The Moving Finger Writes

My Sunday Feeling

2012-01-29T08:43:00.000-06:00

Super Bowl Sunday aside, I have for the most part never been one to pay much attention to commercials. I have made it a practice to toss most direct mail solicitations that contaminate my mailbox. I'm the kind of guy that pretty much knows what I want from the merchants that I tend to do business with. For example if Jos. A. Bank announces a sale, and if I am in the market for a new suit, then I will pay attention because I buy most of my clothes from the Jos. A. Bank store a mile or so from my house. If an ad for Men's Warehouse comes on, it's in one ear and out the other.

Without going into inordinate detail, I have been encouraged to start paying more attention to all of the propaganda with which all of us are bombarded on a daily basis. The reason for my newly found interest in these communications will be disclosed in the fullness of time. For now it will suffice to say that I am paying attention.

I had ESPN Radio on in the car while I was out running errands. Many spots for insurance, both life and casualty. There were ads hawking credit repair services and ads for outfits that will intercede upon your behalf with the IRS ("Do you owe more than $10,000 to the IRS?). There were ads touting cut-rate Viagra you can buy on the Internet to ads offering participation in a "clinical trial" to the first 50 sufferers from "decreased male vitality" that called in. The latter was swiftly followed by a disclaimer delivered at live auction speed which stated that these claims had not been evaluated by the FDA and that the product was not intended to be used to treat any medical condition or disease. Finally, I noted an ad for a certain brand of gin that the ad claimed was "so smooth you could drink it straight."

The only conclusion that I could draw from my afternoon swim in the media was that ESPN Radio's target audience is a frequently red-lined drunk and tax deadbeat that can't get it up. I switched to classical programming as I am none of these things.

Things weren't much better back at the house. During the Razorback game, I noticed a spot for a financial service that was dedicated to "saving your house" if you were behind on your mortgage or had lost your job using "local attorneys" to intercede with your lender. Not long after that appeared an ad for a tax service that made the assertion that the IRS had gotten "lenient" and that this service's "team of lawyers and enrolled agents" was waiting to spring into action to lower my tax debt and get that pesky levy discharged.

I know one divorced couple that is not making much headway with the Service on their compromise offer on back taxes. And I know one guy who is spectacularly unsuccessful in getting them to make the levy on him go away. Ask these folks about how frigging "lenient" the IRS is. And they, too, have local tax professionals in there pitching for them.

Finally, today's mail brought me a cardboard item of correspondence ominously marked "2nd Attempt" and "Respond Within Five Days." It looked very much like the tax documents I have been getting from the government the last week or so. Alas, it was a solicitation for an extended warranty on my vehicle. This would explain the 2nd attempt. Undoubtedly, I had tossed the first.

As H.L. Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Conversely, the purveyors of the various shifty services (Well, not the gin. That one was pretty straight up. Pardon the expression.) that I described above are obviously moving product and reeling in clients. Otherwise, they wouldn't be spending the money to put out the word.

And, all kidding aside, the target audience for these products are obviously the desperate and the incompetent. Times are hard. People are strapped. Shady actors slither out from every other rock during times like these.

I found another ad I heard yesterday to be exceptionally pernicious and misleading. The ad was for an outfit that was touting gold as the only "safe" investment. This pitch has gained some cache in recent times with lunatic Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul advocating eliminating the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard.

The ad was pretty slick. A woman's voice, choked with emotion, is heard telling of how her husband lost his job and can't find work. I paraphrase the pitch. "The economy is getting worse and the government is proposing even more wasteful spending that will put our country even further in debt. That's why I rolled my 401k into gold, the only truly safe investment."

Of course, the ad is disingenuous on numerous fronts. The speaker is most likely paid voice talent and not some harried wife and mother. The economy is growing and more people are finding work. The government is proposing spending cuts. And gold prices are unstable. Indeed, if our speaker had her 401k in a FDIC insured account she wouldn't have to worry about losing any money if the bank collapsed.

But again, the target audience for these pitches are the desperate, the unsophisticated and the paranoid. Who evidently listen to and watch a lot of sports.

I have said it before and I will say it again. If you have tax problems go a CPA or a tax lawyer. If you are having financial problems, go see your lender. Trust me. They don't want your stuff. They want your money. Odds are that unless your situation is truly unworkable or if you have gone strictly deadbeat on them in the past, they will try to work with you. If it can't be worked out go see a bankruptcy lawyer to see what relief is available. If you aren't feeling well go see the doctor.

But stay off the Internet. Lay off the 1-800 numbers.

Like I said, I've never much paid any attention to advertising. I'm paying attention now, boy. And it is really interesting to hear what people will say to get you to part with your money.

A Man In Full

2012-01-23T19:06:00.001-06:00

"This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I had done more."

                                                                                                         Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno never wanted to retire. On more than one occasion he reminded people that Paul "Bear" Bryant died shortly after he quit coaching at Alabama. He did not wish to suffer the same fate. And sure enough, JoePa, the beloved Head Coach at Penn State for 46 years, died yesterday almost 2 months after being fired by Penn State's Board of Trustees on November 9 after it became known that the most horrific story in the history of college sports had occurred on his watch.

Nobody could have seen this one coming. How could you? The Grand Jury indicted Paterno's former Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky for unspeakable crimes against little boys. One of the Counts described in graphic detail Sandusky allegedly molesting a 10 year old in the shower in the football team's locker room.

A young Graduate Assistant witnessed the assault. After speaking with his father, they both went to Paterno to tell him what he saw. A day later Paterno informed his Athletic Director about what he was told. The two accounts before the Grand Jury differ. The GA testified before the Grand Jury that he advised Paterno that he had witnessed a sexual assault. Paterno's testimony was that the account he heard was not as graphic as that.

Whatever the truth of the matter may be, an entire Nation was shocked by the fact that law enforcement was not advised of what Sandusky was alleged to have done to that poor boy on that awful night in the locker room.

Heads had to roll. And one of them belonged to Joseph Vincent Paterno.

Paterno said the reason he didn't call the police himself was that he didn't want to go outside procedures for reporting incidents and that he reposed trust that his A.D. would take care of the situation. And I believe that. I also believe that a man in his eighties might not exactly be programmed to understand the gravity of the situation although how any sentient human couldn't be alarmed by the allegation that a former employee was seen naked in your team's shower with an equally naked little boy is pretty much beyond me. But maybe that's what JoePa believed.

But maybe a guy in his eighties doesn't need to be in charge of a football program. And that's on Penn State's brass. They tried to get him to retire in 2004. He wouldn't do it and they didn't have the guts to push the button. The tail of big time sports wags the dog in a lot of places. I can't think of many other million dollar operations that have octogenarians at least nominally at the controls.

But let's get to it. What is Joe Paterno's legacy? He leads all NCAA Division I coaches in victories. That record is not likely to be in danger. This is mainly because you will never see another head coach at one place for 45 years. Ever.
His players tended to graduate and afterwards become useful and productive citizens. Lord knows a bunch of Nittany Lions made it to the NFL. Paterno and his wife Sue donated millions to the college. And JoePa was a genuinely unpretentious sort whose number was in the phone book and who walked back and forth between the college and the modest ranch house where he and Sue raised their kids. Bet you can't just ring up Urban Meyer.

But unfortunately, at least for the near term, Joe Paterno's legacy will be tarnished by the sex scandal that cost him his job and which will undoubtedly subject his Estate and his former employer to liability. And to the limited extent that some good came of these unspeakable crimes, it is equally without doubt that new protocols are now in place in college athletic departments setting out mandatory reporting requirements concerning sexual assaults on children. You know that while such incidents are isolated at the college level it is bound to have happened before. Ask Roy Boeheim. Or better yet, ask Bernie Fine's wife.

One of his former players said that Joe Paterno died of a broken heart. Of course, this is romantic nonsense. There aren't many good outcomes when an elderly person gets lung cancer. But I have no doubt that Joe Paterno grieved mightily as the full gravity of the inadequacy of his response came to rest upon him. After all, the man has children and grandchildren. You can't coach for as long as he did without loving young people. And I am certainly willing to concede that the stress of all of this certainly didn't help matters any. It had to have taken a terrible toll. How could it not?  But still, while you can bet that Internet message boards will be full of posts blaming Penn State's Board of Trustees for Paterno's demise, this is dangerous foolishness.

The public record of the man in full is exemplary in the extreme. Whether that public record will ever be free of the taint of this awful scandal is highly problematic.

A child got molested in his locker room.  For whatever reason, the authorities weren't notified.  All of these things happened on this good man's watch. I don't know if the passage of time can unring such a horrific bell.

And while the scar on Joe Paterno's otherwise exemplary public record is not the tragedy to which he correctly alluded at the top of this post, there are tragic dimensions to his downfall.

He studied the classics at Brown. He understood tragedy. In his dotage, maybe he forgot hubris.

Rest in peace, Mr. Paterno. Rest in peace.

My Sunday Feeling

2012-01-22T09:11:00.003-06:00

I have said this before and I will say it again. I typically am not remotely interested in the past or current sex lives of politicians. After all, none of us are without sin. And it would be unrealistic to believe that our political leaders are completely immune from the human condition. So I have a pretty high bar when it comes to levels of hypocrisy that offends even me.

Maybe it isn't the hypocrisy of Rick and Karen Santorum that offends me as much that I am stunned by their sheer gall. As is widely known, Santorum is running for the Republican nomination for President. His is an exceedingly conservative platform in which he would make abortion illegal even in the case of a woman impregnated by a rapist. He is opposed to some, if not all, forms of birth control. And he and his wife both profess to be opposed to sexual relations outside of the bonds of matrimony.

That's fine. He has tapped into a constituency out there that sings off this same sheet music. Doesn't bother me. I wouldn't vote for Santorum if he was running for dog catcher unopposed. Indeed, I pretty much tune out most of the static over on that side of the aisle. I am immune.

But the story of Karen Santorum's creepy past got my attention. Here is the Reader's Digest condensed version of the story. When Karen Garver was in her twenties she lived for years without the blessing of clergy with with an OB/GYN in Pittsburgh. So far, who cares? Right? Here's where it gets interesting. The good doc was some 40 years older than her when they began shacking up. Not only that, he was an abortion provider. And if that isn't sufficiently stunning in and of itself, little baby Karen Garver was brought into this world by guess who? You got it. The guy she took up with later on in life. You can read about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/karen-santorum-rick-santorum-abortion_n_1208867.html

As I said on my Facebook page the other night, you just can't make this stuff up.

To which a friend of mine from high school posted something along the lines of "people can change. You should have seen me 24 years ago."

Of course people can change. Indeed my Bible encourages both change and repentance. We all know a person who has struggled or has had a family member struggle with drugs or alcohol only to come out of that experience opposed to their use. There are are militant former smokers. And, like my high school friend, we all have done stuff in our collective past lives that we are not particularly proud of.

But it is one thing to "have done with lesser things" as the old hymn puts it. It is quite another thing altogether to urge that the law of the land be changed regarding certain behaviors and medical procedures based on a belief system that you evidently did not embrace yourself during one fairly long stretch of your life.

Again, what were these people thinking? That Karen Santorum's past would never be a campaign issue in a Republican race in which the candidates are falling all over themselves to prove who has the greater commitment to "traditional moral values?"

Which leads me to the question concerning whether this is all just a scam anyway. And I'm not just talking of the Santorums although their hypocrisy in this regard is simply the more stunning example. Maybe none of the guys running to be the GOP standard bearer in November really believes this junk in the first place. Maybe they are just pandering to the lunatic political base that has taken over the Republican party? Indeed, a former associate of serial philanderer, and fresh from the oven newly devout Roman Catholic, Newt Gingrich said that if the prevailing political winds were blowing from the left, Newt would be a liberal.

I don't know and I don't much care. I do know that it is easier to wrap yourself in the flag and to pound the Bible than it is to actually run the country. But I digress.

People can change. And thank God for that.

But just because you have changed doesn't mean that you are necessarily the best person in the world to be out front and center on issues that evidently didn't concern you very much at all at one point in time. Most similarly situated people might prefer to keep what is past in the past. But most people with dubious pasts don't have the gall to inject themselves into the searing light of a political campaign.

The old smoke filled rooms that used to produce candidates look better and better to me each election season.

My Sunday Feeling

2012-01-15T07:29:00.000-06:00

I got a text message Friday night.

"Tim Tebow has been arrested for driving drunk. A hooker was in the car with him. He also had an ounce of cocaine in his possession."

"Whaaaaaaaaaaat?" I texted back as I reached for my iPad in order to get jump on the Internet.

"I can dream can't I?" was the response.

This exchange fairly illustrates the the mixed feelings from football fans surrounding the confounding recent success of Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow. For those that don't follow football, Tim Tebow is a second year quarterback for the Denver Broncos who, as I type this, are scheduled to play, and most likely be defeated by, the New England Patriots this evening.

The Broncos turned to him out of desperation after former Chicago Bear bust Kyle Orton reprised this role with the Broncos in steering them to a 1-4 start. Since then the Broncos limped into the playoffs at 9-8 although they did win 5 straight with Tebow at the controls. Which, quite frankly, stunned most NFL experts.

After all, although Tebow won the Heisman Trophy he did it in a running system at Florida. Although he is by any measure a phenomenal physical presence for a quarterback, it is Adventureland whenever Tebow is required to throw the ball longer than 30 yards downfield. Think of a paler version of Vince Evans and you have Tim Tebow. Further, it is whispered that he is not exactly the brightest bulb on the porch.

But you know what? The kid has won football games with more frequency than he lost them this year. And he has gotten the Broncos to within spitting distance of the Super Bowl in spite of his deficiencies as a traditional NFL quarterback and in spite of the predictions of the "experts" who said that the Broncos could not win with what amounts to a tricked out version of a college offense.

This would be the sort of story that you would think every football fan could get behind as everybody likes to see an underdog do well. But as you can tell from the text cited hereinabove, not everybody is a Tim Tebow fan. And this is why.

Tebow is an evangelical Christian who is not shy about proclaiming his beliefs. At Florida his eyeblack came imprinted with John 3:16 on it, an adornment which the NFL forced him to eschew. When a Bronco touchdown is scored or when they win, he points upward toward Heaven in Praise of God. This rubs many people the wrong way, including me.

But you know what else? I don't much care. I do wish he would eschew the rather Pharisaic practice of somewhat giving God credit for success on the field. While Tebow hasn't exactly said that he finds the hand of God in all of this, he hasn't much gone out of the way to disabuse anyone of this impression. While I find all of this to be pretty irritating, it is no more irritating to me than it is when other athletes give God credit for making the big free throw or hitting a home run.

This is Bad Theology to believe that God intervenes in human history to fix athletic contests. I would like to think that the Almighty has enough on His hands with disease, war, famine and every other cause of suffering on the part of the human children He allegedly loves and for whom the cynic might suggest that He hasn't lifted much of a finger to save.

But with me, it goes in one ear and out the other. I have little interest in any professional athlete's views on how and when God moves in those mysterious ways, His wonders to impart.

And it bothers me not all that some evangelical fans have a heightened interest in the Broncos due to the success of Tim Tebow. This is no better or worse than Catholics that follow Notre Dame for that reason or Baptists who are fans of the Baylor Bears. But what DOES irritate me is the view of some fans that the Broncos' success is a sign of God's favor or that the Tebow's accomplishments despite his many deficiencies is practically miraculous.

Don't take my word for it. Just look at how Facebook blows up every time Denver wins.

Look. Might I suggest another explanation that does not take into account divine providence? The Broncos have a great running game, an even better defense, a what-the-hell approach to offense by the coaching staff and sheer dumb luck. There you have it sports fans.

And I find it equally irritating that some people seem to want Tebow to fail for this reason. Or are predisposed to view him as a phony. Look. As far as anybody can tell, and believe me there are those in the media who have tried to find evidence to the contrary,Tim Tebow is completely sincere in his faith and that his many good works come from this sincerity. Even if he is a pain in the ass about it at times.

And sure. There wouldn't be this kind of buzz about Tebow if he weren't such a polarizing figure which I'm sure that the Broncos front office views as a mixed blessing at best.

Here's what I predict. Tim Tebow and the Broncos will get sent packing by the Patriots. But it will be closer than some folks believe because New England's defense is held together with spit and baling wire. And Denver's defense is awfully stout.

In the off season, the Broncos will try to find another quarterback because nobody, and I mean nobody, believes that they will ever go to a Super Bowl until they have a quarterback who can actually read defenses and throw passes that don't go end over end.

But I wouldn't put it past Tebow to pull it off tonight. And I kind of hope that he does, because this is fun despite the fact that I find his public displays of religiosity completely off-putting. Or that some people can't stand him.

I just don't care about any of that stuff.

My Sunday Feeling

2012-01-08T09:55:00.000-06:00

"The past is not ever dead. It's not even past."
William Faulkner

It is also said that history is written by the guys that won. The folks that showed up in period drag for yesterday's commemoration of the death of David O. Dodd's execution by the Union troops that occupied Little Rock in 1863 would probably agree with both sentiments.

It occurs to me that the phrase "occupy Little Rock" was not an abstraction in those days. Forgive me. I ramble.

I confess that I don't know much about Civil War reenactors. Yesterday's performance was the first time I had ever encountered any of them live and in person. It is my understanding that their attention to detail in their garb and equipment is painstaking and sincere. Certainly there is something to be said for historical preservation. There is much that is right and purposeful about remembering and maintenance of traditions. And I suppose it might even be fun to spend the day pretending to be Johnny Reb.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that.

The execution of David O. Dodd resonates still for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it is a compelling story about a brave young kid who refused to rat out a friend during a time of war. And it cost him his life. Personal bravery and steadfast courage in the face of certain doom are both exceedingly appropriate metaphors and/or examples to ponder. The story of David O. Dodd is also a metaphor for martyrdom for the folks that showed up at Mount Holly Cemetery yesterday. Martyrdom is a romantic concept. To some, the death David Owen Dodd is a symbol of denial of self in the furtherance of a noble and just cause.

The speeches were instructive. The great conflict that gave rise to yesterday's event was referred to repeatedly as "The War Between the States." There were copious references to "freedom" and "the cause." The blessings of Jesus Christ were invoked repeatedly. "Dixie" was sung by the troops. Many variations of the "Stars and Bars" were on display.

And these folks have an absolute right to peaceably assemble (something of a figure of speech since the ceremony involved the discharge of ersatz weaponry) and make speeches in which they espouse whatever they wish to believe while wearing the symbols of these beliefs.

But it's bad history. I am willing to bet that if you asked any of the organizers of yesterday's service to explain the root cause of the Civil War, none of them would mention the institution of slavery in the South. I'm leaving the rank and file out of this. I'm willing to suspend disbelief long enough to think that some of them are out there just to have a good time or because they gave up golf.

But as the great historian Casey Stengel might say, "You can look it up." Off the top of my head, it is my recollection that every declaration of secession from every state that broke off from the Union mentioned preservation of "the peculiar institution" to borrow Mr. Lincoln's phrase. And the "Northern aggression"-which was completely unaggressive until noted whiskey drinker U.S. Grant was given the keys-was instituted to put down the rebellion in service of preservation of the Union.

But you heard none of that yesterday. And that's OK. Everybody is entitled to their own view of history. You're certainly entitled to your own facts, I suppose, just so long as you're not in a debate. And there was no debate about the sanctity of the cause yesterday. Everyone there was a True Believer. Well, everybody but the media types and a former lawyer armed with both a camera and unrequited curiosity about such events.

The story of David O. Dodd is what it is. But it's not what it's not.

And we are certainly free, in this great country of ours, to believe what we will. Even if the guys that won get to write the history.

I Gotta Nikon Camera. I Love To Take Photographs.

2012-01-07T16:55:00.000-06:00

Every January 7, local Civil War reenactors gather at historic Mount Holly Cemetery in downtown Little Rock to commemorate the death of David O. Dodd the so-called "Boy Martyr of the Confederacy" who was executed by Union troops for being a spy. Those who are interested in the story can find it here:http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2536# .

Here are some pictures from today's ceremony. Suffice it to say these people take this stuff verrrrrry seriously. I'll have more on this tomorrow.

My New Year's Day Feeling

2012-01-01T10:20:00.000-06:00

The course was pretty jammed up last Friday. So Rick and I spent as much time talking as we did actually playing golf. At least it seemed that way.

" 2011 was a big year for you," he said as he was teeing it up. "Lots to deal with."

" Yeah," I said. "But it's mostly dealing with stuff. Some people have real problems. I don't have real problems."

"Don't sell this short," he said as he looked down range. " One of your best friends died. You walked away from a career. Granted, you wanted out for years. But that's a major life change.  And then there was all that other shit. That's a lot to deal with."

He pulled his tee shot into the woods.

" That's what I get for going all sensitive on you," he said. "Let's talk about something else."

2011 was turbulent. No doubt about that. But as the Buddhists say, "Storms can't hurt the sky." The storms pass. The sky abides.

There is not a day that passes where I don't think about my friend Hugh who died last February. As I have said before, people die. I get that. They have car wrecks. They have heart attacks. They get cancer. But Hugh was a big strong man. And he flipped over into a traumatic respiratory disorder none of us had ever heard of after catching the flu. None of us had any frame of reference for something like this.

The surgeon who did his trache pondered the irony with Laura and I. "All of us have had the flu," he said." It doesn't turn over into something like this except maybe in the elderly. This is just bad luck. Bad luck, pure and simple." Motor vehicle accident? I have a frame of reference for that kind of bad luck. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome? I got nothin'.

Or as Chris Riviere said after the funeral, " Boys, back when we were at Tulane could you have believed that something like this would happen to one of us?"

Non, mah bah. I still don't.

In retrospect, I don't believe that I consciously thought of Hugh exactly when I made the decision to accept early retirement. But I was keenly aware of the shortness of our temporal lives. My father, who died at 52, had too many mouths to feed to consider retirement. But he did express an interest on maybe going to law school at night. To maybe become a patent lawyer. Well, he didn't get that chance. A friend of mine in Jackson who expressed approval of my walking away from the Federal Building reminded me that Hugh wouldn't get the chance either. Life is short.

