on cleaning house

We are, once again, cleaning house. This involves (among other things) sorting through the piles of paper that build up, deciding what to keep and what to shred. It is amazing what builds up if you don't systematically sort and discard - such as statements from banks that no longer exist. This is like looking back through your own life, one receipt at a time.

I was digging through the back end of a file drawer and found a folder of papers from my father's time in the Army (I consider my packrat tendencies to be a thing of honor, inherited from my father). I found his Army medical examination report from 1942, when he was 30 years old. He had low blood pressure, like I do, which is remarkable because he smoked three packs a day until he quit, "cold turkey," after I was born. He had 20/200 vision, like I did (before it got worse). His vision disqualified him from serving in what the Army calls the "combat arms" branches - just like me. He was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 137 pounds. I was taller than him when I came back from Boy Scout camp at the age of 14. This is the sort of thing that prevents you from cleaning house - you get caught up in the details of what you are reading and go "off task." So, I put the papers back where I found them, to be sorted through on a day when I have nothing else to do, which might be this time next year.

Charley's anniversary

People outside of Florida may be unaware, but this is the first anniversary of Hurricane Charley. Charley was aimed directly at our house until, without warning, it took a right-hand turn, rolled over Punta Gorda, and cut across the state. I should have said, rolled Punta Gorda over. They have empty buildings and busy construction crews at work even today. I do mean "cut" across. Imagine the power it takes to snap a tall, mature pine tree like a match stick, or roll a mobile home over and leave it like a crushed can.

Our newspaper had a story this morning about the bravado being expressed today by fools who think "they never come here" and last year's evacuation warnings were "false alarms." I truly hope they live the remainder of their lives seeing no proof to the contrary.

At least I'm prepared for the next one. If the power goes out again and stay out like last time, I can brew coffee on the gas grill with my new, campfire-style coffee percolator. I just hope the gas grill stays where we left it and doesn't end up on the bottom of the swimming pool.

July in Florida

The problem with going to Boston on the Fourth is, you have to come home soooner or later. It's July, and it's hot. Danged hot. We don't get 100-degree days here like in some other parts of the country but when the humidity is 99 percent the "hot as" factor is about 300 degrees. I mowed my front and back lawns today - don't usually mow them both on the same day in the summer - and I'm sitting here recuperating. Good news: The crape myrtle I planted a year ago is finally showing blooms. I'll put up a photo later. Bad news: The key lime tree has about six limes on it and no evidence of wanting to bear any more this summer. But she's a tough tree, having survived a freeze and two close calls from hurricanes, so there's always hope. After what she went through last summer she's entitled to rest, like I am right now.

Fourth of July in Boston

Of all the places to be on the Fourth of July, I can't think of a better place than in Boston, home of the Tea Party, Paul Revere, and all that. Never mind that they throw a party on the banks of the Charles River complete with the most amazing fireworks synchronized to music from the Boston Pops. Never mind that our twins live there and their siblings think of Boston as a second home town. That's just part of the charm of being there. On the Fourth, this is where it started, here and in other places like Philadelphia, but who wants to go there?

on seeing your daughters turn 30

We aren't old enough for this. Our twins weren't born that long ago and their mother and I aren't old enough to have children that old. But they were, and we are, and they've celebrated one of those birthdays with a zero in it. Good news: They won't have to worry about such a traumatic event for another ten years.

When they were six months old I met a father of six-year-old twin boys who said he felt sorry for me. It doesn't get better, he said. It only gets different. He was wrong. It got different, for sure, but it always got better. Daughters are great; twin girls as good as ours are more than twice as great.

When I turned thirty I'd finished law school, and I had a job with the state legislature that seemed like a good job at the time. Our twins have finished college. One then earned a master's degree while the other completed the requirements to become an R.N. Both have jobs which are much more valuable to our society than the job I had. They are sweet and caring young ladies who know how to enjoy life, too. I am sure my parents were proud of me, but they couldn't have been prouder than their mother and I are of our little girls.

on seeing your son become a husband

I threw in a paragraph about the Devil Rays the other night just to demonstrate that I'm still on line and my computer hasn't fried itself despite my best efforts. But the Devil Rays are the least significant aspect of my life.

I am remiss in not reporting that our "Numbah One Son" (and only son), Colin, married a beautiful young lady two weeks ago, in Colorado. This is almost too profound to speak of in a blog, but I have to say that his mother and I, and his sisters, are as proud of him as we can be. As the old cliche goes, we have not lost a son but gained a daughter, and her four sisters, and her parents, as part of our extended family. Colin met Sarah after moving from Boston to Boulder two years ago. Four years of college and we never heard a word about any of the gals he dated or made friends with, but when he met Sarah he fell like the proverbial ton of bricks. Sarah is like Colin in many respects - they are motivated, serious minded, hard workers, yet fun loving in an "extreme sports" sort of way - snow boarding, rock climbing, running, kayaking, etc. - and also family oriented. They are the greatest match and they have been inseparable. Megan captured the event and added her own classic captions in a web page she created for the event, and you can see it here: http://www.megangalbraith.org/wedding.html
Thanks, Megan. Pictures are sometimes more eloquent than words, but I can think of one exception. If you will send me your speech I'd like to publish it here.

Devil Rays amaze, daze, in phases

I cannot figure the Rays out this year. They are so consistently inconsistent. The conventional wisdom is, they cannot win on the road but then they go to NY this week and beat the Yankees two of three games. The loss was a horrible blow-out, 13 runs in one inning. True to form, they had a huge lead going into late innings but then the real Rays went back to the hotel and sent their bogus clones out on the field to "close." I hope Lou Piniella is not looking at Yankee Stadium too fondly. If he goes, there goes the franchise. I predict that you will be able to buy the Rays on E-Bay before this year is out. Starting bid will be $100.00. I won't make a bid.

back on line again

I refuse to admit how long it took me to upgrade the operating system on my computer, a task made necessary by the gift of an iPod Mini. I installed Windows 2000 Professional over Win 98, hoping not to lose a few old programs I can't find the installation disks for. They survived the installation. But I can't find the disk for my fairly new HP printer. I've tried to download the drivers from HP's web site without success. The installation goes so far, then fails with no explanation whatever. I also lost my favorite places in Internet Explorer but I'm going to start using Mozilla anyway so they were in jeopardy of being lost.

But the important thing is, I got my iPod functional. That's a different painful story. I think Apple has sabotaged their software for PC users to make it less functional. How, for example, do you delete a song from your iPod? If you have home-made disks, like I have, consisting of songs I bought on line, why is it necessary for me to type the titles and artists' names in manually, and how do you do that efficiently? Ah, well. Tomorrow I'm spending the day on a big jet plane and I'm ready to listen to a little Ray Charles, a lot of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with stellar county performers ("Will the Circle be Unbroken"), a touch of jazz (Weather Report), and a half-ton of oldies. Life could be worse.

here's hoping

I am about to upgrade my computer from Windows 98se to Windows 2000 so I can use an iPod. I'm getting conflicting advice about whether to spring for Windows XP, but I have this installation disk for Win 2000 Professional handy and I'm saving my money for a digital underwater camera. I'm going to back up everything I can, then attempt a "dirty" installation so as not to lose too many programs. If that chokes, I will wipe the hard drive clean and do a "clean" install, then re-install the programs I have installation disks for. If that doesn't work I will either go get Windows XP, or kiss the camera goodbye for another year and buy a computer with XP already installed.

A few observations here: (1) At first, I thought the failure of iPod to work on Win 98 was Apple's revenge on PC users until I realized how much money Apple is forcing PC users to spend on Microsoft products. No, we aren't migrating to Apple just for the sake of a portable music player. (2) Market saturation of personal computers in the U.S. is now complete. Americans who do not have a computer now will never buy one because they are too dang much trouble. (3) The old saying, "If everything works perfectly, it is time to upgrade," proves itself true again.

