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

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.

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.

"...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

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.

“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

A (true) Nightmare Story

WARNING: The following (lengthy) report of events will probably only serve to increase your seething frustration with unjust government bureaucracies, specifically, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (a misnomer if there ever was one.)

Six months after I was supposed to leave for a rehab program and more than a year after I originally received my parole answer, I am finally at the unit where the program takes place. This entire week has been nuts so far because of the trip and all the unknowns through the process.

At 1 a.m. Monday morning I was wakened and told to pack my stuff. I was on transit. No one could tell me where I was going, just that i was leaving. I could be going straight home, to an evaluation and back to Venus, or to a four-month rehab program. Or I could be going anywhere because TDC does whatever they want. I quickly got a nervous, sick feeling in my stomach and was constantly drinking water to keep dry mouth at bay. I hate dealing with unknowns like this.

I packed my stuff into three plastic mesh onion bags - one that would go with me filled with hygiene products, books, and legal paperwork; the second to be picked up by my family filled with old letters and card games I can't take with me; the third filled with the rest of my property that didn't fir into the first bag to be sent to me in a few weeks via TDC truck mail.

Around 4:00 a.m. the cell doors were opened for breakfast and West came out to talk for the last couple of hours before I left. We kept trying to figure out what was going on and where I might be going. No progress was made.

As we talked, people kept coming to the table and wishing me luck, some that had never said a word to me before. When we went to breakfast, I saw a few friends and asked them to pass on the news of my departure to guys in other parts of the unit.

The call came at 6:30 a.m. for me to grab my mattress, pillow, and clothes and to head for the chain room. The chain room is where all incoming and outgoing inmates are processed into or out of the unit, exchanging TDC clothes for MTC (the private company that runs the unit that I am leaving) clothes. "Chain" is prison for "transit" due to the chains of handcuffs we are put into for each trip.

While in the chain room my friends Omar and OJ dropped by. It was probably wishful thinking that told me I was simply going to an evaluation to decide whether I would be put in the rehab program. Since professionals in the past have told me that I am the lowest risk for re-offending that they have ever seen, I figured that it would be quickly determined that the rehab program was unnecessary and I would be sent back to Venus until a parole address was approved. With this process in my head, I told Omar and OJ that I would be back in a couple of weeks. When the mailroom lady stopped by and asked if she needed to find a new Elvis for the talent show (see blog entry Friday, December 3, 2010), I told her the same thing.

At 8 a.m. all of us on chain were shackled individually - hands to waist and feet together - and corralled onto a small bus that looked like it belonged to an assisted living center. Three hours later we reached our first drop off in Huntsville, then hit the second near noon. I wasn't scheduled to get off until we reached the Huntsville unit in "downtown" at 1:30 p.m.

The Huntsville unit, also called the Walls, was one of the first prisons in the state, going back to the mid-19th century. This is where every execution takes place and the red brick walls have many stories to tell. The corner of the unit where I came in contains the crumbling state prison rodeo stadium where it is said that inmates would attempt to pluck $100 bills form the horns of a bull. The rodeo is lone since defunct and I overheard the officers say that the winning bid to tear down the stadium was just over $40,000. Despite the nation's progress toward newer prison operations, the Walls' outdated form of incarcerations lives on in Texas.

After arriving at the Walls I had to wait outside in a cage (a common theme of the trip - I felt like a head of cattle) until being ushered past the industrial buildings of the unit and into a converted gym. The industrial building was built in 1949 and was dedicated to the governor at that time, Shivers. The gym's side walls had closed in like a trash compactor and the floor had a series of six cages where inmates were being stripped, inventoried, and sorted. This process took a couple of hours with lots of standing around waiting. After being sorted, I was given a cell assignment on the sixth floor of an old-school cell block overlooking the gym floor.

The cell already had one occupant, a German who had been there 33 days. That doesn't sound very long until you realize that this cell was the smallest I've encountered yet - just six feet by nine feet - and had most of the space taken up by the sink, toilet, bunk beds and property we carries. The walls were covered with scribblings of departure dates (the Walls was also where everyone was released until a change last year), Scripture and artwork. The art varied form portraits of family or Christ to sexual images and gang symbols. It felt like the most cramped and unclean place I had seen yet. I was grateful to know that this was only an overnight stay.

