A New Year's Murder
Jan. 12, 2015: 7:00 a.m.: Watching the Local Morning News

Good morning. I'm a little lost today. Being in this new prison has changed the way I was used to living my daily life in here but I still continue to get up & watch the news every morning & I am still shocked at the senseless killings. In Bedford County, PA, a 15 & 16 year old boys decided to kill someone. They planned to murder someone to get money to buy weed. So they planned it, then went & shot & killed a young woman. The very next news story was a 67 year old woman fell in her snow covered driveway. She couldn't get up, she froze to death & died. These were 2 senseless deaths, 2 lives that did not have to end. In a statement made to the cops, the teenage boys said that they also wanted to know what it was like to shoot someone. As bad as I once was, that's not a feeling I ever had a desire to know. My grandmom, before she died in 2006, she was home alone & she fell. She got hurt pretty badly from the fall & laid there for hours until my cousin came to visit her. If she would have had the life alert button, she would have been able to get medical help. I only think of this because my mom had the life alert button & I wish we still had the money to pay for that. That 67 year old woman wouldn't have frozen to death in her driveway. Medicaid, Medicare, one of these should be forced to pay for a system like life alert for seniors who cannot afford it on their own.

We send our military all over the world to help people, for missions, for war, so many reasons but according to CNN, a huge number of military vets commit suicide every year. I don't remember the number but it was in the thousands. Thousands of men & women, who just happened to serve in the military, end their own lives every year. Something's definitely wrong.

But even though they are sent to wars, what about sending them to end Boko Haram in Africa? Specifically Nigeria. Why hasn't Obama sent them to Nigeria to end this terrorist regime? The soldiers of Boko Haram murdered 2,000 men, women & children in Nigeria for 5 years now. This is the same group that kidnapped 200 elementary aged school girls & they have never been found. You can imagine the horrors & tortures that these poor kids are living. They were most likely sold into slavery &/or child prostitution. If I could speak to Obama right now, I would ask him if he plans on having our military do anything about Boko Haram. We all know how politicians are, maybe there are no natural resources there that we need.

My final complaint for the day is the cost of a phone call overseas. I will not be calling Italy now as I had wanted to call Lisa on her birthday. The phone company raised the cost of an international call from 45 cents per minute to $1.50 per minute. That would be $22.50 for a 15 minute phone call. This is just another way that they continue to rip us off in here. I would have to work for 119 hours in order to be able to make that phone call. Ridiculous. I still don't understand why Pennsylvania does not have legislation in place preventing the phone co. (Global Tel Link & Securus) & the dept. of corrections, from ripping us & our families off. 8 states do so far, we need the rest.

There is a new prison that's supposed to be opening up later this year, SCI Phoenix, it'll be next to SCI Graterford, I think I'll ask if I can get sent there. In the meantime, I have spoken to the prisons chaplains & I want to start a holy name society organization here, if the prison will allow it & if the HNS will allow us another prison charter. I also need to round up volunteers from the outside so that we can begin our own annual cursillo retreat weekend here. This prison doesn't have much to do so I think those would be beneficial to a lot of prisoners. 90 % of the men at this prison will return to society one day & these are the ones you must focus on first. I won't give up the fight. The dept. of corrections (that name is a joke) their focus is on warehousing, not rehabilitation, not helping. Do you know how many people are rotting in here because they have nowhere to live? I know a guy who was paroled 3 years ago. But he lives out of state. He has an armed robbery charge. He did 15 years off of a 10-20 year sentence for robbing a store with a gun. He has to max out because he has nowhere to live in this state. Stuff like this makes no sense to me. This is the dept. of prisons/slaves.

I apologize, I have 1 final complaint for today. The dept. of prisons/slavery now makes tv's. They buy the RCA parts & have an inmate assembly line. They make you buy this TV, they will not allow you to buy from anyone else. You are forced to buy a 19" flat screen LED RCA TV, assembled by now trained prisoners (you learn on the job). A 19" TV, they charge over $260. TVs are essential in here, they are essential to keep your sanity, keep you from losing your mind. Let's remember the old phrase (I hope I say it right) "Idle hands are the devil's tools." In here, when you are locked down in your cell 20+ hours a day, with nothing to do, that's when you get in trouble. You have no way to educate yourself, no way to entertain yourself, prisoners tend to get more violent, get into more trouble. It's the same out in the world with a child, if you don't have something for a kid to do, he/she will get into some type of trouble. It's just the way of the world.

Well I want to thank everyone who took the time to read what I write. Not very interesting so if you have any ideas, questions, comments, I'm all ears. It gets harder to write without feedback. Take care, stay out of the cold (it's freezing here ) & God bless. Happy new year, ciao.