I still don't really know what 2012 will bring. Ending my safe and secure career was scary at first. But it's OK now. I have been approached by 2 or 3 people who want to know if I am available to talk about working for them. That is flattering and reassuring. Sure. I will be happy to talk to them. Finished the edits on the first resume I have done in 20 years. Those will be unleashed on an unsuspecting populace soon. I look good on paper. Then again, you've never seen a resume that starts off, " Well, to be perfectly honest....." Anyway, we shall see what we shall see. There are things I think I want to do that don't involve practicing law.  But I was also a pretty fair country lawyer. I don't know what the future holds. But I won't have to take in laundry or dip dogs in order to make money. I'm not anxious. I am at peace.

Rev. Nixon senses a spirituality about all of this that he encourages me to heed. "Listen to yourself," he said the other day. " Take your time and let that new voice inside you lead you to whatever it is that you are supposed to do."

I don't know about the spiritual aspect of all of this.  But retired or not, Vic is still a Methodist preacher. He knows what he is.  His antenna for the spiritual is still on high gain. Me? I'm still in the process of figuring it out. But I am at least trying to listen to that new voice.

2011 was for the most part just godawful. But I am not anxious. I am at peace.

After all, the storm has passed. The sky still abides.

Happy New Year.

My Christmas Feeling

2011-12-25T09:27:00.000-06:00

It occurs to me that I have never been sick on Christmas before. At least I can't remember a Christmas when I was THIS sick.

Now it's no big deal. Jim Mark told me on Monday that I had a sinus infection for which he gave me a shot in the ass and dreadfully expensive antibiotics. That aren't working apparently. I'm running about a half degree of fever and my throat feels as if I swallowed some steel wool. Oh well. If this is the worst that happens to me during the future Christmases I am allotted I will be fortunate. Not too far from where I am sitting there are folks in the cancer center at UAMS who are spending Christmas tethered to a pole.

I will get better. Some of them will not.

I hear church bells. Christmas on Sunday.

My day began with the phone buzzing with text messages and the IPad ringing with posts on Facebook. One of Hugh's girls wished me a Merry Christmas first thing. I imagine that this will be a hard day for them. I wished Susannah a Merry Christmas and I told her that I loved her. That's all I can do from over here. Come to think of it, that is about all I could do if I were in Jackson.

I have some presents but I don't much feel like opening them. My original plan for the morning was to go play golf at War Memorial down the street. It is a time honored tradition that guys walk War Memorial for free on Christmas day. I will not be in that number today. I will be doing good to get the stuff out on the grill this afternoon. Oh well. It is always best to measure one's expectations at Christmas. Christmas can be pretty overwhelming if let it.

Last night I joined the Baptists for a little service. I hadn't been in that old church in years. My new golf buddy Randy Hyde is that pastor there. I had never heard him preach before. So I walked my Methodist self in and took an aisle seat in the middle. Carolyn Staley, the assistant pastor there, came up to me and gave me a hug. She told me to go sit with her husband "so you won't have to sit alone."

I was sincerely moved by that small, considerate gesture. I live by myself. I do lots of stuff in my own company. It's no big deal to me. But it was to her.

I don't much know what I believe anymore. And I know that much of the biblical narrative of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth does not withstand the scrutiny of history. Christopher Hitchens pointed out once that humans existed in organized societies some 10,000 years before the Nativity. It was his position that to believe that God would wait that long, evidently doing nothing, only to intervene in human history to impregnate a young girl in the middle of the desert is ridiculous. It is a fair point.

But, as I have said before, there is power in myths. And often truth is subsumed therein. And as Dr. Hyde said last night, even in those days as it is in our present age, when the Middle East coughed the whole world heard it. So what better place to introduce the Kingdom of God? It is a fair point as well.

Who knows?

All I know is I that enjoyed the service last night. I felt very welcome there among my Baptist neighbors. I enjoyed seeing my golf buddy up in the pulpit. And it pleased me to conceive that God exists so you won't have to sit alone.

Merry Christmas.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-12-18T10:29:00.000-06:00

"I burned the candle at both ends...it often gave a lovely light."

I heard Christopher Hitchens speak at the Arkansas Literary Festival a few years ago. In retrospect it would have been about the time that he was diagnosed with the esophageal cancer that eventually killed him last Thursday at the age of 62. "god [sic]is not great" had just been published and he was on a promotional tour in the Deep South. As I sat in my seat awaiting the lecture it occurred to me that there was a period of time in Little Rock's not too distant past where the very idea that an avowed atheist could give a public lecture at a literary festival would be unthinkable. Then again, the idea of a literary festival was pretty much unthinkable around here as well.

I didn't know what to expect. Hitchens was nothing if not disputatious as one of the many obituaries gently pointed out. Would he chain smoke at the lectern? (One of his friends has reported that he smoked @ 130 cigarettes a day.) Would he be entirely sober? (Hitch drank a staggering amount of Scotch. No man this side of Faulkner wrote better with a buzz on.)

The Christopher Hitchens that I saw that day was gentle and soft-spoken. He was courtly and deeply respectful of the audience, especially of the elderly members who had questions. If atheism needed a PR man, Hitch was a good one that Spring day in the River Market.

Hitchens believed that religion "destroys everything." There is a story in "god is not great" that I remember to this day. A man was set upon by a masked gunman on a country road in Northern Ireland.

"Are you Catholic or Protestant?" the gunman asked.

"Neither," the nervous hostage replied." "I'm an atheist."

"Well then, " came the response. " Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?"

Now I don't know whether this story is apocryphal or not. But it is a perfect example of the complete madness of sectarian strife. One doesn't have to be an atheist to admit that Hitchens had a point about the potential dangers of religion and power. Look at the examples. The child abuse scandals involving the Catholic church. Radical Islam or "Islamofascism" as Hitchens put it. Look at how the Republican Party in this country has been hijacked by Christian conservatives. Garry Will, as devout as Hitchens was not, has sounded much the same alarm.

One of the more moving tributes to Hitch that I read came from a British journalist who said," With the death of Christopher Hitchens it feels like our culture just lost a limb."

Perhaps this apropos of nothing. But I thought of what passes for culture nowadays when I consulted Facebook this morning. Someone had posted a picture of an American soldier in full combat gear kneeling in prayer. Below the picture was a caption that said that the young soldier was fighting to preserve our rights "including the right to say 'Merry Christmas.'"

Now this is profoundly stupid on any level you care to explore. Pick one. Factually, legally, what have you. The fact that otherwise sentient people actually believe such utter tripe is evidence of a very real strain of paranoia to go along with the dumbing down of the culture.

This was the sort of inanity that Christopher Hitchens loved to skewer. He was argumentative, occasionally inconsistent, self-destructive and despised by many of his peers. But his opinions were never opaque. And he was utterly fearless in presenting them.

The culture has indeed lost a limb.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-12-11T09:09:00.001-06:00

The lady had just been released from jail. She had been incarcerated for "hot checks" the first week of December. She has 2 kids and a job at a fast food place here in town. I'm no criminal lawyer. But I know people in the prosecutor's office. And just like that other well known legal scholar Mick Jagger, I ain't too proud to beg. The prosecutor told me the Judge would let her out if she could come up with half of what she owed. 800 bucks. Which might have been 800,000 as far as this lady was concerned. And she had no relatives or other people here in town to pony up the "get out of jail card."

Mercifully, a local pastor agreed to pay the money. He went down there himself and got her out. God bless him. And 2 days later she met with me and the social worker. While I am not overly familiar with the internecine procedures of District Court, there was something about how all this went down that had me confused.

She sat on one end of the table in the Conference Room. I sat on the other. The LCSW sat between us.

"The reason we are meeting today," I said. "Is we want to figure out just how you got in this fix and what we have to do to keep you from going back to jail. You OK with this?"

"Yessir," she said. " I don't want to go back to that jail ever again."

"And we don't want you to go back."

"Tell me," I said. when did you first learn that you had been charged with writing hot checks?"

"When I was in traffic court here in Little Rock."

"I'm sorry. Traffic court in Little Rock. OK. Let's start there then."

"I got a ticket last Fall. Illegal lane change. That and I didn't have no insurance. So I had to go to the traffic court."

"OK."

"And that Judge up there said that there was a warrant for me over in Sherwood and that they were sending somebody to Little Rock to pick me up."

"So that's when you first learned about the warrants."

"Yeah but I kinda knew about the hot checks before then really."

"I beg your pardon?"

"They took my state tax refund to pay on them checks about 2009 or so."

"2009? When did you write the checks?"

"I bounced 2 checks to Kroger about 2004. I ain't written any checks since then."

"Can they do that?" the LCSW asked.

"Sure they can," I replied. "I've seen the IRS do it a million times on delinquent Federal debts."

"Ma'am how do you know that's why the offset your refund?" I asked the lady.

"I don't know what that means," she replied. "What's offset?"

"I'm sorry. When they took your refund. How did you know the reason they did that?"

"I got a piece of paper that said it was for those checks. I didn't think no more about it. I thought it was taken care of then."

"OK. So they took you to Sherwood. What happened there?"

" They took my fingerprints and snapped a photo. And ROR'd me."

She actually said "ROR."

"They told me to go to Court in December. So I went to Court and that Judge told me I had to pay $1600.00 or he was gonna throw me in jail. I was by myself. I didn't have $1600. So they put me in jail."

OK. This was making sense now. For some she didn't show up on the hot check charge. Maybe she moved and didn't leave a forwarding address. Maybe she never read the letter advising her of the Court date. 2 little checks plus a fine for a FTA and the running of interest and court costs can turn into a 1600 buck problem pretty quickly. There wasn't much else the Judge could do. Not and be fair to others that had similar stories that he had to make guests of the County.

"You have any other criminal charges?" I asked.

"Just that theft of property in 2003," she said. "But I've applied to the Governor for clemency."

"OK," I said. " Let's talk about THAT."

This went on about another 20 minutes. I struck by the fact that this lady was pretty clueless about she had gotten to this juncture. They offset her tax refund. She thought it took care of the problem. That had the ring of truth. But she also knew the acronym for "Released on Recognizance." This indicated to me that she had a nodding acquaintance with the system.

Not that it matters. She goes back to Court in January. She will be put on a payment schedule. She will pay it or she will go to jail. If she goes to jail, her kids will get picked up and they will be put into foster care. That's what we told her.

And it also struck me that the jails are full of low level criminal types for whom the social problem drives the legal problem. Folks for whom 1600 bucks is a princely sum. Folks that live from "pillar to post" as the old folks used to say, stumbling from one calamity to the next. Most of us can scarcely imagine getting into such a fix. But then again, most of us are really lucky.

So far so good. Money got found. Her social worker is on top of the problem now. But the keys to the jail are in the lady's hands.

And if she doesn't understand that, she doesn't have ears to hear. And the jails are full of those types of those people too.

Hillcrest Tree Lighting During Which I Took Pictures Of Everything But The Damn Tree

2011-12-08T08:46:00.000-06:00

How Not To Pick Your Spots

2011-12-06T14:38:00.000-06:00

I don't know if this story is apocryphal or not but it sure is a good one and is instructive on many levels.

Years ago, tennis star Andre Agassi was playing in the Legg-Mason tournament which is held in Cincinnati. His private plane touched down at 1 AM at an airstrip in rural Kentucky across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Andre, then solidly in the avis rara stage of his career, supposedly got freaked out by the lack of security in attendance (or more accurately NOT in attendance) when he got off the plane.

"Andre," the lady the tournament sent to pick him up supposedly said. "It's 1 in the morning and you are in rural Kentucky. Unless you play basketball or are on Hee Haw, nobody around here has a clue who you are."

Which brings up to the recent news of the arrest of mega head case Mindy McCready, who was arrested in Heber Springs, Arkansas by the authorities (State and Federal) on a warrant out of Florida where she is engaged in an exquisitely nasty custody fight with her parents over her child and from whence she had hit the trail.

Now, if I am on the lam and am a country music singer of some fame if not notoriety, I think that the last place I would try to make myself invisible would be Cleburne County, Arkansas or any other small town in the South where you probably can't swing a dead cat without hitting a country music fan.

Good thinking! What? She didn't have the gas money to make it clean on to Nashville?

As for Andre, he has settled comfortably in a relatively conventional life of husband and father. But I think if he ever needs to take a powder somewhere, I bet nobody knows him to this day in rural Kentucky.

Or Heber Springs either. If Mindy ever reads this, she could profit from his example. If she ever has to hide from the authorities again that is.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-12-03T15:10:00.072-06:00

Herman Cain may be many things. But he's not stupid. And since he is not stupid, how did he think that allegations of sexual harassment and infidelity would not eventually come to light during the white hot atmosphere of a presidential campaign? The most recent is a lady from Atlanta named Ginger White who claims that she had a 13 year relationship with him. Even had phone records and text messages to back up the claim.

Guess Herman Cain never heard of Houston Nutt.

Let me say this again. I could give a rip about what two consenting adults do in private, be it a romantic interlude or a commercial transaction. As I wrote about a certain prominent Arkansan's wandering from the marital hearth, if Hillary could live with it, I could live with it. I honestly do not care.

But really. What made John Edwards, Bill Clinton, and now Herman Cain think they could get away with it?

We all engage in compartmentalism. Which is to say that we tend to rationalize our faults and/or put them somewhere in our heads where we don't have to trip over them too often. A more extreme example of this behavior would be found in the interview of accused child molester Jerry Sandusky on the front page of yesterday's New York Times which may be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/sports/ncaafootball/at-center-of-penn-state-scandal-sandusky-tells-his-own-story.html?hp

As you can see, Coach continues to deny that he engaged in any deviant sexual behavior with minors. And he reveals himself to be a whiner in the process.

But sexual predators are a different breed of cat altogether. In Sandusky's case, he talked himself into believing that he was helping these kids and he sticks to this story in the interview. It is one thing to slip around on your spouse. (She's a bitch, she doesn't understand me, we're only married for the children's sake). It is quite another thing to take a shower with a 10 year old boy. (How the hell do you talk yourself into thinking THAT'S normal?) So let's forget pedophiles, although it is useful to note that Sandusky actually thought he had a shot at being Head Coach at Penn State someday despite his unsavory sexual proclivities. Evidently, he must have thought his criminal deviancy would never pop up in a background check.

But let us return to mere garden variety egomaniacs. There is the thought being bandied about that Cain wasn't really all that serious about running for President much in the way it was the suspicion that Mike Huckabee was mainly in it for the money down the road. But still, why put yourself in the public spotlight thereby running the risk of humiliating your spouse and/or hurting your family and supporters? How could you?

A buddy of mine has a working theory that a person has to be borderline crazy to want to put themselves through electoral politics at a certain level. Or maybe any level. I have a buddy in the Arkansas State Legislature. You ought to hear some of the stories he's told me.

There may be something to my friend's theory. You would have to be crazy to think that you can cat around with and give money to a woman not your spouse for 13 years and that it can be kept a secret when all of a sudden you decide to thrust your philandering self into a race for a public office. He wasn't sleeping with her? Right. Name me another man in our common experience who is giving money to a woman over that length of time who isn't showing him where the horse bit her.

I mean c'mon. That's crazy. And he was leading on that side of the aisle for a bit. And now serial philanderer Newt is "trending" as they say. In the race to become the standard bearer for the party that allegedly stands for an exceedingly cramped view of Christian morality.

This is crazy.

But maybe the R's are counting on their lunatic base to compartmentalize as well.

AWOL

2011-11-27T09:33:00.000-06:00

No Sunday post today. Too much stuff going on. Will be back next Sunday with yet another heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

Talk among yourselves.

My Thanksgiving Feeling

2011-11-23T11:01:00.000-06:00

I would like to think that, for the most part, I am a grateful man. While I have had my ups and downs since last year, much like you, I have on, the whole, nothing much to complain about. Allow me to take a moment to count my many blessings in this space.

First of all, I would like to thank the Civil Service Retirement System. While it is not responsible for the content of this message, it allows me the freedom to sit here in tennis shorts and a Nikon sweater on a Thursday morning rather than being at the law office. As a corrollary, I am grateful that I had a long career. Likewise, I am grateful for the prospect of doing something else.

I am grateful for my friends, both old and new. As I have written elsewhere, the outpouring of love and affection upon the news of my retirement was beyond what I expected or deserved. I am truly blessed beyond measure. I do not take my good fortune or the love of others for granted as I know now all too well how fragile they can be.

I am grateful that I have become even closer to old friends. As Mark said, "We got a good thing going here, Bowen. Let's not mess it up." Although he did not use the word "mess." And I am grateful for new friends. You can never have too many. At least I can't. One of my new friends is a Baptist preacher. Another is a therapist. It doesn't hurt to hedge one's bets.

I am grateful to have few wants and even fewer needs. I am grateful to have some time to figure out what my next step will be. I am grateful for Amy at the gym. This is despite the fact that she attempts to kill me on a routine basis. Female trainers are the worst. They get ahold of a fit man and they treat him like he just bounced a check.

I grateful for the opportunity to read another short story for the Tales From The South Holiday show. Next Tuesday. Starving Artist Cafe. In Argenta. 5 bucks at the door.

I am grateful for the tolerance of shameless plugs such as the one above.

I am grateful for Ronnie and Alicia, my new friends from Thibodaux. They will return to UAMS next week so that Alicia can begin her stem cell treatments. They will spend the Holidays here in LR. I am grateful my friend Chris Riviere told me that they were here and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve these wonderful strangers at my gate. I just hope that Ronnie,him, makes gumbo again back at the RV, non.

I am grateful for how I spent last Thanksgiving. If you have a chance to express your gratitude to someone or to return a favor, do it now. You may not get another chance. Having said that I am grateful for a more acute appreciation for those opportunities when second chances present themselves.

I am grateful for my good health. Oddly enough, my blood pressure dropped a good 10 points since last year. I wonder what we can attribute that to. While I am grateful to be healthy and strong, I do not take it for granted. Read the recent headlines in the Sports section. Hang around over at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Center awhile. You think you got problems? You don't have problems. And neither do I.

I am grateful for Newt Gingrich. This is great.

I am grateful for the return of college basketball. Especially since it looks like the NBA is going to shoot itself in the head.

I am grateful for Community brand Dark Roast coffee direct from New Orleans. I am grateful for friends bearing whisky. I am grateful for Brother Richard and his gentle wisdom. I am grateful for the fact that I caught that I had accidentally spelled "gentle" "gentile." Which is kinda funny if you think about it. I am grateful for a woman who likes me because she thinks that I am kind as much as anything else. I will take that. That would have pleased my mother who liked me because she thought I was "such a gentle man, just like your father."

Maybe that's why me and Brother get along.

I am grateful for a roof over my head. A new one at that. I am grateful that I had sense enough to listen to Uncle Howard 30 years ago and always set aside money with each paycheck. That's why I can afford to carry on my profligate ways for at least 7 months to a year before I have to get serious about other employment. I am grateful that my youngest brother is about to get out of court finally. I am grateful for the certain knowledge that even the nastiest, most protracted litigation must always come to an end.

I am grateful for my license to practice law. Oddly, enough I'm starting to miss it. Didn't see that one coming.

I am grateful for another Thanksgiving and the opportunity to see my family in Heber. I am grateful that there's a lot of water going under the bridge. It needs to stay under the goddamn bridge.

And I am grateful for you. Whoever and wherever you are.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Townsman of a Stiller Town.

2011-11-21T19:08:00.001-06:00

To-day the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at the threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

"To An Athlete Dying Young," by A.E. Housman

I knew Garrett Uekmann in much the same way that most people in Little Rock did: as a football and basketball player at Catholic High School here and later as a tight end for the Arkansas Razorbacks. And that's OK. He was just a kid and there was not much reason for people other than his friends, teachers and family to know him much beyond the limited context of the honors he achieved on the playing field. However, I can say this. I never heard the single bad word uttered about him. And that's not true of everybody either at Fayetteville or Catholic High.

He was in his sophomore year in college, well on the path of formation to someone other than just an athlete, when he was found dead in his room last Sunday morning. The mind reels. How can this be? 19 years old. An elite DI athlete, strong as 3 men. And from all accounts he just "up and died" as the old folks say. I cannot possibly imagine what his parents are going through right now. Cannot possibly imagine.

Years ago, I attended a funeral service for a man who died in an accident. Jim's hobby was remodeling houses. He accidentally got across a hot wire in an attic one day. And that was that.
The homilist at his funeral Mass was Andrew McDonald, the Bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock at that time. He told a story from early in his ministry when he was confronted by another tragic loss of life that was equally unfathomable. I paraphrase. But not by much.

"There was a young couple in my first parish church. Devout. Strong in their faith. Their only child had just drowned in the lake. They came to see me not only for solace but they wanted answers. They wanted to know how something as unspeakable as this could have happened to a couple as devout as they?

All of my studies, all of my training at seminary and in graduate school did not provide me with an answer. Neither did my own faith in God. So I told them, 'As God is my witness, I do not know why these things happen.'"

Bishop McDonald paused for a moment.

"I stand here today as your Bishop," he said. "And as God is my witness I still do not know why these things happen."

And perhaps that is still the only answer.

Scant solace for his thunderstruck friends and devastated family, to be sure.

But perhaps the only answer.

Rest in peace, you good boy who had no need of rest so soon. Rest in peace.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-11-20T07:51:00.000-06:00

My friend GiGi motioned for me at the back of the courtroom. She was sitting next to an Asian lady.

"Ask him," she said, pointing to me." He would know."

"They said we can take pictures."

"Yes ma'am.  This is the only time cameras and cell phones are allowed in a Federal Courtroom. You may take a picture."

" Will I be able to take a picture when my husband takes the Oath?"

"No ma'am," I said. "They will administer the Oath to everyone at once. But when your husband goes up to receive his Certificate, you can go up and take his picture then."

"That won't be a problem?"

"No ma'am. Absolutely it will not."

"Oh good," she said, obviously relieved. "This is such a happy day. I'm glad I can take a picture. Thank you."

"Thank you. And congratulations."

I suppose I have sung the National Anthem for at least 7 Naturalization Ceremonies. I got this job due to the fact that up until last October I was the best tenor in the Federal Building. Now I'm just the best tenor the United States District Clerk has on speed dial.

It's a fun gig. I try to get there early to avoid the jam at the security point by the entrance. If a Color Guard is there, I go through the drill with them. Unless, it's the Marine Junior ROTC from Catholic High. With them, "just like at the ball game boys. The flag is presented and we do the Anthem." suffices.

