Author: Nicole Lobry de Bruyn

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The Shoe

This was how it was pronounced – the shoe. “He’s in the shoe.” What they were really saying was SHU – which stood for Special Handling Unit. It was the part of the prison where the real baddies were and it had an ominous feel about it. You should feel nervous about entering here. The SHU officers had straighter backs, tighter shirts, highly polished boots and elaborate and colourful tattoos down their arms. They had body art. Let’s be clear – inmates had tattoos – the black blue bleeding lines. LOVE. HATE. That kind of thing. These guys had shading and three-dimensional imagery on their biceps. Smiling at them you felt like they might say back, “It’s no joke.” “There’s nothing funny about the SHU.” There were no female officers in this part of the prison. When we visited it, Warwick and I went together or else Warwick went on his own. I often didn’t go at all, after the first few visits. It really scared me.

We were escorted by an officer through some heavy locked gates and down a race and then into a further locked area where there were a couple of administrative rooms before we entered the prisoner area.  Like going deep into the Russian doll. Layer after layer. If we had anything with us we had to put it in a locker. One room held the Santa suits – the orange outfits that labelled them as men of the SHU, as well as the riot gear that might be required one day. Before we could enter one side of the SHU where the ten or so prisoners were, the officers inside were told to put a certain prisoner away on the other side. He was not allowed any female contact. Not even to lay his eyes on one. He had once been in a medium security prison and armed with a knife had captured a female arts worker and held her prisoner, doused her in aerosol and repeatedly raped her over six hours. He had, in the years before the attack, gained people’s trust enough to become a cleaner in the Education Area, despite having twice assaulted female prison workers whilst in captivity. Caring people had been duped. From his position as cleaner he had tricked them into believing he had left the area, but had stayed behind to ambush the woman. She had been lucky to survive. Now he was never to be released and no one took any chances with him. His actions had deeply scarred the whole prison community. It pleased me to know he could not even see me. Once he was in his cell on the other side, we could enter.

But it was weird to know he was there. Adrenaline. “He’s away. Safe to enter.” Even behind the locks and the bars on the far side of the Unit I felt my heart speed up. This man was sitting in his cell. This monster. I had never really felt this way before about someone. Labelled them. It didn’t feel normal to feel this frightened of someone else. It turned them into something less than human. An essence of the fear he engendered hung everywhere. Monster. But having heard the story of his assault on the woman it seemed the only term for him. It seemed sensible too to be very afraid.

Men in the SHU didn’t usually put their names down on the flyer to see the prison visitor, but we went there anyway just to have it said out loud that we were there and able to hear anything they might want to say. Warwick seemed to think it important to make sure we had not forgotten them. The officer would announce us a little half -heartedly and stand in the back ground. “The prison visitors are here. Anyone want to speak to them.” If not in lock down the prisoners were free to roam the Unit. If they were in sight of us they might shrug and then turn away. Like they had boredom to get back to. Perhaps a “Morning Miss.” We would wander the corridor and poke our noses into their open cells and say Hi but mostly we were ignored. Mostly we chatted to the officers. Admired the body art. I positioned myself so no one could get behind me, just in case. Someone was teaching the drug cartel guy English and in return he taught them Spanish. Someone else was working out on the gym equipment. Someone else was doing the clean up in the kitchen. From the central area we were being watched by two unseen officers in the control room. It was that glass that you can’t see through. Each guy in the SHU had his own cell. There was no sharing in here.

One guy was in here for punishment. He was in lock down. Back in the Units when he had been doubled-up he had lost his temper and torn his cell-mate apart. The superintendent told me he had never seen a man so damaged by some one with no weapon other than his bare hands. The attacked man had had to have metal plates put in his face to repair it. This guy wanted to talk to me and was brought from his cell. We sat in a glass room with an officer outside watching us through the glass. The prisoner was in orange with shackles around his ankles and his wrists. Bare feet. The suits have no pockets. Nothing on their person can be hidden. The officer pulled the chair back for him so he could sit opposite me. He leaned forward to tell me his concern. I wrote down his complaint. I can’t recall our conversation now, but when he asked me what I did on the outside and I told him I was veterinarian he lifted his chin and said “and I’m a tiger.”

