Basketball (Sort Of)

Hello and welcome once again to the Roost. It has been a little bit since last I wrote a post for you, and for that I am truly sorry. I have mostly recovered from the search I wrote about last time… mostly… I have been busy remaking some of the things taken. (Like the paper tube extension I use to hold this three inch ling “golf pencil” I write with, a laundry line I must make out of raw material and spin into cord like you can buy at the store to hang up wet clothes, sheets, etc. on) and I have been sharpening pencils, of course… something that sounds simple to most of you, but when you live in a cage and aren’t allowed to have anything sharp, it can be a challenge at best. (In theory, we are supposed to be able to request that pencils be sharpened…but the pencil sharpener in this wing has been broken for about a year or so…. good luck making that request.) But as I said, I am now mostly recovered. Could use a few more amenities… but I am far enough along to continue my postings for you.

There is much rumor flying all over the place about the proposed close-custody experiment I already wrote about… there is little point in relating rumor so I will wait until something more concrete manifests to fill you in. If what is being said comes to pass…well, it is interesting.

For now, however, I believe I told you I would let you know about the basketball program that is currently going on. So let me relate that as best as I can.

Unlike the close-custody experiment– where an unsolicited form is brought around to sign or not, and once signed, the person “agrees” to be housed around all manner of riff-raff including but not limited to child molesters and killers, rapists, and the like. (This faction of a prison population is in general not tolerated well… the rest of us have children, families, etc. on the outside, and these types of individuals are looked upon as a “bane to society among the bane to society” so to speak.)

For clarity, prison populations (in Arizona, at least) are separated to cut down on violent behavior. You have GP, which is general population, and SO, which is sex offenders. SO are given their own “units” to keep them alive.)

But to get back on point here….for the basketball program we put in requests on who we wish to go out into the enclosure with. Make no mistake, there is an “approval process”, during which the request goes through security checks and several levels of administrative red tape in order to try and make sure a person is not just trying to “get to” someone… but after all that, provided all the checking passes muster, two people are allowed to go out into a 30×20 chain link enclosure with one naked (no net) basketball hoop in it.

We are not jut thrown into these enclosures and left to our own devices… oh no. We are chained in our cell (after a “strip search”) and escorted under guard to these cages, then unchained throuhg a hole in the gate.

Then, I am in an enclosure…for the first time in almost two decades, unrestrained with another human being. Now, this is someone I know and if all the security checks have worked, someone I get along with, so we shake hands and try to act “normal” (that is, like a person who has not been denied human contact for decades.) This is pulled off with varying degrees of success. but I assure you, it is on many levels odd at best.

We are not alone. There are two more enclosures that may contain general population, or they may contain sex offenders or any manner of protective custody population. Also, there is a guard present. This guard has a high-powered version of a paintball gun, essentially. This device holds rubber projectiles that that contain a dry powdered form of the active ingredient found in pepper spray. That, however, is not really the deterrent. That comes from being hit, close range, repeatedly, by a solid projectile that is akin to a rock fired from a sling shot. I believe the number is seven– the number of times they are supposed to shoot you in the body before they start taking head shots, the pepperballs leave large welts in the center of a good-sized bruise…but it is not unknown for them to break the skin either.

But compared to what we originally have, there is an upside. The enclosures are outside the prison buildings (but still within the perimeter fences of course) and one can see some greenery (whatever passes for it anyway) off in the distance beyond the fences. But one needs to be careful about looking too long. When your world has been about ten feet at a time for decades, eye strain and the headache that comes along with it is not pleasant. But there are birds to see as well. They come right up to the enclosure, sometimes perching within the chain link. They look at you, almost like people would look at animals in a zoo. I know I am being anthropomorphic, but I wonder if they get the irony of the situation. But in truth they are only looking for a handout… still, some seem to have a sense of knowing in their gaze.

But after two and a half hours of “basketball” we are chained, brought back to our block, allowed to take a shower, and then deposited back into our cells to work on processing all that just occurred. The overload of mental stimulation can actually be exhausting. Not being in contact with another person in decades, green things, sky overhead with clouds in it (planes flying over, too!) the “knowing” little birds… in actuality not that many people choose to go out. People put in for it, and then after once out, that was enough for them. Can’t say why; I only associate with GP and we do go out as often as they let us. There are some of “the others” but not all that many. There are rumors about the ones that won’t go out… but a place like this is rife with rumor, so unless one indulges in “drama” it is best to ignore the majority of it.

