Lawyers who write on the side

I met a lawyer today who is a mystery writer on the side. That seems almost mundane and therefore uninteresting, but just to get your attention, I was told that he is the winner of the Poe prize for the best new mystery short story of the year. This not insignificant accomplishment clearly impressed ME and so he gave me his card. I was going to look him up once I got home, but then I noticed that the card was (mistakenly?) actually that of an insurance agent in California. So what now? Track him down to let him know that I have the number of the person he needs to call for his insurance question? I looked up the award winners on google for the past several years and none of them sound like they might have been him.

The thing is, I had a very interesting conversation on the art of short story writing. If I find out that this is not based in reality, because the guy is really a fake, then are some of my thoughts on writing, formed during this talk, suddenly less valid?

Audacious emails, pt. 1

This new feature will give you an idea of the type of people who write to me. I’m not talking about blog reader email and I’m not talking about spam – i.e. email generated by the truckload to anonymous addresses—I’m talking about email sent to ME PERSONALLY. Of course, I will protect the confidentiality of senders. As I said, I do not make things up on the weblog [yes, the “triplets of Bellville” post (March 8) is true—subsequently I decided that this person simply must like the feel of all those “ll” sounds rolling off the tongue]. In posting a message, I wont tamper with grammar or style. I will, however, change names and facts slightly because 1. I’m a nice person and 2. I don’t want to get sued.

Email message (A):

My ex wife kidnapped my son 4 yrs ago. She fled to Austria with him. My son is now 10yrs old. Last year was the first time she allowed me visitation with him (in Austria). She has sole custody of him in Austria. I have custody of him in the U.S. She said if I change the court papers here stating she has custody of him in the US she would allow him to come for a visit here in a few months. Is there an easy and inexpensive way I can change the court documents so they would be vague but state that she has custody and I have visitation rights? When my son arrives here I would of course want to wipe it out so it’s back to my having sole custody. Please if you could help me I would deeply appreciate it. Or if you know of one of your students that could help me out with the paper work....or what ever you could do. I am very desperate and don't have much time to take care of this.

I should have replied thus: So let me get this straight: you’re asking a law prof and students, future illustrious members of the legal profession, to help you figure out a way to “adjust” court records so that their “message” would be fake but look real? And you want me to do this quickly and with little expectation of getting anything for my illegal and immoral acts, with the exception of possibly a criminal charge that’ll land me in jail along with homicidal drunk-drivers and convicted drug felons? If your ex siphoned money from a bank, would you write a prof in the business school asking for help so that you could do the same? I’m not denying that child kidnapping is a tremendous problem among divorced parents. But your devious plot, leading to the “recapture” of your son (possibly a lynching party, to go after your ex later on?) sounds like a BAD IDEA that should be PUT TO REST.
Copied to: Board of Professional Responsibility with a Post-it saying: “please put this in my file as evidence of the fact that I am a morally and legally upright attorney, that I do not take bribes and I turn away potential clients who ask me to do illegal acts. Thanks, NC”

Why do some people do great things?

We ask this about people such as Schindler – who risked his life to save Jews from extermination during World War II. Schindler’s List comes out today on DVD, hence there is a renewed sense of curiosity about the man himself (Schindler died 30 years ago). Why did he do it?

Do we ask this because so many Germans did the opposite? So that his act of goodness stands out like a single flower would in the rubble of war? Maybe we expect too little of ourselves… We marvel at greatness, as if it truly is the unanticipated surprise gift.

The year Schindler’s List won the Academy Awards (seven, including Best Picture and Best Director) was a good year for movies. Could I even find a dissenter who’d argue that the movie was not the most significant film experience of the year? I’m thinking no, and that’s a good thing.

From Blackmun to Black Birds and Blackboards

I’ve come to appreciate that in the suburbs, waking up to the gentle twitter of birds really should be translated as waking up to the screaming noise of black birds (not of the Agelaius phoeniceus sort, but CROWS).

Crows can make life on our block an offensively dirty and miserably loud experience. The birds build their nests in the tall trees that line the street (minus one tree – chopped down, my fault, see post below) and leave their droppings on chosen driveways. They love ours. No good reason, they just do.

