Moving Day...

I moved the blog to its own corner of the Internet: Adkabin.com.

Teaching In Da Joint

It's 0730, the inmates are at first meal (breakfast). My day started much earlier and, thanks to mud season, now features a half mile trek to the car. The drive to Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institute takes another hour. It's a breathtakingly scenic drive, more enjoyable when the mountain passes aren't icy. 

Prisons are traditionally repurposed buildings around here. The former Olympic athlete dorm is now a federal prison, across from the state joint that used to be a tuberculosis hospital. Many years ago, Adirondack mountain air was considered therapeutic by health pioneers such as Dr. Edward Trudeau (the cartoonist's great-grandfather), who established the first TB sanatorium in Saranac Lake. 

Aerial View of RB FCI

I've taught here for several months but it's still hard to go inside. I triple-check my pockets as much to delay getting out of the car as to ensure they are empty. Then I leave the cell phone in the car, take a final deep breath of freedom and head in. The guard retrieves my ID badge from a locked cabinet (every door here has a lock) and I offer both hands, only one will receive a UV-readable stamp. I sign in, surrender my car keys, go through the metal detector and proceed through remotely controlled steel doors into the outer perimeter. Another two such doors, another security check, then my chit goes on the board (for personnel accountability in case of an 'adverse event') and radio issue, then I emerge into the inner yard. Overhead it's the same sky, dark and cold in the winter, brilliant blue most other times, mountains towering all around, but this air certainly doesn't feel therapeutic. I'm in. 

Growth in the Prison-Industrial Complex

Ray Brook is a medium security prison. These inmates may have started out in a maximum or even a super-max but they've sufficiently demonstrated good behavior to be trusted at a 'medium'. With about a thousand confined men, there will always be some violence, but it's usually inmate-on-inmate attacks, occasionally using shanks. Even though I'm alone in a room full of former bank robbers, murderers, drug dealers, sex offenders, gang members and terrorists, I feel safe. The red panic button on my radio is false security. I just trust in The Universe. Letting go of any pretense of control is oddly peaceful.

No Croissants Here

The Education building is across the Commissary and next to the Chow Hall. The breakfast menu changes but, no matter what's served, it always smells like pancakes. First movement is underway. Inmates look away unless they trust you, and then it's disrespectful to pass by without at least eye contact. Some nod or even say hello (often, 'hola') and some will approach to (conventionally) shake hands. 

The Resistor

My first class is Electronics. The inmates are seated in the windowless classroom and waiting patiently. Patience is an essential life skill here. I usually storm through the door; the energy gets their attention and some laughs. If I can make someone laugh here then the drive was worth it. I have total academic freedom, today I decided to focus on discrete solid state devices - diodes and transistors. 

But first we discuss CPR, and since this is electronics, the cardiac conduction system. Many have never heard of CPR beyond the insipid depictions on TV. I found a good video on YouTube ('good' meaning it had a female instructor) and we discussed the main points afterwards. The class watched intently and many asked to get officially CPR certified so they could help save a life someday. 

Now, it may seem absurd that someone who took a life now wants to save one. Such is the paradox of the convicted murderer. Unless they are clinically insane - an infinitesimal number of inmates at a medium - the average murderer serving life without parole (LWOP) is probably the lowest risk inmate, far more inclined to atonement and reflection than violence. One of my best teaching assistants was sentenced to LWOP for a double murder - as a juvenile. 

Each class nominally runs an hour and a half, often I hang around after class to chat until the room gets a security sweep. During class I often show YouTube videos. Most of them are in response to requests involving hard-core physics, such as how absolute zero was calculated. 

But we also discuss practical skills, for example how to wire a household circuit. We've even studied two- and three-phase residential wiring. My classes are hands-on so electronics is in an electrical shop and math is in a computer lab. We'll discuss any topic of interest. Although I've had to explain to a student how to use a 'shift' key, most of these guys are quite skilled and highly literate - Scientific American and the Wall St Journal are ubiquitous. I've borrowed the NY Times Book Review section that is usually floating about - but only after promising to return it. The range and depth of subjects are phenomenal, this is the most learning-starved environment I've ever seen. With no Internet, it's also a haven of old-school literacy, many inmates carry books with them constantly and they love to talk about what they are reading. 

