Our Leather Crafts

As you guys may know, my buddies and I have a leather ship we run in our unit's craftshop. I've been considering, for the better part of a year, how I could make our products available to you. Given my anonymity, and the fact that I must remain such until I get out of prison, our options for selling our crafts seemed slim. Yesterday however, I thought of a potentially very cool way to solve this problem. Basically, I'll fill you guys in on what products we make, their respective ranges of customization, and our prices. On a first come, first serve basis, I'll take orders one at a time, and personally cover the cost until you've received your order, at which point you can reimburse me. I know that I'm incurring the obvious credit risk, but given my anonymity, I just don't see any other option than take on the burden of trust myself. Plus, as the ideal of productive employment fostering rehabilitation means a lot to me, I feel I must promote it to the best of my ability. I thank you guys.

All of our leather goods are handmade with high-quality materials, by very experienced craftsmen, and are very durable. All items are endlessly customizable, in terms of color, design and dimensions. The following are some stock products and prices:

Laptop Case - $300.00
Portfolio - $125.00
Portfolio Case - $150.00
Bible Cover - $75.00
Bible Case - $125.00
Can Coozie - $25.00
Bottle Coozie - $30.00
Clutch Purse - $50.00
Drawstring Purse - $75.00
Women's Wallet - $35.00
Men's Wallet - $30.00
Kid's Wallet - $20.00

Customization might affect the cost, but will many times remain the same.

I will try to get some pictures up in the near future.

The Choreography of a Faded Father

So my buddy Onion had a pretty rough childhood. After his father went to prison, Onion lived with his mother for a spell, but as she was a drug addict, the household was still not a good one.

When Onion, freed from the yoke of his father, began to act out, he was sent to a crazy uncle’s house. After a terrible few months there, his aunt practically kidnapped him and gave him a great place to live. A few months after Onion arrived at his aunt’s house, however, his father called from prison. His aunt received the call, and tremulously handed Onion the phone when his father asked to speak with his son.

As his aunt watched with wide eyes from across the foyer, Onion, puffed up with the invigoration of a new life, at one point after his father demanded that he take his (expletive) behind back home, responded with a pert, “Dad, if you can’t talk to me without cussing at me, you may as well not talk to me at all!”

After a brief but probably eternal silence, his dad did hang up the phone. In discussing these events, Onion conjectured a choreograph of what his dad did, post ultimatum. The image that took hold was one of his dad, with a look of utter incredulousness, moving the phone from his ear to in front of his gaze for a moment, and then, as though moved by forces more powerful than himself, hanging up the phone in a slow swoop and with another pause toward the end, in its cradle. And the fixed gaze of emotional consideration never once falters.

This plausible choreograph stuck because it also served to distill the essence of Onion and his father’s relationship at that hectic time. And when a fundamentally similar situation recently occurred here between another buddy and his mother, what did we do? You got it, the previous choreograph! Such, as the distilled essence of both of the instances in question, speaks volumes when acted out as regards to the latter; more in fact than mere words describing the underlying situation, because of the choreograph’s aesthetic nature.

And now, whenever any social situation or dynamic resembles that of Onion and his father’s, we jocularly stare into a hand contorted into the shape of a phone, and pause once before hanging it up. And though the circumstances that surround that essence are unfortunate, identifying it as an essence, and in such a manner, is very funny!

Abstractions Defined

Recently, I wrote a post detailing my idea for a distinctionary, which would basically be a tool or service that can distill the fundamental, distinguishing elements of any two terms.

Well, in a recent debate, my buddies and I were considering whether or not my allegation of one’s patronization in a previous conservation was true or not. At one point, it was argued that the alleged patronizer was at least being pretentious, and I agreed, saying that I’d perhaps mistook the patronization for mere pretense, because, whereas the pretense can exist alone, patronization necessitates an element of pretense.

After further research, however, I believe that neither concept is automatically subsumed in the other. But, to help solve problems like this, I realized that the opposite of the distinctionary would be ideal. Rather than defining distinguishing elements between abstractions though, this tool will actually define relationships between abstractions.

