Motor Lodge

Pine paneled walls...plastic ice bucket....paper wrapped toliet seat...tiny soap....grainy sheets.....scent of moth balls and cigarettes....trace of mildew on the shower curtain....traffic noise from the two lane blacktop...TV flickers...guy in the office is wearing a Molly Hatchet t-shirt and gunk in the corner of his mouth...thin walls and worn carpet. But damn that neon is wonderful.

Email Received from a Student

Hello Shaun,

I attended your talk to my school Dover Grammar School for Girls earlier this evening. I just wanted to let you know that I find it remarkable at how you can tell others about things you regret earlier in your life, and the decisions you wish you had never made.

It must be hard for you to tell everyone about the hard situations you went through when in prison. Also, I find your commitment to letting the world know how awful these prisons are, and trying your best to get it recognised uplifting.

I was the only year 10 student in the hall this evening, and the reason I decided to attend was because last year you had talked about this with our year when in year 9. When you told it the first time, I found it amazing. It was full of information, and really made people realise the conditions at which you could be put through as a consequence of taking illegal drugs. I thought it would be good for me to come again since I loved it last time. You don't hold back on the truth which is great because then we find out the truth about what it is really like.

I thought it was wonderful this time that you showed the video of your mother talking about how she felt when all this was happening to you. 

I think this added a lot to the story as it made me and the people around me think about how our parents would feel if we put them through a similar situation.

That's all I really wanted to say.  I wish you all the best in your future. I am so happy that you got out of prison just to tell us your story because it is full of emotions and you are truly an inspiration in my eyes. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Becky Arman, Year 10

Click here for another email received from a student:

Shaun Attwood

Video 2: Shaun Attwood Answers Questions May 2013

Sporting Art by Ripley

Aiden Lassell Ripley(1896-1969) was a Boston native and a prolific painter of sporting scenes. He served in WW I and upon returning made his living doing New England pastoral scenes and paintings of urban Boston. The dawn of the Great Depression compelled him to move to a more marketable genre...and the subject of his personal passion: hunting and fishing.He frequently traveled to the plantations and estates of the wealthy to do commissioned works. Recently one of his originals sold at auction for $89,000.00.

In my parent's attic I came a cross a scrapbook made by my Uncle in the mid 40's. He was an accomplished hunter and had taken pages form Field & Stream that featured Ripley's work. Each page had an accompnaying essay by the prolific outdoor write Nash Buckingham. As to this painting, Nash commented:

        "Wherever fowlers debate the comestible or sporting values of favorite marsh or river ducks,confirmation is usually predominant that for all-round toothsomeness and thrill packed shooting glamour a corn fed,rice-heavy,cooked-just-right mallard brings home the bacon."

At nearly $100,000.00 a pop....I wish I had found an original up in the attic. I would have been banging on Southeby's door faster than a pointer after a downed quail.

Pics/Videos from Guildford Party Time Book Launch/Banged-Up Abroad Premiere

A big thank you to all of the people who showed up at The Boileroom in Guildford on Sunday for the Party Time launch. A combination of karate, BodyCombat and yoga people made the atmosphere spot on. The Banged-Up Abroad episode gripped the audience, and was followed by almost an hour of questions and answers.

Setting up with Mike Hotwheelz and Stuart

Mum

Mum and Callie

With my sister and partner Callie

With Judy from the BodyCombat front row

Mike Hotwheelz

With Martin, a karate black belt

With Mark a teacher from Aldershot

With Seb from Poland

With Josephine

With Sam from the School of Hard knocks

Watching Raving Arizona

With Fotini (far left) from Greece

With BodyCombat instructor Steve from Zimbabwe

With Nige, who just got his karate black belt

With fellow karate friends

With Jon, a former BodyCombat instructor

With Claire and Jill, my senior proof readers 

With Tony, my BodyCombat instructor and his daughter

With Mary from BodyCombat

With Gemma from BodyCombat

With Mike and Elizabeth from BodyCombat

With Dawn from BodyCombat

With Carol from BodyCombat

With Stuart the sound engineer extraordinaire  

Shaun Attwood

Where are you reading Party Time? Menorca, Spain

Review of Hard Time by Gill Hoffs

Click here to read the review.

Shaun Attwood Answers Questions 26 May 2013

Video: Guards Murder Mentally Ill Inmate in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Jail

My tips on how to survive Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail

Link to all of my books on Amazon, including my jail memoir, Hard Time

Shaun Attwood 

Banged-Up Abroad Guildford Film Premiere May 26th

This Sunday In Guildford, an arts venue called The Boileroom is showing my Banged-Up Abroad episode Raving Arizona four months before it goes on national UK TV. It's a free event and all ages, including students, are welcome. Doors open at 7pm. The episode is on at 8pm, followed by Q&A.

