life so he can afford to meet and associate with people who have similar goals to his; to be happy.
Letting an inmate read lets heir minds open to possibilities that might never have occurred to them. Allowing them to use their time to benefit themselves rather than to use the time pursuing violence and cultivating and nurturing the hatred that must well inside of them . . .
The best way to stomp out crime is education and hope. The best way to worsen and promote crime is via unjust punishment and the reduction of humanity.
Who doesn't know this? Who hasn't seen this proved out time and time again?
  
July 1, 2009

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Today was Canada day.
We were expecting lock down. On many holidays or even just very nice days enough guards would call in "sick" that the warders would decide they had insufficient staff and order a lock down.
Its amazing how much even an hour out of your cell can be missed.
To everyone's relief there wasn't a lock down. I was relieved as well as I expected my friend to visit so we could have our 20 minutes to discuss what had happened yesterday at my kangaroo court hearing.
I got yard. There was this guy I didn't know who kept eyeing me. I always spent the first 10 minutes of yard running wind sprints and every time I reached the wall and turned around I saw him staring at me.

Click images for desktop size: "Benny Goodman" Hosia, the Yardie, came over and warned me that the fellow checking me out was shanked. A shank is just a home made knife. They make a big deal about not permitting shanks at Maplehurst. We get toothbrushes with one inch handles, rubber spoons.
A shank is just a hunk of something that a hunk of metal can be tied to. There's plenty of concrete walls to use as whetstones to sharpen the hunk of metal into a stabbing weapon. If your patient enough it can become a slashing weapon as well, but that's harder to make.
With all their dehumanizing fussiness there's plenty of stuff around to make a shank.
When I finished running this guy came up o me and started to run at me. He lunged. I was lucky enough to turn aside. He fell and broke his wrist. His shank skittered on the concrete and I kicked it into the grated storm sewer.
While they were helping the guy out of the yard the rest of us were checking out the sewer. It was thick with cigarette butts and roaches (marijuana butts). When I'd come back late from getting my insulin shot most of the guards were unaware that any prisoners were roaming about. More than once I caught a couple of guards out in the yard passing a joint back and forth.

Click images for desktop size: "Artagatis" by Mortalitas Yard got extended a tiny bit because of the fellow's accident. We enjoyed that.
Back in my cell I tried to wait calmly. I really hoped my friend would show up and we could talk and plan and think about where to go with all this.
She never came.
Later I found out that she'd been downstairs waiting to visit. They kept her waiting for six hours before they could figure out that there were too many holiday visitors to get everyone in. knowing the guilty or the innocent makes you guilty in the limited guard mind. They treat visitors only slightly better than they treat prisoners.
I didn't know. I could only feel abandoned.
Even my muskrat didn't show up on his daily rounds. I worried for him.
That night when I did my blood sugars they were 6.8. The nurse proclaimed that was perfect. I was surly enough to say that I hadn't eaten in two days so that number was exceedingly high.
The nurse shuffled and said, I'm writing in perfect anyway."