One More Week Done

 I managed my way through work. The hip held up while the knee ached. All the same, I was pretty much exhausted. We got off early. One of the guys gave me a ride down to the bus station, but too late for the bus. I ate at Casa del Sol, a wonderful burrito. Before going to Payless for groceries. Being too full of burrito cuts down the desire to buy food.

Back in the room, I paid rent and showered and piddled with the email. An executive decision was made to just go to sleep and start anew tomorrow. I slept for an hour. I thought I had been asleep for hours, when it was closer to just one.

I watched a little TV before sitting down here in front of the computer. Firs thing was to format "Exemplary Employee." I caught an orphaned sentence, but I think all the embarrassing stuff is out of there. Thanks to KH for helping me edit. He also helped with "Psychotic Ape." He catches all this stuff when I think I have done as thorough a job possible. Quite embarrassing for me. Make me think he thinks I am incompetent, or wasting his time.

Another rejection of "Colonel Tom."

Thank you for sending us "Colonel Tom". We are honored by your choice to entrust us with reading your work.

Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your piece at this time. Due to a high volume of submissions, we must often decline examples of promising work.

Thank you again for your submission. We at Blue Earth Review wish you the best of luck with finding a home for "Colonel Tom"!

Sincerely,

Pritika Pradhan,

Fiction Editor

Blue Earth Review

I got another email from Wesley, and doing some research for him, I came across the following from Zoukis Consulting Group:

On February 10, 2022, former inmate Johansel Moronta was sentenced to five months in federal prison for possessing and obtaining contraband while at the facility. He had used a drone to smuggle contraband into the facility. The Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office had investigated the case.

In June 2018, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, sentenced to 28 years for bribery, racketeering, and corruption, was moved to Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix.

In April 2018, Martin Shkreli was moved to the low-security FCI Fort Dix to serve his seven-year sentence for fraud and stock manipulation. He was the man who sparked outrage after boosting the price of the life-saving AIDS drug Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent.

In April 2018, Paul Anton Wright, a correctional officer at Fort Dix prison, was arrested and indicted for smuggling contraband into the facility. This included introducing suboxone and K2 into the federal prison. He had received bribes in exchange for these smuggling activities.

Also, in April 2018, Omar Adonis Guzman-Martinez, serving more than 16 years for drugs at FCI Fort Dix, was sentenced to an additional 30 years for using smuggled cell phones to arrange a 2016 slashing attack on his former girlfriend and the murder of her boyfriend — while he was still in prison.

In January 2018, a stash of contraband, including 1,046 cell phones, dozens of bottles of liquor, over a pound of K2, and 95 cartons of cigarettes, were found in a basement just outside the secure area of Fort Dix federal prison. Prisoners allegedly could sneak out of prison unnoticed, pick up contraband from this stash spot, and then sneak back into the prison undetected.

In September 2017, Angel Cordero, a prisoner at Fort Dix, New Jersey prison, was indicted along with Ohio resident Eduardo Rios Velasquez in a murder-for-hire conspiracy. He subsequently pleaded guilty.

In May 2017, eight federal prisoners, who were already serving time for child pornography at the Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix, were charged with using cell phones, memory cards, and cloud storage accounts to possess, sell and distribute child pornography on federal property. On May 8, 2018, Smith was the first to be sentenced. He received a 13-year prison term.

Also, in May 2017, Jamaican drug kingpin Christopher “Dudas” Coke, whose loyalists fought security forces to prevent his arrest and extradition, resulting in over 70 people being killed, was sent to the low-security FCI Fort Dix.

I knew of Kwame Kilpatrick, but never saw him. I knew of the 2017 bust, my unit building spent the day because of it and several people I knew were arrested. When I first met my PO, we were talking about me getting my first laptop, he asked if I could be trusted with the internet, since I would be going from zero to a hundred. That took me aback. Nothing about prison kept me from committing internet crimes from within prison - except my own disinterest in criminality. When I was in the halfway hose, my flip phone had interest access (as did the TV on the second floor), and I had no interest in returning to the crimes that got me where I am. My PO seemingly still awaits me to be downloading pictures from the internet; nothing will convince him, I am so bored with that idea. He also seems not to understand, nothing about prison or this supervised release would keep anyone from further criminality unless that person decides they want nothing to do with further criminality.

Also, from the foregoing site:

In 2016, more than 1,500 contraband cell phones were seized from inmates at the facility, up from 652 in 2015 and 217 in 2014.

And there were more than enough to go around when I left in 2021. Some rooms in 5714 had 2 or 3 phones. I heard the phones were so plentiful that the cost for one was $300. I think it was closer to $1,000 at one time. Now who was making all that money?

Austin Kleon has a list of books to read here. Honestly, I have not heard of them. He also a piece on mind maps as a cure for blocked creativity here. 

Over at The Washington Post, Michael Dirda wrote Why read old books? A case for the classic, the unusual, the neglected. That he puts an emphasis on old detective stories, I have to agree old stories can be much more fun.

I got a letter from Charlie G. which I will report on later. 

On the bus to Payless were high schoolers, much quieter than the middle schoolers with which no adult willingly rides, and one said that Muncie was the suckiest place to live. I would have liked to have asked her what made it so, but I was too tired to do more than file the phrase away. Frankly, I am surprised how well Muncie is doing nowadays. Used to be, say 40 years ago, the town gave off a sour, mean vibe. I do not think it does so now. This I write even though every day I see at work people who slug away at a very low rung level of employment. These are the people who see Donald J. Trump as being for them, for saying what they do not or cannot say about the world. I write this even for all I can see of the damage done here by opioids and meth. Unlike Anderson, Muncie had been off by itself, like a festering wound. Too far from the interstate for easy access by the roads they had had then. Round about 1983, there was the McGalliard Extension, also known as Indiana 332, with its four lanes coming in on the north side of the city, the Ball State area. About 20 years ago, the old US 67 was expanded to a four lane highway, giving access to the city's south side, doing away with the narrow old highway. Only 32 remains two lanes, curving, with almost no place to pass the farm equipment that will use it. There is also the cultural influence of the Balls and Ball State University. On the other hand, the Mall is on its legs, there is one movie theater, and it is still an old factory town in the Midwest. My friends and I hated Anderson when we were in high school.

I read The Legacy of a Caged Bird: On Gene Andrew Jarrett’s “Paul Laurence Dunbar” by Vesper North. Dunbar was a poet from Ohio. If nothing else, read the poem quoted at the start of the review.

And I will close here.

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