The Peanut Butter Cookbook

Ah, peanut butter!  How many days and how many ways can I enjoy thee?  Locked down as we are, having bagged meals brought onto the unit for the past four months (we cannot use cafeteria during Covid), peanut butter has become our most common staple food.  So I’ve gotten creative in my effort to seek culinary variety of some sort.  There’s PB&J, of course, but also PB&M (mayo) and PB&Mu (mustard), any of these improved by slices of banana.  Don't make the mistake of PB&H (hummus) – I mean, I like PB.  I like hummus.  But together?

 

The most creative bunk chefs on the unit have branched out beyond sandwiches.  We’ve made thai peanut sauce, Mexican mole sauce, even a peanut butter and chicken pizza!  For us Southerners, PB&G (grits)!  Or for a snack, PB dipped in fruit:  Apple dipped in PB tastes sort of like a caramel apple?  So why not a caramel pear?  Which led me to carrots (8/10), celery (yechh – 0/10), oranges (-2/10)....

 

Just when I thought I’d tried them all – peanut butter with almost anything edible:  beans, hamburgers, hot dogs, roast beef – just when I was convinced that I just could not stomach anything with peanut butter ever again, along came PB Nirvana!  Allow me to share with you the secret of the best PB-wrap you can make (at least behind bars).

 

1.     Lay out a tortilla, preferably flour;

2.     Spread a thin layer of mayo on it;

3.     Top with a thick swipe of peanut butter;

4.     Top that with a pre-prepared glop of oatmeal;

5.     Top that with brown sugar and cinnamon; and

 

Are you ready?  The crowning touch:  add a couple spoonfuls of white albacore tuna.

 

Okay, I know what you’re thinking.  No way, right?  I guarantee you’ll find it scrumptious – just thinking of this heavenly wrap has my mouth watering.  But then, here on day 120 of lockdown, maybe I’ve finally gone ‘round the bend?  Well, gotta go – guys are blending up a PB, chocolate milk and apple milkshake – yum!

Three Hours a Week in the Sun

Three hours.  What’s an activity you do, cumulatively, for three hours a week?  Shower?  Eat?  Play Words with Friends?  Here in prison, during corona lockdown, the answer is Go Outside!  Three times a week we are allowed outdoors for an hour so the unit can be sprayed with bleach.  Because we can’t come in contact with guys from other units, the whole event ends up lasting just 50 minutes, so we don’t cross paths.

 

Don’t get things twisted, I’m much happier with three hours a week outside than the seemingly endless weeks since the pandemic hit when we were not allowed off the unit at all.  In order to maximize our minutes in the sun, everybody gets prepped.  Prior to the recreation call, the hallways fill up with guys limbering up and stretching.  It looks like the world’s most rag-tag men’s only yoga class.  When the call comes, you better be ready.  The doors open and it’s like the running of the bulls at Pamplona crossed with Black Friday at Walmart.  You get carried forward on a wave and pray you stay on your feet.

 

Once outside the 150 guys immediately self-divide based on their goals for this precious 50 minutes.  The runners, me among them, hit the track, having already stretched and jogged in place to warm up while indoors.  Here I go:  towel hung on the fence, mask in pocket, water bottle in the corner, hit the stopwatch and run!  Each lap of the Yard is about .42 miles and let me tell you, the first day out after so many weeks of lockdown was both the most glorious and the most excruciating .42 of a mile.  My mind was still busting out the 10-11 miles I used to do before corona, but my body was yelling, “Hey, 60 days of peanut butter in here!  You listening?  SLOW THE F__K DOWN!”  But the pain was worth it, just to move through space again, it was so sweet!

 

On the track you have to navigate the speed walkers, the high-intensity interval trainers, the slow joggers, and the plodders like me.  Fortunately, some guys could care less about running.  One group I call the “Thank God I Can Feel the Sun on my Face” guys.  You have to be careful not to look their way lest you be blinded.  It’s like staring into a solar array.  If we ever make it out of the virus-era, the medical center is going to be running a lot of biopsies judging from the truly frightening sun burns I’ve seen over the past couple weeks.

 

The third group of guys, I don’t even know how to categorize them.  Maybe the Moaners?  Picture a guy who, if given a million dollars in twenties would complain that the bills weren’t hundreds.  If we go out at 8 am, he complains that the guards called it early just to mess up our sleep.  If we go out at 12:30, then it’s just because the guards want us to bake in the sun.  If it’s raining, the guards caused that, too.  They scowl at us runners for coming too close, at the sun worshippers for stealing the best light.  Extra hot dogs on July 4?  Why no hamburgers?  Free phone minutes?  It’s a conspiracy.  There’s 150 guys to share three phones.  Clearly the free minutes are intended to get us to fight each other over access.  These guys live a never ending tidal wave of negativity.  Apparently, being in prison is not miserable enough for these guys, they find it necessary to create a joy sucking black hole of pessimism, too.

