3-27-16

Dear Azkadellia,

I was especially happy to receive your letter and finding it to be someone with something nice to say. I appreciate all your compliments and hope to supply more stories. However, the hard part is coming up with something that I think my audience will have an interest in reading. I'm always open to suggestions.

I was sorry to read of your brother's situation. I have met a few gentlemen in here who were arrested at 16 and are now 40 to 60 years old. It's just really tough to imagine how these guys have not really had any kind of a life whatsoever. At least in my case, I was able to do a lot of stuff because I wasn't arrested until I was 31. But these guys barely even had time to even drive a car. You mentioned that you want to reach out to him. Well, whether you know it or not, one of the most enjoyable times in a prisoner's life is hearing his name get called at mail time (it's the very reason I signed up with this program).

Since you've read my previous writings, you must already be familiar with the fact of who things can change around, depending on my location. I probably appeared to be a more active individual back two or three years ago. However, at this camp, things have really slowed down. So in answering your first question, in regards to occupying my time, I mostly do a lot of reading and writing. Things like playing Scrabble and drawing my mazes have all but vanished due to the fact that my game was stolen during a transfer—and I can't get my hands on any fine tip felt-tip markers with which to draw. We also have yard time a lot less and they aren't in need of a math teacher in the GED department.

In answering your second question, I'm going to assume that you are referring to the time in which the doors are locked, meaning that the time that I have to spend in my cell (otherwise known as lockdown). Between the six hour evening slep time and the five different count times that take place, I'm usually in my cell for about 10 hours out of a 24 hour day.

Let's see, for number three, the answer would be about one year and ten months that I've been at this current camp. So by the time you get this letter, it will probably be right at two years.

Wow, this number four is a tough one to answer. How about if instead of coming up with the food I like the most, let's just think of it as the food I hate the least. Just a minute. I need to go take a look at the monthly menu... Okay, I found something that's not too bad. It's labeled here as Western chili with rice. Back in the day, a couple of breakfast meals were my favorite. But this camp can't seem to fix them right. Also, they no longer serve us eggs or hot buttered biscuits. Whenever I get visits, I used to get those things called breakfast pizzas. But they no longer sell those.

My number of pen-pals seems to fluctuate quite a bit. I guess the only one I've got at the moment is a gentleman who looks up the lyrics to certain songs on the Internet for me periodically. This all started in early Dec. of 2015, but it wasn't until just recently I discovered he is the executive director of the American Musicological Society. I've got to admit, that was a bit of a surprise.

Your last question can be answered with just one word: never. Although, I am always told to never give up hope.

I suppose one of the questions I had for you is pretty much the same as yours: what do you like to do for fun? Then my other is, what is the roundabout area you're located? I've had commentators from the USA, Sweden, and Bosnia. And I have found that it makes communicating more interesting when I know where you're from.

I'm sure I'll have more questions next time. But until then, I hope everything goes your way and I hope to hear back from you soon.

MAZE