Usually, the Clerk takes me back to chambers to shake hands with the Judge before Court is convened. Friday's ceremony was presided over by United States Magistrate Judge Beth Deere. We go to the same church. Last month's ceremony was run by United States Bankruptcy Judge Audrey Evans. She lives down the street from me. I used to be scared to death of Federal Judges. Now I pretty much know them all. This is all pretty cool.

Yesterday, as I sat on a bench near the Bench waiting for the show to start, it occurred to me that people that hate the the government would do well to see one of these ceremonies. Of course, it also occurred to me that a bigot who hates the government (and they sometimes are one and the same) would probably be alarmed to see so many Asians, Hispanics and Arabic people assembled in one spot.

To some of these lunatics, the government is represented by a Muslim illegal immigrant who is trying to take their guns and do away with Medicare.  If the average Tea Party wing nut were to attend a Naturalization Ceremony, assuming they could get through the security point without packing a gun, they would see something else: the entire magisteria of civil authority in the service of all manner of people from distant shores. In the Courtroom Friday I saw representatives of the military, law enforcement, the goddamn Postal Service even and elected representatives. The Courtroom Security Officers enter.  Unlike the average day in Court, they aren't all tightassed.

"All rise!"

A Federal Judge appears.

"The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, United States Magistrate Judge Beth Deere, presiding in now in session. All those that have business before this Honorable Court, draw near, and you shall be heard. God save this Honorable Court and God save the United States of America."

I always watch my new fellow citizens as the Judge is announced. Some of them smile. Some are transfixed. Some are in tears. The Judge has taken the Bench. They are about to become Americans by rule of law.

I thought of something else as well while sitting out there on my little bench. Weirdly enough, I thought of Tim McVeigh. Rather, I thought of the spoken by the Judge when he condemned McVeigh to death.

The judge said something along the lines of "The Government is not some abstraction that looms over us. The Government is people just like you and me."

The Government is people like you and me. And last Friday around 50 people got to be part of it. Just like you and me. Just like the Tea Party.

Like the lady said. Such a happy day.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-11-12T18:23:00.000-06:00

Ronnie and Alicia had never been to Little Rock before. But then again, Alicia had never been diagnosed with multiple myeloma before.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is one of the leading centers in the world for the treatment of this dreadful disease. I have heard that people show up on the steps of Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church with literally nothing more than a suitcase and a piece of paper that says "UAMS."

Ronnie and Alicia took a more conventional route although they decided to go ahead with a planned vacation to Albuquerque after their doctor back in Thibodaux gave the bad news to the kids and them. Their doctor told them to come to Little Rock. So when their vacation was over they pointed the RV East and headed to the People's Republic of Hillcrest where they knew not a soul to begin Alicia's treatment.

I received the news that I had strangers at the gate via-what else?-text message. My Tulane buddy Chris Riviere was deer hunting with a relative of theirs when he found out. He sent Mike Robichaux-the relative- an email with my contact information and copied me in on it. Chris sent me another text asking me to check on them.

Small world, non?

I met Ronnie last Sunday in the lobby of the Winthrop Rockefeller Cancer Center at UAMS. He was standing by the elevators. He had a Subway sandwich in one hand and a Toyota cap on his head.

"You must be Paul from Tulane."

"You must be Ronnie." We shook hands.

"How's it going?"

Tears. Oh God.

"It's hard, man," his Cajun accent pronouncing it hod , " It's been hard."

By now I'm crying too. Great. What a sight that must have been, two grown men and all. After we had composed ourselves we went up to see Alicia.

She was sitting in a recliner tethered to a pole. They found me a chair. I sat and held her hand. We got to know each other. Being a woman, she is tougher than either Ronnie or I. She told me about her kids and grandkids. She talked about how nice the folks at UAMS were. They both talked about how pretty they thought Little Rock was although Ronnie said he could do without all of the Hogs depicted everywhere. I advised him to keep those thoughts to himself. I also told him he was lucky that the only peoplein the room that understood his thick Cajun accent that delivered that observation were his wife and I.

"I know there is no cure," Alicia said as I prepared to leave. " But I hope this will buy me a little more time. I would like to spend more time with my family. To see my grandchildren grow some more. That's all I want. The doctors say it is treatable. That's all I want."

The biggest lie in the world is contained in the phrase "I know how you feel." Unless, of course, you know how someone feels. I can only imagine how lonely it must be for folks from rural Acadiana to be uprooted from their insular Cajun life and to be inserted into the booming buzzing confusion that is UAMS.

I am just happy that I can provide, through mutual friends in this small, small world, a tenuous connection to home. I understand them perfectly when they talk. Except on voicemail. Cajun voicemail so far is indecipherable to me. But that's OK. My pingy Arkansas accent probably hurts their ears. What's important is that we are all here for each other.

Like I told Ronnie, " I know everybody in this goddamn town and half of them owe me something. We're gonna get y'all some support." Not exactly the Beatitudes. But that's how I roll.

As I type this, Ronnie, Alicia and their son Greg are heading South having spent the night in Vidalia to break up the drive to Thibodaux. They will be back here in late November. By then, hopefully, I will have both the Catholics and the Methodists layin' for them. And I know a couple of female cancer survivors that I can sic on Alicia. The biggest lie in the world in the phrase "I know how you feel." They know how she feels.

Once upon a time I wrote-concerning the passing of Kurt Vonnegut of all things-that hope abides in the heart that loves. The days ahead will be hard indeed for my new friends. But Alicia loves her family and she loves her life.

And so hope abides.

Speak, Memory

2011-11-11T15:24:00.000-06:00

My friend Richard sent me a message on Facebook-of course-after he read my Father's Day post. He wanted to share his recollection of something my Father once said either to him or to one of the classes he taught at Mabelvale United Methodist Church. For the uninitiated, this means he was relating something that took place no later than the early seventies.

Now, as anybody who has ever done a deposition can tell you, memory can be a tricky thing. I wish I had a nickle for everytime I have seen somebody testify under oath about what they remember with crystalline clarity to be true only to have a document shoved under their noses prove the opposite. It's not that these people are all liars. Memory is selective. People tend to remember what they want to remember. People confuse emotions with facts. It's just human nature.

But I have known Richard about as long as I have known anybody. And so I know that there is not an ounce of confabulist in him. So I will just relay the message.

Richard said that the discussion that day during United Methodist Youth or whatever group my father was leading concerned the proposed Vietnam Memorial. He says that my father didn't think much of the notion.

He said that Buck talked about being at Guadalcanal and how you could smell fear in the air.

"Your Dad said he got so sick of that smell and being so sick of being afraid himself that one day he set up on a trench and smoked a cigarette," Richard wrote."

" You want a monument to war?," he remembers Buck saying. "Go down to the State Capitol grounds and dig a slit trench. Fill it with all the trash and rubbish you can find. Urinate in it. Defecate in it. Now let it fester a couple of weeks in the sun. That's your monument to war."

There are a couple of problems with this recollection. My father didn't serve at Guadalcanal. However, although he was in the Navy, as a Seebee he served on many islands that the Marines had taken over and so he would have been familiar with the contents of a slit trench. Further, my father was a painfully shy man, especially around women and girls. Accordingly, while I can't imagine Buck ever using elevated bathroom language in front of high school kids, the slit trench as a metaphor for the ennui and degradation of war would have come easily to him. So it might have been Buck.

Most likely the speaker was Mr. Dalton Miller, who did indeed serve in the Marine Corps in the Pacific Theatre. I have no recollection as to where he fought but that much I am sure of.

But it doesn't matter. As we lawyers say, the story has the "ring of truth." Richard most assuredly heard the story from a veteran whose actual wartime experiences made his view of war cynical and unromantic. That's all that matters. And it stuck with him to this day.

And whoever the speaker was, we owe him a debt of gratitude along with all the other men and women who have worn, and will wear, the uniforms of the Armed Services of the United States of America. To me, the slit trench is only a metaphor. To either my Dad or Mr. Miller, the slit trench served both as metaphor and a disgusting reality of daily life at one time in their youth back during the Big One.

Thanks to them and all the other veterans, I vote as I please, pretty much say what I please and go to church wherever I want. Or I don't go if I don't want to. Thanks to them, I was able to spend my youth and young adulthood acquiring an education and a profession. Thanks to them, I enjoyed a good career from which I was fortunate to retire early. Thanks to them, you and I enjoy a measure of personal autonomy that is the envy of much of the world.

And thanks to them, never had to sit atop a slit trench in order to cover up the smell of fear all around me.

For all of these things, I give thanks to our vets. Thank you. Thank you.

Big Trouble In Happy Valley

2011-11-09T14:41:00.000-06:00

By now, even the non-sports world is reeling from the sordid tale of the sexual assault of a young boy in the locker room shower in Penn State's stadium by a former coach and the subsequent completely inadequate response on the part of very important people in the athletic hierarchy who were informed about it.

Let us begin by reconstructing a basic timeline. In 1977, Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky starts a non-profit called "Second Mile" which is created to assist at-risk youth. More on this later. Sandusky resigned from Penn State around 1999 or so. However, he still had a parking place, keys to the building and an office at the athletic complex.

On March 2, 2002, a graduate assistant informs Head Football Coach Joe Paterno that he had seen Sandusky having sex with a young boy-adjudged to be about 10-in the shower in the football locker room the night before. On March 3, Paterno advises Athletic Director Tim Curley that the GA saw Sandusky "doing something of a sexual nature with a young boy." No law enforcement investigation is launched.

Later in 2002, Second Mile gets wind of the shower incident. The AD tells Second Mile there was no "finding of wrongdoing" on the part of Sandusky. Still, law enforcement not advised although Sandusky by this time has been relieved of his 24/7 access to the locker room and is advised by Penn State not to bring anymore Second Mile kids around the facility.

From 2005-2007 Sandusky begins another relationship with a Second Mile kid. Buys him gifts. Takes him to sporting events. According to testimony before the Grand Jury, Sandusky performed oral sex on this boy 20 times during this period.

In 2008, the kid's Mother reports Sandusky to his High School principal. Sandusky is banned from coming on campus and the police are notified. Eventually, Sandusky is indicted on numerous counts of sex with children. The Athletic Director and one other administrator are indicted for lying before the Grand Jury. Paterno escapes any criminal sanction.

Paterno says he advised AD of sexual activity. AD testifies that Paterno told them that Sandusky and the boy were merely "horsing around."

At this point, let us distill this down to the simplest essence.

I have coached youth sports for years. I never, and I do mean NEVER touch a kid outside the presence of another adult. While I have devoted much of my life to being a friend to kids, I do not have a peer relationship with any of them. It has been my recent privilege to have 3 boys in my life and I came to love them very much. But I was not in love with them.

If somebody came to me and told me that they saw one of my fellow coaches, or acquaintances even, was seen naked with a child, not only would I have informed law enforcement, I would probably have to be physically restrained from killing the son of a bitch. Since when is a grown man in the shower with a naked boy "horsing around?" I don't know whether Joe Paterno had a mandatory duty as the Head Football Coach to notify law enforcement as would a doctor, a minister, or-yes-the principal that finally sounded the alarm. I don't know whether I have a mandatory reporting responsibility as a coach of youth sports.

But I don't need to know what my legal responsibilities are. I know what my moral responsibilities are as one who is privileged to be entrusted with other people's children. And it wouldn't take me very long to connect the dots between Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile. Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is," he replied. It is not completely cynical to suggest that Sandusky was informed by a similar logic when he incorporated Second Mile.

I don't get on my High Horse very often around here. But I'm up there now and I'm digging in the spurs.

And the kid that Sandusky is accused of molesting between 2005-2007? That's on Joe Paterno. That's on Tim Curley. Hell, it's on the Graduate Assistant. But at least he reported it to SOMEBODY.

Paterno says he will retire at the end of the year. You goddamn right he will. If I'm Penn State, I tell him to hit the bricks yesterday.

Because any kid molested by that bastard after 2002, that's on Joe Paterno.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-11-06T07:02:00.000-06:00

The woman that told me this story swears it's true. And it is the worst retirement story I have heard thus far. A man retired from a job with the State of Arkansas. He sold his house and moved to another town 50 miles away. This man evidently did not have much to occupy his time. So twice a week he drives back to Little Rock to do his old job on a voluntary basis.

Is that not the saddest thing you've ever heard? Well, there are sadder things. We all hear about the guys (and they are all guys) who work until they are 75 or so and then drop dead within the year. And lately, all of the comedians in my life-and they evidently are Legion-have reminded me that the recently deceased Andy Rooney and I both retired last month. And look what happened to him. Please. Andy Rooney was 92. The fact that he died a month after he retired from CBS is not nearly as remarkable as the fact that he worked into his nineties. I can't imagine living into my nineties much less working then. Not that there's much chance of that. The men in my family tend to check out way ahead of what the actuaries prophesy.

Still, people ask me all the time, "How's it going?" or the equivalent. And here's what I tell them.

It's going OK. I'm not going to lie to you. At first it was just awful. Unlike the man in the story that opened this post, I did not miss my old job. Indeed, I still don't. Rarely do I even think about it unless somebody from the office calls me or sends an e-mail or something. Oh, I miss most of the people I worked with. But I keep in touch with most of them. As I told one of my Louisiana friends, as long as they keep playing college football, he and I will remain in touch. But I don't miss the job. That's huge. And the realization of this early on was the anchor to which I held during those terrible first weeks.

What was so terrible? Hard to put a finger on it. There were certain complicating factors of which I was unaware until that point in time that added to the feeling of dissonance I was experiencing at first. To borrow Mr. Eliot's lovely phrase, sometimes the moment is forced to its crisis. So it goes.

My friend Gisele called me from her vacation. She wanted to know how things were going.

"Awful," I bravely said. "Just awful."

"I was afraid of that," she said. Then she told me something I had never considered. Or had even heard before.

"Paul," she said. I could tell from her voice that she was shifting into full blown clinical psychologist mode. "You don't have to earn your self-esteem anymore. You had a great career. You have a wonderful reputation in the community. You are loved by more people than anyone I know. You earned this by your actions and your service. And you don't need a job right now to maintain your self esteem."

Boy. That was exactly what I was doing. Didn't see that one coming.

"Be still. Just like the Bible says," she said. "Now is your time to be still. There will be plenty of time for a second career. Enjoy this while you can."

I kept these things and pondered them in my heart. And in time, the Big Picture that I had lost sight of returned to me. Of COURSE this is not all the money I will make for the rest of my life. Of COURSE, I will work again, Of COURSE people won't forget about me. And of COURSE I will have someone in my life again.

The line between navel gazing and having one's head up one's ass can be pretty thin. I believe I crossed it.

So how are things going? OK. If the first pension check is any indication (and people say the first one is never right) I can sustain my normal level of profligacy for about 7 months or so based on the money I have in my checking account. But I hope to be working again before then. I have retained a resume service. I got the first draft last week. As the old saying goes, I look good on paper.

I have made new friends. Men and women. One of them is a Baptist preacher. Most people find this astounding given-shall we say-my historic (ummmmm antipathy is too strong) differences with the Baptist communion. Differences. Let's go with differences. But Randy and I just mainly talk about golf and photography. But the other night, while we shooting pictures off the Clinton Library bridge at twilight he made a reference to his "personal theology of hell."

Now this is pretty un-Baptist. To most Baptists-at least the ones I grew up with-Hell is not a theological concept. It is a geographical location. Like Memphis. This is great. The scales have fallen from my eyes.

What else? I've been taking lots of pictures. That's nothing new. I'm working with a trainer again after a hiatus. That's nothing new. Playing golf 2-3 times a week. The frequency is the only thing that's new. I generally walk twice a day mainly in hopes of getting the pinched nerve in my back that has returned to loosen up. Doing a lot of reading. Cleaned out the shed. Replaced the crap in there that got hauled off with other crap. Like the box filled with my degrees and licenses.

My boy Chris from Thibodeaux has a friend up here at UAMS with bone cancer. Wants me to check on she and her husband. Talked to her husband before the Razorback game. Listening to that wonderful accent made me wonder if I would need to provide translation services for the folks at the hospital. Anyway, Ronnie said they would like a visit from the Catholic clergy. I am plugged in to the Catholics around here. Not to mention the Baptists all of a sudden. But I can make that happen. Ronnie also asked me if I knew where he could park his RV for a week. I told him I would have to get back to him on that one.

I'm glad Chris reached out. It's good to feel useful.

But not much has changed in my life except I now get paid just for breathing.

So it's going OK. At least it is now that I have got my eye back on the Big Picture.

Thanks for asking. Know where I can park an RV for a week?

My Sunday Feeling

2011-10-30T08:55:00.001-05:00

I was in the clubhouse of the apartment complex minding my own business and watching the World Series when I felt the tug on my arm.

"You've got to come outside! You've got to help! Please hurry!" a fellow guest at the party yelled as she pulled me to the patio.

I had seen them together earlier in the evening. Some of the folks had come to the party in Halloween attire. She was dressed like some kind of cat. A really good looking cat. Like me, he was in civilian dress. Unlike me, he was in her face.

" Fuck you," he yelled. He was obviously drunk. He had her by the arm. She was struggling to get away.

At this point in the narrative let me make something abundantly clear. If there is a bravery gene in my family makeup I did not inherit it. Similarly speaking, the word "gallant" has rarely been bandied about in any discussion about me insofar as I know. But this was trouble. And something had to be done. And for some reason, I was the instrument chosen by Catgirl's friend to try to get this turned off.

I stepped in between them. I put my hip into her body and blocked her away from Prince Charming.

"Hey, you stay out of this!" he screamed at me.

I pointed my finger at him. "You have to leave," I said in as calm a voice as I could muster.

Catgirl's head was buried between my shoulder blades. I put my left arm around her from behind me. All those years playing basketball turned out to be surprisingly useful at that moment.

"Fuck yooooou!" he screamed. His fists were balled up. His face was crimson and contorted by rage. It occurred to me that he resembled a child throwing a tantrum. So this is why we don't let children drink whisky.

"You have to leave," I said again. By this time, the only sound on the patio was from the television in the clubhouse. People were staring. He noticed. He also noticed that he was outnumbered. And so he stomped away, F-bombs dopplering off in his wake.

I sat Catgirl down.

"Are you OK?" I asked.

"Um-huh," she said as she took a badly needed sip of her wine.

"Do you need a place to stay tonight? I know a place you can go if you have to."

"No. I'll be OK. He won't come back. "

Her Android buzzed. She looked at it briefly and set it down.

"Guess who?" she said through a thin smile. " I'm not talking to him."

"Would you mind telling me just what the HELL happened here?" I asked although I had a pretty good idea.

"He was mad at me to begin the evening because he didn't like my outfit. He thought it was too revealing, she said. "That and he has been drinking."

"Well," I said. "So has everybody else at this party tonight. But not everybody is acting like an asshole. You need to pay attention to this. I'm not kidding."

She took another sip. She smiled. She squeezed my hand.

"Thank you," she said. "I really appreciate it."

Her phone buzzed again.

I went back into the clubhouse to get my self a glass of the amber liquid. The woman who had summoned me minutes earlier came up and hugged me.

"God that was awful," she said. " Weren't you scared?"

"Of course I was scared," I said. "Absolutely I was scared."

"This isn't the first time he's gone off on her. She'll let him come back."

"I'm not surprised, " I said. "Trust me. I'm not surprised."

I didn't stay much longer after the evening's amusement. I didn't think that I needed to be hanging around in case our hero returned with a gun to settle the score.

It is said, as a matter of statistics, that a woman has to leave 5 times before she makes the final decision to escape an abusive relationship for good. I've never really understood that. But people that have studied these matters say that dynamics of abuse are more complicated than folks are generally aware.

Maybe so. Maybe no. I used to help run a women's shelter. I just think that there are some things that we aren't meant to understand.

This much I do know. I've never gone off on a woman. And I don't know any woman that I've ever been involved with who would tolerate such behavior out of me. I also know that this incident is proof that abusive behavior crosses all lines and stratas. After all, this didn't exactly go down in a biker bar.

I'm just glad that I was able to successfully intervene and slow this jerk down long enough for him to realize that all the eyes of the party were on him. And that he was making a big mistake. I guess he realized it. In any event, he left and nobody got hurt.

I'm also glad that he didn't have a gun. Really, really glad.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-10-23T08:48:00.000-05:00

The literary world may lift a sigh toward Heaven but there will be no MSF today. Between Miracle League, Race For The Cure and covering something for a buddy today I ain't got time.

Will be back next week.

Talk among yourselves.

Vox Populi: Message In A Bottle

2011-10-20T08:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got a card from a lady friend I haven't heard from in awhile. The outside of the card said "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Inside, she described the piece I did for the paper about retirement as "a major housecleaning." She went on to write:

"The best way to predict your future is to create it."

"Sometimes the hardest role to play is yourself."

"You can't get to a place that you don't believe exists."

"Do or not do. There is no try. Yoda said that."

Finally, "Don't close the door completely. Just find another one to kick in."

Do or not do. Find another door to kick in.

The lady knows me.

And I know that I am very fortunate that my universe still has people like her in it while I "clean the house."

Very fortunate. And humbled beyond measure by all of this kindness.

I'm lucky. I know it. I do not take it for granted.

And I think I owe somebody lunch.

How Indeed?

2011-10-19T15:06:00.001-05:00

I was invited to attend services at a church in the neighborhood by a friend of mine. Inviting a friend to church is a lovely tradition here in the South. As for me, I have always found that it does me good to hear Mass said now and again. I'm playing golf tomorrow with the Senior Pastor of the Baptist church down the street tomorrow. Haven't heard Bro. Randy preach yet but first things first.

I really have been irregular in my church attendance for the past 6 months or so. A nominal Methodist at my most fervent, I seem to have spent most of my recent Sundays here at home or off doing something else. So I was pleased to receive the invitation if for no other reason than I had never set foot in this particular church.

Once I found my friend I sat down and scanned the program. It was clear from the Order of Worship that this congregation is a little more evangelical than what I am used to and I am no fan of so-called "praise music." But it pleased me to be sitting with a friend at a different church on a beautiful Sunday morning. And I looked forward to the service.

But what I really looked forward to was singing the first hymn which was the stately old Baptist(not Quaker as is it is widely misidentified) hymn "My Life Flows On" otherwise known as "How Can I Keep From Singing?" The hymn tune sprang immediately to my mind as I read the program. After all, God knows I have sung them all. If you will pardon the expression. But to paraphrase a very famous Methodist, my heart grew "strangely warm" as the pianist played the first bars.

