Archive for January, 2008

Bullingdon Prison Blues Revisited

Posted by Import on Jan 31 2008 | Britain, MP3s, This 'n' that

“San Quentin, what good do you think you do?
Do you think I’ll be different when you’re through?
You bent my heart and mind and you may my soul,
And your stone walls turn my blood a little cold.”

-Johnny Cash - “San Quentin”

I’ve not been blogging long enough to start running repeats of old posts, I think I need a year or so under my belt. That being said, after my third visit to Bullingdon Prison this week, I thought it would be fun to revisit the post I wrote after my first visit back in July. So if you’ll indulge me a bit of repetition, what follows in italics is the original “Bullingdon Prison Blues” followed by some thoughts after subsequent visits.

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It’s funny where life takes you. I spent yesterday afternoon at Her Majesty’s Prison Bullingdon doing some volunteer work regarding drugs and alcohol, forgive me if I’m not more specific. But if it was good enough for The Man in Black, then it’s good enough for me. And, no it wasn’t court ordered…

I have never been in a jail cell, never mind a prison (not for lack of trying). The closest I came was in high school when a guy I knew named, in the interest of anonymity let’s call him “J”, was driving with my friend Jamie and I from Gainesville back to Lake City. I think he must have been speeding because we saw those characteristic red and blue lights behind us that only mean one thing. One thing, right - you stop. Jason didn’t stop. I don’t remember what kind of car it was (Jamie, a little help?), but it was a something “Turbo”. I hesitate to guess what was going on in J’s head, but I think he maybe figured something like this: “Turbo means fast, if we make the Columbia County line, the Alachua County Sheriff will be out of his jurisdiction. Just like in ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’”. I am here to tell you that the laws of Hazzard County don’t apply in the State of Florida. . So, Jamie and I had to sit in the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office until one of our Mom’s came and got us. Can’t remember what happened to J.

That was enough time in custody for me for the next nearly twenty years. So, this visit
to Bullingdon was something I’ve been dreading since I agreed to do it. About a month ago I went up for security training. The man who did this was a short, yet big Scot who started the training by saying: “Now most of your prison experience is from the TV or prison lesbian movies, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t know shit.” (I paraphrase, but this is what I heard and he definitely said the thing about prison lesbian movies). And then proceeded to spend three hours telling us about all the things that can go wrong in a prison and what sort of things he’s found in various orifices. It was very entertaining but when I got home I couldn’t remember for the life of me what I was supposed to do in the case of being taken hostage.

Now, I am not a prison-hating kind of liberal. In fact, I think if you are sent to prison, you should do the time you are sentence to do. There’s a shortage of space in British prisons and all kinds of offenders, including violent offenders, are being released early. I think that the answer to this is obvious - build more prisons. However, I think that a lot of people go to prison and come out worse than they went in. A recent study by the British prison service said that prisons were serving as breeding grounds for Islamist extremists. If we’re alienating Muslims in prisons being watched over carefully by the European Human Rights Courts, imagine what’s happening in Guantanamo.

Sorry, off topic - I’ve heard estimates that 75 - 85% of people serving time in British and American prisons are there directly or indirectly due to drug and/or alcohol abuse. Since you’ve got a captive audience (huh huh?), seems the time to try and help get those problems sorted. That’s why I was there. If you’re not part of the solution then you can’t complain, right?

Yes, I was scared. A prison is a scary place, it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to sap your spirit. I will never complain about how well prisoners are treated, three squares and a bed, leisure time, etc. because at the end of the day, they can not leave that place and all those gates lock. The thing is, that the guys I talked to where not what I thought. They didn’t look like “prisoners”, they looked like me. They were polite and grateful that we had taken the time to come and talk to them. When we were done we shook hands and in some cases, hugged in that manly way where you don’t touch much. And they went back to be locked up in their cells and I walked out of the main gates.

It’s funny where life take you. And it’s funny how the road twists and turns. A twist or two in the wrong direction and who knows.

“This wall divides us, we’re on two different sides
But this wall is not real; how can it be real?
It’s only made of concrete and barbed wire
Concrete and barbed wire, concrete and barbed wire
It’s only made of concrete and barbed wire….”

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-Lucinda Williams “Concrete and Barbed Wire”

I recently saw one of the guys that I met on that first visit back in July, let’s call him K. He was down in the Oxford city center in a heated argument with another guy, clearly off his head on something. K was in one of those drunken debates that never end well for either party. And I don’t think it was going to end well for K. I know better than to get in the middle of two drunk, angry guys, so I moved on.

