Roger's Meanderings

This blog in storage - direct all inquiries to www.No3EquityCourt.blogspot.com

2008-03-31T14:00:00.001-05:00

Notice from Roger "Elu's" attorneys

2008-03-30T20:50:00.002-05:00

30 March 2008

Dear Denizens of Abookshelf2.org:

We have the honor to represent Mr. Roger LNU, commonly referred to as “Elu,” who has been a part of the general Shelf Community since November 1997.

Mr. LNU has asked that we contact you to inform you of significant developments in his life. Owing to the death of his favorite Aunt, Ms. Myrtle LNU (who died recently at age 107 from a water-skiing accident on Lake Titicaca), Mr. LNU has inherited a substantial estate, including controlling interest in the Susquehanna Hat Company, arrable acreage, standing timber, several feldspar mines, a boomerang manufacturer and the leading tallow distributor of Namibia. Mr. LNU’s new-found responsibilities require that he embark on a Grand Tour of the world to manage this estate in the public interest. At Mr. LNU’s request, the undersigned has been appointed trustee of the Elu Trust, which has been established to establish a group home for recovering robbers, roues, rap “artists”, Republicans and other undesirables whose vocations begin with the letter “R”, and also provides for the care of abused squirrels.

Earlier this evening, Mr. LNU set off from the Port of Baltimore aboard a tramp freighter. Rest assured that he will not remain idle, but rather will act as Assistant Navigator, being one of the last accomplished practitioners of the science of Dead Reckoning. Indeed, Mr. LNU eschews the use of LORAN, GPS or any other instruments of navigation, save his great-grandfather’s sextant, a compass and a wind-up chronometer. As the freighter cleared the harbor, Mr. Elu tipped his Orioles cap at Camden Yard, and set off into the wide world with a song in his heart.

The “blog” commonly known as “Roger’s Meanderings” will necessarily be suspended for the indefinite future. A copy of this letter will be the final post placed thereon. Any news or opinions from or about “Elu” may be found at the blog of this firm, www.No3EquityCourt.blogspot.com. By copy of this letter to Sonya “Treesquish,” we are requesting that a link be placed at abookshelf2.org for easy access to that blog by anyone who retains any interest in Elu.

With continued good wishes, we remain,

Curry & Swisher, pllc
Attorneys and Barristers-at-law
Roger D. Curry, Partner
No. 3 Equity Court, the Outer Temple
Fairmont, by the grace of God, West Virginia

The start of Holy Week - The Via Dolorosa

2008-03-18T10:43:00.002-05:00

Pastor Josh sang an absolutely haunting song, The Via Dolorosa, at the end of the Palm Sunday service. Here are the lyrics:
.
.
Down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem that day
The soldiers tried to clear the narrow street
But the crowd pressed in to see
The Man condemned to die on Calvary.
.
He was bleeding from a beating,
there were stripes upon His back
And He wore a crown of thorns upon His head
And He bore with every step
The scorn of those who cried out for His death.
.
Down the Via Dolorosa called the way of suffering
Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King,
But He chose to walk that road out of
His love for you and me.
Down the Via Dolorosa, all the way to Calvary.
.
Por la Via Dolorosa, triste dia en Jerusalem
Los saldados le abrian paso a Jesus
Mas la gente se acercaba
Para ver al que llevaba aquella cruz.
.
Por la Via Dolorosa, que es la via del dolor
Como oveja vino Cristo, Rey, Senor Y fue
El quien quiso ir por su amor por ti y por mi
Por la Via Dolorosa al Calvario y a morir
The blood that would cleanse the souls of all men
Made its way to the heart of Jerusalem.
.
Down the Via Dolorosa called the way of suffering
Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King
But He chose to walk that road
out of His love for you and me
Down the Via Dolorosa, all the way to Calvary.
.
.
I think that it translates as The Way of Sorrow (Suffering?).
.
I am annoyed at the false image that we so-called Progressives are somehow separated from God. And also at the hesitation of some to refrain from mentioning God, Christ, eternity or what-not, for fear of offending a Muslim/Jew/Buddhist/atheist/whatever. The First Amendment applies to us, too - a simple statement of faith is not pushing a religion on anyone, and it's neither establishing a religion nor "preventing the free exercise thereof."
.
People, READ THE MEMO: WE ARE ALL IN THIS LIFE TOGETHER.
.
Keep your powder dry. Pippa passes.
.
R

True and fantasy headlines I'd like to see - in the old-fashioned seriatim style:

2008-03-17T20:00:00.002-05:00

In keeping with my curmudgeonly pique this evening, I offer the following which are either (1) true or (2) I honestly wish they were true. Perhaps this will be a continuing feature. Perhaps it's just me blowing cold flame. Coincidence? I think not.

MILLIONS OF STUDENTS SOBER, STUDYING, WORKING
- Student leaders: " 'Everybody does it,' my ass!"
- Book purchasing soars
- Take time for church, volunteer work
- Youth recognize the elderly as having had hard & honest lives
- News execs no longer say "If it bleeds, it leads."

BOTTLED WATER INDUSTRY COLLAPSES
- Surgeon General: "What kind of moron would buy it?"
- States continue to regulate safe tap water.
- Coke, Pepsi Board Members hurl selves from Midwest water towers.
- God promises: Rains will continue until further notice.
- President of France: "Damn, you finally figured out that Perrier tastes like bubbly piss."

BRITNEY ONLY ONE OF A MILLION
- Surgeon General: "There are at least a million screwed up young women out there."
- Major healthcare need finally recognized.
- Insurance executives hurl selves from Midwest water towers
- Microsoft offerring update to Word; "Britney" will be auto-deleted from the news.

SMOKERS ABANDON LAWSUITS
- Surgeon General: "About time - what morons!"
- Plaintiffs decide to accept personal responsibility.

"COP KILLER" BULLETS BANNED
- Made to penetrate body armor
- Have been available by mail order
- Wayne LaPierre: "About time. What the hell were we thinking?"

INSURANCE COMPANIES TO OFFER FAIR SETTLEMENTS
- Companies pledge to end lying and abuse
- Trial lawyers fail to hurl selves from Midwest water towers; too many people already there.
- Gecko, Guy with Deep Voice, Good Neighbor Agent, "Cave Men" all exposed as frauds.

CONGRESS ENACTS MINIMUM LIVING WAGE
- Two working parents to be able to live, raise children
- Chamber of Commerce admits that small business will prosper for a change
- Union bosses avoid the Midwest

PARENTS UNITE, BECOME GOOD EXAMPLES
- No longer preach abstinence of alcohol and get wasted on weekends.
- Apologize for acting like "buddies" rather than parents.
- Apologize to grandparents who had to step in to raise grandchildren

Keep your powder dry. Pippa passes.

R

911 pique

2008-03-12T10:28:00.002-05:00

Folks, at least 100 people in Elu County are responsible for building our modern emergency response system, 911 plus all of the various departments. I am proud to have been one (and only one) of them. At least 100 people work somewhere in the system every day. You call, you get an answer in seconds from someone trained to handle the call.

Too many people either do not call 911 at all, or delay calling because they "don't want to inconvenience" the responders, or "aren't sure that the rescue squad [etc.] is absolutely necessary," or "don't want to make a fuss that the neighbors see."I cannot tell you how many thousands of hours, tens of thousands of hours, has gone into the 911/fire/rescue/police system in every county. Your tax bucks, fire fees, phone surcharges, insurance, etc., pay for the great majority of this whether you use it or not.

Consider being in a school building, standing by a fire alarm. You look down the hallway, and see smoke coming from under a doorway. What do you do?

a - Wait for more smoke so you're SURE there's a fire.

b - Go down, open the door (and possibly give a fire a blast of air that will get 'er going good).

c - Nothing - there's no flame visible.

d - Pull the fire alarm.

Answer: Well, it's obvious.

It is so sad for people in the system to hear about problems or tragedies which could have been lessened if only people had called 911. If your relative goes into cardiac arrest in your car as you are driving him/her to the hospital, there is NOTHING that you can do. My dear friend A. James Manchin (google him, he was a character and a wonderful guy) screwed around for over an hour when he started having a heart attack. He lived five miles from a manned rescue squad station, but no one called until he went into cardiac arrest. Would a 911 call have saved him? I have no idea. But it DEFINITELY would have given him a greater chance. Another quick example: A couple of weeks ago, my mom had a minor fall, and her oxygen line got disconnected. She couldn't get it reconnected. Fortunately, someone was home at our house to go over and help get the line reconnected. But if there had been nobody available, Mom would have been perfectly justified to call 911 and explain the problem. They prioritize calls, so if you have something (relatively) minor, someone else's need will not be met with a delay. They would have put the call out to the rescue squad or fire department (whoever was available in station or driving around) as a "public service" call. The fire departments and rescue squads don't mind public service calls. That's part of what they are there for.

Remember to thank these people. Send a tray of rigatoni from Muriale's to your local station unexpectedly. If there is a station close to your church, invite the folks there to come to special services, and assure them that you'll leave a space right out front to park the engine.

READ THE MEMO, PEOPLE: WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

Keep your powder dry. Pippa passes.

R

Relevance at the Barber; Jesus Meets Bernard Goetz and They Become Buds; and Other Fables

2008-03-02T20:44:00.000-05:00

Friday, I was running around, going to the Courthouse, etc., and drove past the barber shop. You can tell what it is by the name of the establishment: “Barber Shop.” Simple. Direct. Informative. Not unduly flashy. My kind of place. Sometimes I wonder if I’m caught in sort of time displacement, and this place is the direct incarnation of Floyd-the-Barber in Mayberry. (Those over whose heads that cultural reference has passed are forgiven, so long as you forgive this humble scribe for his profound indifference to contemporary cultural “icons.”) Also, I’m reading a rather quirky novel at the moment by Wendell Berry, The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself. Wordy title, quirky book, and I’m quite enjoying it. (The title is a touch of Rocky & Bullwinkle. I like Rocky & Bullwinkle.) Anyway, the Barber Shop is an endless inspiration for my meanderings. I parked right in front of the door, went in, and in my own quirky tradition wished a quiet “God bless all here” to the company. I do that in bars, too. At least, I think I probably still do, but it’s been rather a long time since I’ve been in a bar. There were several fellows in there, one of whom was holding a rifle. Now, I don’t know where that would be a common sight. Certainly, here in Our Town, it isn’t UNcommon. This was a nice little rifle, a .22 caliber, with some sort of curious sort of semi-automatic action that ejected spent brass without bringing another round into the chamber. Why anyone would invent such a thing is beyond me, but we live in the age of Transformers Toys, Mighty Putty, KaBoom and other stuff hawked by Billy Mays which makes about as much sense. It was an ordinary little rifle, and he passed it around, and while it’s ordinary, it’s always nice to see a well-made firearm. One of the fellows there was quite old, and talked about having “qualified” on an ‘03 Springfield, meaning that he was in the military a long, long time ago. Another fellow came in with his dog (not on a leash, quite a docile animal) and we proceeded to talk about dogs for a while. In my own continuing saga of idiosyncratic behavior, I got my already short hair cut to the length that is popular amongst law enforcement. I wonder why - I still have most of my hair follicles, and it’s mostly salt with some pepper, and I’ve kept it mostly long over the years. In the chair, five minutes, eleven bucks, and I’m gone. EluMama and I did a bit of furniture shopping, and I went back here to No. 3 and spent a quiet evening dictating stuff.

Church as usual Sunday morning, and quite enjoyable. As we were filing out, I asked Pastor Josh if he’d like to go with Bro. Dave and I to the Gun Show in the afternoon, for culture, commerce and politics. I think Josh was a tad taken aback - maybe he’d never been invited to a gun show? Well, the duality of a morning of Christian love with an afternoon of destructive devices was positively irresistable.

Yes, “destructive devices.” Firearms are weapons. The so-called sporting uses are either (1) violent or (2) to develop finer skills for the user to be violent in the future. They are lawfully used for hunting. That’s violent. I choose not to hunt, but I don’t condemn those who do. First, people close to me hunt and they are fine folks, and second, the meat in the meager meals I have didn’t come from animals who got depressed and committed suicide. Target practice is seldom a free-standing sport, and those who are serious about it are few and far between. It is not divorced from violence. Anything you do with a pistol is even more steeped in violence. Pistols are not useful for anything but to kill things, mostly people. Practicing with a pistol is to improve one’s skill, both speed and accuracy. Carrying a pistol is not done for sporting purposes. Carrying a pistol concealed is not sporting in any sense of the term, it is done so that one can employ deadly force unexpectedly when it is warranted. As long at the gun-loving community hides behind the “sporting myth,” we cannot have a genuine conversation about violence in our society and the presence of seriously bad actors who present situations where a violent/deadly response is legally (and morally?) justified. And that discussion needs to take place in the absence of loads of macho bullshit where people exaggerate the dangers in the world and their own willingness to pull a weapon and in the absence of denials that the bad actors are out there. Captain Reality, where are you?

Anyway, Dave picked me up at No. 3, and off we went to the local armory. Part of the building is secured and I presume that military stuff is kept there. The rest is a big open space used for basketball games, proms, and other public events. At the door, there were prominent signs: “Unload Your Weapons. ALL of them. This means you!” The entrance resembled the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with lots of people slapping for holsters hidden all over to pull pistols, remove magazines and clear the weapons. Dave was not tooled up, which I commented was a poor choice. Walking unarmed into a public place where there are lots of firearms and hundreds of people, one or more of whom SURELY believes that he screwed them in a divorce, just doesn’t seem to me to be very on-the-ball. He was amused by my opinion. He and I toured around, chatting with people we knew, and he was handing out campaign brochures. I’d rather go to a gun show than a hooker bazaar, because I’m much more likely to buy something. I was sort of looking for a particular type of firearm, but when I found one, it was (1) too damn small and (2) too damn expensive. However, the local Guard unit was running some sort of raffle for the benefit of the troops, and that bled a bit of cash, without any hesitation. The sergeants who were selling the tickets were uniformed, and I idly wonder if that’s kosher in the military – not that I mind, quite the reverse, anybody who would object to that is wasting their time with trivia. As we talked with them, one of the sergeants thanked us (Dave ponied up a good bit of cash, too) and commented that people who support the troops also should be supporting the war. Well, this was a nice guy, and it was neither the time nor the place for a political debate, so I moved on. Right next to the Guard table was a table with three guys I didn’t know, but a Shrine Fez on the table. One of them saw Fred’s ring, and asked loudly how good a brother I was. This was all in fun, but also an obvious and straight-forward way to put the squeeze on me for more cash. Being a good sport, I simply asked how much seeing the brothers was going to cost me. Twenty bucks, it turns out, but for a pretty good raffle, something called a “gun club.” The idea of a gun club is that the sponsors arrange with a FFL holder (Clank, dealers must be licensed in the U.S.) to buy a bunch of guns, usually rifles and shotguns, maybe 20 or 30. Then, once a week for several months, they draw a ticket and give away the next gun on the list. Some of them are ordinary, and some of them are nice, and they are a good fundraiser around here. (They used to be a better fundraiser when they were illegal. Wes Ruby, the patron of Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, who was a friend of my Dad’s, made the Boy Scout Council a LOT of money in the 60's with gun clubs.) I was amused at one table where a fellow had some .22's with synthetic stocks. There was a matched pair of Dale Earnhardt, Sr. and Jr., rifles, and one small child-sized rifle that was no kidding pink. I thought that was a bit over the top. And let’s see - I found a handmade leather “scabbard” for the new cell phone I just got – The Blackberry finally pissed me off to the point that I got rid of it. And one vendor had a table of nice knives, including some American-made Buck knives, so naturally I HAD to buy one. (See some months ago my tirade on Buck moving production to China, where slave-labor reduces costs.) I’m honestly curious about the cultural accomodation made for implements of violence elsewhere. Perhaps the culture I’m doused in is unusual. I don’t have a context for comparison. Oh, one thing that does piss me off about gun shows is the presence of so-called “militaria,” usually Nazi shit like emblems, knives and so forth. Were I immensely wealthy, I would do the same thing some guy in Illinois did with John Wayne Gacy’s paintings, bought them all up and burned them publicly.

There was a sign posted behind one table that speaks to the extremism of gun people: “Let Gun Confiscation begin in West Virginia – It won’t take them near so long to get it out of their system.” Sigh. So many people equate regulation with confiscation.

One vendor (the one with the cell phone scabbards) was selling very nice handmade leather “possibles bags.” I wish those were stylishly permitted, it would make life a little easier. Sometimes, I feel like I’m supposed to be Batman or something with all of the gear I honestly need to carry on my belt or in my pockets.

It was kinda cool to be able to park far away from the armory and “glide” through crowds in the aisles. I have to internalize this stuff.

What is this fascination with the American Idol contestants, and how they emotionally react to winning, losing, and so forth? Why do we really care what the “judges’” opinions are? These are young people who sing well. Part of that is a gift from God. Part of it is that most of them have worked hard to develop that gift. But this is all a part of the bread-and-circuses that distracts people from taking some responsibility, facing the works of Captain Reality, and getting the odd satisfaction that, if they cannot deeply care about anything that matters, they can always form a hazy, internal attachment to the lives of people they don’t know. This, to me, is just another variation on the theme of a “spectator society,” where we are unwilling to interact with real humans, particularly when it involves any sort of unpleasantness. It’s also emblematic of the “celebrity society,” where we strangely care about who Oprah, yadda, yadda, yadda, want us to vote for. Why do we favor these “gifts”? There are so many others in society who have gifts that they have developed and so many, many others who have overcome obstacles to develop skills or knowledge that are actually useful. A young man at the church [whose father is a good friend, whose grandfather was a good friend and mentor (those who do not like that word, tough), and whose great-grandfather I knew slightly] has the gift of an ear for music and hands that will play a musical keyboard WELL, and he has spent LOTS of time developing that, rather more I would think than your average singer.

Hmmm - perhaps there is a post on what I consider useless people coming. Let’s see, number one and two would be astrologers and psychics.

Pastor Josh says that he intends to link my blog to his “Pastor’s Blog,” and I have warned him that the comments here are often somewhat edgy at times. Always honest, though. Well, at least indifferently so.

One good habit I have (at least I think it’s good) is that there is always a memo book in my pocket to keep notes. At some point in the service this morning, the idea for this “meditation” to do on Good Friday gelled in my head, and I was able to write it down. Now I need to get it translated into English on the keyboard. Perhaps I’ll turn it into several theses and post them on the door of the church. Nah, already been done.

Pippa passes.

Keep your powder dry.

R

Apocalypse now

2008-02-28T20:20:00.000-05:00

Lack of desire hasn't been the reason for a post-less week -- it's been frantic 'round No. 3, and I've brought in an endloader to shovel off my tragic desk. OK, actually, Tammy & Kathy are pitching in, and that's every bit as good as an endloader.

Pastor Josh has started a "pastor's blog" for the church - excellent idea, I believe. I need a transparent identity to post comments - there is an elder named Roger there - Perhaps I'll be Roger-the-Heretic - you know, the one who they call on for the rebuttal after a particularly moving service, and have a congregational vote to either expel or burn at the stake. Actually, I've taken on giving one of many "meditations" about the words of Jesus on the cross. I'm curious - will Josh ask me for my thoughts in advance, or live with the nervousness of open heresy? I confess, I like watching people puzzle over my peculiarities. In a Bible study last night, there was a discussion of apocalyptic stuff - with the opinion offered that the current age isn't very apocalyptic. How's that again? You don't need to warp current events into Daniel, Revelation, Ezekiel and Nostradamus to detect oncoming disruption. We are truly in sight of the end of petroleum. When some people now living are old, they will NOT be driving gasoline powered vehicles. We have the end of coal & gas visible in the distance. There are still some tens of thousands of nuclear warheads which are still assembled and lots of fissile material (much of it missing) from which other warheads may be assembled. There is a growing disruptive influence in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and much of Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as hot spots everywhere else. The MTV generation thinks that privation is having the cheap champagne with dinner, and the growing desperate poor have no voice. Climate change is a fact, and the skeptics are flat-earthers. Gresham's law lives. So, perhaps Heaven will not open and from out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword and all of that, but this is not a stable or safe time.

Politics is heating up locally. I think that Bro. Dave understands basically where I am coming from, that to me, politics is a cross between science and religion, and that sometimes Captain Reality says things that you don't want to hear. Partner Amy is only now figuring that out. I have told them both, as well as several other candidates, my views of exactly how to change the current trends. In so doing, they MUST be the MFIC of their respective campaigns, and must make the damn choices. They can listen to all sorts of advice, some of which will be well-intended but just wrong and the rest of which will be from people blowing sunshine up their kilts hoping that if they win, those folks will have some unfair advantage or influence. Sometimes, I think that Second Father Jim and I are the only trustworthy ones in the bunch, mainly because we don't have personal political ambitions or desire for glory. At least political glory locally.

Today is LaElu's birthday, and she had a snow day, which she enjoyed. It's also Bro. Dave's birthday (he's a year younger), and I think he spent his day grouse hunting and probably freezing his ass off. I've snagged a couple of books out of the endless book box for Dave. I think that his wife has always thought me to be a bad influence, an example of measured indolence, strategic incompetence and dangerous doctrine. (Actually, she is a VERY sweet lady.)

Oh, another part of that Bible study was the image of light vs. darkness. That doesn't translate well to me. I have always loved the night. Working midnight shift was a special time. An acquaintance of mine, one of the national leaders in EMS, the late Jim Page, wrote a book of essays on EMS entitled "The Magic of 3 AM." He was right. And night in the woods is even more magical. The only unusually acute physical sense I have is night vision, and it is positively a joy to walk silently at night.

I've five reviews to write for the canon, and honestly haven't had the time even block more than two of them out.

Down 185 solid. The silver band I bought as a sort of wedding band has gotten too big for my ring finger.

Keep your powder dry.

Pippa passes.

R

A little hat symbol, real poverty, a veteran, and miscellaneous thoughts.

2008-02-21T21:27:00.002-05:00

I mark all my books these days. LaElu reminded me how my dad marked those that he had read with a little hat symbol. I wonder where that came from?

In local Municipal Court Thursday, I was sitting waiting on a case, and a lady was trying to plead guilty to driving on a suspended license and no insurance and the Judge was concerned but was letting her do it. She kept adding facts about her life - she lives way the hell up a hollow on land owned by her family, and there are three children from 15 down to 9 in the house. Her income is $262 per month, plus food stamps. The Judge was in the process of fining her $800. Honestly, I tried to close my heart, Lord knows I'm swamped already with pro bono shit, but there was a room full of lawyers who didn't even quit quietly gossiping about shit, I got mad, and intervened in such respectful tones as I could, took her on as a client, withdrew the plea, and now will see if I can assist any good things (or at least less-than-totally-miserable things) happening in her life. My point is NOT that I'm a hale and hearty fellow, I'm not. I probably spend more money a month on books that their family receives. The fact that people live like that and are ground up in the legal machinery is a blot on our society. And it is easy to say that she ought to get her ass to work, etc., but simply telling her to do that does no good at all. She needs a boost -- transportation, heating (she's 50 and looks 70, and cuts firewood to heat the house poorly). I asked her how in the hell she would have paid that fine, and she said that she would have to have sold her last calf, but didn't want to, because she has enough pasture that the calf will grow pretty much on his own, and in a year or so, he will represent a big part of the family's food supply for several months. What a hell of a choice. And I do not for one minute think that Obama, Hillary, or Mahatma Gandhi are going to swoop in and make a lot of difference in her life.

This morning, Bro. Dave & I had coffee in the café across from the Courthouse. Dave left for Court, and I remained to finish my coffee and do some notes in my notebook in the quiet. A fellow came in, somewhat grizzled African-American guy, got his coffee and sat down at a nearby table. I noticed one of the few military symbols I recognize, an airborne insignia, on his ball cap and I commented that he obviously had been there and back again. He was somewhat surprised that a non-military guy would recognize that, and we chatted a few minutes. He said that something was on his mind today, he was remembering a "fire-fight" in Vietnam where his buddy earned a posthumous Medal of Honor by covering a grenade with his body. This gentleman credited that with saving his life. I did a quick search when I got back to No. 3, and found a brief account:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_L._Olive%2C_III

Mr. Olive was among the first to "win" that medal in the war. Anyway, I had to get back to No. 3, so I asked if this fellow if I could shake his hand, we did so, he gave me a "God bless," and I left. What’s my point? I’m not sure. Sometimes I get a little ticked off at our local newspaper. In the obits, if the deceased has served in the military at all, s/he has a little flag symbol put on the obit. There have been lots of DAMN fine people, very patriotic people who didn’t happen to put on that uniform who have died without that honor, and others whose service was military, but tame and peaceful (and, in the case of one fellow I just dealt with, thoroughly dishonorable). But it’s a good thing to be reminded that there are and were people like Mr. Olive and this fellow I met this morning who really, really sacrificed a lot for their country. Hokey? I can live with that.

I received an email this morning from my brother (both genetic and Masonic) who visits here and had some comments about my nascent study of Paul’s writings, and I appreciated that. I’m finding that this area is quite complex, and worthy of being called scholarship. The way Pastor Josh is going about it I appreciate. He does not have a "syllabus," which to me is a checklist to fill out, not a system of study, which reminds me of the line out of a Simon & Garfunkel song, ". . . and we note our place with bookmarkers, to measure what we’ve lost." Filing out that checklist may require some learning, but it ain’t scholarship.

I went to a political fundraiser for an extraordinarily conservative justice of our Supreme Court tonight. Our philosophies are remarkably different, but he is taking absolutely outrageous damage from the left which is so morally corrupt that it offends the HELL out of me. I will not be a rubber stamp or knee jerk liberal. Perhaps that's why I piss EVERYONE off now and then.

Yesterday, I was in a small town in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia for a municipal court hearing. This was appalling. I know the judge, and he’s a nice and easy going fellow. I didn’t know the city attorney, but didn’t need to, because in the 20 hearings that went before ours, the city attorney didn’t say ONE SINGLE WORD. Poker players may be familiar with the term "cold deck." This one had icicles hanging off of it. The Judge negotiated the pleas and essentially coerced people to pay big fines in exchange for no points on their driver’s licenses. The Judge and the police present were joking, obviously pleased with the cash cow that the Court gives this City. And they would be deeply offended at my conclusion that this is totally legally and morally corrupt. But it is.

Heard an ad on TV last evening for a "Girls Gone Wild" video. Essentially, someone films drunken college girls flashing & stripping. And they sell this shit. Hey, I like women as well as the next guy, but this stuff is demeaning. We are teaching boys & young men that girls & women are only talking life-support systems for breasts, vaginas, etc. Is it any wonder that they conclude that from society’s context?

Heard a blurb on the news about last night’s eclipse, that it would be good "if the weather cooperates." Sloppy language. The eclipse was going to happen, celestial mechanics mandated that.

I listen to tapes/CD’s in the car on trips. On one I listened to yesterday, the narrator related how "wilderness is therapy." That speaks to me.

I'm going home. Pippa passes.

R

Eclipse

2008-02-20T21:18:00.000-05:00

As I write this, I'm popping outside frequently to watch the developing lunar eclipse, which should reach totality around 10 PM Eastern time. LaElu's house is on top of a ridge (1140 feet, per GPS), and I wonder who has watched eclipses in the past from this ridge, and what they thought. It's embarassing, but I don't know as I sit here what sort of solar system arrangement that early native Americans pictured -- probably heliocentric, but I'm not sure. What would such people make of the curved darkness crossing the full moon?

Is this musing mysticism or genuine and justified human wonder? Honestly, I don't know. (Wait a minute - justified to whom? Who do I need to justify this sense of wonder to?)

Pippa passes.

R

Country duality through the lexicon lens

2008-02-19T20:50:00.008-05:00

I just got home from a very busy day. In the late afternoon, it included running up the Interstate to Morgantown to the weight loss clinic for medical stuff and a class. At the end of the class, Torri, a Master's level educator/counselor, asked what I had gotten out of class. Ever the enfant terrible, I responded with total candor, I got a set of notes for a kickin' discussion of where Captain Reality meets Duality. (My wryness there usually is directed at my own silly past.)

Do I play with words? I'm not sure. Certainly, I play with ideas, and we have this clumsy device called language with which to do so. I find when I'm talking to various intimates that we argue a while and then figure out that we are really using different words to express very similar thoughts. The words that drop-started my thoughts (drop-started? Is that reference understandable? I know a hell of a joke where that's the punchline, but you need to know timber and EMS to get it. That's a touch esoteric.) (Don't these parenthetical phrases in the middle of a damn sentence get distracting?) was the idea of "momentum" for weight loss. That is, if one is doing well, does that give one "momentum" which makes it easier to continue tomorrow and the day after without problems? Well, we talk about momentum all the time. If a politician or a football team is behind but gaining, we say that they have momentum, meaning that their trend to increase their share or points will continue and surpass their competition. Is that a valid concept or is it simply the result of random grouping of events? In any event, "momentum" when applied to future behavior is a null concept to me. With respect to weight loss, you make a conscious decision when you get started every morning, and you probably will have "opportunities" (i.e., temptations) to revisit that decision occasionally throughout the day. To be successful, you must make a positive decision nearly all the time. (Here, maybe my opinion of momentum falters -- does screwing up once make it easier to do in the future? I think so. It's illogical, but I still think so.) But making a positive decision yesterday does NOT cause me to make a positive decision today -- I revisit it anew. Every damn day, EACH of us confronts what is, to us, a metaphorical demon. Like Room 101 from Orwell's 1984, that demon is different for each of us. For Friend JC, it's alarm systems. For a former partner, it's snakes. For some, it's ethanol. For me, it's fucking doughnuts. Every day, we have the opportunity to bring fear and failure into our lives. Is that fair? Is that healthy? By avoiding the demon or fighting the demon or ignoring the demon (the latter what I try with mixed success to do), do we build up "momentum"? Does it exist in the social or mental world in the same manner it exists in the physical world? I wonder - Maybe we NEED to believe in momentum, like some say that we need a "Higher Power."

And if we have "momentum," then we have to do better and better ("Every day in every way, I become better and better."), and we will NEVER get to the point of being good enough. When is it OK to "just keep on keeping on"? The idea of needing constantly increasing goals sets us up for certain failure at some point. We are people. We have finite capacities. Maybe we have capacities far above what we actually use (I certainly buy that), but at some point they are finite. Somebody can high jump 7 or 8 feet these days. (I can't.) They aren't going to get to, say, 12 feet with the current development of our species. There is a finite limit. That certainly applies to weight loss. Your calorie intake can go lower and lower - until it reaches zero, then you cannot do "better". Theoretically, your physical activity calories can keep increasing, but that too is subject to some finite limits. And yet we are urged ALWAYS to have "our reach exceed our grasp," according to Robert Browning. When is what we do "enough"? When do we get to go to bed and say, "Hey, I did great today, I did GOOD ENOUGH." I'm not the world's best at anything. Likely, neither are you. We don't need to be. All we need to be is the best at being US.

Everything in our society ends up a competition. Take the frisbee for example. It's a simple plastic disc that one throws with a spinning motion which makes it an airfoil that is spin-stabilized, so it goes slowly through the air and goes a longer distance and stays up in the air longer than we can make it do if we throw the same weight if it were not a spin-stabilized airfoil. It's great, if you haven't tried it, you need to. You get to be outdoors. You can play with your dog. The nicest dogs I ever met were my former partner's, Libby the German shorthair pointer, and Friend JC's Bucky the Dalmation, both of whom LOVED to play frisbee with me or anybody else they could con into a game. It's formless. There are no rules, there is just throwing and chasing and fun and petting the dog and taking a break for water or a (lite) beer and then playing some more. Then, along comes "Frisbee Competitions." Who can throw the frisbee the farthest or most accurately, and keep the dogs off the "field of play," because they'll interfere with the serious competition, and interfere with determining who is the ONE person who "wins," and who the myriad "losers" are. Must EVERYTHING be a zero sum game? Are we not permitted to just have fun, to be happy to be the best at being US?

Read the label, it says right there (in the book of Deuteronomy?) that life IS duality, yin and yang, good and evil, boy and girl, black and white, blah, blah, blah. DUALITY IS A SHAM. It's a concept which provides refuge for the intellectually weak or lazy, the unscientific, the morally fearful, and for all those many people who are, to a greater or lesser degree, scared to death of Captain Reality. They are afraid of ANYTHING except that which has a high-contrast weltanschaunge. They lose soooo much. They are unable to appreciate the subtlety of a sunset or the uncertainty of the wind, they appreciate Norman Rockwell (so do I) but not Monet. When I was in school, LaElu and I lived in an old, old mansion that was divided into apartments. We had the unit on the side by the street, with the huge old porch. My law school buddies and I used to love to sit on the porch in the warm weather and drink cheap wine (Nectarose was my favorite, haven't seen it for years) and hassle the drug dealers across the street. Nearly every night, a fellow from the neighborhood took a walk. He would bundle up warmly even in warm weather, and walk with a measured step and pointed a flashlight 3 feet in front of him the whole way. He missed the bats and squirrels and drunken law students, and his world consisted of a pool of light in front of him and "here there be dragons" everywhere else.

Nothing is yin or yang. Nothing is good or evil, in the moral world, the philosophical world or the physical world. The vacuum of deep space is only vacuum relative to high density places like suns and planets and atmospheres -- there is approximately one molecule of Hydrogen per cubic meter of "space." We have widely accepted beliefs. Some of those are relatively precise. The accelleration due to gravity on Earth ("G") is approximately 9.8 meters per second squared. But G is just a little different on Mt. Everest than it is in Death Valley. As happy as we would be with absolutes in any area of thought, there aren't any. Are there moral absolutes? OK, let's try one. It is a bad thing to physically damage people. Wait a minute, we arm police officers. We expect them (rarely) to harm others. But, we say, that's OK, there is an EXCEPTION. Absolutes have no exceptions. Where there is an exception, there is no absolute. Abortion. Capital punishment. Is it good or bad to terminate what is or will be a human life? Oddly, people who say yes to either one say no to the other. Exceptions, not absolutes, rule us. I oppose capital punishment. I have met 2 individuals in my life who I would honestly like to see executed. (Would I do it personally, or is that an exception, too?) (Oh, only one of them is legally eligible for the death penalty.) We watch The Godfather (several Academy Awards, constantly replays on AMC), and we root for the Corleone family, which pimps, runs gambling, extorts money from honest people, kills their enemies in Italian restaurants, but oh, they are a FAMILY and they hang together, and wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of closeness, even if a family member or two gets whacked at times. We all fear the "Dark Angel," old Thanatos, the spectre of Death, s/he is BAD. Wait a minute, why do we then speak of death releasing someone from great pain as "God's mercy." Would God do something bad? We talk about the weather: Is it GOOD or BAD today? Must it be one or the other? And what is "good" weather? Sunshine? What if you are fair-skinned? Warmth? What if you like to ski? (What slides down hills: Avalanches and fools.) Relative, all relative. We pooh-pooh old Sherlock Holmes, for he used "merely" deductive logic, while according to one of the unexpectedly wise writers of the last century, Robert A. Heinlein, inductive logic is far better because it "can produce new truths." Bushwah. There is no inductive, there is no deductive. We find facts, we develop hypotheses, we call on past hypotheses and proofs, we find more facts, we make conclusions and if we are smart, we will always be willing to revisit those conclusions. (My executing the two who I think deserve it, though, would make revisiting that conclusion a tad tardy.) Why must we describe everything and have a totally consistent world view or FAIL? Why is it a bad thing that Special Relativity and General Relativity aren't consistent for the present? Perhaps it just means we haven't gotten there yet. Perhaps it means that the Universe is not simply stranger than we DO imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine.

Religion, we find absolutes there. I think. Oddly enough (and the better you know me, the odder it seems), we are studying the letters of Paul at Bible study at the church. Hey, THERE is duality, THERE is yin and yang. Wives, SUBMIT to your husbands, all of you, it doesn't matter is your husband is a drunken, shiftless idiot. (Pastor Josh may visit here at times - hey, Josh, feel free to post a dissent in the comments, I love dissent.)

