Scapular Part II

After wearing my scapular exposed for the next two or so weeks, I attended a Catholic service where the inmate Priest who wrote to the Carmelite nuns about my scapular informed me that the Sisters prefer that I wear my scapular tucked inside of my shirt. I thanked the priest for his follow through and promptly complied with the Carmelite Sisters preference. As far as I was concerned the Sisters had just resolved the impasse.

So life at America's Sodom and Gomorrah, Butner returned to as normal a pace as insanity can have. The bumps frolicked in the showers and the walking dead inmates shuffled about endlessly in search of the rare medical staff in hopes that one could prolong their lives long enough to make it home and die in the arms of loved ones.

In the midst of this monotony I noticed that I was not receiving my magazines. Next I was told that I had mail at another housing unit in another building. Then, in a couple of more days I was called upstairs to retrieve yet more of my mail that had been delivered to a housing unit not my own. I just figured no big deal a new CO is working the mail room.

Meanwhile in the days and then weeks that my mail was being delivered in all the wrong places I started taking more unwarranted heat from (of all places) my counselor who can only be described as the living clone as the Wicked Witch of the West. She is just a little bit shorter and much much dumber. I once heard a story that the military bounced her because she couldn't spell I.Q. And yet she is now a trusted employee of the new Federal Bureaucracy that has become the lifeline of so many rejects and political flunkies.

Anyways after my return from the SHU, Wicked goes into a near breakdown rant screaming threats and obscenities at the top of her lungs. This behavior is nothing new to lunatics, reality TV stars, or my counselor. She has screamed, raged and foamed at the mouth at least bi-weekly for the last six months that I have been here. So the next day she comes into work and writes thirty shots. Most for petty things like dust, too many books and food products stored illegally in the cube. My shot was for dust on items stored below my bed. I sleep on the bottom bed of a set of bunk beds. Myself and my bunky share the floor space beneath my bed so with neither of the two of us present how could she identify my belongings from his? So how was it that she only gave me the shot? My other cubie (there are three of us in the cube) also received a shot for dust-related nonsense. We are both Italian while the third shot-less inmate is not. In the cube next to mine, the one Italian inmate received a shot for a dirty common floor while the two Latinos that live with him did not. Five cubes down one Italian: shot, two non-Italians: no shot. The pattern is just too obvious.

Later my counselor decides she is going to throw out most of the shots and leave only the worst. I guess my dust and the dust of the three other Italians was dustier than anyone else's dust and more severe than all of the other infractions that she found. So, at the next step which is a formal interview with a lieutenant we were left with nine men: five Italians, one white guy, one guy of mixed lineage and two Latinos. We were told that in a few days a panel would meet with us and decide our punishment, if any. No one was worried because of the minor offenses that we were charged with and there were postings on the community bulletin board that clearly stated, "Failure to maintain a tidy room will result in a zero on our living skills classification."

Pretty boring bullshit but watch you'll see it all come together and the hate filled antics of our BOP employees here at Butner Low. Stayed tuned to see how these tyrants at Butner roll.

Stronger today than yesterday.

SAVALOOO,
TSG