I never had any illusion that every guy I talked to was going to immediately put down the booze and drugs and become a model citizen for the rest of their lives. But seeing K down in town well on his way back to Bullingdon threw me for a loop and this visit I came into to Her Majesty’s Prison with a slightly more skeptical attitude. This time I tried to really pay attention to what the guys were saying and most of them say the right things - a recognition that drugs or alcohol got them into their current predicament. Many of them are aware that if they wanted to stay out of jail they would need to steer clear of drugs and booze. I’m pretty sure that some of the guys were only there to try and get their sentence reduced. I think the most honest among them were those that said when they got out they were pretty sure that a drink or a fix would be one of the first things on their list. It was kind of disconcerting and demoralizing.

But, like any volunteer work, the reward comes from making the effort. Whether or not any of these guys get anything from my visit is neither here nor there. Just like after my first visit, as I was walking out of the final gate of Bullingdon Prison I was overcome with feelings of release and having done something useful. I don’t know if I did anything for the guys inside, but I had certainly done something for myself.

“San Quentin, you’ve been livin’ hell to me
You’ve hosted me since nineteen sixty three
I’ve seen ‘em come and go and I’ve seen them die
And long ago I stopped askin’ why…”

Image Credits:

Razor wire

All images of Bullingdon from the Beeb

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Science Tuesday: One Cell’s Junk Is Another Cell’s Treasure

Posted by Import on Jan 29 2008 | Science

The human genome, and most others for that matter, is a massive and complex template containing the written instructions for life. Those instructions, our complement of protein coding genes, make up only about 1.5 percent of the genome and are nestled among billions of base pairs of so-called junk DNA. This is a misnomer, however, as this “junk” contains not only parasitic DNA elements but repetitive sequences and other information crucial for many cellular processes.

A sizable chunk of the “junk” is made up of transposable elements (or transposons) - genetic elements that can move around the genome. Transposons were first identified by maize geneticist Barbara McClintock Continue Reading »

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Z’s Music Monday: Belle & Sebastian

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 28 2008 | Baby DVD, Britain, MP3s, Music

“And the head said that you always were a queer one from the start
For careers you say you went to be remembered for your art
Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange
Making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay…”

-Belle and Sebastian - “Expectations”

There are a number of British bands that it took me moving to England to be able to appreciate. Continue Reading »

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MP3s of the Week - New Counting Crows

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 27 2008 | MP3s, Music, politics

Let the 90’s nostalgia begin! With the possibility of another Clinton in the White House - though, thankfully Barack Obama’s trouncing of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina may slow that train - new albums by 90’s rock bands are the next indicator of a revival of the decade of my 20s. This week, 90’s icons Counting Crows released two new tracks for free ahead of their new LP due in March. Continue Reading »

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Windsor

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 26 2008 | Britain, Dr. O'C, MP3s

“God save the Queen,
We mean it man,
There is no future in England’s dreaming…”

For someone born deep in the heart of republican Ireland and raised in sovereign Australia, Dr O’C has a deep and proud Royalist streak. So, our Saturday excursion to Windsor Castle was more of a pilgrimage for Dr. O’C. In fact, I saw her get excited when I speculated aloud about the number of royal asses that had been changed in the baby changing room at the castle (most probably zero).
Pilgrimage or pleasant Saturday outing, Windsor Castle is worth the visit - particularly the opulently obscene State Apartments. Even a cynical democrat such as myself got kind of sucked in to the very British-ness of something like The Order of the Garter. It’s less than an hour drive from Oxford and I must say that I’m slightly ashamed that it took us over three years to make the trip.

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In a West End town, a dead end world

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 25 2008 | Chris, Florida, MP3s, Music

“Lost in the high street, where the dogs run
Roaming suburban boys
Mother’s got a hairdo to be done
She says they’re too old for toys
Stood by the bus stop with a felt pen
In this suburban hell…”

-The Pet Shop Boys - “Suburbia”

In September of 1985 I was 14 years old and entering the ninth grade, full of puberty fueled self-doubt and a lack of any self-knowledge. And what a disastrous year it was. I spent a good part of the school year in a cold war with my best friend over a girl who I don’t even remember. My Mom had begun to let me make my own fashion decisions and if you were ever to see my school photo from this year (which you shan’t) you would see that I was not prepared for that level responsibility. Unlike most places in the States, ninth grade in Columbia County, Florida was not the beginning of High School but a sort of purgatory between it and Junior High. So, the excitement of beginning High School - new people, a new school - was absent. It was just another year stuck with the same classmates, stuck in the same social stratum without any hope of improving my level of coolness. I was firmly entrenched in the sort of geeky academic crowd and with glasses, a full palate of pimple, a skinny physique and a funny name and accent. In short, I was an easy target for merciless teasing.

