mass incarceration
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On drinking.
“The only thing I’m scared of is that I’m gonna drink again and my daughter won’t let me see my grandkid.”
addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, apology, beer, booze, Dave Gibson Makes His Way Down, Dave Johnson, domestic violence, drinking, drugs, fear, forgiveness, jail poetry, penitence, poem, poems, poetry, poetry in jail, prison poetry, Raymond Carver, repentence, teaching poetry, teaching poetry in jail, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water, Woolworth’s 1954
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On games, tinkering, and gratitude.
By expecting games — and the wider world around you — to have flaws, you can save yourself some heartbreak. Then it’s time to fix ’em.
board game design, board games, Boss Monster, Boss Monster review, card games, depression, dungeon building game, dungeon crawler, expecting flaws in the world, game design, game review, games, house rule, marcowargamer, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, optimism, Pages to Prisoners, perserverance, puzzle games, strategy, tinkering, tinkering with board games
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On light.
“When the lights come on,” T tells me, “that’s when the darkness comes.”
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On prayer.
Czeslaw Milosz wrote that “if there is no other shore / We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.”
AA, addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Aphrodite, Czeslaw Milosz, deities, God, healing, higher power, impulse control, jail, jail poetry, mythology, myths, naloxone, Narcan, odinism, On Prayer, opiates, opiod epidemic, poetry, prayer, prison, recovery, rehab, rehabilitation, Robert Hass, teaching in jail, Thor, TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation
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On sexuality: dolphins.
Where ambiguity isn’t safe, people can be only portions of themselves.
AB, An Aquarium, Aryan Brotherhood, bisexual, CAConrad, criminal justice, desire, dolphin, dolphin sex, dolphins, Enkidu, gay, Gilgamesh, homophobia, homosexuality, human sexuality, identity, internet, jail poetry, Jeffrey Yang, poem, poetry, punishment, Queer, racism, Roman soldiers, samurai, sexual identity, sexuality, sexuality in jail, sexuality in prison, Spencer Reece, teaching in jail, The Road to Emmaus, While Standing in Line for Death, white supremacy
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On reading Natalie Diaz’s “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs” with a room full of men in jail for drugs.
Natalie Diaz wrings beauty from an impossible situation — how much hurt can you bear, trying to help someone who can’t be saved?
addiction, amphetamines, crystal meth, drugs, heroin, How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs, jail, jail poetry, juvenile detention, meth, methamphetamine, Natalie Diaz, opiate epidemic, overdose, poem, poetry, prison, prison poetry, rehab, relapse, sobriety, street drugs, teaching in jail, War on Drugs, When My Brother Was an Aztec
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On correspondence.
With vague mail policies, guards can sever people from the world … often those who need help most.
activism, beginning of life, biotech catalogs, books to prisoners, central dogma, church outreach, correspondence, DNA, DOC, drug blotters, drugs, enforcement, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, filing cabinets, greeting cards, Indiana, Indiana Department of Corrections, Indiana DOC, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, K2, LSD, mail, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, MWPP, plasmids, poetry, post cards, prison, prison guards, prison mail policy, prison poetry, RNA world, RNA world hypothesis, spice, suboxone, synthetic marijuana, undergrad research assistants, USPS, vague policies, War on Drugs
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On smell.
Humans actually smell pretty well … and scents affect our emotional wellbeing. Shouldn’t we want places of healing to smell good?
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On addiction, crime, Buddhism, and exorcism.
If we want people to heal, we shouldn’t keep them inside bleak boxes.
abuse, addiction, agency, Buddhism, child molesters, Demon, demons, drug dealers, exorcism, free will, gang murder, Harvard commencement, hurt people hurt people, I Will Find You, incarceration, J.K. Rowling, jail, Jason Shiga, Joanna Conners, liberation rite, mythology, nurture, parenting, penitence, poverty, prison, prison rape, Rowling, sex offenders, solitary, Tibetan mythology, trauma
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
Frank Brown Cloud 