They ravage the garbage pails each week. Thanks to them, I know that our left-side neighbors always order meat toppings on their pizza, and everyone up and down the block knows that we went through a summer fad of eating fruit juice pops. There’s actually more that they know, but what the block knows, the blog need not reveal.

This morning, the birds were at it from dawn and it isn’t even garbage day. I heard that one environmentally correct way of dealing with them (apart from brutal murder and I am not there yet) is to fly a plane overhead and make exploding noises. These days that’s just about the worst idea that you could have. So, I am working on developing coping strategies instead.

But mainly I am hurrying to review my lecture for this morning. It is an introduction to the issues surrounding child support. This is the one topic that I cannot do without using numbers and a calculator (an anathema to law students), because you cannot demonstrate the legal fictions and absurdities created by otherwise rational (one supposes) legislators without entering into the math of it. This in turn means that since I am technologically of the “behind” sort, I have to expose my other behindedness – meaning I have to turn my “back” to the class and write things on the blackboard.

I hate doing that—perhaps my loathing of it signifies my not wanting to lose control of the classroom. And in addition, when I turn my back to students, I am imagining that I have gotten myself into some absurdly compromising state, much to everyone’s amusement. This isn’t sheer paranoia. Four years ago, I was walking to my office in the morning and a random student on the sidewalk came up to me and said: “uh, I think you’d want to know, your skirt zipper is undone.” I was so GRATEFUL to her, but ever since then, I feel compelled to check every time I am turning my back to the class. The act of checking itself is probably completely indiscreet and produces gales of guffaws. What can you do.

To days gone by

Remembering today the Les Mis lyrics:

“Drink with me to days gone by,
Can it be you fear to die?
Will the world remember you
When you fall?
Could it be your death
Means nothing at all?”

So much has been said about the newly released papers belonging to Justice Blackmun that I needn’t add yet another blog entry on the topic. But there is one small file of material that, to me, is particularly intriguing. It has to do with the friendship between Blackmun and Burger.

Can you sustain a friendship in light of significant political and professional differences? In an interview some years back, Blackmun admitted that his mother was right to warn him that his lifelong friendship with Burger might be challenged once they were both appointed to the Supreme Court. Blackmun hadn’t believed her initially, but after a few years on the job, he changed his mind.

How can years of shared experiences be undone in this way? Is it because each Justice was convinced that the work product would survive into posterity, lasting far longer than any personal connection ever could? One can only speculate. Still, it is saddening to read about the details of the breakdown. Friendship is circumscribed, defined by each of the participants. Why would it dissipate so late in life? Reading the materials now, one can see the decline in spirit and commitment. For me, it is one of the sadder stories that emerges from the Balckmun papers.

What can be made of this?

[statement of intent: I am going to continue with my determination (see Saturday post) to favor text over visuals in the blog, but this post just would not work without the graphic. A new resolution is thus made: I will stick with text only, unless an OVERWHELMING URGE, or necessity lead me to incorporate visual imagery]

A friend has taken to inserting an odd phrase into the conversation. We will be talking about not anything in particular, and he will say “the Triplets of Belleville.”

[It’ll be like this, for example: “So far, March hasn’t been a very tempestuous month; in fact it has virtually manifested halcyon elements a summer season [nc: ignore the choice of words – this stuff is normal for him] perhaps obfuscated a tad ‘the Triplets of Belleville’ by the intemperate cloud-cover, wouldn’t you say?”]

I really don’t know what to make of this. I’m not even sure he saw this film. Perhaps the figures have made an impression – of the sort that only ten years of psychoanalysis would begin to unravel, in which case I don’t want to question him about it, in the same way that one doesn’t ask someone with 11 fingers why they have been blessed with an extra.

Sometimes I think that winter puts us over the top. We say and do bizarre things, which can only be attributable to our almost uncontrollable desire to pilfer, ravage and destroy anything in sight, just because we have such anger within, all the result of severe light deprivation.