All is relative. But we don't take that to reductio ad absurdum, where there the lack of a yin-yang duality becomes a moral homogeneity. There is often an agreed-upon PREPONDERANCE of dual thought, and I feel just fine believing that and acting on it in such a way as to impose it on others. It IS "bad" to hurt people, and the exceptions (e.g., self-defense) make sense to us as a whole. The edges are not clear, that's where the moral-certainty crowd gets confused, but the trends are there. Polluting the Earth - bad, to most of us. A certain discreet segment of society disagrees. I think they are nuts. They think I'm a tree-hugger. Well, I am. My favorite tree is an old gnarled oak at the farm, and she always welcomes me. Meanness - bad. But admired, particularly in my profession. Caring - good. But don't "nice guys finish last"? No, generally they don't. Stengel disagrees. OK, I can live with that.

It's all relative.

Hey, I'm down 180. I've got momentum, don't bother me.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

Point, counterpoint

2008-02-16T18:58:00.001-05:00

I'm wondering about kindness and courtesy to strangers elsewhere. Note that I am EXTREMELY poorly traveled, and I know darn little of the day-to-day customs of other parts of the country, let alone the world. How do strangers treat one another where you are? Last evening, my mother went with neighbors to dinner (without me, which is GOOD because I can't become some sort of brooding omnipresence in her life, that would be bad for her) and as they were coming out of the restaurant, she and her 91 year old neighbor had to descend a couple of steps. She said that a big, hairy, tattooed guy came up to them and offered to "help you ladies down the steps," and did so. Is that common everywhere? Generally speaking, you hear a lot of "hello," "sir," "ma'am," "miss," "buddy," and so forth here. I met a lawyer informally in Baltimore last week, on a Sunday afternoon at a big office, and he chuckled when I called him "sir." I look at this as casting bread upon the waters or as showing the respect that any human being deserves, always have. I'm just curious if this is universal -- if it is, my opinion of humanity needs an update.

A minor theme related is calling others by more familiar names or without formalisms. This is something that I'm observing in myself as I age. I've seen harried fathers of young children at times, and nowadays I'm likely to say, "Spend time with them now, dad, they grow up soooo fast." Is that rude? Presumptuous? Lots of guys I call "buddy" (and I think I "inherited" that from my late friend, Fred) unless they are Masons, in which case it's "Brother." I avoid calling wait staff "honey," or something of the sort, because that's disrespectful -- but when I'm in a courthouse dealing with ladies I know well, I often use endearments, honey, darling, sweetie, etc. I must one day get smart enough to write a comprehensive work on the dimensions of human relationships. I feel like I know most of the rules, but there are too many dimensions to picture a representation of them in a physical form. What do you do?

The latest school shootings are renewing the same tired argument about firearms, where neither "side" recognizes that their pure solution won't work over the near or medium term without serious glitches. On the one side, disarm "everyone." The hoods won't be lining up to go into the police stations to turn in their guns, so for a time, the criminal/violent element will be even more disproportionately armed than the public. As it is, drug guys make enough money to have the option of something better than the old-fashioned "Saturday Night Special," a derogatory term for a cheap handgun. "Something better" these days consists of semi-auto or illegal full-auto weapons, large capacity magazines and specialized ammunition. One kind of ammo that I was referred to recently will never go "through & through" a body, but will create such unspeakable injury that the "laws of war" forbid it. (Having laws of war forbidding certain kinds of ammunition but sanctioning killing with bombs seems hypocritical to me.) Other ammunition now available can defeat lower classes of ballistic material (inaccurately named "bulletproof" material.) In a crisis of personal confrontation, calling 911 is a responsible thing for citizens to do, but very seldom do the police have the ability to respond so quickly that they can intervene in a violent confrontation. Throwing more money at police and jails hasn't really improved the point of the spear, where the services are delivered. The other side says, arm everyone (except felons, drunks, druggies and crazies.) In the pure sense of stopping or reducing the number of victims in some of these mass killings, that would work. But I don't know a hell of a lot of people with judgment that I'd feel comfortable with concerning when to introduce a gun into the mix. Sometimes, it is far better judgment to take an ass-whuppin', rather than pull a gun. After the gun laws were drastically changed in West Virginia (I represented the NRA in the case that scrapped the old ones), licensure became relatively easy. And some of the goofiest, most irresponsible (and in some cases, unconvicted criminal) people now may carry a concealed weapon. Here, one of these is a known nut who built a bomb to try to kill a prosecutor, but he was incompetent in bomb-building and the police made a pig's breakfast of the search, so conclusive forensic evidence was thrown out and the case was dismissed. Thoughtful discussion about crime, violence and guns is very difficult, perhaps as much so as with abortion, because people are wedded to extremes. (I know a good bit about weapons law. However, I'm no more than ordinary in skill with the use of weapons. In my 4 person household, I'm a SOLID 4th in marksmanship. That's OK re Son Tim, because his eye-hand coordination is positively spooky, and he could aspire to being in the class of Brother Dave in the future. But the fact that both LaElu and my mother have always been better shots than I am has to violate some sort of macho ethic.) How can we satisfy a "Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment," which is quite liberal in West Virginia, without arming those who reasonable people wouldn't want armed? Guns cannot be quickly drawn out of circulation, because they work for years and years and there is a remarkably robust underground economy in them. Beating one's breast about the violence and sad state of affairs isn't very helpful. I very, very reluctantly believe that some level of armed citizenry is the best alternative right now, but in implementing such a policy (which we have), people are going to get killed and wounded. A gunshot wound is not a pretty thing, and there is seldom such a thing as a "flesh wound." The hero doesn't manfully ignore the bits of blood and the sting of pain, get a band-aid and fight on. In some instances, the hero is going to be in a wheelchair or in a nursing home.

What the hell is the matter with me? I've started listening to Country music. Dammit, it tells a story and often is a good bit more morally uplifting than other genres. Why am I looking for moral uplift? Why do I seem to need it? In my mind, it is a counterpoint to the morass of moral swill that is so prevalent elsewhere.

I have work that has to be done tomorrow, but there is a block of time that is sacrosanct. No, not church, even though I'm going. Tomorrow is the Daytona 500 Nascar race. If you are a fan, I needn't explain the attraction. If you are not, I wouldn't bother.

I just finished The Appeal, by John Grisham. I'll review it anon in the canon. The first 33 chapters were gripping and so skillfully written that I can only admire the guy with the envy that the merely competent hold for the truly gifted. The last 4 chapters sucked, and I'll never, never read another Grisham.

Pippa passes.

R

Re: Motivations, or What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men

2008-02-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I will not tell you what my "heart" thinks of it, I'll merely describe my actions in the physical world. A couple of days ago, I went to the card shop and bought a shitload of Valentine cards - about $100 bucks worth. I've sent them to numerous valued ladies (perhaps sometime I'll do an essay about the myriad varieties and dimensions of relationship experiences) and also, under Amy's & my name, to numerous ladies we deal with professionally, e.g., court personnel, etc. (And there's also some delightful overlap there.) So, here is the connundrum - why did I do this? Crass commercialism? Silly sentimentality? Genuine feelings of love for these people and/or for humanity in general? (At least the female half of humanity - our Magistrate Court system has 7 ladies and 1 man, and I put a postscript on their card that I'll call him "Your Honor" and all that, but I sure as hell won't send him a Valentine.)

Assume for the purposes of this question that I know my own motivations, but either am not telling or, if I were to tell might not tell the truth. What ARE my motivations? Is that even knowable by me? Or by you, or by anyone? For some reason, asking this question amuses me a great deal. I think one Shelfer knows why.

We went to a no-kidding Bible study tonight. Rather a strange experience, considering my practices approximately since birth. The question of the alleged divine inspiration of Paul's writings came up, Pastor Josh answered in a forthright manner, and I'm still quite confused. It would be nice to get at least the basic structure of this new-found spiritual system (assuming again for the sake of argument that it's genuine and not a ruse, and I likewise cannot prove that, and probably wouldn't bother to if I could), and the details can then have places to live. A fundamental question is in my mind that I've mentioned before, the need I seem to have to coordinate Sagan and Christ. A recent statistical study estimated that there are 70 sextillion stars in the observable Universe. Is all but old Sol just window dressing for our one species?

My mother is having to adjust to the reality of permanently impaired health, and that is quite worrying.

Pippa passes.

R

God as ticket taker; and I gotta buy a new car

2008-02-12T10:27:00.000-05:00

I spent the weekend in wicked, wild Baltimore doing tittillating tax accounting. And yes, tax accounting is just exactly as much fun as you think. Fortunately, Friend JC is a total whiz at it. Me being a country bumpkin, and that being (to me) a hell of a big town, I've quite a few notes from which to write a little essay or two. Not much this morning, though.

Tim came home from a midnight shift in a very rural station at 8 AM. A 30-something with an acute infectious illness arrested, and they worked it a long time. As most such events go, it ended with a transport to the morgue. He was fairly upset, because it's just not an understandable thing in the Universe to see a young person otherwise healthy get on the train. But as I reminded him (as we were driving back from the auto repair shop - he hit a curb on the ice and bent a rim), when God punches the ticket, you're staying on the train.

In a bit of an outing, we went to something called a "car show" at the Civic Center downtown Saturday night. This was essentially a multi-manufacturer car lot, indoors and carpeted. However, this was a concentration of advertising and marketing, and I finally got the message which, upon reflection, is the one which car manufacturers have been trying to get through to me for years. I have concluded that if you buy a new car, you immediately will be wrapped in the embrace of a Beautiful Young Person (gender your choice), who will ignore your poor dentition, questionable personal hygiene and lack of intelligent conversation, and who will then proceed to screw your brains out. Moreover, if you buy a convertible, and you are a guy, they seem to guarantee that your penis length will increase by at least 30%. I conclude all of this from the knowledgable salespeople who were in attendance. They were all Beautiful Young People. I would have thought that older, scarred and stained shadetree mechanics would have known more about automobiles than they do, but apparently that's not the case. Surely, the manufacturer's selected only the most knowledgable people to represent their wares. The Beautiful Young People gushed about the cars and trucks, cajoled, coyly smiled or manfully strutted, and showed absolute interest and affection when answering the questions of idiots. Dear me. We got downtown in JC's "new" car, and I thought that it was nice -- a 1990 model in perfect condition, immaculate, acceleration out the wazoo, and very comfortable on the road. But it wasn't purchased new, so the Beautiful Young People weren't on the job. How sad!

There were couple of odd things, though. The Cadillac display touted a new "green" engine, called the "Partial Zero Emission Vehicle" engine. How's that again? Partial zero? Would Clorox sell if it made your clothes "nearly whiter than white"? How about if I could get a result of "mostly not guilty"? Well, these are sophisticated folks, so perhaps "partial zero" is a new wave of technology. Also, several vehicles had small LCD screens mounted right outside the driver's side window, connected to cameras of some sort which showed the view behind the vehicle. What a marvelous idea. Hmmm - Although if you wanted to save a little money and have a more fool-resistant system, I guess you could mount a mirror there. Nah, for reasons that my mind cannot fathom, the camera's got to be better. Oh, and none of the vehicles had knobs screwed onto the gearshift levers. Perhaps that's an option.

Mizpah.

R

Either too tired or too bloody lazy to write this evening

2008-02-09T20:51:00.000-05:00

. . . besides, dear old Emerson said it so much better in a compact form than I could were I to write steadily all night:

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

You realize, of course, that I seldom have any original thoughts.

Mizpah.

By rote,
R

Ashes, ashes, all fall down

2008-02-06T20:42:00.001-05:00

This is the second time I've tried to write this entry. The first one was humming along nicely and vanished. Naturally, I didn't save as I went, so it's my own fault.

I have some interest in the culture of the so-called Native Americans. (I am genetically descended a miniscule amount from those people. However, I was born here, my family has been here for time ranging from centuries in some lines to decades in others. I am a Native American.) Most of what I know is about those groups which were present in recent history in this area, primarily the Shawnee. (There were also various earlier groups collectively known as the "Mound Builders," about whom relatively little is known. By the way, ancient peoples built mounds, both for burial and other unknown purposes, all about the globe.) One of the cultural devices of the Shawnee was known as the "gantlet." Essentially, the strong men of the village formed a sort of alley. The condemned was covered totally in a mixture of animal fat and ashes. The goal of "running the gantlet" was to run the length of the gantlet and be alive and not permanently disabled at the other end. Few folks did that successfully, and the only one who immediately comes to mind is Simon Kenton. (There is a Holiday Inn at the confluence of the Elk River and Kanawha River, where Kenton spent a winter around 1770 alone, which is sad to me -- I stay elsewhere when I go to Charleston.) Well, the notion of the gantlet symbolizes my odd spiritual journey of past months, because it denotes pain and path-altering forces coming from unexpected directions. (See prior posts for the then-current feelings.)

The next step in this gantlet tonight was the observance of Ash Wednesday. The church had a service for the "imposition of ashes." For those unfamiliar with that practice, it consists of the pastor making a small cross on one's forehead out of ashes with some sort of oily binder. In years past, we had county Magistrates (the lowest rung of the judicial ladder) who would get the ashes in some early morning service and leave them on all day. The consensus at the time was that this was conspicuous religious consumption, and rather cocky of them. (There is an article in a very obscure publication from the turn of the 20th century about judges who modeled themselves and their decisions after Christ. The article concludes that these people are unstable idiots, and that they aren't doing their job, which is the application of the LAW as it exists.)

A prayer authored by Pastor Josh identified three reasons for the Ash Wednesday observance, self-examination, confession, and penitence.

I'm totally on board with the notion of self-examination. Only a moron believes that he or she cannot be doing better, and critical self-examination is a marvelous tool. Without self-examination, progress of an individual or a society is completely stalled.

I'm generally OK with penitence, too. When it prompts a state of mind that produces positive results, penitence works well. Too many people go overboard, though. They sink right through wallowing into depression and into useless stasis. Some of them emerge into the strange world of those who actually enjoy taking upon their own pain, a la Las Penitentes. That's rather self-destructive, and therefore stupid. Mind you, there are lots and lots and lots of other ways that we are self-destructive - booze, food, tobacco, drugs, violence, hate, and on and on. But it's rather warped to be sorry to the point of self-destructive.

Confession is the one that I have some trouble with. Oh, I understand that "confession is good for the soul," but is it good for those around you? Sometimes it is, for it engages other minds in solving problems and improving life. And it is necessary and a part of self-examination that you "confess" to yourself what your life is really like. Any other way and you would be suffering from a divergence of your mind from our friend, Mr. Reality. Confession, however, can hurt the ones around us. We might feel our souls cleansed and our minds at ease, and do so only after selfishly pointing out that we have ignored or rejected or betrayed those around us. Sometimes the kindest thing to do, the honorable thing to do, is to shut up and suffer in silence.

Darn - LaElu is watching something on TV in the other room involving people answering stupid questions upon which they have been polygraphed. There are dramatic pauses while an ethereal voice declares whether the contestant's responses are true. What unadulterated bullshit. Is there NO debasement that we are willing to inflict upon others or ourselves in order to find a bit of bread-and-circuses amusement?

At any rate, Pastor Josh went about the job of the "Imposition of ashes." As he did so, he repeated a mantra (is it proper to use a Zen term in this context?) on the ashes-to-ashes theme. I reminded him sotto voce that this was quite similar to a stanza in a song in a Simon & Garfunkel early album, probably Wednesday Morning 3 AM. The stanza goes:

Who will love a little sparrow?
Will no one write her eulogy?
"I will," said the Earth.
"For all I've created returns unto me.
"From dust were ye made and dust ye shall be."

The reference to the Earth creates an interesting line of thought, that of the Gaia belief/hypothesis. Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Earth (one of MANY novels of the Foundation series, which continued after Asimov's death) expounds widely on Gaia, the spirit of the Earth to whom we all owe some sort of love and allegiance. The idea of planet-as-deity is intriguing. It raies an interesting question: What is God's jurisdiction? Is some sort of fresh pursuit of sinners into other jurisdictions allowed? Are the laws and lawgivers there similar to our own God? Do spooks and sprites of sin get extradited from Andromeda? Well, this light-heartedness covers a pretty powerful problem. I have elsewhere talked about an intensive sky survey done recently by earthly astronomers which opined that there are approximately 70 sextillion stars in the Universe. Does this ONE GOD run the whole show? Many stars have planets, which makes the proliferation of spatial bodies even more profound. Is God bigger than we imagine? I'm not sure. I THINK I'm sure that God is bigger than we possibly CAN imagine. We talk blithely about getting the truth about the Plan from God, but I rather doubt that we can handle very much of it at all. We humans are optimistically cocky, and that'll bite you on the ass 9 times out of 10.

After the service, an "elder" who has been a lawyer-friend since we were very young told me that he had suggested that a particular individual who had called him and who he was conflicted from helping call me. He told me that individual's name, and I truthfully told him that if that guy came into my office and tossed gold bars onto my desk until it collapsed from the weight, I still would not represent him.

As of last night, I'm down 175, and still pushing hard. My activity level is up because (1) it's physically possible for it to be and (2) because my life gets nothing but more complicated as the months roll on. Today, I ordered a couple of pairs of dress shoes. I know that doesn't sound very earth-shattering or even vaguely interesting. It's monumental in my life, because I'm ABLE to wear conventional footwear. How to write about all this, that is still a question mark in my mind.

LaElu has been on my ass a bit about rings, and why don't I wear a wedding ring. Well, when I worked with power equipment, I wore no rings, watches, chains, dog tags, ties, loose gloves or anything else that would be dangerous, and I kept up that habit for years after I got away from those activities. Then I acquired Fred's steel Masonic ring, which I wear faithfully, and that shot in the ass my argument that I just don't wear rings. So, I found (on the net, naturally) a silver band inlaid with turquoise that I'm wearing.

I'm looking forward to a fun weekend of tax accounting. To my great fortune, my dear friend JC is a brilliant tax practitioner. All in all, I'd rather have pins stuck in my eyes. But I'll have some reading with me, do some writing, go to a bookstore I've never been to before, have yuppie coffee and generally have some moments of peace.

A local police officer called me today, wanting me to come down to the station to give them a statement about a domestic violence incident, part of which I witnessed when I took my mother to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. I told the officer that I'm as good a citizen as the next guy, but I was crushed today, and he was OK with me dictating a statement since, perhaps, I have some clue about what information is supposed to be in one. It turns out that it's a felony case because it's a third or subsequent offense, so that makes my participation in Court as a witness sometime more likely. In one sense, that's good -- it is an experience to see life in what is my home from another perspective.

I wonder if I'm perceived as being very open here. In point of fact, a great deal of what I am doing professionally at the moment is totally black, and there are many things about which I can make not the most oblique reference. Sometimes, just the fact that I am helping someone is a fact that, if spread, would cause irreversible damage. That is rather constraining, but it is the life I have chosen.

In a larger sense, I wonder how open anyone is on the net. The hostility which has been present on abookshelf2.org lately, in addition to being pointless and silly, probably is the face of lies, for I doubt that people's minds are so petty or that their hearts are so twisted. On the other hand, I'm the eternal optimist, and even though I see constant examples of honest evil, I want to think that it'll always get better. "Vanity of vanities," saith the Preacher. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Pippa passes.

R

As promised, Richard Cory, by Edward Arlington Robinson

2008-02-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning,"
and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king —
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Counterpoint - Without having been in or near those places in my lifetime, I would be a much poorer human being. I have been at the door of suicide, and have had dear friends pass through that door. The despair cannot be translated to words, and only the morally ignorant can dismiss it lightly. Perhaps our collective lives are rather too easy to foster understanding. There has been reference in the community blog to meat. We buy it fried brown and juicy or packaged attractively, and blind ourselves to the truth that someone had to slaughter the animal. We sit in our warm or cool homes, and don't recall that others have had to produce the energy source that heats us, cools us, and runs our computers, and that those people have real lives, hard live. Bad things will never happen to us, and we simply don't remember that there have to be people like Rox and Tim who see humans at their physical and emotional worst. Elsewhere, I am addressing the brethren on these things tonight, too. Our collective ignorance and sloth are displacing work and honor in our society, and if we don't decide to stand up, that will simply continue.

Perhaps I sound a bit shrill this evening. Certainly, this is stream-of-consciousness and not organized with any advance thoughts. But these are my words, and some here will recognize the meaning of that and the meaning of these words.

And I have been dealing with fucking idiots the entire day, with few exceptions, and if bad judgment, intellectual triviality and spectacular human ignorance become Olympic sports, America will have a team of around 100 million.

Pippa passes.

R

A cautious toe into popular culture; happy breakfast; miscellany

2008-02-02T21:36:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I put a few faces to the names of the popular culture figures that seem to be on everyone's mind. For the first time in I honestly haven't a clue how long, I went to the movies with LaElu. I still cannot help but think that the slow pace of speech is a very inefficient way to impart information.

A local bank had its huge "Groundhog Day Breakfast" this morning. There were probably 400 there. I was the only one in a Hawaiian shirt - in honor of Sarai, and in affirmation that spring is coming - and I did point out to some folks that if Christ personally were giving the speech, I wouldn't be in a tie at a Groundhog Day Breakfast on a Saturday morning. The governor was once again the speaker, talked a lot about energy policy (West Virginia's biggest industry is coal mining) and I had a brief chat and told him I'd send him my copy of Freedom from Oil. I dug around No. 3 and finally found it this afternoon.

Rosa's right - I have been rather tightly strung of late. But the idea of taking a break is anathema. Damfino what to do.

The Community Blog has been a laboratory of invalid argument devices lately. I found a nice compendium. In the spirit of the Super Bowl (which I won't watch because it's 4 hours of bloody booring kitsch), perhaps we can come up with referees' hand signals (expressed as emoticons) to use to call the penalties:

Invalid Argument Terms/Techniques
(some of these terms do not always imply an invalid technique,
but the ploy can be labeled as such)

Ad Antiquitam - Appealing to convention or traditional action as a proof of validity.

Ad hoc - Simply means directed to a single proposition or issue--no further implications intended. A proliferation of ad hoc adjustments to a theory indicates a crisis in acceptability.

Ad hominem (abusive) - Attacking the behavior or character of the man instead of his argument. Appealing to emotions and/or prejudices rather than to intellect or reason.

Ad Novitam - Appealing to modernity or newness as a proof of validity.

Associationism - Implying that an associative relationship is a causative one.

Affirming the Consequent - In valid logic structure when we say that if A is true then B is true, we must prove A to be true in order to conclude that B is true. Affirming the consequent is to falsely conclude that A is true upon finding that B is true.

Authoritarianism - Unquestioning reliance on an authority or expert.

Composition Fallacy - Applying to the whole the properties of the parts.

Defeatism - Claiming an end is impossible to achieve as a reason for not following a line of reason.

De fide - Literally "of faith", but implying revealed by god and requiring unconditional assent.

Denying the Antecedent - In valid logic structure when we say that if A is true then B is true, we must not assume B to be false because A is false. Denying the antecedent is to falsely conclude that B is false upon finding that A is false.

Derision - Using an emphasis on ridicule to assail a premise or argument.

Dis-accreditation - The ploy of pointing out a lack of formal accreditation on the other side. .

Disaffirmation - A contradiction or repudiation of a premise formerly stated or agreed upon.

Dismissal - Dismissing a premise, hypothesis or theory before hearing the argument.

Dis-qualification - Excusing oneself by the ploy of being formally or academically unqualified.

Division Fallacy - Applying to the part what may be true of the whole.

Dogmatism - Unwarranted or arrogant stating of opinion or position.

Equivocation - Using the same term or word in different and incomparable senses..

Enthusiasm - Originally implying supernatural inspiration, it is often used to try to override logic.

Exaggeration - Overemphasizing to an extreme degree.

False analogy - An offering of resemblances that don't really imply essential similarity.

Gamblers Fallacy - Thinking that some pattern of the past has an influence on a truly random event.

Genetic Fallacy - The Origins of something is erroneously ascribed.

Ill-logical - Based on faulty logic.

Invalid emphasis - Accenting or stressing a word or phrase in a sentence where that accent or emphasis changes the probably received meaning..

Invalid syllogism - A syllogism is a major premise, minor premise and valid conclusion such as: All virtues are laudable, kindness is a virtue; therefore kindness is laudable. An invalid form would be: Some Danes are dogs, Lars is a Dane; therefore Lars is a dog.

Irrelevance - Where an argument that may support one conclusion is used to support another, or where the argument is misguided or oblique to the issue at hand.

Hyper-limitation - Intentionally and/or needlessly limiting the number of options or possibilities.

Hypocrisy* - Originally meant lacking in judgment or lacking the quality of careful and critical thinking. Now used here to denote an agenda other than to arrive at the truth.

Loaded Questions - Asking questions where no simple response can be reasonable, or where any response implies acceptance of what is asserted as part of the question.

Mala fide - With intent to deceive.

Mal entendu - Misunderstood or poorly conceived.

Mal absurdum - Mis-characterization or invalid reduction to an absurdity..

Misinform - To supply with misleading information.

Non-comparable - Not worthy of comparison.

Non sequitur - Latin for out of sequence, a break in the chain of logic with an unwarranted leap.

Pedantism - A demand to prove the case within the conventional framework..

Petitio principii - Assuming in the premise of an argument the conclusion which is to be substantiated; a form of circular reasoning.

Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc - An argument that implies that since A preceded B in time, A caused B..

Proton Pseudos - First or fundamental falsity or error. Many times arguments start with this up front or as a hidden assumption..

Reductionism - Any method or theory that reduces data, information or processes to seeming equivalents that are less complex or developed than is the real case.

Reification - The attempt to make a purely abstract idea or concept into a real-world extant entity.

Red Herring - The introduction of extraneous material or irrelevant argument to divert attention or focus on the issue at hand.

Simplistic demand - Demanding a simple or inadequate answer to a complex question or issue.

Special Pleading - Using a double-standard to require less rigorous treatment for one's own assertion than one would use against a counter assertion.

Straw man - Arguing against a premise no one has taken, knocking that premise down, and then assuming or implying that you have then discredited the original at question.

Tautology - A form of needless repetition or circular reasoning that does not advance understanding.

Ultra-Symbolism - Confusing the symbol with the reality for which it stands.

Unilateralism - Taking into account only one side of an issue or matter.

* Most men of good will would say they place the highest priority on knowing the truth, and they would deny being willing to deliberately promulgate falsehood for no higher purpose than to win an argument or to defend a personal position. These men would all claim to value the truth over what they really value more. It is in this most fundamental way--men pay lip service to the truth, then let personal agendas override--that we are using the terms hypocritical and hypocrisy. Any man driven to use invalid techniques can be considered to be a hypocrite.

My mom is more comfortable wearing the nasal cannula out of the house now, so I don't think I'll have much trouble encouraging her to go to church in the morning. The service will be based on Lincoln, which is a neat idea.

Mizpah.

R

Berserker

2008-02-01T22:34:00.000-05:00

I've been a pushy, censorious bastard most of the day.

I was at my Mom's this morning for a while, and the respiratory person from the home medical place came to show her how to use the travel O2 cylinders. To me, it's just a bottle of compressed gas, not a big deal, but on the other hand, I'm not the one tied to it. She is soooooo embarassed to have to wear a nasal cannula. (That's the prongs that stick up your nose.) She sort of crashed and was unwilling to go anywhere, won't go out, won't leave the house, won't go to church, and so forth. So I pushed, and pushed all day, and finally got her to make a trip to B&N with me. With our frequent attendance, the local B&N has sales which approach the GDP of Costa Rica. The hook I used was to tell her that we need to get Pastor Josh a gift card because he was such a comfort, etc., over the past week. When we were walking in, a lawyer-buddy was standing in the foyer looking at the half-price stuff, I introduced him and my mom mentioned how awkward she felt with the O2. I sort of gave him the high sign, he picked it up, and opined as how there are lots and lots of people with obvious medical problems and devices, more who have invasive medical devises that don't show, and that we would be shocked if people wore tags spelling out all the medications they were on. I didn't hover over her, rather bought a few books (including Common Sense, a small print compendium of the Leatherstocking novels of Fennimore Cooper, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which someone on the site recommended), and let her find out for herself that people generally don't notice little shit like that. Then we went and met LaElu at a little family restaurant, and by the end of the meal, I think that she felt a part of humanity/society again. When we got home, I urged her to swap out the travel cylinder so that she would be confident that she knows how to do it. The respiratory person told her to open the valve stem one full turn, but I suggested that she open it 1-1/4, and then close it 1/4 turn. That way, you won't mistake an open valve for a closed valve, and put the gazoobahs on it and damage what is containing gas under high pressure.

And then back to No. 3 to complete what absolutely, positively had to be done today.

In the morning, there is the "Groundhog Day Breakfast" put on by a local bank, at which the Governor will be speaking. I made a reservation for Bro. Dave, and told him he was fucking attending. Like I say, I'm just an unpleasant pushy shit this week. We had coffee at the Book & Bean this morning, and Dave shocked the hell out of me by noting that I'm "even talking like a Christian." Jeez, is it showing?

And this evening, I stopped at the Community Blog before coming here, had a mental short-circuit and entered into a full-fledged rant, and if I could find my enemy tonight, my tomahawk would be red with their blood, and I would sing the war song far into the night.

I wonder if I've been ingesting rather too much caffeine.

Pippa passes.

R

Only a promise for a full post

2008-01-30T20:51:00.000-05:00

I'm hanging out at Mama Elu's house tonight. She came home from the hospital today, and is on 24/7 home oxygen. Let me tell you, that has gone over like a lead turd in the Monongahela. She sees it as a great imposition on her independence (which it is, let's be honest here) and as the beginning of the end. Hmmmm - I thought that started about age 22. Anyway, she'll permit me to stay overnight begrudgingly, and tomorrow is having one of those radio pendant things installed at my strong insistence -- If she had been just a little sicker last Thursday night, she would have been unable to call me, and I wouldn't have discovered the problem for a few hours. Telling her that she is lucky to live in the age of antibiotics (without which last week would have been a strongly life-threatening event) and oxygen (without which her sats are terrible) isn't producing much positive reaction. It's no doubt a lot to get used to in a terrible hurry. Bro. (in both senses) Joel is doing both the son and the pastoral thing, and Pastor Josh has been very supportive. He's an interesting guy, unassuming and I think very intellectual without being pretensious. Hell, in that respect, he fits in very well in my (and now his!) mountains.

I'm using her computer - biggest damn monitor I've ever seen. TimSon and Mama Elu collaborated on speccing the system. The font appears to be 24 point or so on the screen.

I'm unusually buried in politics this election cycle. In addition to Bro. Dave's judge campaign, I'm working another judicial campaign, a sheriff's race (that may sound minimal, but it's a big deal in WV) and most recently a minor role in a statewide judicial campaign.

Reading is WAY down this week - reading Pontoon, by Garrison Keillor, and it is a certain addition to the next quarterly canon. This guy's use of language is downright stunning.

I confess that I'm run ragged and on the rim of shutting down. By necessity, I'm away from No. 3 tonight, so this will be a bit of a vacation. In some sense.

Walking in the hospital down a LONG corridor yesterday (must be 200 yards long), I suddenly noticed that my long and distance-consuming stride is coming back. Watching this is amazing, and I'm writing, writing about it.

Speaking of the canon, I've offered it in modified form to the WV State Bar magazine, but I don't know if they will take me up on it.

Today's political news analysis: My party has succeeded in grabbing defeat right out of the jaws of victory. I will support Obama or Hillary, whoever the nominee is. I will put money into the campaign. (After all, I would find Vegas to be a great bloody boor, so I've no other way to uselessly waste the money.) But I'm practicing the phrase "President McCain." It's really sad. I was at the barber shop this morning, and there was an absolutely stereotypical political discussion of the extreme conservative bent.

Pippa passes.

R

Mom's status; brief commercial observation

2008-01-26T22:18:00.000-05:00

1 - My mom remains hospitalized, and will be for a while. Systemic infection, serious but fixable. But also a bunch of lung damage, more serious and not fixable. Adaptation to the new reality is going to be quite difficult for her.

2 - I would not buy an HP toilet. And I would only piss in one if the discharge pipe ran onto the manager's desk at Best Buy.

My legendary good nature has taken a bit of a beating today.

Pippa passes.

R

Dragging so low that if I walked naked through a mud puddle, I'd leave 3 tracks

2008-01-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

Lots of things to talk about, but not tonight - my Mom's health crashed bad last night (911 time) and so I'm fully engaged with that.
.
Wish I understood this whole life thing.
.
Pippa passes.
R

Rank hath its duties; and the troubled conscience of a New Progressive

2008-01-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

A few thoughts this morning -- except it's actually published this evening because the Mattel computer system at No. 3 is acting strangely.

I got to No. 3 by 6, worked in the quiet with the eastern horizon slowly reddening for an hour, which was peaceful and pleasant, and then took LaElu up to the local hospital for an MRI. (She has those periodically to monitor a benign tumor on the pituitary, which is not a very operable place.) I served on the board of directors of that hospital for several years (an interesting experience, particularly for one coming out of one phase of healthcare), so I know many of the people there. While waiting for LaElu to get done, I wandered into the executive/administrative offices to talk to a couple of people about a thought I had which might slightly benefit the hospital, and also to do the general networking thing. At 7:15, there were several administrative staffers there, but none of the "bosses." That isn't right. If a "boss" is so damn important, s/he needs to be at work before the other folks. An administrtor also shouldn't need a reserved parking spot -- s/he should get there so damn early that the lot is nearly empty. I am reminded of a quote, and I had to look in my Commonplace Book to find it:
.
If high authority appoints you to an office, know this: Every step upward on the ladder of offices is not a step into freedom, but into bondage. The higher the office, the tighter the bondage. The greater the power of the office, the stricter the service. The stronger the personality, the less self-will.
The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel), by Herman Hesse
.
A worker who happens to be higher on the organizational chart says “Go on.” A leader says “Come on.” There IS a difference. That is becoming more important to me as the years flow by, and I still haven’t totally got it. I’m hardly a total practitioner of the take-responsibility thing, but I think I’m trying to improve.
.
.

This is MLK day.
.
I hate the term “politically correct.” It is routinely applied to progressives (“liberals”) by reactionaries (“conservatives”) to connote that it’s an irrational and intolerant expectation by “liberals” that all others conform to a belief that at least some folks don’t support. Pick a descriptive noun - conservative, liberal, white, Methodist, doctor, union rep, woman, student, gun-owner, athlete, and on and on - and you can find lots of members of that group who are intolerant. Everyone seems to want to show that ALL of those to whom a particular descriptive noun applies are intolerant because of the actions of very few, also known as proof by limited example. The status of the Martin Luther King legacy is one of the subjects of so-called political correctness. That’s sad, because it clouds what is to me a valid discussion of who we honor and how we honor them.

Taking 4/10th of one percent of the available traditional work days to honor an individual seems idolatrous to me. That applies to King. And Columbus. And Washington. How many thousands of people who have done things that matter can we find in American and world history? How many deserve honor? Some of the lesser known:

Dr. R. Adams Cowley - The “inventor” of modern trauma care

Dr. Ingo Petrykus and Dr. Peter Beyer - The inventors of “golden rice,” which has a vitamin A content and which will save literally millions of lives (mostly children) in the coming years.

Count Claus Graf von Stauffenberg - Risked (and lost) his life in a bid to kill you-know-who.

George Washington Carver - Researcher/inventor who made huge strides in food crop production.

Mohandas Ghandhi

Senator Edmund G. Ross - Lost his seat because he sided with Andrew Johnson and his non-punitive Reconstruction plan.

Johannes Gutenberg - I really hope you recognize his name and contribution.

Leo Szilard - The one who originally thought of bringing nuclear research to the U.S. president’s attention, and got Albert Einstein involved because everybody knew Einstein.

These are examples right off the top of my head.

King said “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” Does that strike you as hopeful and true? It does me. And it would be equally hopeful and true, no matter who said it. Again, we are finding proof in limited examples. Lots and lots of people have said lots of true things. That Commonplace Book contains a ton of them. We cannot honor them all with a day off. We can honor them by getting off our collective asses and taking action consistent with our - and their - beliefs and examples. Talk is cheap. Tokenism is cheap. Action matters, results matter.

