The extreme hot of Nottoway and other assorted declarations of oppression...
Well summer is finally here. One of the best things about being in the mountains is that we don't really have hot days. I remember when I was young, one of the local banks would give away free ice cream if the temperature rose above 90°. Of course me and my closest brother were always watching the thermometer rise almost to that unattainable 90°
So far this year we've only had one day above 90°. Temps have been averaging in the low 80s, which is nice.
I spent some time in Nottoway prison, which is a max joint that has no air-conditioning...talk about hot box! We had windows in the cells but they were welded and couldn't be opened. Only 2 fans mounted near the ceiling outside our cells. I think being there that first summer may have been the hottest temperatures I've ever experienced. Not only was it super humid due to 80 hot blooded men being cooped up in a small place, but being in a different part of the state, most of the days were in the high 90s and low triple digits...if there is such thing as low 100s.
I remember one day I was on the yard working out. It was around 100 and I had had enough and was ready to go cool off....not happening. When I entered the housing unit I was just smacked with a wave of heat that if accompanied by a strong wind could easily have been confused with a nuclear blast or the gates of hades being opened.
Oppressive is the understatement of the year compared to this heat.
All prisons in VA have a thermometer in the pod to track the temp. When I checked ours, it had bottomed out at 120°... poor thing...
I remember telling my mom this story and that I tried to rescue the poor thing. When I checked it a nymph had it in a choke hold and after fighting this hotblooded nymph away, the thermometer was limp in my hands, tongue hanging out one side...no signs of life.
I tried to resuscitate it but the poor thing had given its last reading. At 3:07 pm July 17th, 2014 - I pronounced it DOA... hot enough to kill a thermometer...that's Nottoway....that's hot!
I remember telling my mom once that I could actually feel the meat in my chest cooking. It wasn't a far stretch to imagine and at times I felt I could actually feel my chest cooking and browning....I wonder if the cannibals of the pacific like their chest burgers rare or well done.
I think it's ironic that these same living condition for dogs and cats are considered inhumane and people donate money every month to help the ASPCA "save an animal"....yet here I am stuck in a concrete box, no window (that opens), no air, 120° heat (at least 120) because the thermometer only reads up to 120; i should request a cooking thermometer for a precise reading.. and yet no one is screaming from the rooftops of how inhumane these human beings are being treated.
I guess an animal deserves better than myself so why am I bitching...right?!
I also find it highly ironic and amusing that Juneteenth was just adopted as a federal holiday...extremely amusing.
So for you that don't know...juneteenth... this was the day that slaves in Texas were finally granted freedom after the civil war. Texas had not abolished slavery and many people were still considered property of others.
The irony is that I live in a prison system that is mostly black and all of us are considered property!!! Don't think so? Check it out.
Do you know that I can actually be charged for destroying 'state property' for giving or receiving a tattoo.
We are technically considered the property of the state of virginia.
Now being a white southern gentlemen (ha), to the gentlemen part anyway; my opinions on slavery are probably a little indifferent and not the same as others. But I'm pretty sure a slave is, was, and will always be considered...property, that's if I'm not mistaken.
But what I find amusing in the irony of myself and all the blacks i'm incarcerated with in being property is that on Juneteenth our oppressors, our owners and masters... the staff and administration of the VA penal system, get a paid vacation from the rigors of their hard jobs in their air conditioned offices. All the while I'm being paid 18 to 45 cents an hour, toiling all the day.
what exactly are slave wages by the way??
You'll have to overlook my negativity in this entry. it's just that I'm so tired of watching commercials to save abused animals or feed people in Africa, and the support of reparations for people of a bygone era...yet here I, We..sit, property of the state. Not a person. Not a man. Not even human. Only a number. Bonded and traded on the stock market as a commodity....
Why worry about yesterday, or the living conditions of animals, or humane assistance to another country...open your eyes, look in your own backyard. Just because we live in the land of the free doesn't mean that we are free or that there isn't a "people" without a voice that needs someone to be our voice.
OK that's it.. I'm off the soap box.
Oppressive is the understatement of the year compared to this heat.
All prisons in VA have a thermometer in the pod to track the temp. When I checked ours, it had bottomed out at 120°... poor thing...
I remember telling my mom this story and that I tried to rescue the poor thing. When I checked it a nymph had it in a choke hold and after fighting this hotblooded nymph away, the thermometer was limp in my hands, tongue hanging out one side...no signs of life.
I tried to resuscitate it but the poor thing had given its last reading. At 3:07 pm July 17th, 2014 - I pronounced it DOA... hot enough to kill a thermometer...that's Nottoway....that's hot!
I remember telling my mom once that I could actually feel the meat in my chest cooking. It wasn't a far stretch to imagine and at times I felt I could actually feel my chest cooking and browning....I wonder if the cannibals of the pacific like their chest burgers rare or well done.
I think it's ironic that these same living condition for dogs and cats are considered inhumane and people donate money every month to help the ASPCA "save an animal"....yet here I am stuck in a concrete box, no window (that opens), no air, 120° heat (at least 120) because the thermometer only reads up to 120; i should request a cooking thermometer for a precise reading.. and yet no one is screaming from the rooftops of how inhumane these human beings are being treated.
I guess an animal deserves better than myself so why am I bitching...right?!
I also find it highly ironic and amusing that Juneteenth was just adopted as a federal holiday...extremely amusing.
So for you that don't know...juneteenth... this was the day that slaves in Texas were finally granted freedom after the civil war. Texas had not abolished slavery and many people were still considered property of others.
The irony is that I live in a prison system that is mostly black and all of us are considered property!!! Don't think so? Check it out.
Do you know that I can actually be charged for destroying 'state property' for giving or receiving a tattoo.
We are technically considered the property of the state of virginia.
Now being a white southern gentlemen (ha), to the gentlemen part anyway; my opinions on slavery are probably a little indifferent and not the same as others. But I'm pretty sure a slave is, was, and will always be considered...property, that's if I'm not mistaken.
But what I find amusing in the irony of myself and all the blacks i'm incarcerated with in being property is that on Juneteenth our oppressors, our owners and masters... the staff and administration of the VA penal system, get a paid vacation from the rigors of their hard jobs in their air conditioned offices. All the while I'm being paid 18 to 45 cents an hour, toiling all the day.
what exactly are slave wages by the way??
You'll have to overlook my negativity in this entry. it's just that I'm so tired of watching commercials to save abused animals or feed people in Africa, and the support of reparations for people of a bygone era...yet here I, We..sit, property of the state. Not a person. Not a man. Not even human. Only a number. Bonded and traded on the stock market as a commodity....
Why worry about yesterday, or the living conditions of animals, or humane assistance to another country...open your eyes, look in your own backyard. Just because we live in the land of the free doesn't mean that we are free or that there isn't a "people" without a voice that needs someone to be our voice.
OK that's it.. I'm off the soap box.
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