Another guy in the SHU was a serial self-harmer. He was in there for his own protection and perhaps because not many people could abide his strangeness. In the SHU he could be closely monitored and a kind officer was working hard to help him stop his self-mutilation. He had a habit of pushing razor blades up inside his urethra.

From within the SHU there was no view of anything outside it. Grey bars, grey walls, concrete. It was extremely claustrophobic and airless. The stainless steel kitchen was spanking. There was one exception; the small concrete exercise yard. If you looked up. Then you saw a patch of sky. Blue and pure and far, far away. Not a big dome of it like normal Western Australian sky. Just a smidgen. The exercise yard was bit like an old-fashioned Elephant pit. The concrete walls, spotty and black in places with fungi, reached to the sky, unscaleable. There were no windows out of the SHU. It was, and no doubt still is, very secure.

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Not Just Any Wooden Chopping Board – A Prison Tale

Some years ago I got a wooden chopping board from Casuarina prison. I purchased it from the wood-working section when I was a volunteer for the Independent Prison visitor scheme run by the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services.

As a prison visitor I would observe and speak to any prisoner who had scrawled their name on the pale green flyer pinned to their unit wall. It was our job to document their concerns and take it to the Superintendent. He was a man close to retirement. He had worked all his life with prisoners and you got the sense he really cared for them. He lunched at the prison on Christmas day, he told me. When not discussing the prison he wanted to ask me veterinary questions. He loved to talk of the heifers he raised on his hobby farm. If he was unavailable we would meet with the Deputy. Taller, grey-faced, smelling of cigarettes, with the nose of a heavy drinker. Afterwards, we would write a report for the Department of Corrections as they were required to respond to the prisoners concerns. We were a kind of weak-willed watch-dog, but we were also able to get some minor problems solved, as they arose, if the prisoners were unable to do it themselves. We could get them an appointment with the dentist or find them someone to explain their sentencing. The Super would just pick up his phone. They, of course, often had bigger concerns that we had no control over. Like “I am Innocent.” One man liked to detail his entire defence and how he was unjustly accused and convicted for the murder of his wife. He didn’t even believe she was dead. No body had been found. He couldn’t possibly have done it. His version was, to me, very believable, and he was reasonable company; often making scones for our scheduled visit. If his name was on the list, I would see him. Others, similarly, just wanted someone to talk to and would make up a reason to see the Visitor. One day I asked the Super if he thought the man had killed his wife. Of course, he said. No doubt about it.

The prison visits were conducted in pairs and I usually went with Warwick. He had done the job for a lot longer than me. And he went to more prisons. He was a retired Christian Brother and a good man. He wore a tweed jacket. He believed people, but was not naive. He let them talk, but also knew how to end a conversation that wasn’t going anywhere. Warwick would see some of the more difficult men or those deemed unsuitable for me to see. Or simply the ones that gave me the creeps. Like the guy who started commenting on my appearance. Your hair’s nice today, Nicky. It was in relation to him that I first heard the term Groomer.

We would typically have twenty or so names to see and we would divide them equally and head off in various directions to find our guys. They might be in their units, in education or working. We would be escorted by an officer, if we requested it, but after a while we just went on our own, knowing the lay of the land. Walking across the grounds of Casuarina, even with the sun out and the drone of lawn mowers, made me a little nervous. After all it was not just any garden and the men working on the flowerbeds not just regular gardeners. They were inmates. Granted, to be on the Gardening team meant you had to be of the Good Kind, after all you had the roam of the place and you had tools. You got to drive a little buggy and cart bins. But still. The price of an active imagination was walking across the grounds, whilst scanning for potential threats, locating officers whereabouts, imagining how I could use the flimsy exercise book as a defensive weapon.

Those not working would be in their units. Each unit was cordoned off from the general grounds by fencing and an electronic gate operated from within the unit. Men would loiter at the fence and watch you walk by. Morning Miss. Bouncing basketballs, doing chin ups. Putting muscles on muscles. What ya doing Miss? Any laughter was at me, I was sure. You needed to greet them and smile. It felt required. One time, an officer said to me, “You know they’re thinking of what they would do to you if they could.” That unnerved me. My heart was racing. It made me scared of the officer too. The way he said it. The way he wore his belt so tight. The way he thought I might be a stupid do-gooder for coming there in the first place and deserving of what I got. Who was thinking what in here? Always in the back of your mind, it felt dangerous. And I was a little on edge. Maybe that was a good thing.

