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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Still waiting...

Update on my current status:
  • I finished the required class on March 30th.
  • I was supposed to be released two-three weeks afterwards, around April 20th
  • I'm still inside (although at a different unit.)
Latest word is that my parole plan has been approved but no date is set. Somebody either dropped the ball or this is TDCJ incompetence at its extreme.

I hope my next post will be from the outside.
 

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Book List - 2011


New Year's Eve and time for another book list. Here's to a wonderful 2012:

Recommended


Top Three Favorites

A Clash of Kings
George RR Martin
A Drifting Life
Yoshiro Tatsumi
A Game of Thrones
George RR Martin
A Million Mile in a Thousand Years
Donald Miller
A Visit From the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
Atmospheric Disturbances
Rivka Galchen
Batman Cacophony
Kevin Smith
Black Hole
Charles Burns
Blue Like Jazz
Donald Miller
Brooklyn
Colm Toibin
Consent to Kill
Vince Flynn
Consider the Lobster
David Foster Wallace
Creature Tech
Doug Tennapel
Curious Incident of the Dog at Nighttime
Mark Haddon
Divergent
Veronica Roth
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
Fatal Alliance
Sean Williams
Good Punishment?
James Samuel Logan
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
JK Rowling
Hey…Wait
Jason
High Fidelity
Nick Hornby
How to Be Good
Nick Hornby
I Kill Giants
Joe Kelley
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
Isaac's Storm
Erik Larson
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Susann Clarke
Legion of the Lost
Jaime Salazar
Lenin for Beginners
A & Z
Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris
Life of Pi
Yann Martel
Love Wins
Rob Bell
Marvel:1602
Neil Gaiman
Marx for Beginners
Rius
Misquoting Jesus
Bart Ehrman
Moving Pictures
Kathryn Immonen
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
Neverwhere
Neil Gaiman
Nocturnes
Kazuo Ishiguro
Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
Pillars of the Earth
Ken Follett
Planetary 1-4
Warren Ellis
Sandman, Volumes 4,5,7
Neil Gaiman
Shh…
Jason
Sonic Boom
John Alderman
Start Something That Matters
Blake Mycoskie
Sweet Tooth
Jeff Lemire
The Art of Prayer and Volkswagen Maintenance
Donald Miller
The Diary of a Country Priest
George Bernanos
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
The Last Musketeer
Jason
The Nobody
Jeff Lemire
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Sparrow
Mary Doria Russell
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
The Swan Thieves
Elizabeth Kostova
The Tiger's Wife
Tea Obrecht
The Unwritten
Mike Carye
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga
Then We Came to the End
Joshua Ferris
Trotsky for Beginners
Tariq Ali & Phil Evans
Watership Down
Richard Adams
What is Left the Daughter
Howard Norman
What Jesus Meant
Gary Wills

































































































































Sunday, December 18, 2011

And the bureaucracy strikes again

Here's another example of bureaucracy at work.

I had a visit with my parents today, and I was told by the officer in the back where the inmates enter that I would be having a non-contact visit behind the glass.

"That's not right. Would you mind checking up front to make sure?"

After a quick phone call: "Yeah, it's non-contact."

We only get three contact visits each month here, so I started doing the math in my head. I've had one contact with my parents and will have another with my brother next week. New Year's Eve I have some friends coming but...ah, my parents think my friends can have a contact visit so they are saving one for them. They don't know that only family can have contact visits.

I told the officer my deduction and said to clear it up as soon as I got to the window.

As soon as I sat down across the plexiglass from my parents, I picked up the phone and explained the situation. My mom left to ask the front desk if we could move to contact. One officer seemed to be congenial but the officer on duty would not allow it. Next, my father went to talk to the warden.

My parents had called ahead to schedule a non-contact visit instead of contact. The warden said he would change the visit to contact except the visit had already started. We had not been sitting for more than 30 seconds out of a two-hour visit while I explained the situation to my parents! Thirty seconds! I think it was actually that he did not want to go back into the computer to change the visit and instead did what was easiest.

On my way out of visitation I told the officer in the back what had happened. "If they called back here, I would have told them your visit had just started," he said. "You weren't in there but maybe 30 seconds."

My thoughts exactly.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Silly school


I came to this unit to take a four-month class before being paroled. I'm not entirely sure why I'm required to take the class since I had three years of relevant counseling before prison and did not commit a new crime, but had technical violations that revoked my probation. I even wrote a letter to the parole board that shared my history and counselor's high opinion of my rehabilitation.

