Tag: justice

Sentencing

June 17th, 2026

I’m tired and I should be asleep right now, but obviously I’m not. I went to court yesterday and I’m still wound tight. I am replaying the events of the hearing in my head over and over, hoping for some clarity and closure. So far, I’ve had no luck with that. Maybe by writing about the episode, I can sort things out. It’s got to be better than lying in bed and staring at the skylight for the next several hours.

This about the sentencing of a young woman, a person who is dear to me. It’s been a long time coming. The woman was in court yesterday for two felony convictions: battery on a police officer and her 5th drunk driving charge. The arrest for battery occurred about 2 1/2 years ago. The OWI (Operating While intoxicated) charge is 17 months old. Finally, after numerous delays, the two cases have been resolved. The young woman dragged her feet in the judicial process in hopes of avoiding prison (she has done time before). At one point, she wanted to go to trial for the OWI charge. She eventually changed her mind, bowed to the inevitable outcome, and pleaded guilty. Things wrapped up at yesterday’s hearing.

A sentencing is like an inverted graduation ceremony. It’s a milestone in a person’s life. You just don’t get a diploma.

The young woman wanted me to be there for her sentencing. I’m not quite sure why she wanted that, especially since I was instrumental in getting her in that courtroom to begin with. I turned her in for drunk driving because I thought she was going to hurt or kill somebody. I called the cops just prior to the battery incident because she was drunk and angry, and I have learned the hard way that I should not interact with her when she is in that condition. When the woman is drunk, I let the police handle her. They get paid to do that sort of thing.

In any case, I was there for the hearing at 10:00 in the morning. The courtroom is nothing fancy. It’s a cramped, claustrophobic space with a small gallery for visitors. A courtroom, any courtroom, is an uninviting place. Nobody really wants to be there. Like a hospital ER, a courtroom is somewhere you have to go because you or someone you know is in trouble. In an ER it’s for a medical issue. In a courtroom you are there for a different kind of trouble.

The woman’s hearing was scheduled for 10:00, but it didn’t start until almost noon. That’s typical. These things seldom start on time. While I was sitting in the gallery, I got to watch the warmup act. A young Black man was pleading guilty to armed robbery and fleeing an officer, and then getting sentenced for those crimes. The prosecution, in its effort to get the guy four years in prison, presented a dashcam video of the high-speed chase through a residential area of the northside of Milwaukee. The police were following the defendant’s car through this maze of side streets at 70 miles an hour. If nothing else, the video showed that the young man had demonstrated exceedingly poor judgment. The young man had friends and/or family in the gallery who got to watch the show. I wondered what they were thinking.

Dashcam and bodycam videos are commonplace tools for the prosecution. A picture is worth a thousand words in many cases. A video is worth even more.

When the young woman finally arrived, she was shackled, which is common practice when a defendant is in custody. The public defender made a point of telling the judge that I was in the gallery to show support for the woman. The prosecution talked about the plea agreement (three years inside and three out), and then she wanted to show bodycam footage of the battery of the police officer incident to give the judge a sense what the young woman was like when intoxicated. Oh yeah…

It should be noted that I was physically present for all of that mayhem. I have vivid memories of that day. The bodycam recorded all of it, albeit from a different angle. I quickly realized as I watched the show that I was in the video. I was an unwilling participant in the action. That still feels utterly surreal. At one point I am in the background, observing the chaos. There is also a brief a close up of one of three cops giving me the keys to the young woman’s car. It was reality show that was actually real.

So, what happened during the few minutes of the video? It was action packed. The young woman had backed her car into a ditch. She was drunk (BAL of .20). In Wisconsin the legal blood alcohol level is .08, so she was almost three times over the limit. The three cops tried to coax her out of the car. They were remarkably polite and patient with her. She was belligerent. They finally got her out her vehicle and cuffed her. At this point she screamed,

“I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

Okay. Then a female officer began to escort the young woman across the street to a squad car. The young woman kicked the cop, knocked her over, and they won’t down hard on the pavement. Two of the three police officers got the woman back on her feet and the female officer limped slowly away to lean heavily on the hood of another squad car. The officer was clearly in pain.

The young woman once again screamed, “I will fucking kill you!”