I once converted a 486 computer running Windows 3.1 into a Linux machine. It took hours and hours. It worked, but when it worked it was like watching paint dry. If I didn't think of it as a hobby it would have been a total waste of time.

Wish me luck on this conversion. Who knows when I will be able to access Blogger again?

what's an "awscom?"

In case someone other than one of my children should accidentally stumble into this and wonder what an "awscom" is: Back in the good old days when the Cold War's thermostat seemed permanently set at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the U.S. Army maintained missile sites in Europe. These weren't just missiles. They had nuclear warheads - "tactical" warheads, not the "strategic" kind that could wipe out a continent. These missiles demanded the supervision of the Artillery Corps, maintenance services of the Ordnance Corps (not "ordinance," which is the kind of thing I write for a living nowadays), the Military Police (to stand in the towers and watch the encircling trees), and a few administrative support types like me (Adjutant General Corps). As the story went, "If the balloon goes up, we fire the missiles and our job is done." The headquarters for all this activity was the Advanced Weapons Support Command or AWSCOM, a fancier name for what was also called the 59th Ordnance Group. Until computers came along I had no use for the acronym, AWSCOM. Now, it has a ring to it - a cross between "awesome" and "dot-com." So, there. Now you know.

61 is nothing to fear

For my birthday last year, my sister-in-law sent me a card that said, "Just because you're 60 doesn't mean you are too old to do all the fun things in life." Inside, it read, "61 is too old. You have one year to do everything."

Cute. With a message like that weighing on my mind for a year I knew we couldn't do dinner-and-a-movie on my 61st birthday, assuming I should live so long. So when the 61st rolled around earlier this month, I did the only sane thing an elderly codger could do.

I went scuba diving. I joined a group from my dive shop, and we ran up to the Rainbow River, just north of Dunnellon, Florida. I haven't been "wet" since last November. My buddy hadn't been diving for a year and a half, so we made a good pair. We spent the first 20 minutes remembering how to achieve neutral buoyancy, which is the state you want to be in. I'd get "heavy," bump the river bottom, give my vest a puff of air, and ascend like a balloon. We were in 20 feet, so getting an embolism wasn't a major threat, but it was embarrassing. I'd get back down, look around for my buddy, and find him up at the surface. We went up and down like a pair of yo-yos until we began to get the hang of it again.

The real fun of diving is seeing the fish. I never was big on fresh water fishing but I saw several that would look fine on a dinner plate. We saw a huge gar. I missed seeing a huge turtle. The limestone river bottom has small openings from which water flows, and other openings from which bubbles escape. The grasses bend with the flow but give about 18 inches of dense cover for fish and other critters. This is a great place to cool off on a hot day, with a snorkel or dive gear, and a great place to go kayaking - my next toy after I splurge on an underwater camera.

the Southern Blogs Ring

I've just joined up with something called the "Southern Blogs," a "ring" of (at the moment) 21 blogs that you can read by clicking on "previous" or "next" in the little box, top of right margin. This is described as "a ring defined by latitude as much as anything; if your blog is south of something, an idea, a state of mind, or even a popularly held misconception then you will probably be comfortable here and most certainly south of where you are at."

My four regular readers will probably think I've finally lost my mind. Their image of me as a father does not include what they probably think of as a "typical Southern male." If that's correct, then we raised them right. I am Southern in the same sense that Kentucky, where I was born, is Southern. Kentucky was a Border State during the war of 1861-1865, when brothers fought brothers. That fits in with my being a Gemini, which means (as we should have learned from our high school's speech and debate class), every issue has at least two sides. As a lawyer, I can argue either side for a fee. As a thinking person, I believe the "truth is out there," hidden in the middle of the bleatings and pontifications of the extreme right and extreme left. I am also Southern in the sense that I was raised in a Southern Baptist Church, but I am now proud to call myself a Methodist ("open hearts, open minds, open doors"), thanks to my beautiful wife of 33 years.

If you are reading this for the first time it must mean you are a member of the "ring," because you can't find this blog using Google. If so, don't expect recipes or gardening tips. I don't even have the recipe for a mint julep. I can't tell you what to expect because I never know what will come out next. This is mainly for our children but sometimes takes on the tone of a letter to the editor. . .a place to vent. I'm a fan of the Devil Rays but a bigger fan of the Red Sox, and I've seen enough of the world to believe the South is a nice place to live but it is not God's Back Forty. I am a Democrat the way Will Rogers was a Democrat. ("I don't belong to an organized political party.") I believe the judge made the only correct decision he could make in the Terri Schiavo case, and I believe conservatives have forgotten what they have historically stood for. I also believe the Red Sox can do it again this year, but the season is still early yet. Stay tuned.

Summer has arrived

In Florida, we measure the passage of Spring into Summer by the date we turn on the air conditioner. It's still pleasant in the mornings but the afternoons have become hot and muggy. It is unusual for Spring to hang on this late in May. This evening it was 86 degrees and humid and the house felt like a microwave, so we reluctantly agreed to flip the switch. "I'll turn it off when we go to bed," I said. But I probably won't. It's been on for an hour and it feels better already. Thoughts of diving in 72-degree spring water (see below) are beginning to creep into the random thoughts of odd hours. Right now I'm thinking of celebrating my 61st birthday diving in the Rainbow River with other divers and instructors from my dive shop. You can check out their web site at: http://www.macssports.com

if it's Saturday I must be in Home Depot

But not this Saturday. Instead, I bought a new garage door opener at the local Genie dealer. I love garage door openers almost as much as remote controls on TV sets. This is my third one and I installed the other two myself, so who needs to spend 70 bucks on an installation charge? I refuse to admit how many hours I spent on this project. For 70 bucks I wasn't paying myself minimum wage by the time I finished. That's OK. I needed a project that I could do with my hands and take pride in when it's over and done with. I spend my normal working days reading, writing, thinking, talking, and sometimes arguing, not necessarily in that order. My hands have no calluses. Rarely can I point to something at the end of the day and say, "I did that." Removing an old garage door opener and installing a new one is a good thing to do. The work requires all the home repair skills a man needs to know except plumbing. The new opener is quieter and smoother, and has electric-eye sensors inches off the floor that stop the door if something is blocking the path. The remote doesn't work, yet, but I had to leave something to do tomorrow.

p.s. -- Does anybody need about 14 feet of old bicycle chain?

finally, photos

I just uploaded two photos (see below). Memo to the Blogger people: The programs we are to use for photos, Picasa and Hello, are not winning new friends from people like me. Getting a photo on the board is a very klutzy process. Ah, well. For free, it is worth every penny.

