My Sunday On High Ground Feeling

 I think the outer outer bands of Ida have reached our fair city.  There is a pretty good breeze coming out of the south.  I’m sitting on the porch where it’s actually comfortable under the fan.  The temp has been @ 100 up until today.  The white clouds are low and moving north.  They resemble the gulf clouds I used to watch when I was at Tulane.  They appear to be low enough to where you could reach out and touch them.  Just like I remember.  

And here’s the sure sign that something’s up.  My ears are popping and I’m experiencing sinus pain under my right eye.  Rapid pressure change will do that.  I guess it’s good to know that some things stay the same.

Of course, I can afford this reverie.  When Ida hits here Monday (I think) it will be just 15-20 mph winds accompanied by rain.  If it hits here at all.  The maps indicate that Little Rock may be just west of Ida’s path in the state.  Just close enough to make us wish for fall.

It didn’t occur to me that today is the 16th anniversary of Katrina.  That’s surreal.  Down in south Louisiana folks have been celebrating by evacuating since yesterday. Check the online edition of the New Orleans Time-Picayune/Advocate to look at the parking lot that is I-10.  Ida has a chance to be dangerous.  It may hit my buddies in Thibodaux as a Category 4 storm.  According to NOAA, at Cat 4 she may be packing 130 mph winds.  This will likely result in “catastrophic damage” as in “well built homes sustaining severe damage.” “Trees snapping or becoming uprooted.” Power outages for “weeks or month.” Not to mention water levels of up to 11 feet or so.  Sounds like fun, non?

Of course, as if this would not be misery enough, we can predict that some of the pumps will fail.  If they turn on at all.  ‘Twas ever thus.  My first experience with that was during my first year of law school.  I walked out of my apartment to go for a run.  I heard it rain through the night but I didn’t think much about it because it rains a LOT in New Orleans.  Anyway, I walked out to see Napoleon Avenue completely flooded.  Cars were parked on the neutral ground or median as we call them up here and everywhere else for that matter now that I think about it.

But what was really amazing was watching guys in pirogues rowing up and down Napoleon.  Toto, I don’t think we’re in Mabelvale anymore.  That was just after a hard rain.  And that wasn’t the last time I saw this particular phenomenon.  Believe me.  Some of the pumps will fail.

As for my friends, they have been through this drill before.  Trina and her son made it to Atlanta Saturday morning @ 1am.  Riley and her boyfriend made it north Louisiana.  Chris is staying put.  Then again he’s on duty at the Volunteer Fire Department until the coast clears.  Pardon the expression.  His son George is on duty with Coast Guard.  Andrew and Michelle headed for Oxford.  Cindy and her husband are going to ride it out in the local hospital. Flynn and Ronnie are sheltering place as is Gus who is counting on his supply of guns and alcohol to see him through.  

Tonight will most likely find me glued to the Weather Channel sending texts and doing FaceTime.  With those that have power and Internet that is.

What to us is the first taste of fall has a chance to be dangerous as hell to folks in the Pelican State.  If you say your prayers, please pray that Ida cools down to a Cat 3.   

And don’t buy any used vehicles whose point of origin is Louisiana or Mississippi for the next 2 or 3 years.  Trust me on this one. 

 

My Sunday Feeling

 The Los Angeles Dodgers have a problem.  His name is Trevor Bauer who pitches for them.  Or did before he was suspended.  

Trevor Bauer seems to like rough sex.  And it’s now a matter of public record.  

Now while I am about as kinky as tapioca pudding, I understand that this kind of stuff goes on between consenting adults.  Indeed, a realtor friend of mine once told me years ago that occasionally she stumbled across romantic hardware when she showed houses.  Her personal favorite was a trapeze in the spare bedroom of a home she was showing. “You would be surprised,” she said.  

Undoubtedly I would given the rather boring life that I lead.  But to each their own between consenting adults.  The renowned sexologist Joan Armatrading put it best in her song “I Love It When You Call Me Names.” 

“It’s their way of lovin’ not mine,”   That pretty much sums it up for me.

