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Making Lives More Whole

     In a word association game of “ dog” and “criminal,” you might have visions of Rin Tin Tin leaping into the air and howling over an armed assailant or a pack of bloodhounds on the trail of an escaped convict or perhaps a posse of pit bulls surrounding a Latin King Pin. For a Gen. X, latchkey kid, a trench coated Scruff McGruff practically ordering, “Help me take a bite out of crime!” might resonate. For Disneyphiles, Lady being thrown in the slammer only to discover her Tramp is a playboy might come to life. None of these have positive connotations. At the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield Missouri the two terms are tethered together in a positive way. Their partnership involving dedication, discipline, and patience leads to lives changed for the better, both inside and outside Fed Med’s walls.      The dog training program, composed of a dozen trainers and ten dogs, falls under the auspices of the education department. Fed Med partne...
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Arts at Club Fed

     At the start of 2024 while toiling away on an elliptical, a 'New Year New You’ segment on NPR piqued my sweaty ears. The pop psychologist interviewed advised switching from 'resolutions’ to 'intentions’. “Of course!! my enlightened, ego mused, "resolutions are so constraining and procrustean…Intentions…now those will lead to a Me 2.0. I can explore, expand, and examine if I start with an 'I intend’. Who needs a well-thought-out S.M.A.R.T. Goal, tinged with the stress of accountability? A quaint, feel good verb, the type that people pencil on their living room wall, is much more salubrious. I rolled infinitives around my head. One bumped up: To Create.      Of course I had dabbled in 'creation’ before. As a theater director, I had to make props like a papier-mâché spider egg sac for Charlottes Web. And a seagull carcass for Annie Get Your Gun. The act of directing a play is a form of creation. You’re in charge of bringing life to a playwright’s words, c...
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Behind Bars, Beneath Covers

     Walking Through Fed Med’s tunnels, hallways, and dorms, I’ve overheard snippets of questions ranging from "what’s for chow”, “why did he go to the SHU?” “Have you checked out the new female C.O. working the T…. damn?" “How many stamps do you want for them cinnamon rolls? “When are you getting out?" All of these, I imagine, are what you hear at most institutions. Other questions, though, are “have you read anything by him? Man, that guy can write!" and "do you know anyone who has book #6 of that series? I gotta know what happens!” These might seem like aberrations for the non-incarcerated, as out of place as palm trees in Minnesota.      For long time residents, these questions are pedestrian, part of the fabric of prison life. Upon arrival at USMCFP Springfield, or any Bureau of Prisons facility, your first piece of reading material is the “Inmate Admissions and Orientation Handbook”, given to you by a visibly burnt- out counselor who’s handed the same...
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Food, Glorious Food

      “Where Do you want to go on your last days of freedom?” My friend Gabe texted. It was mid-May 2021. I would self-surrender to the Bureau of Prisons in a few days. Nostalgia was in my mind's foreground. I proposed heading down to Hastings to visit my old stomping grounds on Hastings College campus. The chances were strong I wouldn't be visiting central Nebraska anytime soon, even after my incarceration. Gabe picked me up, and he, his boyfriend, and I drove highway 281 from Grand Island, past cornfields, over the Platte River, into Adams County, and down tree shaded side streets. We stopped by the cemetery north of campus. Gabe and I used to stroll the Grand Island cemetery, checking out headstones at dusk, so visiting another fit my memory lane mood. After we got to campus, I gave an anecdote-filled walking tour, sharing stories two decades prior of a more naïve, shy and idealistic Brian. The stroll done, Gabe asked, “Any other haunts you’d like to visit?” Ponde...
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