I’m going to give him some time. By next month, either his head will have cleared and we will again converse quite normally, or I’ll rebut with an equally obscure and irrelevant phrase (like ‘ooee, oo ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang’ --from Alvin and the Chipmunks maybe? Not terribly sophisticated, but undeniably noticeable) and see if he responds. This may open the door for a reasonable discussion of the problem.

One line

Meet Krtek, hero of Saturday's post (see below), the mild-mannered bandit that stole my calm over the week-end.

Why did I fail to post images? Tonya (of blog fame) stopped by my office and we went over the steps I followed, versus the path she had taken. The difference? One line. I was missing one stinky little line. That's it. Computers are insane in their fastidiousness!

Late night run-in with the Madison police

It’s not what you think. No one called the police on me. I called the police on THEM.

Late the previous night someone took a club to the car that we park on the street, shattering and ripping out side mirrors, antennas, and generally leaving their vampire-tooth gashes up and down the body of the vehicle.

Being reticent to go out on days when March gusts of wind make the outdoors inhospitable, none of us noticed this car-nage until late in the evening, when our visitor decided that she had to get out and see the world [our visitors often feel somewhat isolated in the suburbs, what with the nearest hub of commercial activity consisting of a strip mall with not much in it beyond a Bob’s Copy Shop (an essential to suburban living) and a Hooters Bar (no comment)].

The car is a nifty little Corolla that once belonged to my mother. It got left behind when my mother decided to move to California to become one of those weather-obsessed (“is it as miserable as I remember it in Wisconsin right now?”), radically-leaning (words such as imperialism and socialism can be heard among the clatter of soup spoons in her cafeteria), gray panther types (power to the aging!) of Berkeley. In the typical way of an older driver, my mother had never put many miles on the car. Thus, even though the vehicle is old (not quite as old as she is, but gettin’ there), the odometer would have you think it’s virtually off the showroom floor.

Feeling frugal with this inherited machine that is now mainly driven by visitors, we have never bothered to insure it much – though of course, we insure against the damage to the planet that may be caused by its gentle movement around town.

As soon as we noticed the shattered glass and the twisted metal last night, I called the non-emergency police number and had the following conversation with the officer-on-call:

nc: “I’m calling to report that someone bashed in our car.”
Police: “A real shame. Do you know who did it?”

nc: “I have my suspicions..”
police: “Good. Would you like to give us some names?”

nc: “My suspicions are only suspicions. I know better than to accuse people without evidence of their guilt. However---- now that you ask, I do know that the car has an enemy. Last year a driver ran into its parked little sweet body and we made her pay substantial sums to get it fixed. She may well hold a grudge.”
Police: “What’s her name?”

nc: “No no, you’re not going to make me say it.”
Police: “Well, would you say that there’s more than a $1000 worth of damage now? Because if it’s less, why then we can just mail you some forms and you can self-report!”

nc: “What, no house-calls anymore?? In any case, it’s more than $1000. It costs $5000 these days to repaint a scratch on a fender. Of course it’s more than a $1000! The car has been walloped by a maniac with a clear homicidal impulse.”

Several hours later, a very young, very friendly officer came to our door. I had hoped he would come with great fanfare, lights shining, siren blasting, to scare the bejesus out of the people who did it, should they be watching from behind a shrub. But no, all was quiet, save for our barking Ollie who obviously has not yet learned to be intimidated by a blue uniform.

The officer wrote up the damage and gave me some good advice as to where I can get some salvaged replacement parts (for those who are curious: at the dump). I asked if he’d had any other calls of this nature lately, just to see if our peaceful existence is coming to an end (today: quiet suburb, tomorrow: drug-trafficing, gang-infested mean streets of the south side of Chicago type -- our last place of residence prior to moving to Madison). He answered “well, I typically work the downtown beat. It’s a little less calm down there, you know. Nice little block you got here.. noticed there’s a pretty little house for sale up the street?”