Ginnie Springs 

that's me on the right 

thinking ahead to Summer

We've had a delightfully prolonged Spring in Florida. It is still cool in the mornings and nearly perfect in the afternoon. The Gulf waters are warming up. It is time to think about getting wet again! Above are two photos of me at Ginnie Springs, underwater, in dive gear, which I've posted as a reminder of what the antidote for a hot summer day looks like. (OK, it took me two days to get the photos up but, hey, they're up.)

hooray, Rays

I love the Rays this year for their total unpredictability. They get "up" for the best teams in baseball, defeating the White Sox (second win tonight), the Red Sox, the Yankees (four out of five so far). Then they turn around and drop two against the Twins. Hmmmm, maybe there's some predictability in this pattern. Give these kids a chance to mature and jell as a team and they will have a better second half. We've said that before - like, every year. "This could be the year" worked for the Red Sox. Stay tuned!

the Good Rays showed up

When the Rays are good, they are not perfect but they are fun to watch. They were fun last night and again tonight, with good hitting and pretty fair pitching, beating the Yankees (highest paid roster in Major League Baseball) at Tropicana Field. That's three wins out of four games here, plus one for two in New York. Red Sox fans, eat it up. Devil Rays fans, we have a team worth paying attention to. This is going to be a good season.

off to see the Devil Rays

The New York Yankees are in town. Tonight is a good night to appreciate being under a dome because it has been raining in St. Petersburg all day. The big question at the moment is, which of our teams will show up tonight? We have the Good Rays and the Bad Rays. The Good Rays usually start the game but they change uniforms with the Bad Rays in the seventh inning and take the rest of the night off while the Bad Rays go out, blow the lead, and lose. Sometimes, like last night and the second game in New York, the Bad Rays get the whole night off and the Good Rays are allowed to act like a real baseball team. When that happens, the highest paid roster in Major League Baseball (the Yankees) or the second highest paid (the Red Sox) will get pounded by the lowest paid roster. Don't try to make sense of it. Just kick back, relax, and watch the show.

reach out and touch someone

I've just made contact with a woman I haven't seen since 1971. No, not an old flame. She introduced me to a woman she worked with at a department store in Tallahassee. A few weeks later she packed her bags and moved to Atlanta to the mild consternation of my roomie, who'd been dating her. The woman she worked with became my wife and the mother of my four faithful readers of this blog. Leni, who introduced us, has never known until today what she'd done! She was amazed that I found her, and frankly so was I.

To put this in perspective, when I was a boy we moved from Tarpon Springs to Clearwater, about sixteen miles down the road. It was as if we'd moved to the dark side of the Moon. I lost all track of kids I'd known in elementary school, partly due to lack of continuing interest but mainly because it was a long distance call back to Tarpon Springs and nobody had even dreamed of the Internet yet.

About 18 months ago I made contact with one of my best buddies in the Army, thanks to classmates dot com. That was cool because we haven't seen each other since 1968. This is cooler, because until today Leni was totally unaware that, but for her, I might still be looking for the right woman to marry and my four faithful readers might still be shopping the Earth for parents to be born to.

Dunedin Highland Games, 2005. 

Conni was one of ten nominees for Guardian Ad Litem of the Year, of about 200 Guardians Ad Litem in the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Florida. After hearing about the winner, we knew it was an honor to be nominated.  

The GAL of my dreams

No doubt about it, I am married to the gal of my dreams. She's also a "GAL" (Guardian ad Litem), a court-appointed volunteer assigned to watch over children from extraordinarily dysfunctional families. Tonight she received nice recognition from a non-profit organization that exists to provide support the State of Florida cannot provide, ranging from clothing and birthday cakes to piano lessons and summer camp. She was one of ten nominees from the two-county Sixth Judicial Circuit out of approximately 200 guardians ad litem. . .truly, an honor just to be nominated.

I was going to upload a scanned image of the certificate she brought home, but Blogger wants me to use Picasa and "Hello," the former being a bloated kludge and the latter being dysfunctional. ("Network unreachable.") So, if my four irregular readers want to see it, you know how to ask.

Rest in peace, Terri and the Pope. Give it a rest, CNN

Terri Schiavo has finally gone to meet her Maker, where she should have gone in 1990, crossing the threshhold just ahead of Pope John Paul II. I hope they had a nice chat in the waiting room. Meanwhile, CNN seems to believe that the only acceptable break from the trial of Michael Jackson is an unrelenting death watch - first for Terri, then for the Pope, and now we have to endure this until the funeral on Friday. Saturday will be comic relief in the form of the "royal" wedding in England, after which it will be more of Michael Jackson. I have never liked CNN, and this week is a good week to quit watching it altogether. Surely there must be more news happening in the world than what we will ever learn from CNN.

And the Hypocrite of the Year Award goes to. . .

Tom DeLay Took Father Off Life Support in 1988

The Los Angeles Times has revealed that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's family went through a similar ordeal as Schiavo's family. While Delay has denounced the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube as "an act of barbarism", he supported allowing his father to be taken off life support 16 years ago. In 1988, Delay's father suffered a freak accident and went into a coma. He was kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment. Then when his kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. Charles Delay died on Dec. 14, 1988 surrounded by his family. Tom Delay's mother said "There was no point to even really talking about it. There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew - we all knew - his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Schiavo, on appeal

In a two to one decision, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied the plea of Terri Schiavo's parents for relief today (March 23). The concluding paragraph sums it up well:

"There is no denying the absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo. We
all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children. However, we
are called upon to make a collective, objective decision concerning a question of
law. In the end, and no matter how much we wish Mrs. Schiavo had never suffered
such a horrible accident, we are a nation of laws, and if we are to continue to be so,
the pre-existing and well-established federal law governing injunctions as well as
Pub. L. No. 109-3 must be applied to her case. While the position of our dissenting
colleague has emotional appeal, we as judges must decide this case on the law."

Read it in full here: http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200511556.pdf

Congressman DeLay is an idiot

The following is from the St. Petersburg Times for March 22 (edited for space):

CLEARWATER - Many local Republicans shuddered last weekend when U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay accused a Pinellas judge of "murder" and "terrorism."

Such labels, troubling in any context, are particularly grating when they involve two members of the same political party. "I was absolutely so disgusted with what he said," said County Commissioner Bob Stewart.

Pinellas County Property Appraiser Jim Smith, a former state legislator and Republican state committeeman, called DeLay's remarks "a disgrace."

Local Republicans had their own words for Judge George Greer, who, as presiding judge in the Terri Schiavo case, ordered the removal of her feeding tube on March 18.

Conscientious. Honest. Compassionate. A good Christian. An outstanding lawyer.

"Those folks that are saying anything bad about Judge Greer, they don't know him, and apparently they don't understand the law and the separation of powers," said state Rep. Everett Rice, R-Treasure Island, who stood behind Greer's decision last week in Tallahassee.

* * * * *

"We need more judges like Judge Greer, not fewer," said Bruce McManus, a Largo probate lawyer who specializes in elder law. McManus has found himself in a particularly difficult position. He's a member of groups that have been critical of Greer, such as the Southern Baptist Convention. But he also specializes in the area of law that Greer is interpreting. McManus said Greer has done his best to make a tough decision, and called DeLay's comments "ridiculous." "Judge Greer is an evangelical Christian man," McManus said. "He believes in the right to life as much as some of the people who are criticizing him so harshly. But he also believes in the rule of law, which he was sworn to uphold. To the best of his ability, that's what he is trying to do."

the Schiavo saga continues

Federal district judge James Whittemore entered an order today (Monday, March 22), faster than Congress acted but with greater deliberation, denying relief to the parents of Terri Schiavo. I am sorry to report that he accepted the argument that he had jurisdiction to hear this one case, of the hundreds if not thousands of other cases involving the right to die, because Congress told him he had jurisdiction. He ducked that issue. He ducked all issues as to the constitutionality of the act, which might have included the Equal Protection Clause. But he seized upon the first and most important issue in any suit for what is called "temporary injunctive relief," which is whether the moving party (in this case, her parents) can show that they have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. That means likely or probable, not certain, success.

Schiavo's parents attacked the procedures followed by state court judge George Greer, identifying five legal issues. You can read the five issues and Judge Whittemore's discussion of them here: http://www2.sptimes.com/pdfs/schiavodenyingtro.pdf . He found their contentions without merit. The phrase "without merit" appears several times in the order. Ultimately, he paid a subtle compliment to Judge Greer, whether he meant to or not, by denying the restraining order because "this court is constrained to apply the law to the issues before it."