I’ll be at No. 3 all day. And Columbus day. And Good Friday. And President’s day. And so forth.

Mizpah.

R

Stunning stupidity; and a poem

2008-01-17T12:00:00.000-05:00

On the way home, I drove down our street, and was really disgusted at a sight. Ordinarily, I think that people around here are pretty well versed in the safe operation of tools and machinery. A couple of fellows were working underneath a truck parked on the street. Holding up the truck was a SMALL hydralic jack, fully extended. No ramps, no jack stands, no cribbing. Doing something where a single part failing may kill you is just evolution in action.

Robert Service (1874-1958)
The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursèèd cold, and it's got right hold, till I'm chilled clean through to the bone. Yet 'tain't being dead —— it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you, to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows —— Oh God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared —— such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear, you'll let in the cold and storm ——
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Gotta memorize that, I love it.

Mizpah.

R

Now we gotta get rid of the body

2008-01-15T21:07:00.000-05:00

Just a few notes this evening -- went to the funeral of an elderly cousin which was, for some strange reason (at least it's strange here), held in the evening. The deceased was prepared in what appeared to be the usual manner, although my mother commented that she didn't look very good. I wonder - she's dead - she's having a very bad day - I don't require that she look real good. She will be buried at some future time in the cemetery at the no-kidding traditional seat of our family, which is an out-of-the-way Baptist Church on a bucolic ridge with a bucolic name, Harmony Grove. I assume that the deceased (I won't call her Dail - Dail isn't in there, she's just moved out) is full of chemicals which for some very, very strange reason are intended to resist the natural progression of the return to the earth, and that they will use one of those steel vaults that funeral directors (that's what we call undertakers) brag about because they are water-proof, pest-proof and earthquake proof.

What is the point? What do you think should be done with a dead body? (The UK has proposed a policy allowing harvesting of organs unless the deceased specifically opted out. I like that approach, but I understand that it's somewhat controversial.) For myself, I would strongly prefer a cave, such as the early Shawnee in West Virginia used. A real cool old guy I knew found one of those, very cleverly hidden so that you couldn't see the entrance from five feet away (so he said, and I believed him), way, way out in the woods. He said that when it came his time, he wanted to go there and thus rejoin the Great Spirit. (That's not a hackneyed western cliche, that is a translation of the Shawnee word "Wishemaneto.") However, he had a stroke, was paralyzed and aphasic, so not only could he not go to the cave, he couldn't tell anyone where it is. Failing the cave, I would accept a platform so that I can return to the earth through my friends, but that is (1) illegal (not that I would mind, but I suppose I'd need some cooperation by someone corporeally alive) and (2) not really a custom known among the First Americans around here.

I guess I'll settle for cremation. If Bro. Dave outlives me, he's in charge of leading the crowd to some appropriate venue for the scattering thing. (Is it a stretch to think that there will be a crowd? Perhaps it'll be the proverbial one-car-funeral.)

Anyway, no lying preserved in the ground for me.

Reminds me, my Dad often recited the Cremation of Sam McGee. Don't know why that is in my mind tonight.

Oh, the new pastor did the funeral. Young chap, from a big city. He is reluctant to use his own words for things, and I bet he feels a bit like a "stranger in a strange land." I told him privately after the service that although I had never heard the term "homegoing" for a funeral here, now it is in the county lexicon because he brought it here - just as all of our language has been brought from SOMEWHERE at SOME TIME. I really like this guy. It's rather strange dealing with younger people in positions of responsibility and dependability. When I was younger, responsible/respectible meant old. Now, it seems we have children as members of the bar, police officers, physicians, and others. Sometimes I have to consciously remind myself that I can depend on and learn from EVERYONE.

Tomorrow, a case has suddenly gone red, and must be solved in the morning - extremely serious ramifications, and I'm studying on it right hard tonight.

Mizpah. Pippa passes.

R

Saturday Night Miscellany

2008-01-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

This week was my Dad’s birthday - he would have been 85. Normally, that would not be in the front of my mind, but a couple of things had me thinking this week. Early in the week, I was at my Mom’s, she was talking about the Masonic service at his funeral. I thought of the tiny emblem (the square & compasses) that he wore on his lapel for nearly 40 years. She looked, found it, and gave it to me. I remember when I was a kid asking him what that was, what it meant, and that was my first introduction to the Craft. There was another emblem in the box that will go to my brother. And then, when I went to pick her up today for a get-out-and-see-the-world shopping expedition, she gave me several books that she just found in the bedstand. I guess she hadn’t been able to open it, or hadn’t thought to open it in several years. Of particular interest was two daily devotionals and, again, one of them goes to my brother. There was other memorabilia in the jewel box, notably Uncle Earl’s watch. Uncle Earl was quite a guy. He lived in a trailer up a remote run in Taylor County, and was on VA Disability since WWII. My Dad used to tell the story of Uncle Earl at basic training, which was at a facility where Dad was also posted. People from Uncle Earl’s unit (platoon? I’m not sure) sought him out to complain and see if Dad could talk to him. Uncle Earl was a walker. He used to get a notion in the morning to go visit his brother (my grandfather), who lived about 15 miles away. Uncle Earl would take off through the woods and walk to my grandfather’s house pretty quickly. After his visit, he would walk home. At that time (and maybe today, I don’t know), when military units marched, there was someone up front with a “guidon,” some sort of flag, and that guy set the pace. The complaint from his buds was that Uncle Earl was walking their asses off. Dad said that there was nothing he could do about it.

Memorabilia, memories - do they keep crashing in on you as you age?

My “second father” (also a Brother) was visiting the Governor’s office last week, and was talking to the chief of staff. That guy is using Governor Bill Marland’s desk. Bill Marland was the most brilliant student ever to attend WVU College of Law, and rose like a rocket politically. However, he had a serious drinking problem, which inundated him when he left office. He was destitute, without friends he was willing to talk to, so he moved to Chicago and became a cab driver. Years later, a West Virginia newspaper person was in Chicago, recognized Gov. Marland, and there was some small publicity. What I see here is a hell of a lot of honor – the guy could have bitched, moaned and faded away, but he pressed on doing honest work.

I was in Court a lot this week with new lawyers. They look lost, as a rule, trying to cover it with cockiness. I suppose that it’s a matter of getting adjusted to a new place. I find that difficult- whenever am going to try a case in a new place, I go to the Courthouse some weeks before a trial, and sit in the empty Courtroom and just become accustomed to it. Is this common? Does everyone have this sort of sensitivity to unfamiliar places? Well, I was in one of the same Courtrooms I’ve inhabited for 30 years, so it feels like home. I remember trying a murder there in 1982 (wow, I was only 29), a case involving a penitentiary escape.

Sometimes, I tell my police friends a story that some people assume came from the representation of that guy in 1982. However, they have never, never heard me say that. The story (which could be true for all I know) is that there was this fellow, who coincidently was on the run, having escaped from a penitentiary. He was on a “most-wanted” list, and presumably his face was on wanted posters all over the country. (I honestly don’t know if police now-a-days actually read wanted posters.) In any event, he was stopped by a trooper, let’s say in Virginia, for something innocuous like a taillight out. He had no ID, but he did have his pistol on the passenger seat covered with a newspaper. He was charming to the officer, and reportedly later said that he looked into her eyes, and if he had seen a flicker of recognition there, he was going to kill her. Perhaps that’s a thing that will only happen once in a quarter of a million traffic stops. The trouble is, the police don’t have prior warning which one it is. If you are stopped by police and they seem a touch careful, that’s the reason.

A bit of schooling. If pulled over by police, they don’t mind if you seek out a lighted place at night. At night, turn the interior light on, have your paperwork ready, and stay in your car. These people are justifiably nervous, and will appreciate it. Oh, and if you are armed, FIRST hand them your permit THEN tell them that you’re armed. I honestly consider all police officers to be my friends – they labor in the same vineyards that I do. Seldom have I been proved wrong.

Down 165. Clothes has become a pain in the ass, as I am in between what I have. Well, that’s not such a bad problem to have.

Tim Son continues to talk to Dad-san about his concerning calls. He had a 45 y.o. guy this week with no medical history arrest on him in the ambulance, and that was somewhat traumatic. Do we ever adequately consider that there are bloody awful things that happen out there, and SOMEBODY has to deal with them? It is so worrisome when young people have to be introduced to Mr. Reality.

I’m doing a lot of “social work” at No. 3 ,the sort which generates zip for fees. But dammit, that’s who I am and what I do. If I were rich, I could freely choose only the clients who really need help but can’t get it. I don’t mean to sound pious, I’m certainly not. Quite the contrary, I often feel quite helpless trying to make seemingly impossible things happen. It’s no surprise that the lack of money is to some extent behind ALL of these problems.

I’ve talked a bit about writing about the obesty experience. I am struck by a question from Rosary “I'll start with a question I ask all of my writing students--just why are you wanting to write about this subject?” Answer: I wish I knew. I feel compelled to do so. Perhaps it is cathartic, I don’t know. I have been running some of the very sensitive stuff by intimate friends, who are uniformly supportive and think that my reluctance is silly.

An ALJ (Administrative Law Judge) made a stunningly stupid, cliche comment about literacy in West Virginia in a hearing this week. Do I bitch or remain quiet? Which is better for the client?

And there are a few unbloggable things going on that are taking up an awful lot of space in my heart.

Mizpah. Pippa passes.

R

Upon reflection, I don't think I can write for shit

2008-01-04T21:42:00.000-05:00

A complicated day at No. 3. I'm putting up a blog for the firm, and I'll send some links. (If someone cannot figure who the hell I am, s/he is more inept at this computer shit than I am.)

And I had a dr. appt. in Morgantown, so naturally had to make the obligatory stop at B&N. 6 books, 60 bucks, so many books, so little time.

And I went to the damnedest place in my mind this evening, and I don't think that I can even cast a shadow of these thoughts in writing. I (not so secretly) admire writers whose minds can go to . . . hell, I can't even describe the places they go. Mark Helprin did it in Winter's Tale to an unusual extent. Arthur C. Clark made it in the last 2 chapters of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some would say that Tolkein found that place, but while the idea of an alternate reality is well developed by him, the world of "Middle Earth" is remarkably conventional. Let's see - Emerson touched upon those places; and Richard Burton (the writer, not the actor) a little bit. Charles Lamb touched them. But descriptions of a truly different kind of reality are pretty poor and very rare even for those. And I know that this sounds like babbling, because these thoughts translate very poorly from my mind to yours using these few dozen symbols arranged in a particular order. Did you ever look at printing, and not see the words, but see the strange symbols and marvel at how any thoughts at all are communicated through them? It's magical, to me. Perhaps these "other places" are so unreachable because we think using language. When you think of a broom, what is the content of the thought - a visual image? an image of the broom being used? or just the word "broom" or, for people who are illiterate, however they symbolize or remember the sound of the word "broom"? If these places aren't recognizable, how in the pluperfect hell can we share them? This is exasperating.

OK - my poor attempt. I've talked in some recent posts about this yearning for a cabin in the dark, dark, dark woods. Tonight would be a perfect time for that, since the moon won't rise until nearly sunrise, and there are no clouds diffusing or reflecting distant light. There is absolute magic in walking silently through such a night, and again I do not have the words to approach my feelings of being a part of the night. I know that Brother Pete has been there, and Brother Dave, and they know whereof I speak, but I can't tell someone who has not experienced it what that experience is . . . like (?). No, I can't tell you what that experience is, it's not "like" anything describable. Tonight, I was in that cabin in my heart -- geez, what a poor description -- the muscular pump that moves blood around my body has nothing to do with feelings. OK, I was there in my mind, in front of an open stone fireplace with a burning fire, perhaps the "birch logs burning" that Kipling described (remember that line, Pete?). In the corporeal world, I can (and do) sit for long, long periods and stare at flames in a fire. At a restaurant with the family the other night, I did just that, and I wasn't there with my body. There is something about the flickering, the movement, the light, the chaos, that draws me in. Tonight, there I was sitting in front of that fire, and I entered into a totally alternate reality, where I became a part of the fire. All of the senses were present. I could hear the popping of the wood and the hiss of air moving, smell (a little) and taste (a lot) of the smoke and heat, feel (some) heat, but the visuals were the most striking. I was in the fire, but not a part of it, and all of the tracks of my mind were engaged there, were totally present there. What I saw was not beauty in the see-the-sunrise beauty, or what-a-nice-painting beauty, it was elemental, primordial, universal, non-reproducable. There is no painting, no photo, no image that can exist in our reality that would be there. The images were of the colors and brightness, of the chemistry and physics, and of the geometry. EVERYTHING in that fire is predictable and follows a fixed path. But there are so many elemental particles at work and such complexity, shapes, fractals and non-connection with conventional perceived reality that it is functionally chaos. Hell, we cannot picture infinity or "even" the size of the observable universe, and we/I get totally displaced in a micro/nano experience? I lost myself for I honestly don't know how long in that place, there was no language, there was no biological life, there was no falsehood, there was no truth, there were no expectations or demands, and the only way I can describe it was that there was nothing recognizable there, the only way I can describe it is by what it was not. But I was there. And when I run down tonight and go to bed, I know that I'll go back there, and again experience something extraordinary, something that has no connection to these symbols or language, and I feel sad that I absolutely do not have the ability to take you there with me. This is sooooo frustrating - I feel mute. And silly, too, because as I look this over, I see essentially blather. But I'll publish it anyway, in the hope that even a spark of where I went will strike a chord with someone. How does a Helprin or a Clarke do this?

In a more localized fashion, this also takes me a bit to other writing in the pipeline. (OK, on the memory stick that's on my key ring.) In a book entitled Living Large published a couple of years ago, a political consultant fellow (whose name I don't recall right now, and I'm too lazy to look, Mike something-or-other) wrote about his struggle with obesity, and how it felt at his high weight. I went there with him because these were experiences that I had. However, his high weight was maybe 320, which in my experience is not that damn high. (See? My reality, based on my experiences, is totally divorced from yours.) I am trying to write about what so-called "malignant obesity" feels like. Partly because it is unexpectedly gross (and I cannot inflict that here) and because it is indeed an alternate reality that is a living torture, I am having an impossible time with that writing. Dammit, I can write humor, I can write cute, ironic, sarcastic, social, loving, informational, verbal, symbolicly, but I cannot write about things that are only in non-language thought. And I have the fleeting thought of, hell, a couple of slugs of the Bombay Sapphire would expand my thoughts and loosen my constraints, but that would only dumb me down even further.

I don't know reality, and I'm without a compass this evening.

R

. . . and then you die?

2008-01-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

Thoughts of that cabin at the farm and real life are diverging more and more. I "billed" 14 hours today, and I'm tired -

Encountered five people who gave me pause - two have trust deed (our equivalent of a mortgage) foreclosures this month because society's safety net has gaping holes. One called me and a friend and talked suicidal, then was peeved that I called the Sheriff's office to send a deputy to check on her - the friend is coming up to bring her in and go with her through the resources we have. I'm still sad about the friend who suicided over the summer. One WALKED three fucking miles to get to Court - I gave her a lift home and asked her why she didn't call me before the hearing - she said she didn't want to bother me. And a fourth was the wife of a disability client from years back who has herself suffered a disabling work injury, and has found that her supposedly caring employer (a healthcare provider, no less) actually doesn't give a shit about her as a person.

I submitted the entire 4th quarter canon to the state bar journal - it will be interesting to see if they publish any of it. There is a new executive director who I don't know who will make the editorial decisions.

My dear paralegal Kathy had her last chemotherapy treatment today - now for some radiation, and she will have completed treatment.

Down 160, still a fall risk on the ice, and I'm going to keep using my walking stick this winter - looking dumb beats breaking a hip or something. This may be more info than you want, but I find that when one's ass is bonier, it's harder to sit on a hard chair. Oh, and I shopped at a CONVENTIONAL CIVILIAN STORE for clothes today - Believe me, that is sooooooo gratifying.

Also substantial issues going on that I cannot explain that are worrisome. That cabin looks better and better.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

The Fourth Quarter Selected Canon from No. 3 Equity Court:

2007-12-31T20:19:00.000-05:00

Note on prices: The most available book resources currently available are on-line, chiefly Amazon and bn.com. For used/rare books, the gold standard is bookfinder.com. Personally, I enjoy going to Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Borders or independents, such as The Book Shelf in Morgantown, because the online booksellers have yet to recreate the real-world browsing experience. Besides, there’s no coffee bar at Amazon. The largest bookseller is WalMart, but its selection is quite limited. The Amazon price is close to almost all sellers’ prices.

ll - Odyssey, by Jack McDevitt (Ace Hardcover, 2006, Amazon Price $16.47) - This is a sorta fun space opera. As is necessary in that genre, it postulates faster-than-light travel and ignores relativity. (If relativity turns out to be an absolute, space opera is pure fantasy.) Naturally, it deals with mysterious alien life. Space opera is an addiction of youth, and I have found that it lasts into adulthood. For me, it’s fun. For a non-sci-fi-er, it would be a great bloody boor.

llll - The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne (Atria Books, 2006, Amazon price $13.17) - "The secret" is that we become what we think about. Think abundance, you get abundance. Think health, you lose weight, and so forth. That sounds a little New-Age-ish. In New-Age-feng-shui-tao-te-ching-lao-tzu-sun-tzu-confucian-if-only-I-had-training-and-there-are-conspiracies-and-secrets-that-"they"-don’t-want-you-to-know-about world, this "secret" is certainly prominent. Nevertheless, the science underlying this idea may be perfectly sound. Neurological/behavior science isn’t very far advanced. We do know that the mind is a stunningly complex computer-analog, and most agree that it can be used more efficiently and effectively. It is capable of, indeed it thrives on, "fuzzy logic," something that computer engineers are slowly developing to make computers more "intelligent." We humans have "hunches" and "feelings," sometimes superstitious and stupid, but sometimes I think that it is the human mind making logical extrapolations from relatively little data. So, if we decide to think a certain way, is it not possible that our minds will work at least a bit more effectively to move us in that direction? I cannot talk probabilities here. To some extent, it is a matter of desire or faith. Some faith is due to concrete and measurable things - e.g., if I drop a pencil over the floor, I have every faith that it will fall to the floor every time. Some faith is not at all measurable or based on empirical evidence, for example, God and the after-life. I believe that, too, but cannot demonstrate it by dropping a pencil or anything else experimental. The capabilities of the human brain fall somewhere in between, and I have no expertise at all in quantifying those capabilities. So, for the moment, you either believe "The Secret" and apply it, with whatever results, or you don’t. One thing that I am fairly confident of is that thinking positive, constructive things won’t automatically bring their opposites into your life. I liked this book well enough to buy several copies and spread them around.

lll - Stick to Drawing Comics, Money Brain!, by Scott Adams (Portfolio Hardcover, Amazon price $16.47) - Dilbert is like a lot of lawyers - you either love him or you hate him. I absolutely love Dilbert. The humor is pointed but sometimes subtle, yadda, yadda, yadda, I just like it. Adams has written this non-Dilbert book which consists of pithy little essays, not unlike 100 decent blog posts. He writes in a readable and funny way. His opinions have an edge that I don’t enjoy and for a liberal, he writes in an unusually judgmental way. That’s a personal thing, not a recommendation against Adams. I certainly hope that my opinions have an edge which some folks don’t enjoy. (No, your Honor, I don’t mean you!) His insights are thoughtful, even when you don’t agree with him, and it’s an easy read.

llll - Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . ., by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein (Abrams Inage, 2007, Amazon price $12.89) - This is a damn fine and fun read. These guys, who have degrees in philosophy, explain various schools of philosophical thought using jokes as illustrations. When you remember that life is fundamentally a hoot from start to finish, this makes sense. For some reason, one illustration about the reductio ad absurdum is stuck in my mind. A man and woman are driving past a farm. They see 50 sheep standing in the pasture. The woman says, "Those sheep are shorn." The husband replies, "At least on this side." The teaching is that the probability of (1) farmers shearing sheep on only one side and (2) 50 sheep randomly orienting themselves so that only the shorn side faces the road is so slight that the woman is "right." Philosophy is far more "real" that it seems, because it puts labels on the perspective of our human minds. I had a lot of fun with this one.

llll - Heyday, by Kurt Andersen (Random House, 2007, Amazon price $17.79) - I’m not sure what to call this genre. I’ve always thought of historical novels as being fictionalized versions of known historic events. This is set in the United States in 1848 - 49, mostly in New York and California. It is a "quest" novel, quite rich in detail about the manner of living at that time. The images are clear enough that the reader can get a detailed picture of the setting and the culture. It shows that the author has done detailed research into 19th Century New York, fire-suppression technology and departments, prostitution and gold prospecting, as well as being familiar with human nature. Beyond the time-setting, this is just damn fine modern fiction.

lll - The Chase, by Clive Cussler (Putnam Adult, 2007, Amazon price $16.17) - Since around 1978, Cussler’s bread-and-butter has been the adventure novel featuring "Dirk Pitt," and a fictional government agency. There are 19 novels in that series (the first edition of the earliest one published only in mass market paperback and now very difficult and very pricey to obtain), and if you enjoy that sort of thing (which I do), they are a lot of fun. For the first time, Cussler alone has written a historical-adventure novel in the same style as the Dirk Pitt books, but without that continuing character. The plot involves a criminal investigation and pursuit in the West in 1906 (including chapters about the San Francisco earthquake), and as such is a western. (I hesitate to include that - for some odd reason, that setting turns lots of people off to otherwise good books.) This, too, has unusual historical detail, and is a fine read.

llll - Dinner with a Perfect Stranger; and A Day with a Perfect Stranger, by David Gregory (WaterBrook Press, 2005 and 2006, Amazon price $10.15 each, Amazon has a boxed set for $12.89) "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . .", Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance. See above, I’m not a great fan of unscientific, unprovable mysticism. This is unscientific and unprovable, and if it’s meant to be taken seriously, maybe it’s a touch heretical. The assumption is that Jesus personally visits first a husband and then his wife. In Dinner with a Perfect Stranger, the protagonist-husband receives an engraved invitation to dine at a nice restaurant with Christ in person. While nothing conflicts with my (admittedly incomplete) Biblical knowledge, it’s just vaguely uncomfortable for a modern author to be putting words into Christ’s mouth. (Neale Donald Walsch does that with a serious passion in his Conversations With God series. He makes no pretense at inspirational parable, he claims that the Almighty personally guides his fingers on the keyboard.) Christ explains, well, Christian love and takes a stab at pointing out where modern people are off-track. A Day with a Perfect Stranger starts with the protagonist-wife leaving on a business trip, and with her intense belief that her husband has stripped his mental gears. (She leaves him a note, "While I’m gone, I hope you and Jesus have a nice time.") On an airplane, she sits between an pushy proselytizer and a quiet, thoughtful fellow, the latter of whom is, again, Christ returned. This second volume is better than the first. The theme there is opening your mind (and your heart) to the extreme stretch that faith and love require. If these books are read literally, they are uncomfortable. Perhaps if these are read as allegorical or even as parables, they are inspirational and valuable. I liked them, and I’ve spread around several copies. Why does everyone feel compelled to apologize for spirituality of any sort and especially for practicing Christianity? Hey, if it bothers you, don’t read them, the First Amendment is alive and well in West Virginia.

lll - Rumpole Misbehaves, by John Mortimer (Viking Adult, 2007, Amazon price $16.29) - My goodness, a Rumpole book that scores only 3 compass points?! Have I slipped a cog? I’m not sure. John Mortimer is an English barrister, author and playwright who has been producing the delightful Rumpole stories for 30+ years, which feature an irascible older criminal trial barrister. Everyone who has ever appeared in front of a Court must appreciate and smile at (and maybe even secretly admire) the unspoken I-should-have-said asides in Rumpole’s mind. The most recent collections (Rumpole and the Primrose Path, Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, and Rumpole Rests His Case) are at the zenith of this long-running series. Perhaps the irascible brush is painting me, or perhaps the series is just running out of gas, but I just didn’t get intense appreciation from this one. But I read it, and I will gladly and gratefully read any more that Mortimer has to offer.

llll - Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch’s Assault on America’s Fundamental Rights, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubrose (Random House 2007, Amazon price, $16.47) - Molly Ivins died last January. One of her last professional acts was working on the manuscript for Bill of Wrongs. The war on terror, she reasons, has resulted in trading away the very things that make America unique and free, leaving precious little for the terrorists to disrupt other than public order. Factually innocent Americans have been detained for extended periods without lawyers or access to the Courts. Free speech is taking a licking from the Right (and, while Ivins only touches upon it, from the Left, too.) Employees of the American government - the AMERICAN government - are performing investigative and enforcement acts which constitute torture. This is NOT a balanced presentation, nor does it pretend to be. The Administration is, for example, taken to task for liberally interpreting the Second Amendment (a position which West Virginians have repeatedly supported en masse with their votes, including that on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment, West Virginia Constitution Section 3-22.) Ivins sticks with the zero-sum approach to creation/evolution. Nevertheless, we NEED voices for responsibility, liberty and free speech, so we are poorer with Molly Ivins’ passing.
Perhaps her best epitaph will be found in the reaction to her death of her primary target for the past decade, President Bush II: "I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. She fought her illness with that same passion. Her quick wit and commitment to her beliefs will be missed."

llll - Freedom from Oil, by David Sandalow (McGraw-Hill, 2007, Amazon price $17.79) - This is written in the format of faux government officials advising the President of energy policy options. The book is so intensively researched and so fact-rich that any qualms about the structure are quickly lost. Indeed, I wish that whoever occupies the White House would read this and take the information and projected solutions realistically. Minerals are finite. Minerals are unevenly distributed about the globe, thereby making energy hogs (like Americans) dependent on imports from regions which happen to be unstable or undependable or filled with dangerous fanatics. Combustion of fossil fuel liberates carbon which was trapped in the earth for some millions of years, thereby increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. (Not everyone agrees. A West Virginia political candidate was quoted as saying that "there’s no scientific proof whatsoever that greenhouse emissions are caused by fossil fuels." That such simple minds are in positions of influence is either touching or disturbing, take your pick.) Sandalow debunks the common wisdom that scientists will certainly rush in and save the day by easily turning sea water into combustible (non-carbon emitting) hydrogen or conquering the problems of controlled fusion reactions. Sandalow discusses real-world short-term and long-term actions which should be taken. For instance, widespread use of "plug-in electric hybrid vehicles" would provide immediate energy efficiency and pollution limiting effects. It might be that we now living can escape the worst effects of our energy madness, but our grandchildren won’t. If the problem had been this bad in 1908 and was ignored by the people of that year, we would be quite peeved about now, and rightly so.

llll - Dune, by Frank Herbert (Originally published 1965, First editions run $100 or more, a hardcover reprint can be found for $10 or so) - I have a first printing of Dune, but I’m irrationally unwilling to handle it since it’s in DARN good shape. So I found a reprint hardcover on sale at B&N, and couldn’t resist. My list shows that this makes at least the third time I’ve read Dune, the next most recent being over 10 years ago. This is just brilliant mainstream sci-fi. Also, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is one of the very few sci-fi books to have made a faithful translation to the screen. An oldie and a goodie.

ll - Lion in the White House: A Life of Theodore Roosevelt, by Aida D. Donald (Basic Books, 2007) - Hell, I always enjoy a read about TR, since he’s a genuine hero. But Lion in the White House adds very little to the extensive biographies of the past decade. The single thing I really got from it is a reasonable interpretation of TR’s intervention in the 1902 Anthracite Strike, reasonable being defined as I agree with it and it’s a noble conclusion. Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and the (hopefully) to-be-written volume about the post-presidential years remain the gold standard of TR bio’s, and H.W. Brands’ TR: The Last Romantic runs a close second. One detailed and fun (if quirky) TR tome is My Last Chance to be a Boy, by Joseph Ornig, which is a detailed account of the 1913 - 14 Brazilian expedition.

llll - Monongah, by Davitt McAteer (West Virginia University Press, 2007, Amazon price $19.80) - On 6 December 1907, an explosion in the Fairmont Coal Company’s Mines 6 & 8 in Monongah, Marion County, killed 500+ miners. This is a detailed study of that disaster. Before I actually put these words to paper, I was somewhat negative about Monongah, but for the wrong reasons. That would have been pretty stupid on my part, and would have placed form over substance. (Also, it would have run afoul of TR’s comments about it not being the critic who counts, but that the credit belongs to the one "who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly . . .".) The author, Davitt McAteer, is a native of Fairmont (right up the road from Monongah) who now practices law in Shepherdstown. (His sister is a friend and very gracious lady.) He served honorably as the head of MSHA during the Clinton Administration. Having come out of the United Mine Workers of America, he was less than the darling of the coal operators while in government. (The owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, which collapsed killing 6 miners and and 3 rescuers in 2007, spoke of McAteer with fluent contempt in a press conference broadcast on CNN.)
To grade this book, we have to grade several subjects:
Research/Scholarship - A
Organization - B+
Editing - D
Overall Value - A+
McAteer researched Monongah for 30 years. (If he plans to match the output of a Michener, he needs to move a little quicker.) The length and depth of the research shows. Nearly all of the sources are primary ones, and the book is extensively end-noted. McAteer’s writing isn’t Michener, but particularly when he is talking about people, and how people lived, he does so with passion and such unusual detail that one can clearly see the images. The descriptions of the miners’ poverty in the squalor of company houses are so real that they are painful. The organization is a touch chaotic, but I might be unfair about that one. McAteer is covering a single large event which had several coherent lines of development going at once, so a strict chronology is impossible. At times, the book is redundant, but that’s really more of an editing problem.
Ah, editing. Monongah is the unfortunate victim of inadequate, even inept editing, so much so that it takes willing suspension of disbelief to get past that to the value of the work. Whoever edited this used spell-check but didn’t read the manuscript itself very closely. There are several instances where homonyms or similar words are confused ("to" rather than "too", "road" rather than "roar", "Triangle Shirt Waste Factory" rather than Triangle Shirt Waist . . ."), poor grammar (" . . . they were paid a hourly wages" and some silly factual mistakes. (West Virginia was formed in 1863, not 1865; the hotel in Wheeling is McClure House, not McLure House; President Taft’s Christian names were "William Howard," not "Howard A.") For 30 bucks, ($19.80 at Amazon), more attention should have been paid to the details. There are also errors that I’m probably too petty in noticing that wouldn’t distract any reader save one who has walked the ground where the disaster happened. (I’ve been there many times, and every time I go to my father-in-law’s house, I park on the streetcar right-of-way that figures prominently in McAteer’s account.) McAteer isn’t heavy on historical interpretation (an attitude that I heartily approve of), and most of what he does sounds reasonable to me. (I think he misses the point of Theodore Roosevelt’s intervention in the 1902 Anthracite Strike, but that’s subject to honest disagreement.) SO, overall, if you set aside my own literary/grammatical fastidiousness, Monongah is an engaging and timely look at an important event and a turbulent time in our state’s history.
There is a children’s book (The Monongah Mining Disaster, by Jason Skog) due to be published in January 2008. It will be interesting to see what view that author presents to youngsters.

llll - The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, by Mark Herrmann (ABA Publishing, 2006, List price $34.95, Amazon price $23.07) - I’m not sure if I like this one because it’s full of good advice, or because I’ve learned soooo much over the years from curmudgeons. I started practice before Judge J. Harper Meredith, a curmudgeon if there ever was one. Wow, I loved that guy, and learned more much from him than anybody in law school. (Perhaps the best compliment I ever received was from Judge Meredith: "Roger, you and I understand each other.") The theme here is working hard and taking responsibility, which are probably hard to teach, but Herrmann mixes in a lot of "how’s & why’s." That’s the way I learned what I know about my craft (and hope that I’m still learning) from my mentors, mainly Alfred Lemley and the late Frank Sansalone. Both of them taught me the attitude of fighting like hell for your client, for giving honest and candid advice, and for working hard. Both gave me advice that, if followed, makes a lawyer’s life much easier. Do the order as soon as you get back to your office after a hearing. Don’t violate what is now RPC 1.8. Herrmann talks about the trap apparently laid by every lawyer-supervisor who assigns a brief to a student or new lawyer, that of asking if this is your best work and ready to file. I only got caught on that one once, and learned that the only acceptable response was "Dammit to hell, Alfred, I wouldn’t have brought you the bleeping thing if it weren’t." Herrmann teaches billing clearly, dealing with staff, dressing acceptably, involving clients in decision-making without compromising yourself, and building a practice. Maybe a great gift that those of us who have been taught by curmudgeons is to become curmudgeonly ourselves. This is a great resource to keep learning.

A note on cyberbooks: Ben Bova’s 1989 Cyberbooks forecasts the mixed blessing of large numbers of books being carried in a simple handheld computer the size of a modern mass market paperback. There have been several feeble attempts to fulfill this prediction in past years. Sooner or later, some format will catch on, just as VHS, cassette tapes and CD’s did. The latest entrant is the Kindle device exclusively offered by Amazon. Amazon touts its readable screen, (tiny) QWERTY keyboard, ease of downloading books (wirelessly), and long battery life. Amazon also offers online storage of your "library" so that you can keep downloading books basically forever, or until the next successful attempt at a cyberbook standard occurs. Downloads cost $10 for anything current, although $4 downloads are available for some books. Right now, Amazon has 90,000 titles available for the Kindle which is, when you think about it, not a whole lot. Oh, the biggest downside: The Kindle costs $399. Shipping is free. Yippee.

Pippa passes.

The spirits did it all in one night?

2007-12-24T21:08:00.000-05:00

Now THIS was another strange day in a really, really strange year.

It started early with a trip to a regional jail. I represent a fellow from Arizona who is charged with a meth conspiracy, interstate transport in aid of racketeering, money laundering, and stuff like that there. There is little that I can tell anyone about what's going on with the case, since at this point, it's headed for trial, and the decisions that he and I have to make are HUGE in terms of risk and effectiveness. One known fact is that $45,000 was seized from him by alert police in Missouri, and the money was (a) well hidden in a car and (b) packaged exactly the way that the alleged kingpin packaged his money. That's going to be rather a challenge to explain - Surely, it didn't come from a paper route. This is one of the cases that is taking over my life. Friend JC from Baltimore went with me to talk to him because (a) she doesn't do criminal work and hasn't been to a jail and (b) to give me a fresh viewpoint. Oh, I gave her a dollar bill to retain her as co-counsel (who cannot appear, since she's not admitted in the district) so that the privilege applied to the discussion with the client - I need a name for him - Hispanic fellow (American citizen, uses better English that I do normally), but tacking some stereotypical Hispanic name is consdescending. OK, Joe, how's that? Very nice fellow, super worried about his family back in AZ, and he's essentially like a "stranger in a strange land." We had an arraignment for a superseding indictment a couple of weeks ago, and on the trip from the jail to the courthouse, Joe saw his first snow. I gather it doesn't snow in southern Arizona. Not sure, never been there myself. So here's a guy who is thousands of miles from family, in a strange place, in a locality where Hispanics are rare and nobody speaks Spanish, and the case is dragging on and on due to the fact that a co-defendant hasn't been arrested yet. How does one wish Joe a Merry Christmas? JC's imput was valuable - she is very much a student of humanity, and didn't come to the table with a criminal practitioner's biases. I'm not proud - I'll take fresh opinions and veiwpoints wherever I can find them. I knew a fellow who kept a tarot deck in his desk, and as he was dealing with a difficult case, he'd do whatever people do with tarot cards and read their "message." He didn't believe that the cards were magic or anything like that, he just thought it was a good exercise to introduce something random and out-of-the-box as he did his decision making. I'm not above borrowing others' ideas, but I'm such a scoffer of occult crap, I'll not do that one. Joe is looking at zero incarceration if he wins; 6 or so years if he pleads guilty; and 25 or so years if he goes trial and loses. If I do anything but let the case consume me, am I doing him a decent job? If I do let it consume me and make choices when I'm not focusing totally, am I doing him a decent job? Sigh- this sort of self-doubt - I don't know how many other lawyers have it. All of them (and me) posture like we're totally in control, totally affable or intense or whatever our persona-of-the-week may be. But "who knows what lurks in the hearts of men"? The drive wasn't comfortable, either - the heater in the Elu-mobile is screwed up, it's stuck on 81 degrees - so it's either roast, freeze or turn on the heater and crack the windows in such a way that the heat is somewhat dissipated at the cost of so much noise that conversation is impossible. If I ever write a book on practicing law, I gotta remember to put in it that folks need comfortable cars, because their rear ends are going to spend a lot of time in them.

