August 25, 2024
Honey Buns,
I just dropped your birthday letter, along with letters for you and the kids, in the mail. I am sitting on my bed right now with my box in front of me, waiting for count. My roommate hasn’t eaten any food or spoken a word for nine days. He is an Odinist, a worshiper of Odin. From what I can tell, Odinism is a prison religion where white supremacists pretend to be Vikings and talk about having white kids and women. I guess right now there is a nine-day festival where they remember how Odin was on a tree for nine days, so during this period, they turn inward. I have huge respect for the two guys that actually pulled it off, as far as I can tell, making it all nine days. My roommate is kind of their leader of sorts. I read the little manual he has for the ordeal. I don’t care who you are, if you go nine days without food or talking, you’ll turn very introspective.
We just had count, and they didn’t come into our room. This has happened before. It might mean they will need to do a recount, but sometimes they clear it, which always makes me wonder what exactly they are counting.
I’m listening to Alice Johnson on the Sean Hannity Show. She’s the woman who was in prison for 21 years for a first-time drug offense. I guess she’s a huge advocate for Mr. Trump and everything he has done for the Black community. In prison, she became a mentor, and she’s really singing his praises for what he’s done. She’s talking about Trump’s work on criminal justice reform and that he has a lot of plans to do more. She might be someone really good for you to reach out to and see if she can be an advocate or spokeswoman. Alice Marie Johnson is her name; I imagine you can find her on Twitter, or she might have a website. Check her out. Have I mentioned I love you? LOL.
August 26, 2024
I’m sitting up in the woodshop cage this morning. This morning was the last commissary for two weeks. I guess next week they will do some kind of inventory. I reduced my order to the minimum because I couldn’t confirm if your funds had been deposited by the time I checked out. I saw on the receipt that the deposit had posted. I won’t bore you with the details; I already sent you an email about this morning’s ordeal. I shouldn’t have waited so long to ask for funds.
This morning, there was a white inmate talking about everything from tattooing to getting into fights at a previous spot. He talked like an illiterate urban person with the drawl of a redneck. Every now and then, I meet someone who just really drives me bonkers. I think it boils down to them making their bad choices into things to brag about. They glorify beating someone up simply for disrespecting them. This place has its share of people who don’t think twice about using violence to get their way. These people have to be given their space.
My roommate is someone who has been like that. He’s been in and out of prisons pretty much all his adult life. He says he used to stab people who cut in line. Now, he’s tempered out a lot and doesn’t react that way anymore. You have to respect a guy who can stay silent and not eat for nine days.
I guess Donald Trump is looking very presidential this morning, laying wreaths at Arlington Cemetery for something, while Biden is vacationing in California. Harris is nowhere to be found.
This morning, when I got back to the housing unit from commissary, the neutral TV that the COs pretty much control was on Fox News. I didn’t stay long enough to see if they were just flipping channels, but I always like it when they watch Fox.
I am really sleepy right now. I’m having my first cup of coffee. I don’t usually drink coffee before commissary. I went to bed late last night because I kept checking my account up until 11:30 p.m. Then I slept a little rough, worried about it. I’ll have to go to bed earlier tonight and try to get another hour in.
The menu for the next two weeks isn’t too bad. There are only a few really bad meals. I should be good with commissary. I feel so bad for the indigent inmates who have no money. You want to know the crazy thing? People with drug offenses often have huge bank accounts. I’ve talked to a few of them who transferred money to family and friends to send to them in prison. I know an inmate who has millions and a few others with hundreds of thousands.
It’s crazy to me—with all the work I do in the woodshop, I only earn about $90 a month. With bonuses, it gets up to $94. That’s basically $25 a week. It’s all kind of a sham. Jon is looking at getting a job in R&D, which stands for Receiving and Discharge. I wouldn’t mind working there. There are a few places I wouldn’t mind working if I didn’t work here.
Speaking of work, our guard is back, so it’s time to leave the cage and go sand something. I have a flag my Montana buddy made under my supervision before he quit. I need to go grind it here. XOXO.
So I didn’t work too long in the woodshop. We went into work for a little more than an hour, then I had to go to lunch. There was an annoying blue light, so I had to wait in the hall for like 20 minutes. For lunch, we had cheese pizza, which is basically a big square piece of pizza dough with some marinara and a very thin layer of cheese. I had some ranch that somehow made its way into the chow hall. The sides were green beans and some pretty bland noodles. I felt really hungry after lunch. It just wasn’t satisfying.
I went back to the shop just to turn around and head up to the housing unit to be a little early for my legal call. I won’t go into any details of the legal call, but I thought it went really well. We’re going to have another call in three weeks. I’ll mention it tonight, but you can call him anytime for an update. He did tell me that you were featured in a New Yorker article. I believe he said he would send it to you and me. He said that for being a well-known leftist publication, it wasn’t too bad in regards to you and me. Ultimately, he said Sedition Hunters made a comment as well, that I am not the extremist they were helping to bust.