Memo to Congress, Representative DeLay, and President George W. Bush: You can lead a horse to water, and shove his head into it, but you can't make him drink it. Thank God for the independence of the federal judiciary. I don't mean the Supremes, but the hard-working district court judges who deal with real cases involving real people every working day of the year.

Fear the arrogance of Congress

I read what I wrote at one c'clock this morning and it stands up well to the light of day.

What Congress has done over the weekend is an exercise of raw, arrogant power that every citizen should fear. The Founders separated the legislative and judicial powers for good reason. Now we have Congress telling ONE federal court that it has jurisdiction, and shall hear and shall decide, ONE particular case that is of a kind historically left up to the state courts. We have Congressmen stating that Florida is about to take a life "without due process," completely discrediting everything done by the various Florida state court judges who have wrestled with this case for years. Federalism is turned upside down; the Congress that the States and the People created now considers itself to be in total control of our lives.

tale of the heart

My four regular readers may remember my having heart issues beginning New Year's Day. Now, here's the rest of the story: I visited my cardiologist last week to get the final report. "Beautiful," he said, referring to the sonogram or whatever they call the heart movie he took a few weeks ago. "Beautiful," he said two or three times. "And the hole is no bigger than last time." Hole? HOLE?

He reminded me of something I'd forgotten about, assuming it sank into my consciousness the last time I went to see him. Last time, he said, the heart movie showed a leaking valve. Two of them, in fact. "But the valve pumps beautifully," he said. I can see why he became a cardiologist. To him, heart movies are beautiful.

The valve leakage is not the result of anything I've done or eaten, but is just the result of aging. There's a calcium deposit building up. Too much milk? No, just aging. Will this require surgery? "Oh, maybe in fifteen years, or maybe ten," he said, hedging his bets. Meanwhile, it won't interfere with scuba diving, he quickly added.

I'm putting my children on notice: Someday, you may have me on your hands!

more on the Schiavo case

The Florida state court judge assigned to the Schiavo case has been a friend of mine for 19 years. The people from the radical religious right who have been castigating the judge for his handling of the case might be surprised to know that he is a Republican, a Southern Baptist, and a Christian in the narrow, theological sense of "born again."

He is also a good man, he was a good lawyer, and he is one of the best judges we have in our county. He has been a respected probate judge for years. He applies the law to the cases that come before him.

This is why, when I hear Congressmen saying the Florida courts have not given Terry Schiavo "due process," I want to throw up.

We are governed by fools

Here is the key language in the bill passed by Congress over the weekend: "In such a suit [to be brought by a parent of Terri Schiavo in the U.S Court for the Middle District of Florida], the District Court shall determine de novo [Latin for, from scratch] any claim of a violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo within the scope of this Act, notwithstanding any prior State court determination and regardless of whether such a claim has previously been raised, considered, or decided in State court proceedings. The District Court shall entertain and determine the suit without any delay or abstention in favor of State court proceedings, and regardless of whether remedies available in the State courts have been exhausted."

There are at least two things wrong with this. (1) The bill violates the Separation of Powers doctrine. Notice the mandatory language - the court SHALL "entertain" and determine the suit without delay. Congress has the power to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and this bill starts out by saying the court shall have jurisdiction to hear the particular case to be brought by her parents, but I would not be surprised if a federal judge in Tampa looks at this and says, "Congress cannot tell me I have jurisdiction and must determine this one particular case to the exclusion of others that could be brought by others similarly situated. That amounts to a determination by Congress that this case, and only this case, is 'justiciable.' Congress has gone too far." (2) The bill violates the principle of Federalism. Here is a case that has been up and down in the state courts for years. To say, as at least one Representative has said, that the state courts of Florida have violated her right to due process goes beyond audacious. It is uninformed. The bill gives virtually no credence to anything that any state court has said or done in this case. The federal court is supposed to give no weight to any state court decision. Coming from Congress, this is an intolerable demonstration of ignorance of the Constitution.

second thoughts about St. Patrick's Day

I used to think St. Patrick's Day was an interesting excuse to drink green beer. Why else would you? I used to think of myself as half Irish, too, because Mom's maiden name was Casey. But then I got into genealogy, which is just a way to personalize history. I found a disgusting number of English surnames in the family tree, and I've learned my father's ancestors were probably Scotch-Irish or "Ulster Scots" and not "pure" Scots.

More to the point, I've read enough history of Ireland, Scotland and England to realize that the history of all three nations is written in blood. Ireland's Catholic population has been impoverished by the Catholic Church. A subsantial bulk of the early American pioneers and Revoluntionary patriots were "Ulster Scots" who came to the New World because they were tired of being caught between blood-thirsty English Protestants and equally blood-thirsty Irish Catholics (which explains why we are supposed to have separation of church and state in these United States, but that's a different subject). And yet, we ignorant Americans think of Ireland as merely a merry place to drink beer, ogle pretty red-haired ladies, and tell stories of leprechauns.

My ancestors probably wore orange, not green, and probably did not celebrate any Catholic saint. They were happy to get away from a land dominated by people we today would call warlords. I am now a "Heinz 57 American" and proud of it. So, Erin go bragh and all that, but tonight I'm sipping a little late-night Scotch to dilute the caffeine I've ingested and I'm frankly not interested in green things that you may have eaten or imbibed today.

It's about time

Headline: Spanish clerics issue Osama fatwa
Thursday, March 10, 2005

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al Qaeda leader. The ruling was issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's 1 million-member Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain. The March 11, 2004, train bombings killed 191 people and were claimed in videotapes by militants who said they had acted on al Qaeda's behalf in revenge for Spain's troop deployment in Iraq.

Let's see. . .it's been a year since the bombing in Spain and three and a half years since September 11, 2001. I am glad to see some Islamic leaders have rediscovered their spines.

getting the close shave

I've regressed back to the days of my grandfather in one (almost) exclusively male activity: Shaving. No, I haven't started shaving with a straight razor, yet, although the thought has crossed my mind. But I have grown tired of expensive plastic razors with two, three or four blades that don't seem to get the job done well.

In high school I started out with a light-weight single-blade injector razor that was all I needed for peach fuzz. In college I moved up to the classic, the adjustable Gillette double-edged razor that they don't make any more. I have no idea why I gave that up, but I switched back to an injector razor that was OK until the blades became hard to find. Then I switched to an electric razor that was, well, convenient. Lately, I got tired of mowing my face and tried some of the razors on the market today. I wasn't getting much mileage out of the expensive ones and the cheap ones are good for maybe two shaves.

Fortunately, the Germans still make a great double-edged razor and the English make a great shaving brush, soap, and mugs. (Shopping tip: Get a badger-bristle brush and not a boar-bristle brush, which will smell like a wet boar after awhile.) The razor reminds me of the old Gillette. The blade is thicker, maybe a little sharper, and of a better quality than what you find in the new disposables. The shaving brush, a throw-back to my grandfather's time, is a new experience for me but I can see that this will turn into a pleasant morning ritual. I tried it all out for the first time this morning. Hot water, soapy brush, soapy face, a razor that glided through it like a hot knife through butter with no effort on my part . Yeah, I nicked my chin, and my chin got a little stubbly earlier than usual this evening, but this is going to be only a short learning curve. . . a lot shorter than learning to shave with a straight razor.

sometimes, a sick day at work can be a good day

I shouldn't have gone to work today. I've been hacking and spitting for a week with a bronchial infection. But I went anyway because I had a project that absolutely postively had to be finished and filed in federal court by five o'clock.

The incoming mail made it all worthwhile. One, we won a building demolition case that we'd won already but it was taken to Atlanta on appeal. I suspected we'd win, but I was disappointed not to get one of those 20-page opinions with all sorts of discussions of the facts and the law. All we got was a two page order saying "affirmed," which is exactly what we wanted. Second, we won a silly zoning case where the issue was, should the garage doors face south towards the avenue, or east towards the street? The judge dismissed it, which is what I wanted.