A Typical Class - Inmates Learn Programming at San Quentin

Math class has morphed into a programming class...without any hardware resources to code! One learns to improvise in prison. Eventually the BoP will ease the rules on inmate access to programming resources, following the example of San Quentin, where inmates write code for Silicon Valley companies. Until then, I may be the only person trying to teach Scratch and Python using a blackboard and chalk. I'll show a video of a programming sequence, then review it, step by step, on the blackboard. It's exhausting and tedious for everyone. But it's also amazing to see students begin to grasp the concepts, especially the ones with zero programming experience. A former software engineer (serving 25-to-life for terrorism) usually stops by, always willing to assist when I need a bit of technical help. 

A Few Lines of Python Code

And so it goes, every week we do another four hour stretch in da joint together and everyone learns something. Unless we're in lockdown, they depart to midday meal while I'm escorted outside to breathe the air of freedom again. If there's a lockdown, well, we all just wait it out. It can be frustrating and hopelessly difficult work but I've never felt more appreciated. Come to think of it, I've yet to spend a bad day in prison. 

A Year Survived, A Year Thrived

Awaiting a Croissant at a Patisserie in Old Montreal

We celebrated our first full year at Woodman's Lee by taking a little drive to Montreal. The pre-9/11 "arm wave" border crossing into Canada is long gone, but we still arrived in less than two hours. 

Sign from the Good 'ol Days

Canada Customs used to control the border, but after 9/11 it was decided that they were insufficiently hostile. So a new agency, the CBSA, was created in a futile attempt to be bad-ass, overstaffed, inefficient and rude, like their like their southern TSA brethren. Eventually the CBSA reverted back to a rather dignified treatment of visitors and today's border crossing is fairly efficient. In no time we were immersed in a defiantly French speaking city, we found our AirBnB apartment and settled in. It was incredibly cold.

Colder than the North Pole and Siberia

It turns out there was a rare pocket of extremely cold air that decided to migrate over us and stay there. But we had a terrific weekend anyway. 

A Brutalist Abomination Towers over the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Montreal is one continuous architectural tragedy. City blocks with beautiful old buildings are shadowed by towering brutalist abominations. Regardless, it's a charming and vibrant city. The Metro (subway) is easy to figure out so a car is unnecessary. We braved the arctic-like cold (an odd weather event made our location the coldest in the northern hemisphere!) and had an extraordinarily good time exploring the terrific restaurants. We walked a lot, especially given the treacherous sidewalks.

The Byzantine Boroughs of Montreal

The city is divided into 19 arrondissements (boroughs). Each arrondissement has its own mayor and ordinances, including those for snow removal. "Bureaucracy", a word coined by a Frenchman, flourishes here. 

Another Pedestrian Takes a Tumble on the Icy Sidewalks

Many sidewalks were downright dangerous, essentially trapping some residents in their homes. Hospital admissions for falls soared in January. 

We parked the car and didn't touch it again until we left, but, given the conditions, driving was safer than walking and using the excellent mass transit system. It's odd that AuSable Forks, buried in the Adirondacks can learn the art of sidewalk clearing. But one of the top ten cosmopolitan cities cannot.

Our Weekend Getaway Apartment in Downtown Montreal

Aside from that, we had such a nice time that we're returning soon. Our 11th floor apartment had everything we needed and it was close to the Metro. On our next visit we'll explore a few more arrondissements, including the little shops and sample the innumerable restaurants.

The Path to Becoming an EMT

I started EMT training in October. With luck, my grades, clinical hours and number of patient contacts will yield the 'blue card', enabling me to take the state and national exams in mid-April. I misjudged the effort required to become even an EMT-Basic. It's a lot of work. You can easily spot an EMT student, they are ones who carry the 1400 page textbook everywhere and study constantly. Sometimes I catch myself eating while reading about  a grisly injury or medical condition. That's bad enough but sometimes I don't even notice, which is even more disturbing.

Vehicle Extraction Training, Wilmington FD

Almost everyone in the class is working full time, usually more than one job. Factor in family time, especially for those with kids at home, and I don't see how they do it. But the intrepid students who survived thus far continue to battle exhaustion and keep slogging through the three hour classes.