Hymns can have that effect on people. And there is no accounting for taste in this area. While there are any number of hymns that I love, my Mother's favorite was the dreadful "In The Garden." Which alongside "Are Ye Able?" are two of the worst hymns in Christendom, much less the Methodist hymnal. But I digress. The congregation started the first verse.

"My life flows on in endless song,
above earth's lamentations,
I hear the sweet, tho' far-off hymn
That hails a new creation."

Then came the refrain. Draw near.

"No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I'm clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?"

No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I'm clinging. The word "inmost" is voiced with alternating half-steps while the word "calm" goes down a major third. No where else but in the refrain are words set to music in such a declarative fashion. Boy. That's heavy stuff.

Some folks have a mojo. I have an inmost calm. Or I did. My friend Jennifer Imbro once told me, "You know what I like about you? You're quiet." It is good to be liked by the Jennifer Imbros of this world.

But quiet ain't calm.

Somewhere along the way I have lost my rock. I need to find it again. Or another one to replace the one that evidently has disappeared.

There are worst places to began the search than singing a wonderful old hymn with friends old and new as sunlight streamed through the stained glass.

This is do-able. After all, love is lord of heaven and earth. How can I keep from singing?

For some reason, Blogger won't let me upload youtube videos. So I have attached a link to a performance of this wonderful old hymn by the Los Altos High School choir in Palo Alto, California. The arrangement is not as tricked out as some I found. And these kids really sing well. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYZ8dIXvvX4

My Sunday Feeling

2011-10-16T07:53:00.000-05:00

I recognized the number in the Caller ID as being one of the "Tall Building" law firms here in town. I figured it was probably one of lawyer buddies from the world of work. Probably wanted to get some lunch. I was wrong.
"I swear. You are the hardest son of a bitch to find in Little Rock," said the voice of an elderly man.

"Well, there's no longer any particular need for anybody to find me," I said. "To whom do I have the pleasure of talking to?"

Turns out that the voice on the other end belonged to a much beloved gentleman who is greatly prominent in banking and the legal community around here. I know him just a little. But he is the kind of guy that knows everybody. And how to find anybody.

"I read your essay in the paper about you retiring from the government. I thought I would try to get in touch with you. See how you're doing."

" Well, it's kind of surreal," I said. "I don't know what to make of it right now."

"And you can't. Not right now. How old are you?"

"55."
"See, that's young. I retired 3 times in my career. I'm proof you can have more than one career in your life if you keep your health. Anyway, they let me have a little office up here. But they don't let me stay very long during the day on account of I have a terminal illness."
"Oh my God. I am so sorry. I had no idea.?"

"Yeah. Old age. I'm 88. Anyway, 55 is nothing. You'll be OK. You'll find something to do. I don't want you to have a worried mind."
"I won't," I bravely replied. " I mean, I got a job offer just last week."

"Don't take it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said don't take it."

"Well, I only brought it up because it's an encouraging sign."

"Of course it is. But don't take it."

"Oh. Well, I didn't. Although I was quite flattered."

"You aren't married are you?"

"No sir."

"Didn't think so. There are 3 things you don't need to be doing right now while your trying to get your bearings. You don't need to get married. You don't need to buy real estate. And you don't want to take a job just yet. Not unless it's something that you really, really want to do. And I would think long and hard about it before I committed to it. But in general, this is not the time to make any big decisions."

"I don't plan on doing any of those things any time soon, Sir."

"I want you to call me next week. I want to buy you lunch and we'll have a good talk about your next step."

"I would like that very much. I will call you next week."

And with that we hung up.

As I have written, I don't know what the future holds. But I think it's going to be OK. All I know is that although I have stumbled here and there I have been supported and nudged along by the best friends a man can possibly have. I am truly blessed far beyond what I either expected or deserve.

I look forward to lunch next week with my crusty old friend. I am fortunate beyond measure to still have a wise elder with whom I can confer.

They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. It's going to be OK.
"Oh hell yes it is, Paul," my friend said. "Hell yes. It's going to be just fine."

The student is ready.

I'm The Best

2011-10-13T12:34:00.000-05:00

I am taking pictures at the fashion show that closes out Harvest Fest in Hillcrest Saturday night. This afternoon the lady in charge of the production was called away by a phone call while explaining the drill to me in her shop.

"Excuse me," someone said.

I turned to behold a tall young white kid resplendent in tattoos and dreadlocks. And I do mean tall. He had to be at least 6' 7".

"Excuse me," he said again. "I hate to eavesdrop. But did I hear correctly that you are the photographer for the fashion show?"

"I'm one of them," I said while looking up at him.

" Do you have a makeup artist?"

"Do I have a what?"

"Do you have a makeup artist? Because I'm the best," he said with an offhand gesture, palm up to the sky. Replete with slight curtsy and eyes cutting to ceiling to emphasize what passed for his point.

"I do events. I don't do fashion," I said.

"So you wouldn't have one."

"No."

"Does she-she being the lady running the show-have a makeup artist?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, I'll go ask her. Because she needs to know that I'm the best."

Back when I worked for the government was disseminated on a "need to know basis." It was never information like this and I have my doubts that I will ever need to actually use it. And while I don't know much about this young man's industry, even if he's not the best makeup artist in the business, I would wager that he has got to be the tallest.

I also know that you just can't make this stuff up. And that obviously there's a slice of life out there that I never much encountered while sitting in a law office all day during my previous incarnation.

Saturday will be interesting.

Vox Populi: Don Checks In

2011-10-12T09:14:00.000-05:00

My law school buddy Don called yesterday to see how my new and interesting legal problems were going. As usual, the conversation devolved into slanderous commentary.

Don: You know, you having all of this free time nowadays is worrisome to those of us that know you best.

Me: How so?

Don: Well, Grandmother used to say that idle hands are the devil's workplace. We are all waiting for you to do something stupid.

Me: Actually, idle hands are the devil's tools. An idle mind is the devil's workplace.

Don: So, that would mean that you have a "two-fer" going for you.

Me: I guess so. Yes.

Don: This is hardly reassuring.

Me: Don't you have anything better to do than to pester me?

Don: Not at present, no.

Me: Well, I do. I'm going to use these idle hands in the service of a round of golf.

Don: Even you can't get in to too much trouble out there. I will be able to sleep tonight. Bye.

Me: Bye.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-10-09T07:45:00.000-05:00

Is there anything more dignified than a burial with military honors? And Edward Erxleben was nothing if not the very essence of the word. His final commendation by a Color Guard of his beloved United States Air Force was a fit and appropriate send off for an extraordinary gentleman.

An age in which a Chaz Bono or an Alex Rodriguez can gain some measure of national spotlight is neither dignified nor is it modest. When an Ed Erxleben departs this life, some cosmic scale tips a little closer toward the profane.

To use Leonard Cohen's expression, I was only permitted a fleck of Ed Erxleben's life. His health, not much good in the last 10 years, had begun to fail him. I loved one of his daughters. We had a falling out. So I was not around much toward the end of his life. But the times I was blessed to have been in his presence will never be forgotten.

I don't have extensive experience with military men. Or women for that matter. My father was a Seabee in World War II. I worked with a man who was in every deployment since Viet Nam. One of my best friends was sent to Iraq. What all 3 guys had in common was that they really didn't talk much about their service. And if they did, the talk never much centered around them.

They also had mutual disdain for those that would inflate their military deeds so as to make them appear like unto the second coming of Audie Murphy. I am told that there are any of a number of guys that hold themselves out as Navy Seals despite have nor more military experience than I do. This is amazing to me.

Ed only told me a couple of stories about his service. One was an absolutely fascinating tale of how the VC (he never lapsed into racial epithets) were in awe of the Buddhist Monks in South Viet Nam. They referred to the monks as "ghosts." Ed told me that while the monks were basically apolitical, they leaned toward assisting the wounded and the escapee. They could also be counted on for intelligence. Ed Erxleben's war stories-or at least the ones he shared with me-were highly nuanced and ego-free. And he told them very simply and quietly and without extraneous detail.

The positive attributes of military service informed Mr. Erxleben's life. Words like honesty. Integrity. Duty. Words which were spoken often during the service today only to hang in the air like sparks upon their utterance. To those wondrous attributes I would add "modesty" and "dignity."

These attributes may be undervalued in this loud and profane world. But despite my unfortunately all too few encounters with the gentleman I could see that they were the core of his essence. Our society is all too full of guys that are equipped with levers they don't know how to use. Edward Erxleben was a fulcrum.
I hugged his grandsons after the service. To my beloved Jack I said, "He was a helluva man."
And perhaps I should leave it at that.
Your grandfather was a hell of a man boys. He loved you all. He loved his wife and he loved his girls.

And they don't much make them like Edward John Erxleben anymore. A helluva man.

Vox Populi: The Catholic Educator

2011-10-07T08:44:00.000-05:00

I was out taking a walk early this morning when my buddy Steve pulled over. I noticed he was not in his usual uniform: khaki pants and golf shirt.

"Nope," he said. " Heading for Chicago. Going to tour Notre Dame and watch a game Saturday."

"And who are the Irish scheduled to lose to on Saturday?" I asked.

"Air Force," he said.

"Ah."

" Well, how's retirement going?" he asked. " It looks like you're still sober. Frankly, I'm surprised."

"No, I haven't started my days with orange vodka yet."

" This is just your 4th day. Give it time. Ease into it. I have faith in you."

"Hey! Thanks for caring!"

" No problem," he said as he pulled away. "Will call you when I get back. I got you on the sub list at the school."

" Great!" I said.

"Go Air Force!"

Vox Populi: Top This Bob Ueker

2011-10-06T23:02:00.000-05:00

One of my Miracle League kids is a kid named K. She is aphasic, which means that things that come from her little highly intelligent brain, turn out to be something else when they get to her mouth.

Anyhoo I was up taking pictures at the "First Thursday" up on Kavanaugh. K and her folks were there.

K hugged me around the knees

" Love you baseball, " she said.

" I love you too," I said as I hugged her before she ran back to her folks.

Her doc Mom looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and laughed. Her educator Dad did much the same.

Great to have you around little K. Great to be hugged,.

Vox Populi: The Country Banker

2011-10-05T21:37:00.000-05:00

CB: So, how's retirement so far?

Me: Scary. I'm used to being busy. It's just surreal. I'm not used to the phone not buzzing or e-mails flying in. I am going to have to find something to do.

CB: So what are you doing now?

Me: Just got through playing golf.

CB: Put this on the list of things to do. Kiss my ass.

Me: Noted.

First Steps

2011-10-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

The alarm clock didn't wake me up this morning. The sound of text messages did. Text messages from the working world and one e-mail from my old office.

Today is my first day cut loose and left utterly to my own devices. And you should see my devices sometime.

The technical term is retirement. But I don't like that word. The word "retirement" connotes receipt of the gold watch, a white belt to match white patent leather shoes and moving to Arizona. I still consider myself to be a young person. I still have lots of energy and most of my marbles still. I will do something else with my life. I just really don't know what that "something else" is at this point.

Which is kinda scary. I won't lie to you. At least not about this.

We are creatures of habit and structure. Men in particular. And as one of my friends-one armed with a license to commit social work-told me, I am a fixer. As she said, I have experienced a lot of loss in the past year or so. Maybe work kept me from dealing with it. So I guess now there's nothing much left to fix but me. At least for right now.

I am a guy. Goddamn I hate this.

But it's going to be OK. It's just going to be different.

I talked to a lot of people about whether I should take Uncle's offer to retire early. One of the people I talked to was my old friend Linda. Linda's health is not the greatest in the world. Whatever it is they can't seem to figure it out over at the med school.

" Just think of getting up on a beautiful morning in October," she said. " Think how wonderful it would be not to have to put on clothes and fight the traffic. Think how great it would be to get up and take a long walk. To breathe the cool air and see the beautiful colors. Me, I have to go to the Mayo Clinic. I like your prospects better."

Perspective is a bitch is she not?

Early this morning, I took Linda's walk for her. And she is right. It was great. The first steps of Act II.

The e-mail from the office said, "I miss you already."

I miss you too, baby. But the Federal Government survived the assassination of Lincoln. It will survive without me.

Everything is going to be OK.

I'm not retired. I am changing.

It will be different. See? Already I am overindulging in one sentence paragraphs.

Everything will be OK. I just have to figure it out.

As Mr. Frost said, "You come too."

My Sunday Feeling

2011-09-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

TMFW will be off of the air for awhile. I have a hearing next week in Jackson for which I have been preparing. And when I return I have a million things to finish up that I couldn't get done because I've been trying to get my arms around this deal in Jackson.

But suffice it to say, my schedule will pretty much clear up in October. And we will have many things to talk about when I reappear. So I will see you in a week or so.

Talk among yourselves until I get back.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-09-11T08:37:00.000-05:00

I was at work when the planes hit the Twin Towers. Carrie came into my office to tell me about a terrible accident in New York. It didn't take long for the horrible realization to set in that the death and destruction in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania were not the result of "accidents."

And then the world flipped.

I don't know what to say about September 11, 2001 that hasn't already been said.  Or will be said today.

So on this day I will leave history to the historians, politics to the politicians and punditry to the loudmouths.

September 11 2011 was a beautiful day here in Little Rock.  We were sent home early after the attacks. The government was trying to get a handle on just what in the hell was going on. The only reason Tim McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was that he couldn't find the one in Little Rock. Some Ranger. Anyway, rather than run the risk that lower hanging fruit was also involved, most federal offices closed.

Like I said, it was a beautiful day. Perhaps there might have been less chaos if it were raining cats and dogs.  I went for a run. I went up on Kavanaugh. There used to be a convenience store up there that sold gas when it wasn't getting stuck up.

There was a line of cars at the two gas pumps there that snaked around the block. The rumor had gotten out that there was a gas shortage and folks all over town were scrambling to fill their tanks. Tempers were short. The line ran across the parking lot of the pizza joint next door. The manager of the pizza place was threatening to call the cops if cars didn't get off the lot. High words were exchanged. Exasperated drivers trying to turn up side streets that were blocked off by the panic induced gridlock were laying on their horns. It was an ugly scene in a neighborhood that is otherwise known for tranquility and civility.

Of course, there was no shortage of gas.  Winthrop P. Rockefeller, who was the acting Governor at the time while the lack of commercial aviation had Mike Huckabee stranded in another state, took to the airwaves to assure Arkansans that there was plenty of gas available for purchase and that everybody should cool it.

In retrospect the image was striking and ironic in the extreme.  The terrorists that flew the planes that day were for the most part Saudis. Who sit atop most of the world's oil that feeds our addiction. And the initial response to the events of 9-11, at least in my neighborhood, was a run on gasoline.

Here's what else I remember about 9-11. A couple of years after the attack I was awakened early one morning by the sound of footsteps on my porch. I went out to investigate and found 2 letters from my friend John on my porch swing. They were addressed to " My dearest son Jackson" and to "My dearest son Strick." There were no instructions. None were needed. It was my duty to deliver these letters to the Edwards boys if there daddy didn't make it back from Iraq.

I never had to deliver those letters. Thank God. Strick and Jackson were lucky. Other little boys and girls were not so fortunate.

Much blood and treasure has been expended since that awful day when the world flipped. It is safe to say that we will never see a military operation of the size and scope employed in Iraq and Afghanistan ever again in the Middle East. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, any future Secretary of Defense that would make such a recommendation to the President, "needs his head examined."

Are we safer since 9-11? Certainly. Al Queda has been decimated and many of it's leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, have been exterminated.

Are we immune from further attacks? Of course not. And we never will be. Terrorism is not the enemy. It is a highly theatrical tactic used by individuals or groups who otherwise could never attain their goals through political means.  Which means that as long as there are fanatics and/or lunatics with access to technology we must always be on guard if not necessarily on alert.

This is the lesson of the last ten years. This is the lesson of 9-11.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-09-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

I confess that I don't much get Dancing With The Stars. I know a lot of women that watch the show. Then again, as I type this it occurs to me that all the women that have ever been in my life and/or are still trapped there have loved to dance. And I suppose that it is harmless fun to see celebrities try to attempt to perform in areas outside their comfort zones.

For instance, I've always enjoyed watching politicians and other famous people attempt to throw the "first pitch" of a baseball game. It is amusing to see Hillary Rodham Clinton fire one in there while a highly skilled basketball player like John Wall three hops it to the plate. One of the most side-splitting hilarious things I have ever witnessed was Bob Ueker-the self-depreciating "Mr. Baseball" and the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers-sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" at Wrigley Field as a stadium full of Cub fans booed their lungs out.

So I kinda get it. What I don't get is how who gets kicked off DWTS sometimes is the lead story on the morning "news" shows. And I also don't get how they pick the contestants for the show. Which brings me to the gentleman above.

A part of the universe that watches DWTS is high pissed that transgendered Chaz (nee Chastity) Bono has been picked to compete in the Fall season along with the venomous Nancy Grace and lunatic professional basketball player Ron Artest. I suppose I can see the inclusion of the latter 2 for the reason that Grace was in the news without surcease as she tried to convict Kaley Anthony from the TV screen. Artest has been an NBA All-Star and he will most assuredly be the biggest, most powerful human ever to wear the sequins on DWTS. If I were his partner I would rightly fear being accidentally hurled into the balcony by Ron Ron.

But back to Chaz. While I don't much care, I find his inclusion to be something of a mystery. I'm not offended by his sexual orientation if that phrase is even particularly apt given the fact that he is now a man. And I'm not attempting to be flip. While I have many gay friends I don't think I know any transgendered folks. I would think that they would have to be exceedingly complicated people. And, contrary to the protests of the highly offended "family values" blowhards, I don't think they invited Chaz Bono to promote the "gay and transgendered agenda" any more than including Nancy Grace promotes the harridan agenda. By the way, it occurs to me to check with Mark to see if he can shoot me his copy of the Gay Agenda. I've lost mine.

But has the notion of what constitutes a "celebrity" been so seriously dumbed down in the Internet age that Chaz Bono may be considered to have achieved that status? Back when I was a kid celebrities were people like Kitty Carlisle and other New York types that appeared on game shows. What on Earth has Chaz Bono accomplished in life other than the fortuity of being born to Sonny and Cher Bono and having sexual re-orientation surgery? Nothing that I can tell. Kitty Carlisle may have been as utterly useless as Mr. Bono appears to be by the time she was doing game shows but she at least appeared in opera productions and on Broadway and
was awarded the National Medal of the Arts. And I'm not just harshing on Chaz. By the same token what did Bristol Palin have on her celebrity CV apart from getting knocked up while her Mother was running for Vice-President? Again, nothing. At least Bristol looked reasonably lithe and athletic which I would think would be useful for dance competitions. This cannot be said of Mr. Bono beside whom DWTS alum Kirstie Alley seems taut.

But then again, I don't much care. My friend Jeanette, who is a very fine dancer, predicts that even I will be compelled to tune in to watch this lineup "perform." Maybe so, maybe no. It depends upon if there's nothing else to watch I suppose.

But my God. Is Chaz Bono what passes for a celebrity nowadays? Just because his Mother happens to be Cher and just because he switched out the plumbing? Really?

I don't get it.

My Sunday Feeling,Which Today Is Mostly Frustration

2011-08-28T08:36:00.001-05:00

Blogger inexplicably ate today's post while I attempted to edit same. I ain't got time today to do a rewrite, so the literary world will have to go elsewhere for amusement.

Talk amongst yourselves.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-08-21T07:29:00.000-05:00

North Carolina and THE Ohio State University can breathe a completely undeserved sigh of relief. The NCAA has bigger fish to fry. Last week Yahoo Sports broke the story that a scumbag Miami Hurricane booster named Nevin Shapiro showered Hurricane athletes with gifts and money since 2002. Shapiro, pictured above with former Miami basketball coach Frank Haith and Miami President Donna Shalala at a fundraiser is doing 20 years in prison for operating a 930 million dollar Ponzi scheme. The $ 50,000 check held in Dr. Shalala's hands? Completely hot. Stolen from his "investors."

The NCAA investigation involves 73 current Miami and former athletes and @ 7 coaches. You can read about it here: http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=dw-why_miami_is_in_trouble_081611

When, this news first broke the phrase "death penalty" was instantly bandied about in the sports community. They refer, of course, to the NCAA's banning SMU from playing football for 2 years back in the eighties. My initial thought was that the NCAA would never do that to a program again. Indeed, SMU has just now become remotely competitive again. Besides, the Mustangs scandal not only involved the boosters but the coaches were in on it and the SMU administration was aware of it. Hell, even the Governor of Texas back then knew about it. If any program deserved getting nuked it was SMU.

But I am having second thoughts as the Miami deal is getting worse with each passing day. First of all, the Miami Hurricanes are no stranger to the NCAA slammer. Indeed, they were on probation in 2002 when Shapiro says he started his activities. Rumor has it that the NCAA has advised Miami that it will invoke the "wilful violators" clause in the NCAA by-laws to increase the "lookback" period beyond the the usual 4 years. If Miami was violating the "extra benefit" rule while on a period of probation this will not go well for them.

Secondly, as Yahoo reported, Shapiro, in a drunken rage, tried to fight Miami's compliance officer in the press box during a game. They should have banned him from the program then but didn't. Secondly, Shapiro says that Miami investigated him after that incident and discovered all the swag he was providing the players. And did nothing. Why should Shapiro be believed? After all he's a convict. Well, so far he has been right on the money according to Yahoo, convicted con-man or not.

If this is true, Miami is toast. The NCAA will have to come down harder on Miami than Southern Cal and Tennessee. Here's why. The head of the Committee on Infractions in above-referenced investigations was a man named Paul Dee. Guess what? Dee was the Athletic Director at Miami when most of these alleged violations took place. And it has been reported elsewhere that Dee approved Shapiro to participate in a mentors' program back in 1995. No, whatever the NCAA does to Miami, if it can prove a lack of institutional control and/or actual knowledge of what Shapiro was up to while its former top cop was the AD it will not be pretty.

Of course, the delicious irony in all of this is that Butch Davis was brought in to Miami to shut down the party and appease the NCAA after Dennis Erickson got them put on probation. As you may recall, Butch Davis just got fired at North Carolina for NCAA violations during his watch.