I haven't done so well on days when I felt 110 percent and full of piss and vinegar.

why I have no use for the French

from a UK paper, dated Feb. 22, 2005:

"Iraq war wobbler Jacques Chirac scuttled George Bush’s fence-mending trip to Europe yesterday — by cranking up a row over the future of Nato. He embraced a German-led plot to ditch the alliance as the backbone of transatlantic relations, in favour of the European Union. He also snubbed President Bush by speaking French at a dinner, despite having fluent English."

It's the speaking French part of the story that really chaps my fanny.

A piss-ant like Chirac could turn me into a Bush fan.

a quick comment about hockey

The hockey season died today. It's been a long time dying. I hope the owners are happy with their profits for this season and the players are happy with the money they made while trying to "get paid what we are worth." Nurses, social workers, and school teachers should get paid what they are worth. I don't lose sleep over the players.

It would be ironic if the Stanley Cup ends up in Tampa Bay permanently as a consequence of the death of professional hockey in the United States. Tampa Bay! Florida! Ice hockey! The Stanley Cup on permanent display, to be seen by school kids who never see ice except in iced tea glasses! If that happens you'd have to love it.

good news on the heart front

There's nothing quite as fine as a follow-up visit with your cardiologist to hear the results of a stress test, and having him smile and say, "looks good!"

The point of all this was to see if my heart is trying to tell me something after going into atrial fibrillation on New Year's Day, for the third time in seven years. The best guess for the cause of it, this time, seems to be self-induced upchucking, and I promise not to do that again if I can avoid it.

The stress test sort of stressed me out because they quit on phase 3 before launching into phase 4, which has you jogging up an incline. Phase 3 is a fast walk up an incline. She didn't think I was picking up my feet fast enough in phase 3 and cut the machine, but I was doing fine in terms of not dying aerobically. I want a rematch with the machine.

So today I asked if I have the heart of an 80-year-old, an 18-year-old, or something in between. He said I have the heart of a 60-year-old, which makes perfect sense because I see 61 around the corner. Blocked arteries? Not an issue. Now for the important question: Is there any reason I can't go Scuba diving? No, he said, but he'd rather I wait for the water to warm up. Now, that's the kind of medical advice I like to hear!

the last free man

I have a cousin named Gatewood Galbraith, from Kentucky. Everybody seems to know Gatewood, or of him. I meet somebody from Kentucky, her husband was his roommate in college. It isn't solely because of his charming personality (which he has, in spades) so much as because he has run for state and local office, several times, although without success.

Gatewood probably has the highest IQ of anybody on my side of the family. He also has a free spirit like no other. He has campaigned for the legalization of marijuana all of his life.

I have another cousin, Mary Catherine, who is down this week with her husband to escape the cold of Kentucky. We met for lunch last Sunday at Frenchy's Salt Water Cafe and she gave me a copy of Gatewood's book, "The Last Free Man in America Meets the Synthetic Conspiracy." I am part way into it and I highly recommend it. He needed an editor who can spot comma faults but his story is compelling. I didn't realize he grew up with asthma. He gives marijuana credit for opening his lungs, letting blood fill the tissues like water on the parched earth of the desert, and curing his asthma.

His book was written pretty much the way he talks, with frank bluntness mixed in with humor. I know that he once disappeared from sight for months with my aunt and uncle not knowing where he was. I didn't know he hitch-hiked across the U.S. and back, not once but three times. I remember Dad telling me that his father opened their door one evening and there was their long-lost son. "I didn't know whether to hit him or hug him," he told Dad later. He hugged him, apparently, although that particular tale is not in the book.

By the way, he has a web site: http://www.gatewood.com

More later, as I get further into it.

let us praise true heroes

We hear the word "hero" often, sometimes in reference to a baseball player who scored in the bottom of the ninth inning, a firefighter who rushed in when normal people were rushing out, etc., but today we must all stand and salute many, many people in Iraq. The candidates for office, those who ran the polling places on election day, and ordinary Iraqis who braved death to go vote have engaged in the bravest, most heroic activities a mortal human can endure.

The "insurgents" who attempted to stop the elections in Iraqi just don't get it. They don't want to get it. They want to force their world back to the Stone Age. Ultimately they will lose. They will lose because people want to be free.

Wisdom of the ages

Yesterday I was in a storm and fog mood. Today is Friday, so it's time for a different view of the world. I'll share a few insights gleaned from experience (none are original - these are extracted from one of those e-mails that circulates through the universe):

Some days you are the pigeon; other days, you are the statue.

If you lend someone $20.00 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

Never buy a car you can't push.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well - just get up and dance.

The second mouse gets the cheese.

Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

A happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

The early worm gets eaten by the bird, so sleep late.

People are like crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty, and some are dull. Some have weird name and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

a few serious notes

Well, I haven't "blogged" in weeks and I am sitting here waiting for the rush hour traffic to thin out, so I have vented my spleen with three notes on dark and heavy subjects. Blame it on the weather or the time of the year. Next time around I'll brighten up.

Radical Islam, and Germany under the Third Reich

The explanation for why so many people of the Middle East hate the U.S. and supporters of Israel, and are willing to die while killing innocent people, runs along the following lines: They are poorly educated, live in poverty, see no hope for their own futures, hate Israel and the U.S. because they are outside the restaurant window looking at the feasting with their noses pressed up against the glass, and are fueled by religious teachings that promise Paradise if they go out in a blaze of glory.

Now, consider Hitler, Nazis, and Germans who willingly worked to exterminate Jews and conquer Poland and France: They were educated, did not live in the same sort of dirt-poor poverty, had reason to hope for their futures, and were not motivated by religious teachings that promised Paradise except for believers of the Christian faith.

You are thinking, but how about religious teachings to the effect that the Jews were the Christ-killers and deserved to die, coupled with the Nazi mind-set that the world conspired against Germany after World War I and the Jews were the chief conspirators? You are getting to my point, which is that human nature is fundamentally evil, malicious and destructive, and religion is fuel for the fire.

God, who turned us all loose to exercise free will, must weep daily.

abolish the death penalty

There is a TV show coming up soon that tells the stories of six people who were on death row but who were reprieved after their innocence was established.

Four of them were on death row in Florida.

Because I have no confidence that our criminal justice system will always convict the guilty while letting the innocent go free in every case, I no longer support the death penalty. Life imprisonment is bad enough for a crime you did not commit, but your hope of redemption ends forever when they throw the switch.

China

For those who would like to believe that China is our friend because they see so many goods made in China sitting on the shelves of all the major retailers in the U.S., consider this news item today:

China rounds up, beats mourners for deposed leader Zhao: witnesses
Thu Jan 27, 6:40 AM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - China has detained dozens of people, some of whom

have been severely beaten, for trying to mark the death of former

leader Zhao Ziyang, witnesses said.

The allegations came as the government intensified security to

prevent mourners attending Saturday's funeral in Beijing for Zhao,

the former Communist Party secretary general purged for opposing

the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy movement.

At least three people, including a woman in her 70s, were punched

and manhandled by police officers outside the government offices

which receive complaints in the Chinese capital, witnesses said.

They were among some 60 people who pinned white paper flowers

to their clothes, a traditional Chinese symbol of mourning, said a

bystander who took pictures of the beatings and posted them on

overseas websites.

If you mourn the passing of Zhao, you must be an enemy of the state. This is something to remember the next time you are in Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Target, and other stores where it is difficult to find a product not made in China.

Dear God, would you please cut it out?