Trauma Assessment, Lake Placid

There are three main components - class time and exams, practical skills training, and clinical experience. Class and exams involve basic academics. Practical skills involve the application of book-learning, training the muscles to work with the brain. This can be challenging until you get used to it. Clinicals are completely different because the patients, illness and trauma are real. Everything is more challenging when the patients aren't stable and more so when the ambulance is moving. The rigs are built on commercial truck platforms so you experience full, 3-axis motion. It's not unusual to get motion sickness, especially on the back roads to and from Saranac Lake.

It doesn't help that every time I enter a hospital's emergency department I contract a new cold and battle it for a week. This amuses to the ER staff, all of whom were somehow granted the pathogenic equivalent of diplomatic immunity. 

Last week I completed my hospital clinical time over in Elizabethtown, which everyone refers to as E-town. There are many nursing and med students in the ER but EMTs can be especially handy. Most are experts at taking vitals, resourceful and are good patient communicators. One of the hospital EMTs asked if I would ride along on a patient transfer to Plattsburgh, which would yield all-important patient contact and clinical field hours. The patient, younger than me, was in awful shape with no DNR orders and a sporting chance of 'coding' enroute. It was a long, horrifying trip. 

You don't have time to reflect while working on a patient so the return leg can be the worst part. That's when you replay events and marvel at the fragility of life. I asked my teammate a typical rookie question, wondering how long it takes to get used to the tough rides. I received the typical 'oh, you'll get used to it' answer. But then she recounted a few bad calls that far eclipsed ours, some were from years ago but sounded like they happened yesterday. So the unspoken answer is: You don't ever get used to it. 

But most runs, such as the one we had at 2am today, aren't critical and - given our remote location and small population - executed flawlessly. A little oxygen, a few mgs of IV morphine or Zofran eases the pain and settles the (patient's!) stomach. 

Since we have nearly an hour of transit time to the nearest hospitals I have lots of time to chat with patients. The more they talk, the more comfortable they get and it's not unusual to see pulses and BP trending to normal levels by the time we get to the ER. Then it's ER paperwork, perhaps a snack stop, then a long, bumpy, transit back to our district. A drive home on utterly deserted roads is followed by the long, dark trek up our muddy access road to the cabin. Then, back to the book for a little more studying...

The Coldest Winter Since '76

Sign on Keeseville Laundromat: Here, Winter is November through May!

They say it's so cold in these mountains that we don't get a Fourth of July until Labor Day. Another version asserts that we have three seasons: winter, Fourth of July and pre-winter. The pessimists complain about the cold and say it's worse than anything. The optimists counter that it may, indeed, get even colder. The old-timers at the Town Garage say that this winter has been exceptionally cold, the worst since 1976 when even more water mains froze than this year.

Getting Crossways on the Access Road

Well, that's all good news for over-wintering rookies like us because we've survived it. The backwoods mountains are the worst place to declare premature victory, but the days are getting longer and this morning's temperature was nearly 20F (above zero!). We had a string of 56 days below freezing and Lake Champlain froze solid for the second year in a row. That hasn't happened in a long time. Even Niagara Falls and Lake Erie were frozen.

Niagara Falls Freezes Over

Today's high was barely above freezing, but it was sufficient to be the warmest day in a month. A man in Keeseville said it was so warm he actually had to roll his car widow down, which sounded like a harbinger of spring but I wasn't buying it. Lumberjacks and their tall tales inspired the North Country's culture, so a little truth stretch is commonplace. Anyway, I appreciate an occasional exaggerated story way more than than (the unavoidable) reality TV.

Our Snow-Capped Birdhouse 
Awaits Springtime Occupants

Regarding car windows, the beagle occasionally surprises us with a glimmer of intelligence. She doggedly figured out how to operate the windows in the Tundra. One morning it was ten below and, sure enough, as we got underway she rolled the window down then stuck her head out of it. I sped up to 35mph to see if she'd withdraw from the -41F wind chill, but she was unfazed. Her nose felt like it had been immersed in liquid nitrogen. Maybe she's not that smart. Dogs can be amazingly durable critters.