Dinner at the Walls came at 8 p.m. and we walked through a courtyard where we could see where executions take place. I was told that two executions were held a few weeks ago - probably one of the Jasper "truck draggers" - and the bodies were wheeled out as guys walked past on their to dinner. Creepy.

After dinner I read a few pages before going to sleep. I only had one hour of sleep before being wakened for chain that morning, and I was exhausted physically and emotionally. Unfortunately, I was wakened at 10 p.m. to begin the departure process, which was the same process done earlier that day, only backwards and we a had two-hour break for breakfast around 2 a.m. From the cages inside, we headed to the cages outside to wait for our transportation to arrive. At this point I still did not know my final destination and was still hoping to do a short trip then back to Venus before going home.

While waiting in the cages outside, rain began to fall around us. We were protected from above by a corrugated tin roof, but collecting rainwater on the ground threatened to soak our property, so I was forced to hold mu bag of books and such off the ground. This same storm hit Venus as we were leaving the day before and I would see it again getting off the bus at my current unit.

My bus arrived at 6 a.m., two hours after I came out to the cage. I headed to Hightower, the unit in Dayton where I spent a month over two years ago. My heart sank. No evaluations are done at Hightower, just the rehab program. If I start the program as soon as i arrive there, I will get out in April or May with only a month or two before discharging my entire sentence.

I was upset that I wasn't picked up last May as scheduled and more upset that my lawyer and nearly every other official involved in my case had told me that I would only be incarcerated for two or three years at most. If I had been picked up for the program on time I would have been home with family and friends now for the holidays. Instead I'll be sharing the holidays with me, myself and I over a tray of poorly cooked prison food. I may still have a chance at trying to the administration that I don't need the program, but that chance is very slim.

We arrived at Hightower in the rain and had to wait in another cage outside. I kept my back to the wind and held my property close to my chest so the driving rain didn't get to it. Hours later, our stuff was inventoried, the guard told us to carry our property into the rain and to strip to be searched. All my effort was for naught as my legal paperwork, letters and books got soaked. I was angry and in disbelief, but far too sleep-deprived to do anything. Once we entered the unit we were made to wait in yet another outdoor cage to see the warden, classification and. I was given a job as a nighttime janitor, the same job I had last time I was here.

When I got to my cell around 12:30 p.m., I unpacked everything and laid it our on my bunk to dry. It wasn't until after 3 p.m. that I received dry clothes and a mattress (no pillows here). About five hours in wet clothes. After dinner at 4:30, I crashed out. I'd had only four hours sleep in the last 58 hours, so I was knocked out quickly.

This has been a long and crazy week so far, but I'm one step closer to coming home. Too bad I'm nearly 300 miles form home and back to the authoritative arms of TDC. I just hope this time flies by and I'm home before I know it.

In-and Out (not the burgers...)

Here's another story of mind-bending logic form behind prison walls. This unit has recently started doing in-and-outs (no, not the burgers). The cell doors in each dorm are now supposed to be closed at all times, except for two short intervals near the top of each hour. During those intervals we are to get anything we want to take to the dayroom with us and to use the restroom. Or we can stay in our cells for the hour. This doesn't work well here because we don't have restrooms outside the cells like other units and we don't have panic buttons in the cell if something happens. Anyway, on with the story.

West's morning routine involves brushing his teeth in the shower each morning so he doesn't wake his cellmate. This morning the officer did in-and-outs while West was brushing his teeth in his boxers. After West finished brushing, he asked if his door could be opened so he could get his clothes and stuff for work.

Most of the time officers don't really care if a door is opened. They are usually accommodating and practice common sense. If someone needs in, the door is generally opened, then closed after the inmate is finished. Because the policy is so new, however, the practice is far from consistent; even the length of intervals is different depending on the officer on the floor.

This morning the officer denied West's request. Even though West needed to go to work fifteen minutes later, the officer would not open the door for him. West asked the officer to call a sergeant to come resolve the situation, but the officer said no again. The officer encouraged West to go to the security office himself but West protested that he was only wearing his boxers. The officer told him to go anyway and opened the door to the hallway. When West stepped into the hallway, the officer called him back and said would call a sergeant.