After getting back to town, I went with LaElu, son Tim and our mom to my cousin's house, which is something that we have done for the last 50 years, no kidding. It's a comfortable house in a nice residential area, and my cousin and her husband are the friendliest people imaginable. My aunt was there, and she and my mom talked a lot. They both miss their husbands, my Dad who died in 99 and Uncle Junior who died 4 years ago yesterday. Perhaps I'm in a position to better understand (just a little bit?) the love of family this year. There was a modest gift exchange, stuff like sweaters, etc., things that are comfortable. Whenever someone needed a knife to open a package, each of the men in the room immediately produced one. Is that a local thing? Do people across America routinely carry knives?

Son Tim is working at his rescue company from late evening to morning tonight. He's a young, unmarried guy, no children, so he's inevitably going to work a lot over Christmas. I warned him when he left tonight to be especially careful out there - some times of the year, Christmas included, bring out unusually strange behavior in people - the anger is more angry, the anguish is more anguished. His station got slammed today, and I hope that they have a quiet night. Generally (at least here), the call volume is down a little on Christmas, but most of the calls are fairly serious. And yes, I do sorely miss doing that even after all these years, but the fact is I'm too old and not physically qualified to do that job any more. I got to tell myself, "I did that already."

Also, this evening included another paragraph in my strange transformational journey of 2007. "Our church" had a Christmas Eve service. Now, the phrase "our church" is a very weird concept to me. I'm the independent gadfly, the samurai, the knight-errant, the tomahawk wielding, painted warrior, the ice-in-the-veins guy who has in real life laughed at gruesome crime and autopsy photos when prosecutors have flashed them to shock me, and made jokes in very poor taste at the bench in murder trials. I'm the free-thinker, the unapologetic apostate, the heretic, the drinking buddy of Ol' Thanatos, the boatman on the River Styx. And now it's "our church"? We were doing communion by "intinction" tonight (first time I've ever heard the term) and Parson Jim gave me the bread with the loving intonation, "Roger, the body of Christ," and I couldn't resist leaning over and telling him in a whisper, "Yeah, but this is still pretty weird, Jim." When we left after the service, he hugged me and laughed and assured me that God has a sense of humor. As Dilbert has confirmed, that would explain a lot. LaElu has even signed us up for some sort of Bible study at the University next semester. And I went along with it. And my pastoral brother got me a theological kind of book (a very elementary one, mind you) for Christmas that I'm reading and that's actually thought-provoking. And I want to discuss it with him, and with others. I believe in DNA and evolution, fission and fusion, relativity, the inability of matter to move at the speed of light in normal space, the constancy of gravity, random chance, statistical anomalies, that "only the good die young," "live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse," (worked for Belushi), and it's "our church"??? But I also believe in love and peace, in avoiding human idiocy, fundamental goodness, the Scout Oath, and in God. The service tonight lasted an hour and a half, and I was sorry when it was over. "Jesus mugged me, this I know . . ." This is juxtaposed on the stunning family strife going on for the past couple of months, and I'm very disoriented. I have two civil cases going to trial in the next two months, Joe's federal case which will take a couple of weeks, some juveniles who (whom?) I'm really worried about, the ongoing awareness of my own behavioral issues (the presence or absence of which figures prominently in the family strife thing), a transformational diet thing, and I really do fantasize about a cabin at the farm with a chair and a reading lamp and little else. If anyone knows how to put this into a consistent framework, I'd be obliged to hear it.

And I must still say every morning, "All the things of my life are present, and it is a good day to die." That keeps me sane, or at least as sane as I get.

The fourth quarter canon is in process. I'm working on a couple of book reviews for the state bar journal - not cover article material, but I hope decent filler. Oh, I passed the 120 books for the year mark.

I do wish all here a Merry Christmas. I hope that we can all use it as a time to reflect and renew, and that the coming year is better for all of us than the last one.

Mizpah.

R

I'm a literary failure

2007-12-21T22:08:00.001-05:00

Something got me looking for an obscure literary character on google today, and I stumbled onto learned articles explaining the intricacies of literature to us poor unwashed. The character I was looking for was from The Last of the Mohicans, and I was treated to a fascinating discussion of the male images and the surprise that Cooper wasn't writing with a lot of homophobia. You got to be shitting me -- they actually pay people to write this shit? Or am I indeed a swine before whom pearls have no interest. Then at B&N today, I ran across a book called How to Talk About Books You've Never Read. WTF? How to preen and pose? How to bullshit? I confess that while I'm widely read, there are magnificent gaps in my canon. If I haven't read a book and someone wants to discuss it, I'll certainly listen, but I have nothing to add to the conversation. Some of my best reads have come from those sorts of conversations. A fellow customer in a bookstore at least 20 years ago directed me to the historical novels (exquisitely researched) of Allen Eckert. Those cover the 18th century development of the shifting frontier.

My partner remarked this week that she thinks it's "nuts" to carry around multiple books to read. (I keep the ones I'm working most on in a canvas tote with my briefcase.) That's a touch offensive - it feels like a freedom thing to me. I take pleasure in books. I have friends there who are as real to me as many people in the physical world, and most of whom make a hell of a lot more sense. One of my favorites is Handling Sin, by Michael Malone. I'm sure I've mentioned that book before. Here's the power of a book: I gave a copy to my former partner's daughter, who loved it. She had a friend whose father was dying of cancer. She gave him the book, and it was the last thing he read, and she told me that he told her that he got lots of hours of pleasure and lightness and escape from the pain from it. That's power. I cannot imagine a life without books. Amazon has a new product, the "Kindle," which is an ebook reader that may be practical. I can picture the convenince of cyberbooks -- no more heavy canvas tote. But I just hesitate to pass up the full experience, including the tactile experience, of a printed book.

Today marked the 30th time I have gathered with staff to recognize another Christmas. As I am wont to do, I talked a bit, about our difficult year, about the joys we've had, and the crappy times -- Tammy coming to work for us and being soooooo hesitant to trust us to support her in taking care of her family's need; the whole cancer experience with Kathy; Amy's family health issues. But we have hung together, and we have persevered. Perhaps that's all that's expected of us, I'm not sure.

Last night was the county bar Christmas reception, and it was held at No. 3. It was surprisingly nice, and I enjoyed it a bit. Lots of people who are important to me and who I care about were there, and we talked in peace. And this morning was the last "judicial day" before Christmas, which means that I made my Christmas rounds, and made a few dozen phone calls to wish my friends a good new year. Something I blogged a few days ago, about how many murdered people I have known, has had me thinking. Clank asked probing questions of the why of all that. My brother Dave and I have reflected on this, and postulate that it's a combination of the sordid parts of life we inhabit, and the fact that we live in a town of 20,000, and a county of 60,000 people. So, we just know an awful lot of people. There are literally 1,000+ people I know who I will greet with a genuine smile, a handshake, a hug or a touch on the back, and genuinely enjoy seeing them. My experience of other types of places is virtually nil. What is it like in more populous areas?

I honestly don't know how to take this holiday off. I feel like I can slow down for 2 or 3 hours, but after that I get antsy and have to be doing something. That's hardly a healthy attitude, I know, and I feel stuck and quite hopeless to have genuine down time. Tomorrow is 1/2 day of work (issues surrounding a house mortgage foreclosure), Sunday is a full day of activity, and I have been "assigned" a fairly aggressive schedule by LaElu for Monday, mostly family and church stuff. I have in my mind a perfectly restful setting, the farm figures prominently in that, but I don't know how I would react to it in real life.

Good news: Down 155. Got the pre-sentence report on the third of my triad of woman federal drug defendants, and I have a plan to get her a good result. I will, however, be worried a ton about it until March, when the sentencing is set.

All in all, it's a dull and lonely life this week.

Mzpah. Pippa passes.

R

None so blind . . .

2007-12-17T21:15:00.000-05:00

Odd day - endless parade of the clueless. Odder evening - book study at the church with LaElu, Grandmother, sane brother & sil, several others. For one who purports to be so widely read, I've rather several gaps in my education. In response to an observation about Dan Brown's book which postulated a romance between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, several ladies present said that Jesus wouldn't have done that. I rather blundered into disfavor by agreeing that maybe he had the right idea. It seems that for the last month, every guy in trouble I've met has started the conversation with either "I was in this bar . . ." or "There was this woman . . ." Hmmmm - I wonder if by admitting that I'm reducing my already non-existent chances of getting lucky with any of the Ladies of the Shelf. Ah, well, perhaps I'm in reality dreadfully dull and thoroughly domesticated.

Well, I hope I never quit learning.

My dear friend Leah just got back from SF - secreting the ashes of her in-laws (whom she loved) in some out-of-the-way place. Our rituals of death, those are strange. Personally, I would go for the cave thing or, failing that, the platform thing, so that I can return to the earth through my friends.

More fun in federal court tomorrow. At a dinner party thing with LaElu Friday night, I was basically consumed with getting back to No. 3 to file something in federal court -- but how do you explain that? This is a part of my world.

An acquaintance of son Tim was murdered, apparently by an ex-husband, Saturday night. He's affecting no effect, but I know it bothers the hell out of him. But knowing murdered people, that's part of my world, too. Friend Dave and I were reminiscing a few months ago about how many people we've known who got whacked, and it was an impressive number. When we go for coffee, he never sits with his back to a door, which is a wise precaution in his job.

The whole gift and partying thing for Christmas is a gigantic pain in the ass. I cannot help but cringe at how many days No. 3 will be out-of-service this month.

Oh, and permit me to wish a warm welcome to the busybodies who visit here who don't know where to go buy a clue about what I'm saying.

Mizpah.

R

Flexidoxy, Reasoning Together and Flaming Idiots

2007-12-16T20:45:00.000-05:00

After church today, LaElu needed to do a touch of shopping, so I snatched a couple of pamphlets from the narthex (no kidding, it's really the name of a room - it's like we're in the Middle Ages or something) to see what the denomination tells others it believes. I didn't have a book with me, and one of the more boring things is waiting in the parking lot while LaElu shops in her curiously contemplative fashion. (Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus; I'm from 61 Cygni.) In any event, the minister isn't bullshitting when he describes the situation as Christian Flexidoxy. One is free to read and interpret the Bible as s/he will, there is darn little dogma, few magic words, no expectation that praying for stupid stuff (magical cures, etc.) will work, and there is no need for an intercessor, 'cause plain folks can talk to God and get a message as validly as one who has been in seminary. I'm pretty comfortable there. (I recognize that there may be some apparent inconsistency with any-doxy on my part and my cynical and curmudgeonly nature. But see post on God some months ago.) This whole thing of everyone having some sort of ministry (1) is consistent with my anti-clerical beliefs and (2) finally makes sense of something my Dad was trying to tell me in the last month of his life. To each his/her own. Moreover, this is all very consistent with Masonic teaching, which also makes sense to me.

Speaking of Masonic teaching, Friend Dacey in Baltimore was telling me that she'd seen some sort of documentary or docu-drama about the Freemasons' evil plots, and described a purportedly accurate recreated ceremony. Darn, the thing was pretty close. That still doesn't bother me a bit. It's not the input that's important, it's how you process it and whether you get the point. Not that everyone gets the point, even the Grand Whatevers.

Had a pleasant talk with my former partner on Friday, mainly catching up on family, etc. When we talk, there's not an elephant in the room, there's a whole fucking zoo. I still do care for her and care what happens to her, and perhaps we are moving toward detente. Life is too short to harbor bitterness. (We still own a building together, and have not resolved that.)

Well, I keep telling myself that, but the (insane) brother is still an ultra-brooding topic to me.

My (sane) brother is coming in from Indiana tomorrow (plus his wife, a very sweet lady). He has sincerely tried to spread oil on the turbulent water plus provided a lot of gentle and effective support to our mother. The boy's got a touch that I don't have. He's a seminary guy (I don't know if he ever got the decoder ring, but he has a Masters of Divinity, I think) so that fits his background. Well, that's excellent. I have told him, though, not to bother with the oil-on-the-water thing with me, because I must consider the relationship with the (insane) brother terminated. That's a sadness, but life is too short to volunteer to take abuse.

Yes, I realize that brooding and termination are somewhat mutually exclusive. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." (Emerson) (I like to quote Emerson. I quote from his poem Brahma a lot -- it's extraordinarily in-your-face.)

I'm bringing up a blog for No. 3, to have yet another place to spread my heresies, only this one known and available. I'm wondering how edgy I'll be willing to write there.

Last Thursday's sentencing -- I'm still wondering how much a role I played in the great result. I stretched as far as I could, farther than I usually think is credible, in order to ask for a home-confinement sentence. For the past year, I had been honestly working my ass off on this case. This is a great judge we had - smart, appointed by Bush I, so conservative, human, and the way she runs her courtroom permits (or even invites) people to put aside advocating ridiculous things and "come and reason together." Mind you, if you go into her court and act like an asshole, she'll cut your heart out. I just finished a book (that I'm going to review for the state bar journal) called The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law. In some respects, the author does not accurately depict practice as it is done in West Virginia. (Were I a curmudgeon myself, I would say that in some respects the author is full of shit.) (Oops, I guess I've already admitted that status.) In any event, he does talk about how cases percolate (my word) in a lawyer's mind, and you just live with it 24/7. I cannot turn that sort of thing off and, indeed, I'm a little sad to close this file, too. But Friday, yet another lady crack client came in, to talk about HER sentencing which is in March. From each of these three women, I've learned (or relearned?) something. From Tina, I saw how deep the pit is, and how daunting that mountain you gotta climb looks from the bottom. From the lady last week, Toni, I learned that being on top of that mountain looking down at what you just did is pretty thrilling. And from the third lady, Tonya, I'm seeing confirmation that there are a lot of evil animals who are willing and anxioius to shove otherwise decent people down into the pit. That's yet another case that is churning in me.

I'm looking forward to attempting coffee with Brother Dave in the morning - to see us together, you would wonder what in the hell we have in common. He is a small man, super-athletic, and a really snappy dresser. I'm just, well, me. But he's my best friend, and I'm very glad of that.

I'm running the decision tree for how to adjust to Amy's prolonged absence. Family has to come first. But we do important work that must get done, or lots of people are in a world of shit.

I'm going to a book-club-group sort of thing tomorrow night - first time I've done that in DECADES. A different part of the brain is involved in turning learning and reactions to a book into spoken language.

Ruminating about an "ideal" life - and there is no consistent vision, at different times I want different things. Tonight, there is a high wind, cold temps and some snow (nothing like what they got north, west and east of us), and I would like to be at the farm, in a cabin of some sort, in the darkness and silence of a winter's night. Inside, of course. I was thinking tonight as I walked from my car to the house, jeez, I used to enjoy going camping in this shit, what was I thinking? Brother Pete, does this mean that I'm getting old or soft or something like that?

The bar Christmas thing is at No. 3 Thursday night. I'm a touch miffed - Amy's absence will be a problem. Last week, I made it clear that I'm not hosting the fucking thing, I'm not a host kind of guy, so another sociable lady lawyer is taking up the slack. I promise that I'll wear a coat & tie and smile now and then as I lurk and drink my coffee, but that's it.

My week is packed, and I hope that Friday night thru Wednesday will be an interlude of down time.

Mizpah. Pippa passes.

R

Tripping through Oz

2007-12-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

I'll write at some length this weekend - but this was a WEIRD day - Did another woman crack distribution sentencing in Federal Court today, and got such a stunningly good result that it's already on the district's jungle telegraph - and it wasn't me - I'm at home in court, I feel good there, I feel natural there, but I'M NOT THAT GOOD.

I was ruminating about what an "ideal life" for me would be like as I was in the car going between courthouses today - I'll blog about that, too - that concept is definitely a moving target.

Mizpah.

R

Paladin at heart

2007-12-12T20:58:00.000-05:00

The bug passed in the night, so I was fully functional today - ok, functional to the extent that I'm ever functional.

There was an 8:30 hearing in Morgantown on my schedule, so I was there by 8 -- and found that the hearing wasn't until 11 - and the interim to return to No. 3 would consist of 1-1/2 hrs in the car, and 1 hour working. No problem, got a brew at Starbucks, and worked -- did the notes for tomorrow's sentencing, rewrote the notes for a brief, and wrote a bunch of cards to people - I carry them in my clipboard thing for such occasions - The hearing was really rather humorous. It was a Social Security case remanded to the Administrative Law Judge by federal court. ALJ's hate to get reversed. So he was trying to set up the record to deny the claim and prove he was right the first time (including the rare step of calling a medical expert witness) and I was trying to set up circumstances that he couldn't deny the claim this time around. Each of us knew damn well what the other was doing, it was couched in the most pleasant possible language, and watching ourselves and the other spar was just funny. (Nobody else in the room was in on the joke - the case is totally important to the client.) In my petition to the federal court for the remand, I used words like "strange," "inconceivable," and "incomprehensible" in reference to the ALJ's original opinion.

Amy told me today that she's going to be out effectively for 3 months, secondary to her 2 y.o. having something called auditory neuropathy, that will probably need treated someplace like Baltimore. So, whoever said that "things can't get any worse" is an optimistic dumbass.

A client's family, the nicest people imaginable, brought me a xmas gift today - poinsettia (no doubt someone will want to use it) and a large tin of peanut butter fudge. Damn. Then on the other hand, it does illustrate the power of addiction, and the fact that I just can't be around that. (No, didn't imbibe a bite.)

TimSon took a 6 y.o. on a long-distance interhospital transfer Monday night - he was talking to me about the experience, and I'm really glad that he is showing a lot of heart and care, and not acquiring the jaded outlook that EMS creates in some people.

I noticed that I've been putting my name in a whole lot of books lately - not sure why - I always put my name & the date on the flyleaf of my books in the same way. Odd habit, I know.

But then remember Dykstra's Law: Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.

Mizpah.

R

Mixed bag

2007-12-11T19:25:00.000-05:00

1 - 150 down. That's good.
2 - The f.ing flu shot apparently worked. I got it. It's gotta be gone by 5 AM or I'm in deep shit. However, my body hurts, and that is a good reminder of the physical pain of higher weight. Hey, I gotta find something good in this.
3 - My ignorant sister-in-law just got beat up by her drunken, lazy, criminal husband, but she refuses to call the police. I have a good record helping abused women, but this is one failure of mine, and the whole thing pisses me off.
I'm going to bed.
Pippa passes. Mizpah.
R

Secrets revealed, circuit breakers trip, a small encounter

2007-12-07T20:03:00.000-05:00

Stayed real busy today. Had to do the bill in Tina's case to get my partner off my ass. And then I closed Tina's file. Hell, how many files have I closed in 30 years? This could be the first one that I put the sticky note on and put in the "out" basket with . . . regret? Sadness? Hope? I'm just not sure.

I had an out-of-town appointment today, and my mom wanted to go along for the ride (and to hit B&N after we were done.) She's still stressed by yesterday, and all that I can do is provide what support I can. Another (genetic) brother is clergy-trained and has been stepping in and providing a LOT of advice and support that I'm not able to effectively bring off (for a number of reasons). But the senior (genetic) brother is just so outrageous that I cannot take him seriously and still be effective in lots of realms. So, them's the circuit breakers what tripped.

While I was at the appointment (which was at a health care facility), I came out to the waiting area where my mom was sitting, and there was a young man, 15 or 16 there. Upon closer inspection, I saw that he was wearing handcuffs and shackles. (Shackles go around the ankles, prevent anything but a slow walk.) The deputy with him was a nice fellow, and didn't object when I struck up a conversation with the kid - nothing elaborate, nothing legal, just that he was obviously having a bad day (and he agreed with that) and that he should hang in there. It is probable that he's in this predicament due some lousy parenting and a don't-give-a-shit materialistic MTV society. Yeah, yeah, I hear people saying that there IS such a thing as a bad kid, but that's just WRONG. Some kids take the wrong path, and some don't need as much stupidity to go that way, but they are CHILDREN. This really pisses me off, we as a society are spending pennies on resources for children because (1) they don't vote and (2) neither do many of their parents. The funding mechanisms of government are for sale, and pretty cheaply at that.

Hmmm - got off the track there.

It's a dark night here, but there are still town lights. Have you experienced true darkness outside? You have to be away from all lights, all towns, and it's either a spooky or a cosmic experience. The moonlight can illuminate lots, but when it is only starlight, it's magical. I had an English prof. in college named Sonnenshein, wonderful fellow. He was strictly a city guy, and once confided to me that one of his greatest fears was being in the woods out of sight of any of the works of Man. Funny, I'm rather fearful of walking down the sidewalk in a huge city. To each their own. Oh, when he retired and moved to San Francisco, Sonny wrote me a note, which was nice, but he accused me of forever scarring Epithelamion for him by reciting it in W.C. Fields' verbal style.

The "secrets," as requested by Sarai:

Mizpah is a Hebrew word literally meaning "watchtower," not to be confused with the Jehovah's Witnesses use of that term. It is used metaphorically as the wish that "God watch over you and me until we meet again."

"Pippa passes" is a lot tougher to explain. Rosary is right, it comes from a poem/play by Robert Browning. The most remembered lines from the poem are "God's in His heaven and All's right with the world!" In this poem, there is a nice and even naive character, Pippa. In the midst of all sorts of situations of chaos and debauchery, Pippa appears very briefly, announced by the sentence "Pippa passes." I use it to mean that in the midst of chaos, we just march on.

Mizpah. Pippa passes.

R

Sunrise, sunset

2007-12-06T15:54:00.000-05:00

Well, this is certainly a mixed day so far.

Tina the Crack Dealer got sentenced - We got the Title 18 § 3553 "safety valve" which made her eligible for a sentence less than the mandatory 10 years, got bottom of the guideline range there, which is more than I really hoped, and the sentence is 57 months. With time served, time off for intensive drug treatment, good time, get a GED and a stay at a halfway house, she'll be out in 3 years, which is rather miraculous. The judge recommended that she serve her time at Alderson (WV) (where Martha Stewart served her time) which is a fairly low security setting. The Bureau of Prisons looks to the expense necessary to keep people - the more secure, the more expensive - and Tina should be a low security risk. At Alderson, they live dormitory-style, so I guess you could say it's rather like a very low-class summer camp. I'm really pleased, but also concerned what the various safety nets in society will be able to do to support her in a normal life.

Then, a (genetic) brother dumped some unspeakable shit on our mother, and this afternoon has been filled with dealing with that in an appropriate way (which meant a lot of getting help from outside because I'm too damn close to the situation and too hurt and too angry to trust myself to think totally clearly and be as effective as she needs right now) and generally being sad -- This is a brother that I idolized much of my life - e.g., he is a legitimate war hero, very strong - it's just a great sadness.

The shootings in Nebraska - it is absurdly easy to obtain and modify a military-style weapon - the use of weapons is a spreading sickness - that's what our focus should be on, not petty family shit. Sigh - I can be a bit of a dumbass.

Sarai, darling, most mornings I call my best friend and tell him "All the things of my life are present, and it is a good day to die." To me, that is a very positive statement - it doesn't mean that I want Ol' Thanatos to visit me that particular day, it means that I feel strong and defiant and if I go out today, I'll go out on my feet and not on my knees, with my tomahawk red with the blood of my enemies. (I like martial metaphors, did you notice?)

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

Little to say

2007-12-05T19:45:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the sentencing for Tina-the-Crack-Dealer. By the time we get to court, the judge will pretty much have decided what to do. I'm worried, but it's darn near out of my hands.

Most drivers were relearning the physics associated with ice & snow today. Rather tiresome. It's not like the coefficients of friction or acceleration due to gravity change year by year. At least not by much.

TimSon learned today that betting with Dad isn't gambling, it's paying tuition. He also got called in to work today, because they were getting slammed by weather-related stuff. His company managed to wreck two ambulances today - not a red letter day for ol' Station 20.

I still use a stick on the snow - I don't know if that's because of remaining weight or just sensible or silly caution.

I made a goal last January to read 120 books in 2007 - I'm up to 115, so I think I'll make that. Perhaps that's also silly. Well, it's me. I am the Doubter and the Doubt and I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

Mizpah.

R

I am the Doubter and the Doubt; or, Moderation is for Monks

2007-12-01T20:22:00.000-05:00

I confess to being in a "screw it" mode today. Not intense, not angry, just screw it.

LaElu, my mom & I went to "the fort" for the Christmas market. This is a reconstructed 18th century fort on the original location, but it was dreadfully dull. When I try to imagine the place 200 years ago, well it takes a lot of imagination. Rather than woods that were old growth, now the hills have been timbered within the last 50 years. Rather than a creek and robust river, we are afflicted with dams. (Mind you, the town across the river would not exist without serious flood control.) Some fellow was outside the fort demonstrating supposedly period firearms, but was using a percussion ignition weapon. Sometimes it's instructive to read period literature to have some clue about what life was really like -- but there are several versions, and I have no way to know what is true. Much of the literature in the 19th century was highly stylized (like Cooper) and just isn't very clear. Hmph - I am reminded that I'm being hypocritical according to the beliefs of Robert A. Heinlein, who found it inconsistent that one would embrace the beavers' dams, but not man's.

Tomorrow, No. 3 will be humming in the afternoon. A new client is coming in who for some very strange reason I've managed to get out on bond. (Were I the prosecutor, I would have gone to the mat on a detention hearing.) He does not yet truly appreciate his predicament. If we do this case incorrectly, we can eat a mandatory life sentence without parole, even though this guy has never killed or directly harmed anyone. (Drugs are harmful as hell, they are just not up close and personal.) (And perhaps it's a bit presumptuous when I say that "we" can eat a particular sentence -- When discussing overall strategy, I always remind the client that if things go South, he can look all around the prison cell, but I won't be there.)

I'm tempted to explain at some length the post about the Muhammad-teddy-bear. But since I would have to answer questions that do not exist in my world, I'll let it lay.

That reminds me - a very smart and tough fellow I knew when I was in college and doing an internship in the Capitol was talking to about 20 of us before we ended the day and headed for the Twenties, which was a favorite and crazy bar. (I was enamored of a young lady friend, and was seriously looking forward to the evening. She died of medical problems a couple of years later, and I often reflect on the unfairness of the Universe.) Anyway, the speaker passed around some sort of stuffed animal, told us to examine it as much as we wanted. Being cocky 20 year olds, we each grasped it with two fingers, held it at arm's-length, and passed it to the next person. It got back to the speaker (Jack Whiting was his name) and he took the stuffed animal, cradled it, petted it and in so doing taught us a remarkable lesson that I have never forgotten. Goodness, I was so darn stiff at that age (when sober). What I wouldn't give to be 20 again, knowing what I know now, of course.

I had a positively delightful breakfast this week with Bro. Dave and Pastor Jim - philosophical and fun. For some reason, the pastor wore a tie. Dave, of course, was on his way to court, and he's a very natty dresser nearly all the time (even to some extent when he's in the woods.)

Am I guilt of literary miserliness? At the Christmas Market, there was a bookstall with several (mostly uninteresting or paperback or poor condition books) with one book that I wanted. However, being a small bookseller, s/he needs to charge fairly high rates, in this case full publisher's retail of $34.95. I can get a pristine copy on Amazon or bookfinder.com for under $15 bucks, so I passed.

As I write this, WVU's football team is playing its last regular season game, with an eye to being in the national championship game. They have worked hard for that and I wish them well, but I'm not terribly emotionally invested in this whole thing. The problem with circuses is that they become not simply diverting, but totally distracting.

Great Caesar's Ghost, I'm a censorious bastard tonight, and pontificating like I have some clue what is going on. For some reason, I know that I'll sleep uneasily tonight, I just have one of those feelings that something is amiss in the fabric of the night.

Mizpah.

R

Now is the time for all Walloonians to come to the aid of their country; or, great wisdom from simple people

2007-11-26T21:29:00.001-05:00

Actually, just a few random thoughts today.

I'm beat - a habit I have when under stress is to work maniacally, get minimal sleep and wait to crash. I acknowledge that that's not a real healthy way to manage stress, but it's my way. After all, I can't use either food or booze, so I gotta improvise.

This church thing is getting weirder and weirder. An apostate like me in a church? Look, I went along with this to provide some company and support for my mother - a couple of hours a week for something that's important to her is not that big a deal. But now I seem to be looking forward to the experience. We went to a no-kidding church supper tonight. What's next? Gathering around the TV to watch Milton Berle? The darn place is accepting, even of me; loving; there's no macho posturing; nobody seems to be guarded in their interactions. It just ain't my kind of environment.

Huge blow-up in the WV Masonic organization - This is not Masonic, it's moronic. One would think that such people would sit down and talk and reason together and actually practice the brotherhood that gets taught, rather than go at one another hammer & tongs.

Darn it, I need a bag of cookies. I need a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin. This clean living is going to kill me. I need somewhere to swing my tomahawk.

"All the things of my life are present, and it is a good day to die."

Mizpah.

R

Purposely being vague . . .

2007-11-24T13:01:00.000-05:00

. . . is sort of what I do, and it's a habit. (Sorry, Rosa!) And I wrote the last post in great haste owing to urgent need to tend to things. (Rather like multi-tasking several lines of chaos. No, Chaos. It deserves the cosmological designation.) The circumstances to which I refer are a very serious ongoing confrontation (I may have mixed tenses there) (ooh, I made an unintended funny!) with a (genetic) brother that's (bothering the hell out of me? heck, I don't know how to describe the level of either cause or effect), am stuck by my own nature to the high road, and I'm having to keep an energetic "game face" on so that our mother doesn't twig to the existence of (or viciousness of) the discord, because that would upset her tremendously.

I should have specified that my health is great (down 140), that of my family ditto, and it's sunny in my mountains, and I'm hiding in my room at No. 3 today because the County Historical Society is conducting all day tours of historic houses, and apparently this is one of them. The place is spotless and totally neat, with the exception of my room which is closed and in which, like on the deck of a laboring boat, one finds the line, hooks, winches and other implements I use.

Today is the first day in several that I'm thinking clearly and looking for the learning that this situation has to present. Haven't found it yet, but it's there.

Endeavoring to persevere (I love that phrase, comes from Outlaw Josey Wales with Clint Eastwood),

R

Wanted: Guest Blogger

2007-11-21T11:14:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't posted for a while, and I have a good bit in the pipeline. Due to some unexpected adverse personal circumstances, I'll be out of touch for a while.

A great holiday wish for everyone.

Mizpah.

R

The pique of spirituality; or, Is the Pope just another guy with a funny hat?

2007-11-11T20:24:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting weekend.

Me and Jesus, we're buds. We have an understanding, I think. I don't demand to know the details of The Plan, and he's OK with me being human. It's a good working relationship. Church, however, is another matter. As a kid, I grew up in the Methodist Church. Frankly, I don't have a clue about the details of Methodist doctrine. I assume that it doesn't include transubstantiation, but I'm not clear on the issue of predetermination, predestination, or total free will. Some people find that important. I grew up with varying ideas of God, and frankly I think I always tried to keep a low profile. It didn't seem right to proclaim piddling items of faith as the Absolute Truth, when I really didn't have a clue. Church was, to me, about friendship and connection with society. As you know, I've always been socially retarded, and that certainly applied to me as a kid. I remember an "interdemoninational youth group" that I was a part of in high school. It was ethnically diverse, in retrospect, and I'm amused that I even remember that. We certainly weren't aware of that, we were just friends, learning the basics of independent interaction and loving friendship. (Note elsewhere, I've said that the current prohibition against teens touching each other is moronic.) The youth leader was Al, a senior at PHS, a big fellow with an outrageous sense of humor and who showed about as much fellowship and love as was permissable for a high school kid. I remember when he was killed when he rolled his little red MG convertible on Route 50. That did not make sense at the time, and still doesn't. Was that ordained by God? If so, He needs glasses. Why couldn't he have killed a young Saddam Hussein or Usama bin Laden? Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think Al would have been a much better human than either of those two. (And here I remember a song by . . . by . . . damn, I forget - Springsteen? Anyway, one line was "Only the good die young," and when it was popular, it was sort of an anthem for paramedics. Many a drunken episode in a nice bar was livened up with that song. It may even be true. It was true for Al.) I remember showing a senior girl the way up to the dome of the church, and fantasizing about "getting lucky" up over the stained glass. When she bent over to look down the long way down into the sanctuary, my eyes were focused intensely on the tops of her legs. (This in the days before panty hose, which are both ridiculous and not too darn enticing.)

Both yesterday and today have been spiritually thought-provoking for me. Yesterday, I was at No. 3 most of the day, doing the Saturday routine, which frankly isn't all that strenuous. I.e., I spend some time screwing off in the cushy chair in LaElu's office, reading. I went to my desk and was sorting through some papers. I came upon a postcard (remember those) from my Masonic Lodge which announced the "Past Masters Night" for that evening. It is hard to get away from No. 3 in time to go to lodge during the week, and when the meeting runs very late, that makes the next day's schedule all the more difficult. But whenever I see that we're having a Saturday meeting, I do my best to attend. So, I stayed late at No. 3, found a blazer that fit, and went to lodge. (I'm going down in clothes sizes quickly now - the nature of solids and geometry is that at a lower weight, the same weight loss produces larger linear reductions.) I got there early, because parking is a bear there, and sat through the dinner. That night, it wasn't prepared by the "stewards" of the Lodge, it was prepared by ladies from the Eastern Star, to make money for their organization. (That's bothersome to me. It feels like they are taking a subservient role. Note elsewhere my extreme -- if occasionally ruinous -- love of women.) The meal was "traditional rib-sticking American food," i.e., way too much and loaded with grease. (I'm soooo concerned about the diet long term - for this to be successful, I have to keep that stuff out of my life.) We went upstairs to the Lodge room, and held a "Master Mason's Lodge," in which there is ritual including prayer. (dear friend is a lawyer here, whose grandfather was Master of my Lodge in 1921, and whose father was Master in 1950. I'm going to mail her the little program of remembrance that was printed up.) As I've noted elsewhere, you can find versions of Masonic ritual in hundreds of places online. Every time I am a part of it, it gives me an opportunity to reflect and learn. LaElu surprised me today - noting that she thought I was an atheist, given my avoidance of church services. In fact, no atheist can be a Mason. I was disturbed during the meeting and afterwards when I learned of the illness of four brothers I'm close to. My "coach," Billy R., is in the hospital with severe respiratory problems probably due to years and years in the coal mines. The Lodge chaplain, Bob E., is a fellow I dearly love. He was an assistant scoutmaster in a troop I belonged to nearly 40 years ago. He came over during a break, and was telling me about just being diagnosed with prostrate cancer, and what the medical mill had in store for him. He talked about the fact that he has always prayed every day, and doesn't expect something miraculous of the burning-bush variety. Rather, he prays for the strength to fight. He is a man's man. Then there's Butch, who occupies a post called the "tiler." Butch is a contractor who smoked for years, quit 3 or 4 years ago, but got cancer anyway. He has cancer of the jaw, throat and tonsils, and he too has been tossed into the medical grinder. He's doing pretty poorly. He's a great guy. Due to my legendary ineptitude at fixing things, he's taken care of my Mom's house since Dad died in 1999. He stops in to visit her every month or so, usually bringing a bag of hamburgers from a greasy spoon near the college. And finally, there was Harold. I really love that guy, he is giving and loving and altogether pleasant. He has long been a brittle diabetic, and a couple of years ago, had to have a pancreas transplant. (I'd never heard of a pancreas transplant before that.) This cured his diabetes, and he's had a couple of great years. Now, though, the immune-suppressing drugs that he absolutely must take to avoid organ rejection are now causing squamous cell skin cancers, which are accumulating faster and more aggressively than surgeons can remove them, and he is truly screwed and he knows it. There's an interesting conundrum, what is the right thing to say to someone who is dying and knows it? Oops? Bad luck, old boy? Well, I told him I didn't know what to say, and he laughed because he enjoyed my perplexed look. Then I told him that I'll be there to help his wife "when the time comes," and that was a comfort to him. Here are 4 guys, 4 brothers, who have lived really good and decent and productive and honest and worthwhile lives, and they could each conclude that God has deserted them. None of them are saying that, and I pray to God that I'll be able to buck up like them when my Time comes. I left rather sad, and not understanding the justice or fairness of this. As if I believed in justice and fairness.