An Early Morning Drive at Twenty Below Zero

The Nadir of Winter

It doesn't feel like it tonight, but we've passed the nadir of winter. The days are getting longer. This is the time of year when the temperatures bottom out and begin to trend higher. In a couple of weeks we should begin experiencing some daily highs above freezing. Then the glacier surrounding the cabin can begin to recede.

Our driveway is a continuous, treacherous ice sheet, but still navigable on most days. There have been days and nights where we must hike in and out. It's cold but the exercise and views are breathtaking. Thus far the car and truck have reliably started but I think both are becoming weary of subzero weather. 

Seventy Degree Difference Between In and Out

The NWS forecasts minus ten tomorrow morning, but it's usually warm and cozy inside. It'll be nice to get back out again and resume the projects. It's too cold and icy to work on the window trim and firewood stockpiling. Our boots have ice gripping spikes but it's difficult and risky to do much outdoor work. 

Frost Covered Window

Our remaining single-pane windows are often painted with beautiful, intricate frost patterns. It's cold on the porch. I use it as a walk in freezer. The new double-pane, argon filled windows are amazingly efficient, but often the first casualty of efficiency is charm.

The Dog Toaster

The beagle spends all but a few minutes of her day on the couch. Here she is in front of the dog toaster. Occasionally we'll augment the wood stove with a portable heater, this one is a small propane heater that's popular with the ice fishing crowd. We don't run it overnight. The beagle stays warm all day and night in front of the wood stove or Kero-Sun heater. 

Juno, a Classic Nor'easter

We weren't affected by Juno, the recent nor'easter that dumped two feet of snow on Boston. The trailing edge of the storm had little energy, most people west of the Hudson River received no snow while the east side got buried. The next big storm system is due tomorrow, but all we will get is bitterly cold temperatures. 

Cold, but a Beautiful Sunrise

When it's below zero, the sunrise provides beautiful show as the morning light is reflected off the Sentinels. The trillions of little ice crystals that flash-form on supercold surfaces sparkle in the dawn. All these subtle effects can't be fully captured in a photo. 

A Winter Sky at Sunset

When the sun makes an appearance - it's not a daily affair - the sunsets are also gorgeous. No matter how many times we've seen it, we have to stop and appreciate the beauty. If you can do that without getting anxious about getting off schedule, then you've crossed into the world of the country person. That's the same culture that expects a long chat with neighbors instead of a curt 'hi, howya doing?'. Which culture is better for the soul?

Our daily low temperatures will creep into the double digits by the end of February - maybe all the way to 11 above zero. Winter retains a firm grip but it's gradually relaxing. 

The January Effect

Minus 21, One Degree Colder Than the South Pole

Minus 21F forecasted for tonight, if so, that'll be our coldest day of the winter thus far. When it gets below about 15F it's too cold for outdoor activities, even walking isn't appealing. But the air feels healthy. This was the rationale for locating tuberculosis clinics throughout the High Peaks a century ago before antibiotics were discovered. 

Christmas came and went, this year it felt genuine with all the snow covered trees, and everything else that snow can cover. We went to Vermont a few times over the holidays, all their snow melted and the absence of snow cover looked odd. We haven't been outside the Blue Line much, so Burlington felt like a major city. Its exurbs appeared almost as ugly as Melbourne, FL, a benchmark of hopeless urban planning. We each breathed a sigh of relief upon crossing Lake Champlain at Crown Point, returning to our light-pollution commercial-free Adirondack Park. The roads were utterly deserted.

A month after the big snowfall we still have a good foot of snow around Woodman's Lee, hard packed and seemingly impervious to melting. I can appreciate how Ice Ages begin: snow packs don't melt over the summer, they become reinforced the following winter, sunlight is reflected, global cooling accelerates and glaciers advance. We're living in an interglacial period; since we are due for new Ice Age it might as well begin in our backyard. 

The kids visited sequentially with a one day overlap, this place is too small to accommodate a full up family reunion. But they had a good time and endured a bit of snow and cold temperatures. We cut down a little tree and trimmed it, hanging battery powered lights, so I'd say we had a proper Christmas.

