Prison Pete
Love is.
While attending a REC (Residents Encounter Christ) weekend, I heard a great definition for the word love. According to Joe, a very gifted speaker at this event, love is about making a commitment. It is not at all about liking someone, liking someone is about personalities.
This gave me a lot to think about. Certainly I have learned about the word commitment. The paperwork that allows the state to keep me in this undisclosed secure location is called "JUDGEMENT AND COMMITTAL." I am committed by the state to spend between five and fifteen years behind razor wire fences. No exceptions, no alternatives, no ifs, ands, or buts. Neither party can wake up one morning and say "Okay, enough of this commitment thing, let us go our separate ways. Not going to happen.
Even if I am lucky enough to make parole this November, I will still have up to ten years of rules and regulations that will govern my life until I have fulfilled my commitment to the State of New York.
So loving someone means being committed to them. It means you will be there for this person, no matter what. Even when you are pissed off, hung over, tired, hungry, mad at the person, or just want to care only about yourself. Nope, when you love someone you are there for them any time, any place, any anything„ That is what I have been doing for the last twelve plus years.
What have I been doing for the last twelve years? I have been committed. No, I am certainly not in love with prison. But for the purpose of understanding what it means to be committed, I got it? And while I had a lot to do with what put me in here, it was certainly not in my life plans to become committed to prison.
Being committed to prison has certainly hammered into the gray matter exactly what it means to be committed. Now I have been told that to love someone, you are going to have to be committed to them. Sometimes it takes me a little longer to get the message.
While I have had some good days and some good things happen to me while in prison, it is not an experience I wish on any other human being. In prison you often get to see how low human beings can go, and the level of hurt, physical and emotional, one can cause to another. (Some specific examples may be written about in other places in this blog, more examples will just have to wait till I am out of the system.)
Amidst all the bad times there have been some incredible bright spots„ People and events that I would never have met and experienced had I not had this "commitment.” True, there are other events and people that I have not shared an experience with because I have been in prison. That is life. You can only be in one place at one time.
If you are in love with someone, you are going to be there for that person no matter what, no matter where, no matter when. Not because at this time you would like to be there. Not because you have nothing better to d. You are there because you love that person.
The great revelation to me is that once you understand (and accept.) what a commitment is, and you say, "I love you" to a fellow human being your life becomes easier. No longer will you feel the challenges of what to do. No, first and foremost you answer the needs of your loved one.
Okay, you happen to love your spouse, and one result of the physical ramifications of that love produces a couple of charming offspring whom you also love dearly. Now what happens if this wonderful trio in your life all need you to be at a different place at 8:00 PM on Wednesday? That is logistics, and with love it can be worked out to meet the needs of all. The fact that the NCAA Final Four is playing in your town, and your alma mater is one of the teams that is not one of the FOUR places you need to be that night. You still only need to be THREE places. Unless of course one of your loved ones happens to be on the team in the Final Four. Now that would be very cool.
We interrupt the continuation of yesterday's letter
to bring your this late breaking news.
As I was enjoying s lazy morning tucked in tight, the officer taps on my bunk to tell me they have a project for me. I put on my trusty mess hall whites for the first time in about two months and head over not knowing if it was only to fix a data problem or something new.
It turned out to be something new he wanted. He was going to have me work on his computer, which is in the front area of the kitchen as opposed to working in the back office. I mentioned that I needed to get my working directory off the back system since he only had the compiled software on his machine. As he escorts me to the back office, my nemesis, fellow inmate, Darnell Biggins, is hard at work on the computer, playing solitaire. This is around 8:30 AM. Yeah he is so busy on the computer.
Anyhow, I spent the next three hours or so trying to get back into my programming. I need to put a preprinted form on an existing report. After digging around through the help files I ended up using two sub reports, inside another main report to get the end result I needed. Now I needed a way to pass the parameters for the original report, now a sub report.
This was not working out. I had done something similar once before and finally remembered that the solution involved creating a specific query file each time as opposed to just passing a variable that contains the 'where' clause. Tomorrow I get to go in to work right after breakfast to complete this task.