God, we are told, has a sense of humor. If so, it is a macabre sense of humor evidenced by mean, nasty practical jokes being played on Planet Earth. . .or else His attention has been distracted by rebellious life forms on another planet in another galaxy far away.

It's been twelve years since Hurricane Andrew (seems like yesterday to Floridians), and since then we've endured (I mean "we" in the universal sense of all humanity) forest fires, floods, melting and shrinking polar caps, four hurricanes that pounded Florida in a matter of weeks, record snowfall in the Rockies accompanied by avalanches, huge boulders smashing down on an Interstate Highway in Colorado and a railroad line near the Utah border, a monster Tsunami in Asia that obliterated more than 200,000 innocent people according to the latest guesstimates, heavy rains and mudslides in California that killed 28 people at last count, a 110-foot-diameter sinkhole in Florida that swallowed an entire house and parts of neighboring houses. . .the list goes on. The latest piece of evidence that strange things are happening on Planet Earth comes from Venice, Italy:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/01/13/venice.reut/index.html

Dear God, if you read blogs like this one, would you kindly restore this planet to order? This is all driving us crazy, which is a short trip for many of us.

"TCO"

My New Year's Resolution for 2005 is very simple: T.C.O.

That stands for Throw Crap Out. My wife and I tend to be pack rats. I inherited the trait from my father who, although not as bad as I am, saved every one of his income tax returns from the 1940's onward. Nineteen years in the same house, a house with no basement and no attic, have generated a mountain of stuff in our garage. Some of that stuff is now history thanks to our kids, and more is destined to go out soon. This is true in my office as well, where an amazing pile of stuff has accumulated in four point five years. I'm discovering something that is liberating. Once you start moving crap out, you want to get rid of more of it. You begin to see floor space and table tops you haven't seen in a long time. Less does mean more. With less stuff sitting around I can find the few things I actually need because they aren't buried. Dang, I wish I'd discovered this sooner.

how to impress your son's fiancee

I haven't made an entry here since. . .oh. . .last year sometime, so it's time to get caught up. We had a great Christmas, with all four of our kids home plus our son's fiancee, who arrived the day after Christmas. In keeping with our desire to impress our prospective daughter-in-law, our heating system died, followed immediately by the dishwasher. On New Year's Day, my son and I contracted a touch of food poisoning, which is an effete way of saying we woke early upchucking. She participated in the Great Clean the Garage Project, which means she saw nineteen years worth of family "stuff" stacked up in no particular order, in what serves as a substitute for a basement in a Florida house. (She gets the credit for discovering my passport, which I knew was "around here somewhere.") The night before they left the clothes dryer croaked, leaving our son a small pile of wet tee-shirts for him to pack. They are still engaged, the last I heard. Good choice, Son.

Christmas gifts

All I really wanted this year was to have my family - the six of us - home safe for a few days. We got that, and it was great, especially with our son's fiancee joining the crowd. Next year will be different, naturally, but this year was one to remember.

Our kids gave us a special gift for Christmas - they cleaned out and reorganized our garage. To understand the significance of that, understand that a typical Florida house has no basement and no attic. The garage becomes the attic. After nineteen years in the same house the garage collects a ton of stuff, to be polite, or crap, to be honest. It is our stuff, my parents' stuff, our kids' stuff - and it propagates in the middle of the night. We haven't had room for a car in the garage in more than a decade. To do this job they had to haul it all out into the driveway, add new shelves, put some of it back, and throw some of it out. They did it all in one day. Our job was to stay out of the way and not interfere.

So, in this strange bloggie diary that is open for the world to see, I want to proclaim that we have the greatest kids any parent could hope for. "Kids" is no longer the right word for these adults, but no matter how old we get they will be our children and we love them unconditionally.

notes from Atlanta

Yesterday I was in Atlanta, defending my city in the federal court of appeals. I won't bore you with the details but it was a building demolition case. The district court judge in Tampa ruled in favor of the city and we were defending his decision. To be there bright and early, I stayed overnight at the HoJo hotel downtown on Peachtree Street (of course), across from the Marta station and the entrance to Underground Atlanta. From there, you can walk one way to the courthouse and the other way to the hotel. An Atlanta taxi driver once told me Atlanta has seventeen Peachtrees - streets, avenues, boulevards, etc. I didn't take the taxi this time, though. Marta runs a nice train right downtown to Five Points, where the east-west line and the north-south line intersect.

The courthouse is a wonderful old federal office building. The courtroom has beautiful panelling on three walls with one wall of windows to brighten the place up. Everything about it oozes of proper courtroom dignity and legal majesty, like it ought to. The three judges hearing the arguments that morning (mine was the fourth and final case) had obviously studied everything in the files and were armed with pointed questions. You can never tell how the case is going by their questions - a "hostile" question might be intended to clear up a point before they rule in your favor, and a "friendly" question might spring a trap. You can plan on maybe a few minutes of speaking time before the questions begin. The last time I was there they gave me time to clear my throat before pouncing on me, and they just about beat me to death. We lost that one. This time I felt like the tide was running in our favor. Being in that beautiful courtroom, all dressed up like a lawyer, answering questions like hitting tennis balls back over the net, was a much more satisfying experience this time. How the case will turn out is anybody's guess, though. Never bet your lunch money on how people who wear black robes for a living might decide a case. If I could predict the outcome of cases I'd make my living at the race track. Ask me in six months if we have a decision yet and I'll tell you how it went.

catching up

It has been a quiet week, except for the national, perhaps international, news of the family in Orlando (why do these stories always come out of Florida?) where the parents are "on strike." Lemme see. . .the kids didn't pitch in with chores, so Mom and Dad are sleeping in a tent on their driveway. The kids have the run of the house, and what passes for winter in Florida is arriving. Who is winning, here? This morning the paper ran photos of their messy bedrooms. Messy? I can see most of the floors. What's the problem? When our kids were growing up, we had some high priorities, like school work. They did their own laundry and fixed their own lunches for school, or suffered the consequences. But the bedroom mess was not our problem. We could always shut the doors, and we often did. As long as we didn't smell smoke, no problemo. As long as kept their school work up, no problemo.

Did that work? Well, let's add it up. Four kids. Four high school diplomas, four National Honor Society memberships. Four bachelors' degrees, two masters' degrees. One additional degree to become a Registered Nurse. Nobody got a degree for keeping a clean room. Four well-adjusted, happy, productive young adults living in Boston, Boulder, and San Francisco. If anybody is in therapy or having a drug or drinking problem, they haven't told me about it. They grew up loving and respecting each other, their parents, and their large extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Their mother did an excellent job of raising them. There were times when she thought about going on strike against me but, fortunately, we don't have a tent large enough for the mattress, air conditioner, refrigerator, TV, and sewing machine.

light bulbs

I had one of those fifteen minute projects that kills an afternoon this afternoon, the consequence of living in a house wired by a drunken handyman (a former owner, not me). The task was to replace burned-out exterior light bulbs in the side yards, rear yard, and over the pool deck. Aaaargh.

An understanding of the wiring and switches is critical to understanding how I took too long with this job: The switch for an exterior light at the NW corner of the house, shining down the side yard, is in the garage. The switch for the light at the NE corner of the house is in the living room. The same switch, in the living room, controls a light over the pool deck. There is another light, just outside the door leading in from the pool deck, controlled by a switch just inside that door. (That bulb, thankfully, was working and is not part of this tale.) There are actually two switches just inside the door from the pool deck; the other one controls the light in the rear yard. That's four switches, five lights. (I'm not even counting the light in the garage that blew during my labors, requiring me to change that bulb also.)