Then, today, I started with the typical Sunday routine. That means getting up when I damn well feel like it (although, as I age, it gets earlier and earlier), heading for No. 3, putting on the coffee and reading the Sunday paper. That doesn't take a great deal of time, I only read the local paper. Oh, I cannot claim originality in the use of "mizpah" at the end of most posts, as that comes from a local columnist who writes in a way that shows he absolutely doesn't care what people think about him, he's saying what he wants. I like that attitude. (A girlfriend once got me to read the New York Times and Washington Post on Sundays. It took too much time, and didn't cure my cultural isolation, and besides, CV News, the only place in town I know of that sold them, closed a couple of years ago.) I got dressed up again mid-morning, because I promised my Mom that I would take her to church. She's been depressed because the people she has sat with for years have either died or sickened to the point that they cannot attend services. Given my adult-life record of formal church attendance, she didn't believe that I'd follow through until I showed up at her door. To feed my caffeine addiction, I stopped at McDonad's and got a "senior coffee," which annoys me but still saves 41 cents. While I was there, I saw a grizzled, bearded fellow go inside and then emerge with his own coffee. The car thermometer said 38 degrees F., so I figured that he would go back to his car and take off. He went to the little balcony overlooking a simple, working-class neighborhood, wiped the dew from the railing, and stood there drinking coffee, leaning on the railing and "observing the scene." I'm not sure why I mention this - it struck me as significant at the time.

I confess to some nervousness as we went into the church. I hadn't been in there since my Dad's funeral, and I busied myself with examining the physical plant. There are laminated wooden arches which create an impressive free span. On the sharply curved ends of them, there are whatever the modern equivalent of flying butresses distribuing the load, and that both amused and impressed me. It was some comfort to me that I know the pastor pretty well. It's Jim N., a very pleasant retired Methodist minister who is the temporary preacher at this Disciples of Christ Church. He was Bro. Dave's pastor for years, and that's how I met him. He's a sort of philosopher of "Flexidoxy," my word for love and not iron-bound doctrine, not to be confused with a hooker who has been a gymnast. Early in the service, he asked if he had any "young friends" he could talk to, and several little kids came forward. (I was impressed that this church doesn't banish the kids to some alternate room for the service, they understand that sometimes kids make a fuss, and it's not a big deal.) One of the children brought a "lava rock" for him to look at, and he gave what I think was an impromptu sermon (I hate that word for some reason) about science and how it is consistent with God. He talked geology and somehow transitioned to cosmology. Actually, he didn't do a bad job, even touching upon the contra-intuitiveness of relativity. He did opine that the universe is eternally expanding, and I need to talk with him about that not being settled. It depends on the presence of currently-unmeasurable "dark matter" as to whether the universe we know is open or closed. Some of the rituals of the church aren't so flexible, but I guess tradition supports them without requiring that they be taken seriously. One is a song or chant or something, the name of which I don't recall, which promises "world without end." Personally, I find Carl Sagan's concept of a "last perfect day" on Earth to be pretty convincing. Indeed, it's inevitable. The sun is going to run out of hydrogen in a few billion years, begin to burn helium and expand beyond Earth's orbit. So it's not "world without end," but of course I won't be corporeally here to confirm that. I think. (Aside: The new novel by Ken Follett, World Without End, is totally superior and I highly recommend it.) There was, of course, singing, which I don't really understand. I had a couple of problems. Where my Mom had to hold the hymnal to see it, I couldn't make out the printing with my bifocals. Also, I have an untrained but decent baritone voice, but I've never really read music well enough to follow accurately the baritone line. So, I just went with the flow without singing. Another confusing part of the service is the "Lord's Prayer," where God is implored, among other things, to "lead us not into temptation." I wonder why that's still a part of that prayer. Prayer may be answered in some respects, but I don't know that this phrase has ever gotten an affirmative response. A better request, in my opinion, would be to "help us have the strength and good judgment not to jump at temptation like a cliff-diver at Acapulco." God hasn't always answered that one affirmatively, but it strikes me that it has a better chance of working.

I enjoyed the service. For some reason, I was reminded of my favorite bit of e.e. cummings.:
.
i thank You God for most this amazing day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything wich is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birth day of life and love and wings:
and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake
and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
.
This afternoon, I was reading a bit of Scott Adams' new book. One essay talks about religion and how the adherents of each of the world's faiths "pray to different invisible friends." The First Amendment is healthy and vibrant in some respects (those which do not threaten profits).
.
I'm gearing up to drive to a far-away jail tomorrow to talk to Tina the Crack Dealer. Perhaps the acid test for a belief system is one that will help her make sense of her life, and live in peace and love in the future. She certainly has the potential for that - she is a nice person. But I do so worry about all of the horrible influences in her life, and her willingness to put them aside. Here is the test of religion: How does this spiritual body treat Tina the Crack Dealer? If the only people who get saved are the meek, pious and lucky, the whole thing strikes me as a sham.

Oh, I'm going back to church with my Mom next week. Go figure.

A worrisome thought for today: This is Veteran's Day, formerly Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I. Whoever decided the terms of the peace determined that there was some sort of important symbolism is ending the war at 11:00 AM, so that it ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. In McCullough's bio of Harry Truman, he says that Truman's battery fired their 75 mm cannons right up until 11:00. Who's dumbass idea was that? Rather, fucking immoral idea. Who was killed simply because some symbol-bound moron decided to delay peace by a few hours. God wasn't on the ball on this occasion.

What also impressed me a lot is that Pastor Jim pronounced "gunwale" correctly when he was citing Kierkegaard. Not many ministers know how it's pronounced.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

I have nothing worthwhile to say

2007-11-09T21:02:00.000-05:00

Well, not much.

If I explain how everything is wonderful, I'm lying. If I bitch, I'm whining. I'll do neither. Sooo, some random observations:

I've noticed that those Shelfers I've talked to on the phone have distinct regional accents. Am I the only one who speaks without an accent and with perfect English?

Tomorrow is a parade in town, and of course the politicians are turning out. I told both Bro. Dave and Partner Amy today to look for me on the 2nd floor carved stone balustrade of the Courthouse as they slowly drive past. And I told them that they will have to look REAL hard, because I won't be there. I think Emma has passed the Grinch Conch on to me to hold for the holidays.

I went to dinner last evening with LaElu, Tim and my mom, to a ma & pa kind of restaurant which serves various kinds of comfort food. I sat, drank my coffee and chatted, and on this occasion, the food thing wasn't very difficult. Tim is getting good experience as a rescue guy, and he and I were having a friendly argument about preparations for hazardous materials incidents. I was on the county fire departments' shit list for a good while, because when I was an emergency services director, I torpoedoed a poorly considered proposal for a hazardous materials response unit, because after consulting with buddies in the hazmat business (one of whom co-wrote the revision of the response guide that is supposed to be in every apparatus in the country) it appeared to me that there are too few incidents to justify either the danger to responders who don't get calls and experience or the considerable expense. Tim worked midnight last night, and wouldn't you know they had a hazmat incident in an adjoining county with a death from exposure to toluene triisocyanate (think cyanide and phosgene, the gas that make WWI famous), sheltering, and a y'all come to lots of departments here including his company. Son Tim is a trifle smug this evening. Sigh. My opinion remains unchanged, but I'm no longer in a position to do much about that. One of my (borrowed) rules of life is "don't let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash." These young people are eager and think themselves invulnerable.

I have to get up early to meet a garage door installer, for the garage door (which is decades old) gave up the ghost. Hell, I offered to LaElu to get one at Lowe's and install it, but no, she had to have a professional. (Perhaps you don't realize how ridiculous such an offer is on my part. My favorite - sometimes only - tool is commonly known as the BFH Tool.)

I'm more and more leaving tracks in books - I have more stuff on my person than Batman does in his utility belt, including a yellow highlighter. When I see a phrase that strikes me, I mark it - maybe because that helps me remember it. This afternoon, I was waiting in the car reading Odyssey, by Jack McDevitt, and found one such passage: "Life is what it is. A brief stroll in the sunlight. A chance to enjoy yourself for a century or so. Love. Be loved. Have a few drinks before the fire goes out." I'm not often drawn to broad stuff like this, more so to terse, tight points. But this one just touched me. Maybe having a few (figurative) drinks is the one and True Answer.

I talked to the ladies at the diet place today - just talking about the future. My ideas in that respect aren't totally conventional, and I'm not going to do anything behind their back. I did tell them that they are important in my life, and I do love them. They were embarassed. How silly a society do we have when it's embarassing to be told that you're loved. There are as many kinds of love as their are combinations of people, and that potential changes every moment. (Sound silly or sweeping? I can live with that.)

I don't often pass along news items. On cnn.com today, though, there was an item about a high school girl who was suspended for hugging a friend who's parent had died. What kind of fucking values are we teaching kids? They watch the Dysfunctional Olympics (aka MTV and VH1) and so our collective response is to punish compassionate, human, loving behavior? Christ, I can think of cases that I've gotten ENORMOUS fees consisting solely of honest hugs at the end. What a world of trash. Hasn't anybody gotten the fucking memo? We're all in this together. (I do reserve the right to be judgmental about people who are silly, annoying and boring. If someone doesn't like that, I can live with that, too.)

November is a bad month for me generally. I'm working on the "why's" of that, but in many respects, my mind is closed. See, even I don't read the memo all the time.

Pippa passes.

Mizpah.

R

Sometimes country sayings are useful

2007-11-08T20:05:00.000-05:00

Amy got bombed in family court this afternoon - unfortunate case which illustrates the difficulty of bro. dave's job - I talked to her this evening as she was still smoking, but she wasn't ready to hear my opinion - which I distilled to a favorite localism - "sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you." Does that sound harsh or jaded? Perhaps - but the idea of lawyers who don't lose cases is ridiculous - if you get down in the trenches, deal with real people, you will see nasty stuff. That is the case in lots and lots of jobs. And when you emerge at the end of the day, covered with mud and sweat, you have to go take a shower and get some sleep, because tomorrow will be more of the same. Does that sound pessimistic? Not to me. I carry with me different documents for different purposes - one thing that I carry is a picture of the Central Criminal Court in London, the "Old Bailey." That is symbolic, to me, of the life I have chosen. Lots of very bad things happen there. I think I'll try to find Bro. Dave in the morning for coffee - and hassle him generally - in good fun. Although sometimes my sense of humor is a bit broad and inappropriate. Or iconoclastic.

Losing cases - of the post-death-penalty era in WV, by some quirk of fate, I own two of the three longest sentences - (life plus 200 years; and 7 consecutive life terms without parole). bro. dave tried the first one with me. There was a case with some conflict - the chief deputy sheriff let us in on his secret security plan for that trial- "if anything bad happens, you lawyers hit the deck because we're going to shoot the defendant." That had everything a good security plan needed - simplicity and decisiveness.

Tim got hired for ski patrol today. Believe it or not, an EMT is considered over-trained for that job around here - bizarre. He didn't appreciate my opinion that two things slide down hills - avalanches and fools.

LaElu has pointed out that I'm spending insufficient time around Casa LaElu - hell, I'm only working half days as a rule (that would be 7 AM to 7 PM). I like getting in early - there are 3 lawyers I talk to occasionally around 7, because we know that we are likely the only ones working at that time - it's a bit of a joke and a bit of mutual encouragement. Darn, I really miss my buddy and brother Fred - he would stop in at 7, we'd drink coffee, solve the world's problems, I'd run stuff by him for a lay/police-experienced view, and sometimes alter something I was doing in a case due to his opinion. Who will not listen to anybody's opinion is a fool. Cocky, too.

I'm taking off somewhat early tomorrow afternoon to go down to the diet place, and have a sort of status-check talk with the ladies there - I absolutely treasure those people. The office person there is in law school, and watching a new person's perspective is interesting. And there is a "fellowship" feeling to it. Anyway, re the diet, it will be a long time before I transition to long-term stuff, but it bears thinking about carefully even now. I'm walking longer distances without thinking about it lately - very new, and I need to look carefully at that and process it, and remember how truly miserable my physical life was 130 lbs. ago.

My mother has been using a computer purchases in 1998 by her and my dad. Tim finally talked her into the merits of a new one, and they ordered a Dell, including a good laser printer - she is getting more interested in photography.

Mizpah.

R

This space for rent

2007-11-05T17:37:00.000-05:00

I have a hopefully humorous (in my usual dark fashion) post in progress. I planned to take some time and buff it up this evening. Of course, humor is in the mind of the reader, perhaps it will be dreadfully dull and stupid. I have another darker one on my mind, too, but I don't know if I'll post that even here. Friend Dacey says that I get a bit edgy here at times.

However, a couple of hours ago, I was put into a terrible ethical dilemna (that I absolutely did not create even 1%) that has me, to use Partner Amy's term, "really freaking out." And the fucking rules (Did I say that? These are the rules I've lived by for 30 years, pretty faithfully and, indeed, the rules that I was tasked with enforcing for a few years) will not permit me to give any details at all here. So here I sit at No. 3, it's dark and storming outside, the house is dark but for my little desk lamp, everyone else has long since gone home, I've talked to my best friends (who, being lawyers, I can give some factual details to) who say it's a damn shame but I am absolutely mandated to do what I'd already done before I called them even though if I didn't do it nobody would (probably) ever find out. So do I be corrupt and feel bad, or follow the rules and feel horrible? Sadly, there is no room for discussion or even hesitation, and I feel guilty in an odd sort of way that I didn't at least consider doing the expedient but wrong thing. Not that I'm some sort of ethical drama queen or icon. But, by God, I DON'T FUCKING LIKE IT and I'M REALLY PISSED OFF AT LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE RIGHT NOW. For all the good that does. Sigh.

Pippa passes. But right now, I'd like to kick her ass.

R

Thoughts on the aerodynamics of flying squirrels

2007-11-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

Oddly enough, it was a day of about 60% rest. I was at No. 3, but spent part of the time screwing off, reading and so forth. Meant to do laundry, but I'll get that tomorrow. People are coming in tomorrow afternoon, so it'll be up to full steam.

Something is happening in my mind - I don't understand it. I'm getting more and more willing to share somewhat nosey opinions. In the trick or treat block party this week, as I saw a couple of grim-faced dads out with their little kids, I told them, "Enjoy it now, Dad, they grow up sooooo quick." (I know, it should be "quickly," but that's not in the local patois.) It's like I'm claiming to have some "wisdom," whatever that is, and the thought of making that claim is daunting.

LaElu, SonTim and I went to B&N tonight. Hell, I'm a cheap date. I bought a little bound edition of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. I haven't read that since college, and I remember enjoying it, and I couldn't find my copy of it if my life depended on it. Let's see, 3 or 4 other books, too, including Scott Adam's collection of essays. Damn, I wish I could write that well. Tim and I talked EMS all the way, and it was a nice discussion. LaElu has the uncanny ability to sleep anywhere very quickly, and she slept through it. I shop pretty quickly, so I spent a good bit of time waiting for them in the coffee shop, sitting in a comfortable arm chair (hell, I fit in them now) and practicing some Masonic memory work. My "coach" insists that I be "letter perfect."

Permit me to share a reading tip with you. B&N, etc., sell fancy bookmarkers. However, if you keep lots of books going at the same time (I do to match my particular mood at the time I want to read), the cost of bookmarkers can be scandalous. I use business cards sometimes, but they just don't have the umph to do the job. So, when I go to WalMart, etc., and pass the paint department, I often get 3 or 4 "paint chips," the long strips of thin cardboard with several shades of the same color on them. They work admirably. Hell, I'll even buy paint there someday. I also love bright colors. My private office at No. 3 is painted in WVU Mountaineer gold. That wasn't intended to honor the Mounties at first, it was just a bright color that didn't remind me of past offices. For some reason, I'm really responsive to colors. Odors, too.

I'm still trying in vain for the avant garde label for my post titles. I don't think I've ever seen a flying squirrel, at least not in flight.

Deer season is coming up. I think I'm going to the farm with Tim, just to enjoy the woods on opening day. I will not carry a long arm, because I don't hunt. I didn't get outside enough over the summer. What a dumbass I am. I live in this beautiful rural place, and I don't enjoy what it has to offer.

Closing in on 130, the process is totally nominal right now. I think the folks at the University wish that I were more involved in the process, thinking about it more. But what I need to do to make this a long-term success is learn to lead a somewhat ascetic life without having to constantly think about it. I'm actually wearing shorts these days, because they do not look totally gross on me. Or so I'm told. I'll never be a can-can dancer or a leg model, though - owing to lots of knocks and spills over the years, my legs are scarred and ugly.

Pippa passes.

Mizpah.

R

Unchained melody

2007-11-02T18:53:00.001-05:00

I don't have a clue why that phrase is in my mind tonight. Maybe something from The Righteous Brothers? Anyway, I post it in the hopes that someone will find it profound and assign some deep avant garde meaning to it, and consider me some sort of electronic sachem. Jim Morrison and The Doors - they said the name was profound, from some poem about a passageway into paradise or something like that. On the other hand, The Commodores picked their name at random from the dictionary - the first word they saw was "commode," so they looked further down the column. Maybe I'll found a group if I ever learn to play an instrument - The Wallboards; The Casement Windows. I've got it, The Studs. God, I'm deep.

I went to my Mom's house on the way home. LaElu was there. They were comparing horoscopes. No kidding. I asked when the witch doctor would be there with the shrunken heads, and recommended feng shui to channel the ethereal energy of the house. They were not amused.

Speaking of science, apparently John Raese (pronounced "racy") is running against Jay Rockefeller for US Senator from WV again. At a Republican dinner last night, as reported in the local newspaper, his speech included the assertion that "there is absolutely no scientific evidence for greenhouse gases being caused by burning fossil fuels." How can you argue with that? How can you begin to challenge someone who is so stunningly stupid? Or such a blatant liar. Or, perhaps, mentally ill. He's a gazillionaire who inherited businesses, and says that he runs them. He may, I don't know. His point was to get support as the "friend of coal." WV has much coal deposits. Coal burns with lots of particulates, so it looks very dirty. It also has a good bit of sulphur in it (unlike the preferred "sweet" crude oil) and so when the particulates are removed (electrostatically, I think) the resulting smoke is faintly orange-yellow. Sulphur combines with water and produces airborne sulphur dioxide - acid rain. That's a problem only now being effectively addressed. A good point which he didn't make (because he's too stupid?) is that gasoline burns with about 10% efficiency. That is, the energy potential of the product is used 90% for waste heat and 10% for work. With new coal burning technology, 40% efficiency is within sight. An electric car plugged into the grid uses fuel which releases about 1/3 of the carbon as an equivalent distance driven with gasoline. Science is the answer, technology is the answer, civic responsibility is the answer. But we get fucking stupidity, cupidity and malice. But who else would want to wallow in the political mire?

Something profound - OK, I heard it in the barber shop yesterday. (I'm shorn.) "There ain't no such thing as a woman who ain't pretty." Now THERE is a Truth.

Thinking about putting a post in the community blog about the confederate flag, and displays of it. It's protected speech. It personally offends the hell out of me. I wonder how others feel about it. Of course, I wear the square & compasses, star of life, and fleur-de-lis, and perhaps some folks are offended by some or all of those. Oh, Kath, a St. Michael's medal on the back of the tag with the star of life, too. And those symbols are on my car - it's rather busy.

I bombed the lying son of a bitch who has pissed me off in court today. Friend Dacey convinced me to tone it down, so there was only a fringe of fury there. Lawyers who lie betray the Fellowship.

I just tried to "upload an image." Probably copyrighted. Damn, I'd loved to have thought of that.

Mizpah.

R

The containment vessel ruptures and a nice block party

2007-10-31T18:42:00.000-05:00

This evening was a wonderful counterpoint to the rest of the day. I spent a delightful hour and a half out in the neighborhood and on the really great porch on LaElu's craftsman style house handing out candy, visiting with neighbors, and talking to kids. I continue my strange journey to giving good if unsolicited advice by telling a couple of grim-faced dads who were taking their kids around to enjoy these times now, because they grow up soooooo fast. LaElu was out with me most of the time, and that's the longest uninterrupted conversation we've had in a while. This is an old neighborhood (LaElu's house is the second oldest one on the hill, built in 1925) and is just a real pleasant place to live. The only cousin I'm close to came in town and stayed with my Mom, because she lives out in the sticks and just enjoys the hell out of the little kids. My Mom really enjoyed the company.

There was a nice spot in the work day. Tina the Crack Dealer called me from jail, and we had a nice chat. She calls me "sweetie," and I call her some endearments, and it's genuine. Here is a person who is having a very difficult time in her life, and she remains nice. I don't think she's ever had much of anyone give a shit about her. That's sad. I hope she finds some peace while she's locked up. She'll end up at a fairly open prison, on a par with a very low class summer camp.

However, when I got to the office this morning, there was a fax sent late last night by the lawyer who reneged on a deal yesterday. This was a "motion" which contained lots of factual allegations and which was sent directly to the judge (that is an ethical violation) and the facts alleged were false (and that sure as hell is an ethical violation.) I was really peeved last night, and this morning I went over the edge. I sat down to write a paragraph letter to him, something on the nature of "what part of 'a deal is a deal' are you having trouble understanding?" It MIRVed into a 3 page righteous diatribe. I shared it with Dave (the case is in another county, so it's nothing he'll ever see) and he was both amused and understanding, because he knows how irrational I get when I blow. I showed it to Friend Dacey (a damn fine lawyer), and she lovingly kicked me in the ass for revealing a strong emotional response. (Criticism is a good thing - it's honest, it's thought-provoking and it is indeed a loving thing.) And as I sit here tonight, I'm still really peeved. Do something stupid, hell, that happens. Screw off on something, who hasn't done that at times? My Dad always said that the person who doesn't make mistakes obviously isn't doing anything. Get mad at me, tell me off, hell, I'm a big boy, I can take it. But, by God, do not fucking lie to me.

Darn, I need to return to the block party mode.

Amy gave me a book today by a guy named Osteen. It's a self-improvement book, and is fairly religious. Me & Jesus, we're buds. But religion, I don't know what to make of that sometimes. It was very nice of Ames to give me the book.

I need to run more contests. I'm running out of shelf space again.

In solidarity with JeanMarie and Kathy, both of whom are doing the chemotherapy stuff, I'm going to hit the barber early tomorrow and get totally shorn. I'll keep the moustache, though. Let's see, my moustache is 36 years old.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

Tying down the safety valve; mealy mouthed, passive-aggressive idiots; and other observations

2007-10-30T20:45:00.000-05:00

I'm reading The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. It's a rather happy book, about the idea that what we think about manifests itself in our lives, or we attract it, or something like that. Sounds a touch unscientific at first blush, but science hasn't really touched human capacities, so I'll keep an open mind. However, I must be thinking bad thoughts at the moment, because I'm getting unpleasant results.

Old steam engines (ok, I betcha new steam engines, too, if they still make any) have "safety valves," that is, a valve set to open at a specified high pressure so that if the containment nears a pressure that you can have a catastrophic failure (i.e., blow up and blow live steam all over the place), the valve will open and the pressure thus be relieved safely. Of course, it reduces the energy output of the engine. Operators who wanted more energy and damn the risk would "tie down" the safety valve, preventing it from opening. The last 3 days, I've had my safety valve tied down. It's late, and I just got to Casa LaElu, and I'm still racing and grumpy. I stayed at No. 3 to work on some contracts, but also because Friend B. was doing a mediation downstairs, and I try to avoid having her (or any woman) leave the office alone at night. Perhaps that's old-fashioned or paternalistic. I can live with that. Due to little issues going on, I've been considering the advisability of getting a gun permit again -- I hate to do that as a matter of principle, but I'm also a realist. Oh, B. came upstairs and we had a nice visit after the mediation.

See, I told you I'm grumpy.

I did a memo (orally and in writing) at No. 3 yesterday, and acknowledged that the contents might lead people to conclude that I'm an asshole, and that I could live with that, too. We will not tolerate poor performance. I will not tolerate it of myself, and I kick my own ass frequently because of that. So, basically, I've been doing edicts. And they will be followed. I think I'm a fairly decent fellow to work with/for - I don't pay attention to sick days when staff is sick, I don't bitch if people are occasionally late, I think we pay pretty well, and I am loyal to everybody who works with/for me. But the edicts will be followed.

I have been feeling all pious lately because I get to work real early. But it seems that every day I go to work, there's lots and lots of other people on the streets, so I'm not the only one by far getting up in the dark. Anytime after 5 or so, there's a good bit of traffic out on the interstate, so I should stfu and quit the piousness.

Some clients I love and protect and sort of incidently do that by representing them. Tina the Crack Dealer, who I have blogged about in the past few months, is one of these. Some clients I represent because it's my function in life, and that hopefully leads to their protection with a favorable wind and a star to steer by. Tomorrow, I'm having a short trial on one of the latter. This is a contributing case where I could give the client a $100 bill and she still wouldn't be able to buy a clue. Life enhancement is something that I'm occasionally able to do. No chance here. I'm not Houdini. Yesterday, I went to a negotiation where a biological father wants to step to the plate and be a part of a baby's life. Good for him, really. Some sort of fuse blew (I'm full of machine metaphors tonight), and I suddenly started acting like Louis Schoolnic - of course, you'vef never heard of him - Louis was a great guy, and a great lawyer, and he wasn't afraid to "pontificate," and teach younger lawyers like me wtf this life is about. Not only that, but he called me "kid" right up until he died. I've always wondered who got his Mont Blanc pen that he did calligraphy with. Anyway, Louis would tell his own client and the other client and the other lawyers when they were out of line or ineffective or temporarily stupid. (My friend Justice Richard Neely, now in private practice and a prolific author, does the same thing, without the tempering of old age.) Anyway, neither my client nor the biological father (nor his lawyer) really had a clue that they weren't discussing a trophy, they were discussing a baby. So the fuses blew, and I got real blunt with them. It's a new feeling, and I need to explore this - it feels weird, I must admit. But, Jesus, enough is enough, cut to the chase and do the right thing - not the easy thing, not the cheap thing, not the fun thing, the right thing. And we hammered out a temporary agreement, called the Family Court and talked to one of my friends there, described the issues and got her recommendation for a mediator, and agreed to mediation. No problem. And then when I get back to No. 3 tonight, there is a faxed letter from the other lawyer unilaterally imposing a control-freak condition on the case. Wisely, I think, I haven't yet answered. A fax. Not a phone call, not a discussion, a terse (hell, there was one sentence to the letter) declaration. What mealy-mouthed, passive-aggressive bullshit. I am, I confess, still quite steamed. I'll do a reply first thing in the morning, and I need synonyms for "lie" and "fucking arrogant." I think I'll sleep on it, and they'll come to me.

Federal court today for an arraignment in a case that's really off-the-rails, and we're laboring in the vineyards to get it on track. (There's a mixed metaphor.) The judge ran late, to the US Attorney and I had time to sit and discuss a couple of other pending cases frankly and constructively. Sometimes, other lawyers may think I'm pretty fucking dumb. I can live with that. They always know that I'll be frank and honest. My credibility and effectiveness for people would plunge if it weren't so. And you can do that without kowtowing, it's perfectly ok to tell a prosecutor to fuck off in a nice way, you're going to trial. But at the end of the day, we are the engineers on this justice machine.

I dragged out a bunch of old (smaller!) clothes yesterday and today - Do I doom myself with the sin of hubris if I say that's a very pleasant experience?

No court tomorrow, and I'll be home early for Trick or Treat - In this neighborhood, it's effectively a block party of all the adults, with houses decorated all to hell, and with visiting back and forth, enjoying the kids, and just having a easy, pleasant time. Quaint? Old-fashioned? Hokey? I can live with that.

I'll probably meet Judge Dave for coffee in the morning - haven't seen him for a week or so. And I've got an intense coffee with Miss V. (the lawyer who represented my "second father") and I always enjoy the easy intimacy with her. (She has terrible taste in men. I'm trying to get her to realize that she needs to find someone who will buy her fuzzy nightgowns rather than lingerie.)

I was at the old office building (which I still own half of) last night for the first time in a year. Frankly, I had been dreading that. However, the safety valve was tied down, and I just didn't have time to fret, so I did it, got out, and kept steaming along.

This evening, I see the wishekwanwee muga. I dare you - translate that.

Pippa passes.

Mizpah.

R

Roger's Selected Third Quarter Canon

2007-10-27T18:40:00.000-05:00

It was a pretty good quarter for reading. I’ve mostly been slogging through my to-be-read shelves, and haven’t bought very many new volumes this past quarter.

&&&& Allen D. Spiegel - A. Lincoln, Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated Lawyer in His Time
I loved this book. You would probably find it sooooo unbearably boring, so I cannot recommend it. This author goes through some historical and extensive courthouse records concerning Abraham Lincoln’s law practice in Springfield, Illinois, ranging from the late 1830's to 1860. Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer, never going to a law school per se. In those days, it was permitted to "read the law," and essentially apprentice in law offices. There is a lot to be said for an intensive academic preparation for lawyers. But an apprenticeship makes a lot of sense, too. Only now are the law schools extensively using "clinical law" programs, which pair teams of students with experienced lawyers (at least that’s supposed to be the way it works, sometimes they get paired with pure academics) who then represent real people. The best lawyer in America, Gerry Spence, has favored both academic study followed by an apprenticeship.
Lincoln practiced under the "common law pleading" system, which developed in England from 1066 right through today. Some familiarity with that system is helpful in reading Spiegel’s work. He has collected pleadings (the documents in the case that lawyers prepare) and court reporter notes and appellate records to reconstruct the kind of practice Lincoln had. It’s really remarkable. Lincoln was indeed a small town lawyer, and a damn good one. As late as 1860, he was representing individuals in small cases, but also was representing the large corporations of the day (e.g., railroads) in complicated corporate matters. It is difficult to really tell how Lincoln ascended to the presidency (at least it is for me) and Spiegel doesn’t go there at all. I’ve read somewhere that there are 16,000 books about Lincoln, and I would love to have them all.

&&&& James M. Strock - Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership: Executive Lessons from the Bully Pulpit

TR is a hero of mine. I firmly believe that we need heroes, and that the lowest common denominator dysfunctional jaded jackanapes featured on MTV, VH1 and various "reality" genre TV presentations are filling youth with warped values. And the trivial and useless activities so common on the web contribute to that. (I know that there are Second Life afficianados out there. Sorry, it just bothers the hell out of me.)

TR lived his philosophy. He didn’t just talk about the strenuous life, he lived it. Strock draws from mostly commonly-known writings of TR, and draws from them lessons of leadership. (TR left a lot of writings, and acknowledged that he was writing for posterity.) If you know nothing about TR, but are interested in social science, this book is still interesting. If you do know his writing, it will stimulate new ways to consider his lessons.

&&&&& Michael Flynn - In the Country of the Blind

This is damn fine "near" sci-fi. The thesis is that history is mathematically predictable and therefore manipulable, and postulates competing groups doing that. It has a remarkable "alternate reality" feel.

&&& Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

Oprah recommended this, so I took my sweet time reading it. It is a peculiar family history, a history of reinforced bad genes which culminate in a difficult life for the protagonist. The title is a play on words, supposedly the name of a community, but also a comment on the protagonist dealing with being a pseudo-hermaphrodite. My mother hated the book.

&&&& Harry Turtledove - Settling Accounts: In at the Death

Here again, I highly rate something that most folks will abhor. Standing alone, this book would be total nonsense. It is the 11th volume of an alternate history series by Turtledove, who is the best-known writer of that sub-genre. In those 5,000 or so pages, he introduces a complicated cast and has time to really, really develop their lives. To me, they became friends and despite the underlying premise (the Confederacy won the American Civil War), it’s a very real world he creates.

&&&&& Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The Wheel of Darkness
I don’t understand how writing teams can possibly cooperate. These guys do. They started several volumes ago in a fairly loose series talking about museums and curios (one of their books is Cabinet of Curiosity) with some macabre (if credible) touches. Early on, a minor character, Agent Pendergast of the FBI was introduced, and he has become the volume-to-volume continuity. I waited darn near a year for this to be published, and it was worth the wait. The best of the series is Still Life With Crows.

&&& Ben Bova - The Aftermath: Book Four of the Asteroid Wars

You have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate this. It is not only the fourth book in a series, it is set in the near-future Solar system, and is consistent with many other books Bova has written. If you’re not really serious about sci-fi, don’t bother.

&&&& William Dietrich - Getting Back
This is another near-future work, based on the twin premises of a world-wide plague which has drastically reduced the human population (and in my dark hours, I can imagine that as a not-too-bad idea) and that large corporations control what’s left. (I’m not sure that’s such a far out premise.)

&&&&& David Von Drehle - Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

To me, this is a haunting work. It is pure history. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the three top floors of a 1911 New York highrise. It was a clothing factory, producing "shirtwaists," that is, women’s blouses. The conditions were sweatshop style, and the attention to worker health and safety were abominable. Fabric pieces and cotton particles, which are all highly flammable, were collected in bins beneath the cutting tables. (A key worker in a clothing factory is the fabric cutter, who must accurately cut panels of apparel without excess waste.) The only fire safety precaution was buckets of water spread around the room. In order to control the work force, some of the (inadequate) exits were locked. A fire started, probably from smoking, and spread extremely quickly through two floors of the factory, killing 146 workers, almost all of whom were immigrants. Von Drehle sets up the conditions accurately and in detail, and has a large knowledge of the physics of fire. The description of the response of FDNY is heartbreaking, because here were caring public servants who couldn’t get there in time to save many lives. There is a vivid description of a "gentleman" who helped ladies trapped by the fire escape being burned to death by helping them jump to their deaths – quite reminiscent of the choice that some of the WTC workers had in 2001.

The book documents the labor unrest which led to conditions which made the fire so deadly, and recounts the aftermath including the manslaughter trial of the owners in detail. The author analyzes the defense provided to the owners by Max Steuer (rhymes with "foyer"), who was one of the best trial lawyers of the 20th Century. (The owners were acquitted.)

This book brings to me very emotional images. One is a short scene in a movie about the fire made some years ago, where the first fire engine pulls out of the firehouse and responds to the call. In 1911, the engines were steam-powered pumps drawn by teams of horses, and the image of the engine plunging down the center of the street going to an incident which it will be wholly inadequate to fix is quite vivid.

&&&& James Dallesandro - 1906
This is a historical novel of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. It uses protagonists who are believable, but also major public players who did not exist in history. However, the descriptions of the damage, the progress of the fire, and the political considerations of the people managing the disaster are detailed and, so far as I know, accurate, as is the detail of life in 1906 San Francisco.

&&& Jeffrey Toobin - The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

I really don’t know if a non-lawyer will like or be disturbed about this book as much as I am. The public does not really appreciate the impact that the Supreme Court has on society, nor the cognitive disconnect between these justices (and judges in general) and the public. The selection process is an abomination, and it is not surprising in the least that it leads to an insulated political body which is at the same time grossly political and detached from real people. Justice Scalia, a conservative icon, is asked how he's different from Justice Thomas, the most famous recipient of affirmative action of all time. Scalia replies, "I'm not nuts."

&&&&& Michael Gates Gill - How Starbucks Saved My Life

This is the no. 2 pearl of this quarter, and it’s the best business book I’ve read. Gill was a high executive in the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency in New York, and was making an undisclosed yet fantastic amount of money doing so. At age 63, he was fired without fault, no doubt because of a more youthful corporate ideal. Around the same time, this married father of grown children got a girlfriend and had a baby with her. (The girlfriend turned out to be pretty crazy, and although he was very attentive to the baby, the romance fizzled.) (Been there, done that.) He worked as an independent advertising consultant without much success, owing partly to the youth-oriented corporate culture, the stigma of having been fired, and his own profound depression. He happened to be in New York City sitting in a Starbucks drinking some yuppie brew (and wondering how he’d continue to pay for them in the future) when he met a young black female manager who offered him a job. So, he began life as a "barrista," cleaning toilets, working the cash register and making coffee concoctions. Along the way, he discovered happiness and his own humanity.

