The past year behind bars has been a “bother,” reports former Minneapolis City Council member Dean Zimmermann in a recent letter to supporters, but the longtime local activist admits it’s not been a completely negative experience.

“Perhaps the two best things to come out of the experience is that I have had a lot of time to get a lot of books read and I have been able to lose 40 pounds — I’m still working on losing 20 more,” he writes. “I also have had a chance to see my son, Klaus, on a weekly basis as he lives and works here in Denver.”

Zimmermann, who cut a rather rotund figure at City Hall before being convicted in 2006 of accepting a bribe from a local developer, now “powerwalks” for an hour each day in the exercise yard at the Federal Prison Camp-Englewood in Littleton, Colorado. He spends much of the rest of his time reading, washing dishes, meditating, and trapping rats in the prison kitchen.

And he’s also looking forward to softball season. “With the coming of spring comes softball, and I hope to be an umpire once again for the camp softball league,” he notes. “So far we have had one pickup game — eat your hearts out you snow-bound Minnesotans.”

Zimmermann’s also been attending weekly meetings of Narcotics Anonymous, as part of his prison sentence, and he admits that it’s given him a chance “to tweak my priorities and to come out a better, more rounded person.”

On July 10, Zimmermann will check into a halfway house in Minneapolis and begin his transition to civilian life. His sentence ends January 5, 2009.