Some officers made you feel that way – a Them and Us. But others had a different approach. Mentoring and helping.

Where men were working it felt more settled. People had things to do. The officers had a role to teach more than guard and it made for a better atmosphere. More like high school. My favourite was the Bakery. Men in white, aprons to their knees, and flour smudged and softened everything. Yeast and baking bread overrode the prison smell. My least favourite – veggie prep. Piles of potatoes for peeling. An overripe stench. Wet floors and gum boots. Hair nets. A man worked here who all the others despised. He had AIDS and they feared him. He picked the festering scabs on his face and they said he bled over stuff. It’s Unhygienic. The others wanted him removed. But it was a privilege to have employment. And he’d earned it. After all you have more freedom that way. You got out of your unit and walked in a group with a couple of officers the length of the grounds to the work areas. Tell him to quit picking, suggested the Superintendent.

So one day in wood work I bought a wooden board. I checked with the Super. It was okay, as long as I made sure I paid for it. An invoice was created and a cheque made out. No cash in prison.

When I use the board I think of Casuarina. The prison in the scrub, an oasis in sand, its perimeter razor wired and impenetrable. Driving away, past the Vietnamese market gardens selling strawberries by the roadside, past the new suburbs with their darkly tiled roofs, I began to breathe. I drove to the ocean and sat looking out. The ocean went on and on. So free, I felt. So grateful, and liberated, and free. I burst into tears. I didn’t know where the tears came from. I guess it was simply a release from the stress and fear. In the prison I had encountered madness. A young man was so clearly deranged that even I, with no training in mental health, could see he needed to be in hospital, rather than in prison. He believed the superintendent had implanted a monitoring device in his brain and was watching everything. Everyone knew of this young man. The prisoner was always on the list. We couldn’t help him. We nodded and tried to get away as quickly as possible. We wrote notes about getting the device removed. He was one of the forgotten. Young and pale, in his dark green prison attire, breakfast stains down the front of him. A face tortured with illness. Nails bitten away. His name sent eyebrows to the heavens and made officers groan, “What does he want now?”

 

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NYC Dogs

In classic New Yorker style, correspondent Burkhard Bilger, reports on the canine units in Manhattan keeping the city safe from terrorists. It is a great article; lengthy and detailed, giving the background of the rise of the detection dog.

The article quotes some of the great trainers working today such as Karen Pryor and Ken Ramirez who have taken the basics of operant conditioning, discovered by BJ Skinner in the 1940s, and spread it through aquariums and zoos and are now seeing its use trickle down into dog training.

“Thirty years ago, if a lion needed a flu shot, it had to be tranquillised. These days, it will walk up to its trainer and proffer its paw. “I could give you examples all day,” Ken Ramirez, the vice president of animal training at the Shedd Aquarium, in Chicago, told me. “We have sharks that will swim from tank to tank, and a beluga whale that will present its belly for an ultrasound. Our sea otters hold their eyes open to get drops, and I have a diabetic baboon submit to regular insulin injections.” Not long ago, when a camel broke its jaw at the nearby Brookefield Zoo, it walked up to a table and laid its head on a lead plate for an X-ray. “It makes managing animals so much easier,” Ramirez said. “They do things as part of a game you’ve taught them.”

And I guess this is the message that good dog trainers are now trying to get across to the public at large. “Like so much in the dog world, the change mirrors a trend in child rearing – and provokes the same heated debate.(“The only thing two dog trainers can agree about is that the third dog trainer is wrong,”)

Guide dog training in the US has also switched to positive reinforcement with great results. In the past about 50% of dogs completed training and went on to become working Guide dogs and now it is closer to 75%.