I started the class last week, so apparently the parole board neglected my letter and I must stay until at lest March 30th. The teacher is a short Hispanic woman in her late fifties who was fired when another re-entry program, Project RIO, was shut down by the state, then rehired to teach this class. She has made it clear that this is not rehab or treatment, but merely and educational class.

As I paged through the workbook we were given I saw that all the material is a less-detailed version of what I went through with my counselor. When I mentioned this to teacher after class, her response was, "Well, I guess you'll have your answers prepared and you can help me teach the class."

It seems to me that if there are so many people waiting for this class that my own parole is delayed eight months, the system could do a better job of prioritizing who does or doesn't have to do the class. All of this is done to appease the public - "See, we do rehabilitate these guys before putting them on the streets." - and take advantage of grant money. I know I'm dealing with a giant government bureaucracy so I shouldn't expect anything in the neighborhood of perfection but, c'mon, I've done this stuff before. Let me go home.

Saturday, December 10, 2011


"...He found a way to live with the aloneness, to say "Yes" when he asked himself if the Pearl would be worth the price he paid, day after day. Night after night. Year after year.

Who could speak of such things? Not Emilio Sandoz who, for all his facility with many languages, remained tongue-tied and inarticulate about the center of his soul.

For he could not feel God or approach God as a friend or speak to God with the easy familiarity of the devout or praise God with poetry.

And yet, as he had grown older, the path he had started down almost in ignorance had begun to seem clearer to him. It became more apparent to him that he was truly called to walk this strange and difficult , this unnatural and unutterable path to God, which required not poetry or piety but simple endurance and patience.

No one could know what this meant to him."

~ Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow



Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Empathy AND Common Sense


It didn't take long for me to get my first disciplinary case at this unit. Once I finished working last night I sat down at a table in the dayroom to finish a letter i had started earlier. As I penned the last line a guard came in and told me to stop writing and get back to work. I replied that I had completed my job but she told me I needed to sit on the benches anyway. When I got tot he benches i put the letter in its envelope and waited to be allowed to shower.

The next morning I was called out by a sergeant at 6 AM and made to wait outside in the freezing weather for thirty minutes in my jacket without a hood or zipper. Finally I was called in and told I had received a case for "failure to obey a direct order, namely continuing to write when told to stop."

"What's your statement?"
"I did stop writing."
"That's it?"
"Yes, sir."
"What really happened?"

I told him what occurred and added that I was actually working on my day off. At this remark the sergeant's eyes narrowed in a questioning manner. We don't have enough dorm janitors so I come out on my day off and clean the two dorms some nights. Did he really think it would be fair to punish someone who picks up the slack?

"Don't worry about this case and I'll look into getting more janitors assigned to your building. But, in the future, don't be writing while you're working, OK?

"Yes, sir."

Amazing. Empathy and common sense.


Thursday, December 1, 2011

“A house without books is like a room without windows.” *


I'm really beginning to dislike this unit. In Venus many guards had at least a little bit of empathy and common sense but I haven't seen much of wither here in Dayton. Today I went to the mailroom where I had three books denied to me. TO understand my frustration better (although having books denied for any reason is frustrating) allow me to give a little bit of background.

I had heard that while I am in the education program I am not allowed to receive books, so when I got here my mother called the unit to ask if I could receive books or not. The answer was yes, I would receive them. She ordered the books that day but they arrived the day I started the program. Somehow that day was different than the day before and the books were denied.

When I went to the mailroom I was given paperwork to sign and when I started to ask questions, the lady snatched the paperwork form my hand and said I would have to leave. I have been blessed with an enormous amount of patience so, even after being treated so rudely, I calmly asked to talk to the mailroom supervisor. I explained the situation to her but she was adamant that I could not get the books just because I had started the program. I told her that I could get the same books in the library if they were on the shelf. Her to that was that she doesn't think we should be allowed to use the library, either. Really? What kind of crazy rehab doesn't allow you to educate yourself?

The books I will be sending home - at a cost of $4.46 postage and $1.27 for the jumbo envelope - were as innocuous as they come: Quantum (about the the history of quantum physics), Innovator's DNA (about what makes entrepreneurs successful), and Luminarium (a sci-fi novel.) I was told the only books I could receive are religious texts and textbooks. I feel like a blanket denial on everything else is just plain wrong. I worked as a librarian in Venus because I believe education changes people for the better. If you feel the same way, let me know by leaving a comment on my blog or, if you want to do something more active, write the TDCJ Programs Director:

Madeline Ortiz
Director, Rehabilitation Programs Division
PO Box 99
Huntsville, TX 77342-0099

* Horace Mann