I assume you have been receiving the INC magazine I ordered for you at Christmas time. I just received the June issue. You need to please look at the article on page 114. When you're coding. I was reading this around 11:30 PM last night and when I got to the paragraph where he describes how being interrupted while writing codes is like letting all the balls fall as you juggle the variables and how when interrupted it takes ten minutes to get back tip to speed.
Can you please explain how he makes his money? My limited understanding of open source tells me that any application written in an open source environment is available at the code level to all. Do you still buy the application? Where is the money coming from? Imagine what if a similar enterprise could be grown for medical records?
Can you shed some light on this?
As it is now it looks like I will out of the dorm most all of tomorrow, and so I wanted to type this short note tonight. I will certainly return to your letter on Thursday while celebrating my 53rd birthday.
How the package thing works.
I am entitled to receive two food packages a month, not to exceed 35 pounds in total. Books, cosmetics and clothing are not subject to any limits. At this point the only food package I have received in the last two years is the one that you kindly reshipped (and added to). So at this point you sending me a food package would not be a problem.
As you know I manage to feed myself off the food that is available from the commissary. While the items are supposed to be priced at a wholesale level, but the current supplier has jacked up a lot of the prices. The deal is they do put the contract out for bids, but the winning bid only has to hold the prices for thirty days. Then he can raise them to allegedly reflect his increase in cost. For example we are now paying $1.60 for a 16 ounce can of mackerel and one of the catalog companies (Bust a Move) sells it for the some price.
Why is any of this relevant to you? Well I used to be able to buy enough food to feed my self for two weeks, and even purchase extras like a daily dose of chocolate. Lately, and last week in particular I has just enough available spending limit to buy what I consider my basic three meal a day requirement. We are limited to spending $55 per biweekly shopping trip. This limit used to include tobacco products but they have since removed them from that limit. That was a boost for those that smoke, but since I do not smoke, it did not change my limit.
Wah, wah, wah. Okay so now the package option becomes a source for items that are not sold in the store or for buying treats that I can not fit in my $55. On the one hand the $55 limit is a forced saving mechanism. Since I receive $15 a week from my job, plus the $100 a month from my mom, I can not spend more than $110 every four weeks. The limit does not include postage stamps.
There is one inmate who gets a package every few weeks from a store, which is paid for by his family. Included in the packages were four ounce bags of beef jerky. The first time he sold me two packs of the jerky for one box of Kool cigarettes. The Kools cost me $4.50, so I certainly get the better of that deal.
The point is I really do not physically need any more food. I have gained a few pounds, and that means I am not starving. But emotionally sometimes the diet of oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, and tuna fish just becomes too much. Ironically most of the time the "pressure" for something different passes. If I were on the street I would jump out to the local pizza parlor or maybe the grocery store and buy something special.
I used to have Mom and Dad send me some items every few months just for the sake of variety. I recently received a catalog from a company called J&E Warehouse. They have a 5 -- 6 pound block of mozzarella cheese for $20.00. Now that is what I am looking for to go with the can of anchovies you sent. They used to sell an 8 ounce package of shredded mozzarella, but now it is that artificial all oil, non milk product that does not melt at all like the real thing. So the point is that once in a while some variety is nice.
Of course the irony is that for the first eight and a half years between my time in the various county jails and Club Fed, I was not able to have any packages sent in and I survived. This is one of those no right answer life questions.
One of the guys near me, who is going home in a couple of months, just got a humongous food package with real chickens, real sliced American cheese and all sorts of goodies. What is the right thing? I guess it depends on who your friends are.
Now I do not mean that to reflect at all on you as my friend. I am not expecting you to send me anything. I am grateful for all your support and true friendship. The point I was thinking of is what I just was sharing with Ray Carlton, you have to be willing to acknowledge that different people will offer their help in different ways. So if you were to send me some jerky it would be a great gift, give me a taste of something I read about in the Times and we have been kicking around for how many letters. Does any of this make sense?
I just spent the last hour talking with Ray. His wife came to visit him yesterday with her mother. It turns out his wife has a bunch of different cancers flowing in her that make treatment options next to impossible. She has been given xx amount of time to live. Her mom tells Ray that she is going out to the car now, he has the next three hours with her daughter and then he is done. Mind you this is not how his wife feels.
