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January 07, 2007 |
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A Very Good Year
FOUND by Seth Tisue
in Chicago, Illinois
I found this in the inside front cover of a Cook County Prison Library's discarded copy of Jean Genet's prison novel The Miracle of the Rose.
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Panhandlers For... August 30, 2006 |
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Mark My Words... August 31, 2003 |
The Stranger September 21, 2007 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
Well, that's kind of creepy.
OMG... tell me that is not a list of what I think it is. Gross. I bet the first digit is the # of times he slept with them and the 2nd digit his rating of their performance.
I can imagine a couple of possible explanations, but I wonder what the red numbers mean? . . . 1977? . . . another inmate who knew the same girls?
I dunno...what guy dots their i's with circles?
willa mae, freddie mae, tomasita...no kiddin. anyhoo, i hope that this list presumably compiled by an inmate isn't any more violent or disturbing than a catalog of consenting partners. yikes.
Do you think it's possible that, after being in prision for a while, nostelgia made him reacess their performances?
Spy I think it is what you think it is . The red numbers are chronological order , Naomi and Catherine were the BEST , Sheila , Diana , and Willie May were really good , and the rest were just memorable !Mike was just an experimental phase . That's my take on it , could be wrong .
Well it could be a list of possible childrens names. They really love the most popular girls names of 1976? … Although the sordid option is more entertaining.
so do you think the top list is 1977? so does that mean that our listmaker slept with mike?
i wonder if there is a chance that the author is a woman. whoever they are, 1976 was definitely a good year.
The 2nd set of numbers are in chronological order. Also, the list contains males and females. If I had to guess, I'd say it was a list of 12 people allowed on their visitation list and possibly the number of times each actually visited. I don't think the list has anything to do with crimes or sexual encounters. Also, the quote "it was a good year" would make sense b/c he was happy he received a lot of visitors.
I agree with Christina. There's something nearly tender with the "was a good year." Although the sexual encounter idea (# of times/performance rating) is interest, what do the plus signs to the left of the names mean? My guess: it's a visitor list, and the plus signs are whether or not they brought anything--like Snickers bars or cookies or crossword puzzle books. Good find, either way.
Yeah maybe... but then what are the +'s for?
I suspect that the list itself was dictated by an inmate to a female "transcriber," if you will -- hence the circles for dots over the i's (if you'll forgive my broad generalization that women are that much more likely to use circles over their i's than men).
The red numbers were written by a different hand entirely (the inmate himself?). Compare the 9 in "1976" to the red 9: noticeably different.
As for what each set of numbers means, here's my stab at the breakdown:
Red #s = Just counting the notches; not necessarily chronological order, but simply numbering the list to get the total # on list.
1st set/black #s = Only 1s, 3s, and 7s are used; I postulate that these are the ratings.
Plus signs = Multiple encounters...however you choose to define <i>encounters</i>.
just my $0.02 ...
It looks to me like the names, the 'V brackets,' the +'s (both intact and crossed out), and the caption about 1976 were written by the same hand, an with the same pen. They also look like they were written by a woman.
The blue and red pencilled numbers look like they were added later. Not by the original writer, and not necessarily by one person. I seriously doubt that any 'rating' system is involved. After all, the red numbers are sequential, and the blue numbers are mostly 1's and 3's with a couple of 7's. An odd rating system to say the least.
I don't know guys... I'm thinkin' it's a list of the kills. Or rapes, or Whatever. Guess I gotta stop reading books about serial killers...
Wow. I didn't think of any of those things when I first saw this. I assumed it was a list kept by the prison library to tally up the names of the prisoners who read the book that year.
Isn't the note written under the glue for the check-out pocket(which was removed when the book was discarded)?
That would mean the note was probably written by whomever donated the book to the prison.
Oh, Honeydew Mike! You're incorrigible!
Why has no one yet commented on the fact that he slept with someone named "Honeydew" - Woweee!
I agree with Steve in Boston. Why is it that people automatically think of sexual encounters. Your minds aren't all in the gutter are they?
haha..i call my boyfriend honeydew. i am going to have to ask him where he was in 1976.
I was thinking the same as Steve, but then I couldn't figure out how it could be a list of who took the book out from the prison liberry. There would have to be a name list card that one could take out of the book to track who had taken it out. Had someone maybe transcribed that list onto the card pocket that was attached to the book and then decided it was a good year for this book? Oh, the mysteries of a good find.
And Quinn, you gotta hop in the sack with Honeydew. She's a total +7.
Ugh, someone sneak in a copy of Excel into Cook County.
I'm happy to see prisoners are reading Jean Genet!
What I find interesting is that some of the +'s are scribbled out. If it was on the theory of bringing gifts, were they then Indian-givers?
it is fun to imagine the prison character that empty-dots his 'I's.
the DISCARDED stamp reeks of melancholy. )':
it is fun to imagine the prison character that empty-dots his 'I's.
the DISCARDED stamp reeks of melancholy. )':
Anyone notice how -
Margo (and)
Rita
Are placed right on top of eachother? Like 'Margarita?" HA HA HA!
Maybe the 1's and the 7's correlate the the number of years he was sentenced for crimes against those women?
1 yr for peeping, 3 for flashing - eh I don't know.
great find!
this woman has a blog on find items in a jail: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumble/sets/7205759405
-really funny....
BTW: found this website today. great site! haha. i added the RSS to my reader!
I love all the speculation... as a volunteer in a jail library, I would just reiterate that there are plenty of women in jail, too (in regards to the circle-dotted i's). Additionally, the numbers and plus signs could have been made by several different jail library volunteers. Or maybe this book was used in a jail library book discussion, and the numbers have to do with attendance. Or, as others have suggested, the list was created prior to its donation to the jail library. (Most jail libraries don't have much funding and so rely almost solely on donated materials for their collections.)
The last assumption makes the most sense. Given that the names are almost all female, it would makes sense that this book was probably from a Women's Prison, wouldn't it?? And, a book discussion with attendance marks makes sense, as well. The highest number being a 7 might indicate that there were only 7 meetings that year, and Diana, Geraldine and Cynthia get full marks for attending all of them!!
Hahaha...That Stain Is So Creepy.
:[
I'm really wanting to think that this is a library circ card. I'm a librarian by trade, and Steve and jd have swayed me. The stain that creeps Alyssa Jordinne out is glue. Why else would there be a discard stamp on it? Dunno.
I kind of think that the blue number might be the number of books the person was checking out at the time along with this one.
Or it could be that the number corresponded to the day it was checked out (ie, 7 for Sunday, 6 for Saturday, etc.) I know my grocery store did taht on breads and what not. Instead of putting the day that the bread was baked, they'd put a small number on it. Though, for a library book, that might be more complicated than it's worth.
I think maybe the stain is the residue of glue where the pocket that holds the Check-out card was held.