Saturday, August 29, 2020
I talked to my mother, Lucille Norman, for a few
minutes Friday morning. She sounded fairly well, if tired and preoccupied,
urging us not to worry about her. That's impossible, of course. It's my nature
to fret. She's more concerned about my situation. ''How are you and Libby
doing, son?''. ''We're fine, Mama, if lonely to be apart.''
She had a subdued 91st birthday celebration at home in Thonotosassa last
Sunday, with only a few family members present.
She's going into Brandon Hospital on Tuesday, Sept. 1st. She has been suffering
for a few weeks with the onset of yellow jaundice, and the surgeon is going in
with a camera to see if a duct is blocked. The doctor will take a biopsy of her
pancreas to verify whether her condition is malignant or not. Hopefully, the
one-day procedure will be without complications.
Please keep my mother in your prayers.
Tomoka C. I. had seemed to have recovered from and gotten a grip on the virus
pandemic until this week. A few days ago the medical people put dorms B, C-1,
and K-2, over 300 men, under quarantine for 14 days again, because several
prisoners in those dorms exhibited COVID-19 symptoms.
In this court case we filed in Tallahassee August 14, I wrote about the serious
drug problems running rampant at prisons across the state. The most alarming
drug issue surrounds what is generically called ''K-2," or synthetic
marijuana, a misnomer, since it has no semblance to pot. The prison authorities
claim to be looking out for our health, but their handling of this current drug
pandemic belies their words. What is this ''K-2,'' really?
Wasp spray! Can you believe it? Wasp spray, or roach spray, is soaked into
various kitchen herbs, allowed to dry, then smuggled into the prisons, rolled
into pin joints, and smoked. The effects? Have you ever directly sprayed Raid
or Black Flag on a fat cockroach and watched what happens? The roach spins
around, goes crazy, kicks its legs a few times, spasms, then dies.
Humans aren't much different from roaches in the harmful results of smoking
wasp spray. The lucky ones live. Some die. One died in my dorm last year
sitting on the toilet, smoking K-2. He was going home in 40 days.
They put the foolish young ''confinement releases'' in my dorm when their days
in lockup expire. Most of them went to lockup for possession of drugs, and the
first thing they want to do is find dope to smoke. Friday at 3:30 a.m. I was
awakened by a fool screaming gibberish at the top of his lungs, beneath a double
bunk, horizontal, clasped to the steel bunk legs, hallucinating, his buddies
trying unsuccessfully to pry him out. Everyone was awake, including the guard,
who watched from his enclosed officer's station, doing nothing. That happens a
lot. I get furious when I go in the bathroom/shower area and that death spray
is being smoked. The junkies scurry away like roaches when the light comes on
when I start yelling at them.
Eventually the guy under the bunk came out of it, alive this time, his friends
mopping up the vomit and rinsing him off in the shower.
''They'' always say that the weekend visitors are responsible for the glut of
drugs in the prison. Visits have been suspended since March. The drug flow is
un-abating. Who's bringing it in? The same ones who've always brought it in.
They say they will reevaluate the visiting suspension at the end of September.
We expect them to declare another evaluation in October. I say, if Disney
World, Universal Studios, and Sea World can be open in full swing, why not the
prisons?
Limited chapel programs are scheduled to begin September 8th.
It is count, and I must go. All the best,
Charlie
