#washington branch

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Branched Shanklet Close-Up

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I don’t think I’ve ever walked past this tree and not been tempted to take at least one picture of it...

Watershed Park

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mssrs “my team sucks” and “dstrome17”

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Looking through the moss-covered branches at a blue Pacific Northwest sky. #washingtonstate @traveltheworldinpeace-blog

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These are a lot of examples of something that "never happens".

By Anna Slatz March 28, 2024

A female inmate at the Women’s Correctional Center in Washington has come forward to reveal that she was sexually assaulted by a violent transgender sex offender who was transferred into the women’s prison in 2021.

For the purposes of this article, the female inmate will be referred to as “Mary” in order to protect her privacy and prevent her from experiencing institutional repercussions.

Reduxx was provided Mary’s testimony through letters she passed on to an internal source, who then relayed the information out of the institution on her behalf.

Mary explains that the incident occurred in April of 2022 after a transgender inmate named Christopher Williams asked to be moved into her cell. Williams had previously been serving his sentence at a male facility, and has a criminal history including sex offenses and violent assault.

“Christopher asked if he could move into my room because he said his current roommate was bullying him … I had no issues with him being a transgender. But then he would make weird comments like ‘it hurts when it fills up with blood,’ like he wanted me to know when he was having an erection.”

Mary says that she became increasingly uncomfortable with Williams’ behavior towards her, which had a near-constant sexual undertone. At one point, Williams appeared to become frustrated with Mary’s lack of interest in him, and started issuing disturbing threats of sexual violence.

“He said to me, ‘I don’t know why you don’t want [my dick]. Everyone else does.’ Then he started to follow me into the bathroom. And one time he told me, ‘Just so you know, I can get you wherever I want.'”

Mary says she was voicing her concerns to staff, but was “pretty much being ignored.”

By Genevieve Gluck March 27, 2024

A trans-identified male who sexually assaulted three female employees at a disability support organization, of which he was a representative, has been sentenced to six years in prison for his crimes. Kazumi Watanabe, 57, who claims to “have a woman’s heart,” was sentenced March 27 at the Osaka District Court’s Sakai branch.

Watanabe was first arrested on February 7, 2023, after he was accused of sexual assault by multiple female staff members. At the time of his arrest, Watanabe was the owner and head of Aoi Sodanshitsu, a public company that provided services for disabled or otherwise disadvantaged individuals and their families. The company had an agreement with the municipal government of Takaishi, Osaka Prefecture, which referred people with vulnerabilities to Aoi Sodanshitsu for assistance when needed. Watanabe and his staff would then provide supportive consultations and referrals to relevant welfare services.

According to the indictment, Watanabe sexually assaulted multiple female employees and patrons of the business in 2021, luring them into a vulnerable position under the guise of giving them a “massage.” In order to make his victims comfortable enough to trust him, he’d claim he was not sexually attracted to women and had the “heart of a woman.” After they allowed him to touch their bodies, he would sexually assault them. In at least one of the cases, Watanabe raped a victim by forcible penetration.

One woman, in her forties, was a client of the disabilities counseling project. As Watanabe began to massage her, groping her breasts and genitals, he made comments about touching her “pubic bone,” and suggested he could make her breasts bigger, and made her walk around in her underwear.

In its decision, the District Court stated: “The method of committing the crime under the pretense of a offering a massage by lying about his gender identity was cunning, and the fact that he repeated it clearly showed that he had sexual distortions. He also took advantage of his position. This is a strong condemnation.”

By Anna Slatz March 26, 2024

A trans activist drag queen is standing trial for 2019 charges related to the sexual abuse of a teen boy he met through gay hookup app Grindr. Dwight Evan Chisholm, also known as “Sno Wight,” was already a lifetime entrant of the sex offender registry when he began grooming the boy.

As previously reported by Reduxx, Chisolm was initially convicted in 2011 on charges of sexually assaulting a child and sentenced to three years in prison in Brown County.