The only reason a punk like Nevin Shapiro got within spitting distance of the athletic department at Miami, much less on the sidelines, was because he gave them so much money. Even if it wasn't his to give.

Which leads to another observation. If the Federal Judge in Shapiro's criminal case ordered a Trustee to try to "clawback" the money that Shapiro gave to Miami they may get to cough it all up AND suffer what are sure to be crippling sanctions from the NCAA.

A cautionary tale for all Division I schools. Get a handle on the boosters. If it is even possible.

Of Course, This Is Not True

2011-08-18T19:23:00.000-05:00

" Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion."- Gov. Rick Perry

Texas Governor and Tea Party Presidential candidate Rick Perry gives us the opportunity to resurrect the first of what undoubtedly will be the first of many OCTINT posts during this political season.

Gov. Perry's remarks concerned the possibility of the Federal Reserve, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, qualitatively easing the money supply to help stimulate the economy. Perry, and many others, may believe that this is a bad idea and they are entitled to their opinion. But it ain't treason. Says who? The Constitution of the United States and the United States Criminal Code.

The Founding Fathers, oft misquoted by the Tea Partiers, defined treason in Article III, Section 3[1] as follows in pertinent part (or in pari materia as I like to say frequently in casual conversation at the grocery store): "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them,or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." (emphasis supplied).

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see in the paper where the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors attacked Kansas. Or that Mr. Bernanke was caught giving lemonade to members of the Taliban.

Turning to my home edition of the United States Criminal Code, the one that I stole from the Office of the Inspector General (I have a home version of the United States Bankruptcy Code and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as well. While these tomes are not on my nightstand, the question of why I live alone is something of a moot point given the reading material I possess.) we see the codification of the definition in the Constitution.

18 U.S.C. 2381 states, " Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

Which is pretty screwed up if think about it. The range of penalties if you are convicted of treason is death toooooooooooo 5 years, a 10k fine and you can't run for County Judge. No matter. Uncle isn't really going to fool with you for this reason unless you are Tim McVeigh. And you will note that he is usually referred to in the past tense.

But I digress.

Do I really think that Rick Perry believes that Ben Bernanke deserves the death penalty if the Federal Reserve "prints more money?" No. But treason is not a word that should be bandied about in political discourse. Treason is not only, well, treason but it is a legal concept first defined with acute precision in the Constitution. And to equate the Fed's exercise of its legal authority to regulate the banks and execute the monetary policy of the United States is palpably irresponsible and panders to the lowest common denominator in the electorate. Which, of course, seems to be working. Which is why I'm fixing to ask my old Hendrix College buddy over in New Zealand who coaches track if he needs an assistant.

But is "printing money" an act of treason? No. Of course, this is not true.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-08-13T13:59:00.012-05:00

Last week was crazy. Standard and Poor's, evidently not satisfied with helping cause the economy to crater in 2008, decided to have another go at it by lowering the credit rating of the United States which caused the stock market to go through the floor. The 6th Circuit ruled Obamacare unconstitutional. Texas Governor Rick Perry threw his cowboy hat into the ring of lunatics that are seeking the Republican nomination for President. Perry, who practically speaks in unknown tongues on the stump, recently said in an interview that he thought Social Security was unconstitutional. He will fit in well with the psychotics and bigots that have hijacked the GOP for the time being. So do I want to write about any of this stuff?

Hell, no! I want to write about something important. I want to write about the latest shake-up in college sports, namely, that Texas A & M, is joining the Southeastern Conference along with Clemson and Florida State. The earlier rumor that Missouri was going to follow the Aggies over into the land of Bear Bryant and UGA the bulldog was just that. The Tigers are staying put.

Why would the Aggies leave the mediocrity of the Big-12 for a far more murderous and insane football conference like the SEC? Two 5 letter words my friends. And those words are "Texas" and "Money." The Aggies always felt like the red headed stepchild next to the snooty Longhorns. But what really got their noses out of joint in College Station is when Texas went out and started its own television network, the proceeds from which they ain't got to share. So, if the Aggs are going to finish in 3rd place in football on a yearly basis, why not do it in a conference where they stand to make a little more money?

Except they might not finish third. Odds are the Aggies will be put into the Western Division of the conference. Which only consists of Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State and Ole Miss. No Iowa States or Kansas Jayhawks in that lineup. The Aggies may not be able to beat Ole Miss on a consistent basis. This may be a tougher slog in football than they thought at the time they made the jump.

The good news is that they will be competitive in basketball in that division right out of the chute since it pretty well stinks. That and they won't have to fool with Kansas anymore. The bad news is that nobody at A & M much gives two hoots in hell about basketball.

I will say that having Clemson-or "Climpson"as those rednecks pronounce it- in the SEC will be bring a certain element into the mix. The SEC schools pride themselves on traditions. Well, Climpson football is traditionally one of the cheatingest programs extant. Their booster club is known as the IPTAY club. It was started by legendary coach Frank Howard who had the farmers who made up their fan base back then pledge at least 10 bucks to the booster club after they got the crops out each year. Hence, IPTAY or "I Pay Ten A Year." It has also been said that IPTAY stands for "I Pay Ten Athletes per Year" and/or "It's Probation Time Again Y'all." Further, folks in Starkville or Auburn are downright Parisian next to the average Climpson fan. Indeed, it is not for nothing that Sports Illustrated once referred to home games in Memorial Stadium as "the world's largest open-air Klan rally."

But I do like the fact that their coach is named Dabo Swinney. Never met anybody named Dabo before. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure I ever met anybody from Clemson before.

Florida State already plays Florida and Climpson. And the basketball programs there will surely enjoy not having to play North Carolina, Wake Forest and Duke anymore. Hell, Florida State's team last year could have won the SEC Eastern Division even with Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt in it.

And none of the new schools will enjoy their SEC debuts in track or baseball. At least not anytime soon.

But they can live with it, at least for awhile because they will be out from under the teams they need to be out from under and, most importantly, they will each make more money.

And that's really all that matters. Money.

But I can't wait for the first Clemson-LSU game. The fights in the stands will be more entertaining than the game on the field.

Vox Populi: The Girl At The Bakery

2011-08-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

The cute kid rang up my order.

"Don't you usually get croissants?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

" I thought you were the guy that gets croissants."

" You have confused me with some other unattractive man."

She laughed out loud and covered her mouth and nose with her hand. After she recovered, she opened the register to get my change. She affected a regal bearing.

" Actually," she said as she handed me my change. "You are a very handsome man."

"Wow," I replied. "So what time do you get off?"

She laughed again.

" Wellllllllllllllll. How should I put this?" she said as she looked to the ceiling.

She looked back at me.

" You are a handsome older gentleman."

"Gotcha," I replied. " See you later."

"Thanks for coming in," she said. She winked.

Not a bad start to a rainy Saturday. Maybe I should get some croissants next time.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-08-07T06:00:00.004-05:00

"I am at peace."

These were the only words uttered by child molester and polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs as he stood in front of a Texas jury of his peers. A jury that returned guilty verdicts against him on charges that he sexually assaulted two girls. 12 and 15. Girls he held out as being his "spiritual wives." The 15 year old got pregnant. The 12 year old he had the good taste to violate in the presence of 3 other "wives."

It took the jury 3 and half hours to come back with its verdicts. My buddy Don wondered why it took that long, especially since Jeffs didn't actually put on a defense. Indeed, he fired his lawyers on the eve of the trial. My feeling was that the jury felt that if Jeffs was going to waste their time by standing mute before them for most of the 30 minutes he was allotted for closing argument that they might as well hold out for their free lunch courtesy of the State of Texas. Might as well get 2 things accomplished.

Actually, Jeffs tried to interpose any of a number of defenses, mainly based on the theory that his prosecution was in violation of his religious freedoms. These religious defenses were routinely shot down by the Judge who-pardon the expression-exhibited the patience of Job during Jeffs's ramblings, even when she was advised that God had appeared to him in his cell,and told him that "a whirlwind of Judgment" would be unleashed if he were not set free.

Well, why didn't God just go ahead and bust him out, God being God and all? But I digress.

This is a teachable moment about where our 1st Amendment rights start and the criminal law ends them.

In this great land of ours, even in quasi-theocracies like Texas, Utah and apparently Hot Springs, Arkansas, you are free to believe anything you damn well please. You are free to visit both the Catholic church and the Methodist church as I occasionally do. Or did. Or you can stay home and watch The Sports Reporters on ESPN as I generally do. You can believe that there is no God. Or that there are Gods.

You can even believe that you are God's spokesman on Earth as does Warren Jeffs and his weak-minded acolytes. However, your religious beliefs will not provide you with a defense if you violate the criminal laws. Or many of the civil laws either.

True story. A lady in Mississippi filed a Chapter 13. She was asked by the Trustee at the First Meeting of Creditors why she hadn't filed an income tax return in years. Simple she said. She didn't have to pay taxes because she worked for a church. Wrong. Ask Richard Roberts.

God may tell me to smoke dope. He can be my great comfort in times of woe. But He can't be my defense if I get popped on a drug charge.

Same with Warren Jeffs, he obviously believed his station in the universe to be sufficiently exalted that it entitled him to 78 "wives" and to engage in sex with children. As a footnote, I think the main reason I could never be a religious sex pervert is that I would not like living in a compound with damn near a 100 people. I like to be by myself too much.

What is it about America that produces a Warren Jeffs, a Tony Alamo or a David Koresh? Try as I might I can't really come up with a recent European counterpart. Even at that, I am convinced that Alamo is mainly a criminal. Unlike Warren Jeffs, Alamo had the relatively good judgment to cross State lines to go get his underage concubines. So he is pulling his time in a Federal joint. Jeffs will likely be spending the rest of his days in a Texas State prison where he will be forced to engage with a rougher crowd than what he is accustomed to.

Jeffs may well believe that he is God's spokesman on Earth. But that didn't cut much ice with that jury down in West Texas.

I doubt it'll cut much ice with God either.

Day of Rest

2011-07-31T08:17:00.000-05:00

No Sunday post today sports fans! Got lots of stuff going on nowadays and I ain't got time for this right now.

Will return soon!

Talk among yourselves.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-07-24T07:55:00.000-05:00

I love my Uncle Howard. He is a friend, a mentor and a golf buddy. I cannot imagine my life without him. Like many of us, Uncle Howard and his buddies like to share stuff from the Internet with each other. He used to share a lot of these exchanges, most of them right wing rants about politics, with me. He was pretty active during the Clinton administration until I guess he got tired of me returning fire, which routinely required him to apologize to his friends on the distibution list. Typically, it would go something like, "Well, my nephew is a good boy but he's a liberal."

Howard was pretty quiet during W's administration. The e-mail traffic during those halcyon years of peace and prosperity were mostly about golf and family. But now that the Oval Office is occupied by a Muslim from Kenya, it is Katie bar the door.

Yesterday, "H" as he is known in the family, disseminated to the family and some of his friends an e-mail that purported to be an eyewitness account of a talk given by the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer at the Center for the American Experiment in 2009 in which he criticized the policies of the Obama Administration.

Of course, as with many other offerings from the Internet, the supposedly accurate account was anything but as a quick trip to snopes.com proved. You can read the story on snopes here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/krauthammer.asp

As I have said before, I view these as teachable moments. I sent H the article, along with what I view as a rule of thumb regarding stuff like this. Anytime you receive from the Internet a supposedly eyewitness account of an event and it doesn't include backup documentation, it is invariably false. Especially when the author purports to describe a talk that occurred over 2 years ago. Indeed, even Krauthammer repudiated the mischaracterization of his remarks.

Didn't matter.

"Whether K's comments are true or not they could not be more correct," was his response.

Now last time I looked this was a free country. You can vote any way you see fit for whatever reason you want. And I am not naive. As the old saying goes, "politics ain't bean-bag." It is a dirty game with plenty of spinning and parsing from both sides of the isle.

But there is a difference between having an opinion and telling a lie. You're entitled to your own opinion. You're not entitled to your own facts. The author of the e-mail about Dr. Krauthammer told a flat-out lie. It got passed all around the country. Undoubtedly many people accepted it on face value. And I don't think these things are always just cooked up by nuts. This particular offering was pretty damn clever the more thought of it.

Think about it. The author knew that Krauthammer was invited to speak at an event that was not open to the general public. So, there wouldn't be much documentation regarding his remarks. That and it gives an aura of "inside information." Secondly, the author prefaced the account by describing Krauthammer's history as a public intellectual. He's a Harvard trained psychiatrist and award winning author. So he's really smart. That and the author probably suspected that some background was needed since many of the downstream recipients of this screed probably have never frigging heard of Charles Krauthammer.

And the fact that that his remarks at the event were mischaracterized in the e-mail obviously means very little to some people. And most recipients would accept it at face value in the first place.

My love and admiration for Uncle Howard is not remotely impacted by his political views. And vice-versa. At least I hope. Oh. Friday's explanation to his friends on the e-mail list was a semi-exasperated " As you can see my nephew's way out there on the left." What H does not know is that Friday I was busy with 2 different investigative agencies. The rest of the day was spent doing debt collection. Some flaming communist I am.

Like I said, I love my Uncle Howard. And it is for this reason that I am going to give him some George Orwell for Christmas. Who would have been amazed at political discourse in the present age.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-07-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

" This is not good," said my 19 year old dermatologist as he looked at a spot on my scalp. "This is coming off."

For the last 10 years I have been going to the dermatologist on a fairly regular basis due to chronic eruptions of spots on my scalp called "Solar Keratosis." When I was first diagnosed by the doctor I had then, who has since retired, he told me that the spots got started when I was a kid playing outside. And probably all the time I spent on the tennis court didn't help matters any.

"Yeah," Dr. Keeran said. "We tell folks to get out and be active in the fresh air. Well, this is what can happen. All your years of baseball, running and tennis. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle that any doctor would approve of. Now this. Ironic, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said I was I recoiled from the blasts of liquid nitrogen. " Petty damn ironic."

And so, I examine my skin on a pretty regular basis. And a few days ago, I noticed one of the spots on my scalp looked darker than the other spots. So I made an appointment even though my next scheduled appointment was in September. I'm glad I did.

After looking at my scalp, 19 began intently studying my face and ears.

"Notice anything different on shoulders, neck or back?"

"No," I said.

"Good," he replied. "But that spot has got to come off. And I mean, with a scalpel this time. I need you to let me do this."

"OK," I said. "Do what you have to do."

After he had finished hacking on me he put the offending spot in a plastic jar. He turned and started writing in the chart.

"Am I going to die of skin cancer?"

It just came out of my mouth. What a pussy thing to say.

"Not today you're not," he said as he furiously wrote in the chart. As an aside, I don't see how that will provide him any useful information. You should see his handwriting. It is illegible by doctor standards. I had a pharmacist ask me once which doc at Little Rock Dermatology signed a prescription that 19 had given me to fill. And pharmacists can read anything.

Anyway, he rolled the chair around to face me.

"Look," he said. " If it is anything it is most likely squamous cell. And if it is squamous cell, I probably just took care of the problem. If it is the next likely culprit, I probably just took care of that too."

OK.

"Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna look at it under the microscope. Then we're gonna send it off and you'll get a call in a couple of days."

Hand on shoulder.

"Try not to worry, Mr. Bowen. No get out of here before I think of something else to do to you."

"Well," I said to myself as I rode down the elevator. "at least he didn't send me straight to the hospital like they did Andy."

My buddy Andy went to the GP with a sore hip. Andy played baseball in college. Figured it was arthritis or something. 3 months later he was dead from melanoma cancer. He was 50 maybe. 19 didn't send me off to the med school the same day like Andy's doc did.

Then again, up until the other day 19 had never referred to me as "Mr. Bowen" either. My overactive mind wondered what that meant. If anything.

As a friend's doctor told her, "If you live long enough stuff just starts happening. Mother Nature didn't really design us to live as long as we live."

So stuff starts happening.

And I am not complaining. Like most folks my age I have a few chronic medical conditions. Much to the shock of both myself and the cardiologist, I have a lot of plaque in my arteries. Bad genes. I have asthma and allergies. Not my fault. I have arthritic changes going on in my lower back. Ditto.

It's frustrating because I really didn't do any of this stuff to myself. As the cardiologist says, "What am I gonna do? Tell you to quit smoking? Take up exercise? Lose 50 pounds?" I'm very lucky that all of these issues are being followed and managed well by an armada of exquisitely gifted people in white coats. My biggest issue is the asthma especially in this heat. And if that's the worst that happens to me I will be truly blessed. Check that. I am truly blessed.

But, like every sane person, I didn't want to be any where in the same Area Code as the "Big C." Luckily, I wasn't there for long. 19's office called to say that the biopsy revealed that the spot was pre-cancerous. No golf or other prolonged exposure to sun on that incision cite for a week. Otherwise, see you in September.

I'm not going to die from skin cancer. At least not today I'm not. I'm blessed. And I know it.

And now maybe 19 will go back to calling me "Paul" again.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-07-10T07:16:00.000-05:00

"I did not say she was innocent. I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be."

                                                    Jennifer Ford, a member of the jury that acquitted Casey Anthony

By whatever criterion you would care to devise, Casey Anthony was one hell of an unsympathetic defendant. Most of us, well, all of us, cannot imagine partying, and otherwise making a spectacle of oneself, if our child had disappeared. 2 year old Caylee Anthony was missing, dead actually, and Casey's out getting tattoos and cavorting with numerous men as if she no longer had a care in the world? Casey Anthony sure looked like she was guilty of killing little poor little Caylee. Indeed, she looked for all the world like an intemperate head case, a less stable version of Lindsay Lohan, the kind of barfly that sensible young men would do well to avoid but inevitably do not. And the State of Florida proved that she came from a family that was, to use the current catch-all definition, "dysfunctional."

But that's not murder.

I am no criminal lawyer. Nor do I play one on TV. And while I didn't follow the case like some people did, it always seemed to me that the case was overcharged. Which means nothing in a certain sense in that prosecutors typically charge a defendant with anything and everything they can think of in hopes of getting at least a plea or conviction on a lesser included offense. Not to go all pedantic on you but a lesser included offense is an offense that is a constituent element of the charge with the highest penalty.  To put it very simply, and making up a criminal statute to do it, if I attempted to murder you, I at least assaulted you, assault being the lesser included offense of the charge of attempted murder. And it is unknown, at least to me, if they offered Anthony a deal to plead out to a lesser offense or not. I'm guessing that the State had no choice but to go all in, given the glare of publicity surrounding the case.

Which leads me to the next question. What made this murder trial a national issue? If Nancy Grace hadn't sunk her fangs into Anthony's backside I submit to you that we might have never heard about this case. Don't get me wrong. The death of a child, any child, is a grievous and pitiable loss. What reasonably sentient parent wouldn't be wild with grief or worry over a lost child?  And the thought of poor Caylee being buried by the side of the road while her Mother disported herself like unto a white trash version of Paris Hilton is hard to reconcile. No, there is a lot to dislike about Casey Anthony.

But that's not murder.

And children are killed every day. Often at the hands of a parent or-forgive me-caregiver and nobody hears about it. At least it is safe to say that the abuse and murder of children does not ordinarily throw the media into a frenzy.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, we have CNN's Nancy Grace largely to thank for turning this case into a circus and inflaming the court of public opinion against the Defendant, who granted didn't exactly help herself on that score with her reprehensible conduct. But you don't convict a person of capital felony murder because of behavior in saloons that might cause Salome to blush. You have to have evidence. And the State couldn't prove causation or time of death. That's pretty big. It is hard to sell a murder charge with only circumstantial evidence in an age where folks are used to seeing the genius cops on TV wrap things up in a hour with computers and microscopes.

When O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his trial, it was said by some that it was proof that the legal system doesn't work. Well, under the Constitution the burden of proof is on the State to prove guilt. When it doesn't sustain that burden the Defendant gets to "go home" as my criminal lawyer friends say.

And for Nancy Grace, a lawyer who professes faith in the legal system, to say after the verdict that"[s]omewhere the devil is dancing tonight" is reprehensible and unprofessional and panders to the lowest common denominator. Check that. It would be unprofessional if she were using her training and experience to do straight up legal reporting. She is not. It is strictly show business. She is to legal reporting as Rush Limbaugh is to politics. So I take that back. Sorta.

Did Casey Anthony get away with murder? Only she knows that for sure. The juror quoted described their task correctly. Because innocence is not a legal concept. It is a moral concept. The question before the jury was whether there was enough evidence to prove that Casey Anthony was guilty of the crimes for which she was charged. Period. And the jury ruled that there was not.

Like it or not, like Casey Anthony or not, that's the way the system works.

May God have mercy on her soul.

My 4th of July Feeling

2011-07-03T07:25:00.000-05:00

I got up bright and early Saturday morning. I had some coffee and glanced at the paper. I got a bottle of water, I powered up the camera and headed out the door en route to Van Buren Street next door. I very quickly noticed that something seemed amiss.

There were no cops. There were no barricades at the top of the hill. There were no......runners. Seeing as how nothing much gets past me, I quickly suspected that the annual Firecracker Fast 5 K race was actually going to be run on the 4th of July this year and not on Saturday. A quick visit to the Internet confirmed my suspicion. Thus began, in such an inauspicious fashion, my Fourth of July weekend.

Granted as far as screwups go, I have committed far worse. But I have to think that I must have looked pretty stupid standing out on Van Buren with Nikon Senior as the only other folks out at that hour seemed to be the usual yard sale type ladies going up and down the street looking at the classifieds as they drove. Which seems more dangerous than texting and driving if you think about it.

This weekend is going to be a scorcher. My friend Marge over in Jackson, distraught as she is after losing a jury trial last week, has rethought her earlier plan to go lie in the street. Too damn hot. So some good did come from this. I would hate to lose her. Especially in such a ridiculous fashion.

My plans are pretty simple. NV and the boys are coming over Saturday night. She has graciously included me in celebrating the happy fact that her oldest boy Paul got into the Honors College at the University of Arkansas. The young man wants me to cook hamburgers on the grill. OK, son. You got it.

Other than that, going to play a little golf, watch the Gentleman's Final tomorrow morning at Wimbledon and join friends for dinner. Maybe try to catch up on my reading.

And take pictures of the runners on Monday morning.