And if that was not enough, his mom is suffering from cancer too and was in the hospital for the last month with a collapsed lung. His family kept making excuses for her when he called saying she was out at this or the other place when he called. On top of that one of his brothers has MS and he is only around 18 and his medical provider has said he has only a year or two left. Yeah sometimes life just keeps coming at you.
Meanwhile my neighbor Tyrell wants to stomp on Ray because Ray apparently claimed some fish filets he was supposed to bring back from the mess hall were taken by the officers, when in fact they were diverted by Ray to an alternative inmate. Life is fun here at Camp Run-a-Muk.
It is now almost 2:00. I am going to jump in the shower and get ready for my 3:30 ART (Aggression Replacement Training) class. This is finally the last week. Only four more classes. Yeah. Depending on what I "feel" like when I return at 5:30, this might be the last page of the letter, or page three of a longer letter.
I wrote that I wanted to get back to writing
and this morning as I pulled out my monster Webster's Dictionary your latest letter popped out. It is now 11:15 AM and I have had my morning breakfast; oatmeal, and one toasted English muffin, and instead of lying down and disappearing in to a book I am going to respond to your letter.
I quickly reread the letter I typed to you yesterday before sending it out and was pissed off at the spelling errors. This typewriter has a great spellchecker and it beeps at wrong words.
Unlike the SmithCorona, there is a different beep for the end of line and spelling errors therefore there is no reason for misspellings. The spellchecker even has an option to look up possible corrections.
Since it is fairly comprehensive I have taken to looking in the thesaurus or the dictionary if it beeps at me and cannot find a suggestion. So misspellings are just the result of plain laziness and inattentiveness (even that word is in the spellchecker, however spellchecker is not). Hold on; let me look that one up in the big Webster’s. Stand by. Okay it is listed as two words
Let us skip the name calling, and see if we can figure out what it means to be friends. I am always lifted up when I read any of your older letters, and just a few weeks ago I was sharing some of the jokes from one of your letters and had him laughing.
Abby has been sending me cards and or letters at the rate of two or three a week, but then it will taper off for a week or two. I can trace the lull to a gap in me sending out letters a couple weeks back.
This raises two thoughts. One: do not feel you have to answer an entire letter from me. Hopefully there will be one or maybe two thoughts that rise above the rest of the minutia that is my existence that are worthy of a response from you. Then what might happen is that we will develop some continuity.
That is what I think worked in the past. Yes I tended to try and comment on each paragraph in your letters, but with Abby, what ends up happening is that the issues that are more relevant to both of us rise to the top and get the most ink.
You and I have some things in common, some things that one of us likes to know about the other, and some things that are not as important, and in an effort to budget the time we have to write might not merit the full head on attack of more than a sentence or two. Not that these lesser issues are unnecessary, they do provide context and sometimes come back to the forefront later on. For example I do enjoy hearing about your cycling adventures, and feel like an insider when that subject turns up in the paper. I can then read something that I would normally pass over.
Damn, this is exactly what I mean. Your opening paragraph is only three lines and I take off and give it a half a page.
One last point, I would say that volume wise I put more words on paper than Abby, but that again is part of the budget thing. I do have somewhat more "free" time, but it is also a function of who I am. I tend to "need" to explain things to the nth degree.
One way I may be able to work on that is based on your shorter letters, reading them carefully for context and learn what things I write that either have no impact on you, or things I just put down way too many words.
SPLAT!
I hope you can understand some of what I said about why looking into the VA medical software could become a lifesaver. I have no idea; well I have a damn good idea, where the parole board is going to be heading when I meet with them that third week in July, I Just wonder if I could turn the whole interview on its head by showing possible major league employment possibility.
While this letter is not at all organized or very concise it does show me that I have plenty I can write about and it is a waste of my time not to buckle down and do it. As I mention in the enclosed post, I am in control, it is just that with so little positive reinforcement or gratification (instant or otherwise) I need to get my head around the fact that at this point in my life I am stuck with having to put in work that will bear fruit in the future. It sucks, but it is the truth.