When the sergeant arrived she told the officer to immediately open West's door and instructed West to get clothed and come to the security office before going to work.
While West got ready, the sergeant told a lieutenant, who just happens to have had a target on West for years, what had happened. As soon as he arrived in the security office, West was handcuffed and taken to segregation because he had "caused a disturbance." Crazy.

Hopefully, he will be let out of segregation soon, but in any case, the situation defies logic and shows the complete lack of power inmates have, even when they are right.

Passing the Buck

Last October I received a parole answer saying I would be enrolled in a rehab program in May 2011 and released on parole in September 2011. Obviously, neither has occurred. I sent a letter last month to both the parole board and to the director of programs for Texas Department of Corrections asking what the delay was and what I could do to speed up the process.

I just received as "answer" from TDC tonight in the mail, two weeks after my initial letter. The director of programs thanked me for writing and stated that she would forward my letter to a manager. Thanks for passing the buck!

Bad Teacher! - Part II

Remember the crazy business guy that taught my friend, Shane, the wrong stuff so that he would be dependent on his teacher to be successful? Well, I ran into him a couple of days ago - easy to do on a unit of 1,000 men - and he said that he would give me a shot with my business questions.

The reason I came to him in the first place was because I want to start my own graphic design business when I get out and, while I know a bit about the graphic design part, I don't know much at all when it comes to business. I hoped to get a good idea of how to actually operate my business.

Today we started on accounting and how to get the business off the ground. I can tell he doesn't have a good idea of what a cash-strapped start-up needs to do because e keeps giving advice for pricey services like a CPA and an attorney, but most is solid, like how to organize costs and revenue.

I think I will learn some essentials over our next few sessions but I also think I would learn more by watching the processes. My biggest problem is not knowing what to ask about. I'm just that oblivious. I can't wait to get out and dive into it, though. Experience is the best teacher, right?

Databases, code and fantasy football

My friend, West, works in maintenance as a clerk and has just taken over in the parts room. He has to keep track of what was ordered, when and how often parts are issued out for jobs on the unit. With that info, he gives a monthly report on how much money was spent and how much the department needs to order for the next month.

And it is all done on paper.

West asked me last week if i could build a database for the parts room to make things work more smoothly and easier. After getting permission from West's boss, I went back to maintenance and built a structure for the in Access. It took a while since I didn't know everything the database needed to it would be used. Once the skeleton was assembled, I asked West to populate it with fake data and make some forms to help see how it would be. He also me a list of functions wanted as we discussed project back at the dorm.

With the foundation in place and an idea of what needed to be done, it was time to get dirty. Access is not the best or easiest-to-use development tool for making programs, but it is the best we have available. I probably wouldn't be good at any others since I have almost zero experience. Most of the functions need to be added in with Visual Basic, which I am slightly familiar with after working on the book cart program in the library. The first bit of work on the parts room program was easy to set up. Then West kept asking if this certain thing was possible or if this tweak could be made. All of what he has asked for is possible, I'm sure, but I just have to figure out how to code it. Sometimes the process of discovery can take days, though joy of figuring out the solution is definitely worth it.

To give myself a break from the parts room program I have been fine-tuning and adding functionality to the fantasy football program I made to track stats and scores for the seven leagues in the unit. It's a lot of fun taking a rough product and transforming it into a lithe, easy-to-use beast. Hopefully, I can do that with the parts room program before I leave.

LENIN - AND OTHERS - FOR BEGINNERS

During lockdown last month I read a graphic novel called A Drifting Life that is a history of post-war Japanese culture and comics, as well as a kind of autobiography of its author, Yoshihiro Tatsumi. When I mentioned the book to my parents, my dad asked, "Oh, is it like Lenin for Beginners?" I'd never heard of it, so he explained that it was a comic he read in college that was a biography of Lenin and his place in the Russian revolution.

Yesterday I received a pass to the mailroom that stated I had a package waiting for me. When I went to find out what came in, I saw that it was a copy of Lenin for Beginners with a companion, Trotsky for Beginners. Interesting. Even better was that they were both original editions from the late 1970s. It's wild to me that books sympathetic to communism were in wide circulation while the old War was far from over.