We do take all of this for granted, you and I. I have written about this before but it bears repeating on the 4th of July. I do not understand the campaign rhetoric that suggests that our freedoms are somehow being "eroded." I can pretty much do whatever I damn well please as long as I can afford it, it doesn't hurt anybody else and is otherwise legal. So can you.

I can have whoever I want over to my house. I can pretty much keep anybody out. Assuming they are not carrying both a badge and a warrant that is. I can watch what I want to on TV. I can go to church to hear a patriotic sermon on Sunday or I can refuse to go because I find patriotic sermons stupid and/or borderline dangerous. I can read whatever I can put my hands on. An old friend called me late last night. We talked for sometime. Unlike my latest pro se lunatic, I reasonably believe that my phone is not tapped. I can stand out on the street with a camera without being questioned by the authorities. Indeed, there were none to found when I stepped out early Saturday morning.

We take our freedoms for granted. But that's different from being paranoid about them. We take them for granted because we can.

That's because all of the men and women out in the Veteran's Cemeteries across the world wore the uniform in defense of rights and freedoms we enjoy today.

I have a couple of buddies who served in Iraq. I'm going to send them a message Monday thanking them for their service.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate the 4th of July.

Due Diligence

2011-07-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

The question of how a relatively small time operator like Frank McCourt managed to buy one of the most storied franchises in all of professional sports is a fair one. Certainly McCourt was a wealthy man having made most of his money in real estate development-parking lots mostly-in the Boston area. But he wasn't Steinbrenner level rich.

Indeed, McCourt tried to buy the Boston Red Sox and was turned down. He also tried to buy the Los Angeles Angels back when they were happy to be from Anaheim and was likewise turned down. The reason? He didn't have enough money. Or at least he wasn't considered sufficiently liquid to become a player in that world.

And yet, in 2004 McCourt managed to "buy" the Dodgers with only 9 million of his own money. The rest of the financing for the 430 million dollar deal came from Bank of America, Fox and-get this-Major League Baseball. That's right. MLB loaned McCourt 75 million to help him join the club. As an aside this would make MLB a creditor as well as the trade association that is most likely going to try to seize ownership of the Dodgers from McCourt and his numerous corporate alter egos. Some might find this to be a conflict of interest. Some, myself included, might find this hilarious. Talk amongst yourselves.

So how in the name of Calvin Griffith did this deal get done? I have a couple of theories.

First of all, compared to the NBA and the NFL, the baseball owners are considered to be for the most part, well, idiots. Twas ever thus. As the perpetually cranky Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin once said, " If it were raining soup, baseball's owners would be standing outside with forks."

The rumor at the time the Dodgers were put on the market by Rupert Murdoch was that Mark Cuban was interested in getting into baseball. Cuban, the owner of the recently crowned NBA World Champion Dallas Mavericks, was in those days frequently fined by NBA Commissioner David Stern for his sideline antics and post-game tirades about officiating. The story is that the thought of Mark Cuban elbowing his way into "the club"sent MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and some of the other MLB owners straight for the Mylanta. These guys thought McCourt would be a better fit than the brash young owner of the Mavericks.

The second theory is that the whole economy at that time was running on the foolish assumption that real estate was forever going to appreciate. My guess is that McCourt, like many other people during that halcyon time who put up real estate as collateral for loans that they couldn't afford -in his case parking lots in the Boston area-looked good on paper. Well we know what happened don't we? Real property values went through the floor taking the economy along with it.

Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan said something on ESPN's Sports Reporters to the effect that the folks in Boston were on to McCourt all along and that Bud Selig is getting exactly what he deserves. Some people in the Commissioner's office have said that maybe, just maybe, they should done a better job of due diligence when Frank McCourt first hiked his skirt at MLB. Ya think?

I bet Mark Cuban, who has recently been quoted as saying that he wants nothing to do with the Dodgers mess, is looking pretty good in retrospect. He may have a big mouth but he's got a ring. And he can pay his bills.

I bet he looks pretty good. Especially on paper.

The Commissioner Digs In

2011-06-29T17:21:00.000-05:00

Well. That didn't take long. Yesterday, Major League Baseball, acting by and through Commissioner Bud Selig filed its Objection to the Dodgers' Application for Interim Financing. We'll get to the Objection in a minute. First, the boring procedural stuff.

Monday, I told you that the Dodgers had filed bankruptcy and that they had filed an application for Interim Financing. Such an application is just what it sounds like. When a Debtor-in-Possession or DIP, files for bankruptcy protection, it often (in the case of a large corporation) has a "white knight" that it approached pre-filing to arrange to fund the business. Indeed, some very sophisticated lenders will require a business to file an 11 as a condition of making the loan. Why? Because bankruptcy stops all collection efforts by the creditors.

But the DIP can't just get the loan money and fund the business. It has to get permission of the Court to obtain the financing. Here, the Dodgers requested approval of the loan it had negotiated and an initial draw of 50 million against it in order to make tomorrow's payroll. They requested interim financing until the hoped for Final Order Confirming a Plan of Reorganization.

MLB objected. They reasons for the Objection are basically three-fold. 1) They allege that Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Dodgers siphoned off millions of dollars and misappropriated them to his personal use; 2) Oh, and by the way, we took McCourt out of baseball and installed a monitor to run the club. He can't requisition paper clips without the monitor's approval much less put the Dodgers in bankruptcy. I confess that I wondered about that one too and; 3) MLB is ready to make a loan for Interim Financing on much more favorable terms, will not charge a fee or place a lien on the assets.

The response of the Dodgers is that the decision about who to approach for financing is vested in the "sound business judgment" of the DIP, and yeah, the rates and terms of such financing is typically at murderous rates and terms because DIPs are typically in acute financial distress. Secondly, they say, the Dodgers are not required to do business with someone who is trying to take over the business. And thirdly (thirdly?) we don't believe the Commissioner has the authority under baseball's Constitution to take over a member baseball club.

The Judge granted the Application for Interim Financing. The report is that MLB agreed to it and I believe that. They had no choice. There was no time for a trial on the Objection. The payroll has to be made. All of this will be tried down the road.

So what's next? ESPN reported today that MLB will try to terminate the Dodgers franchise and then take it over in order to sell it to somebody else. Eventually there will have to be a ruling on the issue of a) whether the Commissioner of Baseball has the authority to take over a team. Every Commissioner since the time of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis has viewed the Commissioner's power to act "in the best interests of baseball" to be damn near plenary in nature.

So I guess the threshold question before moving too far forward is who is entitled to run the Dodgers? Is it Frank McCourt? Or the monitor appointed by Bud Selig? Oh, let's not forget Jamie McCourt. She contends the Dodgers are marital property to be divvied up by the Divorce Court Judge in Los Angeles. Look for her to intervene in the bankruptcy before too long.

This is all fascinating stuff. I will continue to monitor-pardon the expression-the activity in the case. And in the next installment we'll talk about McCourt's acquisition of the Dodgers and how MLB is partially to blame for the current mess.

Stay tuned.

Frank McCourt Goes High And Tight

2011-06-27T19:55:00.001-05:00

The Los Angeles Dodgers filed a Petition under Title 11 of the United States Code today. To put it in layman's terms, otherwise widely known as English, the Dodgers filed a Chapter 11 in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

First some background. Chapter 11 is a business reorganization. You may recall that Chrysler and GM both reorganized under this provision of the Code. You may ask why Delaware? And the answer would be that many, if not most, major corporations incorporate under the laws of Delaware because of Delaware's corporate-friendly organization and tax laws. Chapter Elevens are time consuming and expensive. And in my experience with smaller corporate debtors, rarely successful in reorganizing the business.

Some more background. In 2004, the Dodgers were acquired by Frank H. McCourt, who made all of his money in the parking business in Boston. His wife Jamie will figure into these chronicles soon enough. Long story short: In 2010, the Dodgers started experiencing what the Emergency Motion for Interim Financing dryly refers to as "cash flow difficulties." According to the Motion this was due to a decline in attendance and failure to make the playoffs. Oh. That and a whopping 22 million in deferred compensation to current and former players.

In April Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig ousts McCourt and appoints a monitor to run the Dodgers. The Motion refers to Selig's authority to do this as "questionable."

McCourt cuts a deal with Fox Sports that will get him well financially. Here's where Jamie comes in. As if the Dodgers don't have enough drama in sufficient supply, the McCourts are embroiled in an exceedingly nasty divorce. One of the issues in the divorce is whether the Dodgers are marital property along with the numerous other entities created by McCourt. Indeed, a hearing on the issue is set for August. Or was until the bankruptcy filing. Anyway, part of the deal with Fox was that if Jamie McCourt prevailed in divorce court on her theory that the Dodgers were marital property, she would get 100 million (Yes. You read that right.) which would be partially funded by the loan. The other part would come from a loan from Fox to Frank.

Selig doesn't approve the deal because of the proposed payment to Jamie. That, and the McCourts have run the business like their own personal candy store. The Dodgers are officially broke by June 30 if they don't close with Fox Sports. So off to Bankruptcy Court we go.

Which if nothing else, will serve to piss off everybody in Major League Baseball. Let me count the ways.

1) The Debtor in case 11-12010 isn't Wally's Pizza. It's the Los Angeles frigging Dodgers. One of the crown jewels of professional sports. Broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. Won 6 World Series. Created everlasting enmity in Brooklyn when the franchise moved to LA in 1962. This is a black eye on the sport. Which leads to......

2) The other owners will be pissed especially the Chicago White Sox to whom the Dodgers owe 3.5 million. This filing is a black eye for baseball.

3) The Commissioner will be pissed. His powers to act "in the best interests of baseball" are damn near plenary. Until they run into the Automatic Stay provisions of 11 U.S.C. 362. If MLB wanted to sell the Dodgers, no can do without a fight in Bankruptcy Court.

4) The Major League Baseball Players Union will be pissed. Most of the Dodgers' unsecured creditors are current and former players. They owe Manny Ramirez @ 22 million. They even owe Marquis Grissom @ 3 million. He played for then what? A year? These insane contracts were made possible by a collective bargaining agreement. Expect the player's union to bring hell if the Dodgers try to impair (again, in English the word would be screw) these claims.

5) Speaking of collective bargaining agreements, ask the United Auto Workers how their contracts held up in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies.

I'm just getting started good.

I may have no life. But it is for these moments that I indeed live.

AWOL Again

2011-06-23T22:24:00.000-05:00

This is becoming a habit. I know.

Will be back next week sometime.

Talk amongst yourselves.

My Father's Day Feeling

2011-06-19T06:59:00.000-05:00

As I have said in the past, I like Father's Day. Later on today, I will hit the sales and buy stuff for me on sale. It's not like I'm cheating. I can't stand Christmas or Valentine's Day. For me, participation in either of the latter civic rituals is complete hypocrisy. But I need a new golf bag. I know where I can get one on sale today. Somebody is going to buy it. It might as well be me whether or not I have any "heirs of the body" as the old property law cases used to say.

Besides, most Dads I know would love to treat Father's Day as no big deal. Here's a true story. Back in April I submitted a essay on Father's Day to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. My editor at that time was a devout Roman Catholic father of a little girl whom he adores. Here is the following e-mail exchange.

Editor: " This is great. I want to use it."

Me: "Cool."

Editor: "When is Father's Day anyway?"

Me: "You're asking me?"

Editor: " Yeah well. It's no big deal to those of us who are actually fathers. I would just as soon be left alone."

Me: "But that won't happen will it?"

Editor: "Oh no."

Anyway, no, there are no heirs of my body of which I am even remotely aware. And that's OK. I assumed that I would be a father at one point in time but it just never worked out. But on the other hand, I am in a position to do some things with my life and what little money I have scraped together that I would not be able to do if I had to worry about the college fund. Which certainly is in line with my essentially narcissistic personality.

My memories of my own father are kind of diffuse at this point. After all, by now he's been dead longer than I knew him. I know it's different with girls and their daddies, but I suspect Hugh's daughters will experience at least some of the same disconnect when they consult the memory banks when they are in their fifties as well. Human nature is what it is. And 34 years, to use my example, is a long time to bear witness.

But what of my father? Here's what I remember. He was quiet. He was shy to the point of social ineptitude. Looking back at some of the weirder aspects of his personality through the modern prism of diagnosis I wonder whether he had ADD or Asperger's. He was the kind of guy that could teach thermodynamics and yet fully believe that no one could see him from the outside as he passed by a window in his skivvies. Which, as one of my shrink friends who evaluates children would say, sounds kind of "aspergery" to me. Then again, maybe I come by it honest. My father always struck me as a lonesome person who had something of an impaired ability to relate to others. As for me, I am not lonesome to the slightest degree and I play well with others. And yet, for the most part I am the most content when I am by myself.

Maybe I'm a little more aspergery than I care to know.

One of my aunts maintained that he was a drunk. I don't know about that. I only saw Dad real bad drunk once that I know of. It was not pretty and is a story for another day. Sometimes it takes awhile for dust to settle. That time has come. But this is Father's Day. Today is not the day. In any event, I do know he was addicted to nicotine and this is why his heart blew up at 53.

Bottom line. He was a good person. He worked hard. He wore the uniform. He faithfully did his duty in harm's way. He was a good provider. He loved his sons. Like most marriages his had its up and downs. And from what I could tell from my perspective of limited discernment as a young person, the downs were practically Wagnerian in their scope and intensity. But over time I have come to see just as bad if not worse. And he made sure that there were investments in place that were so sufficiently sound that only recently have they been liquidated pursuant to his spouse's Will.

My father and I clashed a lot toward the end. In my junior year at Hendrix I began the process of applying for law schools. I applied to schools all over the country. While he grudgingly paid the application fees for Vanderbilt, Tulane, SMU and Arkansas, he made no secret of the fact that he wasn't going to pay for me to go to school out of the state. Which struck me as an odd position for somebody who up until then had routinely disparaged higher education in Arkansas. Eventually I figured it out. He didn't want me to leave.

Unfortunately, he left before I did.

If I am doing the math right in my head, which I am probably not having still no aptitude for math or science which he found unfathomable, Buck Bowen would have been 87 as of this writing. Most likely, he would not have lived that long given his chain smoking ways along with the genetic predisposition to coronary artery disease that recent testing revealed he bequeathed to guess who?

But I wish he had been around after I returned to Arkansas after getting my law degree from The Tulane University of Louisiana. I wish we could have played golf. Maybe we could have worked some of this shit out on the driving range. Maybe not.

I wish he could have seen that I turned out OK. I wish I could have said "Thank you."

Not A Morality Play. Still, Karma Is A Bitch.

2011-06-13T18:20:00.000-05:00

It would be the easiest thing in the world to say "I told you so" after the Miami Heat and the much-ballyhooed Big Three of Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James were dispatched in the NBA Finals in 6 games by the Dallas Mavericks, the final win taking place on the Heat's home floor. So by all means let's do it: http://themovingfingerwrites.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-sunday-feeling.html

Particularly, I direct your attention to the quote from legendary tough guy Paul Silas who at the time LeBron told a rapt America that he would "taking [his] talents to the South Beach" was telling ESPN Radio that James didn't have much of a killer instinct. Silas was LeBron's first NBA coach. So he should know whereof he spoke. And LeBron's disappearing act late in games in the Finals, although he played pretty well last night, seems to bear that out.

Text from a friend Saturday: "Why can't LeBron make change for a dollar bill?"

"No 4th quarter."

While it is a safe bet that nobody outside of the Sunshine State was rooting for the Heat in this series, let's not make a morality play out of it. Sure, LeBron's (and ESPN's) stupid decision to announce that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers in prime time during a contrived "special" entitled "The Decision" in retrospect made LeBron, a guy who up until that point was not particularly known for hubris or arrogance, seem steeped in it. And when James, Bosh and Wade were introduced to the Miami fans strutting around in their white home unis as if the NBA Title was a foregone conclusion it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Myself included.

But let's not forget that, again, these guys didn't have bad reputations for being knuckleheads prior to that night. And they still don't. Sure, Wade and James looked like a couple of punks for mocking Dirk Nowitski's sinus infection after a shootaround after Game 5 which Dirk played while running a 101. Hey, assholes! You lost! Shut up. But still, there are far worse citizens in the NBA than these 3.

Also, James and Bosh's decision to go to Miami was a business decision they were entirely free to make. Indeed, depending on what kind of labor agreement the NBA Player's Association and the League can hammer out after the lockout-you do know there's gonna be a lockout right?-free agents will continue to essentially collude with each other to join teams that they believe gives them the best chance to win a title. Somewhere Curt Flood is looking down and smiling.

And let's give the Mavericks some credit. Dirk Nowitski had a series for the ages. Jason Terry and Jason Kidd shot the Heat out in games 5 and 6. Shawn Marion (who has to be carrying an AARP card by now)and Tyson Chandler held their own with Bosh. They were quite literally the better team last night, scoring 27 points off of highly unsure Heat ball handling. Note to Erik Spolestra: who thought it was a good idea to have LeBron bring the ball up the middle on the fast break.? I'm sure that it wasn't you. And if so, I'm sure Pat Riley was not impressed. Also, your team's free throw shooting was generally atrocious especially in light of the the Maverick's excellence at the line. So that's two notes.

So while we don't need to make a morality play out of the victory of the Dallas Mavericks, there is some real satisfaction in seeing the Heat get taken down a peg. And that tells you everything about what a PR disaster "The Decision" and the events afterwards really were.

Because basically OK guys instantly became the very embodiment of arrogance and hubris. And the whole country-or at least the part that follows the NBA- pretty much rooted against them in the Finals. Which is remarkable when you think about it.

Oh. And I told you so.

AWOL

2011-06-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

There will be no MSF tomorrow. My excellent friend Jim Nelson is coming up from Baton Rouge to play golf with me and my little friends in the Hendrix Warrior Booster Club tournament. He is a big LSU Tiger booster. I think it does him some good to see real student athletes that aren't getting paid either over or under the table.

In any event, I am all jammed up this weekend. Will return next week.

Talk amongst yourselves. Happy Father's Day to all the Dads!

Narcissus Shrugged

2011-06-07T19:35:00.001-05:00

I have done some foolish things in my life. Odds are you have too. And we have all done things that we would just as soon never finds the light of day. Maybe they are not very bad things in the great scope of fucking up. But they are things that might otherwise not reflect entirely well on a reputation for sound judgment and probity that one might hope to attain at a certain station in life.

Like sending a picture of your crotch on Twitter to some girl in Texas. While you are married. And a Congressman.

I never did anything that stupid.  Point for me.

I was sitting in a bar in St. Louis back during what I recalll was Bill Clinton's first term.  Like everyone else in there I was transfixed by the breaking news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that was breaking in on the TV.  The man sitting next to me must have picked up on my Arkansas accent whenever I ordered a refill of my iced tea. He asked me if I thought that the story might be true.

"No," I said. "Bill Clinton may be many things but he isn't stupid."  Of course, subsequent events proved me completely wrong. He was that stupid.

At least Clinton had the basic good sense to lie about it. Congressman Weiner led off with the plausible explanation that his Twitter account had been hacked. But I have a pretty good bullshit detector after all these years. And it started going off when Weiner said that he wasn't going to turn it over to the investigators to spare that the taxpayers the expense. After alleging that he, a Member of Congress, had been hacked? I'm willing to bet that the FBI advised his office that an investigation was not an option which I'm sure started the bullet sized sweat droplets. Because you do not want the FBI poking around if your story is even remotely hinky. I refer you again to Bill "I did not have sex with that woman" Clinton.

But what really sent the ole bullshit detector into the red zone was when Weiner stated that he could not say for sure that the image that got transmitted to the girl in Texas was indeed not of him in his skivvies.

I am not a Congressman. Having said that, there are no pictures of me in the Jos. A. Bank jockey shorts that I favor. Nor will there ever be. If anyone ever shows you an image that purports to be me in such scant attire, it is not me. It might be Congressman Weiner. But it is not me.

Which leads one to the inescapable question: What kind of an idiot what do something like this? Isn't being a powerful elected official who happens to be married to a beautiful woman validation enough? Evidently not.

My take? Leave it to the Democrats, his wife and his constituents to deal with him. I know. Nancy Pelosi has called for an ethics investigation. Undoubtedly the Republicans will demand he be turned over for the criminal equivalent. Please. From what I can tell Weiner's behavior, though disgusting, unseemly and juvenile, was not a violation of any criminal laws. Let this be between his constituents and his wife. If they can live with it, I can live with it.

Here's another good question for the folks in his District. Presumably they sent him to Washington to represent them on the major issues of the day. Health care, the national debt, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And Congressman Weiner has time to send texts and pictures to some young woman in Texas whose only mistake was contacting an elected official she admired?

Earth to Anthony: She admired you for your positions as a public man. She did not like you as a person. And now she probably thinks, with some justification, that you are a creep. Well played.

But back to Bubba. Weiner would have been better off to haul off and lie like a damn rug. Just like Clinton did. Coming clean is just marginally useful as a matter of tactics as he is probably now realizing to his infinite chagrin.

What he should have done was enlist his wife in the defense. Really. He should have put her up in front of a mic. And she should have said:

" That doesn't look like my husband's crotch. Actually, Anthony is much smaller than that."

Bet she would have done it. Most of the women I know would have done it.

Up On The Rooftop

2011-06-06T19:49:00.001-05:00

The sounds of Lance Armstrong level strong woodpeckers overhead are building my new roof. Read into that what you will. The roofing crew got here as I left for my white collar job. They are still here as I type this while drinking wine in the comfort of the air conditioning.

How bourgeois.

And it occurs to me that this little house here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest, sitting here,as I am being my bourgeois self, drinking wine while Mexicans work 14 hour days in the service of me and the insurance company, is a symbol of the national debate on immigration.

Young men going up and down on the ladders carrying-what?-bags of shingles that weigh a hundred pounds per bag. In 100 degree heat.

These guys on the roofing crew are here because nobody else will do this kind of labor. The "Build the Wall" types are not opposed to the maids, agricultural workers or the guys on my roof. As far as I can tell, they are opposed to providing government assistance to the children of these people who are "taking jobs away from Americans."

But what should I do? Ask these guys to produce green cards?

