Gloria Rubac picked me up from the airport and we discussed logistics and updated. As far as logistics are concerned: they are a bit complicated. Going to the US without a drivers licence is like trying to swim without arms and legs. We are looking at four full days in prisons, one north of Houston and one in the south, respectively 38 miles and 80 miles away! It takes four times a day to bring and get me there! I’ll probably stay in a motel, close to Polunsky and I have to solve some logistics myself: find one dollar coins to use in prison, find a place to hide my stuff when one person brings me and another takes me back: in prison you cannot get in with more then a passport and coins in a plastic bag and motels refuse to keep the stuff so one can pick it up after a visit. But with help of my friends I’ll manage. I just have to wait before I make my definite schedule for some other meetings.
And there has’t been an execution in half a year: it is decades ago that that was the case in Texas. Hard to tell why: one guy was mentally retarded as they said. He is on Death Row for more then 35 years and this seems to be new information. Another guy seemed to be innocent and in some other cases they made other legal mistakes. Time after time the system seems to be broken and even politician start saying: the system is broken.
And life goes on. Friday-morning in Houston with all his homeless and psychiatric disturbed people in the streets, the one-way streets with all the SUV’s, pick-up trucks and other big cars. I had a not so nice breakfast, rented a bike and did my shopping. And….the airb&b is lovely!
Frans Douw 