Back to Trevor Bauer.  He spent 3 days in Court last week defending against a former lover’s Petition to ripen a Temporary Restraining Order (or Order of Protection) to a permanent one.   The woman testified that she feared Bauer after he allegedly assaulted her during “rough sex.” Bauer’s defense was to the effect that he choked her into unconsciousness and punched while she was unconscious because she “didn’t say no.”  

The Judge ruled in Bauer’s favor. She held that Bauer was not a future threat to the woman because he respected her boundaries-such as they evidently were-while they engaged in what everybody agreed was consensual sex. 

I didn’t think you could consent to anything while unconscious.  But that’s why appellate courts are part of God’s plan.  

Now this is all pretty unseemly stuff.  Is it grounds to terminate his contract?  I don’t know.  And as I tell folks all the time, I don’t know is a good answer when I don’t know.

The standard Major League Baseball player’s contract states that a club may terminate a contract, among other things, if a player shall at any time “fail refuse or neglect to conform his personal conduct to the standards of good citizenship and good conduct…”

Is this sufficient grounds for the Dodgers to get rid of him?  I don’t know.  Probably not.  He wasn’t accused of domestic violence which has gotten numerous players suspended in the past.  The sex, however revolting it may be to you and me, was consensual.  And the Judge-a female judge- ruled against the victim. 

But wait. There’s more.

The Washington Post has reported that Bauer was also under an Order of Protection in Ohio back when he played for Cleveland.  The alleged victim in that case alleged that although Bauer allegedly punched her and choked her without her consent, she didn’t become afraid until he had allegedly sent her two text messages.

One allegedly said, “ I don’t feel like spending time in jail for killing someone.  And that’s what would happen if I saw you again.”

The second one allegedly sent to her-and heavily edited for this space- is even more charming. “Like the only reason I would consider seeing you again is to choke you unconscious punch you in the face shove my first(sic) up your a**… and kick you out naked.  And obviously I would never do that to anyone. So I can’t even enjoy the one thing that I sometimes enjoyed with you.”

Bauer’s lawyer denied that these messages are authentic.  The authorities in Ohio are investigating as are the authorities in California. He’s entitled to the presumption of innocence just like you and me.  

But the standard in the player’s contract is not as high as that in the criminal law.  We know the allegations against him in California are true.  If he really did beat the other woman up and then send her menacing text messages do these behaviors in the aggregate add up to a failure of Trevor Bauer to “conform his personal conduct to the standards of good citizenship and good conduct?” You can make a case for it being in the same zip code. It’s one thing-I suppose-to have a harmless taste for rough trade.  Bauer’s likely a sociopath. What he’s alleged to have done ain’t exactly a frolic on a trapeze in a bedroom in west Little Rock.

Bauer is radioactive for business.  The Dodgers most likely can’t get rid of him because no team in their right mind would touch him.  I say “most likely.”  Because we are talking baseball here where the front offices are not typically composed of highly evolved beings. 

He’s suspended until the end of the month.  I say-at the minimum-suspend him for the rest of the season.  Make his return contingent on psychiatric treatment.  Dare the Player’s Union to grieve it.        

But you can also make the case that he needs to be terminated if both allegations are true.  There’s the argument that he violated the conduct clause of the player’s contract.  If for no other reason than women make a lot of money in our society.  And a good number of them are sports fans.  Or enjoy going out to the game. How many women or parents of daughters are going to shell out good money to watch Trevor Bauer take the mound?

Does Major League Baseball and the Player’s Union want to die on that hill?

I guess we’ll see.  

Oh.  I forgot to mention this.  His own teammates?  They don’t want him back.  

If you’re too freaky for a locker room of baseball players you need to be gone.  

 

My Sunday Feeling

 Tomorrow is Opening Day for the schools in this state.  Or most of them anyway.  Some of the country schools started earlier.  

Catholic High School for Boys will be in that number.  I will be there bright and early for the Opening Assembly.  I’m trying to remember how long I’ve been associated with those folks.  I’m guessing @ 7 years by now.  That seems kind of hard to believe until I realized that one of my own history boys is on the faculty now.  Duncan is going to coach football and teach world history for Freshmen.

That will show him by God.  

I tend to wear different hats over there depending on the situation.  I’ve taught history and choir.  And I get to do a good bit of pedagogy when I sub for folks in the Liberal Arts.  I’ve done History, Literature, Politics, and Econ.  I have bluffed my way through occasional classes in 1st Semester Freshman Latin.  I might could do the same with French if given adequate notice.  