I was thinking as I started to write this how really screwed I have been by the justice system. If the simplistic sales job my lawyer in NY did was true, I should have no fear of not making my first board. Being on parole would be a piece of cake so therefore do not worry about the 15 year part of my sentence. Now the truth is looking like I will be lucky to get out before my 10 year CR (conditional release) date. It is not up to parole at that point, as long as I have not refused any "programs" I am released but would still be subject to that last five of the fifteen year sentence to parole supervision).
So the real short and long term hope I have as far as having any kind of a real life is to do the extraordinary. But I realize that the only way to do that would be through some incredibly hard, no short term payoff, and very little monetary gain while getting to that point. So the two basic areas at this point are writer extraordinaire, or putting those 8 out of 10 doctors on to an electronic records system at an incredibly low cost.
See I am not asking for much am I? Then again I could just get stepped on, SPLAT!
Okay before I ramble on to yet more uncharted waters let me put this in the mail to you. I have only four more days of the ART class that has been taxing my ability to not blow up at someone or something, and then I guess I will be back to the whole day free schedule. Time will tell.
I need to hear from you more often, I know I need to write more too. For the short term, maybe try short letters, while I certainly enjoy hearing what you and the boys are up to, maybe we can each focus on ourselves a bit and toss around some of life’s unanswered questions. Just a thought.
Anything But A Head
My dad was famous for telling us the latest joke around the dinner table, and not only laughing to himself as he was telling the joke, causing him to stop talking, but then he would forget the punch line.
One joke that he did remember was as follows:
Once there was this head, just a plain, ordinary head. No neck, no other body parts just a nice almost spherical head. Each day during the week this head would roll out of bed in the morning, eat his breakfast and then roll off to work. Each night before he went to bed, he would say his prayers, and always ask if God should so will it, could he be anything but a head. He was tired of being only a head.
One night he has this feeling that God was really listening to his prayer, so he prayed extra hard, begging God, "Please make me anything but a head." He went to sleep wondering if this night was to be the night that God would answer his prayer.
He wakes up the next morning, opens his eyes, and discovers his prayers have finally been answered, he is now a grape.
On the way to work that morning, he gets stepped on, SPLAT!
The moral of this tale: "Quit while you're a head."Being in prison is like this joke. You are just a head. It is the only part of your body (at least what is inside of your head) that is not under the twenty-four hour control of the prison authorities.
The rules of the prison at a minimum control when you can move from point A to point B. They may be as strict as to say you can only shower three times a week, regardless of the fact that it may be over 90 degrees inside and outside of the prison. But luckily, they can not tell you what or when to think.
One of the great things about this blog is that it gives me an opportunity to think out loud. To allow my thoughts and feelings to escape the confines of razor wire, electric fences and stone walls. I have not risen up to the challenge and the gift that is available to me. I have been sitting here wallowing in my private pity party.
While it may be true that the medium of the blog is dying, I am certainly guilty of not keeping this particular blog alive. I have no excuse, no reason for neglecting the freedom that this blog (and my editor) provide.
I am working at getting this blog back among the living. It provides proof of my intellectual freedom, if only I take advantage of it. I must also be willing to put the work in.
I have no one but myself to blame, and on the positive side, need no one but myself to reverse the status quo.
24 hour medical coverage.
Another great idea, not allow health insurance companies to charge more for people that have pre-existing conditions or known chronic conditions. Makes sense to me that if I have to charge everyone the same price I simply have no choice but to charge a higher price for all.
The real problem is that as far as health care goes we have to either admit as a country that if you can pay for it you can get it, or everyone deserves the same treatment. Until you decide that, how can you design any type of national coverage? If we admit that life is not fair and we cannot make it fair, then we just do the best we can.
For example, back at Club Fed we used to have 24 hour PA coverage. One day the Warden wakes up and says,
Hey I do not have 24 hour medical personnel, why should prisoners? So then from 11PM to 6AM we had PA on call rather than on site, and sure enough the one night I have an asthma attack I have to wait almost an hour for the PA to make his way into the prison.
Here they do not use PA's. We have at least one nurse on site at all times. As far as doctors go, with have Dr. Weinstein when he is here, which is usually not more than four days a week for about 6 hours maximum. And yes there is a backlog waiting to see him.
I got a quickie physical a week or so ago that included my first digital rectal exam (DRE) i.e. prostate check. That was pleasant. He said I should wait at least a month to get the blood test done as apparently the physical exam causes a false rise in the levels.