I will do it whenever you ask your Caucasian or African American roofing crew to do the same.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-06-05T07:25:00.000-05:00

It wasn't the worst scandal in the history of college football. I will give The Ohio State University that. That dubious distinction will forevermore reside with SMU whose players were getting paid in a scheme that reached all the way to the Governor of Texas. And the NCAA gave their football program "the death penalty" for the first, and I predict the only time. But it was pretty bad. Especially after Sports Illustrated went with a story this week that was so damning in its exposure of the utter corruption of Buckeye football and in revealing head coach Jim Tressel to be a pious fraud that Tressel resigned before the article hit the stands. Resigned without extracting a severance deal from The Ohio State University even. Which is not only unheard of but is indicative of just high pissed the Buckeye brass was at Tressel.

As most of these things go, it started small. Before 2-a-days started last season, Tressel got an e-mail from a booster who also happened to be an attorney that had gotten wind of the fact that the FBI was investigating a Columbus tattoo parlor where players liked to hang out. The investigation also revealed that some, if not most, of these guys had been selling sports memorabilia such as game worn equipment and autographed programs and the like for money or in exchange for getting ink. Now this was a clear violation of the extra benefit rule, which would conceivably render the players ineligible for the upcoming season. But this is nickle and dime stuff which likely would have resulted in some lesser penalty if Tressel had acted on this information or told his Athletic Director about it.

Tressel did neither. But what he did do is he executed the NCAA compliance letter and certified that he knew of no NCAA violations and that his players were eligible to participate in the upcoming season. Which was, of course, a flat out lie. And lying to the NCAA is THE cardinal sin in the coaching business.

Flash forward to December. The Buckeyes are headed to the Sugar Bowl where they are scheduled to play-guess who?-the Arkansas Razorbacks. About that time the Department of Justice passes info along to The Ohio State University about a raid it conducted on the tattoo joint in question which confirmed that 6 players had been selling or trading memorabilia. Tressel, and his supporters, including the President of the school, state that he knew nothing of any of this. Which was Tressel's second whopper. Or third since he obviously lied about it to his AD and his President.

The NCAA declares the players involved, including star quarterback Terrelle Pryor to be have violated the extra benefit rule. But it didn't rule them ineligible for the Sugar Bowl. Rather, they were ruled ineligible for the first 5 games of the NEXT season in the first ruling of its kind in the history of the NCAA. Armed with the full compliment of players, Ohio States defeats the usually sure handed Razorbacks who evidently caught a fatal case of the butterfingers the day of the game.

In March of this year Tressel 'fesses up. In what was both an obvious sop to the NCAA and a bid to keep his job, Tressel offers to join the players in the suspension. By this time Sports Illustrated and local media are sniffing around. Turns out that this kind of thing had been going on on a widespread basis since 2002. Suuuure Tressel didn't know. And so he was histoire by Memorial Day. Which was about when the local media revealed that about 50 current and former Buckeyes received sweetheart deals on vehicles from local car dealers.

Now this situation stinks to high heaven for any of a number of reasons. An athletic scholarship is a hell of a deal. Free room and board and tuition. But since the NCAA won't let the student-athlete work at a job-with some exceptions- during the school year what's a poor kid gonna use for gas money? Or to take a girlfriend to the movies? Hell, Rick Majerus got a reprimand from the NCAA when Utah self-reported that he had taken a player out to get a pizza. This was despite the fact that the kid had just found out that his father had died. As one of the players interviewed for the SI story said, "Technically we knew if was wrong, but a lot of those guys are from the inner city and we didn't have much, and we had to go on the best we could. I couldn't call home to ask my mom to help me out."

Schools like Ohio State and Arkansas, and the coaches they employ, make millions off these kids. And eventually Division I sports is going to have to figure out a way to provide some kind of financial assistance for the kids in the revenue producing sports. Whether they can figure out a formula that is fair and equitable is not known. A lot of D-I schools are barely scraping by in trying to support their football programs. Tulane certainly couldn't afford to provide as lucrative a stipend to the men who wear the Olive and Blue as could LSU. And could they do it at all without violating Title Nine which mandates equal athletic opportunities for women? Who knows?

And lest the NCAA get too high on its horse, remember that it allowed clearly ineligible players to participate in the Sugar Bowl game. Why? They won't admit it but a Sugar Bowl without Terrelle Pryor would have hurt ratings. Its all about the money.

And here's another wrinkle. The NCAA just laid the wood to Southern Cal, primarily over the Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo episodes. You can bet that the Trojans-and the PAC 12 (or 27 or whatever it is now)- will give the NCAA unshirted hell if they don't lower the boom on the Buckeyes at least to the extent that they themselves got tossed in the hoosegow. These are indeed happy days up the road in Ann Arbor.

All we know now is that Jim Tressel will be raking the leaves this fall instead of roaming the sidelines in his trademark tie and vest. The situation at The Ohio State University will get far worse before it gets better. And it all started over Jim Tressel covering up for poor kids selling otherwise worthless crap that has value only for the sports obsessed booster types that feed the beast that is Buckeye football.

Read the article on the jump. Make up your own mind: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/magazine/05/30/jim.tressel/index.html?sct=cf_t11_a2#&sct=cf_t2_a3

Oh. The "pious fraud" remark with which I led off this post? There is an incident in the story that put my Hypocrite Meter into the red zone that is usually reserved for politicians and televangelists. Let me know if you find it and if you concur.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-05-29T08:10:00.000-05:00

It has been a terrible Spring in the South and Midwest. Hundreds of people killed and millions of dollars of damage from tornadoes. And that's just last week. In one 24 period last week, 84 tornadoes touched down in Arkansas, Texas and the Midwest. 84. Godalmighty. And of course, since about the first week of May the Mississippi River has been doing its damndest to cut over to the Atchafalaya. It has been held at bay by both the Army Corps of Engineers and sheer luck. But they had to open the dam at Morganza to flood the spillway. Unfortunately people and wildlife live in the spillway. We shall see what is left when the water recedes sometime in June.

But things are looking up. We haven't had any rain since Wednesday or so. Otherwise sensible people are speaking wistfully of Summer. It may be hot but it will be dry. We are technically in a drought which hardly seems possible. But nobody cares about that. People are ready to be cooking on the grill and playing golf. We are sick of being cooped up indoors or checking our rooftops for hail damage. The good news is that I saw that the kids who operate the snow cone shack have hauled it back to the parking lot down the hill from Mount St. Mary. If that ain't a sure sign of the advent of Summer here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest, I don't know what is.

The Memorial Day weekend also is the unofficial start of the Presidential election season. That seems hard to believe but I read it somewhere on the Internet. So it must be true.

One of the common themes that I have been hearing from the Loyal Opposition in recent years is that the next election will be about restoring freedoms that we have lost. What to do about health care and the national debt I get. Restoration of lost freedoms I do not.

In the last 2.5 years, nobody has told me what church to attend or that I have to attend church at all. As far as I know, nobody in the government is monitoring my communications. If my usual telephone and Internet traffic created an exception to the Court Order requirement allowed by the Patriot Act I am honored. Which means that the National Security Agency knows that I bought a golf GPS today and that my buddy in North Carolina is taking Vicodin for back pain. Big whoop.

My last post on this blog was about how I view Harold Camping's predictions of apocalypse as complete nonsense. It did not result in the seizure of my laptop. Earlier this morning I took a walk. There were scores of runners, walkers and bikers out this morning. Everybody was pretty much going whatever direction they damn well pleased.

I went to Little Rock National Cemetery to take pictures. Nobody seized my camera. A police officer drove through as I was walking unescorted among the graves of our veterans. He waved. I waved back. I was glad to see him. Here and there folks were laying flowers on the graves of loved ones. They were completely unsupervised. By now you should be getting my none too subtle point.

There has always been a paranoid element in American politics. But it seems now that the notion of sacrifice of self to the greater national good is seen by some as naivete. Or that laws enacted by the legislature, such as the recent health care reforms, or seat belt laws even, are an impermissible infringement on personal liberty. Be that as it may, I have not heard much from the Tea Party in either Baton Rouge or Joplin lately.

Here is a true story. A woman with whom I am passingly acquainted started dating somebody. He is a small business person and enamored of the Tea Party. Anyway, she told me that he is insisting that she read "Atlas Shrugged" as what I gather is a condition of their continued relationship. When a crackpot like Ayn Rand makes something of an inroad into the zeitgeist I wish to suggest that these are indeed remarkable times in which we live.

But that's OK. Everybody is entitled to their opinions. And they are pretty much free to express those opinions as they see fit so long it doesn't involve a bullhorn at 3 AM in front of my house or the use of explosives. That's because men and women came together for the greater good in times of national peril. They put themselves in harm's way so that we might be secure. So that I might be free to go see the Catholics whenever I see fit or that you can read Ayn Rand. Or anything else you damn well want.

Or to go get a snow cone if you want. The snow cone kids are back. Which means it is officially Summer in the People's Republic of Hillcrest.

Just take a moment this Memorial Day weekend to remember those folks at rest just East of Downtown Little Rock. Remember those men and women from all walks of life united in death at the National Cemetery because either they wore, or they were related to someone who wore, the uniform of the military of the United States of America.

And give thanks for their service.

Wrong As Usual

2011-05-25T17:57:00.001-05:00

I was driving to an event around 6 o'clock Saturday night. I took an extra minute while paused at a stop sign to take a look at the sky. I didn't see any bodies being assumed into Heaven. I rolled down the window. No trumpet. I rolled up the window and increased the volume on the radio.

Harold Camping, a California radio evangelist, was wrong again. The world did not end, contrary to the predictions that his ministry have relentlessly hyped for the past year or so. The first I heard of any of this was as I was driving home from work back in March. Purple vans festooned with "The World Will End on May 21, 2011! The Bible Guarantees it!" were rolling through the State Capitol grounds.

I didn't give it a second thought until I started reading news stories about people divesting themselves of money to give to Camping's ministry in anticipation of the End Times. People quit jobs. Left college. All in expectation of no longer being on this Vale of Tears on the 22nd. Well, guess what? We're all still here. Sinner and Members of the Elect alike. People were willing to act on faith or at least to suspend disbelief. This despite the fact that as of the May 22, Harold was 0-2 in the prophecy game.

As I say at times like these, this is an opportunity to teach. If any aspect of Christian doctrine has proven spectacularly elusive it is the belief that Jesus Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Every prediction dealing with the Second Coming of Christ has been wrong. Every single one. The early Christians thought His coming was imminent within their lifetime. Wrong. American theologian Barton Ehrman has posited that Jesus himself got it wrong when He preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Because it wasn't. And if anybody might have had a clue, it would have been the Son of God.

Just because End Time theology has been a spectacular failure in human history doesn't mean that it still doesn't have its adherents. When I was a kid, a man named Hal Lindsey wrote a book called "The Late Great Planet Earth" that had everybody stirred up. Lindsey predicted that the Great Tribulation would occur in the late Eighties. I also seem to recall that he tweaked that prediction to allow as how it would occur around 2000. Last I looked he was wrong both times. And if the latest fuss over Mr. Camping's latest busted attempt at sooth-saying was not proof enough, I give you Tim LaHaye who has made a fortune with the "Left Behind" book series.

But back to Camping who admitted to being flabbergasted when the world didn't go kablooey last Saturday. He now says that the Second Coming did indeed occur as previously scheduled. Only Christ returned long enough to place a "spiritual judgment" on the world and execution of same will actually occur on October 21. Kinda like the filing of a Lis Pendens to tie up property you are foreclosing on.

Now I don't know if Harold Camping is a charlatan, a con artist or whether he actually believes this foolishness. I know he hasn't gone broke in the radio ministry. I also know his reckless claims of certitude regarding May 21 led gullible followers to make imprudent decisions. So far, I don't think Mr. Camping has offered to help them in anyway.

My birthday is on October 24, assuming that, well, the world is still here and all. My tightwad buddy Don is not going to send me a present this year just in case. I think it's just an excuse not to spend money.

He might as well send it. Because I am going to offer my own prediction.

On October 21, Harold Camping will be 0 for three.

AWOL

2011-05-15T09:02:00.000-05:00

I am going to be pretty much out of pocket for the next week or so. Between work stuff and out-of-town company I ain't got time to fool with the blog.

The literary world may not recover but exigent circumstances have forced me to prioritize.

Talk amongst yourselves for the time being.

Vox Populi-Outside The Courtroom

2011-05-13T17:05:00.000-05:00

I was standing outside the Courtroom talking to my friend who is a Big Shot Court Official while waiting for the Naturalization Ceremony. We were talking about tennis and golf as most sensible people would under the circumstances. All of a sudden a little guy wearing some government badge I couldn't make out steps in and interrupts the conversation.

LG- "Did you get my e-mail?"

BSCO- "What e-mail?

LG- "I am a Civil War reinactor. Remember? I offered to wear my uniform."

The woman LG is with mouthed the words "I'm so sorry."

BSCO-"Ohhhhh yeah. Look, technically speaking, this is an official session of Court. We can't have folks showing up in costume."

LG-"But the D.A.R. is here. So I thought it would be OK. But you never got back to me."

BSCO-"Yeah. The D.A.R. is here. But it's not like they're in period dress or anything. They're in normal clothes like everybody else."

LG-"Well, I have a Union Army uniform if that would be more appropriate."

He actually said that.

LG pulls out a smartphone and pulls up a picture of him in his Civil War drag.

LG- "See I could show up in this next time."

BSCO grabs my elbow and starts pulling me to him as he pretends to look at LG's phone.

BSCO-" You've never met Judge Marshall have you?"

Me: "No I haven't."

BSCO-"Well, let's go do that before we get started."

Me: "OK."

LG: "Get back to me on the uniform."

BSCO: "Sure thing. Gotta go."

I look back at the lady with LG as I'm being dragged into the Courtroom.

She mouthed the words "I'm so sorry."

Great Miracle League Video

2011-05-08T18:38:00.000-05:00

But the guy leading the "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" can't sing for shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elyfFJjk1ow

My Mother's Day Feeling

2011-05-08T08:24:00.000-05:00

"Son," Mother said. "I need to get some stuff. Some stuff for my hands."

I brought her to Little Rock for a doctor's appointment. By this point in time, communication with Mother was getting more difficult as the Parkinson's induced dementia was beginning to take its dreadful toll. It would not be long before she would be moved from assisted living to the nursing home. But on that day she needed stuff for her hands.

"What kind of stuff,Mom?" I asked. "Do your hands hurt?"

"No. My hands don't hurt. When I could drive I would go to the big store and buy the stuff I like for my hands. Oh God. I can't remember anything."

She made a big production of rubbing one hand over the other.

"You want some hand lotion?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed while pointing a tremulous finger at me. "And I want to go to the big store."

Big store. Hmmmmm. We were sitting in a doctor's office on the campus of St. Vincent's at the time. Big store. Wait. We had gotten off at the University exit. Maybe this had caused something in her neurons to fire. I took a shot.

"You want to go to the mall?"

"Yes. I want to go to the mall to buy the, the,"

"It's Okay Mom. We'll go to the mall on the way back to Conway. We'll buy the lotion for your hands."

And so we went to the mall. Once we entered she took my arm and we shuffled to a store that sells soaps and lotions.

"No. This is not where I buy it."

Since I didn't know where else to go, I asked her to lead us there. And eventually we came to another store down the way.

"Here," She said. This is where I buy the stuff for my hands."

"You're kidding."

"No."

And this is how I came to make my first, and so far only, visit to Victoria's Secret. To buy hand lotion for my Mother.

Suffice it say, Mother in her blue polyester pants, "Arkansas Songbirds" sweatshirt and SAS shoes didn't fit the profile of the typical VS customer. And indeed, the store was full of hot young women buying the usual ammunition that hot young women buy. But the hot young woman behind the counter where they sold the lotion and God knows what else could not have been kinder to this confused old lady and her greatly amused son.

Naturally, Mother couldn't remember what type of lotion she liked. HYWBTC asked her if she could maybe recognize the scent of her favorite brand.

"I think so," Mother said.

And so HYWBTC would place a dab of goop on her own hand or arm and let Mother smell. This went on for some time as HYWBTC patiently opened tube after tube of samplers. Eventually Mother eyes lit up. She had found the stuff for her hands.

HYWBTC opened a fresh tube. She took Mother's hands and rubbed a generous portion into her skin.

"There," she said when she had finished. "Now your hands will feel good and smell pretty."

"Thank you," Mother said as she brought her shaky right hand up to her nose.

She offered her hand to me.

"It smells great Mom," I said.

"I just love it," Mother said. She was grinning like a child.

I bought three boxes.

Mother has been gone a little over a year now. She was an unpretentious person of simple tastes. But somebody along the way had introduced her to hand lotion from Victoria's Secret of all places. It was as close to decadence as Donice Bowen was capable of.

I'm sorry that I didn't remember this story when we were planning the funeral. While I am not usually given over to superstition, I would have made sure that they didn't close the lid on Mom on until her hands had been anointed by the stuff she used to buy for herself at the big store back when she could drive.

Damn. I wish I had remembered.

A Very Good Thing

2011-05-02T17:48:00.001-05:00

I paid a visit to the soldier down the hall as soon as I got to work.

"Ya hear about the woman that got shot?"

First thing out of his mouth.

He snorted derisively and turned back to his computer screen.

"Bastards. He got what was coming to him," the soldier said. "I'm good with it."

Danny Woodyard served in Iraq twice. Like most soldiers who actually pulled important duty, he is pretty taciturn about it. Today was no different.

The "he" to whom Danny was referring, of course, was the late and not lamented Osama Bin Laden, who had gotten himself whacked by Navy Seals in a small fortress in Pakistan. During the firefight one of the "warriors" defending the compound attempted to use the body of a woman to shield himself. She was killed. More on that later.

Make no mistake about it. Osama Bin Laden had it coming. Not only was he the mastermind behind 9/11 which took the lives of over three thousand innocent people, his actions ignited a conflagration in Afghanistan where the Taliban had given him aid and comfort. Eventually, the United States invaded Iraq creating thereby a two front war.  We may debate whether there was adequate cause to invade Iraq. What is not subject to debate is the United States and its allies have expended a tremendous amount of blood and treasure in a most unsettled part of the world largely because of one man.

Which made Osama Bin Laden a legitimate military target. And not merely for the sake of retributive justice. But because a man like that, who still had cachet on the Arab street, whether it was waning or not, was still dangerous.

And so while I am appreciative and grateful that our government was able to insure that he was taken out I can't say that I rejoice. Terrorism is a tactic. It is not the enemy. It will not end with the death of Bin Laden. Not while religious fanatics with access to technology that hate America still breathe. And we cannot delude ourselves otherwise. The bad guys will attempt to retaliate. It may take them some time. But retaliate they will.

Which brings me to my second point.

We shouldn't be too quick to try to find the hand of Providence in the elimination of Bin Laden from the planet. I don't believe for 5 minutes that God intervenes in sporting events, causes tornadoes to destroy homes and cities or that He gets an assist in Bin Laden's extermination.  Al Qaeda's god represents vengeance and blood atonement. We need not stoop to that level even as we give thanks to closure of this chapter of American history.

Which brings me to my final point. While I'm not big on conducting military operations for symbolic reasons. I am comfortable in saying that symbolism is a completely efficacious side effect to Bin Laden's death. Al Qaeda is made up of death glorifying fundamentalists and mysogynistic nihilists, one of whom thought nothing of using a woman's body to protect himself. Such an act is less than cowardly. The coward might attempt escape first. The adherent to radical Islam does not believe that girls deserve an education and that they may be raped with relative impunity. Such a man would naturally have no hesitation in using a mere woman's body for cover.

Osama Bin Laden was the living embodiment of the man who hid behind the woman the night the Seals came to call. It is a good thing that he is dead.

I do not rejoice particularly. But I know that it is a very good thing that the son-of-a-bitch is dead. Osama Bin Laden and his soldier that hid behind the woman.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-05-01T08:10:00.001-05:00

Sometimes stuff happens that reminds you that life can utterly surprise and delight. I'm glad that I have not yet lost the capacity to recognize that.

Most people have the idea that lawyers hate each other when they are in litigation. Some cases unfortunately do get personal. But the fact of the matter is that I tend to get along with most attorneys that I do business with. And I actually have become friends with other attorneys that I only met through some pretty nasty cases. I mean, we don't try to do each other any favors and we don't expect any in return. But most folks realize that we have a job to do and that once it's quitting time, it's time to get a beer and discuss baseball. Which is one of the reason some consumers of legal services think it's a rigged game. They cannot conceive of their lawyer not wanting an outcome as badly as they do. Well, it's personal to them. It had better not be to their lawyer.

I became friends with D, an attorney in Oxford, Mississippi, in the course of negotiating a settlement in order to keep my client from getting sued by hers'. Quite frankly, she and I got off to a rocky start. By way of introduction, she hit me with about a 12 page demand letter. This resulted in my calling her to advise her that I had been around forever and that I had never seen the theory she was espousing. She wrongly assumed that I was casting aspersions upon her relative youth, as compared to me at least, and took offense.

Way to go you slick talking devil you.

Anyway, she advised me in no uncertain terms that I pretty much didn't know what I was talking about. This forced me to resort-gasp!-to the lawbooks to look up the citations in her letter. Sonuvabitch. She was right. But she was likewise wrong on the exact scope of the liability for my client. Point for me. We discussed my findings in our second call. We started talking about working out a way to a resolution of the issues before us. Turned out she wasn't a ballbuster. And I gather she came to understand that I wasn't a condescending jerk. For whatever reason, everybody cooled off. And from that point on we were fine.

Since that time our dealings have been pleasant in the extreme and we always take time to visit after we conclude our business. And so it was last week that we came to a discussion about home equity lines of credit of all damned things. D and her husband are thinking about getting one for their house. I told her that mine sure came in handy when it came time to do home repairs on my little house here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest.

"It seems like there's always something to do on a house," she said.

"Especially when your house was built in 1927," I said.

"Your house is that old?"

"Yeah."

"Do you live in an older neighborhood?"

" I do. It's called Hillcrest. First suburb of Little Rock. The rich white folks moved up the hill where the breezes were cooler than downtown. "

"My husband's parents live in Norman, Oklahoma. When we go see them, we generally stop in Little Rock to break up the drive and to let the kids stretch their legs. Last time we were in Little Rock we drove around in a really neat part of town that was mostly older homes."

"Really."

"Yeah. We had pizza at a really good place in that neighborhood. Place had a funny name. Oh what was it called? There was some kind of an ethnic bakery behind it."

"Damgoode Pies?" I asked.