Gill writes a triumphant look at the lives of real people, and the meaninglessness of great riches. I highly recommend this.

& Esther & Jerry Hicks - The Law of Attraction: The Basic Teachings of Abraham

Worthless New Age drivel. The authors think that they are in constant contact with some supernatural being who gives them wisdom to pass on to us poor ignorant slobs. The buffoonery is enjoyable for maybe 20 pages, and then the book is nothing but annoying.

&&&&& Tawni O’Dell - Coal Run

A woman author writes in the first person of a male character who is a former football star sidelined by a career-ending injury, the son of a coal miner killed in an explosion, who goes back to his small Pennsylvania hometown and works as a deputy sheriff. It has bad judgment, recrimination, redemption and reality, and is a really excellent work.

&&&&& Robert Morgan - Gap Creek

In counterpoint to Coal Run, Gap Creek is written by a male author who writes in the first person for a female narrator. The novel is about small farm life and poverty in southern Appalachia around 1900. The protagonist is a strong character who is handed unfair and crushing blows by life, and who perseveres. I highly recommend this one, too.

&&&&& Ken Follett - World Without End

And last, here is the gem of the quarter. Twenty years ago, Follett wrote The Pillars of the Earth, a novel about a town in England in the 1100's and the construction of the cathedral there. That book was richly researched in general history and particularly in the building trades.
World Without End is a sort of sequel, set in the same town 200 years after the cathedral was built. It, too, contains rich descriptions of life at that time, including familiar political and social maneuvering which differs only in time from what we see now. The book covers about 50 years, and a historical secret connects the beginning with the end. Three main characters plus four or five minor characters interact over decades and produce a great read.

Thus, the third quarter.

Mizpah.

R

Retrenchment?

2007-10-26T18:26:00.000-05:00

I have mixed, sometimes pretty low class, taste in books. At B&N last week, there was a book on the "bargain" table, a humor book by "Larry The Cable Guy," a self-professed redneck comedian. He explains that he has copyrighted the phrase "Git-R-Done," which he explains as a comment on a "blue collar work ethic," that the people in the trenches have to do distasteful things all the time, and just have to "git-r-done."

I was in depositions all morning in a case I pretty much have down cold. (A deposition is testimony in a case taken before a court reporter, and a transcript is made which can be used later if need be.) My client is a really nice "good ol' boy" who was well prepared, so it was a fairly low-stress event. So as I was sitting there, drinking the big firm's coffee, my mind wandered to this "git-r-done" concept, and whether it is indeed exclusively a blue collar thing. It was an interesting place to consider this. I was in one of the many locations of the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, a large firm in WV and DC. You walk back a BIG ass bronze sign when you enter their offices, and the offices are tastefully decorated (I guess - what do I know about decor?) This is an old firm, founded in the 20's by a couple of fellows including Louis A. Johnson, who was a snappy dresser and very odd guy who was Harry S Truman's Secretary of Defense. The opposing lawyer was a young guy, maybe 30, starched & pressed, the muted power tie, typical associate at a big defense firm, but a very nice guy for all of that. As my mind wandered, it went to the same old question, "who am I?", in this case, why does this so-called blue collar ethic sound valid to me? Hell, I read lots of business books, and do I find some sort of basic truth from a redneck comedian?

I started working in law offices when I was a senior in high school, doing coal titles in county record rooms. That involves going through records of deeds and other documents to determine who owned the coal under various parcels of real estate. It was exacting work, and for a kid in the early 70's, I was making really good money. I kept working in law offices right through to today, and have met all sorts of people who have been important to me. I did work for Frank Sansalone and Al Lemley, and they taught me litigation and going all out for a client in a case. During law school, I worked at a firm headed by Mr. Furbee, who was in semi-retirement. We would both come early to work, and I spent a lot of time sitting in the break room drinking coffee with him and learning his way of analyzing cases. The second day after I "came to the bar," I attended Mr. Furbee's funeral.

The idea of "git-r-done" is wholly consistent with the way I practice. Perhaps it is about a blue collar work ethic. If so, I guess that makes me a blue collar lawyer, one in the trenches dealing with real people. I like to do that, I wouldn't like to represent "things." This whole idea of maybe being an older fellow bothers me - I still feel like a youngster, I still have lots to learn. I have had protege's of my own, I suppose. One, Carol M., went on to become a really good medical malpractice defense lawyer. Another, Vanessa R., is in private practice here in town. She just finished representing my "second father," Jim M., in a divorce. I was uncomfortable this week as she said that some of the stuff she learned from me helped get the case to a favorable conclusion. I'm proud of her, she's a blue collar lawyer, too. Then there's Pam F., a former divorce client who went to law school, partly because of her experience in that case. In a Supreme Court case last month, we were dead last on the argument docket, so we sat in the back of this cavernous courtroom and I gave her a running patter of my take on what the Court was doing with the different cases. She called me today and thanked me for that, since she got a call from the Court that she had won her case. (Oh, full disclosure - I got a call from the Court, too - I lost my appeal. I think that the gunslinger-judge talked the "swing" justice into the State's position. Oh, "gunslinger" is not a pejorative, it means a tough judge.)

There is dignity in the blue collar world, in the trenches. Someone has to clean the toilets, and that is dignified work when it is done with a willing heart. (I cleaned the toilet at No. 3 today, I hope with a willing heart.)

So, I'll accept being a blue collar guy, and even risk being thought of as a redneck.

Certainly, life in a small town or the country is different than some of you guys who live in true cities. Blu mentioned the long walk from her parking spot to her residence. Doesn't happen here - It's very unusual to have to park more than 20 or 30 yards from your front door, or more than 1/4 mile from your workplace.

My "second father's" case was in front of my best friend, Dave, the Family Court Judge. We talk lots, go to coffee often, and he had been told that I was going to testify in the case. When I was sworn to testify, both he and I were trying to suppress smiles, because he could tell that I had a joke on my mind. (What was on my mind was that when he asked if I would "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," I should reply, "Yes, unless I can think of something funnier.") Believe it or not, he and I had spoken not one word about the case at any time before that hearing. That would be soooooo improper, and Dave is a man of great honor. I warned Vanessa, too, that having me appear in any way in a case in front of Dave automatically gives the other side a field goal, so that he is scrupulously fair.

Some unpleasant things are on my mind this week. I need a makeover, or a retrenchment. I've been talking to friends I respect and in some instances getting my ass kicked by them - which is good, kicking someone's ass because you love them is an extraordinarily loving thing to do. So - I just gotta git-r-done.

A quiet evening at Casa Elu. Son Tim is out all weekend at his first vehicle extrication class, and is really happy that he gets to cut up cars with power tools all weekend. Ah, the memories. He took his first inter-hospital transfer of a neo-natal last night on midnight shift, and said that he realizes now the inevitable worry about dealing with a sick little baby.

So, it's time to read a while. I promise to write the Irregular Quarterly Canon over the weekend - I've read some great books in the 3rd quarter.

Mizpah.

R

My new voicemail message

2007-10-24T15:29:00.000-05:00

You have reached the voicemail for Roger. Please listen to all options, as our menu has changed. If you are a client with an unreasonable demand, please press 1. If you are a pissed off judge, please press 2. If you are an opposing lawyer who wants to be an asshole, please press 3. If you are a former lover calling to complain about relationships, please press 4. If you are a business associate calling to complain about money, please press 5. If you are an aggrieved husband, please press 6. If you are generally seeking money and want to be a dickhead about it, please press 7. If you are the Angel of Death, please visit me in person. If you are anyone else, you obviously have a wrong number, so don't call back.

I wondered about posting this - but Amy says I've posted a lot more personal stuff.

Pippa passes.

R

Kid found alive

2007-10-18T16:33:00.000-05:00

Amy just told me, the autistic kid lost in Dolly Sods was found alive. Very fortunate. Emergency services down there dodged a bullet with the delayed response. EluSon doesn't answer the phone, so he may still be out bushwhacking without having the word. Hope he gets home tonight, but it's not likely.

R

Kids, Pressure & Seasoning

2007-10-17T21:49:00.000-05:00

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

Vishnu on a Rotisserie

2007-10-12T21:21:00.000-05:00

Yup, Vishnu on a rotisserie - long darn day.

Rode halfway across the state for a mediation. Absolute bust, 4 parties, all with aggressive lawyers, didn't come anywhere near to settling.

JC was there as co-counsel, and that was very nice. We staffed the case tonight after the dinner. Makes the trip worthwhile.

Rode over with another lawyer who was just a voice on the phone to me, and after 6 hours in the car, she became my new friend. Makes the trip worthwhile.

The bar dinner with the Governor this evening was a triumph for Amy. The "remembrance" was my redundant copy of Daughter of the Elm, by Granville Davisson Hall, an obscure turn-of-the-century (the 20th century) historical novel.

Very disturbed by heavy noise from my former partner. I still feel quite attached to her, but the feeling obviously isn't mutual. That's a very sad thing. Zero closure. And I can honestly say that no one has ever heard me say a nasty or disrespectful word about her, and nobody ever will.

Oh, and I'm getting the flu. The flu shot I got this week obviously worked.

Mizpah, but I wouldn't advise you to kiss me in the meantime.

R

It just grew

2007-10-08T12:19:00.000-05:00

I'm alone at No. 3 today. Everyone else is celebrating a day off in celebration of the accomplishments of an Italian navigator working for Spanish royalty who missed his target by 12,000 miles.

The instructor of my son's paramedic class has asked me to do the usual "legal issues" lecture for them Wednesday night. Not a big deal - I bet I've done it 50+ times in the last 30 years. The text they are using (aside: I had a deal to write the legal issues chapter of Harvey Grant's next textbook. Harvey was the "father" of EMS instruction. The deal fell through owing to Harvey's death.) has with it a slide show or PowerPoint or some damn thing like that on a CD, and I'll use it as the basic skeleton for the class. But I like paper, and so I started doing a little handout this morning, intending it to be 4 or 5 salient points. It just grew, and this is what I'll hand out:

Legal Exequatur for EMS

Know all persons by these presents:

That the Bearer has seen the following Truths, accepted them and thus does not need to learn them The Hard Way:

1 - To “do the right thing” means giving excellent patient care more than anything else. If you do the right thing, you don’t need to be afraid of the Law.

1a - But always remember that competent adults have the right to do stupid things.

2 - You do not “outrank” the patient. Always tell them what’s going on.

2a - But “don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash.” (Quoting Larry Winget, It’s Called Work for a Reason. Great book. Read it.) Be truthful and realistic. “You’re going to be fine” to a dying patient is cruel.

2b - Cocky kills. [Explanation: I've had 5 friends killed on duty over the years, all due to someone getting cocky and doing something really stupid.]

3 - Your treatment can directly save a life. But you weren’t called there to set up a clinic and stay there. A successful call always ends in a transport.

3a - You don’t make up time lost moseying to the rig or screwing around on scene by using lights & siren on the road.

4 - Respect. Respect your patient. Respect your company. Respect your team. Respect the Fellowship. The Golden Rule isn’t just for other guys. [There's a sort of impromptu memorial at the WTC site in NY - where patches are posted from companies all over the world. Our company's patch is there. That's the Fellowship.]

4a - The patient can be drunk and obnoxious, but still need you.

5 - Paramedics can kill one patient at a time. Drivers can kill five people at a time. Remember Key Largo. [The Key Largo wreck killed five. When the first responders got there, they forced open a door of the wrecked ambulance and a couple of gallons of blood splashed out on their shoes and pants.]

6 - Be sure you are covered by insurance, and then concentrate on doing your job with excellence on every call. [WV had mandatory EMS insurance with immunity for verdicts over the insurance. I wrote that statute many years ago.]

7 - “Being fat, drunk and stupid is no way to spend your life.” (Quoting Dean Wormer, Animal House, 1978.)

8 - You do wonders for the average life span. You do nothing for the death rate. It’s still one to a customer. [I.e., shit happens.]

9 - The symbols for EMS are (1) the Star of Life and (2) the Cross Draped with Toilet Paper. We preserve life, and we ride with God to help Him clean up Man’s messes. Remember The Big Man.

With the Love and Respect of The Fellowship,
10 October 2007,

Too fatigued for a cute post title, or, Why Yetis are Lousy at Canasta

2007-10-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

Friend Schell, are you OK? I hope that the lawyer has given you some options. We're worried about you!

I'm pretty sad & fatigued tonight. Just a hard day, I guess.

The discussion on the community blog about For Better or For Worse is fascinating. Why do we become emotionally involved with a comic strip? Or for any fiction for that matter? Are we somehow escaping Mr. Reality? Is that a bad thing to do anyway? Well, I wish I had something profound to say, but I don't. All I have are questions.

Hubert Humphrey was a very compassionate guy. He said in speeches all the time that the measure of a society was how it helped the people at the sunrise (the young), the people at the sunset (the old), and the people in the shadows (the disabled and truly disadvantaged.) I've been thinking a lot about disabled people today, this morning in a rather abstract way. There are costs to society and to the individuals from disability. To society, we lose a productive member. (Now, there are lots of working people who are not contributing to the productive bottom line. For example, the entire security industry produces nothing. But in our time, it's certainly necessary.) It is not callous (at least I don't think it is) to consider the economic impact of disability on society. It would be callous to ignore the effect on the individuals. I see a lot of these folks, since I represent people who are injured and disabled in the various legal systems that provide to a greater or lesser extent for them. These people feel frustrated, worthless, angry, depressed, and are leading lives where they live with physical pain every moment and know that they are simply waiting idly and in pain until they die. (I am reminded of a Dilbert cartoon, where Dogbert comments that people are really organic pain receptors rushing headlong into Oblivion.) I was wondering this morning what we can do for these people as a society that we aren't doing. How can we help them to be marginally productive, to regain some self-respect and to give them something other than pain to look forward to in the morning? We have a very few "sheltered workshops," where the mostly-mentally disabled can do simple physical tasks without the stress of production quotas, but very few of those people can be accomodated by what we have. Is there anything useful that we can create that will be something like revenue neutral? I just don't know. I'm more of a one-on-one guy in my profession, not a systems guy. But it all bothers me. In the interests of saving money, the care that we have for these people is often subordinated to financial interests. For instance, few insurers or workers' comp carriers will pay for pain medication long-term. They claim that it isn't necessary, which is utter bullshit in many instances, and that it is often abused, which is absolutely true. So do we erect an even more cumbersome monitoring system to identify the people who really need long-term pain meds? I just don't know. We are so materialistic. When I bought my car, I was in the get-a-nice-car-and-have-fucking-status mode. What a dumb-ass. It's still a good car, now 10 years old, and I think that the materialism/status thing is much lessened in my heart.

It was something coincidental that I was musing on these things this morning, because this afternoon, I had a face to put to the problem. I talked with Mary P., a 40 year old woman who rode 4 hours to get to No. 3 because she couldn't find a lawyer any closer who would even talk to her about workers' comp. (Definition: Workers' Comp is a collective term for the wage-replacement, medical cost and permanent injury compensation given to injured workers who were hurt on the job. It is not very valuable at best, but on the other hand it is liability-neutral, that is, a worker can recover the benefits even if s/he was negligent in causing his/her own injury.) In 2004, Mary was working for an out-of-state temp agency which placed her in a factory. (Of the whole temp agency ills, another post, another day.) She was doing heavy lifting, and had a sudden "pop" in her mid-back, and immediate onset of severe pain. She had zero prior back problems. She went to a family doc, who diagnosed her with thoracic sprain-strain, and put her off work for a while. The pain continued, so the family doc sent her to an orthopedic doc, who ordered an MRI. There was a delay in getting the MRI because they cost $750 and the Workers' Comp carriers hassle the doctors to try to get them to withdraw the request. The MRI occurred a couple of months later, and showed a herniated disk at T-10-11. (I don't know if an explanation is necessary here - this is in the mid back and the disks are made out of a gelatinous substance which cushions the interfaces between the vertebra. When a disk bulges or herniates, it doesn't provide that protection and may itself press on nerves thus causing pain.) Her doctor asked the Comp carrier to amend the diagnosis, and they ignored that request, and it was forgotten for a time. She was sent for an IME (independent medical examination, i.e., to a comp doctor on behalf of the insurance company.) Since the disk was not an "official" diagnosis, that doc didn't rate it or pay attention to it. She got a lawyer, protested the denial of the diagnosis update, and went through the cumbersome litigation process on that issue. In the meantime, her lawyer was getting 20% of her rapidly ending checks. An administrative law judge denied the diagnosis change, saying that she had a very bad disk injury causing disability, but hadn't proved that it was caused by the work injury. (In the record were several reports of doctors who treated her saying that the disk obviously was caused by the injury, but the ALJ relied on the opinion of the Office of Medical Management, which consists of doctors who sit and review records all day, and who never met Mary.) The Board of Review agreed with the ALJ. Her lawyer bowed out, and didn't appeal to the Supreme Court, but I can't criticize her for that, because the Court wouldn't have helped. So, this lady has no income from Workers' Comp, even though it is idiocy to say that the disk wasn't caused by this injury. There is a doctrine called res judicata, one of the first things you learn in law school. Essentially, it says that once a decision is made, it's final and forever unless a higher court/authority changes it. So we cannot go back and change the diagnosis now, and I had to tell her that there was nothing at all I could do for her. (And I am going to have to determine what to do when people call with these problems, and that bothers me as much - I spent 1-1/2 hours with Mary to go through the file, knowing at the outset that it probably wasn't going to be a case, but the rent and salarires and other costs at No. 3 continued to accrue unchecked.) Well, I told her that the only option she had was to file for Social Security Disability, and to make sure she was OK with that, I called the local Social Security office, got them to bring Mary up on the computer and tell me if she had coverage. One has to have contributions of a certain amount for roughly 5 out of the last 10 years. (Actually, 20 of the last 40 quarters.) (I know that this administrative stuff is dry and uninteresting - but it determines where Mary will get the money to pay her electric bill in the future.) It turns out that she didn't have coverage because much of her work was in-home health care for cash for several years, and SS taxes were not paid. (I can hear the voice of conservative condemnation here. If she had gotten a real job . . . Working under-the-table is a fact in our economy, and often isn't the worker's decision, rather it is the employer's because they don't want to pay withholding taxes and do the paperwork. Ann Coulter, take note.) So the only Social Security that she could possibly get is SSI, which is a needs-based program, that is, for disabled very poor people. An SSI check is approximately $550 per month. Mary isn't qualified for that, either, because she receives $600 per month in child support for her 3 children who live with her. Sooooo, she is totally screwed. There is nothing that I can do to help her. Her life is going to be economic hell for however long she lives. In America. In America. God, this is sad.

Before Mary left, I called my former partner to "staff" the case, that is, to ask for a second opinion in case I was missing something. She couldn't offer any other ideas, either. There is a considerable cost to calling my former partner, because my wounds from that relationship are still open.

Let's see - new term of Court started this week. Tomorrow morning will be taken up by "docket call," where the trial court judges "call the docket," and set cases for the next 4 months. It's a very traditional thing not done very many places any more, and sort of formal, like the Red Mass. It is a coming together, and for me a reminder of the isolation and specialization of my profession. Then in the afternoon, I have to drive way the hell down to the center of the state to a regional jail, where they have moved Tina the Crack Dealer, since we received her Pre-Sentence Report, which is great. I may have pulled a rabbit out of the hat and have a way to get a sentence less than the 10 year mandatory minimum. I'm keeping my (and her) hopes up. There is a big factory outlet strip mall a mile from the jail, so my mom is going with me to shop while I'm at the jail. That'll be nice to get her out and about.

Oh, and I don't have a clue why yetis are lousy at canasta, but trust me when I say that they are.

Mizpah. Pippa passes.

R

A shocking confession, and some random thoughts

2007-09-29T18:18:00.000-05:00

I had no choice. Really. I needed some things. I couldn't help it. It called to me. Great Caesar's Ghost, the guilt is consuming me.

I shopped at WalMart yesterday. Not only that, it was a WalMart Supercenter, and I was impressed.

I needed some basic sewing stuff. And a spot mirror for LaElu's new-used car. And Diet Coke for No. 3. I didn't know where else to go. Dammit, it's not fair. The place is enormous. The "associates," who I think of as slaves to an impersonal corporate King, were neat and friendly. I needed some buttons, and got 2 strips of them for 62 cents each. Hell, I even got a little underwear, first off-the-rack/non-specialty-store clothing I've gotten in a long time.

My liberal credentials are smashed. I'm a sell-out.

Sigh. Went to No. 3 this morning, puttered around. Tomorrow is a dedicated work day, on Saturdays I feel OK about not working intensely. Came home, and I've been reading a new book, The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin. It is a recent history of the U.S. Supreme Court and, although I'm officially a member of the bar of that august body (having filed a case there many years ago), I've never so much as driven past the building. I don't know what there was about the book that called to me at B&N. I'm liking it, and if I finish it by tomorrow, it will fit into the 3rd quarter canon.

The windshield wipers on my Audi are crapping out. The f.ing part is $587. Then whatever labor to install it. I'm looking for a Jeep. I think I'm more of a Jeep kind of guy these days.

In response to a couple of comments to the Masonic posts: Is Masonry anti-Catholic? Not expressly, but I can understand why that's confusing. There is the Masonic Lodge, and also other "appendant bodies," that is, other organizations affiliated with it. The Lodge admits no atheists. That's the only religious test. I don't know how many of the brethren are Methodists, Catholics, etc. I do know that one new brother follows some Asian religion, but I don't have a clue which one, and it doesn't matter. Some of the appendant bodies have a strong anti-authoritarian message, both secular and clerical. My bare impression is that the Catholic Church has a more organized heirarchy than any other, but I may be wrong. Also, Kath mentions the Shriners. I'm a Shriner, but I don't attend meetings these days, just from lack of time. The Shrine is a social and service organization, as public as the Lodge itself is private. The Shrine has the largest charitable endowment in the world, and operates about a dozen totally free world-class orthopedic hospitals for children, and two out of the three best burn hospitals in the world, also totally free. I talked at my rescue company's reunion in May to a brother who does a lot in the Shrine. He is a tough, strong guy (former power lifter), and he teared up at his description of a particular young woman who has been treated at the ortho. hospital for many years, and who has gone from being wheelchair-bound to walking unassisted. Clank mentioned the Lodge helping her grandfather's family, and that's a sacred duty of the brothers, and one normally fulfilled as quietly as possible.

I've developed some tremors in my hands that make typing on a light keyboard (like the one on this, my favorite old, dependable Dell) a little unsteady. Damfino what's going on. On the other hand, the weight project proceeds totally nominally, and I am enjoying feeling those improvements.

I went down to the regional jail yesterday to talk to a couple of clients, including Tina the crack dealer/prostitute who I've mentioned in recent weeks. We had a nice chat, she just needed to know that I'm there, we're waiting on the pre-sentence report before the next heavy activity occurs. Thursday was her 40th birthday. She told me something (that I told her I was going to use in the sentencing hearing and tell others including you) that touched me. A year ago, on her 39th birthday, she was turning tricks in the rain on a street corner in a small city in West Virginia, and when she got home her husband beat her up. This year, she was in jail for her birthday. She said that she was safe, warm, being medically treated for the first time in a long time, and with people who for the most part were pleasant to her about her birthday. There are lots of ways to look at this. My first thought is that this is so sad, and that the sadness and degradation so common in America is evil. I also think about personal responsibility and choices, opportunity, and a healthy dose of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I.

Lots of things are going on which are taxing my "adaptability energy," which is what a old paramedic friend-preacher calls stress. I can only think of some favorite passages of Emerson, and press on.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

I lost it in Court, there's a windmill that needs turned into kindling, and at long last I reveal all of the Mysteries of Freemasonry

2007-09-26T18:23:00.000-05:00

OK, I confess that I have a distinctly surly attitude and demeanor this week, my legendary good nature has taken a beating and if I were a true Shawnee, I'd be raiding the settlements just for the hell of it today. (Read a fascinating account of the death of Captain Booth the other day in the local paper - killed by Shawnee while hoeing corn on some flatland by a creek near here.) (Damn, a 'hawk would feel good in my hands about now.) I got really iritated in Court today, and sort of lost it. It's a juvenile case, a 15 y.o. girl charged with domestic battery. Sort of boring case facts. But this young woman is drug dependent (I'm dead-bang certain), depressed (I'm almost sure) and has other serious diagnoses and I suspect what they are but am not smart enough to say with any confidence. She needs a full psychological and psychiatric evaluation and treatment plan, and that MUST be done by people who are qualified, not just some Master's level yahoos who churn cases. The f.ing politicians don't understand or particularly care about human needs and are totally clueless about the special needs of adolescents. The resources available are pitiful, and the best "we" can do is a facility far away in a month or so. In a hearing in the case in front of a Circuit Judge who's been a friend for 30 years, I just blew up and ranted and raged about the rotten way we "provide" for these youth. Mind you, often it is memorably poor parenting that has contributed a lot to these kids' problems, and society is DAMN weak there, too. But this is a proper place for government to provide services. Government is not a bad word. Government is supposed to do things that individuals cannot do on their own, and "provide for the common weal." Oh, the Judge took it in good humor, even when I went back to his chambers after the hearing (with the prosecutor) and was able to expand on my remarks with considerably richer vocabulary. I've had it up to here with mean-spirited, don't-give-a-shit, holier-than-thou (although maybe the latter can be said of me) people who abuse positions of authority.

My friend Dacey has warned me about what I write this evening. She's seen me when I'm irrational like this.

After I finish here, I'm going to compose a long, long letter to the County Commission (which is county government in WV). There are three commissioners, two of whom are friends -- one guy, I was in Boy Scouts with 40 years ago; the other is a former police chief who I've known for 30 years. I've talked about my EMS experiences. I can honestly claim that I was a decent paramedic - not great, not top 10%, not even real good, but decent given that I was coming out of a then-volunteer company. I was a much better administrator, have represented the state Department of Health Office of EMS, yadda, yadda, yadda. A fire department in a nearby village has asked the commission to approve their running an ambulance for EMS. (The County owns the 911 center. The Commission can't prohibit someone from buying a rig and running it, but they do determine who is where on the alarm list.) A further-out department did a midnight-requisition for approval a couple of weeks ago, and this is some sort of "me, too" phenomenon. This is a dumbass idea. It would be nice to have an EMS station and fire station on every street corner. But the cost would be ruinous and the call volume would be so low that nobody in the system would have enough work to maintain their skills. At my peak, I was doing 30 or 40 calls a month, and that wasn't anywhere near enough to keep my skills sharp. This little town has 15 to 20 emergency medical calls a month in their entire response area. I know that this sounds rather dull. Indeed, many organs of government and public service are invisible nearly all of the time. When you suddenly have to call 911, then you care deeply about the ability of the system to deal with the need, but it's just uncomfortable to worry about that in advance. Well, what ho, I'm in the exact frame of mind to spout some passion.

And at last, as promised, I am now prepared to reveal, right here, in a forthright manner never seen by me in any of the study I have done on the subject, all of the deepest, darkest, most intimate secrets of Freemasonry. Here we go. Are you ready? Really? The fundamental key to the secrets are . . . (Will I be assassinated for revealing this? Like the teaser at the end of a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon, am I on the Brink of Doom?) The key is . . .
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Google.

Yes, Google. Anybody who thinks that the Freemasons are a secret society is too stupid or too crazy to Google. Freemasonry has no secrets. Go to Google - Hell, I'll even tell you the search terms: "Masonic ritual" - You'll get hundreds and hundreds of hits, all of which purport to tell these so-called deep, dark secrets. Some of these sources are pure fantasy. (Hint: If the article mentions a strange diety by the name of "Baphomet," or talks about the symbols on the back of the dollar bill, you are reading the work of someone with severe mental problems.) Some of the articles were written by people who were probably Masons, but hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to what goes on. And some are spot on. Now, I won't tell you which is which - I have promised not to. I keep my promises. But there are millions of Masons worldwide, and you can't keep a secret among that many people. Some of these guys don't keep their promises. One of them is a Master Mason who was the lay-minister of a fringe church that last inhabited the building where No. 3 is located. He had some sort of religious epiphany, and went on TV on a local "Christian" station, and there attempted to recreate the lodge room and show these terrible secrets. He obviously hadn't learned much of the "work," what we call the ritual, and some of his performance was buffoonery. I regard him as an oath-breaker. I don't like oath-breakers. But unlike some claims, we don't chuck the oath-breakers off the South Side Bridge, we just never trust them again.

Some of the brothers are bothered by the fact that these "secrets" are so readily available. Personally, I absolutely don't care. First of all, the secrets aren't designed for much security. Masonry can be traced through documents going back to the 14th Century, and can be traced very well beginning in 1717. The "secrets" today are the same as they were 300 years ago - same words, same handgrips, same "signs." If the CIA didn't change code words for 300 years, do you think that they'd still be secret?

Second, read all you want on the net or at the public library, find the accurate resources, knock yourself out. I don't care. This poor scribe tries to string words together to paint pictures, and even a blind squirrel gets a nut now and then, so sometimes I get it right. Let's say that I were to write about sky-diving. I would talk about the butterflies in my stomach as I carefully checked every line and buckle on the parachute. I would describe the airplane with the open door, and watching the concrete of the runway speeding by as we take off, the painted lines getting more and more blurred. And the fear of standing in the doorway, and the terror of dropping away, followed by such wonderful freedom and laughing and . . . you get the drift. And then, if a member of the sporting/athletic fraternity were to ask me how many jumps I'd made, I would have to say, "None, do think I'm nuts?" That athlete would then know me to be an ignorant posseur, who might talk a good game but who had zero understanding of the real experience. Ditto for the ritual. Read it all you want. It is indescribably different to be a part of it, to experience it. Every time I see it or participate in it, I learn a little more, reflect a little more. Freemasonry is nothing sinister. It's an association of hopefully good men who want to be better men. It turns the thoughts inward. It is a place of "friendship, morality and brotherly love." The only requirement is that you not be an atheist - you gotta believe in God. Or Allah. Or Shiva. Or whoever. You do not discuss religion in lodge. You do not discuss politics in lodge. When I'm at the lodge, I'm not the fat guy. (Social interaction is a problem for one of my appearance.) I am one of the brothers. If I do only what I can (e.g., due to weight and a knee injury from high school wrestling, I cannot kneel), nobody comments, nobody cares.

There are lots of crazies out there who love to expose conspiracies. I mentioned the back of the dollar bill. It's not masonic in origin. The designer, Charles Thomson, was not a mason. The only Mason involved in that project was Benjamin Franklin, and if you recall, his strong preference for the turkey as the national symbol was ignored. The pyramid is just an unfinished pyramid. The is the All-Seeing Eye, a common symbol for God at that time. Look at the CBS logo - it's the All-seeing Eye. The Pinkerton Agency used the same symbol. So did the "Vigilance Committees." The crazies read the motton on the reverse of the dollar bill, "novus ordo seclorem," and translate it to "New World Order," the code word for world government by the Zionists and the black-helicopter-flying United Nationists. Unfortunately, they are lousy at Latin. They ignore that "seclorem" is plural and refers to "the ages." Well, that's what America was in the 18th Century, a new order for the ages, the first representative democracy, the first nation to secure and guarantee the rights of average folks. (Magna Carta only applied to the upper class.) Sometimes, the "anti-Masons" point to a very strange guy, Albert Pike, as proof of the conspiracy. Pike was a lawyer (who was undistinguished in the law), a Confederate infantry general (equally undistinguished in military matters) and a brillaint (if obscure) classical scholar. He spoke and wrote in Greek and Latin, and about just as obscurely when he was writing in English. The work that the crazies cite to is Morals and Dogma, which is a source document for the "Scottish Rite" of Freemasonry. I'm a Scottish Rite Mason. I have a copy of Morals and Dogma. It's stunningly dull, and I've not read all of it. There are minor portions which explain the libertarian views of Masonry as a whole - the lack of need for intercessors with Deity, the freedom of citizens. But it's dull, dull, dull. It's unfortunate that some folks spend loads of time looking for darkness and conspiracies. Life is just too short.

By the way, Pete, Dacey had to explain your comment about the jars. I was just way to dense.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.

R

Rambling: I temporarily come unglued, the full moon, and thoughts on a man's man

2007-09-25T18:43:00.001-05:00

I have not forgotten my promise to reveal all of the arcane secrets. As I unburden my brain, I am struck with awe at the audacity of the task. In the Fullness of Time, it will be published, right here.

The weight project proceeds without incident. Every Tuesday, I attend a class at an outlying clinic of WVU Hospital, where some wonderful and caring ladies operate what is called the "HMR Program." The heart of the program is a "supplemented fast," that is, darn little calorie intake, and what you do take in is heavy on protein, to protect muscle (particularly cardiac muscle) from wasting away. Another part of the program is attending class, where these folks work on educating and in many senses advising the participants. The "health educator" with whom I mostly interact is Torri, a young woman who is the daughter-in-law of a very, very dear friend, a wonderful woman with whom I've been through thick & thin. Torri is educated and licensed in the psychology/counseling profession, and that shows in her work. This evening's class was a little unusual. One of the students/patients/clients (I haven't decided what the heck we are) is having trouble following the program, and let her upset flow - which is a very good thing, IMHO. That gave us all the spark to vent, to show support, and to learn from one another. Torri took the conversation wonderfully flexibly - she's not one of those people who are stuck to an agenda or outline, she is there to guide and genuinely interact. I confess that I was somewhat animated - that life has dealt us a bad hand, that sucks, the whole experience of being fat sucks, it's not f.ing fair, but we gotta play the hand that's we're dealt. Far from whining, this was something that created some useful anger and determination and attitude. I made reference to that video clip of the professor that was on the Community Blog yesterday, and I hope that lots of folks watch it. I say that I'm so busy, the whole diet thing has faded into the background, but that's more wishful thinking than anything else. It's there on my mind and it needs to be. When I climb the long staircase at No. 3, it ain't easy. But I must remember what it was like 110 pounds ago. Everywhere I go, I keep what it was like several months ago in the front of my mind. Eye on the ball, eye on the ball. The head of the program is Carla, an understanding and compassionate woman who has helped me through some really difficult times in the past months. I do love these people a lot.

I was running around town this evening right after sundown. Living in the mountains, you will see either darn little sky or terrain (when you are down in a valley) or magnificent views (when you are on top of the hills). I was on top of a plaza and as I started home, I saw the full moon rising. I wonder - how significant are astronomical phenomena in other places? I'm not sure if it's a local thing/mountain thing, or a love-of-science thing, but I'm always aware of the sky - what phase the moon is in, and therefore when it will rise and set; the position of the planets (Venus is glorious in the morning sky right now - nearing the maximum optical deviation from the Sun which is, as I recall, about 19 degrees); the length of the day, how far we are from the equinoxes and soltices, that sort of thing. So, where you are at, is the sky important to you? If I were to live anywhere else, it would be Colorado or New Mexico or elsewhere in the Rockies, just because the sky there is endless and breathtaking.