Out with the old window

When the house cleared out we resumed our window project by installing a larger window on the south wall. We had a rare 40 degree day, so we made the best of it. I still have to trim it out, but now it's become too cold on the days I have time and inclination to do the work.

The seasons influence my daily routine. I still get up early, but it is dark until 7am. The days are short but they are noticeably lengthening, we now have 15 minutes more daylight than on Jan 1st. Sometimes I get up earlier if I'm 'toned out' for a fire or local EMS page. On New Year's Day I responded to a 3am EMS page at a house just a mile away. We assessed and stabilized our patient and moved her onto the stretcher (with plenty of blankets, it was below zero). All this commotion didn't disturb the gentleman blissfully passed out in a nearby recliner. I suppose we had enough spare O2 to remedy his hangover, but we had a higher priority patient to transport. 

The new window

Anyhow, once up I check on the overnight news, a foolish habit that I can't seem to break. Then I'll conjure up breakfast and read. The EMT class keeps me busy, there's a lot of reading and preparation, but I'm at the halfway point and I'm doing well on the exams and practicals. Sometimes W and I will go to the fire station. She sleeps like a veteran firedog on my turnout coat, greeting anyone who arrives and building a goodly amount of social capital in the process. I use the wireless, attending to my latest EdX class and checking on the market. In return, I try to keep the place spotless and address the innumerable technological issues on the equipment. Even remote village fire departments have become too complex. 

Willie the firedog

The federal prison at Ray Brook is, however, well insulated from techno-complexity. You can't even take a cell phone in there and there's no Internet. Once you tune out the fences and concertina wire it's rather nice to teach in an electronic distraction-free environment. My two classes are getting a bit crowded, but no one is turned away. I extended the sessions to an hour and a half so we have more time for questions and checking for understanding. They are up to date on current events, but there are many curious gaps. For instance, because they are un-wired, it took awhile to explain what it meant to 'like' a YouTube video, and although heads were nodding in the right direction, I wonder if all of them understood the concept.

I gave the students a test, mostly to assess my performance...and it wasn't good, as evidenced by an extreme bimodal distribution. A few students excelled but the rest did poorly, one extreme or the other, no one in the middle. The only impediment to teaching trig is getting the class to understand sines and tangents. Once that rather abstract concept is internalized the rest is just visualization and bookkeeping. Unfortunately, teaching sin and tan requires more inmate attention than I can span. But then The Universe shined upon me. I found a YouTube video with an attention-getting trigonometry instructor. Everyone in the class - plus a growing crowd outside the door - paid attention to her presentation of sines, cosines and tangents. That's what inspired the discussion on 'liking' videos, by the way. They asked me to give the video 15 likes, one for each student, plus three more for the guys in the hallway. 

Prisons are exempt from political correctness. 

We had a fire call in Upper Jay, a chimney fire at the residence of one of our firefighters. It was a Tuesday night, cold and snowy and I struggled to make it through the end of EMT class. It's a good class with a good instructor but I fade as we near 10pm. The page came out as I was driving home, so I diverted to the station, grabbed the gear and rode shotgun in the brush truck.

Operational safety is a whole different ballgame with firefighters, they assume more risk than you'd ever see in the aerospace industry. Safety has improved over the years (for instance, no riding on the back of moving fire trucks) but if you spend too much time figuring where to tie off a harness to a hard point on a roof the fire is going to win. When I arrived two firefighters were already on the snow covered, two story roof, no harnesses, with only flashlights for scene lighting, You extinguish a chimney fire by closing the damper, then attacking it from above with Ziplok bags full of powder salvaged from expired fire extinguishers. By the time someone calls 911, their chimney is roaring like an inverted solid rocket motor, so this takes a bit of finesse. But the dry chemicals will put out the fire - unless the chimney ignites the attic. A couple of the old-timers drew upon their experience from the last two chimney fires at this residence - this is a small town with a big memory - and everything was quickly under control. I got home around midnight. 

I haven't spent much time cutting firewood, although this is the time of year to harvest wood for next season. The cabin is cozy and peaceful with the wood stove silently doing its job and the beagle sprawled out on the couch in front of it. It takes a lot of motivation to suit up and cut trees. I hope to get back to work on the woodpile after the January thaw...provided that one emerges and the new Ice Age is delayed another year.