For example, pretentious is necessarily showy, but showy isn’t necessarily pretentious. This tool would have a map of the terms for every concept that then currently exists, and like some monstrous connect-the-dots layout, would have the relationships of any and all of these terms. One could drag and click around the term “showy”, and would see underneath it all of the concepts that showiness itself incorporates (e.g. “bold”). Even terms that aren’t near relatives could be queried for a relationship, and one would see the entire conceptual chain across however many terms that link them.

By defining the nature of the exact relationship between any and all known concepts, this tool will serve to augment human intelligence, just like the distinctionary.

The Goon Squad and the Fight for Contraband

In prison, a “goon squad” has historically been a squad of officers that are on call when it’s time to restrain unruly inmates. Now, however, a goon squad can refer to any squad of officers that do anything outside of standard operating procedures.

Due to the problem of cell phones in prison, and our unit being one of the worst offenders, we have a new goon squad here whose sole mission is to search for contraband. As opposed to simply shaking down (i.e. searching) inmates in the hall and in their cells, this new goon squad shakes down work areas, school areas, inmates’ cells, dayrooms, and even officers. They can shut the crash gates in the main hall (that serve to segment the cell blocks), and shake down the fifty or so inmates that may have been traversing therein.

The new goon squad has also been hitting entire wings, putting all the inmates in the dayroom, and searching a random but large number of cells. Granted, they’re looking for cell phones and drugs, but they’re supposedly writing cases on all contraband…and that’s not good for either my celli or me.

As for myself, just to be clean in this filthy place (by my standards), I must have bleach, an extra set of clothes, a towel for my body, a towel for the cell floor and clothes lines. But all of these things, which I’d jubilantly buy at commissary, are unfortunately not for sale there, and are thus for sale on the black market, and hence considered contraband. As for my celli operating a virtual Radio Shack…lots of contraband!

I’m trying to hurry up and get into some semblance of compliance before the impending strike on our wing occurs. Yes, that will require a lot of creativity if I’m to avoid taking a trip to the Neanderthal era, but necessity calls. Some inmate on “A” wing supposedly got ten cases when they were shaken down last week. Granted, the cases were minor—as any of mine would be—but three minor cases within a month automatically constitute a major case. And a major case will cause me to lose my craftshop privileges, and knock me off the four-year college list for at least a year. So, I have to tighten up.

Contraband can be used to produce either good or bad things. Me and even my celli are doing good with contraband. The cigarette cartel chieftain is doing bad with contraband. Yet we’re all equally scrambling under this new regulatory regime. Effective? Perhaps. Fair?...

…And please don’t say that life isn’t, because while that fact is almost a truism, social institutions should always strive for justice.

From the Archives: Friends vs. Homeboys

Out there in the world, the terms “homeboy” and “homey” have come to be more benign regarding gang affiliations. Here in prison however, it much more often that not, means, “friend within the same gang or clique.” Of course, as such, “homey” is a contradiction and thus a flawed concept.

A friendship depends on some number of shared, rational values. (If the values shared are not rational, friendship is an impossible state, and opportunistic backstabbing is an invariable consequence…i.e. no honor among thieves).

A friendship, then, is in no way correlated to proximity, genetics, or as I just detailed, vices. A gang on the other hand, demands the highest values held by its members to be proximity, genetics or vices! What a gross inversion of logic it is to attempt (tragically successfully so far) to combine the mutually exclusive terms, “friend” and “gangster.”

My feeble-minded celli sure doesn’t understand any of this. He’s staunchly against the individual (beginning with himself, of course) and for the tribe. Soon after he moved in my cell, he mentioned that he was prejudiced but not racist. I rapidly replied that the two mindsets were mutually inclusive, and then explained to him that he was explicitly adhering to the former so he could implicitly hold the latter.

Coffee, Showers and Violence

*Proxy's Note: The following is a guest post scribed by another inmate of the criminal justice system. He is a 27-year-old white male serving roughly four years time. What you will read are transcriptions of his letters to a friend on the outside.

COFFEE

I do love coffee. I like to start my day with a "John Wayne" cup which is black and strong. But then I will drink a few "Billy the Kids" (cream and sugar) throughout he day. That's a little prison slang for you. They even have what's called "cadillacs" or "pretties" and that is coffee with candy and coo-offs (kool-aid) in it. Yeah... I know, nasty huh? The coco/coffee mixture is referred to as "speedballs". It is amazing what you can get used to and learn to like.