In the training of detection dogs the dogs used to start out living with regular families, as do Guide dogs, but despite this some dogs still had phobias in some surroundings, e.g. scared of slippery floors. Now the Canine Detection Research Institute sends its puppies to prisons in Georgia and Florida to begin their lives under the care of inmates. Not only does this pairing help the prisoners but it also results in adult dogs more accustomed to noise, crowds, stairs, slippery floors, grates etc. The less fearful a dog is of new things the better. They have found 80% of the prison raised dogs will go on and complete the program and become successful detection dogs. General dog owners can benefit from this news; expose your new puppy to many varied surroundings as it grows up to teach it not to be fearful in later life. Socialisation is everything.

Watch a video here; NYC police dogs

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Are Montessori kids weird?

When you write a blog and you check your statistics you can see how people ended up on your site. You can see a list of search engine terms readers put into Google to end up pecking thechookhouse floor.

Like when they have searched for Guns. Imagine their dismay when they end up reading of small boys collecting branches and bits of old wood. Of a balcony full of adults while below on the dunes children run amok searching out wood for pistols and rifles freshly washed up from the sea and dropped from the Pines. This is because I wrote a piece about small boys marauding with stick guns on our holiday isle, Rottnest Island, and called it Young Guns. No doubt people searching for guns were not meaning this innocent, old fashioned play with driftwood.

Also having written about my son leaving his Montessori school I have found people searching for; Are Montesorri children weird? My short answer is No.  And perhaps a little affronted – how dare they? They are ordinary kids given a chance to learn in a non-competitive environment. They are self-determined, love to learn for learning’s sake and think tests and bells and a scheduled morning tea are a little strange. Because Montessori schooling is not the norm in Australia it has been mystified by those who don’t know it and people get an impression it is a flaky, hippy kind of education where children simply do as they please. This is the view of people outside of Montessori.

Jasper sees the difference in his new school. He sees that kids are less attentive to learning, need to be reigned in constantly by teachers and show little self direction. Strangely, even acknowledging these inadequacies, he is happy at his new government school. He likes the bigger social engagement. He likes the soft ball at lunch time and the kicking around the playground waiting for the bell to signal the start of the day. He tells me he is one of the four in the class to get all his spelling correct, something he would have had no notion of previously.

Montessori has given him resilience to work independently, something that is well ingrained in him now and hopefully cannot be eroded.

But if there are people searching this query perhaps there is some truth in the belief. Perhaps it is weird to not be motivated by tests and gold stars. Perhaps we are so used to pushing children to strive and do better and beat their peers we don’t know how good they are at pushing themselves. My conclusion is that parents are weird. Being a parent is weird. Being weird is weird. I am weird.

So now if someone is again searching whether or not Montessori kids are weird, the first place they might end up is here. Not weird, just given a different way of looking at what it is to learn.

 

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Dutch Doll

She has white blonde hair. Once she owned a red felt hat, but it has long gone. An arm is missing and a peg, for a wind-up key that no longer exists, pokes painfully from her moulded plastic spine. She has blue eyes and dainty painted lips. I cannot remember what movement or sound she made when her key was turned. How long did that part of her work? She was a precious thing. She stood on a shelf. She was to be looked at. Not fiddled with. In her red boots and her gauze undergarments. Standing looking out, plaits to her elbows.

 

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Skateboarding Dude

 

Jasper’s collects the Lego mini figures. In fact he collects all sorts. This is why boys need pockets (and their mothers carry around bags with bits of Lego floating about in them) and when vacuuming there is the telltale rattle of a small something being sucked into the bag. Boys hoard. He has a crazy bone collection. He has football cards. He has a pile of rocks, a bucket of seashells, a booty of stick guns, a menagerie of plastic animals, a tall boy covered in stuffed toys and a “car drawer” filled with many, many Hot Wheels.

He has always liked figures that he can hold and play a make-believe game with. This is why the superhero guys were such a big hit. He has Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Bad Iron man, Spider man, Bad Spider man, The Hulk, Flash and a few Wolverines. I could have left someone out. They are battle damaged, hardened through years of heavy playing. They have travelled up North, down South, across oceans in airplanes to distant lands. A favourite Batman has red splotches painted on him in an attempt to mimic blood. He has been through the wars. His cape is torn.

