1. Ed and I piled into his Camry and blasted off from Kingston to the CdA Casino just north of Worley, ID. We yakked away going down and coming back about all sorts of things -- friends, local politics, Pinehurst Elementary School and Debbie's experience there, and a lot more. Driving conditions were superb. I had fun burrowing myself in the cocoon of the casino, spinning some reels, sticking to my budget, having a few good spins here and there, but neither Ed nor I, as they say, won big.
2. Back home, I checked out the leftover Yakamein broth from Monday's family dinner. Mostly it was liquid with a few pieces of shrimp and beef remaining and I decided to turn it into a vegetable soup. I chopped up potatoes, onion, carrots, and some broccoli, added the pieces to the broth and slow cooked it until the vegetables were cooked through. I added the left over spaghetti to the soup and Debbie I enjoyed what was, I guess, a variation on the more meaty Yakamein.
I loved it. I enjoyed how the sweetness of the carrots complemented the Creole seasoning. The potatoes gave the soup more gravity, more weight. I'm glad I've lived long enough to experience different uses of spaghetti -- I'm thinking of how Cincinnati Chili is served over spaghetti and how I would have never dreamed to include spaghetti in a hybrid soup like Yakamein. I wouldn't say that now my life is complete, but it's fuller!
3. Debbie likes to have a cocktail or two when she arrives home from work. She also finds watching episodes of Perry Mason relaxing. So do I. After we'd watched three episodes, we returned to the podcast Burn Wild. I had listened to these last episodes, Debbie hadn't, and I was happy to listen to them again.
While this podcast not only explored the stories of Joseph Dibee, Sunshine Overaker, and other people who committed acts of property destruction, acting on behalf of an anarchist effort known as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), it also worked to dig deeper into climate change and repeatedly raised questions about how far is too far as activists protest, disrupt the flow of everyday life with direct action, stage bits of street theater, work within legal channels to bring about change, and, more rarely, destroy the property of entities they see as ravaging the earth.
I listened to these question in earnest, listened to the multiple perspectives the podcast offered through the different people Leah Sottile and her podcast partner Georgia Catt interviewed. They talked to people whose property had been targeted by ELF (and ALF, the Animal Liberation Front) or who lived in places where fires had been set. They talked with FBI agents, other activists from the USA and UK, to Sunshine Overseer's mother, to Joseph Dibee and his attorney, Matt Schindler, and others.
No one articulated a solution. No one deigned to present him or herself as having all the answers.
But, I found myself thinking more about incarceration and its purposes than climate change as Wild Burn came to its conclusion.
I found myself unable to really understand punishment.
The podcast ended with an actor reading passages from the twenty minute statement Judge Ann Aiken read when she imposed her sentence on Joseph Dibee.
I don't want to spoil the ending of this podcast and give away Judge Aiken's decision.
I'll just say that I'm aware of two other fugitives, long with Joseph Dibee, who were connected to Eugene. Silas Bissell and Katherine Ann Power committed crimes, escaped apprehension, and lived law-abiding and productive lives in Eugene. Among other things, Bissell was a physical therapist (I used to see him at contra dances!) and Power helped establish an Italian restaurant I frequented in the 1990s, Napoli. Upon being apprehended nearly twenty years after their crimes, both were incarcerated, Bissell for about 18 months and Power for six years.
Were they considered a danger to society after living nearly 20 years as peaceful citizens? Surely not. So they were not incarcerated to keep people around them safe.
Were they in need of reform? They'd done that without incarceration.
Did they need to serve penance? As I understand repentance, it means not only being sorry for what one did wrong, it also means reversing the course of one's life, of turning one's back on the wrong one had done and living in accordance with goodness. They'd both done that without incarceration. (By the way, the word "penitentiary" is rooted in the word "penance". This connection is gone. For decades, if not centuries, we have regarded penitentiaries as places of punishment, not penance.)
Was their incarceration meant to deter others from committing similar crimes?
Possibly.
Authorities argue that the incarceration of ELF activists back in 2007 had a chilling effect on environmental action involving property damage.
They might be right.
Personally, I don't think incarcerating Bissell and Power had anything to do with keeping communities safer, reforming Bissell and Power, imposing penitence on them, or deterring others from committing crimes similar to theirs.
They were incarcerated as a form of punishment meant to satisfy those who ardently assert, "You commit the crime, you do the time."
Period.
It's easy to go online and see what sentence Judge Ann Aiken imposed on Joseph Dibee.
The articles I've read highlight passages of Judge Aiken's twenty minute sentencing statement.
I've been unable to find, just yet, the full text of her remarks online.
If I do, I'll post a link.
If you are reading this and have a link to the full text of her remarks made on Nov. 1, 2022, please let me know.
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