SHOWERS

The showers are rank. I just got back from them and let me tell you... disgusting. They stink of urine and mold. The drains are clogged up so that they're flooded out. It makes me sick to my stomach to imagine the "substances' that are probably floating around.

The shower's that my wing uses are probably the worst in the unit. We have been dropping grievances for over 3 months now because the showers have not been cleaned in over four months. Not only is that cruel but is is a good way to get really sick or worse. I am very careful when I do decide to go to the showers and I check to see if I have any open cuts or whatever from head to toe before I go. I am very paranoid to catch something. I try and shower in my cell as much as possible (bird bath) to avoid the big showers. Pretty crappy huh?

Nintey percent of the guards are from Africa and have only been in America for a few months. Well... I'm not sure how they do it in Africa... but here in America... we don't crap in the showers. Well... I don't think they get it but I assure you it's a regular occurrence here. And the majority of the time the crap gets discovered... it's right after there is an incident with a guard.

Huh, there have even been times where one of the guards will get a bucket of shower water (off the floor) and they will throw it on inmates (while they are sleeping). I am dead serious. And get this... The buckets they so happen to use are the same buckets they serve juice/milk/coffee with during meal times. So I don't drink that stuff due to that fact. It scares me to think what they do to the food. So I tend to not mess with that too much either... on occasion. There are countless food-poisoning cases as well.

VIOLENCE

Two people got stabbed yesterday on my wing. Nothing serious though. Nobody died or anything. However one incident happened right next to me. I used to get queasy seeing that stuff, but it's such a regular thing these days that it's not surprising when it happens. I've seen people get hit with fan motors, mob sticks, canned goods in socks, etc. I've seen someone get set on fire. I even saw a lawman get hit in the face with boiling Magic Shave and grease. Magic Shave is a shaving cream that is designed to burn the hair off as opposed to actually shaving. I've seen several suicides as well - both hangers and cutters. That is the worst to me. I don't understand how someone could not want to live - regardless of the hardships.

Man vs. Idea

There’s a lot to be said for distinguishing between the general and the particular. Moreover, the same is true for separating ideas and the man who holds them.

When I make fun of an inmate who openly masturbates when female guards walk by his cell—however pretty my own mockery may or may not be—I’m nonetheless making fun of the idea that said inmate is operating under. The inmate himself is a mere particular, a relatively inconsequential element of the context, and as such, his identity generally adds little value to the joke. The joke is about the general principle that happens to be held by the inmate.

The separation of the man and the idea, however, is not a principle that is always kept in mind. If a man gets fired from his job, and an employer elsewhere hires this same man, while knowing that he was fired from his previous job, then the employer must be to some extent separating the man from the idea. That is, the employer believes that the man no longer holds the previous idea that led him to act in accordance with being fired at his previous job.

If a man runs a stoplight and gets caught, he’ll get a ticket. Such is society’s attempt at separating the man from the idea – by negative reinforcement. If, however, the same man burns the stoplight down and gets caught, he’ll get a couple of years in jail. During those years in jail, it doesn’t matter if the man divorces the idea or not; he still must suffer under the idea’s legacy.

Now, if a man is but the total of the values that he holds, and those values sustain a change, it holds that the man must also be a different individual than he was. After such reformation (assuming we could prove it), is the punishing of legacy ideas just? Moreover, will the inmate’s advance knowledge of his idea’s punishment, irrespective of any reformation he may achieve, have a detrimental effect on the policy of rehabilitation? (I believe that it certainly does).

On one hand, we have the employee who ascribes to bad ideas that result in the loss of his job, and on the other hand, we have the citizen who ascribes to bad ideas that result in the loss of his freedom. The former can get another job simply as the result of another employer recognizing that the employee no longer ascribes to the bad idea, but the latter cannot reclaim his freedom simply as the result of society recognizing that he no longer ascribes to the bad ideas.

If both individuals reformed, then the criminal simply required much more reformation. The degrees of reformation required were different, but the principle is still the same. And to treat reformation so differently in each case seems to be splitting that principle.

There’s a proper relationship between men, ideas, punishment and rehabilitation that we must discover. On my end, I’ll continue to consider what it might entail.