I was at my Mom's this evening. LaElu was there, too. My Mom went to a "Lifelong Learners" seminar on probate today. She got to talking about an old, old friend of hers, Pauline, and the fact that one of Pauline's neice's attempted to invalidate her will. What my Mom didn't know was that I had prepared that will, knew that there was a strong potential of a will contest, and I think I did a pretty workmanlike job of making it iron-clad. Pauline was having some minor cognitive problems, but that doesn't render someone incompetent to make a will. In WV, a "testator," to be competent, has to know the identity of "the natural objects of their bounty," meaning who their closest relatives are, and the general extent of their estate. Because I had known Pauline for many years, since I was a little kid, I had an actual memory of the process of doing the will. I do lots of wills, that's part of representing people rather than things. I seldom remember much about a particular event. That's why I do the discussion which precedes preparation of the will exactly the same way every time. That makes me a legally ("specifically") competent witness in a will contest action, because I can then testify from unvarying habit and practice, with assurance that although I don't remember the details, I can nevertheless say with a great deal of accuracy what happened. This includes a long talk with the person making the will, separately from anybody else. Sometimes, older people will have one of their children bring them to me, or they will be present when I go to them. I never want to hear the children tell me "what Mom wants." I will find out from Mom what she wants. We will discuss the alternatives and the reasonableness or necessity of any arrangement other than equal division of property among the closest relatives. We discuss the community and the client's life and other things that give me personal assurance that the person is competent. (Yes, there are frequently times that I will refuse to do a will, when I don't believe that the testator is competent. Can the family take Mom to another lawyer and probably get a will? Yup. But not from me.) Well, when the omitted potential heir of Pauline got a lawyer, the deck was so cold it had icicles on it, and nothing was ever filed in Court. Anyway, this discussion got me thinking about Pauline's husband, Howard, who died a year or so before I did Pauline's will. I did Howard's will, medical power of attorney and so forth for him when he was terminally ill with liver cancer. He came to my office, I already knew about his medical condition, and I talked to him about it. I remember asking him if he minded talking about it. He replied, "Hell, no, Roger, this is a part of life." He went on to tell me that his doctor thought that the cancer had spread from his lungs, where it was caused by asbestos exposure. He told me that the only place that he had had asbestos exposure was when he served on a submarine in World War II as some sort of chief. He hastened to add that it was a fair exchange, that he had done his duty, and that the Navy had always done right by him. I wonder sometimes if gender-based models and examples are current and wise. I think that they are. There are some gender differences, we gotta live with that. You don't have to be a dick to be a man, you just need to have one. And I believe that some behaviors are validly assessed with gender-based models. In that light, I have always consider, and still remember Howard as a man's man.

My partner is president of the county bar. She just arranged to have the annual Christmas party at No. 3. That means that I have to participate. I loathe parties. I am the original wallflower, and don't have a hell of a lot of conversational skills. But I'll be there.

Pippa passes. Mizpah.Z

R

An Old Bailey hack speaks from the trenches

2007-09-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

I don't know what I intended to do when I got out of school, I had no firm idea of what my professional life would look like. I suppose that it was in my mind to do lots of library work and brief writing. Did I see myself trying cases? I suppose that I did, at least I had the vague image of Perry Mason-like murder trials, although how I was going to get there by inhabiting the library was a little obscure. (This winter, I toyed with growing a beard, largely because Raymond Burr looked so darn good in one in the more recent Perry Mason episodes. But for so long, I've been known as the guy with the brushy moustache and the book, so it was a little late to change that image.)

Most kids want to play in the NFL, I think, and I was probably like most of them. Everybody wants to play quarterback, but he's one of 22 starters. There are far more linemen, the guys who play in the trenches. Eighty times or so a game, they have an explosion of energy, work very hard, and get knocked on their ass. In the world of the NFL, this takes a great toll. Not only do I think about the guy from the Buffalo Bills with the cervical spine injury from a couple of weeks ago, I think of Mike Webster, the Hall of Fame center who played for the Steelers. His body and head took so much abuse that he became totally confused and, though he was drawing a decent pension, homeless. The guys in the trenches mostly don't end up as commentators or pitchmen, they end up selling cars or appearing at local "celebrity" golf tournaments. Well, this is where I live - in the trenches. John Mortimer would refer to me as an "Old Bailey Hack." (The Old Bailey is the common name of the Central Criminal Courts in London.) I'm not one of the guys who "wins every case." Indeed, those people are myths, with sooooooo few exceptions. Max Steuer was one of those - I bet you've never heard of him, he tried the defense case in the Triangle Fire case in 1912, and to my thinking is the second greatest trial lawyer of the 20th century. Gerry Spence is the best trial lawyer of the century, and my admiration for him is great. But when he started, he lost lots and lots of cases that even now he says he should have won. Nancy Grace markets herself as an always-victorious crusader. She never mentions the appellate courts who have thrown out verdicts because she pulled unconstitutional and illegal stuff in trials. Well, I don't win all my cases. Indeed, sometimes the best "win" looks a little bit like a surrender. Mary T. from yesterday's post is one of those - served a short term when she was facing the possibility of a life sentence.

I had two plays today that are on my mind. One of them, we had a three and out. The other, we made a first down and are still playing.

In the first, a 45 +/- y.o. woman came in who was injured in an industrial accident about 8 years ago. She has a really bad back, without involvement of the disks. After she healed up as much as she was going to (which isn't much), the Workers' Comp Commission "awarded" her a permanent impairment rating equivalent to about 1-1/2 years of wages. (I don't like the term "award," even though the statute uses that. It suggests that getting hurt to the point that you are permanently impaired is a good thing.) Anyway, as years are going by, she is getting worse, has increased pain and continued medical expenses. Her household is supported by her husband, who makes $12 an hour doing skilled manual labor. Before being injured, she had been in that workplace for 3 years, having gotten that job to help keep her son (who has two jobs himself) in college. Before that, she stayed home with the children. Clearly, this lady is permanently and totally disabled. She is in too much pain to do even a sedentary job on a sustained basis. And there is not a darn thing I can do to help her. Workers' Comp is a joke. It is virtually impossible to reopen a claim this old, because the carrier will always claim that the aging process is the reason that the exact industrial injury that she had is getting worse and, in any event, they have changed the impairment standards to make it most unlikely that the rating will be increased. They will also deny paying for medical expenses. There she is really screwed, because WV law prohibits me from charging any fee to help people with medical issues. That is the product of crocodile-tears-concern-for-the-worker, and the effect is that the worker gets the shaft. Because this lady didn't work for more than 5 out of the 10 years prior to her injury, she is not covered for Social Security Disability. Because her husband makes about $30,000 with lots of overtime, she is not covered by the "needs based" SSI system. So here we have an American family of hard working people, one of whom cannot work due to zero fault of her own who now live on the edge of economic collapse. Un-fucking-believable.

The second lady was a woman who is trying to do a "pro se" divorce, that is, without a lawyer, and a serious problem has arisen. Her husband wants to "give up his rights" to their toddler, even though she has been able, even anxious, that he be very much involved in the child's life. This presents very special problems -- will the Judge erase his rights and responsibilities? Isn't going to happen. But what sort of parenting arrangement can she now safely agree to? Would you want a spouse to have your kid when s/he had stated very clearly that s/he wanted nothing to do with the child? Oh, and there is an older step-child involved who is suffering the pangs of rejection/separation Hell. This is highly custom work, and I can help her. But it's another play, and I will get knocked on my ass a lot.

So, an Old Bailey hack, I just totter on.

Oh, I haven't forgotten my promise to reveal here on this very page all of the deep secrets of the Freemasons. It's taking a while to write carefully, so the Absolute Truth will finally be known by all. None of the so-called "researchers" writing on this topic today have this information. I am risking the Fires of Hell by revealing these things, but the Time has come for the Secrecy to be Pierced.

Mizpah.

R

Sociopaths I have known; and a teaser for coming attractions

2007-09-23T17:32:00.000-05:00

On the Community Blog, there is a post about what defines a sociopath. While I am a jack-of-some-trades and master-of-darn-few, this is a subject in which I have some relevant experience.

Here at No. 3, we represent people, not things. Bank of America will never be our client. Neither will any corporation of greater wealth than your average Mom & Pop operation. When people come to us, they are in trouble. Some of them are in criminal trouble. Some of them are referred to us by Courts to assist an indigent is his/her defense (really, assigned - in the Federal system, the operative phrase directed at this poor barrister is "respectfully commanded"). Others are in the midst of divorce, injury or other assorted ills. Thus, we see a somewhat skewed slice of society.

In my world, I live in shades of grey. It is sooooo much easier to live a black & white existence, right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or bad. That's where most conservative pundits live, and in some respects I envy them their certainty and simplicity of mind. I have noted elsewhere that the justice system is reasonably accurate in determining results and consequences, but woefully deficient in making "the punishment fit the crime, the crime, the punishment fit the crime." (Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado) That is, we're not very good at accurately looking into a persons heart and mind and finding the WHYs of their existence. Dead body = bad. Self-defense by homeowner = good. Case closed. But I see, or try to see, a few "why's." There is Tina the crack dealer/prostitute about whom I've blogged in recent months. Life has given her a few tough breaks. Mind you, she has made poor choices and others who have been given damn bad breaks and have overcome them. But as much as I realize that Tina will serve the sentence that the law mandates (minimized as much as possible by my advocacy, I hope, but still at or above the 10 year mandatory minimum), I like her and feel sorry for her. There is little John W. who I represented years ago. I was called out in the middle of the night for a detention hearing on a juvenile who had shot his grandmother in the back with a deer rifle. The Sheriff (a brother) had pretty much determined what was going on as he brought John back to the Courthouse, and he was already somewhat sympathetic with him. As well he should have been, in my opinion. John was not "insane," but the circumstances leading to this shooting were unusual, and he was treated as a juvenile. I haven't heard anything about John for years, other than he is grown, employed, married, and living far away from here. I can hear most of society saying now, it doesn't matter the motivation, he intentionally shot his grandma, he's got to pay the maximum penalty that the law allows. And I don't condemn that opinion, I actually understand it. I don't buy it, but I understand it. And here, I wonder if I should claim to have some sort of greater understanding of human nature and human foibles than others. Damn - will I be cocky or will I be evasive. OK, evasive - I see society from an unusual perspective, let's leave it at that. There's Mary T. I was called out for an arraignment one hot summer Saturday afternoon. (I called my dear friend Leah, who was an associate with the old firm at the time, and told her, "The game's afoot!," and to get down to the Courthouse. Mary had taken her husband's revolver off of the china hutch (a strange place to keep a firearm), and put a bullet up his nose as he lay sleeping on the couch. He died just as the Medivac chopper was settling out of the air to take him to a trauma center. In this case, I renewed my acquaintance with the "Battered Woman Syndrome" defense. Shortly before trial, I sat down with the prosecutor, a dear friend now deceased, and we had a long and honest no-holds-barred conversation about what our evidence would be at trial (there are no "surprise witnesses" other than in the old Perry Mason episodes) and what the right thing to do was. Shades of grey. Mary ended up serving 2-1/2 years at a minimum security prison, where she acquired job skills, and she is back in the same house in the same little community and, I hope, is having a good life. All of these people are human, somewhat moral, and not terribly dangerous.

Remember, however, that black and white are also shades of grey. They do not appear nearly as commonly as the simple-minded would believe, but they do exist.

I am reminded this evening of two other criminal clients, and I think that they do fit pretty well the profile of a sociopath. The first is Allen T. Allen T. was an inmate at a penitentiary, serving life for murder. (In that case, he charmed a city police officer into turning his back, and then shot him.) Due to an unfortunate and sloppy chain of errors, Allen T. escaped the penitentiary and, in doing so, killed another police officer. He was on the run all over the country for a year or two, and made it to the FBI's "10 most wanted" list. (End of the story - he was convicted at trial, and sentenced to another life term, plus 300 years, and he is now held in maximum security.) I got into the case when another lawyer dropped out and the Court needed someone to put together a case quickly and without being overawed by this guy. (For a murder, you can request additional counsel, and I asked for my brother Dave, who is now a judge.) In the course of the proceedings, Allen T. was kept in our old county jail, isolated from other prisoners, and I would interview him there in his cell. One day, the chief deputy (now serving his third term as sheriff) found out that the jailers were searching us when we went in to talk to Allen T., and told them, "Don't be shaking these guys down." I told him then that I wanted to be searched because Allen T. was such a terrible security risk. At trial, another deputy (now chief deputy, and a fellow I went to high school with) told us his "secret security plan." The plan was, "if anything bad happens, you lawyers get down on the floor because we are shooting the defendant." Good plan - clear, simple. One weekend, while the jury was out, I went to talk to Allen T., and he was somewhat voluble. He told me the most chilling story that I have ever heard, bar none. He said that while he was out, he was stopped by a lady trooper in another state for a taillight out, or something of the sort. At this time, he knew that his photo had been circulated to all police departments in the nation. He didn't have a driver's license, but he did have his "favorite gun," a pistol, concealed under a newspaper on the front seat. He told me that he smiled, looked into the trooper's eyes, and that if he had seen "one flicker of recognition" by her, he was going to kill her on the spot. I tell this story to every police officer I know. (If you're pulled over by the police, understand that this is a finite danger that they face in every traffic stop, so if they are not chatty and chummy, there is a good reason for that.) This guy is a sociopath. We can talk about justice and revenge and retribution, but the reason his fate doesn't bother me is that he must be separated from society. For this guy, I have to say that having penitentiaries is a good thing. This guy is one of the true sociopaths, for whom the only shade of grey anyone can honestly see is black.

I also think of Jimmy S. tonight. Jimmy S. had a horrible upbringing in the most dysfunctional home imaginable. (While preparing for trial, we talked to his kindergarten teacher. He had been kicked out of kindergarten. He was beyond much hope even then.) Jimmy S. went to a local bar (an extremely, extremely low class place with old formica tables scarred by burning cigarettes and the smell of urine from poorly cleaned toilets) to establish an alibi (which didn't work, because the time records were very precise), and ran across a bridge over the river to an apartment building. There, he poured gasoline on the stairway and in front of several apartments on the third floor, and lit it. I'll not go into the gruesome evidence, but 7 people died in the fire. He may have had a beef with one of the residents, but the proof of that was lost in the horror of the crime. Jimmy S. hung around to watch the fire (as arsonists are prone to do) and was questioned by the police. Without much prompting, Jimmy S. confessed rather glibly. After a week-long trial in the city where the prosecutor and I attended high school together (aside - here in WV, cases move VERY quickly - If O.J. had whacked those people here, the trial would have taken two weeks, tops - In Jimmy's case, there was testimony from 40 witnesses), Jimmy S. was convicted of 7 counts of murder. The sentence was a mandatory life without possibility of parole, so at sentencing, there was basically no advocacy to be done. And so, I took the opportunity just to tell the Court what I thought, which was that Jimmy S. had no appreciation of what he had done, didn't have a clue what a life sentence meant, and probably was going to have a better life in the penitentiary than he possibly could have had in society. Jimmy S. was and is purely sociopathic. He doesn't understand to this day that he did wrong. Again, it's easy (ok, nearly inevitable) to talk about retribution and eye-for-an-eye justice, but the plain fact is that we as a society cannot have Jimmy S. live outside a penitentiary.

I've done maybe 25 homicides. Every defendant had a story. Some were sociopaths. But I have also met a few sociopaths outside of the criminal realm. One of these was a lawyer who was a lying son-of-a-bitch (and who is now a dead lying son-of-a-bitch.) One was an abusive boyfriend on the other side in a custody case. One was a police officer. One was a businessman who I declined to represent.

This is my life - shades of grey. But even I have to acknowledge that there's some black out there.

The teaser - within the last week, I've seen a bit of a documentary on one of the history/learning channels about "Secret Societies," and how, for example, the back of the dollar bill proves sinister Masonic influences in our government. I am a Freemason, have been for many years. This post is rather long, so the next time, I promise to tell all of the real secrets of the sinister Masonic order, hold nothing important back. Unless, of course, announcing the intention to do so gets me chucked off the South Side Bridge.

Mizpah.

R

More totally boring, uninteresting, ordinary, jejune, tepid stuff

2007-09-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That's today.

Major problem that my oldest/dearest friend is helping me with. Her assistance is already drawing off a ton of stress.

I was called to a Circuit Court hearing on zero notice today which wasn't drawn to my attention from the notice. I confess that I got pretty peeved, commenting that I have to hike the ball, throw the pass, catch the pass, run for the touchdown and then kick the f.ing extra point. Well, you get the drift. The other denizens of No. 3 were glad I was leaving. I was still right irate when I got back, so I went into my room and closed the door. That is significant in my world. We run an "open door" shop, except when clients are in with us. A closed door says, don't even think about fucking with me. And they followed that advice. I ducked down to an adjoining town for a short-notice plea hearing in front of a judge who was a laid-back classmate in law school, but who runs the most formal state court I've been in. Sometimes the bowing and scraping gets old, I confess. But in this Army of Justice, he's a colonel, and I'm just a somewhat elderly sergeant.

I was thinking a good bit about my Dad this evening. I'm a generalist at heart, the proverbial jack-of-many-trades/master-of-none. One of the things that I do really, really well is run a meeting at a good pace which is interesting and memorable. My Dad taught me that skill, he was a master of it. My partner Amy is president of the Bar for this year (which starts in September), and I am teaching her the system, and she's getting it. She (at my suggestion) got the "dean" of the county bar to present the program at the monthly bar meeting this evening, to reminisce about what law practice in our town was like in 1959 when he came to the bar. It was the best program we had had in many years, a total success, with total good feeling and cameroderie (don't have a clue how to spell that) all around. All four of the candidates for Family Court Judge sat at the same table with me, including my partner Amy and my best friend, the incumbent, Dave. It was totally friendly, and I think that says something special about this county bar. Next month is the annual "social," a big dinner which is usually very well attended. Amy has moved it to a bigger venue this year because we've gotten the Governor to come. (Second time I've landed him for a speaker this year.) That's pretty cool, and we have already planned the "memorial" of the occasion, an inscribed copy of a rare book about West Virginia (Daughter of the Elm, by Granville Davisson Hall) that is a redundant copy on my local-interest bookshelf. Strictly shades of my Dad. By God, this is one thing that I'm good at.

I've been suggesting to Dave that he consider running for the Supreme Court - a state-wide race. He would be good at it, and I have a plan that I can't talk to him about yet about smoking out heavy money for the run. I doubt if he runs, though, he's about had it with politics. But he would be a damn fine Supreme Court Justice. He's a damn poor politician, and that's what MAKES him a really, really good judge.

A juvenile client who I'm VERY concerned about got detained today -- I have to raise some dust with a couple of state agencies tomorrow. She is one of the most "salvagable" kids I've represented -- smart, personable, but addicted to drugs and I believe at least depressed and possibly bi-polar. It will take somebody smarter than I am to determine that for sure, but based on my own experiences, I do know that she needs a thorough psy work-up. I gotta make that happen, she is depending on me.

My son Tim and I just had a long talk over at my Mom's house, we were talking about EMS in 2007. He said something that really touched me, that if/when he passes his paramedic test next summer, he's going to ask the state office of EMS to be issued my old paramedic license number. I was really touched by that. The guy who runs that office is someone I worked with many years ago.

For some strange reason, I have no clients scheduled to come in on Sunday. Hell, maybe I'll take ANOTHER 2 day weekend - that would be a treat.

I'm going to do a very selfish thing tomorrow - I'm going to be in Morgantown, and on the way out of town, I'm going to hit B&N, look for a book and suck down good coffee. Yeah, yeah, it ain't much but I'm an easy guy to please.

Mizpah!

R

No. 3 on the road

2007-09-19T19:43:00.000-05:00

Today was long. I went extra-early to Charleston, the state capital, for a session of the Supreme Court. Friend Dacey tells me that they webcast the arguments now - I didn't know that. I met a colleague down there, Pam, a woman who was a divorce client 15 years ago and who says that that experience in part prompted her to go to law school. Although, I don't know if it was from some inspiration or the thought that "Hell, I can do this shit better than Roger." And I'm afraid to ask. Anyway, we sat on benches in the back of the Courtroom, which is one really big-ass marble room with marble columns out the wazoo and a bench the size of the biggest bar in Vegas. And we sat, and we sat. This was her first appearance there and probably about my 50th, so we talked about the fine points of arguing an appeal. (Much of my knowledge was gained from making mistakes along the way.) We didn't get on in the morning hearing, so loafed around the Court for the hour and a half break. Then the afternoon session started, and it was STILL HOURS before our cases were called. By then the Court was bored, tired and grumpy, so it was a damn short presentation. I had been psyching myself up for the attack I expected from one of the justices, a old circuit judge/gunslinger (that's not a disparaging term in my world) with a very pro-prosecution bent, but he was out. That took some of the wind out of my sails, although the "swing" justice - the guy whose vote I have to have - was on the bench. I made my points and told them I was going to respond to questions but otherwise I'd sit down, shut up, and let this long day close. I stopped at the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, where I park my car, which is 1/2 a block from the Capitol. I was on that board years ago, and that's sort of a remaining perk. We stopped in Elkview on the way back for a cup of tea to unwind, and Pam and I had a nice visit.

Don't know why I'm blogging about a fairly ordinary day. Today, perhaps, I'm just a fairly ordinary fellow.

Mizpah.

R

If I were a bird . . .

2007-09-13T20:52:00.001-05:00

If I were a bird tonight, I would be a vulture sitting high in a tree, glowering beneath furrowed brows. (Although, I don't think that vultures actually have brows.)

No time off this weekend. I've promised two days to people in the regional jail awaiting trial. Neither of them has accepted my advice. That's their prerogative, of course. Stupid, but they have the right to do that. One of them is going to turn a 6-1/2 year sentence into a 25 year sentence. It's like banging my head against a wall. Or a windmill. And windmills hurt.

Lunch today with a brother (not genetic). Very enjoyable, he has been of incalculable help to me since last fall. While there, I saw my former partner and her partner there, and I confess that put me seriously off-speed. I still haven't gotten over the rejection of that dissolution even a little. Which is childish, I know. Or maybe vulture-in-a-tree-ish.

A day-long class at the law school tomorrow on federal criminal practice. I really do need the class, to find out about some important changes. But I'm still thinking of bagging it so I don't have to interact with my (genetic) brother. He stopped at our Mom's today, and upset her quite a bit. A couple of months ago, he emailed LaElu and advised her to dump me. Cheeky of him. Mind you, if she did, I couldn't totally fault her for that decision, but I'd rather she came up with that on her own if she ever decides to do it. If she does, maybe I'll move to Lincoln County and be roomies with Vanda. It would be a long commute, though.

My partner and my paralegal are on their own tomorrow, if I don't bag the class. A replacement for the staff member we fired will start on Monday. She's rather a taciturn individual, which is fine with me.

Sometimes, I just pull out the ID tags I wear to remind me of who the hell I am.

Pippa passes.

R

100 lost, but Vishnu on a Rotisserie I'm off-center

2007-09-11T19:17:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I crossed the 100 pound lost mark. I honestly do not know how much I have to go, I know it's a lot, and I'll figure that out in the Fullness of Time.

I have to keep my eye on the ball - the ball being how much better (relatively speaking) I feel from when I started in March. I can climb the stairs in No. 3 without a whole lot of effort now. My legs are very strong from hauling around mega-weight, so handling "mere" maxi-weight is a bunch easier. Clothes are a problem right now, and thus my available wardrobe is limited. I fit in vehicles and chairs somewhat better. I'm going to the law school for a class on Friday, and am not unduly worrying about the relatively small seats in the courtroom. (I'm more worried about the interaction with one of my genetic brothers who will be there. But it's a really valuable class being offered to people on the Federal panel.) Hell, I actually without thinking crossed my legs today - sounds silly, I know, but it's been quite a while since I've done that.

But I gotta tell you, I'm really concerned. I feel very "brittle." I've had zero real problems with the diet. But I fear such problems. The whole addiction process is pretty insidious, and I have to learn to monitor this for life, or else I am duly and truly screwed. A problem is that food and booze are EXCELLENT coping mechanisms, if you only look at the very short term. They create satisfaction, pleasantly altered blood chemistry, and they never let you down. In the short term. So I gotta keep my eye on the ball, long-term. And I'm just really worried.

And I wonder - Is it "unmanly" to admit to these rather silly fears? This stuff is really bothering me. Normally, I don't worry so - I have done hard and bloody jobs without ill effect. Next week, I'm slated for what will be a very nasty argument with one of the justices during an argument at the Supreme Court. No worries, I'm positively looking forward to it. But fucking doughnuts scare the shit out of me. Totally illogical.

Going to lunch with a young lawyer who wants my advice tomorrow, and to lunch with a lawyer-brother Thursday who's been of enormous help to me in past months. Each time, I'll sit and swill coffee, and it won't bother me. But when I start to eat supposedly normally at some point, that's what I'm worried about.

And I really miss the old Bombay Sapphire.

Just venting, I guess. "I have met the enemy, and he is us." [Pogo]

Mizpah. Pippa passes.

R

I love women, all women

2007-09-08T18:22:00.000-05:00

A comment that Jilly made got me thinking this evening, the one about my wanting to be a young stud, not an "experienced" one. That, and in the mailbox at No. 3 today was a "Victoria's Secret" catalog. (I didn't work all day today -- I left early to go with my son Tim because he was trading his little PT Cruiser for a 4WD pickup truck. Tim's definitely more of a pickup truck kinda guy these days.)

My former partner used to joke when the VS catalog came to the old office that we kept it around as entertainment for the guys rather than for commercial purposes. And for someone who thinks conventionally, the models for VS are darn good looking -- tall, curvaceous, luxurious hair, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I gotta level with you -- I just don't find them attractive. They aren't real. I cannot picture lying on a bed with them chatting about books or business, idly stroking their hair. I cannot picture feeling my face light up and my heart bound with joy seeing them across the room. I cannot even picture deep embraces and doing the wild thing with them. I'm just not interested.

I see attractive women all around me. Real women. Some of them are size 6, some size 10 or 14 or 24 or whatever. Doesn't matter worth a damn. They have all sorts of hair styles. They dress differently, each of them. They are real, they are PEOPLE who are worth interacting with. A woman is not an adjunct to a vagina or breasts or whatever other convention says is attractive. A woman is a person. Some of them are vapid and boring, some are funny and fascinating and just a joy to be around. My unscientific survey suggests that women as a group have a similar bell curve of personality and intelligence to that of guys. The women of the Shelf are all GORGEOUS. I see Pete writing with total love about Sunflower. I envy BigJoe. I think this evening of Friend Beanns - who has been thrown into the maw of the medical monster, who has endured a mastectomy, and will endure the toxic treatment that must be done. Beanns, darling, if you are reading this, I can only imagine the things that are going through your mind - but know that you are beautiful. No operation will touch that. No hair loss from chemo will detract 1% from your beauty. Ditto my paralegal, Kathy - who had to start chemotherapy this week. Gorgeous girl, totally. So many of you I just know through the written words here. But I know you. You are lovely and ravishing. You fill the world with cheerfulness and tranquility. You complete me, as you complete every guy who will stop and think about it.

I confess that my love of women has, on occasion, led me into little issues. Heck, I've had a couple of spectacular romantic crashes. But, God help me, I just like girls.

Mizpah!

R

41 cents

2007-09-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

I have a commitment in another town every Tuesday evening. Being a man of habit, I always stop at McDonald's to get coffee. Today, they asked me my age. It turns out that according to them, I'm a "senior." I saved 41 cents. I'd rather pay the money and not be a senior.

R

The Barber Shop, A Sad Reunion, A Book and I found Fred's ring

2007-09-01T20:14:00.000-05:00

It wasn't a real intense day. I went to the office, mainly to read the paper and have some quiet time, and decided it was time to get a haircut. When I got out of school 30 years ago, my hair was long and bushy (and black). Since then, it has shortened by an average of 1/4 inch per year, gotten salt & pepper, and then gotten thoroughly grey. Now, I get what is locally known as a "cop cut," so either the average will go down, next year the barber will have to get a razor, or I'm gonna die.

I go to the "Barber Shop." Well, it may not be a sexy name, but it just about says it all. The barber, Lou, has been cutting my hair since I was in school, and recently moved to half of an old gas station building at the bottom of Hospital Hill, when his partner of 30+ years retired. The barber chair is in front of a large & sunny picture window (suitably painted with the words, Barber Shop). It's a small space, and mannish as possible. Lou keeps the TV on ball games or sports shows, the magazines are mostly "Field & Stream," "American Rifleman," and so forth. Lou is a trader, and always has interesting hunting/sporting equipment laying around, and he loves nothing more than wheeling and dealing. The parking area out front wasn't crowded, so I assumed it was good to go to slip in, get the haircut, and slip out. Damfino where they parked, but the place was packed. I hadn't brought my book in with me, so I relaxed, joined the male-bonding banter and observed the scene. A grandpa, dad and little boy were all ahead of me. Grandpa was a scruffy fellow with a viva zapata moustache, skinny legs in shorts and a beer belly, and he's the one who mostly held his grandson. All of the men in there were careful with their language owing to the little boy, and the way everyone interacted with the little boy was absolutely cute. I guess those of us who were dads were thinking of when our children were that age. After the three of them were done, and older gentleman and his wife came in. The rest of us weren't in a hurry, so everyone insisted that the old gentleman "play through." The presence of the older lady changed the banter to quiet and correct conversation, maybe that's why we all wanted them to go ahead of us. Well, I got the cop cut, and as usual refused to let Lou trim my moustache. I've worn it mostly bushy for lots of years, and only have really trimmed it when a girlfriend some years ago wanted it that way.

This evening, I chauffered my mom to & from her 66th high school reunion. I've mentioned before, my mom is a real lady, 84 years old, very healthy and quite feisty. When I picked her up to come home, she said that the reunion was, at best, "not bad." It reminded her that she is one of the very last healthy people in the class, and also that many, many of the people who were special to her in high school have died. I'm reminded of a passage in Proverbs which says, as best I can remember, that generations pass away, new generations arise, and only the earth is forever. (I'm too lazy this evening to save this and look up the exact quote at bible.com.) She says that she doubts if she ever goes to another class reunion. For some reason, this all strikes me as very sad. I don't have much experience with class reunions -- I graduated from a high school that I just attended in my senior year, so I'm somewhat a "man without a country" as far as high school is concerned. Everyone in my class who I have any desire to see, I see.

I read late into the night last night and lots today on one of the new books that came from Amazon that I'd been looking forward to. This book is Settling Accounts: In at the Death, an alternate history by Harry Turtledove. It is the 10th volume of a series that's been written over the last 15 years, and I've thoroughly enjoyed them. Alterate history postulates what would have happened if certain key events had gone differently, and this series is based on the premise that the Confederacy won the Civil War and the two Americas continued to violently clash for 80 years. Turtledove tells it as a series of vignettes involving several different characters. He certainly attains, at least with me, the "willing suspension of disbelief." I feel like I know these people, and they exist in a corporeal way someplace. Why do we have emotional reactions like this to FICTION? I am reminded of a line from a Simon & Garfunkel song from the 60's, ". . . and we note our place with bookmarkers, to measure what we've lost." When you've read all that a particular favorite author has written, and particularly after s/he has died and there will be no more work, there is a sadness that's hard to define. That's how I feel about lots and lots of authors - Dickens, Sinclair Lewis, L'Amour, Zane Grey, Asimov, John D. MacDonald, to name a few. Tonight, I'm contemplating my strange relationship to books, which are certainly among the most important things in my life.

I've been looking for months for my friend Fred's masonic ring. It's not much as jewelry goes. It was hand-made from 3/4 inch stainless steel tubing shaped by some process that's foreign to me, and stamped by dies with the various appropriate symbols. It's not valuable, but I really treasure it. Anyway, I did a treasure hunt of my bedroom this morning, and found the darn thing. I think I'll start wearing it constantly. Fred was a police officer who retired in the early 90's. He would stop by the office about 7:00 in the morning just about every day, and we would relax & drink coffee, and solve all of the world's problems. Fred died suddenly a year ago. He had owed me some money for a while, and his widow asked me the balance. I told her to forget it, and she asked if there was any remembrance from him that I'd like to have. So I told her I would love to have that cheap steel ring, since he didn't have a son to leave it to. To me, this represents continuity, another aspect of that quote from Proverbs. There are not distinct generations, there is a continuous flow of people, always handing knowledge and experience and tradition from hand to hand and mind to mind.

I started another of the new books, Wheel of Darkness, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child tonight. La Elu is wrapped up on the net, Tim is out with buds, and the dog & cats are sleeping, so it's back to quiet reading for me.

Mizpah!

R

The Fullness of Time (at least temporarily) and the timid return of Good Nature

2007-08-31T19:40:00.000-05:00

Just a few thoughts tonight -

Today sucked, but it sucked in an interesting sort of way. I had a long conference with a young mother who is stuck with a TERRIBLE parenting arrangement, mainly because she was so scared of her ex that she didn't "dare" get a lawyer for her divorce/custody hearing. I told her I'd put on the dented armor, wield my clumsy blade, and slay her dragons. Dragon-slaying is like windmill-tilting, it can absolutely beat the hell out of you. Then I had a probation revocation hearing with a magistrate who is arrogant, but you have to admit, she's also stupid. So, a trip to Circuit Court for an emergency application Tuesday morning, but in the meantime, my fellow sits in jail. If everyone did their job correctly, this so-called justice system would still be a doddering relic, but when stupidity intervenes, it grinds to a halt.

Number 3 isn't very happy this week. We had to let a staff person go, and I always hate that. I attempted to get a woman who I REALLY want to work for me again to come aboard, but my partner made such a fuss, I had to tell the woman that as her friend, I wouldn't advise her to come to me now. I'm rather miffed.

Kathy, my paralegal, is right on some sort of border for whether she needs chemotherapy or not, so her doctor opted to do it. She realizes the necessity, but she's just mortified about losing her hair. I honestly don't know how to support her on this particular issue. To me, she's a pretty woman (I'm allowed to say that, her husband is a brother) and hair or not hair doesn't change that. But to tell her that seems to diminish what she is taking very seriously. But telling her that this is awful is a lie in my heart. Darn it, give me the sword and I'll hack away with a will, but put me on the sidelines to watch, and I'm often lost.

My second father dropped in today. He's involved in a nasty divorce, and isn't handling the stress well.

Good news: The three books I've been looking forward to for MONTHS arrived from Amazon today. So, I'm taking both Saturday and Sunday off, and that feels rather decadent. I'm going to the farm on Sunday, just to be in the woods a while. One of my (genetic) brothers is in town from Indiana, and my mom is enjoying that visit. He and I, however, have a very superficial relationship. Which is OK.

Friend Dacey from Balto was in this week, too, and we just had the most delightful visit.

Next week, I have to talk to my former partner about some sensitive issues. That's on my mind a lot right now.

More good news: Number 3 was put on the Historical Society's "Historic House Tour" for the weekend after Thanksgiving. I'll have to purge my working office, of course, to bring a bit of Order to the Chaos.

Rox, my son's telling me that in medic class, he's learning to use the modern defibrillator, which apparently has pads rather than paddles. Where the hell is the drama in that? Jeez, they're taking the fun out of it. Seriously, I think I could still function in a 1980's era EMS environment, but I'd have to be totally retrained to function in the 2007 manner. Well, it's his place now.

My mind is rambling tonight, and so are my fingers. Mizpah!

R

This space for rent

2007-08-26T19:46:00.000-05:00

For the moment, I can either do a quick and dirty entry or plunge headlong into my rather unfortunate attitude. I choose the former, and assure you that my legendary good nature will return in the Fullness of Time.

Mizpah.

R

Good news, an update, a question and a horrid conspiracy

2007-08-15T16:33:00.000-05:00

My paralegal, Kathy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 weeks ago, has gotten about the best news she can under the circumstances. The surgery was totally successful, and it was probably the stage which will require only moderate radiation treatment post-op. About time she catches a break. One of the strongest thing she has going for her is a loving husband who is a great source of positive attitude.

Tina, the crack lady, entered a plea yesterday. The District Judge and I had an on-the-record honest discussion about the necessity of rescinding her bond. If she got out again on bond and used drugs again (and it is probable that she would), the potential 6 year sentence I'm aiming for would real quick turn into a 14 year sentence. I told the judge that I'm really heartsick over this case. She commented that I have a good heart, which honestly embarassed me - and added that she has to think of the best result for the client and for society at large. Darn hard duty being a judge. I've often said that I disagreed with this or that decision that she has made, just as she's been peeved with me a time or two, but no one has ever heard or will ever hear me say that I think she has intentionally done the wrong thing.

Oh, in answer to my question, I told Tina very little about what could be coming, that there was sealed information in the file which could be trouble, but that the ramifications to not showing up would be devastating.