But over time, one gets used to all the informational input…. re-learns to focus one’s eyes on points of interest and relegate the other things into the background. (When one first goes out there they are kind of like a dog excited to go on a walk, wanting to smell everything… only, in our case, it’s wanting to look at everything.) It is kind of difficult to relate, I suppose. When you haven’t seen a tree in a long time, you want to look at one as thoroughly as you can when the chance arises. Even a scraggly, mostly sticks, desert tree. And that goes for everything! I have found myself just looking at the small rocks laying in the dirt just out of reach through the fence…for a fair piece of time, too. I have even seen a raven! And looked for as long as it let me. (Until she flew off.) A rare and coveted treat indeed. (To be honest, that alone would keep me going out… just the chance of seeing her–or perhaps him?–again.)

Not a lot of actual basketball going on…not for me, anyway. Living live ten feet at a time has messed up my depth perception so much I rarely throw the ball hard enough to hit the rim (unless I am ten feet or less away from it) but I am content, more or less, with just looking at things I have not seen in many, many years. I plan on not ever taking it for granted again. Just watching and listening to birds chirp, seeing a cloud slowly float by… it is all very precious to me now, and I want it to stay that way. I won’t let myself become ignorant of what is important again… I know you have heard it before, but you don’t know what is important, or what you will miss, until it is lost to you…take my word for it.

So, that is what basketball is like. I hope i painted an accurate picture for you with my words.

(Before I go I would like to say that, just last night, I received my very first correspondence from someone who reads Muninn’s Roost and wrote to me because of it. Thank you, K.R., your card means a lot to me, and you have a letter coming back to you soon!)

Well, that is all I have for this time. Not sure exactly what my next post will be like, but I do have an idea. Hopefully, I will get that our soon. But in this place, making plans beyond a day or two is not advisable…so we will see…

In the mean time, please remember to thank my dear friend Anna, without whom none of this would be possible.

 

 

Targeted?

[Anna’s note: Tod wrote this post on the 25th of January 2017.] 

Hello again and welcome to the Roost.

I was planning on making my next post about the new program where they are putting two people out in “basketball courts” (just a concrete slab, fenced in, with a bare basketball hoop at one end) together. I still plan to tell you all about that soon.

But something just happened yesterday that I think may be of interest to at least some of you. It illustrates the chaos that is prevalent in this world. So I hope no one minds if I relate this occurrence today.

I have to begin by telling you that just about three weeks ago, a major unit-wide “quarterly search” was conducted. As the title indicates, these searches are done approximately four times a year, during which they look for weapons and “contraband” and in general do their level best to disrupt people’s routine as much as possible. So, that means that about three weeks ago all our property was gone through thoroughly and searched.

Now that you have that background…

I was recently asked by one of you whether I am worried about people who work for the AZ Department of Corrections finding out about this blog. (The answer was and still is “no.” If I needed something to worry about, I could find better.) And I am not sure, but I may have been asked what would happen if they did find out. (I know I have run down some possible things that could happen, anyway.)

Well, to perhaps remove the mystery… I may just have found out what would happen if these asswipe bastards found out about this blog.

To be fair, I must tell you at this point that I am not sure that is what has happened. But I have thought through the possibilities and the one that keeps rising to the top of the file, given what was done and “targeted” is that the blog must be the cause. But, this is all conjecture on my part at this juncture. And I want to make that abundantly clear.

Now, with this said, I will relate what happened for you.

Yesterday was a day I was supposed to get recreation time and a shower. (I was in fact supposed to go out to the basketball court with someone!) But everything was “shut down”. Those who asked for a shower were given some vague excuse about a “personnel shortage” and perhaps later. Others asked different guards about recreation, and each was given as different response…something was clearly up!

When a “normal” search is conducted, the search team starts in block or “pod” one, and they continue around the cluster (which holds six pods of ten cells each) until they complete the circle and are done. This is not what happened yesterday. At a bit after 9:00 (9 AM is when administration gets here and fills up their offices in a building adjacent to the prison unit proper.)

The door to this block (I am in pod two) bangs open and in rushes enough cops to “post up” on every cell. (Have not had this type of search since I got off the violence control unit pod years ago!) We were all strip searched (I have described this process before so I won’t go into detail again) and told to “dress warm” and were allowed to take bottles of water with us. We were taken out of the cluster where we encountered at least two, perhaps three, squads of SSU (special security unit… which I also have not been searched by since I was last in VCU). Generally there is only one squad here, so the extra were brought in from other units. Of course at this point, “the jig was up” and we knew we were not just getting hit, but hit hard.

We were taken to outside holding cages where we were put on constant watch by a guard who mostly just sat and looked at us. Asking anyone that showed up as we might about what was going on, we were told that they did not know and were only told that death row was to be “locked down” with no movement until further notice. This in and of itself was odd, as there have been no assaults or communique intercepted by anyone to warrant such a response. So this type of search, while not unknown (if you are in VCU and assaulting people) is unusual, and reserved for “special occasions” as it takes the type of preparation and personnel that it does, and is therefore expensive to pull off, both resource-wise and monetarily.