The light at the NW corner of the house has been burned out for so long that I forgot which switch controls it, and I assumed it was the switch in the living room. The light over the pool deck and the light over the door leading in from the pool deck are so close together that, when you don't have to change a bulb for several years, you tend to forget which switch is which - you flip a switch and there's light out there. This is sort of like walking and chewing gum; you tend not to give such things serious thought. To compound the situation, the light at the NE corner of the house won't come on after changing the bulbs, regardless of which switch you play with (but I know it is the switch in the living room). All of this left me stalking back and forth, inside and out, up and down ladders, flipping the wrong switches and wondering why there was no light.

The score, after taking entirely too long, is now 4 for me, 1 for the lights. Four lights work, one will not. If I also count the light inside the garage, the score is actually 5 to 1. But I am not done until I get the light at the NE corner working.

And I haven't even started putting up the Christmas lights yet.

moving day

Today, I moved my office. Actually, it began on Wednesday but I finished today. I moved all the way to. . .the room next door, but it may as well been across town for all of the hassles involved.

It is amazing what accumulates after four and a half years in the same room. Books in boxes (I have more shelf space in the new room), a lot of ring binders (some empty), files (only I understand the system), and stacks and stacks of paper. In a government office, paper flows in and in, sometimes out. You see something and think, I want to read this, and you set it aside with other stuff to read. Or you get quarter-final and semi-final drafts of various documents. You get maps. You get meeting agendas. They all end up in stacks on a corner of your desk, on a table, on the floor, on top of a file cabinet, wherever. Eventually they threaten to fall on somebody or catch fire through spontaneous combustion.

I jumped at the chance to change rooms in order to force myself to engage in some serioius TCO (Throw Crap Out). Now I have everything in a state of temporary pandemonium, but at least my computer works again. I irritated our ICS people by moving my computer myself. They think that's a job only they can do. Any fool can take a computer apart and put it back together; I can. Those stacks are sitting on two long window ledges where I cannot ignore them. I am going to engage in TCO until the window ledges have nothing but potted plants and maybe a couple of photos. And that's my New Year's Resolution for myself, a month early.

two kinds

In my last note to myself and my faithful readers (all four of you), I said there are two kinds of chess players.

Sheesh! What a trite cliche (or is that redundant?)!

There are two kinds of people - those who divide people and things into categories, and those who don't.

There are three kinds of people - those who can count, and those who can't.

There are 10 kinds of people - those who can count in binary, and those who can't.

This goes on and on - but enough!

chess

Lately, I've gotten hooked on chess - on the computer. Shockwave has a good chess game where you can play the computer or a live opponent. I first got interested in chess back when Bobby Fischer was playing the Russians for the world championship, but I gave it up because (a) it is basically antisocial (visualize a roomful of sweaty tournament players hunched over the boards, not talking a civil word to anybody), and (b) Bobby Fischer turned into the biggest flake since Paul Morphy (Googelize him, I don't have room to explain).

My interest was rekindled this summer when I saw my brother-in-law playing chess on his computer. He didn't understand the game at all, and was amazed when I showed him how to castle his king and how to take a pawn "en passant."

So I got into Shockwave's chess game. There seem to be two kinds of players - those who know what they are doing and those who don't. You can spot the latter by the fact that they bring their Queen out on the second or third move without developing their pieces or castling their king first. I love that because my opponent's Queen becomes my target. Every attacking move againt the Queen is a developing move for me. After about 10-15 moves it is all over but the technique of closing the game.

I don't consider this too big a waste of time. I've read that doing crossword puzzles is a good "brain exercise" that will delay the onset of Alzheimer's in old age. I'm betting chess will have the same effect. If it doesn't, I hope I find another chess player in the nursing home. Meanwhile, I'm having fun.

thanksgiving in Massachusetts

We had a traditional unconventional Thanksgiving this year, in Boston. Unconventional, in the sense that we flew up on Thanksgiving Day (hint: a good day to fly - don't fly the day before), and three of our children were having a family Thanksgiving with somebody else's families in three other states. The fourth had to work late, so the three of us ended up eating non-turkey dinners at a nice restaurant (Boston is full of them). The turkey had to wait until Sunday, so the good leftovers got eaten on Monday.

It was traditional only in the sense that we drove down to Plymouth, where it all began if you don't count earlier settlements like Saint Augustine. We saw the replica of the Mayflower. Your mind boggles at the thought of 102 passengers, including three pregnant women, crammed on board, setting sail for a trip to God Knows Where in a boat so small. We saw the Rock. You know it is the Rock because somebody has chiseled 1620 on top of it, and there is a nice plaque explaining the Rock's history in a way that makes you believe it really might be the first stepping stone into the New World.

So I'm looking at the Rock and thinking how cold and forbidding the New World looked to the pilgrims, who didn't have an Interstate Highway to take them to Philadelphia, except there was no Philadelphia there yet, either. My kids had an ancestor named Workinger in Philadelphia in 1750. The pilgrims, starting out with basically nothing and travelling on foot or by horseback, put in a lot of hard manual labor to make the colonies look the way they did by 1750.

The original Thanksgiving was to give thanks for surviving. It was not to usher in the beginning of the Christmas shopping season or to mark the end of hurricane season. Sometimes we need to get back to our roots and remember where we came from and how we got from there to here.

back to the blog, part two

When our son was a boy, I said something along the lines of, "The key to success is. . ." and he interrupted me with a question: "How many keys to success are there?" Good question. That's what I get for using the same cliches over and over.

Today I was thinking about a few tips I have received from other lawyers during my career. They aren't keys to success but they help cope with the occasional failure.

I was a young assistant city attorney in Boca Raton and the prosecutor in our municipal court. One day I came back to the office, furious that I'd lost a case I thought I should have won. So I asked my boss, "Red, what do you do when you lose a case you think you should have won?" He looked at me and grinned. "First," he said, "you say "Aw, shit.' And then you move on to the next case."

A friend of mine in Clearwater put it more elegantly: "I don't design 'em, I just fly 'em."

Another friend of mine from Boca Raton, who was not a trial lawyer, gave me this observation: "The basic duty of any lawyer is to give his client the best advice he can give - once. After that, the client is on his own." That has stayed with me because it helps me understand the basic relationship between lawyers and clients. Their problems are not really my problems, and they have the right to make "business decisions" on their own, as long as you point out the potholes and stumbling blocks they will encounter along the way.

back to the blog

I haven't blogged in a long time. Now that hurricane season and election season are over, with similar disastrous results, I need to change subjects. One more political note, however, before 2004 begins drawing to a close: I have been reading a lot of theories about why John Kerry lost. Most of them seem overly simplified. I have a few simple theories of my own.

One is that Kerry failed to hit back hard at the swiftboat vets who smeared him. Some of those guys have been smearing him since he came back from Viet Nam and began speaking out against the war. What happened to the swiftboat buddies he had up on stage the night of the nomination? They disappeared.

Another of my theories is that he didn't hit back at the constant Bush smear ads about the votes he cast in the Senate for more taxes, etc. He should have countered with a package detailing all the good things that he did vote for during his career in the Senate.

Thirdly, his own smear ads weren't as nasty as the Bush smear ads. No matter what the experts say, Americans love a good smear campaign. That has been true throughout American history. The only thing better than a smear campaign would be to have the candidates duke it out, bare knuckles, no rules, no holds barred.

Finally, he carried too much baggage marked "wealthy Eastern liberal." Speaking as a non-wealthy Southern liberal, I can say that sort of baggage does not sell well anywhere in the South or the Midwest.

Between now and the next election, the Democratic Party needs to find candidates who can get elected, like maybe a younger Jimmy Carter. Sorry, but Hillary Clinton has no chance - she carries the same baggage as Kerry and she also suffers the disadvantage of being a woman. We will have a woman for a President some day, but not Hillary. This will mean finding "centrist" candidates who are not afraid to disagree with the single-issue constituencies and who can speak instead of the greater good of the country.

