Prison Journal: Day 8,205
January 26, 2010
Yesterday I met Ron, a prisoner who surrendered to Taft Camp earlier this month. He is a friendly man who grew up in Chicago but made his home in California for the past several decades. Prior to self-surrendering, Ron read a considerable number of articles that my wife makes available through our website and he was kind enough to thank me upon our meeting in the visiting room. We spoke for a while before and after our toastmaster meeting.
It turns out that although Ron spent hours reading articles on my website, he missed one that may have helped him over challenges he faced upon his arrival. The prison didn’t have Ron’s paperwork in order, and as a consequence, he began his stay at Taft Camp with 11 days in the SHU. I was sorry to hear about Ron’s discomfort, but glad that he emerged from the challenge with his spirits intact.
Ron built his career as a CPA. Since retiring a few years ago, he’s been contributing to society by working as an umpire. I know these details about his life because Ron had the courage to stand and tell our Toastmaster group a little about himself. I was pleased to meet yet another well-educated man at Taft with an urge to contribute.
In preparation for the Toastmaster meeting, I had prepared a brief speech on the power of community building. I sent a written version of the speech to my lovely wife, Carole, and I’m sure she’ll post it on one of our web sites—though not having much knowledge of how the site is organized, I don’t know where it will appear. It describes an acronym I came up with for community building. I call the acronym APE, and it stands for Attitude, Preparation, and Excellence.
I enjoy offering these strategies. Too many find it easy to ignore the need for serious preparation. Here at Taft, for example, we have scores of prisoners who live with the delusion that they’ll soon be earning millions as currency speculators. Every day wasting hours writing out charts that are obsolete the second the “spectators” put pen to paper. They’re certain that all they need to do is master the CNBC ticker to strike it rich, but most of the participants struggle with arithmetic on the GED exam. When I suggest that their time might be better spent studying equities and fundamental analysis, they accuse me of heresy and that the smart money follows currencies. So be it.
This morning I ran 10 miles and I followed with 500 pushups.
[Consecutive running log: 3,640 miles over the past 410 days]
[Pushups on 2010: 8,700]
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
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