(Or was it three days ago? Whatever.
As usual, I’ll wait a few days, and then I’ll forward comments from this thread to Robert.
Anyhow:)
March 23, 2015
Dear Barry:
Heyo. Thought I’d drop you a line using my spiffy new typewriter. America’s prisons, providing access to hundred-year old technology at only mildly criminal markup! My Facebook friends colluded to buy me this antique but valuable writing tool. It makes writing letters about a thousand times easier; wish I’d had it when I was working on the book.
Here, for the edification and updating of your readership at Alas!, is an update of my life status. (Well, it’s an update for you. By the time you get around to posting it, I presume it will be months out of date, he said, snippily.)
Dear Alas friends –
Greetings from Four Mile Correctional Center, which is soon to be no longer my home! I have been officially accepted into community corrections in Colorado Springs. Community corrections is essentially a transition program from prison to parole. I will reside in a jail-like facility (though less locked-down) but am free to leave the facility each day for work. I can also get passes from the facility so that I can (for example) go to the movies with friends or other wholesome activities.
After a few months at community corrections, I can transition to non-residential status, meaning that I still have to account for my whereabouts and activities, but can live independently and without immediate supervision. It is effectively parole, though with more rules and structure. (Which, let’s face it, I do need.)
I’m presently still at Four Mile, waiting for a bed to open up at the facility in the Springs. This could happen soon, but is more likely to be a couple of months. I am really hoping to be out before my birthday, which is in late June.
I want to thank everyone who has helped me while I’ve been in here, with financial assistance, with personal letters, and with good and worthwhile counsel. Being in prison is hardly something to be grateful for, but I am grateful for the life lessons that I’ve been forced to learn, and especially grateful for the kindness that you have all shown me. I look forward to reintegrating into society and trying in some small way to make amends for the harms I’ve caused with my selfish actions. Parole isn’t trivial but it’s a whole lot better than prison and I can’t wait.
Thank you all again.
Love,
Rob
PS – If Amp takes six weeks to post this, then tell him he’s a lazy dirty hippie. But I love him anyway.
To send Robert a letter through the mail, use this address:
Robert Luty Hayes, Jr. 165970
FMCC Unit E – Four Mile Correctional Center
P.O. Box 300
Cańon City CO, 81215-0300
If you’d rather send him an email, you can go to Jpay.com and enter Robert’s state (Colorado) and his DOC Number – 165970 – into the search fields. (Sometimes I’ve had to do this twice before it worked). Then you can use your debit card to send him an “email” (he’ll actually get it in the form of a print-out) or to send him money, or both. The cost of sending email is not expensive, it’s actually similar to the cost of postage. If you contact Robert via Jpay, be sure to give him your mailing address – he can’t use Jpay, so the only means he has for writing back to you is to send you mail through the post office.
Hi, Rob!
Sorry you haven’t heard from me in a while. In addition to my usually personality deficits, I’ve been unbelievably busy with Hereville 3, which I am finally finishing this week (it is complete, and I now have until Monday to make revisions).
I just posted your most recent letter – and THANK FACEBOOK you’ve got a typewriter now! I scanned it and ran it through text recognition – it took me only a minute.
Once your address changes, please let me know right away, and I’ll attempt to post it on Alas in less than six weeks time.
If you want reply from “Alas” folks, maybe you should post something more controversial? Post an argument about Mac vs PC or something, or about prison policy, for that matter. Seriously, dude, your letter doesn’t give us ANYTHING to argue with. You sound humble and grateful – who the fuck is going to argue with THAT? You might as well write that you really, really love puppies.
(But I am glad that you realize that some structure in your life will probably be good for you).
I imagine you don’t get much news from the outside world where you are. Have you heard about the latest Obama scandal? It turns out that Obama is *literally* a Vulcan, planted here in some sort of butterfly-wing-flapping-plot to control the future allocation of Federation space. All of us who laughed at the “birthers” sure have egg on our face now!
Also, Cleveland was bombed into the ground, not by the Iranians, as we at first thought, but by Columbus. Apparently the water rights disputes in Ohio are far more brutal than the rest of the country understood.
Anyway, I dropped a bit into your “kitty,” which as you know is jailhouse slang for “piggy bank,” which as you know is jailhouse slang for “the hole made in your stomach after your tough bald enormous cellmate who is played by that character actor who appears in all the prison movies inevitably stabs you with a sharpened toothbrush.” Spend it wisely, like I would, on contraband graphic novels.
Best wishes, Barry
Received yesterday. Sure you did, Amp. Sure you did.
Rob, do you have to use those little strips of correction paper if you make a typo? I used to hate those. I learned on the rather stiff and cranky school typewriters and I had to lean down on my little fingers for “a” or “;”.
“PS – If Amp takes six weeks to post this, then tell him he’s a lazy dirty hippie. But I love him anyway.”
This is unfair. I’ve seen no evidence that you’re dirty, Amp.
I mentioned, last time I sent funds, that it looks like Hillary is the presumptive Democratic nominee so he really needs to get it together and come argue with us. Not that I’m going to argue much with anyone who says “The Dems could do better if they weren’t afraid of their own shadows.”
Robert, I’m glad you’re moving on through the system. Keep up the good work, fella.
So glad to hear that Robert will soon be in a less restrictive environment, where we can send him wholesome and edifying literature to pass the time!
” wholesome and edifying literature” <----- Pool boy porn?
I was thinking the collected works of Noam Chomsky.
I’ll see if Moe’s Books has a copy of “A People’s History of America” by Howard Zinn. Good reading!
Amp, do keep us updated. I’m glad Robert will be moving to the next step of the process soon.
A copy of “The Federalist Papers” would make for good reading, too. Although he’s probably already read them, come to think of it.
I fell behind on my correspondence with Robert, and for that I am terribly sorry. It makes me really happy to hear that he’s moving through the system and on his way to getting back into society.
I promised him a story, and so I feel like I should at least give him something, even when he has access to much better literature. I will, ahem, get to that as soon as my schedule permits. In the meantime, here’s the best limerick I could find:
As the poets have mournfully sung,
death takes the innocent young,
the rolling in money,
the screamingly funny,
and those who are very well hung.
(by W.H. Auden)