Reading is my life

July 15, day 190

Dear Dee,

Thanks for your latest letter and special thanks for your subscription to The Week, which started arriving three weeks ago. I'm loving it!

You said your recent car trip wouldn't be "my cup of tea," but it sure did sound interesting and fun. Maybe you're remembering me wrong--or perhaps I have changed. I daresay I would find anything that wasn't behind razor-wire fences to be pretty engaging these days.

I was fascinated to read your husband's family history. It is a sobering thought to realize that we are not that many generations removed from slavery. I wish more families were as scrupulous about passing that information down the line. Before she died, my aunt sent me an old family bible and a box containing a family tree that my grandfather commissioned that went back to the 1600s when my family came over from Europe. There were also some pictures, including my geat-great-grandfather, a preacher with a withered arm who otherwise looked just like my dad. Somehow I have lost track of the box. I hope it turns up among my things when I get them back.

Thanks for sending the sermon too. I gave it a cursory read, but I want to give it another look when I can find a quiet place and can give it the attention it deserves. The noise level is always high here. It's like living among 200 rowdy pre-schoolers, except the "tots" are six feet tall and heavily muscled.

On the same day your letter arrived, I received the application to the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship. It looks ideal for my situation.

I have a steady stream of reading material, thanks to the library and a few books that people have sent me.

Temperature control is iffy. All the buildings are air-conditioned, but it keeps going out. Once it was out for a full week and a half and we complained bitterly every day. So once they got it fixed, they kept the temperature down in the high 50s for the next two weeks as punishment for complaining.

I am finally making some headway at pulling myself up out of the depression that has enveloped me since I got here in May. The idea that this is my life for the next six years, followed by lifetime supervised release, is so stifling and lacking in hope. I don't know of anyone who has succeeded in destroying their entire life as much as I have. But it is what it is, and the only way I can deal with it is by taking things in the 12-step tradition of one day at a time. Anything beyond that is just too overwhelming.

I think I am close to receiving a spare pair of glasses to replace the ones I have been without since April, so I will finally be able to watch television. That's good, because right now, I'm burning through five to six books a week, almost one a day. It's all I have to do.

I'm now working in the kitchen five days a week in the mornings through lunch. I am on the serving line and raking in $18.36 per month, not quite what I made before, but every dollar helps. And the job does help the days go by a little faster.

Well, there you have all that is new and interesting (?) in my life. Stay in touch.

Love, Kent