Then she gave a wild laugh like Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter as they pushed her into a squad car.

It was really quiet in the courtroom for a few moments. The judge looked at the young woman (and at me) and said,

“That was a sad video.”

Sad? I could think of other far more descriptive adjectives for that shitshow, but the judge was a professional and a master of understatement. He went on to tell the defendant that the police had been patient, and even kind to her. He described her own behavior as “ridiculous”. Once again, I can think of other adjectives for her actions.

On the plus side, the judge noted that the young woman has made repeated artempts to get into recovery and stay sober. He mentioned a letter I had written to him where I had said the woman never gives up. That is true. She never quits. She is strong and resilient. She sincerely wants to get healthy and stay that way.

The prosecution, public defender, and the judge all focused on the defendant’s mental health and addiction issues. The plan was her to get enrolled the substance abuse program (SAP) as soon as possible once she gets to Taycheedah (a prison near Fond du Lac, WI). The judge decided to give her 18 months inside for the battery charge and two years for the drunk driving. The sentences are to run concurrently. If she successfully completes the SAP, then she can qualify for the Early Release Program at 14 months. She estimates that she can be out in 18 months. That sounds about right.

The young woman called me from jail later yesterday to explain more of what will happen to her. I told her that all I want is for her to get healthy and be able to care fulltime for her little boy. Maybe that is a big ask. I don’t know.

That’s the story, thus far.

I hope I didn’t bore you.

The Fall

February 28th, 2026

The story of the Fall in the Bible is read during the season of Lent in the Catholic Church. It has always irritated me. Before I start ranting, allow me to post an abbreviated version of the narrative.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:15-17

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” – Genesis 3:1-7

The story attempts to explain the effects of sin and the why there is evil in the world. To my mind, it explains very little, and it produces more questions than answers to the fundamental problems of life.

I am looking at the text as somebody who is responsible for raising a small child, namely our five-year-old grandson, Asher. As caregivers, my wife and I have to teach and protect our grandson. In the story God doesn’t really do much of that. Since, prior to eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve do not know good or evil. They essentially have the moral consciousness of toddlers. They know that “Daddy” told them not to eat the fruit of the tree because they will die if they do. However, at that point nobody in the world has ever died, so what does it mean to them when God talks about death? They apparently have adult bodies, but they are literally babes in the woods (or garden).

To phrase it modern terms, it is like God telling Adam ,

“Hey, Adam, go ahead and eat any fruit you like, but not from that tree in the center of the garden. Yeah, you know the beautiful tree with the really cool looking fruit. Leave that one alone! If you eat, you are going to die. Let Eve know too. Okay, I have go away for a while. I’ll be back in the cool of the evening. Be good! You hear me?”

That would be like me telling Asher not to play with the power saw in the garage while I go shopping. It’s a recipe for disaster. In the human world, God would be charged with gross negligence. Now, God’s instructions are exceedingly strange seeing as he already knows what will happen. He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and a bunch of other omni things. This clearly a set up. God, for some reason, wants to get the kids out of the garden. We can blame the serpent or Eve or Adam, but God is still in charge.

Does any of this even matter? I guess it does if the Church insists on reading this story every year. The Church tells its followers that all humans tend to sin because of the disobedience of our first parents. How is fair to punish the children for the sins of the fathers? Why would God want to have endless generations of flawed people? Where is his quality control? The official answer to my questions is that it is all because of our gift of free will, which we continually abuse. Depending on who you read, be it St. Augustine or John Calvin, the basic Christian message seems to be that we all suck.

During the Easter Vigil Mass, the holiest liturgy on the calendar, the priest recalls the Fall and speaks of it as the “felix culpa”, the happy mistake. I find that remarkable and encouraging. The message is that God would not have fully entered the world without Adam and Eve disobeying the Lord. History did not start until the Fall.

Why did God allow the Fall to occur? Genesis doesn’t say. If the act of creation did not end after six days, if it continues even now, then maybe God wanted cocreators working with him. Maybe he wanted some apprentices that He could train. Maybe God is still working on the ultimate work of art, and he wants us to participate in it, even if we are like kindergarteners fumbling with our finger paints. Maybe it’s not such a terrible thing to struggle and suffer if we are helping to build the universe. Maybe it’s actually all okay.