A new guy might give him many hours of satisfying play. Gradually the game will grow tired and the man stored away in the “man drawer.” But he is just resting awhile. Awaiting a new adversary. A new adventure.

The Lego skateboarding dude has a different head when he arrives in the mail with the catalogue. Black rimmed glasses? He looks neither dudish or cool till he is sourced a new head with the appropriate hipster beard. Hoody zipper half undone to reveal black T shirt. Beanie.  Better, says Jasper. Let’s skate.

 

 

 

 

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Going without tea….

Having almost completed Feb fast- a month without alcohol; I am wondering what else I could do without…

Anger, frustration, voice raising. If I could have a serene household without the morning yelling; get your shoes on, brush your teeth, have you got your hat? If I could channel more zen.

I could go without chocolate or dessert. Because if push comes to shove I don’t really care about them.

What I couldn’t go without is tea. Made in a pot from water boiled in a kettle. A green enamel kettle that whistles, screamingly, when it is ready. The tea pot is a Zero, made in Japan. It holds the tea leaves in a sieve suspended in the water. It is almost spherical, black with a stainless silver lid. The tea is fine leaf ceylon. It makes strong tea. No herbs or petals. No scents. Just tea. The water is turned molasses brown. It is sweetened a tad with raw sugar and a dash of milk. It is hot and soothing. It is calming. It is tea.

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Feathers Fly

It is Tuesday and the gruelling day that was yesterday has left me with my Tuesday headache; a result of too much stress and not enough water.

I am in recovery mode. I walk the dog on the oval outside my house. The lawn mower man in his air-conditioned hub smiles. Thumbs up to the dog walker as he trails his lawn mower and green grass clippings fly behind him. He permeates my world with the smell of my childhood; freshly cut grass. Murphy bunny hops in excitement at seeing his mate the red standard poodle with Tigger for a name. His owner has red hair too.

In the grass Murphy snuffles and emerges with a white feather stuck to his wet nose.

It is a remnant of the weekend.

On Saturday night for the PIAF festival opening the sky was snowing feathers. Below people sat on the warm bitumen of the closed off main city street. They took over the city. The cars were gone. A French troupe, Les Studios de Cirque, soared from the blue and pink glowing council chambers to Saint George’s cathedral. From sky scraper to sky scraper they sped, super-hero style, trawling white silk. Then others, dressed all in white, slowly trundled the wire with suitcases, umbrellas and buckets laden with feathers, emptying them onto the street below. Large clumps, as big as bricks, fell from the sky. But bricks of feathers are just pillows. Sack after sack of feathers came showering down on the crowd below. People stood with arms outstretched reaching for the falling feathers.

Children are running and collecting the booty in bags, or stuffing them into shirts and pockets, if they have come ill-prepared.

People’s hair is covered in down. Feathers are drifting and swirling in the breeze, taken way by it, dropped down by it, pushed into gutters, piled into baby strollers. Tickling their way into shirts and down between cleavages. A helium-filled white angel, the size of a small truck, is led through the crowd. Bending and bowing. Bobbing.

For the finale the feathers fly upwards from machines in the centre of the street, so it is raining feathers and eventually the road is snow-covered, at least ankle deep in down. People are drunk on feathers. They take strangers by the hand and twirl them. They take up huge armfuls and fling them in the air. Feathers are falling all about, snow of the softest kind. In the warm Perth air snow-like-anything is out of place. Caught in the spot-light the feathers are like a blizzard. The t-shirt and sandal wearing crowd, so used to the sand and the sun, are turned child-like by the storm of feathers. Permission to play. A huge Perth pillow fight.

On the train home strangers talk to one another because they too have feathers in their hair. Like the fox that has raided the chicken coop the passengers have the tell-tale marks of a night on the town, playing under falling feathers. Soon the carriage floor is littered with the white fluff. A woman beside me shows me inside her top to her bra that is overflowing with feathers. A child stretching to reach the hand hold on the carriage roof reveals a pair of shorts whose pockets are bulging. A t-shirt rides up and a waist band with feathers poking out is seen. Mothers, like brazen shoplifters, have their handbags crammed.

For those who have not been at the performance, but at the rugby instead, the sight of the feather-clad passengers is eye goggling. What have you people been up to? Playing beneath the falling feathers, why of course.

