Dear Reader,
My friend has requested that I catch up the blog to
present day and more importantly, reveal his true identity. When we started the
blog, he was nervous about possible repercussions and wanted to remain
anonymous. Since then, he has become aware that another inmate, also at Oakdale
Federal Correction Institution in Louisiana and also in for the same crime
(there are hundreds there for that reason), has had his letters published in a
blog since April of 2010 with no negative feedback. That blog (http://mediarow.com/oakdale-chronicles/2010/04/)
is called The Oakdale Chronicles and contains some fascinating entries,
especially the early ones about how it was to be a newbie at Oakdale, a series
called “A Sex Offender Like Me” (http://mediarow.com/oakdale-chronicles/2011/12/a-sex-offender-like-me-the-resilience-of-hate/,)
and a series from July, 2012, called “A Necessary Intrusion.”
But back to my friend…his name is Steven Kent Marshall.
He wrote to me: “My arrest and sentencing were publicized across the nation, so
it is no secret. I see no reason now why readers of the blog and especially the
children in the photos shouldn’t know who this is that is slowly making his way
back into a state of grace. It completes the story.” In short, I think that hiding behind a veil of
anonymity made him feel less than genuine. His arrest was widely publicized
because he is a former television writer and producer and that fact drew
interest from the press.
So my task now is to fast-forward from December of last
year to the present. For the next several posts, I will pick out pertinent or
particularly interesting passages from Steve’s letters during that period.
Christmas, 2011
“They put up a few
lights and a Santa cutout just outside the library. But the really interesting
and creative decorating goes on in the housing units. There is a competition as
to who does the best. We won last year and came in second this ear. Last year,
a large chunk of the common area was given over to a winter scene of a castle
with a small village outside its walls. It was all constructed out of scrap
cardboard and painted by some talented artists. This year the common area
wasn’t available because it is used as a TV room so they were limited to the
hallway just inside the entrance. One wall was taken up by a painted manger scene.
Just over it were paper mache heads of a donkey and a cow looking down on the
scene. Another section of the wall had a Santa in his sleigh and some elves
waving. But Santa’s face was the stern visage of the warden and the elves were
associate wardens and other prison officials. Coming in first just means our
unit gets to eat Christmas dinner first but last year, it also won us back our
microwaves that had been confiscated for six months because someone in the unit
made booze.
Christmas Day
itself, apart from the meal, was pretty much a normal day. While most people
got the day off, we in the dining hall were working. The meal wasn’t as
spectacular as Thanksgiving, but special nonetheless: Cornish game hens, dirty
rice, mac and cheese, and dessert consisting of sweet potato pie, a cinnamon
roll and a chocolate chip cookie. On Dec. 22, they handed out the Christmas
bags, a large plastic bag filled with chips, candy, cookies, crackers and other
snacks. It makes for a nice gift, but it is accompanied by a memo stating that
everything in the bag must be consumed by January 6th. Anything left
will be considered contraband and will be confiscated. As a good inmate who
follows the rules, I scarfed everything down within a week. I now have an extra
ten pounds to get rid of.”
January 8, 2012-Reading
“I just finished
reading a book that terrified me. Lost
Memory of Skin by Russell Banks, while fiction, is a well-researched story
about a 22-year-old convicted sex offender (SO) living under a bridge in
Florida in a self-created community for SOs. Because they are prohibited from
living within 2500 feet of schools, parks, daycare centers or anywhere else
where children might gather, there are only a couple of geographic locations
where they may live: this one or the middle of a swamp. The protagonist, known
only as The Kid, is a good-hearted, socially inept character who knows he made
a stupid choice and will be made to pay for it for the rest of his life. The
jacket says: “This book probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero
tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where
isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.”
An incident he found
amusing:
“When I called my
daughter yesterday and asked to speak to my granddaughter, she got on and said
“Hi.” When I said “Hi” back, she handed the phone back to her mother saying “I
can’t see him.” I guess Skype and the camera capabilities of the iPhone have
rendered me obsolete.”
January 15, 2012-Transfer
Last Tuesday, I went
to check on the status of my transfer, having waited for five weeks. I found
out that the case manager screwed up on the application and it was bounced back
to him the day after he submitted it. He threw it into a folder and did not
resend it. Then he retired. The last census report for Terminal Island that you
told me about was the lowest it’s been since we started tracking it, so I
figured our timing was perfect. Who knows what it will be once my application
goes through.
January 29, 2012 – Fear
Today’s sermon was
“Casting Out Fear” from Rev. Thomas Disrud of First Unitarian of Portland. It
examined situations where fear was appropriate in protecting us from real
dangers. He then contrasted it with the kind of fear that develops in
situations dealing with those who are different from us in race, sexual
orientation or religious conviction; how fear is used to manipulate and
control. It also made me think back to when I was first incarcerated and the
daily fear I lived with, dealing with a world so radically different from the
one I had inhabited all my life; being surrounded by some unstable
personalities that could erupt at any time in response to some perceived slight
or insult. But the more I learned about this world, the less I came to fear it.
I learned that I could navigate it safely by observing the rules that exist in
there, both those imposed by the authorities and those created by the inmates.
So fear, for the most part, is really all about the unknown, just as Rev.
Disrud said. I guess the real lesson here is: if you fear something, study it.
Learn about it. Grow from it. (Boy, I love this religion!)
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