I felt like I needed a good beachside-esque book. I may be reading from a bunk bed in South Dakota instead of a lounge chair in the sand, but you understand the idea. A murder mystery to get lost in. Something to balance out the...
Happiness resides in misery Misery hides in happiness Who knows where they end -Lao Tzu Prison is a punishment. So how does society measure whether a punishment effectively meets the goals of punishing someone? Somewhere a group of experts determined that based on a multitude of factors, x number...
Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari This book was a grind in all the good ways. It's like a can-opener circling everything you thought you knew, then popping open your mind to expose you to an entirely new perspective. The author...
The prison has been in Red or Yellow Covid modified operations since I arrived here. That means controlled movements where foot traffic through the compound is prohibited unless it's during the 5 minutes between when a call is initiated and when it ends. The two...
Every morning at breakfast we are offered oatmeal, 2 cartons of milk, a donut and an apple. In terms of mealiness and instantaneous browning upon biting into said apple, the consistency across the board is astounding. On the weekends, if you are so lucky and...
Mark came through with another riveting book. This story is a globe trotting memoir of John Perkins, a former "economist" with a US based consulting firm. I recently read Robert F. Kennedy's memoir on the Cuban Missile Crisis titled "Thirteen Days." In the book, you...
When it came to prison, I feared all the wrong things. That fear often affected the time between sentencing and self-surrender. You don't know what you don't know and I can't change the past but a lot of what I was worried about didn't come...
Last Saturday we had a snowstorm and the power went out across the entire compound. When all the lights go off in a prison inmates immediately jump into action. I should have assumed nothing less would occur. The night started like many other evenings this...
Everyone relies on this relic of telecom technology to stay in touch with the outside world. I am glad we have access to telephones - not all prisoners throughout the history of the world can say they had as much. No matter what the phone...
It's almost March and this one slipped away from me. So while the holiday's feel like a LONG time ago, I recently pulled out a gift I was sent (I'm counting all the Christmas cards as gifts too) and felt it proper to still share...