The Boileroom,
13 Stoke Fields
Guildford, Surrey
GU1 4LS

Tel: 01483 440022

Info at The Boileroom 

Facebook page for the event

Shaun Attwood

The Couch

Any candidates?

From T-Bone (Letter 16)

T-Bone - Radiating power and strength, this deeply-spiritual massively-built African-American towers over most inmates. He is a prison gladiator with more stab wounds than Julius Caesar.A good man to have on your side.

Peace my Brother,

  This letter is being written by someone else. I’m dictating it to him. Everything is fine besides the fact that I miss my beautiful wife and you my good friend. I didn’t receive your latest postcard because it had an airmail sticker on it, so please send me some good tidings from across the pond, my brother. How is your niece? I’m praying for her right now.

  I’ve often dreamt of speaking in front of students there because it’s more than just a serious responsibility, it’s an honor, and a privilege that not many people have. I can’t wait to be standing with you, brother, and doing what I believe I’ve been called to do.

  Please say Hi to all of the students in the T-Bone Appreciation Society. Give them my respect and heartfelt thanks for their prayers and hopes for me. Please share with them that I will be there, and I will speak nothing but the truth about my life and how drugs and a life on the street have caused nothing but pain and destruction, and to say the least, heartache.

  The next time, I will help people who are on drugs instead of allowing temptation to control me or problems that we use to make excuses to go to do wrong. It’s the same way all around the world, so what we need to do is help people by telling them the truth about drugs and drug addiction. Man, do I have some things to say, and I will with you and as many people I can in my life.

  I love you brother, so please stay strong and positive. Give my respects to your lovely family.

  Each one. Teach one.
  Steel embrace.
  Strength and Honor

  T-Bone

  Please click here for T-Bone’s previous letter:  http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/normal-0-from-t-bone-letter-15-and-my.html

  Click here for T-Bone's previous postcard: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/postcards-from-t-bone-3.html

  Shaun Attwood  

St Catherine's (Bexleyheath) Visit

1. Spoke In Kent today. Every now and then the students react wildly (in a good way) and they certainly did at St Catherine's

   
   

   Shaun Attwood

Dover Grammar School For Girls Visit

1. Spoke in Dover yesterday. The students asked so many questions the teachers had to extend the talk by a second session, almost another hour.

   
   

   Shaun Attwood

Farnborough College Visit

Shaun Attwood

Camp Chow

   In the morning when you and a couple hundred other drowsy boys entered after the hike up from your village, it smelled like  burnt toast and slightly sour milk as you came in through the big double doors from the chill fog. On unusually cold mornings there would be a fire in the huge hearth and woodsmoke mingled with the scent. All other times of the day, before lunch and dinner, the odor was of boiled hot dogs and a faint hint of bleach and floor wax. The soundtrack was the rumble of wooden chairs dragged across pine flooring followed by the slowly increasing cacophony of kids talking and  laughing and counselors barking directions like drill sergeants.
   This was the main lodge and dining hall of Camp Conrad Wesier in the mid 70's where I spent a glorious  month each Summer. It was all boys and run by the YMCA. We camped and shot .22's and hiked and canoed and rode horses and played softball. We were taught orienteering and fire building and life saving.We played ping pong and horseshoes and tether-ball and  engineered pranks on the other cabins. When you hit the upper villages as an older kid you slept in tents on cement platforms and then in open front lean-to's. Your clothes were damp but not your spirits.
   In the dining hall one kid at each table was assigned as "waiter." When your day came in the rotation you awaited the command from a slightly androgynous steward named "Skip." He would chirp into a microphone up front: "Waiters serve" and you would file through the kitchen and trays would be heaped with stainless steel vessels of steaming baked chicken and mashed potatoes or spaghetti or meat loaf, green beans and salad that was more white butt-end of iceberg than it was green. Ham on Thursdays with a vaguely Amish toned raisin sauce, Roast Beef on Sunday that ended up fatigue brown and over-cooked thanks to the Berks county ladies who staffed the range in the back. Fried chicken was a hit and grilled cheese at lunch was a kill or be killed affair. Breakfast offered spongy pancakes with a gelatinous syrup substance in a stainless pitcher over which someone had whispered the word "Maple." Bowls of dry-wall mud oatmeal barely palatable with fifteen scoops of brown sugar. The hamburgers were gristle pucks and the peanut butter was like cooled macadam that had faded to brown. We were 11 and 12 and 13 year old kids. We ate for fuel and little more. We had rules at the table and the counselors tried to sneak some manners into the routine. If you breached the loose rules of etiquette...and we did...you had to stay behind and wipe down tables under Skip's relentless scrutiny.
   On the walls were college pennants and Indian paraphenalia.The ceilng had huge beams and every surface was spotless. One wall held green and white arrows with names burned into the wood. My name is on  a few of those arrows commemorating the days I was chosen as "Officer of the Day" during my later Summers.
   A few years ago we took our Cub Scout den to a weekend event at the Camp. I found my name on those arrows and the smell was still bleach and wax and boiled hot dogs.
  

