prison birdcage living inside my head for far too long 010916 ... carne de metal I love johnny cash's record: Live at St.quentin. 020304 ... raze they sent her to the same place ashley smith died. sometimes i wonder how it is for her, and how it's been. when she gets out she'll have at least a few years of her thirties left. she can still have a normal life. but what is a "normal life", and how do you construct a thing like that after spending a decade in a series of boxes, experiencing god knows what? 170807 ... tender_square the envelope came addressed to the department, asking for professor, and i opened the contents to determine who to direct it to. in the past, there was a faculty member pursuing research with prisoners, but it’s unclear if that work is now carried out by another colleague. my boss didn’t know what to do with the package, and felt that passing it on was akin to sending a stranger to a faculty member’s office. the prisoner spent $2.40 to ship this parcel, and countless hours preparing its contents: a collection of photographs; a three page personal essay; parts of their testimony in court and what they had been charged with. on top of the pile was a handwritten letter on lined three-punch paper in printing that slants toward the future. “hello my name is dallas lewis. i’m currently in prison. i have spent my last few years studying psychology. i put together this essay on what prison is, from the standpoint of a prisoner and i was really hoping for some feedback on what ones take is with this essay? i would like to know if theirs any prison reform groups/activists that i may contact to help prisoners get the help and attention truly needed to become a productive person of humanity. prison is not a place of correction and rehabilitation. prison is a place of mistreatment, pain, and suffering. i would like to expose the truth about prison and recidivism, why the system really fails. i know that if i had a person of good stature to just listen to me, i think together we could make a change for the better… thank you for your time… respectfully, mr. dallas j. lewis inonia bellemy creek p.s. thank you for taking the time to read this…” in two days, i will be leaving my job and i want to take this letter with me, to try and put this prisoner in touch with someone who may be better able to help. 221108 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I wish you all the best with this! I hope you can get it to someone who'd be able to help or at least provide a possible outside contact for this man. Even if there are reasons someone's jailed, it must be so lonely and isolating. 221109 ... e_o_i (This also reminded me of last week in Sociolinguistics class, where someone was saying for-profit prisons still exist in the U.S. For-profit prisons - even those words together seem strange.) 221109 ... e_o_i Coincidentally, in a report from yesterday's Gazette on the U.S. midterms: "Today, prison labour is a multibillion-dollar practice. By comparison, workers can make pennies on the dollar." The article, as did the legislation against forced labour, used the word "slavery" - not a term to use lightly given, well, history there, but I think it makes sense in this case. 221111 what's it to you? who go blather from