GM fiasco.
For the last two weeks, since the NY Times changed to that new New York section on Sundays, my edition ends up with no New York news at all. Up until that point, they had been including the New York section in the main. There was International, National, and New York, all in that first section which is still how my Monday to Saturday papers come. So anything important happens on a Saturday, printed on Sunday, and I will never find out about it. I need to write a letter to complain about that.
The paper is getting lean enough! Another area to write about is how they are portraying the great rescue of GM. I am still not sure if I am going to dive into the bulk of the writing, but for example one story caught my eye about how the bondholders agreed to "forgive" some of the bonds. I would think the bondholders might prefer to have it reported how they are getting "royally fucked" but I guess that would not be printable.
I am also amazed at another headline that says "Obama feels confident that GM will emerge from bankruptcy and be a great company." Lets see, you screw a whole bunch of stockholders, bondholders, and who knows how many small business whose outstanding GM bills were not paid, but you think things are going to be great? Let us not talk about collateral damage.
Smelly Sneakers.
I had an interesting problem back in April, where for so reason my sneakers smelled like cat piss. That is what one particular inmate would say every time I walked into the small TV room. They did smell a bit but it was more mildew than anything else.
No, we do not have any cats around here. They do in some of the maxes to keep the mouse population down. Anyhow, I think the inmate that was razzing me put something in my shoes. He is now gone I have washed the sneakers out, and no more strange smells.
I am enclosing a post for the blog
that has been in the memory of the typewriter for over a week. I have been so funked out, and feeling so useless, that the majority of my time has been spent lying on my bunk reading.
I have not worked at all in the mess hall for last two months, and no one has told me anything. I am still getting paid, and even saw the officer that started me doing all the programming when I made a trip to the mess hall for breakfast this morning, and all he said was, "How you doing?"
I need to buckle down and start up the writing again. I am sending this letter using the cloth ribbon, but will do the post with the one-strike. If I understand your latest comments, both will scan OK, but the single strike does better with the OCR.
I am assuming you can scan my letters etc. into a file and either just save the scan as an image or go ahead and run it through the OCR program to end up with word processor file. So for my letters you could simply save them as images, ah but then you can not search them.
I think I found a company that will do the generic ribbon thing for this typewriter with the cost per ribbon only $3.95 each instead of the $8.95 I just paid. I am going to order a test ribbon to see if it works.
It is easier to write about tech stuff than having to put my emotions on the page. I miss that between us, and for better or worse, as a birthday present to both of us, I am going to try to start that up again. I am not sure exactly what that last sentence really means, but think that I want to be able to have a two party discussion that will also feed me stuff to write on the blog.
It is apparent to me that one way I can jump over all the hurdles of the conditions I will face on parole is to be a writer. While I will still be subject to being violated if I were to write stuff too critical of the correction system, I think I will have a little more leeway if I am outside the fence. In here, say the wrong thing and a fellow inmate beats the shit out of me. Out there, they would have to document some sort of violation, then put me in jail, and then have someone beat me up.
Speaking of being beat up, I remember one of your letters mentioning how you did not like your setup at work because your back was to the aisle and you could not see anyone coming up on you. Yeah, I am afraid to put on my headphones and read with my back to the cube opening for fear I will get an ass whipping. That is just one of the topics I want to get written out on the blog.
On the "why I should just type my own stuff and not help others" front, it turns out that the 20 year old I mentioned did something that really pissed off my neighbor Tyrell Washington, So now I am stuck in the middle so to speak. I can go to Ray Carlton, and say why did you piss off Tyrell and get another side to the story. The point is that Tyrell has no problem whipping someone's ass if it comes to that but he is not wanting to stay longer in jail.
Then yet another inmate wants my help with his parole denial, and Tyrell say he is a rat and I better be careful since I am not supposed to do legal work without the superintendent’s permission, which I do not have, nor would get if I asked, so wink wink I really do not do other's legal work, so there is no need for you to mention the subject back. Got that?
The other side of the coin, as one other inmate mentioned that my nickname should be F. Lee Bailey. So if I help one and not another that presents a problem too.
Consequences.
Another Sunday evening and I am winding up a bunch of typing I did for others.