Maybe he’ll be a neighbor one day soon. Good. Our battered little car will feel safer. So far, being surrounded by houses where people’s jobs run from stamp-collecting (that is seriously the income-generating occupation of our immediate neighbor) to film-making (where the flamingos reside, see post in February) hasn’t kept vandalism at bay (mailbox bashing is a neighborhood past time for the young and restless).

Tomorrow, think red carnations

I would have thought that Hallmark would have picked it up in a big way: what other holiday is there that'll sell the cards, between February 14 and March 17? And, if you are not of the shamrock heritage, even March 17 doesn’t work. So why hasn’t March 8th been heralded as the holiday to end all holidays?

In my years in Poland it was perhaps the most important of the winter celebrations: a day for the proverbial red carnation-- International Women’s Day. I have never thought that the day received much attention in the States. Most years, I can hardly remember it’s here. Do I miss the red carnation I would have gotten in Poland from male colleagues, friends too? No. But I miss the significant attention brought on this day to women’s issues. It was an excuse to get the nation to focus, if only for a day, on persistent gender inequality and discrimination, particularly in the home and workplace.

No, I never did much care for the carnation: it was a mummified flower that seemed to withstand days on end without water. It would last the same amount of time whether you left it in plastic cellophane, neglected in the closet, or placed it in a milk bottle on the kitchen table. But March 8th was just a touch early for the tiny violets, the lilies-of-the-valley, or the forget-me-not bouquets that would be sold by old women from full buckets at every major intersection in the city just a month or two later. This was March, and so it had to be the carnation.

Waiting for a call

There is a reason why the phone is not a favorite of mine. I’m always wishing that it would ring, or, more often, wishing that it would not.

This time, while waiting for a friend and reader to call back, I was staring at the closed phone book, and I saw on the cover of the White and Yellow Pages a little pop-up ad announcing: Homeland Security Guide; see “H” for Homeland Security.

Thinking that perhaps there might be some things I could learn about – like what I could be doing even now to protect myself, for example, I flipped through the pages in search of this Guide. First I checked the red business pages: nothing. The listing went from “Homedco” to “Homemade.” Next, yellow pages: nope, straight from “Home Warranty Providers” to “Homeopaths.” Well, of course, I should have checked US Government: no, nothing again. It moves from “Highways” to “Horses” (horses?? Oh, it’s the phone number for “wild horse and burro adoption”).

I knew I had problems adapting to new technology, but this is a phone book, damn it. I should be able to manage a phone book. Good thing there isn’t a real crisis.

Up up and away

A story caption in the NYT caught my eye –“If You’re Thinking of Living in Exile...” it read. I had assumed it was targeting those who will be disenchanted with the results of the November elections (up to 50% of the population after all, or, in the style of 2000, perhaps even more). In fact, the story is about the lives of exiled dictators.

Could the world do no better than offer a home on the Riviera to the “Cannibal Emperor” Jean-Bedel Bokassa (from the Central African Republic), who, in his time, had the reputation of killing then eating his enemies? Or how about Idi Amin Dada, whose milder sin was to rename Lake Victoria the Idi Amin Dada Sea, and whose great atrocity was that he allowed a quarter million of his country men and women to be murdered? Why would the international community leave him to bask in his Saudi Arabian retreat?

The article in the Times reminds us that lest we rush to criticize the French or the Saudis for taking in Bokassa or Amin, we might recall that the US gave Marcos a posh villa to run to on the Hawaiian coastline not too long ago.

Trump trumps Pepin

Did Donald Trump consult chef Jacques Pepin before snaffling the Apprentice title for his show? Pepin wrote the memoir in 2003, so it’s not as if it’s a text from a more distant past. Or, maybe Pepin and Trump are one and the same? I don’t really know the show – I tried watching once, but truly could not stay with it.

How about the publication? This is from the Apprentice, the book: “I was thirteen and a half years old when I quit school…My parents somewhat reluctantly—but wisely—went along with my decision. To be sure, I was an “old” thirteen, hardened by the war. At an age when most kids don’t know how to cook their breakfast, I had already worked in four busy restaurant kitchens.” And later: “I had loved to forage for food in the forests.” And: “my tastes have remained simple. I like straightforward food that is well seasoned and elegantly presented without fuss or deception.” Finally: “On television I wanted to teach viewers essential techniques of cooking… I became convinced that the only requirement for getting my own (TV) show was raising half a million dollars, an undertaking that I knew nothing about.” Okay, that seals it: different men, a world apart.