A Midrash

January 29th, 2026

I have a friend from our old synagogue named Jakob. He is an elderly gentleman. He is hard of hearing, but his thoughts run deep, and he is a very perceptive person. Jakob has taken a shine to my five-year-old grandson, Asher. He has in the past baked cookies for the boy. They were good. I had some of them. Recently, Jakob bought Asher a book. This is interesting because Asher doesn’t read yet, although he is quite competent at writing his name. My wife, Karin, read the book to Asher. It is a very short tale, and quite funny. Asher laughed a lot while Karin read to him, although he also found a couple parts to be rather sad.

The little book qualifies as a midrash about Noah’s ark, at least it does to me.

According to My Jewish Learning, a midrash is defined as:

“Midrash (מדרשׁ) is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah. (In the Bible, the root d-r-sh [דרשׁ] is used to mean inquiring into any matter, including occasionally to seek out God’s word.) Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new stories, making connections between new Jewish realities and the unchanging biblical text.”

The book is titled Meet at the Ark at Eight! by a German author, Ulrich Hub. The story is packed with absurdity and sprinkled with running gags and sly humor. There are very few characters in the tale. There are three rather clueless penguins whose antics somehow remind me of the Marx Brothers. There is an overweight, overworked, and overbearing white dove. Finally, there is Noah, who only makes a cameo appearance at the end of the story. As I mentioned, the book is hilarious, but it also delves into some serious questions.

There are people, especially among my Christian brethren, who are convinced that every story in the Bible holds a clear and concise moral lesson. This is of course nonsense. In the Torah the narratives are terse using a minimum of words. There is no extraneous verbiage. In fact, the person reading or listening to one of the stories will often have more questions than answers when it is over. The stories in the Hebrew scriptures tend to be a lot like life: confusing and ambiguous. They cry out for interpretation and additional details. Hence, the existence of the midrash, and of a little book about penguins on the ark.

Anybody who has read the story of Noah and actually pondered it, ends up with a kind of queasy feeling about God. The Lord does not come out looking good. Bad optics. Sure, He places the rainbow in the sky at the end of the show, but that is after He has totally trashed his creation. There is an unsettling question of justice in the Bible narrative. God decides that all of humankind, except for Noah and his kin, are irredeemably evil and worthy of destruction. Okay, God is omniscient, so He probably knows the moral standing of his creatures. But why kill almost all of the animals? What did they do wrong? Can a penguin sin? This topic comes up in the book. There are a number of odd theological questions that get broached in this modern midrash. Almost all of them make the reader smile.

I have time before Asher wakes up for school this morning. I am going to read the book again. It’s good. Asher recommends it.

A Bridge to Palestine

September 11th, 2025

There is a pedestrian bridge that crosses over Lincoln Memorial Drive in Milwaukee. It connects Brady Street to Veteran’s Park on Lake Michigan. Two days ago, after dropping off my grandson at school, I walked to the bridge. On it I saw three young people hanging a Palestinian flag over the railing for the oncoming traffic to see. I approached the group and then, on a whim, I stood across from them and leaned against the railing on my side of the bridge. They were busy watching the cars below us and waiting for the next honk of a horn.

I asked no one in particular, “So, is this doing any good?”

I asked that because for many years, I protested in a similar way. I was involved with different causes way back when, but the methods don’t really change. I marched and carried signs, and that isn’t much unlike hanging a flag for all to see.

A young woman with glasses and dark hair looked at me and said,

“Yes, it does some good. Why are you here?”

“I just took my grandson, Asher, to the Waldorf school.”

The young guy next to the woman asked me, “What kind of name is that? It sounds Slavic.”

“No, it’s Hebrew. His name means ‘Happy’.” The young woman smiled. Then she told me her name. It was Arabic.

I told her, “I have Israeli friends and Palestinian friends. The situation is complicated.”

At that moment, she launched into a passionate monologue with various pro-Palestinian talking points. She made it clear that to her the situation was not at all complicated. Her talk was a bit tedious, because I had already heard much of what she was saying many times before. To a large extent, I agree with her. The killing needs to stop. The Israeli response in the Gaza war is grossly disproportionate. But is what she and her compadres doing right now of any real use?