We leave a Hansel and Gretel trail of feathers from the station to our house. Then we set free our stash. We release them in our street under the glow of the street light, far from where they have come.

The next day, driving to work, I spot a lonesome feather swirling its way down the street. Fly feather fly.

 

check out this film by local artists Tunnel Vision

Tunnel Vision

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Old fashioned Ruler and Wafer Biscuit

 

Because I don’t know what else to do….

Seeing the teacher this afternoon. Guts in a knot. Ate one biscuit. Wanted another. Stopped myself.

Took a photo of it instead.

Yesterday Jasper left his hat in his bag in the corridor at lunch time so could not go out in the sun. He sat undercover and watched the others running amok. No Hat No Play. The classroom is locked at lunch time. A no go zone. Perhaps this is because children might graffiti or vandalise. Perhaps someone might turn the word on the black board from lock to fuck. Even a girl.

 

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No More Montessori

When people who have never sent their kids to a Montessori school tell you Montesorri kids are weird, or how much they love Montessori despite never being part of a school with that system, it makes you want to…

Everyone’s an expert on what a child needs.

A child should know what’s it like in the real world, someone says, expounding the virtues of a competitive environment.

The pros and cons rattle about in my head, that feels empty of all else but the two opposing views; one suggesting kids should follow their own path, blazoning it themselves, and one saying children need their path illuminated for them.

Some mothers get my angst. Especially Montessori mothers. They too wish for the control experiment child. The I-dream-of-Jeannie style child suddenly blinked into two. One raised this way; one the other. See which turns out best. A test tube baby in the purest sense.

But short of this there is just giving the other system a go.

We walk the long hill. It is at the point of impossibility for me in my wheelchair. It is long and steep. A limestone wall, deteriorating, is on our right. Convict built. Already Graham has constructed a story how the hole chiseled in its mortar was made by the bushranger Moondyne Joe. Arm muscles are burning. I can do it. If I have to. Two crossings. Lollipop men – mid sixties – swarthy Portuguese? Dogs are tethered to the fence. Blue Heeler. Schnauzer. Chocolate Labradoodle. Murphy joins the mutts that wait.

Jasper asks me not to come into the classroom. But I want to meet the teacher. Please, I won’t embarrass you, I promise.

Just being me is enough. I have to excuse myself past a group of young boys. The corridor is not wide enough for them and me. Is Jasper hoping they think I am with someone else? Please believe she belongs to someone else. The boys are maybe 10 years old. In their huddle they are tanned, even more so because of their gleaming white shirts. February white.

At the desk sits the teacher. She has a gaggle of young girls around her. All leaning in close. Taking in the smell of her. Girls love their teacher. One girl wears her art shirt; a man’s old business shirt, oversized with sleeves rolled up, ready to get dirty. The teacher and I handshake. We smile widely, warmly at one another and I say I will catch up with her later, when she has time. I don’t want to seem demanding, strange, a Montessori mother. I notice her lines about her mouth – like she smiles a lot and I think this is a good sign.

The room is jammed with desks. I would not get around them they are so close. I imagine people squeezing their way through the maze of tables and pencils falling to the floor as one is bumped. On the uneven boards the pencils will roll and keep rolling. Excuse me. Under the desks I hunt for the pencils, but they are gone. The sound of rolling lead. Desks are upending, papers are falling to the floor. A domino effect of tipping tables. Pencils on the loose. Sliding between the boards. Gone. For it is a small, small desk. No spreading out. No room for loose pencils. Elbows almost touching. Nit city. Close enough for cheating. Close enough for note passing.

Breathe.

Outside again and a trip to reception to hand in a form about Jasper’s asthma plan and order more uniform and a wide brimmed hat. Magpies sitting high in ancient gums warble. Wait till we are nesting, they say. In the distance the back of another former Montessori mother can be seen crossing the grass with a child in a brand new uniform two sizes too big. I want to yell out. Here, over here. Come tell me it is okay. Parents cross the bitumen and mill about. Prams galore. A siren sounds to signal the start of the day. It is a sound bursting with urgency. Fire station-loud. Let the day Begin.