Wild suggestion: Let's recruit Colin Powell to run as a Democrat. He'd get my vote.

If the Democrats can't find candidates who can get elected, we will see the party fold up and die. I hope that does not happen in my lifetime, which is not saying I am hoping for an early death. When I'm 88, I want somebody to guide my hand as I punch my absentee ballot from the nursing home, and I hope the Democrats will, at that time, be continuing down a long, long trail of success.

why are we in Fallujah?

Yesterday, listening to NPR while driving home from work, I heard an "independent journalist" from Baghdad accusing the U.S. military of committing "genocide" in Fallujah. I call it war, not genocide, but that raises the legitimate question, why exactly are we in Fallujah? Consider this, hot off the Associated Press "wire:"

"NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - Iraqi troops have found "hostage slaughterhouses" in Fallujah where foreign captives were held and killed, the commander of Iraqi forces in the city said Wednesday.

"Troops found CDs and records of people taken captive in houses in the northern part of Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem Mohan told reporters."

The story goes on to say that the records they found did not indicate the whereabouts of hostages in captivity which are believed to be still alive. On the other hand, they aren't finished with Fallujah yet.

Like I said, I call it war.

success, finally

Faithful readers of this Blog (both of you) may remember my bragging months ago that I was taking a Scuba open water dive class. After a few interruptions (nasal surgery, Hurricane Charley, Hurricane Frances, Hurricane Jeanne, and several unnamed disturbances on both coasts of Florida), I finally finished the course by making my second open water dive this afternoon, at Ginnie Springs, up near Gainesville. See it here: http://www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com/

I don't think it was cave diving, strictly speaking, but we did get an in-depth look at the mouth of a freshwater spring. You could easily hide an 18-wheeler in the mouth, and the floor was almost 60 feet down, but it wasn't a "cave." There were no tunnels branching off to God-knows-where. You could see sunlight at the top, if you looked way back before the ceiling blocked the view and if the 20 other divers didn't get in your way. Cold, at 72 degrees, but not too cold; with a wet suit it was like a drink of cold water on a hot day. Loved it! And now I'm a certified, card-carrying diver. My next toy may have to be a speargun.

goodbye, Ralph Nader

One bright spot in Tuesday's election results is the miserable performance of Ralph Nader at the polls. In Florida, where the Nader vote made a difference in 2000, Nader got a mere 31,849 votes or less than one-half of one percent of the votes cast for the eight (yes, 8) Presidential candidates. To put it another way, he got substantially fewer votes in a statewide race than "Bubba the Love Sponge" got in a countywide race for Sheriff. "Bubba" got nearly four times the number of Nader votes.

You could call this Nader's Nadir. I hope this marks the end of Nader as a political figure. Goodbye, Ralph. Go away. You are unsafe at any speed. I hope we never hear from you again.

but can you fool all of the people?

As I write this, a different kind of writing is on the wall for the Kerry campaign. Let the smugness begin. I mean, I am going to sit back smugly and wait for Bush and his cronies to demonstrate that (a) they talk to God and God talks to them, (b) we really are winning the war on terror, (c) our economy is doing just fine, and (d) the Bush Administration is of such high moral caliber that we will not, during the next four years, see a single episode of corruption or feeding at the public trough by any Republican office holder or business executive.

Go ahead. Show me. After six decades, I am a patient man. We survived the Cold War and "duck and cover" drills (cower under your school desk to protect yourself from the atomic bomb aimed at MacDill Air Force Base that we all knew would miss and hit us instead). We survived Nikita ("We will bury you") Khrushchev and Fidel's Russian missiles. We saw the Berlin Wall come down (for which Reagan claimed entirely too much credit) and the USSR fall. We survived Reagonomics, although he embodied a hatred for government that still cripples the ability of the government to serve the people. We survived Ford and Clinton. We survived Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America. We have survived the first four years of George W. Bush, although few can truly say we are better off today than we were four years ago.

So, go ahead. Show me. I frankly do not believe you know God's will any more than Osama knows Allah's will. I do not believe we are winning the war on terror (a contradiction in terms), and do not believe any of the other "heifer dust" you have thrown at the people during this campaign. But I expect campaign promises to be kept. You have four years to demonstrate that you are as good as you think you are, even though a second-term President is answerable to no one.

In the meantime, may God help us all, if we are still worthy of his help.

you can fool some of the people all of the time

In our home county (Pinellas County, Florida), with election returns in from 254 of 380 precincts (hey, California, your polls aren't even closed yet, so get cracking), Prez. George Bush is leading Sen. John Kerry, 189,959 to 180,212 or 50.85 percent to 48.24 percent.

Further down the ballot, Bubba Clem has gathered 26.30 percent in a two man race for Sheriff.

Bubba Clem, also known as "Bubba the Love Sponge," is a former radio DJ of the "shock jock" genre. How bad was he as a DJ? Bad. So bad that the FCC fined Clear Channel Communications over $700,000 for his performances. He was fined $23,000 by the FCC in 1998 for airing indecent material. In 2002, he was acquitted of animal cruelty charges after a pig was castrated and killed during one of his broadcasts.

You can say what you want about his performance as a DJ but he is as qualified to be our next sheriff as our house cat. And we don't even have a house cat. Nevertheless, 26.30 percent of the voters in my county have voted for him, and 50.85 percent have voted for Dubya.

P.T. Barnum was right.

America's Team: Next year is finally here

There are times (rare times, to be sure) when the stiff, formal language called "legislative legalese" can wax poetic. Consider this, from the Massachusetts Senate Journal of October 28 (edited for brevity):

Whereas, on October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox, against all odds, won the World Series after a record-breaking 4 wins in a row against their arch rivals, the New York Yankees, followed by a 4-game sweep of the Saint Louis Cardinals; and

Whereas, the Boston Red Sox have been labelled "America's Team" because of their perserverance and spirit in the face of seeming insurmountable odds and have won the respect and admiration of professionals and sports enthusiasts with their dramatic come-from-behind victory against the New York Yankees to clinch the American League pennant; and

Whereas, the offensive team became a defensive nightmare for the opponents, evidenced by a World Series performance in which the Boston Red Sox were ahead for 34 of the 36 innings they played against the Saint Louis Cardinals, the remaining 2 innings of which they were tied; and

Whereas, after 86 years, next year is finally here and the Boston Red Sox team has brought the elusive World Series trophy home; now, therefore,

Be It Resolved, that the Massachusetts Senate joins with the Nation in saluting the members of the 2004 Boston Red Sox team, its managers and owners, on winning the 2004 Sorld Series.

one prediction I couldn't quite make

I predicted the Red Sox win (along with 80 percent of Red Sox fans), and then I questioned whether the Republican National Committee was behind the recent resurrection of Osama bin Laden - about an hour before Walter Cronkite wondered the same thing out loud on national television. (There's a new generation who won't remember how much we trusted Uncle Walter to tell it like it is. Only he could say what he said and get away with it.) But there is one prediction I've been holding off, believing it with all my heart but not wanting to look stupid: I was almost ready to post a blog note here predicting that Osama would be produced either alive or dead within 48 hours before the election. Here was are, five hours before the polls open in the East, and no Osama. Why I am up at this ungodly hour is a different story - visualize a flat tire, can't find my air pump, gotta be at the airport tomorrow to pick up my wife, but Wal Mart is open 24 hours a day and Wal Mart carries air pumps. There are no lines at Wal Mart this time of night. But that's a different story. Meanwhile, Osama is still out there. Have we doubled the reward, yet? How hard is it to find a guy over six feet tall who needs dialysis and hides out in the mountains?