coldhearted scientist وداد

The visit was wonderful, I used to hate the drive along I-10E (AKA the San Bernardino Freeway) and then US 61N (the highway that goes right by Dylan’s “baby’s” door, but that in reality is really depressing) but now with GPS it is possible to snake around beautiful country lanes I wouldn’t be able to figure out very easily with a map, such that one saves time by escaping traffic and goes along bayous and through cane fields. You can kind of hug the banks of the Atchafalaya, then bayous Maringouin and Grosse Tête, then the Mississippi, all jaunty in the morning and meditative in late afternoon, on the way home. Angola itself, of course, is really beautiful because it’s such rich farmland, and the animals are gorgeous, this time of year the calves are adolescent and extremely shiny. Normally they are in the grass but the heat index was 110 so they were under the trees. The corn is getting tall and looking very indigenous.

There weren’t many visitors this time so I got right in, and the bus that took me back to Death Row stopped first at main prison, that I rarely get to see. Visitors going there are so much more carefree than those I usually ride with, because they are visiting people with a fixed number of years, even eligible for good time and paroleable. They take their kids and the guys have access to the craft shops, so the kids come back with toys their fathers have made and the mothers get jewelry boxes saying “I love you,” and htings like that. Nathaniel, who I visit on Death Row is, of course, an entertaining person and is now, nearing the end of his life, still more interesting because he’s remembering so many things, especially from his early days. Someone really should do oral history on him, record him, and probably should have been doing so all along. I should have been doing it, even just his accent and turns of phrase are so much of an era. Phrases and vocabulary words I am going to start to describe my own life in the university are “This institution was so low-down that it…” and “mean-mugging.”

The most shocking thing I learned was about stun belts. I have got to get in touch with some human rights organization about this. I can’t believe I didn’t know about them or wasn’t told. Nathaniel had to wear one at his trial, it turns out. But they came up because he has to wear one on the way to N.O. and back for treatment. Now he is allowed to sit ahead in the van so this doesn’t happen but originally, when he was also feeling worse, he had to sit in the back, over the axle, and he got shocked by the stun belt at every bump in the road. That’s 50,000 volts. Every bump, for 3 hours on the way to chemo, and 3 hours back, twice a week.

This seems really important for people to know and it’s interesting that even if you visit prisoners all the time they don’t tell you everything that happens to them. By a long shot. I’m going to get in touch with his lawyer and another N.O. organization just to ask. It seems there has been much discussion of the use of these things, that I didn’t even know about, for a couple of decades, but it doesn’t seem to me that there has been enough.

Axé.