Whatever. Cannot call and wish anyone a happy birthday. ​

No TV and very little noise and interruption. I am still only managing less than hour hours of sleep at night but am finding small naps throughout the day as well. ​

There is blood-letting! Actually, today the new inmates provide blood and urine samples. There is also an initial PREA screening and an interview with a mental health doctor. There is also a preliminary eye exam by a nice woman named Bates who is also a little displeased about my contact lenses being thrown away. Other than that, I am locked in a cell with a guy named Dan and we enjoy food that is exponentially better than the food served to inmates at Kenosha and read of a book we were allowed to snag off a book cart here in the housing unit. Driving Force by Dick Francis. ​

I am already awake at about 4:00am when the guard comes to get me to bring me down to intake/booking to be processed to go to prison. The trouble with my back is usually the culprit but occasionally my elbow somehow discovers its own relevance as previous injuries persist as chronic pain.

After a few hours in a holding cell I get to sign a receipt to release funds and another to indicate I am not leaving any property behind. The balance on my account indicates that the release I submitted to make a child support contribution and another for legal purposes, was not processed. When I question it the woman behind the glass tells me not to worry about it. It seems to me that they are eager to tell me since they do not care if I have access to the court system, or prefer that I do not for all the wrong they are so eager to do to inmates.

After I am shackled, I am told the supervisor, Willstead, was unavailable to collect my legal discovery material from wherever they keep it. Howard and Heeter both tell me they will make sure it gets sent to me in prison. Since I already signed off I wasn't leaving anything behind now I worry. Especially after they failed to process my release of funds to complete the envelopes I prepared for payments for my other concerns.

I am then loaded into a van and depart Kenosha County Jail and head to Kenosha County Detention Center to collect a few more inmates. We then travel north where I get to see familiar territory and construction of a freeway expansion in progress. I spend most of the day in a van on a tour of the states various penal institutions. An inmate is dropped off at Winnebago, Taycheedah, and some other facility near Fond du Lac. We pick up a guy from Red Granite who says he knows who I am. I have never seen him before. I think it was about 2:00pm when we got to Dodge Correctional Institution.

As soon as I get in the door an inmate I know is standing in a holding cell with the door open. He tells me he heard what (his friend, Marquan Washington) "Munch" did. I tell 'scoe that everybody knows its not true. Me and a few other guys are directed to a different cell while guards go through our belongings and throw a lot of it into the trash. I am called out of the cell with much of my property already gone and asked if I wish to send my legal books and contact lenses back to Kenosha so someone can pick the stuff up. I tell the guard that Kenosha is hours from my family and that it would be better if they could collect it from here, Dodge. He tells me it is not an option and that they will just throw it away. I tell him they are good legal books and ask if I could at least donate them. In mild surprise he agrees to that. When I second guess the instruction to throw away brand new contact lenses he tells me that the nurse will take care of it all.

When I finish showering and changing into my "prison greens" I get to talk to the fantastically inpatient and offensive nurse who is then further agitated when I tell her they just made me throw away my contact lenses. By the time they go look, the trash bag has been collected and disposed of. It is explained to me that the correct procedure is to give the contact lenses to the nurse who issues them as needed until my eye exam and prison issue glasses can all be taken care of. Then there are two more people who do some intake questions, fingerprints, and identification. Then I saw a second nurse who issued me a contact case and bottle of solution.

Once about fifteen of us collect in a holding cell we march down the long, wide hallway to Unit 19. Here they play a video about the Prison Rape Elimination Act which is drowned out by a guard yelling orientation stuff at us. We sign a digital acknowledgement of "document 2468" and are issued a bag of basic hygiene items. Cell 12. We also got bologna sandwiches during the van ride and a tray of food when we got to Unit 19, but it was a day that was so distracting I probably could have not eaten anything and not cared. 

While in prison, inmates are required to "stand for count." 6:15am, 12:15pm, 5:30pm, and 9:15pm, Inmates are required to stand up and wait for a guard to walk passed and visually account for you. It seem like a tradition that began after an inmate stuffed some clothes full of extra straw from when they tended horses and then faked out the guards with his straw likeness tucked in his bunk while he wandered out a door someone habitually left open for convenience.

The reformative or rehabilitative value of petty harassment and nuisance anyone? People that run prisons believe the world is flat? It isn't a matter of how to effectively accomplish nothing. It is a matter of promulgating a culture of inconvenience where guards and inmates strive to be whatever sort of burden to each other instead of just leaving each other alone unless intervention is somehow needed. Tax dollars at work.

​Anyway, we stand up four times a day. It doesn't remedy substance dependency or behavioral problems but maybe the clinic here still provides blood-letting with leeches. Maybe the guards and inmates forget who is in charge if the people in blue shirts aren't telling the people in shirts that aren't blue that they need to be doing something multiple times per day. It is my broader impression that inmates and guards both customarily measure low on skills that are required for better academic performance. It probably is just a big game to help us all remember.