Today I received two more Cold War-era comics from the same series: Marx for Beginners and Nuclear Power for Beginners. My cellmate joked with me that my dad was trying to turn me into a communist. Far from it, I thnk he was trying to expose me to some cool history in an engaging way. I can't wait to dig in.

Bad teacher! Bad! Bad!

When I get out I plan to go back to school and pursue a degree in architecture. However, that won't be until next fall. Untill then I will be working at least part-time with the non-profit I worked for prior to my incarceration and also trying to start my own design/advertising business in the Metroplex area. I should be home later this month or early next month, so I've been trying to take advantage of my time to plan out the business.

My friend, Shane, had a mentor here that taught him quite a bit about busness. I've talked to his mentor in the past and he seemed to be sharp, so I figured he would be a good resource to tap into to help me with my plans. I asked him Tuesday if he would be willing to give me some assistance, but didn't get a straight answer. He just asked me to come back the next day to talk. I've been looking for an answer each day since and didn't get one until I pressed him today and he said no. Along the way I found out some pretty sketchy things, and part of me is glad he said no.

All week he has complained that the inmates in the state prison are liars and don't follow through with what they say they will do. He says his students in the federal prison actually wanted to learn and weren't just learning to have something to do. I think part of that is because inmates in the state don't really have any responsibilities and are often looking for ways to pass time while expecting handouts.

The thing that upset me was that he said he doesn't teach correctly - on purpose. The whole time he teaches he feeds lies to his students until they get out. Then he instructs them to contact his lawyer for further instructions. He makes his students beholden to himself rather than independent. Sketchy, eh?

The reason he told me "no" was becasue I was going to be independent and he wouldn't profit from it. In defending himself he tried to use Harvard as an example. People pay huge amounts of money to go to a school like Harvard. He said he was like Harvard. However, I countered, Harvard recognizes talent and will provide scholarships for excellent students. There is such a thing as a free edcuation. It seems his only satisfaction comes from money, of which he will get none from me.

If it's fall it must be football

Fall is here (well, almost) and you know what that means - football, and along with football comes fantasy football. I shouldn't be here too much longer, but the fantasy season will help pass the time. This year's should be better than last year, too, since we have a fantasy football approved for rec.

A few weeks ago West and I got to talking abou the season and he mentioned that it would be cool to get more people playing or if we had a unit-wide fantasy league. It sounded good to me, too, but how would it happen? We had an idea - if basektball, chess and volleyball had tournaments at rec, why not fantasy football?

For a rec activity or tournament to be legit, it must first be approved by the assistant warden. West and I argued over who would ask permission before we agreed that West would type up the paperwork and I would ask the assistant warden to sign.

When I walked into his office, the assistant warden greeted me and said, "Come on in and sit down. Sheesh, every time I see you, you always look so serious. Lighten up!" That was certainly not what I expected. I explained that we would like to start fantasy football leagues at rec to get guys interested in the football season and keep them at least a little occupied. He was all for it on one condition: the paperwork at rec and in the dorms had to be neat. No problem there. West can type stuff up at work in maintenance.

We had over sixty guys sign up, which gave us enough for five leagues. This whole week has been a string of drafts for each league. It's been busy for me but gratifying to see so many guys excited aboout the season, even guys who have never played fantasy football. Should be fun.

A different kind of job

This morning I was sleeping nicely, with my covers over my head and a few sheets of thick paper in the window to keep out the light, when my door started clicking, meaning the picket officer wanted our attention for something. When I opened the door to see what he wanted, I saw the commissary lady standing below my row.

"You want to help with the commissary truck?" she asked.

I'd been in my cell for the last three days on lockdown so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get out and move around.

My dorm was shaken down (searched) yesterday so now I'm free to work, as long as I am called out. The library isn't doing inventory this go 'round so they don't need my help. But most of the commissary workers are still waiting to be shaken down and there was a truck outside waiting to be unloaded.

I spent the whole day taking commissary off the truck and moving the inventory to different warehouse locations around the unit. It was the most physical labor I've done in a while - not hard work, but enough to get me tires by the end of the day. When I came back to the dorm, I took my first shower in two days and napped listening to All things Considered.

I liked the library much better. I still had enough energy for rec in the evenings I worked there. Escaping the cell during lockdown was great, though.