In our state bar newsletter today, there was an item that the state bar revoked the "Young Lawyer of the Year" award given a couple of months ago to a young fellow in an adjacent town, because he has been charged with embezzlement. I don't know this guy. I can argue this both ways. On the one hand, there is the presumption of innocence, which you would think an association of lawyers would respect. And there is the fact that this action focuses attention on what may turn out to be dishonorable conduct. But also, I think back to a similar situation in our local Boy Scout Council. A fellow who was awarded something called the Silver Beaver, which is a nice award to dedicated adult volunteers, was charged with and convicted of sexual misconduct with a kid at Scout camp. Basically, we treated him like the character from Last of the Mohicans, the Huron Reed-That-Bends. His name was unscrewed from the plaque at camp and deleted from the list of recipients, and he no longer has name or remembrance with us, and as far as we are concerned, he has dishonored us and never existed. So which way would you go? Ignore it, or make a big deal of rescinding it?

My partner has entered into a horrid conspiracy with my doctor, and I'm on a hopefully short leave, some time off-duty. So, another question - if you're not reading or working, how the hell do you go about having fun?

Mizpah!

R

Oops, an ethical question, and a driving review

2007-08-13T19:10:00.000-05:00

Tina, the woman who is charged with crack, got arrested by the Marshals this morning. She didn't show up to pre-trial services for a drug screen. This sucks in one sense, because she's going to be gone a long time, and the chances of a sentence less than the mandatory minimum just vanished. On the other hand, she'll be separated from the crack. The ethical question is this: Over the weekend, I received email from the Court scheduling a sentencing hearing for tomorrow, which is blindingly fast, and at the same time email to the effect that sealed documents had been put into the Court file. No dummy me, at least about this sort of stuff, I figured that something was cooking that was bad. So - should I have told her that something bad was about to happen and take the chance that she would not appear or even run and when caught catch a 20 year sentence, or not tell her even though I knew darn well that something bad was about to happen? I'm not going to disclose what I did - I'm curious what y'all think.

We went to B&N yesterday afternoon, and I drove La Elu's new car/truck/whatever-the-heck-it-is. It's a Chevy Equinox. Shhhhh - don't tell her I said so, but I hate driving it. There is absolutely no feedback from the controls, and it's loose and mushy. On the other hand, it may be just that I drive so few different vehicles these days. She likes it, and that's all that matters.

Crossed the 90 barrier today.

R

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings. I am the Doubter and the Doubt, and I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

2007-08-10T20:21:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on my day, about 3 people who's lives intersected with mine today.

Kathy, my paralegal, had her surgery this morning. Her husband (a brother) called me and reported that the doc said that she was "doing as well as can be expected." What does that mean? Why do all professionals (myself included) become all mealy-mouthed when talking about the people whose lives we touch? What's wrong with "She's OK," or "There's a problem," or something that's not a fucking cliche? She will have another surgery, minor by comparison, next week, to install a subclavian "port" for long-term administration of chemotherapy. This may sound corny as hell, but I'd MUCH rather that the doc (who is a friend of mine) was doing the cutting on me instead. Then at least I could DO SOMETHING. It's very difficult to stand helplessly on the sidelines. Kathy has been thrown into the maw of this impersonal medical machine monstrosity and will emerge, I hope, healthy but affected by the terrible experience. I almost said "scarred" by the experience, but I don't know that. Perhaps she will be able to make something constructive of this. Why does the body suddenly "decide" to start manufacturing cancer cells? Who decides? We can talk about decreasing the incidence of cancer (and other diseases) through preventive things, but that statistical phenomenon means NOTHING to the person whose turn it is to be the target.

My son Tim has been working a lot of hours at his rescue company. For the past couple of weeks, he's had a bad run of suicides. He came home a couple of mornings ago, and wanted to talk to me about a call he had during the night. A 30-something woman suicided by pills, mostly psychotropic stuff, a very nasty way to die. We talked the EMS-philosophy thing about getting some distance from the impact of the call. In "my day," we used to kid that the first thing you should do at a cardiac arrest is check your own pulse, because that gives you perspective. He also wanted to talk about the clinical decision to not "work the arrest." See? It's not whether this system attempts to save a PERSON, we talk about whether to address the THING. I'm very, very rusty on clinical stuff, but it was very clear to me from certain findings (that I will not inflict here) that they made the right choice to listen to Mr. Reality, call it a night, and call the medical examiner. Tim didn't tell me the deceased's name. And that was that, end of story. This morning, I got to No. 3 by 7:00, put on the coffee and sat down to read the paper. I always read it from back to front, because I figure that the comics will be the high point of most days. I got my usual chuckle out of Dilbert and Hagar, and felt good following the lives of my friends in For Better or For Worse. Then, toward the front of the paper was an obituary of a friend who died suddenly, a 30-something woman. I called Tim, and he was somewhat miffed that I woke him. You guessed it. She was a dear person, committed and caring and intelligent and funny. I last talked to her in Court a couple of months ago, and we had a pleasant if largely irrelevant chat. My God, what was going through her mind that night? What caused her to take scads of meds which put her through Hell before they killed her? Why didn't she call somebody, anybody? We weren't intimate friends, but I know 20 people me included who would have gone over to sit with her in a heartbeat. We are so damned cocky, me included, thinking that we have the power to eliminate pain in this world, but we don't, and good and worthwhile people have their lives swept away, and by this time next week, she will be a fading memory. She died alone and lonely. Think about that - not alone like when your family goes out shopping and you stay home, alone like there is NOBODY IN THE WORLD who gives a shit about you. Christ, I am so sad.

Then I drove down to a neighboring town to talk to a client, Tina, because she has absolutely no transportation. We met at a McDonald's, went over a plea agreement, signed it, and talked about what happens now. Her history is relevant for the sentencing, which will take place around November. We had talked before, and she filled in some gaps today. She was born into stunning poverty. At age 9 and for several years thereafter, her father habitually molested her. To escape, she got pregnant, left high school, and became addicted to booze and drugs. She had 3 children, who were taken from her by the Welfare Department over the years. To feed her drug habit, she became a prostitute. Along the way, she developed Type II diabetes, but because she has no medical insurance nor any way to get medical care, it is untreated and out of control. She described today symptoms which lead me to suspect that her vision is deteriorating and she is developing peripheral neuropathies. In recent years, she became addicted to crack. She was indicted for distribution of more than 50 grams of "cocaine base," i.e., crack. That's a lot of crack. With that drug quantity, she is looking at a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and in the federal system if you get a 10 year sentence, you WILL serve 10 years, no parole. At least she will get medical care in prison. She wasn't a "drug dealer" in the movie-character sense, where they seem to drive BMW's, wear lots of jewelry and carry wads of cash. Normally, she took her "profit" in the form of a rock or two, plus a little cigarette money. She has existed in a life that you and I can scarcely imagine, one of hopelessness. Of course, we read about people who have "risen up", from poverty and drugs, and we piously condemn those who don't have the gumption or the character to do that. But that life is all that she has ever known.

I know that I'm pretty negative this evening, but that's the truth of what I'm feeling tonight.

R

Justice, Just Us, and Slogging Through the Day

2007-08-08T11:40:00.001-05:00

I donned my "Elu" cloak last night, and stole into the Shelf, and was accosted (kindly!) for not having blogged lately. Well, it's been busy and I've been frumpish. So, some random observations:

Things are really in turmoil here at No. 3. Kathy, my paralegal, was just diagnosed with breast cancer, so she's starting on that marathon with the health care system, beginning with surgery Friday. I'm very, very worried about her. Frankly, I don't know for sure how to support someone in that predicament. From the work end, it's easy, I've told her to take whatever time she needs, we'll cover things here and just do whatever it takes. (I know that big companies do leaves-of-absences & Family-Medical Leave Act status, but I will be damned before I start acting like them.) But from the personal end? I guess I need her to tell me what she needs, and I assume that those needs will change from day to day. Any extra help on requests to The Big Man Himself on her behalf is appreciated. Her husband is a brother, and I've told him that when he crashes (and he will) to call me and I'll go with him and watch him drink a beer. (Not drinking right now, more on that anon.)

This darn political campaign is a major pain in the ass. It's distracting my partner, the process is demeaning (what does marching in a parade have to do with making just judicial decisions?), I'm catching flak from the bar over the whole thing and my very close connection to two competing candidates, and let's face it, neither my buddy Dave nor Amy is going to win anyway. I have an uncanny ability to predict elections, and if that sounds cocky, so be it, I got the track record to back it up. One of the other candidates (4 way race) is going to top 40% and I'm open to bets based on that prediction. (The only betting I EVER do is on elections.) That woman has a fanatic work ethic, and is leaving everyone else in the dust, and she won't slack off a bit until the primary.

My son Tim was in the local paper today in a little feature called "ordinary people," as he was out working at his (my old) rescue company at a public function. That's a nice thing. He's a good kid. Oh, and Rox, he's taking the paramedic class this year.

La Elu's car crapped out for good Monday, RIP, so she went and bought a Chevy "Equinox." Funny name, unusual vehicle, a cross between a mini-van and SUV. As for me, my Audi's got 120K miles on it, and it's good for 200K anyway, so I'll not be in the market for a car for a long time. I'm not always attentive to details, but I'm fanatic about taking care of my vehicles.

I've been asked what 3 books I'm waiting for that are just published: In At The Death, by Harry Turtledove - the 11th and mercifully last installment of a looonnngggg alternate history series; The Aftermath (Book Four of the Asteroid Wars) by Ben Bova; and Wheel of Darkness, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, the latest installment in yet another themed series of novels. I've also ordered Wayne Dyer's new book, even though I have misgivings because he has gone from nuts & bolts to spooks & smoke over the years. Let's see, and I'm waiting on Chuck Norris's new western. I just finished an interpretation of TR's writings & speeches by a guy names Strock, and I sent it over to JC in Baltimore - I'll be interested in what tracks she leaves in the book, compared to the ones that I left. I always read with a highlighter in my pocket, I'm a track-leaver in books, and sometimes it looks like I walked through them with a whiffinpoof. (If you don't know what that is, ask Pete.)

Doreen's recent blog about writing was really great. If you haven't looked at it, you oughta.

I've alluded to a distracting major personal project. Many months ago, I blogged about my morbid obesity. I explained that I was waiting for some ineffable quality or spirit to come into my mind which would fix it. Well, I guess I got tired of waiting, or the gremlin caught up with me or God moves in mysterious ways or there are spooks & smoke at work or something. Beginning in March, I have been attacking the weight as hard as the biochemistry and physics of the situation permits. Last night, I walked past the 80 pounds-lost mark. I’ve a long way to go. So I’m “humming a little cowboy song and walking ahead at a scout’s pace.” I'm journaling a lot about this experience, because I cannot forget where I've been and how bad it is/was.

I impressed myself yesterday. I was assigned a new serious drug case on Monday, and there was a hearing set for Tuesday. I got the whole thing resolved VERY favorably for the new client because I have an excellent working relationship with the involved police & prosecutors. Won't make much of a fee, though, but that's just life.

TR is looking at me from behind my desk, so I'd better go tend to business.

Mizpah!

R

Observations on the fringe of Harry Potter and feeling pretty good

2007-07-20T20:47:00.000-05:00

I took my mother to Barnes & Noble this afternoon. She's 84, very healthy, and a constant reader. This is a relatively rural area. The opening of a B&N 25 miles from our homes was a pretty big deal. (After B&N opened, Amazon started sending me get-well cards.) In any event, it's always a treat to go there, scout out the books, buy a new magazine I've never tried before (today it was Wild West, I told you I have plebian tastes), and suck up some decent coffee while my mom shops. The parking lot was crowded, and so was the store, including a few leftover people in peculiar clothing which I assume is connected to celebrating the release of the new Harry Potter book. These revelers were a good-natured bunch, and so I'm inclined to doubt the extreme fundamentalist Christian view that J. K. Rowling is an incarnation of Old Scratch himself. I could be wrong, Old Scratch is a devious fellow.

I'm at No. 3 Equity Court, because I didn't have a working computer for the past couple of days, while "Rob" fixed it. No, I don't know what was wrong. It was broken. He fixed it. Point of the spear, that's what counts.

I got a compliment I honestly appreciated yesterday. I was in Federal District Court for a status conference on a criminal case. In that case, my client asked months ago for a new lawyer, and that motion was heard last week, and denied by the Magistrate Judge. After the hearing today, the District Judge (who I had cases against when she was a practicing lawyer) popped back into the Courtroom for something or other, and asked how I was getting along with my client. I told her that I'm getting along with the client great, that her motion was made at a frustrating time when she was going into drug rehab and was in need of extra TLC by me, but I was going quickly out of service on medical leave at the time, and I wasn't there as much as she needed me. The Judge commented that she figured it was something like that, because she'd never known me not to get along with my clients. Hey, I'll take the reputation of being a workmanlike decent human being over being known as a brilliant asshole any day of the week. I don't know how the Courts work in the bigger cities, but it's all very clubby in the small towns of West Virginia.

The rough and ineffectual insults which have percolated on the community blog lately are not distressing, they are merely pointless. The physical world has plenty of distress in it, why honor it here?

Three new books I've been anxiously waiting for are being released over the next six weeks.

Tomorrow - No. 3 Equity Court will be buzzing. Or, at least, I'll be here and busy.

Mizpah.

R

Oh, what a dandy f.ing fellow I am, and by the way this so-called Justice System is seriously broke.

2007-07-16T21:47:00.001-05:00

I blogged in February about a domestic case that I’m doing “pro bono,” i.e., without charging a fee. I met my client when I was the volunteer domestic violence shelter lawyer at a domestic violence docket day in Family Court. Not a big deal, I get stuck doing that 3 or 4 times a year. This young mother had a domestic violence petition against a former boyfriend, and she told me a very sordid story based on having a pending Family Court case where he was seeking “joint parenting time” of her 9 year old son even though this guy is not the boy’s biological father. (Oh, but he is a convicted felon.) When she began hesitatingly to catalog a little of the history of abuse and her essentially disabling terror of the Courts, my purely self-aggrandizing so-called “noble instincts” kicked in, and I told her I’d do the Family Court petition case for her, too. What a wonderful human being I am. Great Caesar's Ghost, I'm a sanctimonious bastard, and it’s enough to make you sick.

I talked to this woman several times over the following few weeks. She didn’t trust me a hell of a lot, because nobody in a position of authority had ever really listened to her, and nobody had ever stood still while she dribbled out her story in a parade of non sequiturs. I think I know how to get clients relaxed and talking, and get the facts out of them, and it just takes time. Her story included a ton of sexual abuse, she was embarassed, and let’s face it, I’m not what you would call urbane and tactful, and she was just very uncomfortable telling this stuff to a guy. (I always had a woman representative of the local domestic violence shelter there when I talked with this client. That helped her comfort, my comfort, and gave me another brain to express ideas. I’m not proud, I’ll take suggestions wherever I can get them.) It was her fourth visit to me when she remembered to tell me about 3 nighttime break-in’s plus rapes that this guy had committed against her. And that was the milder stuff. This boyfriend was (is?) one sick puppy.

Doing this case was not a big damn deal. Now, if I stepped into an operating room and took out someone’s appendix, knowing only what I know now, I’d be worthy of some heavy-duty back-slapping. But doing a case? It’s just what I do. I planned it out before and during the first hearing (on Valentine’s Day, I love Family Court hearings on Valentine’s Day), and just followed the plan. Boring. Mind you, I did let the toxins flow during the hearing today, and the abuser left really smoking after the Judge ruled that he was an abuser, and would never have any contact, direct or indirect, with the boy or my client. I think I can safely count him among those who are less than friendly to me. But it’s still just a case. Besides, I piss people off one at a time, while the Judge pisses them off in droves, so he’s more liable to get ambushed than I am.

This woman was in a lot of danger without a lawyer. She hadn’t a clue what evidence was or how to present it. Common wisdom says that Judges collect every important fact, and then make wise rulings. That’s not what happens. They hear disjointed bits of evidence which tell darn little about the life stories of the people involved. They try to make sense of the evidence, get frustrated as hell, do the best they can with limited information and the good ones (this is a good one) then lose sleep and get ulcers. My client is on Social Security Disability, has zip for money, and without someone helping her gratis, she may have lost this case. The Judge couldn’t talk to her privately and find out the facts and determine what helped her case. He does 750 hearings a year, and can’t act as the advocate for 1500 people and, besides, he's not allowed to talk privately with "litigants." (Oh, the abuser was represented by a friend of mine who is a pretty good trial lawyer, and who thrives on aggression.)

What good things can you say about a system where the rich get good lawyers and the poor get dumped into a totally unfamiliar setting? What good things can you say about a system in which money is often the only thing that talks? This woman’s case was an exception, when access to the Courts should be the fucking rule. The monied interests are lying, cheating and stealing to convince the people to emasculate their advocates, to give more and more power to the judges (who are selected in one manner or another by monied interests - the exceptions are few) who by and large are conservative, money-protecting umpires, to convince the people to give away their rights to seek justice. Hell, we are afraid of the word, and I want to stand out on the front steps of the Courthouse and sermonize like a street evangelist that the building should be a place of Justice, where the right thing is always done. But too often the only fucking thing that matters is money. And in most cases (sometimes even in Family Court cases), the only justice I can get for people is money. I can’t fix their back injuries or erase any sorts of scars, I can’t make their spouses faithful, I can’t put love or light or acceptance back into their lives. Money. That’s how I spend most of my days, moving money around and piously taking my cut.

I had a fellow come in the office last week with a MAJOR criminal problem. I quoted him a “retainer” of “eighty-seven-fifty.” He thought that $87.50 was very reasonable for the services. He was the recipient of serious sticker-shock when I told him he misunderstood what I meant by the figure. I don’t have a clue where he went, or what has happened or will happen to him. I feel terrible about not helping him – but the landlord of No. 3 Equity Court doesn’t give me a break for being a dandy fellow. I’m downsizing the workers’ compensation practice because my ability to do those cases and make fees commensurate with the effort has gone down the tubes. I’m turning away several comp cases every week. I temporize with these people about how I “just can’t help you now-a-days like I used to be able to, blame the Legislature, not me” but I’m as much a slave of money as the lowest, meanest whore on the streets.

Like the old Don himself, I’m finding that the windmills are just beating Hell out of me. It’s not fun, and God’s going to have to punch my ticket before I’m off duty.

So, how was your day?

Mizpah.

R

I'm tired, I'm grumpy and Amazon parrots should be in the Amazon

2007-07-11T20:22:00.001-05:00

Today was a couple of weeks long.

Among other things, I went to a home to do a mortgage signing for DiTech. They are killing local banks on interest rates, and are offering fixed rates. Great Caesar's Ghost, in reading those words, I see that I've been taking money from the corporate King for his enslavement of people. Shit. I'm a hypocrite. Dammit, how could I have missed this?

Anyway, this was the home of a mine fire boss. That's a very responsible management position in charge of safety. He works 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. In the home, there is a large-ish bird cage, and in that cage is an Amazon parrot. That disturbs me a lot. The bird shouldn't be in a cage in West Virginia, he should be in his natural habitat. Again, perhaps I'm a hypocrite, what with having two indoor cats (one of whom was with me when I lived alone, also an indoor cat then.)

My son had a minor injury in an ambulance incident a couple of days ago. He's black and blue all over. (Basically, an idiot cut off the ambulance which was hauling ass with a patient, and the driver dropped the hooks.) Welcome to what was my world, Tim. He's sanguine about it, and we've discussed why I told him to favor sitting in the backward facing seat. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

Yours in flaming hypocrisy,
R

God, Me & Jesus; or, If I Should Die Before I Wake, I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take - But Don’t Be in a Hurry About It, God, OK?

2007-07-06T22:37:00.000-05:00

A random discussion in the Community Blog set off alarms in my mind, ringing out danger, danger, fear, fire, foes, we’re getting too darn close to mortification of the mind about the mortification of the flesh, and it’s scary and I don’t want to be here. God. God? GOD? Are you there, God? Give me a sign, OK? A lightning bolt. A lightning bug. It doesn’t take much. I gotta know. Please, God.

“My God!” God is there, always present, always on our minds. To some, S/He’s in our hearts. That’s untrue, of course, the heart is a bundle of muscles that moves blood around, it’s not the seat of any thought or emotion or faith or hope. But that alludes to a deeper commitment in the mind, I suppose, and who am I to criticize how deep another’s commitment may be? Oh, I won’t use a bastardized masculine-feminine pronoun from here on out. God’s a Him. It says so right on the label, right beside “Made in Malaysia.” Or is it the Union Label? I get them confused.

Do I have the nerve to know God, or should I just reach for the Bombay Sapphire, pour one, and take the edge off? Do I have the integrity to talk about my faith (or lack thereof, or confusion thereof, or peculiarity thereof) and my fear and then talk of those times at night when I sit bolt upright in sudden terror because maybe there’s nothing out there but an End and Darkness? Do I have anything vaguely resembling the brain capacity to understand one “jot or tittle” of the truth which doubtless exists?

Human communication about God, positive or negative, loving, threatening, scared, all of it is usually strident and even confident if you can believe that. “I know THE way, [thump, thump goes the Book, thump, thump] and it’s beyond question, logic, critical thought or argument!” Or, how about, “You poor deluded fools, life is short, then you die, die, die, and it’s forever, buh-wa-ha-ha-haaaaa!” Even when we “deny God,” most of us capitalize the word God (as opposed to The Word of God), as if to use lowercase is an insult to Him, or maybe means we might be referring to some other “God.” Remember in the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” (italics mine) but notice that’s not an outright ban on other gods, just a requirement that we get the pecking order correct. This passage may be garbled. We’re reading it in English and it was written in . . . in . . . Hell, I don’t even know what language it was written in. God wrote it – what language was he using? Did he use a fountain pen? Funny how so many of our conversation fillers (“Oh, God”, “helluva thing”, “I swear to High Heaven”) refer to God.

We humans are so reluctant to talk about God. Even though God, or more precisely Death and What Happens Next, are on our minds a good bit. And it’s not comfortable for anyone to discuss God with less than the certainty of logic and authority. Anything less rings those alarms. I well remember a 1966 Time Magazine cover which caused an enormous commotion, because it said in huge red letters on a black background, “IS GOD DEAD?” How could they say that? Is that a question allowed by the Rules? I hope Hoyle or maybe Roberts has something to say about this.

Let's face it - some people believe that God IS. Some people believe that God IS NOT. We are scared out of our wits and it is sooooo uncomfortable to talk about God. Fess up – as we get older, we see God less and less as the Creator and Founder of Life and Source of Morals and more as the hopefully-present Bringer of Eternal Life, the guy who will help us beat the odds. We don't read the obituaries when we are 20, we’re too busy sinning, and we know that we are sinning, and that’s OK because we have LOTS of time to repent. We read the obituaries rather desultorily when we are 30, because maybe someone’s grandmother will have died. When we turn 40, the first wisps of the grave start to call to us, and we start really reading the obits. We are occasionally shocked at the sudden cardiac death or cancer death of someone younger than ourselves. At 50, we’ve given up pretense, and we just plain flat out read the obits, are glad that nearly all of the departed are older than us and, at least in my small town, often see that people we know who have died. That’ll put you back on your ear. My dear friend and brother Fred Griffith stopped in my office on a Wednesday and it was early April. His birthday was April 29, and I would always sing to him a little ditty wishing him and Hitler a Happy Birthday, “Happy BIRTHday Fred and HITler . . .” I didn’t sing it then, because it was early April, and he’d be back, and it would be a whole lot funnier on his birthday. When he came into my room, he expressed fear about my obvious bad health, and told me that "if the Good Lord lets me be here around for the next 10 years, I sure hope you're still here, too.” Those were his exact words, I’ll never forget them. Two days later, on Friday, his wife called me. Fred had collapsed and died at home. The paramedics did what they could, but the only effective thing that they could do was wave, so long, be seeing you, wherever you’re going, you’re blazing the trail for the rest of us. Fred donated his body to medical research. There is a gift inspired by love of God. I don’t know if I’d have the guts to do that. At age 60, the obits are the second thing we turn to (after looking up the Oriole’s scores), because we feel the “chill wind of Death” approaching us. We think that maybe we should "get right with God," or Jesus, or the Prophet (Peace Be Unto Him), or the Eternal Whoever. At 70, we make little jokes about how glad we are to wake up on the correct side of the grass, but we’re really not joking. And at 80? If we make it that far, we have numbed ourselves because Death is coming, and we’ve seen it soooo many times for most of our friends. Funny, we remember the shriveled specter in the casket not as an old person, but as the girl or boy we went to high school with, and they were so handsome or pretty and athletic and alive.

Most organized religions are very detailed, and you can’t tell the players without the program. For instance, St. John the Divine (aka St. John the Evangelist) wrote down his Revelation. Someone else numbered it, I hope - he shouldn’t have been bothered with that detail. In Revelations 19:11, et seq., he relates, “And I saw heaven opened and beheld a white horse, and he that sat upon his was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. [I don’t know how St. John knew about the secret name if it was such a secret and all. But, I digress.] And he was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called “The Word of God.” And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations:” Well, you get the drift. If St. John the Divine (Evangelist) is right, we’re in for quite an exhibition, come the Apocalypse.

Do you know that there are 70 sextillion stars in the Universe, that according to a recent sky survey by probably atheistic scientists? That number is incomprehensible. It is incomparably more than all of the grains of sand on all of the beaches and deserts of this Earth. Just imagine counting out the grains of sand in your toddler’s sand box. Even that’s a lot of sand. Even that’s a lot of stars. It is, to me at least, most improbable that God made all of those stars just for us. After all, the vast majority of those stars were totally invisible and unknown to us until very powerful telescopes were developed in the latter 20th Century.

Where is truth? I’m sorry, I mean Truth. There is truth in Jesus. What a ballsy guy, no wimp was he. He didn’t care a rap for "authority," and threw the money-changers and merchants and fakirs and jugglers and ad-men out of the Temple, saying that it was his FATHER'S house, not a den of theives. And he also had the nerve to announce that “as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.” St. Matthew quoted him there. So much for Enron and Tyco and the S&L's and Ann Coulter. I think. But maybe Jesus isn’t as big as Ann Coulter in a true American’s living room.

Some religious leaders are pretty evil. Pat Robertson asked his buddy God to smite the left-wing liberals on the Supreme Court to make room for God-fearing men (did I say men?) whose hearts are pure and who know that God, Guns and Guts made America great. (Pat Robertson is also silly. He took credit for turning a hurricane away from North Carolina through what must have been a really, really good prayer.) I suspect that he doesn’t much appreciate the downright majesty of the heat exchanging process which creates a hurricane. Pastor John Hagee is real keen on corporal punishment for errant children. His Bible tells him so. Let’s not forget the Ayatollahs with their fatwas (essentially, they take out a contract on someone who has offended the faith in even a teensy little way), and with their promises of Paradise complete with 72 virgins (Who checks? Who counts?) for those who kill infidels and die themselves.

Some religious leaders are good and loving. Billy Graham is pretty doctrinaire, but he’s a nice fellow and doesn’t seem to meddle in God’s affairs concerning hurricanes. Another pastor, “Bishop” T.D. Jakes, always says positive and helpful things, and somehow I really do feel the love coming from my television set.

The acid test, though, is the believers in the trenches. Many religious people are good and kind and loving. I’m a Freemason. I’m glad of that, and it’s one of the best things I ever did. When I petitioned to join a lodge, I had to swear that I believe in a supreme being. Just who wasn’t important. One of my senior brothers, Billy Reid, who is a kind and decent and loving person, believes that “if you don't have Christ, you're lost.” Maybe the reverse of that puts it better, if you DO have Christ, you are NOT lost. Billy lets his faith and love show, neither under a bushel nor perched on his head like the headdress of a Las Vegas showgirl. Let’s see, Reverend Jeff Gill, a simple pastor, has benevolence and love in his heart. (There I go about the bundle of muscles again.) He spent the last night of my Dad's life at his bedside. Dad was already in a coma, and the family was numb with exhaustion and went home. Jeff did it not for a contribution or even to provide spiritually comforting words, but from pure, unadulterated Love. I remember tonight my dear friend Marleen, a very conventional Christian. (Before I met her, I had represented a fellow who had very cold-bloodedly killed a co-worker of hers. Is he a candidate for the literal Hell? I don’t think she would have thought so, but I may be wrong.) She put faith into action, through her “Women’s Ministry” at her church, through her family life, her comfortable moral example, and through her courage when she was diagnosed with bad ovarian cancer. I saw her in my office while she was doing chemotherapy. Her hair was gone, so she had a sort of “do-rag” scarf, and she had the biggest, most sincere smile, and talked about trying to learn the lesson that God and Jesus were teaching her. God, I hope she’s right there with Jesus now, just as she knew she would be.

Wrongs in the name of religion - How can I count that high? There are the Crusades, including the infamous “Children’s Crusade.” In the late Middle Ages, the Malleus Malificarum was written (literally, the “Witch’s Hammer,”) where the just and godly were taught how to torture, burn alive and thereby save the souls of witches. Much of applied Islam is violent. (I know, I know, an extremely small group of radicals has hijacked a kind and gentle religion, blah, blah, blah, now let’s see the kind and gentle people quit electing jihadists to lead them. The Afghani and Iraqi American-approved Constitutions adopt Islamic law, the Sharia. Hang on, ladies, I’ll pass around the chadors. Any color you want, as long as it’s black.) Did you know that 139 people were killed in riots over the publication in DENMARK of a CARTOON showing Muhammad with a bomb in his bonnet? Back to the Christians, there’s the IRA and the Orangemen, the Inquisition, Salem, a few dud popes, and more than a touch of hypocrisy.

Oh, another “wrong” is to condemn the unrepentent sinners (meaning those who don’t follow your particular dogma) to a literal Hell. Hell is an interesting place, by all accounts. First and foremost, it’s hotter ‘n . . . well, you know. There are Lakes of Fire, and for some reason lots and lots of sulphur. Some people say that there are several rings or levels, and that you get assigned a spot based on your sins, sort of like getting bad seats for your season tickets for the Orioles. I can’t help but wonder - Is this literal Hell the probable end for the people created by an allegedly loving God?

Now there are some outfits that do not subscribe to the “loving God” concept and thereby at least aren’t hypocritical in their dispatch of the ungodly to that literal Hell. For instance, there is the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, that’s the outfit which does anti-gay protests at military funerals (without ever explaining the connection between their “cause” and the departed or the mourners). Their website (godhatesfags.com) does not pretend that God loves anyone. It’s at least refreshing that this group has no qualms about boldly flying the Jolly Roger. They’re just one of a parade of folks whose God is a pretty touchy individual.

We misuse religion and God even in small ways. In the movie "Patton," there is a scene where General Patton orders a chaplain to write a "weather prayer," so that the snow will subside and the army can go "from victory to victory to establish thy justice." At the beginning of football games, the teams often pray for success on the field. Obviously, one of their prayers won't be answered affirmatively. I prefer the prayers offered up at the beginning of NASCAR races, where the pastor commonly thanks God for the day (a pretty safe thing to be thankful for) and the people (ditto), and then prays for safety for all there. Even so, too often those prayers are not "successful" with respect to the drivers and crews. And they are almost NEVER totally successful for the fans attending the race. Let's face it, if you have a group of 200,000 people attending an exciting event, someone is going to die suddenly. Well, for that matter, ALL of us are going to die suddenly. Oh, we may know in advance the most probable cause and sequence of our death, but the instant where corporeal life ends and death begins is abrupt. One minute you’re there, then you’re . . . somewhere. Life is change. The secret of life, if there is one, is to make that critical exit on cue every time.

Where does my religious faith come from? Frankly, I'm not sure. I remember going to Bible school in the summers at a church in the little town of Buckhannon. We would draw pictures for our Moms, and play Red Rover, and sing "Jesus loves me, this I know, ‘cause the Bible tells me so." Did my faith start there? But I also have a clear memory of my mother reading me the story of Pegasus, a mythological creature, to help me go to sleep on Christmas Eve when I was 8. Did I know then that Pegasus was a myth? Did I think that Jesus was real? Which is more real, a Bible story or song, or a mother's love? Parent, God, I’m confused -“I’ll never ever know where God and Daddy went, ‘cause there was nothin’ those two couldn’t do . . .” I have been present at (not enough) births. I have been present at (too many) deaths. Of course, being a denizen of this place, I have read some about a lot of subjects. I’m a Jack of all Books, but a Master of None. How do I, Roger, KNOW that God is there, that the Universe is not some cosmic "thing" that just happens to exist? I only know of one way. It's not reading the Bible or listening to a sermon or reading accounts of evolution. (Evolution is not a theory, it is a fact, by the way. Ignorance is a fact, too.) It doesn’t offend me that in His creation, God uses DNA. His speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second, and you don’t have to keep timing it with your stopwatch, and that’s fine with me. He doesn’t need to stop the Sun, blow down the walls of Jericho with horns, burn bushes in front of me, or bother Himself with pillars of salt. I know that God is there because when I open my mind, open my heart (and I know that I've criticized that phrase elsewhere), and I can FEEL and PERCEIVE GOD. When I am at the farm, and see a pileated woodpecker on the wing, GOD IS THERE WITH ME. When I look at my mountains, God is there. When I read a poem or (more rarely) write a poem, God is there with me. Oh, that's one reason that I think that the Boy Scouts' policy of not accepting atheists is moronic. Positively some of the most spiritual experiences I have ever had came in Boy Scout activities out in GOD'S COUNTRY. He’s there, I know it, and I’m not fooling.

Events in my life have shown me God’s presence. The friends I have, the women I have loved, my son - they come from God. There was an event in my life which has always represented the workings of God to me. On 18 December 1976, I was at a rescue company station for a "GI party," that is, painting and scrubbing the walls. An extraordinary series of nine events HAD to occur IN ORDER to place me and two of my lifetime friends at a specific location within 5 minutes of a specific event, and being there at any earlier or later time would have resulted in the death of a 20 year old mother and 6 month old child. What we did was not terribly remarkable - we simply applied our training. But to get us there on cue was an honest miracle. I’ve talked about babies. Heck with multiplying loaves, show me a baby, and you have proved a pure-dee miracle.

I have loved and oh my God, I have had pain. Why did you let me have pain, God? You’re not the Westboro Baptist guy, at least I hope you’re not. If you are, I’m in deep shit, that’s for sure. But at least I’ll have company in the Lake of Fire, and all of that nasty stuff.

So let me tell you exactly what I think of God. I don’t really know if He's a "he," a "she," both, neither, and that's not terribly important. I doubt that He is an old man with a beard, dressed in a toga, reaching out to touch His human creation with the Spark of Life, but I could be wrong. I know that he is there, and I believe that some of what are probably his minor works are the incomparably complex system of physics and chemistry and biochemistry and mathematics that makes this Earth operate as it does. I go to him when I am troubled, and often feel guilty that I don't acknowledge him as often when I'm sailing along happily. It is convenient and comfortable to ignore God passively, for to contemplate God is to contemplate Death (and I’m sure as that literal Hell going to capitalize that), and what if I'm wrong and there is no God and Death is final, and how long is forever, and what will become of my body or even will there be name or remembrance or memory of me when the sun burns out and will there be another cycle of creation, and how did this Universe come to be and has it been here already for an infinite time and how long is infinity, and my God I am scared and I am so small. God, are you there? Are you there in the pleasures of the flesh that you have given me, but some say are sinful? I love nuzzling in a woman’s breasts – but will I go to Hell? Or is God in my friends and in my ability to have friends and to communicate and love and dance and once again, the Universe is so big and so forever, and my God I am so small and insignificant. Or is the Real Immutable Truth in "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are," although I can only see about 10,000 stars in the sky. And God you are so great and I am so small.

In the end, in the quiet hours when we are exhausted from our feeble attempts to embrace God and Infinity and have a drink with ol’ Thanatos, all we can do is rise up, brush the dirt off our blue jeans, and walk on and hope that we are going to be OK. God, I hope I’m going to be OK. Give me a sign. Give me a hint. I’m really scared.