BTW, in trying to find out more about the Trump show, I came across the site where you can apply to be on the Apprentice in the second season (here; on that same site, you can also read about THE DONALD. The Nina did not do that). Only four days remain, thus you should act quickly. If a friend got on – I’d watch.

A long detour along roads poorly described

From my earliest posts here, I’ve admitted to being a fan of travel writing, consummately working through shelves of essay collections in bookstores, searching out pieces that may offer a touch of whimsy or a more serious reflection, sometimes pointedly witty, sometimes ponderous and brooding.

But over the last few years, reading travel narratives has been a bit of a disappointment. So many books, magazines and publications contain journalistic, snappy texts that are functional and impersonal, with a minimal amount of asides, so that the pieces no longer meander [oh, say, along a buckwheat strip of yellow blossoms in a Slovakian village, where the only wealth is in the mouths of residents whose rotting teeth have been replaced by gold crowns, and where the most coveted piece of clothing is likely to be a tight fitting Frank Zappa t-shirt, worn on Sundays only, of course], but GET YOU THERE RIGHT AWAY, with bold purposefulness.

And I’m not thinking of travel guides (these have improved considerably over the years). I’m thinking of the classic travel essays, on topics as different as Parisian booksellers and the disappearing hutong neighborhoods of Beijing. For me, travel writing should not be hurried or terse. But neither should it distract with an overabundance of history or geography. These forays into factual accounting have cropped up especially in works of traditionalists of the genre–for example, writers for the NYT Sunday Travel Section—who are more likely to immerse you in historic asides these days than to offer a personal statement or an insight on a destination.

So, every quarter, I look forward to the NYT Sophisticated Traveler, and each time I toss it aside with great resignation.

But not today. Messud’s piece on Washington – a city where she once lived and now remembers with the kind of nostalgia that is reserved for places one has left behind—is sentimental but not sweetly so: “Perhaps perversely, I miss Washington’s almost puritanical streak, that it is no place to window-shop, no place for luxuries: all the fancy stores have long been pressed out to the suburbs, leaving the city center for industrious pursuits like the making of laws and money—but leaving room, potentially, too, for thought, rather than stuff.”

Mewshaw’s essay on pre-Olympic Athens hoists you, along with the author, into the cab which he takes from the airport: “the cabdriver smoked, as does apparently every man, woman and child in the country, and he fretted with worry beads as he tuned in bouzouki music on the radio.” The cab hits a gridlock. Mewshaw observes “It’s estimated that Athens has more than 2 million automobiles and 500,000 motorcycles, and at any given moment all of them appear to be stalled in anaconda coils of exhaust. For more than 20 years, motorists have, in theory, driven only on alternate days, according to whether they have odd- or even-numbered license plates. But rather than halve the volume of traffic, this law has prompted many people to buy two cars.”

And finally, there is the Livsey piece on wombats and kangaroos. It begins thus: “As a girl, growing up in Scotland, I knew exactly how to reach Australia. All I had to do was dig deep enough, and eventually I would emerge on the other side of the world, where everyone walked upside down and strange animals would hop to greet me. I was a determined child, but after several attempts yielded holes only a few feet in depth, I admitted defeat.”

Perfect essays. Travels writing took a detour, but now seems to be finding its animus and wit. That’s great news for the addicted reader. The future looks good again.

Ping zap chugga chugga

The house is radiantly energized with one visitor here and one yet to come (next week-end). In the space of a few minutes this obliging visitor cleaned up some of my erroneous wordage, links, and files on the computer. No word yet on the future of photos on this blog (see post below), but in reality, I no longer care. It is enough to have the house filled with live demonstrations of Hey Ya dances and to listen to stories of funny people doing hilarious acts in unusual ways. The pace of life changes. So, too, should the tenor of the posted blogs in the next few weeks: mediocrity cannot be dissipated that quickly, but maybe the internal energy will rise and move things forward. After all, the strenght is not in what we write, it’s in what we want to convey.

