Starting My Reading Aristotle 6-15-2010

 I had just enough money ($4.00) to buy Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (2d Edition, translated by Terence Irwin). I like the translation, I like the topic. Now that I have finished my memoir, I have more time for reading.

[Therein may explain the gap in notebooks. The memoir has gone missing. sch 11/6/22.]

I wrote the memoir in an attempt to understand and demonstrate what has gone wrong with my life. I am reading Aristotle for a similar purpose: understanding of where I screwed up and of my current situation.

Understand this: I am in a half-way house with both pre-trial detainees and those leaving the federal Bureau of Prisons. Unlike my former life, I am in the belly of the beast and looking out. 

I think my viewpoint combined with my education gives me a unique perspective. Some detainees (oh, how redolent of Gitmo, but it is not that bad) resent their forthcoming imprisonment. I assumed punishment came with the crime (and if you have been reading these notes, I had a different punishment planned for my sins and crimes). The convicts moving out of prison present some interesting questions, too.

Bureau of Prison regulations will not allow me anything but new books. I had hoped to have my books sent to me for a project, but that idea looks crippled, if not dead. I will do what I can on virtue here. Someone else can finish it off, perhaps.

sch