Due to COVID I pretty much missed all of last year.  I took the shot with the rest of the faculty last March.  But by then the school year was pretty much over.  About all I did was proctor AP exams.  Which is not the most exciting gig in the world.  But I did get to finish a book I had started in between casting baleful glances at the examinees.  

They didn’t have an Opening Assembly last year.  They didn’t have choir or Theology Club either.  I’m not sure if we will have the latter two activities this year.  But at least things will seem more normal while the Principal lays down the law for the school year to his captive audience tomorrow. Even the dullest of the dull will soon realize that he is now subject to a reasonably benign yet indisputably authoritarian regime for the next 4 years of his life.

That must be an awful feeling.

The local law school is going to crank back up week after next (I think).  I guess I will be a mentor over there again.  At least nobody from the dean’s office has told me that the honor of my presence is NOT requested.  I will be doing mock job interviews with second year students tomorrow afternoon.  I’ve done stuff for the law school about as long as I have been doing stuff at Catholic.  This will be the first time I have done the ersatz interviews virtually rather than in person.  

Quite frankly, I’ve about had it with virtual stuff.  At first, I was all for it.  Getting stuff done without having to actually deal with other people?  Where do I sign up?  But you lose something online.  Things seem more forced.  Less spontaneous.  You can’t read a room if there’s no room.  And whenever you do a group there’s always somebody that has their mic or camera off.  Or is doing something weird.  But I believe we are stuck with it.  At least in the lawyering line of work.

I enjoy-mostly enjoy-all of the various students I am privileged to be with.  When I left the government I was given the same advice-word for word-from 2 guys that do not know each other from Adam.  One is the Maximum Dictator at Catholic High who I mentioned earlier.  And the other is a prosecutor with the US Attorney’s office.  The both told me to stay involved with kids because “You’re good at it and it will keep you young.”  And so I did. And they were right. At least the part about it keeping me young.  I don’t know how good I am at it. But it keeps me young.

While I enjoy being with the law students they remind me to count my blessings.  I mainly consider myself to be blessed to not be a law student in the time of COVID and dismal job prospects.  Law school is sufficiently stressful in and of itself without the added stress of looking at a big honking student loan bill. Or counting on sufficient cash flow from doing cut rate divorces to pay it back.  On the other hand as far as I can tell-at least from the legal aid side of things- divorce work is up.  I have a theory.

A lot of married couples were forced to be with each other 24/7 during the shutdown.  Some of them came to realize that they can’t stand each other.  Or as a young woman explained it once to me, “For richer. For poorer. But never for lunch.”  “General indignities” were never so elegantly described.  

Anyway, tomorrow I will be back with students of all various kinds of stripes. I will show up on time.  I will do no harm.  It will seem normal again.  I could do with some normal after the past year that was pretty much the worst of my life.  

I hope that your day is normal too.  Please wear a mask wherever you go.  And get the damn vaccine if you have yet to do so.   

Things aren’t that normal yet.       

And remember.  For richer. For poorer.

But never for lunch.

My Sunday Feeling

 “ In this new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher or a sage. And if everybody is an expert, than nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.” 

            Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

The Arkansas Legislature reached a new low, if that’s even possible, last week.  I will try not to belabor the point overmuch. Last Spring, the Legislature passed Act 1002, which reserved the sole right to impose mandatory face coverings with itself.  Not the Governor.  Not the State Department of Health.  Not with local school administrators on the ground.

Itself.  The Legislature. The Governor, evidently reposing trust in the downward trend of COVID cases at that time, signed the damn thing into law.  

Well guess what?  Not only did COVID come back, but it came back packing a brand new variant which is even more spreadable than the earlier strain.  As a result, hospitals throughout the South and Missouri (which is a lot crazier place than I ever gave it credit for being) are jam packed with COVID patients.  If you plan to have a heart attack or fall off the roof while cleaning the gutters you might want to hold that thought.  Not unless you don’t mind waking up in an ICU in Maine.  Because there’s no room for you here.