Arpaio Jail Story by Ex-Wife of a Guard

Hi Shaun, my name is Janet. I watched your episode of Locked-Up Abroad and I felt compelled to write you. I have had personal experience with Maricopa's prison system as my ex-husband, David, has been working there for 10 years. He worked there while we were married, and I was integrated into the social aspect of the lives of Detention Officers. I have horrific tails of human rights violations that have haunted me for years. There are thousands upon thousands who have suffered under Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign.
 
  I lived in Phoenix for several years. David and I had a little apartment near Durango where he worked the morning shift. I was integrated into a world of severe meatheads and idiot guards. It was always amazing to me the kinds of people that were passed through the academy process. But the guards referred to each other as family, and so these people became my relatives.
 
  My husband was a particularly violent man. He was only 22, but already a monster. I feared him with all my being, but oddly still loved him and wanted only to please him and earn his approval. I guess that's the typical behavior of a battered wife. But the further he worked for Joe Arpaio, the further he continued to change.
 
  After having worked there for maybe 6 months or so, he came home one day with blood on his boots. Like most guards, he was very particular and protective over that "glassy mirror shine" created when a person spent the time and energy into perfecting their appearance, which they believed maximized their authority over the inmates. I was in shock! When he told me what happened, he focused on the fact that there was now blood on his boots, instead of focusing on the fact of how it got there in the first place.
 
  There was an inmate at this facility that the guards all called "Plums." It was unusual for any kind of playful nickname to be used on any inmate, and so I mistakenly took it to mean that they were friendly with him. My husband would come home all the time laughing about something Plums had said or done. I took it to mean that he though Plums was a funny fun guy... I didn’t realize till later that he was just mocking him.
 
  Apparently that day while David was doing his rounds, Plums thought it would be funny to pull a prank on him. Plums had failed to realize that there are no real friends between inmate and officer, and he was about to cross the line. Plums hid in his cell under his bunk. As my ex-husband entered the cell to take a quick look around, Plums sprang out and grabbed his leg. My husband had told me what happened next was just a natural reaction, but I don’t believe kicking an inmate in the face several times is any kind of natural reaction. David was a strong man. He was small, but strong. He kicked Plums several times in the face while he lay on the ground. When I asked David how he could ever do that to a friend, he laughed and told me "He's not a friend! He's an inmate!!... AND he got blood on my boots!" The rest of the night he focused on erasing the blood off his boot, while Plums lay in the hospital with a broken nose.
 
  It was the start of my realization on how horrible the jails were, and how evil Joe Arpaio really is.
 
  As I watched your story last night I cried. I have repressed that life for a long time now and your story brought those years back. I haven't thought about my life with all the guards in a long long time! If you want to post this story it would be a real release for me. These incidents have haunting me for too long!



Video of a guard stepping on the neck of an unsentenced inmate who is cuffed, restrained and even has a hood over his head in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail:



Click here for info about Hard Time, the book about how Shaun Attwood survived Arpaio's jail.

Shaun Attwood

Radley College Visit (Oxford)

My brilliant readers were Tom and Louis

Shaun Attwood

Radnor Hunt Races

    This Saturday will feature the 83rd running of the Radnor Hunt Races. The Grade III National Hunt Cup is the 4th race on the card and sports a $50,000.00 purse. I am picking "Barnstorming" to win this year. This horse is owned and trained by hall-of-famer Jonathan Sheppard and has all the equipment necessary to best this field over 2 3/8 miles and 17 National Fences.
    The talented wordsmith from "The Trad" will be joining us this year. This sportsman will offer his humble opinions on Steeplechase wagering to Tin-Tin as we enjoy gin &; tonics, the races and the people watching. That is if I can get him to put down his camera for two seconds.
    Suffice it to say, this sportsman will NOT be attired in the manner of the two pink-swathed Lilly-boys noted above. It seems that the VA Gold Cup  has spread its "oh-look-at-me" asthetic north of the Mason-Dixon. This means we see more and more pastel and pink garbed tailgate flies buzzing around hoping to be photographed with no idea about or interest  in the serious racing that is taking place. We noticed legions of the same scurrying about drunkenly at the Winthertur Point-to Point races last week...just there for the party and eager to model the most recent knock-off Nantucket Reds or J.Crew greens they bought on-line.The only people permitted to wear gaudy colors at a steeplechase race are the jockeys...and maybe one or two REALLY hot wenches.