I'll just entertain myself

Well, if they got paid, they could support their families. But... how much does it cost per year to house and monitor a prisoner?

Working is better than sitting around.

I was in a jail for three days in Houston. Hitchhiking too close to the freeway. They didn't make us work, but if we did they sent a cheese sandwich with us. The sandwich was muchly preferable to the slop they put on the trays. Plus, working made the time pass. I spread gravel at a firehouse driveway. Not too bad.

You have certainly had an interesting life, edgarblythe! I'd take the cheese sandwich and work over slop any day.

This guy in the jail attached himself to me. I had been sitting alone staring at the wall, when he suggested I do something instead of looking like a fool. After that, if anybody else talked me he muscled his way in. "What did you say to him?" It was always something innocuous, but he just saw everything in extremes. We were let out on a Houston sidewalk. He said to me, don't hitchhike. I'll get you bus money." He panhandeled just about enough to buy a ticket when he decided he needed beer. After that he pretty much forgot about the ticket. I waited for his attention to be on something else and walked away as fast as I could. Walked all the way beyond the city limit sign, which is a long walk. It was cold. I asked a service station attendant could I warm myself at your heater. He was more than happy to share. Then he said, "Aw. You're hitching." After a few minutes he said that a bus stops about a block up the road. He pressed fare money into my hand. I made it home in comfort. I tried to find that man to repay his kindness but never located him.

This hitchhiking had started because a friend drove me to Houma Louisiana to work offshore. We took a chopper out fifty miles to the Blue Dolphin rig. I stayed there two weeks. My friend was gone so I had to hitch, since my checks had been mailed to Oklahoma.

Goes to show you there's good people everywhere.

Speaking of Cuba, when I went to see the film Che it was at a drive-in in Corpus Christi. When it reached the scene in which Castro took over Havana amid great celebration, I was celebrating mentally because Bautista was at last gone. I looked off to the side. The cars were in line to leave the theater in protest. Not many of us stayed to the end. What it (the revolution) meant to me was that our government had loved a tin horn dictator like Bautista, who took the money and allowed the island to be a corporate hangout, regardless of how he treated the people. It is still fresh in my mind the killing of the nuns under Bautista and I don't recall our government caring. So, yeah, I welcomed Castro. Under him, there were some killings not justifiable, but he was also under pressure because our government tried to do away with him. He didn't call himself a communist until our government turned on him. The only reason our government now keeps up sanctions is for the same reason it is keeping Venezuela and Colombia destabilized. In that part of the world it is we who are the tin horn dictator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_reforms_in_Cuba
more on Cuba

Working on a new short. It's titled THe Goose that Mooed. Not aimed at children.

vinegaroon from Big Bend Texas.
https://www.mrt.com/life/wildlife/article/Houston-Texas-Big-Bend-vinegaroons-parks-16319694.php?fbclid=IwAR36sDIP9x8xgP0vN10PjNYX5ltpmDrtNclJsPUeSgP4j6j4CdDqPcbSXEs

I saw a god with a rifle and I wondered, “Who is to bleed?”

I went into seclusion and meditated in my pool of blood

I saw a woman behind a plow planting seeds of love

I saw her children, naked skeletons on furrowed ground

I went into the city where I saw mountains of men

Walking like rats over mountains of men

I looked to the desert for an answer but had my eyes blocked with sand

Whose quote is that?

I don't know. Found it on Twitter.

I do remember Nixon's war on the left.

Me too. I was acutely aware as I was about to be drafted in mid-September 1970 so I had to enlist in AF to avoid being drafted in the Army. He did his part with his ‘ Enemies list’ where he targeted opposition and J. Edgar Hoover and used the FBI to destroy anyone in his path of opposition . He even tried to use our IRS and the threat of an audit to keep his opposition down. Luckily, the head of the IRS allegedly refused.

He was a lot worse than just Watergate.

Of course. He magnified the onset of the Imperial Presidency and campaign that were Dirty Tricks. The inhumanity of carpet bombing Cambodia to cut off supply route during the war did little to shorten the war.