I sighed, and said, “I am not entirely ignorant.”

Then I asked her, “What about the Israelis? What happens to them in the long run? Do they get displaced? 75% of them were born in Israel.”

The young woman snapped back, “But their parents probably weren’t born there! My people have been there for generations. I am Palestinian and I have just been back there, and it is worse than I have ever seen it.”

The young man in her group chimed in, “The Israelis can just move to the U.S. Most of them have family here anyway.”

“Wow,” I said to myself, “I don’t think he has thought this through.”

The three of them told me more about the situation in Palestine. I knew a lot about it. They peppered their comments with words like “Zionist”, “Imperialist”, “Colonialist”, “Capitalist”, and “Racist”. I hate that. Those adjectives are like “woke”: they can mean nothing or anything. They are just emotional triggers that get people wound up.

After they stopped proselytizing, I explained to them,

“I used to do what you are doing now. I was very much antiwar. I used to stand on a corner downtown in the cold in the winter of 2002 protesting the probable invasion of Iraq. Well, we invaded Iraq anyway. And my oldest son enlisted and went to war there.”

The Palestinian woman said, “I’m sorry.”

“Are you really?” I had pain in my voice.

“Yes, I am. Nobody should get sent to fight this country’s wars.”

I went on, “I got busted for civil disobedience. I went to jail in protests. I did all this. I did not get what I wanted. My point is that all you’re going to get here is maybe five seconds of a driver’s attention. You might get a few honks of a horn. Maybe one out of a hundred drivers will remember your demonstration and maybe write their congressman. Maybe one out of a thousand will get involved. We may all be long dead before there is peace. It might take three generations before things are better. What you are doing is an act of faith.”

The young woman replied, “It’s more than an act of faith. I owe this to my family, to my people. I am living here in the heart of the empire, with all these privileges, and this is the least I can do for the Palestinians.”

I had to respect her. She was sincere. She was standing up for her belief in justice. She was an honorable person.

I told the young woman that I had tutored the kids in a Syrian refugee family. I told he how a Tunisian friend took me to Iftar during Ramadan. She smiled about that.

An older woman came across the bridge. She walked slowly between us. The woman wore an olive drab sweatshirt that said, “Israel Defense Forces”. I had to smile. It was a subtle and silent counterprotest.

I told the young woman, “I donate money to SAMS, the Syrian American Medical Society. I wanted to help the people in Gaza without getting anybody killed.”

She nodded.

Then I said, “I also give money to Magen David Adom, the Israeli version of the Red Cross.”

She frowned. “You know, a lot of the money that is given to these humanitarian organizations flows directly to the Israeli government.”

I rolled my eyes. What she said was the mirror image of what people told me about Palestinian aide groups: “It all goes straight to Hamas.”

I asked her, “Would you prefer that I only donate to Palestinian groups?”

“YES.”

“Well, this is all I can do. I’m not willing to wave a flag.”

She shrugged.

She paused and said, “You’re an empathetic and thoughtful person. We come here a couple times a week. Come over and talk with us some more, if you like.”

“I don’t know if I will. I have to care for my grandson. You know, I believe that names have meaning. A person becomes their name. My name is Frank, and it means ‘Free’, although I don’t know if I match the name yet. What does your name mean?”

She said, “It means ‘A gift of God’.”

“And that you are…and so is everyone else.”

They got ready to leave.

I said to the woman, “Be blessed.”

She replied, “You too.”

Yesterday morning, I returned to the bridge. There was a different team with their flags and banners.

I saw a little blonde girl on her tricycle at the far end of the bridge. A woman, apparently her mother, was kneeling on the bridge drawing with chalk.

I looked down at what she was writing. She had written,

“LOVE, LOVE, PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE”

Below that she wrote,

“DEATH, DEATH TO THE IDF”

I have a friend whose son was in the IDF. I said to the woman,

“I don’t think that helps much.”

She didn’t bother to look up at me. She chanted slowly and softly,

“Death, death to the IDF.”

Then she said, “Oh, this does help.”

I just walked away.