Kids, Pressure & Seasoning

Pressure makes diamonds over millions of years. Of course, it also causes sealed containers to collapse catastrophically over a very short time period. Pick one.

Busy day at No. 3.

I was in the office really late to do some very time sensitive work regarding an adoption, with my buddy, B. On the one hand, the meticulousness with which that has to be done is draining. But the results are one of the few truly pleasant things that we do. No details forthcoming ever - this is the most confidential work that we do. B. and I have worked together, laughed together and cried together for 30 years now.

As I was leaving No. 3, I got a call from son Tim. He and a couple of woodsmen buddies are heading out tonight in response to a call from Tucker County 911, for people to join a search for an 18 year old very autistic boy who is lost around a place called Dolly Sods. (Sounds to me like the local authorities waited too damn long to do the "y'all come" call - the kid has been lost for 3 or 4 days, and if you assume a moving target, the search area expands geometrically very quickly. If the kid has wandered 5 miles, a low estimate, you have 80 square miles to search, and you have to assume that an autistic kid may not verbally respond to searchers.) Dolly Sods is geographically and geologically very interesting - fields packed tight with boulders which I assume are detritus from glaciation and those fields end at a long rim/cliff that is high over a valley, and other areas of high wetlands, all surrounded by very thick forest. On the one hand, I am not thrilled to know that my son will be out in a remote and rugged wilderness area on a moonless night doing the search. (At least, it'll be moonless by the time he gets there - you would be surprised how much the moon aids visibility in the woods.) On the other hand, I am very pleased that he is (1) willing to do that and (2) sufficiently woods-savvy that he can do this in reasonable safety. And, dammitalltohell, I feel really helpless that I am not now physically qualified to go, too - but bushwhacking over those mountains is out of the question, even at a reduced (though still high) weight. Christ, I love the woods. What a dipshit I am.

LaElu just told me that as Tim was leaving, she remembered a bunch of us leaving a dance for a rescue call years ago (it must have been early, because we were the only ones sober), and one of the EMS widows shouting to her husband as we left, "Go ahead and go, you civic-minded son-of-a-bitch!"

Another dipshit purposely ran over a police officer with an ATV last night. Now he's a defendant who needs a lawyer appointed to represent him. I talked to the Judge's office today, and passed on that appointment, then called the chief and told him I'd help the officer negotiate the nightmarish workers' comp system. The officer is a new guy, and he's hurt pretty badly.

Another late night tomorrow night - re a serious juvenile case involving a relativce of another lawyer - who is "co-counsel" so that he can attend otherwise secret proceedings and help out. Not all the way kosher, and the officers will complain, but it's a "fellowship" thing.

I've been contemplating my place in life lately. I was talking to JC tonight, wide-ranging talk. She's one of the few people willing to get in my face a little in a constructive and loving way. I was recounting how I've been talking more to people from some sort of philosophical or moral perspective. That's odd in a way, I'm not what you would call conventionally moral in all respects. But sometimes I feel like I have things to say to young people. This is really weird. I'm a young lawyer. I'm still learning. I'm also turning the philosophical handout I did (and posted here) for Tim's paramedic class last week into an article for the national journal, and JC reminded me of another area that needs addressed, the neglect of family. She's right. Am I somehow becoming some sort of sachem by default? Is it too incredibly egotistically to even think that way?

Another difficult day tomorrow. Some weeks, I feel like I'm staggering to the finish line (Friday evening), with another race starting the next day. No, make that most weeks. OK, all weeks.

Whine, whine, whine. I need to stfu, get some sleep, and hit it at sunrise.

Mizpah.

R