 

Well, there you have it, the gang’s all here.  If you had the misfortune of being a prisoner, you’d join this motley crew trudging off to Rec three times a week for their precious 50 minutes of sunshine.

Death of a Friend from Covid

Well the lockdown, already 3 months long, continues on into July.   At last they’ve begun to let us outside to the Yard 2-3x/week, which is something.  Their new plan is to only re-test people who have tested positive already, which will allow them to post smaller and smaller numbers of infected prisoners.  I saw where CDC has recommended 2-3 tests/week after exposure.  Won’t be happening here.  We’ve had three positives on our unit and have not been tested since.  An administrator feigned offense when told that it appears reducing the number of positives is more important than stopping the spread.  Just following our President, after all.  The fewer people you test, the fewer sick people you have, right?  Trying to stay focused, not to become jaded or cynical, but boy.

 

So my cellie and I used to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) to a group of Hispanic guys.  We had a great time, and they accepted me (as a non-Latino), given honorary status as a Boricua (Puerto Rican), because of my difficulty in trilling or rolling my Spanish “rr” (something people from PR don’t do either).  No matter how down someone was, they always left class with a smile and a lighter heart.  You need something?  You knew the guys in class had your back.  Never afraid to lend an ear or pass out a hug.  That closeness, the support given and received, the genuine comradeship – all things that help us make it through the prison experience with some sanity – well, they make it harder to tell the story I’m about to share.

 

Early on during the Pandemic my cellie spiked a fever and was isolated in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) after testing positive.  He didn’t feel sick, just a little fatigued, and he got over it.  But while on the isolation unit, he saw others brought in who were not doing so well.  One of our students, one of our dear friends, un hermano, came in.  A funny, kind Colombiano about 60 years of age.  He was shaking, coughing, having trouble getting a breath.  They locked him in a cell meant for disciplinary segregation, not an equipped medical room, and provided minimal attention.  You could hear him at night, his cough getting progressively worse, yet they never took him to the hospital, not even to the prison medical center on the compound.

 

The other residents in the SHU lay listening to our hermano coughing and moaning at night.  My cellie says he will forever be haunted by the sounds of his suffering and his own feeling of helplessness.  Soon our friend's moans were joined by others.  The Administration was still telling us that all was under control, that everyone was doing fine.  Then some of the voices went quiet.  It was 1, then 2, then 3….  We are now at 12 or 13.  The deaths mounting.  23 total for the compound so far.

 

My cellie says he tries not to think about it, what it meant when the coughing stopped.  It’s not just a number reported on a website, not just an empty bunk to be filled or a digit added to CNN’S Covid counter onscreen.  It’s hard for me to write this.

 

As for our dear friend?  Nuestro hermano se murió.  He died alone. They said he had a heart attack in his cell and passed two days later. Alone. Probably cuffed to his bed.

 

The administration keeps telling us what a great job the Bureau of Prisons is doing.  I no longer have time or energy to dignify their spin.  All I know is that we will have an empty chair in class and an open seat at the domino table.  They’ll never convince me that they did their best. ¡Vaya con dios mi hermano!

Political Cartoon

Amidst all this constant anxiety over the 700+ positive Covid-19 cases here in our 1200 inmate unit, a few of us have decided to vent our frustrations with a little political cartooning.  I story-boarded this one and sketched a rough draft, the drawing completed and reviewed by our informal Board of Standards and Ethics, consisting of a black guy, a Japanese-Dane (looks like a strangely tall Sumo), a Latino, a WASP, and myself (of mysterious Italian/gypsy descent).  To a man, we felt we might have downplayed the Donald's behavior, but here you have it:

Since last week another friend died of coronavirus here, and at least one more I know is in the hospital.  Depressing and no end in sight.  I keep on ticking, feel fine, never even a sniffle, but another guy just turned up positive in our supposedly negative unit an hour ago, so I'm keeping a low profile.  Stay well, everybody.

[Editorial comment:  This drawing arrived at my house today.  It's on 11 x 14 drawing paper, in crayon and ink.  I'm going to pass along the original to the artist's family - it's a keeper!]