There were two letters for my neighbor, Tyrell Washington, another helping a resident alien fill out an eight page form to allow him to stay in the county, and last but not least, a letter for an inmate who shipped a bunch of paperwork to a lawyer back in January only to have the courts throw his case out since the court had not heard from him in the required 120 days. He thought the lawyer was taking care of things. I think that is a logical assumption.
The alien is a young guy, around 25 I think, from the Dominican Republic. He has three kids, (all de facto US citizens) with three different "Baby's Mama." (A term that flows from the lips of many of my fellow inmates like Niagara Falls.)
I told him he might be better off leaving the country and starting over. Apparently, none of the "mothers" (hard to call them that and think of our mothers as being called by that same word) are self-supporting, and all are receiving government aide from multiple sources.
So under the New York States Child Support formula, since all three kids live with different moms and none will live with him, he could be paying over 50% of his income in child support for the next 15 plus years. Yeah that is a life to look forward to.
Yeah I know consequences. But he was only part of the problem, and will end up bearing all of the consequence. I know life is not fair, but there are times that I feel in our attempt to make something fair, we create more unfairness.
Two Things.
I know how you dislike me asking you to do "things" for me but there are two things that I would really appreciate your assistance with.
The first is do you remember that book I recommended to you with the love letters in it. I think it was by Robert Fulghum. The first letter was written from one second grader to another and then read at their wedding. One of the last stories was about a woman and her couch and how she got others to help her move it. I think they are both in the same book but I know the first story is the book I am looking for.
There is a guy here, only 20 years old, who for some unknown reason has taken to talking to me a lot about his struggles. At times I get the feeling I am speaking to a thirty something guy. Weird. Ironically he personally knows several of the officers here and one of our regular ones is only a few years older than him and knows the same people on the street. I do plenty of listening and he usually seeks me out versus me chasing him. Anyhow he has shared a bunch of romance novels with me, and he and his wife sort of share the books and underline parts they can relate to. And I get to read those books. Very strange.
Anyhow, the point is as we have been talking, the hove letter book popped into my head as something he and his wife could relate to. Boy to be that young and in love with the type of girl he has. So mushy Yuck. HA HA Yeah I am jealous as hell. Of course I had that with Karen, but was too stupid to know any better.
So my thought is, if you could at the least remember the full title and author, that would be a start, I remember at one point it was in Hamilton, but I do not think I have seen it lately. If you could possibly send me the book, either a used one via the web or the one you have that would be great. I do not remember what happened to my copy; either I may have sent it to Bobbielou or lent it to another inmate and it was not returned. That is it, I lent it out. Drat. Okay that is the first thing.
The second is to see what you can easily find out about the veteran's medical record software. One of the latest medical records articles said eight in 10 doctors still do not have an electronic records system in place. As I recall, since the veteran's software was paid for with tax dollars,
What I was trying to write was that I thought the NYT article said you were able to get both the application and the source. The most recent article mentioned that it was still too expensive for the average doctor to install a system. But what would happen if first of all one had access to a whole bunch of free source code. Then as I used to do, were able to install a system in stages, so that you did not need to sock a prospective client with a $150,000 plus start up fee. No with access to source, you could attack specific areas one by one, adding both training and hardware as needed.
For example, the first use of the system would be to put in current info only as patients some in, maybe only general health stars. Then you could add the Lab work module, pharmacy script writing, referrals, and eventually electronic storage of X-rays etc.
The orthopedist I go to has his x-ray machines directly wired into the computer no films at all. The ear nose and throat doctor had the voice input option on their network. But I would think that for a small office, one could get the doctor started for less than $10,000 and than add features and hardware over time. One service that could be provided would be trained data entry clerks to upload history files or maybe just offer seminars to train people of the doctor's choosing. The thing why I this is doable is the way Obama keeps talking about the whole electronic records thing is going to be part of the stimulus money he keeps doling out.
So to recap, do you get source code, if so what language is used. At this point I assume once you knew the file layouts you could even use a product like Access to develop custom interfaces. Ideally what I am thinking is how much you could port over to a Lunix system and then eliminate all cost for operating system and runtime licenses.