As I have said before, a “normal” search means we are pulled out and stuck in a shower or something for fifteen minutes or so while a team of two or three guards (not SSU) go through our stuff, and then we are put back in our cages right away.

After an hour and forty five minutes (!!!) we were removed from the outdoor holding cells and brought back inside.

Based on previous behavior of this type, I was expecting us to be moved to different locations all over the cluster (due to time involved and SSU being the perpetrators of the search). This is done when a group of people become too “one-minded” in that one person’s problem with staff becomes everyone’s problem, or there seems to be just too much organization in a block…

But, no, that was not the case. We were brought back to our cages to find the whole hour and forty-five minutes was spent going through our stuff!

I did not ask everyone, but the two I did ask were– like myself– targeted for information. (Paperwork gone through, pads of paper rifled through, that sort of thing.) In general, these types of searches on death row are pretty rare. They are usually reserved for members of prison gangs (which I am not) to try and find out about gang activity information. The last search I got of this type, with SSU being involved and everything, was literally years ago. (Again, when I was on VCU.) and then it was generally after a major and serious issue that had happened somewhere (like an assault that the cops believed had been ordered by another inmate) and nothing like that has even occurred here recently that I am aware of.

But let me tell you what was personally done in my cage on this search. Some (but not all…almost like it was a diversion of some sort) of caches of paperwork (legal work) in envelopes and files were apparently gone through. Letters that have been sent to me were also gone through. But a composition book I keep (and jot down mostly unimportant things in that I want to remember or keep track of) was barely touched! (Which would be the exact sort of thing they would be interested in on an information search…the asswipes do not know it’s nothing until they take it, copy it, and look for non-existent “codes” in it!)

I also have a small file on people of “personal interest” on the row, and although again, this is something that should interest them… well, I am not even sure it was looked at. But none of that… nope…

What they did take was a pad of paper that I had future blog ideas written down in– even a partial post written up on the basketball program was in there! And that was what they took.

They also took every pen I have! (I found this one that I am writing with now rolling around in the bottom of a box.) They took the rolled up paper holders I make for pens because I only get pen fillers to write with, not the plastic part that the filler goes inside of. As far as pencils, I am only allowed to have three-inch-long “golf pencils” so I made a holder for those to fit in and they took that, too! I have had that pencil holder for literally over ten years…gone through I have no idea how many searches! The leads on most of my pencils were broken.

I am pretty sure I am being sent a clear message!

I am very aware that, after extended periods of time in punitive lockdown, some degree of paranoia is bound to set in. (As well as any number of mental issues.) But I have tried to see what was done from other angles, and nothing else makes a lot of sense. I suppose there is some degree of chance that things just happened, out of the blue, to go the way they did. But can you imagine the odds of that? Because I can’t.

To me (a self-admitted asshole) the message that is being sent is simple: under no circumstances will I stop writing entries for this blog!

I must assume someone found Muninn’s Roost and clearly does not like it. Their problem, though, is that there is nothing they can do, legally or otherwise, to stop it! I am within my rights and no laws (or even prison rules!) are being broken, either by Anna or by me.

They can screw with me and make my life miserable. Some of my posts and letters may even “get lost” on the way to Anna. But they are otherwise powerless against their mortal enemy… the truth!!!

As I stated at the beginning of this post, this is all supposition on my part. I may never know one way or another whether my suspicions are correct. (Other than by my treatment here.) There may be clues that can be read (such as if the letters I send to Anna have large gaps between the date on the letter and the stamped postmark date, or if the envelopes are cut open on one end and taped back shut… that means the asswipes are opening them.) But as neither Anna nor I have or are doing anything wrong legally or otherwise, that may be all the evidence we will ever have.

I will have some trouble replacing what was taken. (Perhaps this was their plan? They know my financial situation– they have that on file in their computer system.) The pens I cannot afford to buy. The paper? There were only fifteen or twenty sheets left so I got to use over half anyway. (But it does sting a bit to have it stolen like that.) I can make my pencil holder up again and see if perhaps there is a market for cards….one or two, perhaps? Card drawing is pretty seasonal, except for birthdays, and there are a few people “gettin’ their hustle on” that way. Valentine’s Day is approaching… not a lot of time to get any business together for that, however. Just have to see.

I do know that I will keep posting about this place for as long as I can. I think it is important that I do that– especially now!

Yes, there were other things that were taken, non-blog-related things. Stuff not usually messed with (like my pencil holder) things that I use to make my existence a little bit less annoying. I may not make replacements, actually– my thoughts turn toward “pushing back” at this point.

Well, that is about all I have for this post. I will be back as soon as I can, and I will keep you updated if I ever do find out the reason for what happened. Oh, and I will tell you about the basketball program in the next post, barring any major upheavals here anyway.

Please do not forget to thank Anna….you would know nothing of me were it not for her.