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!]

The Covid Shuffle

Shelter in Place?  Stay at Home orders?  Social distancing?  It’s getting you down, right?  Well, try 90 days locked-in, locked-down, herded, contained, and disdained.  COVID-19 in Prison!  While we empathize, sympathize, and try to understand how people on the outside feel, we also roll our eyes.  “Forced” to stay home with some Netflix, YouTube, treadmills, delivery, backyards…shit, to us that would be paradise.  In here it’s a good day if you’re lucky enough to use the bathroom without two people in the neighboring stalls. On a rare occasion maybe you’re lucky enough to have a window on the back of the building where you can watch a sunrise and maybe see some wildlife, and if you lean over just right your line of sight may not include the razor wire.

 

If your window is on the compound side you have probably spent the past 3 months watching your friends on the way to medical.  With easily more than 700 of 1100 inmates already infected, there’s been a lot of traffic down there.  Among them, you have the seemingly healthy smiling ruefully as they are carted off to the Special Housing Unit (probably just running a fever but otherwise feeling okay). Then you have those doing what I’m calling the Covid Shuffle:  they say it feels like a bad hangover/head cold/exhaustion, and they amble down to the luxurious new accommodations. Unfortunately, there is also the all-hands-on-deck “Oh f__k we let another one die” situation. Through it all most staff just carry on with their typical indifferent attitude.

 

We continue to file paperwork seeking some kind of early release, in line with the federal government’s order, but the staff just acts annoyed, at times even angry, that we are trying.  Twenty men have died so far, plus one guard. We all feel like sitting ducks.

 

You may have heard that they tested all inmates, separated, isolated, etc.  Yes, they did test us – once – but then didn’t move anyone for another ten days!  For those ten days my cellie was a guy who had tested positive.  The unit I’m on, where guys are supposed to be negative, had two more guys infected during that ten days.  As one nurse told me, “It would appear the administration is doing the best they can to make sure every last one of you gets it.”

 

More testing?  Why bother?  “No need” we are told. As far as I know, somehow I’m still well after 90 days of this, and was told, “Well, you’ve probably had it, been asymptomatic (one administrator mispronounced this as “asystematic”), so what’s the big deal?  How about not wanting to risk illness or death, dude?

 

I don’t understand why officials can’t just tell the truth. Admit that just like the rest of the world, they can’t control the virus. That in spite of Emergency Orders, public outcry, and CDC advice, they just will not let anyone go home.  The federal prison system - driven by money, fear tactics, and politics – can’t seem to shift gears and show a little concern for human life.  Is it an 18-wheeler trying to turn around in an alley, a head in the sand hoping the problem will go away (the President’s apparent choice), or a deliberate middle finger?  Two quotes from staff:  “We can do what we want” and “We answer to no one.”

 

Frankly, I don’t care which of these it is, I just know that nearly my entire unit is sick and people are dying.  Was it Alexis de Toqueville in his Democracy in America who first said that you can judge a society by how it treats those at the bottom of the pecking order?  If that is true, and I hope it is, then I ask all of you on the outside, please don’t forget about us in here!  PLEASE!

The Cough: Corona in Lock-up - a poem

You wake up each morning and look all around.

The board is updated and the numbers tick down.

The grim faces, the quiet, the tension all about,

the coughing has started, but nobody's gettin' out.

Where's Slugger?  Saw him playin' chess last night.

The AW assures us that everything's all right.

The indifference, the neglect, the anger...we shout.

Cough's comin' for us, nobody's gettin' out.

160, 150, 140...the count continues to drop.

We're told, "Give it two weeks, it's all gonna stop.

We want to let you go, we just haven't the clout."

The cough's all around, someone please let us out?

Late at night in your bunk, you tamp down your fears,

face in the pillow, wanting to swallow your tears.

You've accepted the truth.  There can't be any doubt.

Some friends won't be back.  The cough took them out.

Beavis & Costello

We begin with a 45-minute argument over who has the classiest and smartest woman on the streets, concluding with:

Bro #1:  (haughty, condescending) Let me ask you this:  Do you know what a lobotomy is?

Bro #2:  C’mon man…what you think, I’m stupid?

Bro #1:  I don’t know, you tell me.

Bro #2:  Yeah, see, the chick at the hospital, when she takes your blood, that’s a lobotomy.

Bro #1:  Okay, good job.

Bro #2:  Hell yeah it is!

Bro #1:  That’s what my girl does, she’s a lobotomist.  (Then simulates mike drop and walks away.)

If I’d offered phlebotomist, would they have called this a nose doctor?  (phlegm?  Got it?  Ha!)

And this:

Watching the MTV show Ridiculousness the other day, featuring crazy things that happen in cars.  Two guys driving down the highway when a snake pokes its head into the tiny gap in a barely opened window.  The camera flashes to the speedometer – 75 mph.  One guy in the tv room turns to another and the following exchange ensues:

Guy #1:  Man, I don’t believe this shit!

Guy #2:  Me neither.

Guy #1:  I mean, like yeah, ain’t no way a snake jumped off the ground and grabbed that car at 75 mph!

Guy #2:  Yeah, maybe 25 or 30, but 75?  They smarter than that!

I’m surrounded by Geniuses!  Geniuses, I tell ya!