Here’s an example. I used to get teased for wearing thick glasses - “four eyes”, that sort of standard unoriginal fare. To give the teasers credit, it was fair enough as one of the (poor) fashion choices I made was to pick glasses with photochromic lenses. This technology was a little ways from perfected in the mid 80’s so that I always walked around - whether in direct sun or in the dark - with some level of tint in the lenses. Some time in the ninth grade I finally got contact lenses. I remember being so excited on the first day that I was going to school without my glasses on - it was going to be a new day for me, new opportunities for popularity and I was sure that the girls of the Lake City 9th Grade Center would swoon on first sight. I strutted proudly around all day up until P.E., the most tortuous class of all. We were playing basketball or something like that and I made a mistake, as it was the norm for me to do, and one of my classmates yelled out to me: “Get it together, big nose.” If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. God, high school sucked.

I spent a good part of my high school years dreaming of escape. One of the things that got me away from where I was - this small town in north Florida where my social class of “nerd loser” was well established and irrevocable - was the occasional song on the radio or MTV. Some time in my ninth grade year I saw the video for The Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” and I was vaulted out of Lake City for three and a half minutes. The misty London montage as the video opens was so foreign to my experience in a small Southern town. The rail thing coiffed and tailored Neil Tennant and dark, semi-transparent Chris Lowe strolling along the Thames offered an entirely different version of manhood than the thick chested and red necked guys that made my school days miserable. I bought the Pet Shop Boys debut LP “Please” as soon as it was released and wore the cassette out that school year. Songs like “West End Girls, “Suburbia” and “Opportunities” kept me sane through the ninth grade.

As I was walking along the Thames yesterday The Pet Shop Boys cover of “Always on My Mind” brought a lot of this rushing back. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go through ninth grade again with the self-confidence, and aplomb that I’ve got today. Would things have been different? Or would a reasonably well adjusted adult man still be bullied and teased into submission? One of my favorite expat bloggers recently expressed a wish to go to her 20th high school reunion. Mine is coming up as well (2009) and I personally can not imagine anything more tortuous. First of all, I would have to return to a place to which thankfully (thank you for moving away Mom & Dad) I have no ties nor wish to return. Second, I fear that all the confidence and positive self-image I have cultivated for the past two decades would collapse under the scrutiny of cheerleaders with a half dozen kids and a job at the Wal-Mart and aging, flabby football players. Nope, not interested in finding out. I’m as happy as could be with where I am in life right now. I think I’ll just stick with The Pet Shop Boys as a reminder of that time.

Image credits:I-10

Heathers

West End Girls

 
icon for podpress  The Pet Shop Boys - "Always On My Mind" [3:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Color Me Impressed

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 24 2008 | Georgia, Music

“Everybody at your party
They all look depressed
Everybody dressin’ funny
Color me impressed…”

-The Replacements - “Color Me Impressed”

Two Peach State acts have new records on the British shelves this week and they are doing their home state proud here across the pond. Continue Reading »

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A plague on both your houses

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 23 2008 | USA, politics

If you’re a Republican, I suspect that you’re pretty happy about the recent CNN Democratic Presidential debate in South Carolina. To be fair, I haven’t seen it, but the press accounts and transcript seems that the the two frontrunners went after each other like schoolboys in a playground fight - name calling, fists and wrestling in the mud. Continue Reading »

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King of Birds

Posted by A Free Man on Jan 23 2008 | Baby DVD, MP3s, Wordless

Continue Reading »

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Science Tuesday: Transatlantic STDs

Posted by Import on Jan 22 2008 | Science

The discovery of the New World in the 15th century presented a novel opportunity for exchange of culture, society and biology between two geographically isolated worlds. It did not go particularly well. At the human level, it has been generally accepted that the New Worlders got the short end of the stick as Europeans rained genocide down on the aboriginal cultures of the Americas. This occurred either intentionally (Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas) or unintentionally (the decimation of Mississippian cultures by smallpox). However, it seems as if at least in one case, the American cultures got a little bit of revenge that has lasted for a long time. Continue Reading »

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