Moving up: from picture books to chapter texts

There are so many jokes on the internet about the technologically incompetent, that just running through the pages and pages of humor can make your eyes crust over. For instance, technocursed.com will give you story upon story of idiocies committed by people like ME on their computers. The techno-cursed quizzes multiply exponentially – all are hateful reminders about how STUPID we all are, misusing terminology, misunderstanding instructions, all of it DUMB DUMB DUMB.

Well, it’s back to basics for me. I don’t care that even the Amish people now have computers, I don’t care that everyone beeps their way now through every movie, restaurant, hallway with cells and who knows what else sounding the alarm. I WANTED TO POST A DROP-DEAD GORGEOUS PHOTO OF 2 STORKS, with a semi-funny story to go with it, AND I CAN’T DO IT! I quit.

A reader applauded my initial move into the visual arts (see post below). "Welcome to 2004" was the not-so-veiled message. Well, the only visual art you’re going to get from now on is black script on a white background. Black and white: fashionable colors for those of us who have moved BEYOND the abstract maze of visuals, assaulting at every turn. Just wait and see: after their first brush with color, these experimentalists will implore the black and white trend-setters to take them back into their (our) fold. Ahhh the svelte black and white sophisticates – stark sumptuousness –all in the word, nothing else, just pure, sensual, cerebral, elegant text.

And so become yourself…

A favorite little ballad from my college days – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “teach your children..” These days, you would not be able to keep a straight face and write these lyrics, yet I’ve had others tell me that they, too, find the gentle melody and words quite touching. A fragment to remind us:

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye

Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by

Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you will cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

And you, of tender years
Don't know the fears that your elders grew by
And so please help them with your youth
They seek the truth before they can die
Etc.

A shame that the singer David Crosby has had to struggle with keeping his life in order. Not too long ago, I remember listening to an interview with him; he seemed more balanced then, more focused on his current work. How quickly it all can scramble itself again. Read the story about his most recent arrest in NY here.

Picture this...or not

Not to be outdone by the magnificent visual addendum to Ann’s blog, I have spent the morning tinkering with my html knowledge deficiencies, feeling myself ready to be among the posters with the mostest.

I had chosen Krtek to lead me into this brave new word. Krtek is an animation wonder: 60 years old, he has seen his homeland, the Czech Republic, undergo some pretty heady changes.

Krtek appears in short animated films for children, and he is far more popular in his home country and in Germany and Japan than any Disney character. Why, then, does he lack an American following? It has been said that Krtek is too slow moving for the crazed frenetic action packed cartoon scene in the States. The New York Times describes the Krek movies thus: “Krtek films are, in fact, slow, but also lyrical and so hypnotically distinct that they can feel less like watching movies than climbing into another human's head" A comment by Michael Medved, the film critic: “It's an alternate universe, like all of the best animated stuff is. But it's an alternate universe that feels astonishingly refreshing and kind."

In an interview, Mr. Miler, Krtek’s creator, said: "Pretty much the whole world knows Krtek; America, which is usually first in everything, is last in this...I always look at American history, and it is a very hard one. People came. They conquered a continent. They suffered hardships, and that hardship is reflected in its movies. I look at children there and think what they are watching is a reflection of that hardness. If you look at America, it is epic. Whereas here, it is more poetic. I feel here there is more lyricism."

So, Krtek is my aspirational hero, my symbol for the new era in blogdom.

There's just one problem: according to loyal readers, Krtek isn't for everyone: many get a blank space where his innocent little face should be. The new era has not yet begun. Back to html education.

The church, the state, and the people of Poland

It is nothing short of amazing to read today (in several of the more obscure news sources, of course) that Poland’s governing Social Democrats will introduce a bill easing abortion law in that country. The current law is among the most restrictive in all of Europe (only Portugal, Ireland, and Malta have laws that are equally punitive and harsh): it permits abortion only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and only if the woman is a victim of rape or incest, or if her health or the health of the fetus is severely endangered. A doctor performing an abortion under other circumstances may be imprisoned for two years.