I am dreaming here to be sure, but I am thinking about building a grass roots tech force where the initial installations are done by less trained individuals, and as the doctor increases the use of the system, more experienced tech people take over. I am thinking you could build a non college educated tech force, supervised by properly educated to support them. With all the low price storage devices available, I can see basically building a prototype growth path, with a clear path of what each step would cost both in additional hardware and staff training time. In addition what support services are available and what their cost is.
Of course the two biggest issues on the good news bad news see saw that is my life. Good news I am willing to put in a whole bunch of sweat equity, and work for cheap. The bad news is convincing my parole office that I am not a threat to have access to some computer hardware. But first I need to see what resources are available so if this VA stuff is really any good at all, think about what a goldmine that could be. I do recall that the VA package was a success.
Future Plans.
I have not made any definite plans about what I will do upon my release. This is not to say I have no idea what I will do. Since I will initially be under very strict guidelines, my goal is to earn the trust of those persons I will be dealing with on a regular basis. The first person would be the parole officer I am reporting to. Then I will work to establish contacts with those people in the community that can provide me with support and guidance in dealing with other members of the community I am located in.
Between the current state of the economy and my criminal record I realize it will be difficult to obtain employment. However, I am not afraid to work. I am willing to work at a reduced wage and prove my worth on the job. While I understand that my access to computers will be governed by my parole conditions, I can still use my expertise to seek employment in areas where my skills for system design and organization could be of use without needing direct access to a computer.
In addition I have years of experience working on minor home repairs, including plumbing, electrical and carpentry. One possible employment opportunity, might be working using my skills to help senior citizens and other disabled persons with repairs and maintenance around their homes. I would like to offer my services at a reduced rate, and/or work through community organizations that provide services to the elderly and homebound.
I would also take the opportunity to work on my writing skills and possibly look toward publishing some of my writings. I have over 3,000 pages of writings, in the form of letters and essays, that I have written over the last thirteen years and this could be used to form the base of either a non-fiction memoir or a fictional story.
My main focus will be to take each day as it comes. My prison experience has taught me patience above all other things. My primary responsibility upon my release will be to my parole officer and the terms and conditions set down by the Division of Parole. Once I earn the trust of my parole officer, I will then build on that and establish other relationships with those members in the community that can further my successful re-entry into society so that I can be a productive and law-abiding citizen.
Inmate Statement.
Help!!!!!!! I met with the parole officer on Friday morning, not a very uplifting experience to be sure. I have until Tuesday to submit an Inmate Statement that goes along with a multi-page submission for each of the two or three parole board members I will meet with the third week of July.
The one really interesting part of this process is that most of the report is confidential to me. I can not see most of what they receive and in most cases do not even know if they receive anything. For example they contact the judge (he is retired now and maybe dead?) and the DA. The office can respond as opposed to the actual DA that handled my case and they can even contact my lawyer. I do not get to see what any of them say. Great, I am denied parole and I can not rebut what went into the decision.
I am enclosing the first two pages I finally managed to get typed this afternoon. What I can not find, and hope you can reach into your electronic archives is that great recommendation letter from way back when. I thought we (you and I) had worked with it since I came to New York State, but an admittedly quick search through the hundreds of pages in my files, plus the miscellaneous files failed to turn it up.
Unless I am losing my mind, we did work with it and you put a slightly modified copy of it on the blog. So PLEASE if you can put your hands on a copy without too much delay send me a couple copies of it ASAP. On the one hand ice cubes in hell will last longer then my chance at parole, but I thinking submitting a two word statement, which would at least guarantee my rejection, I need to put something together, My hope is just to provide an opportunity if the board members want to seem to put an effort in, that yes there is more to me than the criminal bastard.
The parole office made no secret of the fact that the initial conditions of my release will be many, and tough, and at this point I will be going back to the county where I used to live to serve my parole. I am not allowed to have a computer (Internet or not) or cell phone without first earning a hell of a lot of trust from my parole officer. That is what the whole thing is going to boil down to, what I can do to convince my parole officer that I am a different man. Pretty neat trap though. Put a 53 year old man out in the public and take away his ability to earn a living.
Welfare here I come.
I am having a really hard time with this whole experience (parole). Hope you can find that letter and send it to me fast. Thanks in advance.