There have been all kinds of issues with my mom’s visitation form. I don’t know why it’s so complicated. I guess the counselor allowed her to email the form, but she emailed it unsigned and sent a second page with the signature! Ahhhhh! Why is it so complicated? By the time you get this, I will probably have had it all worked out and we will have had our visit. I am most excited to see you in about a month—less than that, when you read this.
It’s hot here again. The back half of August was downright nice—80° or better weather, which has been really nice. This week, it’s Monday, and the weather has returned to 90° until Friday, when a cold front moves in and cools things down. I wonder if September will be nice and 80° and below. We will know when you come for a visit.
My roommate finished his nine-day fast and nine days of silence. I asked him if he would do it again next year. He said probably not. He lost 16 pounds during it, and he isn’t a big guy at all. So today, Tulsi Gabbard endorsed Donald Trump. Wow. I’m not surprised at all. She is a true liberal, so is RFK Jr., but MAGA is a real draw. I like seeing them come over. I have to say, when it comes to Tulsi, it’s very tempting for me—she reinvigorates my more liberal libertarian views. I feel like a free speech absolutist. Tulsi makes me feel like the Democratic Party will be reborn and revamped, or the Republican Party will give way to a refined MAGA party. RFK Jr. talked about how MAGA isn’t a return to sexism or racism, but rather America in ascent, full of hope for the future and American exceptionalism. That is how I have always viewed the MAGA mantra. It’s good to hear someone articulate that better. Trump does so many things well, but he doesn’t articulate policy points as well as some. J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr. all do a good job of articulation. I don’t love Nikki Haley, but I would like to see her out campaigning for Trump.
The big question I have is what will the judge in New York do with Trump as far as sentencing goes? I listened to Trump’s attorney, Will Scharf, talking about it. I think they are prepared to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. The question is if he will be in jail. I really do fear what will happen if the judge goes through with prison time. The legal arguments they have are rock solid. The immunity case pretty much ensures an eventual dismissal or vacation of the conviction. We will see how that goes. It’s only 71 days until election day. Every day on the Sean Hannity Show, there is a countdown. I’m really curious—when exactly did I start writing daily letters? Do you mind looking and seeing when that started? I’m trying to figure out about how many pages I’ve written to you.
I love you. I’m going to check my emails before dinner, then I’m going to read while I wait for dinner. Tonight’s meal is chicken and rice, which is one of the more boring meals. It needs to be dressed up a little bit. We’ll see if someone brings some condiments to make it tasty. XOXO.
I just got back from Outdoor Rec. I had to switch pens—my last pen just ran out of ink. I’ve never gone through so many pens before. This one looks like it’s about out too. It’s crazy how I can just go through a whole pen in a week. I just went and got a new pen from a friend. I have to replace it when I buy my own pack of pens. I wish I could get some blue ones.
So, back to getting back from Outdoor Rec—it was just Jon and me. We read some passages from Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, the book Heidi sent me. There’s a quote in there: “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” That is so true. I read about five or six pages, maybe more. Some of it really touched me, and I got really emotional. There were a few parts where he got emotional as well. Sometimes when it’s the two of us, we have very deep conversations.
Today, another inmate I don’t talk to very often came up to me in the hall. He asked how long I had been a Christian. I told him I’ve been one all my life, that there wasn’t a day I didn’t consider myself a Christian. He said he grew up going to church but didn’t really live it. He served a few smaller prison sentences, but this one is 15 years. I think he’s 12 years into it now. He has become very sincere in his conversion, at least he thinks so this time. He’s questioning if Jesus is really God. I shared a few thoughts and then decided to share the book Faith Beyond Doubt and The Universal Christ with him. I’ve read those books since I’ve been here and felt they adequately touched on the iceberg of the question he presented to me.
I sometimes wonder what effect I have on people. Someone described me as unstable. I asked them to explain what they meant. They said they’ve seen me talk passionately about certain topics and then walk around reserved and quiet. I was like, “Yep, that’s me.” I can be pretty up or down, or at least I can see how they would observe that. Get me talking about politics, and I’ll talk fast. Want to talk about the weather? I’m bored. Up and down. LOL. The context was about why a particular person doesn’t mess with me. They said the other person probably senses that I’m unstable. Ha, probably. It doesn’t bother me if a sex offender doesn’t mess with me.
I love talking on the phone with you. I so wish we could talk more. It totally stinks that our minutes are limited like they are. I feel like this election cycle is a great American experiment. When I see how Venezuela has gone, I hope people are taking notes on why we can’t let it go that far. We just have to believe in the people. There are so many positive signs, but tyranny is tyranny. Danny said something today—he said the system is arbitrary. I would agree. Very little makes sense. It does feel incredibly arbitrary. I hope I can someday be an instrument to end its arbitrary nature and also bring relief to those being chewed up by the cycle.
Love,
Taylor