The Catholic Church has been instrumental in shaping the current, restrictive laws affecting reproductive choice. In a country that is more than 95% Catholic, a widespread acceptance of the Church’s position should be a predictable reality. But the Church, a powerful political force in post-communist Poland, is suddenly losing its connections to the public. I see the new legislation as a real sign of a national disengagement from the Church’s platform. 60% of the people are in favor of loosening restrictions on abortion. That is nothing short of remarkable.

On another note, the person introducing the new law is Jolanta Banach. She is a member of the Social Democratic party, and thought to be Prime Minister Leszek Miller’s strong rival in the elections that are just around the corner. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Poland outpace the United States in electing a woman to a national position of leadership? In less than twenty years, Poland has jumped from having almost no women actively engaged in party politics, to now having a number of them leap frog right to the top. Very impressive!

George Washington type guilt

I look outside at the soon-to-be grassy strip by the curb and I see a tree stump. A few months ago a tall tree lived its full and glorious life there, giving shade and cool summer comfort to the world below its broad canopy of branches. The tree is gone and it is my fault. I asked the city to chop it down. I thought it was dying and I hated to see its yearly decline – each spring, more brittle branches, fewer leaves, less beautifully displayed.

The question is, if I had the tree killed, what will I do to my dog or my neighbor, to say nothing of those closer to me once they show signs of wear and tear? What happened to the idea of sticking by those who have grown old before you, who are there to share their wisdom and counsel and shade?

The city will plant a new tree come spring, but it wont be the same. The old one is gone and it is my fault. Move over in the guilt line, George.

The love/hate relationship with an office

Tonight I grew increasingly concerned that I am perhaps forming too great of a dependence on my office. It is, after all, very late, and after a rollicking Friday evening, here I am in my Bascom Hill den, in the empty Law School building, attempting to get “stuff done.”

I turned to my friend google for a quick consult, and I feel better already. True, google wasn’t precisely on point. The office issues it asked me to address (at the Realtor Magazine site here) aren’t entirely applicable to the academic setting. Moreover, I think the flagged article is attempting to help the poor soul who HATES her office, rather than the one who fears excessive attachment, like I do. Nonetheless, I proceeded with the questions asked of me just to see if there were trouble spots I ought to take note of. In this particular version, I believe the employee is trying to ascertain if the office atmosphere has become TOO dysfunctional. I am told to give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following (in answer to the question “is it true that”):

-- Management sets goals that no one ever reaches, and then berates sales associates for not reaching these goals (true: the exam grading deadlines are hellish, and the pressure to submit grades on time makes suicidal alcoholics of all of us);

-- Sales associates and/or managers use rumors to try and manipulate office policies behind the scenes (well if they are, they’re keeping me out of the loop);

-- When errors occur, the first reaction is to blame someone, not find a way to solve the problem (if the computer doesn’t perform, I blame the computer. What, am I suppose to do, fix it?);

-- Many workers complain of headaches, backaches, sleeplessness, and other physical manifestations of high stress (complain? Yes. Are they for real? Maybe not);

-- Management is overly controlling, insisting that everything be done exactly as it dictates (that would be the provost or the chancellor or the dean? Nahh, never hear from any of them);

-- One or two people are always complaining, writing angry memos to supervisors, and getting into disagreements with other workers (oh, is this about the email exchange of the last few days? It was all in jest, wasn’t it? I certainly didn’t mean a word I said);

-- Company initiatives such as sales contests always seem to be structured so that someone—often the same someone—is the winner, and everyone else is a loser. And then the losers are reminded of the fact (oh no, wrong. We all know who the perceived “winners” are, but we aren’t so mean spirited as to point a vicious finger at the losers);

-- You find yourself going into work later and later, arriving late for appointments, and frequently procrastinating rather than getting work done (doesn’t everyone?).

Like I said, this was overall a relief. No dependency, no need to bail out either. Just a nice week-end night of work at the office. Lovely night at that. Spring-like.