And, the vast majority of these admissions are of people that were not vaccinated.  Like over 90%.  More on this later.  But first, back to the Solons of Woodlane Avenue.

School starts in a week.  Kids 12 and up can be vaccinated.  But what about the little ones?  How do we protect them? A mask or face covering mandate makes sense.  But the locals can’t impose it due to Act 1002.

Governor Hutchinson called the Ledge back in special session in hopes of undoing this crisis-in-the-making that he helped create.  After all, every credible medical expert in the known universe was calling for the reinstatement of the mask requirement in the classroom for the unvaccinated little children until we get over this spike.  

The Ledge was presented with data from the CDC.  The superintendent of a little district up in the country where school has already started testified that he has 800 people quarantined already in the second week of the semester.  The second week!  

Of course it did not matter.  Emergency proclamations and Health Department directives represent “government overreach” in matters that should be left strictly up to parents who “know better” the needs of their children.  Thus saith the pious adherents to “limited government.” 

There’s an old saying that law enforcement largely depends on the cooperation of the citizens.  As somebody once told me, all it takes is a hard core 25-30% of the population to screw everything up. 

I believe that recent experience dictates that we can likewise apply this dictum to public health.  There is a hard core group of people out there that refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask.  Well over 90% of the admissions due to COVID are unvaccinated patients.  Something like 98% of the deaths are in that group. These are cold hard facts. 

The response that I have seen from these folks to this data?  Get a shot?  Of course not.  Close the borders.  

The real cause of the spike according to them, or so I have read, is that about 7000 migrants/day (that is the number the talking points consistently bandy about) are flowing unchecked across our southern borders where they are allegedly neither tested or treated and are then “flown around” or “driven around” all over this great land of ours where they spread germs unchecked.  

Now I believe that it is worth mentioning just for the sheer hell of it that none of this is true.  As in factually correct.  People are being apprehended at the border.  They are being tested, treated and isolated before they can be admitted to go freely.  Many are turned back.  

And even if this were true (And trust me.  It’s never good when the Judge says “Even assuming you’re correct.”) how in the Sam Hill do folks crossing the border in Texas and California translate to a spike in COVID cases in Marion, Arkansas?  Here’s the answer. It doesn’t.  

The medical experts point out a virtual one-to-one correlation between people who balk at simple public health measures and the recent spike.  These people are the reason you might wake up in that ICU in Maine if your shotgun goes off while you are cleaning it.  

But no.  Who cares what the experts say?  The unvaxxed are the victims here.  Not the folks who complied with sensible public health directives in hopes of eating out again.  Or going to the concert or the ballgame.  Or safely sending their young children to school again.

No.  They can talk to each other on social media.  They can blame the immigrants, they can blame Joe Biden, they can blame the stolen election.  They can tell each other that they are being scapegoated by the MSM. They can send money to the “My Pillow” guy.  In the nut bar echo chamber where everybody’s a regular they can blame everybody but themselves for the fix their irresponsibility and narcissism has put the rest of the country.

Former Arkansas Surgeon General Joe Thompson (whose car I once wrecked but that’s another story) put it this way: “If the Legislature takes no action and allows the ban on mask mandates to remain in effect in all schools while the Delta variant rages in our communities, children will be unavoidably exposed to the virus, some will be hospitalized and likely some will die.”

Why listen to Joe Thompson?  He’s just a physician and a former public health officer.  In Idiot America he’s no more an expert than the guy on the Internet that will sell you hydro chloroquine.  Or that preacher in Tennessee who won’t let you walk into the church house if you are wearing a mask.  

Go online.  Do your own research.  Handle snakes while you are at it.

You have a right to your opinion and it is as good as anybody’s.  Right?

Right?

Footnote: Last Friday the Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas  issued a Preliminary Injunction against implementation and/or enforcement of Act 1002 pending further proceedings and Orders of the Court.  We may safely assume there will be masks in the hallways when school cranks up on the 16th.  At least for awhile.  

  

Sick Leave

 Good news. Bad news.

Or vice versa.

I am struck down with a sinus infection and don’t feel like messing with this.

The good news is that it is my first one in almost two years and that I feel much better after the doc sent in the usual horse pills and steroids.  

Wear your mask.  Keep your distance.  Be safe out there.