Upon his release in 2015, Chisolm was listed in official records as homeless and was therefore ordered to report his whereabouts to authorities on a weekly basis. But two years later, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections lost contact with Chisolm, who had stopped making the mandatory weekly declarations of his location. For the following year and a half, authorities were unable to locate him. 

In December of 2018, the state’s District Attorney’s office charged Chisolm with failure to provide information as a sex offender and a judge signed a warrant for his arrest.

That's a lot of sexual violence from mem who claim to be women

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D.C. Public Library

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bit of a windstorm this morning

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Some PNW moss and fungus from March 3rd, of 2023. I took all these with my 5 month old in a wrap hanging on me. He was so interested in everything there was to look at! It was such a lovely walk.

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Branched Shanklet

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The Speaker of the House vote almost ended in fisticuffs between Florida rep Matt Gaetz (🤢) and Alabama rep Mike Rogers so the current state of US politics has less of a professional decorum vibe and more of an MTV’s Floribama Shore one.

So it’s safe to say that we should change the US national anthem to Entrance of the Gladiators or some other circus music because we are truly a country of clowns. 🤡

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Bibliomania Day

Stephen Blumberg loved books. It has been written that “it was his habit to read constantly through the night, cat-napping, walking, reading, dozing, waking, reading again, never fully sleeping.” Stephen Blumberg didn’t just love books, he was a bibliomaniac. Bibliomania is when someone has a strong love of books, where they collect them to the point of hoarding, and social relations and health may suffer. Symptoms may include acquiring more books than would be useful for any reason or getting many copies of the same book. The term was coined by John Ferriar, who published a poem in 1809 with the word as its title, for his friend Richard Heber, who had the condition. The term became used to describe obsessive book collectors. That same year, Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin published Bibliomania; or Book Madness. Bibliomania is different from bibliophilia, which is a healthy form of love for books.

On March 20, 1990, Stephen Blumberg’s bibliomania caught up with him. He was arrested for stealing more than 23,600 books (weighing 19 tons) from 268 libraries, universities, and museums. It had taken him over 20 years to steal them, and he got them from 45 states, Washington D.C., and Canada. After originally being thought to be valued at around $20 million, the value of the books was estimated at $5.3 million. He is known as the number one book thief in American history and became known as the Book Bandit. The books he stole, which included a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin among other rare books, became known as the “Blumberg Collection.”

An acquaintance of Blumberg, Kenneth J. Rhodes, turned him in for a $56,000 reward. During Blumberg’s trial, a psychiatric doctor let it be known that Blumberg had gone through psychiatric treatment as an adolescent. The defense claimed that Blumberg had stolen the books because of psychiatric issues beyond his control. According to the defense, Blumberg had thought he was saving the books from destruction by stealing them. He thought that the government was trying to keep them so that everyday people wouldn’t have them, and he thought he was acting as custodian of the books and doing something good. Because he was well-intentioned, he said he would have never sold any of the books for a profit, and hoped they would go to another person who would take good care of them after he was gone. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 71 months in prison and given a $200,000 fine, and insanity or psychology wasn’t factored into the decision. He was released on December 29, 1995, and has since been arrested for burglary multiple times.

On Bibliomania Day, we remember Stephen Blumberg and his remarkable feat of stealing over 23,600 books. Could you buy, steal, or gather together that many books? Probably not, but you aren’t the world’s most famous bibliomaniac. Perhaps on Bibliomania Day, you could at least try.

How to Observe

Celebrate the day by getting as many books as possible. It’s probably best not to steal them as Stephen Blumberg did, but that’s a decision you will have to make for yourself. You could start by getting some books about bibliomaniacs, such as A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books or The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. After that your options are limitless. As bibliomaniacs tend to collect any and all books, regardless of their value, you could just start trying to gather up any books you can find. But maybe it’s best to start by getting some of the best fiction or non-fiction books of all time.

Source

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A portion of Racehorse Falls, Deming, Washington. @dailyearth

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