" Yes! Damgoode Pies!" D exclaimed. "You know it?"

"Know it?" I said. "I live about a half mile from it. Eat there a lot."

"Really?!?"

"Yep."

Laughter on both ends of the line.

"Well next time we are coming through maybe we can stop and you can join us there for pizza."

" Sounds like a plan to me. Be happy to show y'all around."

Now what are the odds that a person I do business with from Oxford, Mississippi would have decided to stop about two good tee shots away from me to get pizza for she and her family? And that the only reason I deduced where they had eaten was because I had mentioned my old Hillcrest house during a discussion about the usefulness of a LOC. Which jogged her memory about her last visit here.

What are the odds of that? Not very good. Of that there can be no doubt.

And at times like these, I am grateful for the continued capacity to be amazed.

My Easter Feeling

2011-04-24T07:05:00.000-05:00

I talked to Laura on Holy Thursday. This will be the first Easter without Hugh. The plan is for she and the girls to go to Jonesboro, Arkansas for Easter. Hugh's brother Barry lives there. At least that's the plan. She admits to getting overtaken by events at times. If she can't do Easter in Jonesboro,well, she just won't.

As for me, there is very little that I can tolerate about Jonesboro. I can't imagine Easter Sunday making it any better. I can imagine the discharge of a thermonuclear device within the city limits improving things a good bit. But not even Easter can fix Craighead County. I kept these thoughts to myself.

What we did talk about was the first year after the death of a major significant other being a year of "markers." Now, there is a difference between the loss of an aged parent and the loss of a spouse. There is nothing particularly tragic about the departure of a gravely ill elderly person. It's quite another to lose a spouse at a relatively young age to a bizarre medical condition that most of us had never heard of before now.

Still, I don't really count my first Christmas without Mother as much of a marker for the reason that I can pretty much do without Christmas. I guess my first one would be Mother's Day. Or realizing in court last summer that we were in a trial on her birthday. I was sitting there at counsel table when it hit me: "Damn. Today's Mother's birthday."

It takes about a year to get those markers out of the way. And Laura gets her first one right off the bat. Still, if you gotta lead off with a marker, Easter is as good as any. Way better than Christmas.

My own Father died @ 2 weeks before Christmas. Even as a young man in college I didn't have much use for Christmas. Never thought much of the near-mania to be happy or to find "meaning" in buying and receiving stuff. Under the tragic circumstances of earlier in the month Christmas of 1977 was downright surreal.

Easter, with its transcendant messages of love and hope, will meet Laura halfway. Easter will let her be quiet and still.

Easter will let her have some measure of peace. And we can all use a dose of that from time to time.

I Gotta Nikon Camera. I Love To Take Photographs.

2011-04-17T13:08:00.001-05:00

Here are some images of the storm damage from what has now been confirmed as a tornado that touched down @ 5 milesWest of my house. The first image is that of a house on Lee Ave about 2 blocks from here.

This house is on Leawood Blvd across the street from my friend Rick's house. Rick's house didn't appear to have been damaged.

This image and the one above it are Northeast of Leawood Blvd. This is pretty much the path that the last tornado took when it came roaring through here 4 or 5 years ago. The rest of the images are East of Mississippi Ave in the Hall High neighborhood. This are is probably a mile and a half West of Hillcrest. The tornado when Northeast from here toward the Arkansas River. Many people over there are still without power judging from all of the Entergy vehicles I saw.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-04-17T07:44:00.000-05:00

I guess the first sirens went off around 1:30 on Friday morning. The first one that went off was the one to my East and behind me around War Memorial Golf Course. I have to guess at this because I noticed that the alarm clock was flickering. So the power had gone off at least at some time in the night.

Springtime can be exceptionally deadly in Arkansas. Friday morning was no exception. The storm struck when most folks were in their beds. Sirens or no sirens, a bad storm can get on top of you in a hurry. Last time I looked 8 people had died. 2 children. Most likely the toll will be worse before it is all said and done.

I raised up in the bed. The light from the wet bar that I had forgot to turn off before turning in was streaming into the living room. I noticed that the ceiling fan was chugging away. So I had power. So far so good.

The siren had no sooner gone silent than it cranked back up again only to be answered by the one that sounded like it was coming from Leawood over where Rick and Sharon live. 4 years ago a tornado touched down over there. I found out about it from Don over in North Carolina who was watching the Weather Channel. For some reason he remembered that I lived not too far from Mississippi Avenue which was being traversed at the time by a twister. Small world.

Then a third siren. This one sounded like it was coming from around Catholic High. The mournful call and response of the three sentinels coming as they were from 3 different areas was kind of extraordinary. But then again, I had nothing better to do at the time than lay there and listen.

I next heard the unmistakable crack and ping of hail on the roof and against the wall. I decided to get up and take a look outside if only to make sure that my little house was not en route to Kansas. I walked into the kitchen. Trees bent. Stuff hitting the windows. Hail and sirens. It occurred to me that this must have been what London might have been like during the Battle of London. Very little light and lots of noise. And the call and response of the sirens.

Eventually, they die down and I returned to bed. The next morning I noticed that my cable and Internet were dead. So I made a call to Comcast. The disembodied voice said that they were aware of the problem and technicians were hard at work. I checked Facebook. Messages from all over. Trees down. Power outages. Wrecks. Which schools were open?

I checked the Internet on my Blackberry. 18,000 without power in Pulaski County alone. Wow. Some storm.

As I walked to the car on my way to work I had a sense that something was amiss. I turned around and noticed that the gate to my privacy fence was wide open. Upon further inspection I saw that the force of the wind put such torque on the gate that the latch sheared completely away from the wood. If you need a lock for your fence I can recommend Masters. It may have caused the latch to fail but I have to say the lock didn't break.

The aftermath: Called handyman to fix the gate. E-mail to insurance company to send somebody to inspect the roof. Calls and texts to and from friends to make sure everybody's OK. E-mails from out of state folks who were just seeing the news.

Another Springtime in Arkansas where Mother Nature tries to kill us about 3 times before giving it up for Summer. Such is life in these here parts.

A Dumb Sense Of Vast Loss

2011-04-11T17:45:00.001-05:00

Mark Twain wrote the following upon receiving the news of the death of his daughter Susy Clemens. It captures perfectly the feeling I had upon learning of the death of my friend Hugh.

"It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words.The power to realize their full import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast lost-that is all. It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the details and thus learn and know the full extent of the loss...It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete,and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster."

Or as the old hymn puts it, "I scarce can take it in."

My Sunday Feeling

2011-04-10T08:44:00.000-05:00

"Manny Ramirez showed this Spring that he can still hit a fastball. He showed he can still use the whole field. Now he has to show that he can regain his power. The other question with Manny, as always, is how long he can stay interested."

This sentence appeared in Sports Illustrated's pre-season baseball edition that hit the newstands April 4th. Of course, the writer could not have known that, even as the publication went out, Major League Baseball knew that Tampa Bay Rays slugger Manny Ramirez had tested positive a second time for performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs.

Well, to be accurate, Major League Baseball announced only that an issue arose with ManRam under baseball's Joint Testing and Treatment program. And that Ramirez opted to retire rather than serve a proposed 100 day suspension while cooperating with the program. 100 days. Seems clear to me that he didn't test positive for Ben-Gay.

On the one hand, I am surprised that Ramirez was such an idiot. On the other hand, I am not. Manny Ramirez was a head case in a sport that is full of them. His career was punctuated with numerous examples of dogging it in the field and failing to hustle on the bases. These were described invariably as "Manny being Manny." You are given some leeway when you have 500 some odd home runs to your credit. He had and David Ortiz formed the nucleus of the most combustable lineup in baseball when he played for the Red Sox.

And yet, his approach to the craft of hitting was beyond reproach. After the news of his retirement came out many of his former teammates were asked about what it was like to have played with him. Every one that I heard talked about Manny's hard work in the batting cage and all of the extra film study. They talked of his willingness to help young players with their hitting.

And, indeed, virtually nobody attributed Manny's prowess at the plate with steroid use. By way of comparison, nobody believed that Barry Bonds was clean when he was launching them into San Francisco Bay. Manny Ramirez's body stayed about the same during his career. Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa came into the league built like wide receivers. They left built like linebackers.

Still, you would have to think that the prudent man would only have to see the prosecutions of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons to realize that using PEDs is not without almost prohibitive risks. Use of PEDs seems especially senseless in the twilight of your career.

Or maybe that's when the risk calculation says to err on the side of using the needle. Manny Ramirez has more money than he can possibly spend. He obviously could afford to walk away. Maybe using again was the ultimate example of "Manny being Manny." It has always been about him during his career. His retirement leaves a huge hole in the Rays lineup. Obviously the potential consequences to his teammates did not concern Ramirez overly much.

But in any event, the question is no longer whether Manny Ramirez can remain interested. "Manny being Manny" cost him the remainder of his career. And he probably doesn't much care.

Stand By Your Man

2011-04-06T18:00:00.001-05:00

As some of you may recall, about a year ago, a man named Huff was arrested in a neighborhood not too far from here. He was charged with the home invasion and attempted abduction of a young woman.

The story that was alleged is pretty creepy even by the low standards of sex offenses. Huff allegedly coaxed the victim out of her house under the pretense of asking her about a dog he had found. Once she stepped out he hit her in the head and dragged her back in. He then proceeded tied her up. But not before allegedly getting her to pick out items of her underwear and get some high heels for God only knows what reason.

As he was taking her and her wardrobe back to her car she resisted. She screamed. A neighbor who was taking a walk confronted Huff who allegedly told the neighbor that he was doing an intervention on the girl. When the neighbor expressed misgivings, probably because the Bridgeway typically does not bind the folks it does interventions with, Huff allegedly dropped the girl and hit the trail.

A couple of days after that, the cops raided Huff's house where he was having a quiet evening at home with his wife and popped him. They also did a search of the premises which unearthed the practical tools of the do-it-yourself home pervert. Ropes, knives, box cutters, twist ties, sterile gloves, a camera and a bandana. You know, stuff that was on the prop table on the set of "Silence of the Lambs." These items of evidence were the subject of the suppression hearing that was held earlier in the week.

The defense attempted to establish that the search was the product of an impermissable search. The witness claimed that she was never served with a search warrant. The witness? Why, Mrs. Huff, of course.

Now I will be the first to tell you that I am not the best expert on the dynamics of relationships. I have been cashiered by women for no reason other than they didn't like the look on my face at a particular given moment. And yet I know a woman who stayed with her husband after he pleaded guilty to public servant bribery and lost his license to practice law. None of the women I know would put up with me if I had screwed up so royally. Indeed, I have been jettisoned on flimsier evidence of misconduct.

But I can't imagine testifying on your husband's behalf when he is charged with being a major league sex offender. I also imagine that the prosecutors didn't initially see that one coming either. And it's not like she could provide an alibi or other exculpatory evidence. She testified that she didn't get served with a warrant. She said that in order to keep her husband's toys that he kept in the house they shared out of evidence.

Well, it didn't work. As is the case in 90% of suppression hearings, the search was upheld. The toys will come in at Huff's trial at the end of the month.

Sex offenders are different from you and I. We might be capable of larceny. But some people got way out there itches that they got to scratch. Special people get charged with attempting to abduct a young girl.

And I guess it takes a special person to testify in in his behalf.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-04-03T07:45:00.001-05:00

As I type this, it is the Saturday of the Final Four of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. This year's final weekend has Butler against Virginia Commonwealth. While the other side pits UConn against Kentucky. Butler and Virginia Commonwealth are the Cinderellas of the field despite the fact that Butler made to last year's final against the despised Duke Blue Devils. Neither Butler or VCU were very good as late as February. Not only is VCU an 11th seed, but they had to prevail in a so-called "play-in" game to make the tournament. Accordingly brackets over on that side got completely blown up. The only people who have Butler and VCU in the semis on that side are people like your great Aunt who picked those two because she has a friend in Richmond who has a dog named Butler. You know. The scientific method. In any event, this is not likely to happen again.

By comparison, and perhaps to restore a feeling of normalcy to the proceedings, we have UConn going against Kentucky in what Tony Kornheiser refers to as the "Elliot Ness Division" of the tournament. UConn's coach Jim Calhoun, having taken the Bruce Pearl route in contacting prospective Huskies, will get to sit out for a portion of next season. Well known recidivist Kentucky is merely the Whore of Babylon. And they are coached by John Calipari who had 2 programs go on probation while he stayed one step ahead of the NCAA sheriff. And if that weren't sufficient intrigue, both coaches despise each other. Well, I think EVERYBODY hates Calipari.

I say it's Butler against Kentucky Monday night in a refreshing morality play in that folks can play the "good vs. evil" game in a contest that doesn't involve Duke for once. And then we'll see if UK goes on probation again.

While we're on the subject of sports, let us turn briefly to the NFL lockout. Talk about finding it hard to root for somebody. Millionaires versus Gazillionaires. As I understand the issues, the owners want to add to the 1.3 billion-yes, billion-that they take off the top of the niagara of income the league makes so that they can maintain stadiums and the like. Nobody is saying they are going broke. It's just that the profit margin is less obscene. On top of that they want to extend the season by two games.

The union is balking at less money for more games and has demanded to take a peek at the books. The owners refused. The union decertified so they could go to court and the owners locked the players out.

My thoughts are two-fold. First of all, the owner's position is basically one of "stop me before I kill again." Who told Jerry Jones he had to build that Taj Mahal of a stadium down there? Nobody told Al Davis to sign his long snapper for 1.5 million and not many people advised Dan Snyder to go anywhere near Albert Haynesworth. If the owners aren't making a sufficient killing they have only themselves to blame.

Secondly, this case is gonna settle and it will settle well before training camp for a very simple reason that as far as I can tell, noone has mentioned yet. And the reason is this: the NFL owners can't stand up to discovery. You don't want to show us the books? Fine. We go to court and subpoena the books. And we put in the public record the fact that the NFL not only did not bargain in good faith but that it lied about the finances.

Trust me. The owners do not want this. The case will settle.

But first, we have to ring out college basketball. Duke didn't make the Final Four and the bookies lost their pinky rings and gold chains on this year's tournament.

What's not to like about it?

Blogspot

2011-03-31T18:08:00.002-05:00

The inability to insert paragraph breaks is a system-wide thing that Google hasn't gotten around to fixing yet. They are also having trouble uploading pictures and videos. This has been going on for about a week.

I can edit and publish in html but it looks like crap. Will keep you posted.

Hopefully Google can fix this soon as a lot of blogspot users are high pissed.

Dispatch From The Field

2011-03-30T19:20:00.004-05:00

An exchange between two baseball guys that was initiated from the one that's a Dodgers fan in North Carolina. Polycarp: It's funny. Even in a year like this one, where the Dodgers are a mess, they get lots more press than the Angels, even in the LA Times. tmfw: Season starts tomorrow right? Polycarp: Thursday is the first real game. tmfw: Hard to think of baseball when it's 40 degrees. Polycarp: Not if you've been listening to hillbillies talk hoops and Nascar for 5 years it isn't. tmfw: Point for you.

Technical problems

2011-03-27T08:24:00.003-05:00

Blogspot.com is resisting all attempts at editing today. I apologize for the run-on paragraph that is the last post.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-03-27T08:10:00.003-05:00

Scripture instructs us that to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven. I realized about a month ago that it was time for me to leave the Board of a local non-profit here in town. I wasn't pissed off at anybody. My resignation wasn't an act of protest concerning any action the Board had taken. On the contrary, I get along with pretty much everybody on the Board and those in the auxiliary support group of young professional folks. Indeed, looking back on it I realized that I had been affiliated with this organization for the better part of my professional career. This was my second tour of duty on the Board. This time it foolishly made me an Officer and I served as Acting President off and on for 2 years and President the last 2. So what happened? Well, as some people say on Facebook about their own relationships, "it's complicated." And I'm still pondering these things in my heart as I type this. Like most guys, I'm not terribly inward directed. I'm not much one for excessive navel gazing. But here goes. If memory serves, it was that noted humanitarian John Lennon who said that life is what happens when you're busy making plans. One day you are rocking blissfully along and then the game changes on you. A best friend dies about the time other things are going "boom!" And so it becomes time to step back, scratch the back of your head and take stock of the situation. And it occurred to that I needed to go. It occurred to me that I didn't have the emotional energy anymore to devote to the position. I started doing the calculus. I was scheduled to leave in June. Everybody that we needed to get rid of is gone. We got through another audit. There's nothing really left to do before the fiscal year ends. So they don't really need me anymore. Well, they certainly don't need someone at the helm who is as blanked out as I am right now. But still, I've done this a long time. I'm identified with this Board and it with me. It's hard to take the overt step to sever the ties with folks you care about even if those ties were soon to be severed by operation of the By-Laws anyway. I believe that it was Dirty Harry who said that a man has got to know his limitations. I think I know myself pretty well. And I know that I have hit the wall. And so, one night last week I poured me a glass of Knob Creek. I put an ice cube in it. And I started typing. I told the Board that my service with them was an honor and a privilege. I told them that I was tired and that I didn't feel up to making decisions much more complicated after 5 than what club to pull out of the bag. And that it was time for me to go. That was about it. I arrived in Jackson early in the afternoon on the day before Hugh's funeral 3 weeks or so ago. My hotel was next door to Millsaps College, where Hugh and Laura both went. And graduated even. So I went for a walk on the campus that day to stretch my legs. Millsaps, like Hendrix, is a Methodist college, although Hendrix is vastly superior. Just kidding. Anyway, after awhile I happened upon a statue of John Wesley on which was inscribed his famous dictum: "Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places that you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can,as long as ever you can." As I have said before, I am not a very good Christian but I am pretty good Methodist. I wondered what Bro. Wesley would think about me quitting on the job as I typed my resignation e-mail last week. I figured he might not approve. Then again, he never ran a goddamn women's shelter either. Point for me. Do all the good you can. As long as you ever can. I didn't do anywhere near that. Whatever was accomplished while I was hanging around had zero to do with me. I mainly had sense enough to stay out of the way of the folks that actually ran things. Because of them I now have the luxury of moving on. It's time for me to go. I took a sip of whiskey. I pushed the send button. And it was OK.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-03-20T08:45:00.000-05:00

We don't do much political commentary around here. It doesn't much interest me the way it fascinates some of my friends. Besides, I would much rather write about whiskey, women and sports. But the other day, something remarkable happened in the Arkansas State House. That august body, led by a highly principled bloc of Tea Party infected Republicans held up an increase in the appropriation for the Arkansas School for the Deaf. The amount of the increase? A measly 6 grand.

I guess the School for the Blind knew better than to even ask.

Now it is one thing to insist that all state agencies, even the one entrusted with the care and education of deaf children, execute its mission in a fiscally responsible fashion. Noone would seriously dispute this. But it is another thing altogether to come down hard on the deaf school while drawing extra tax free compensation to dummy corporations set up by these stalwarts. My friend and neighbor John Brummett explains it all on the jump:http://arkansasnews.com/2011/03/19/hypocrisy-crashes-the-tea-party/ And as if that wasn't bad enough, they held up the appropriation for the deaf school while rubber stamping a 700k appropriation for the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Let me get this completely straight. These fiscal conservatives don't blink at damn near a million bucks for a mostly useless shrine to jockdom but they will draw the line at a 6 grand increase for the Arkansas School for the Deaf all the while funnelling extra swag to themselves?

It's not just Republicans who benefit from this largess. There are Democrats who are in on the gravy train too. And it stinks. John refers to all of this merely as "hypocrisy" in his column. But that is because he writes for a news service and must keep up appearances. I am burdened by no such constraints.

To call the Republicans (or hell Democrats for that matter) who sought to balance the budget on the backs of the deaf while double-dipping from the public trough is to libel hypocrites everywhere. No. They are chickenshit bastards, sons-of-bitches, punks, and greedheads with Oedipal tendencies(think about it for a minute).

The fact that the appropriation was passed after an indignant response from the electorate might give me some small hope that these Tea Party types are at least minimally conversant with shame. Except that I have no hopes for any long term political consequences for this stunt given the short term memory of the electorate and the fact that the core constituency of the Tea Party consists primarily of corporate interests and lunatics.

This is why I vastly prefer to think about sports. I am not unmindful that hypocrisy abounds in sports, particularly at the intercollegiate level. I give you Ohio State's Jim Tressel and Tennessee's soon-to-be-canned Bruce Pearl. But in an athletic contest there is pretty much always a winner and a loser. And the outcome-whichever way it shakes out-is generally explainable in simple terms. Unless we are talking about figure skating which is not a sport or boxing and the horse game which can be rigged.

It's hard to explain voting against deaf children. At least not with a straight face.

Gee. It's good to be back.

Status Report

2011-03-12T12:55:00.003-06:00

First of all I want to thank everybody who has been in touch with me the last week or so. I have received countless e-mails and text messages since my last post. It is gratifying and humbling to know that so many people care about me. It is also fascinating to realize that many of you came to "know" Hugh and Laura through these pages or from the usual back and forth on Facebook. This is indeed a brave new world that has such people in it.

I made up that last sentence myself. Bet y'all are relieved that my puckish sense of humor survived the recent unpleasantness intact.

Anyway, everybody is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. I spoke with Laura and Camille last night. Camille is excited about her new camera and the photography class she is enrolled in. Laura,in turn, learned way more than she wanted to know in response to the perfectly innocent question "What does SLR mean?" She probably won't answer her phone for a couple of weeks if she sees me on the Caller ID.

As for me, I'm doing OK too. Between Governor's School Auditions and doing a music review for the paper when I got back in town in addition to the day job, I was a little busier than I needed to be. I was a lot more exhausted than I realized. It takes a lot of energy to get through such a traumatic event. And I don't have as much as I used to.

I don't know when I'll get back here. There's a lot going on right now, both in my head and in my heart. These recent events have caused me to look at a great many issues with a different perspective.

But it is Spring and Spring won't let one be idle. Miracle League is coming up along with Major League Baseball. The NFL is on strike which promises to be amusing and the NCAA Tournament starts next week. Golf tournaments have been entered during which we can expect the usual finger pointing and recriminations. But just sitting here on the porch swing with some amber liquid sounds pretty good too.

Like I said in the last post, I will be back. I just don't know when. But thanks for asking. I appreciate it.

I invited Laura to come see me this Spring. She and Hugh loved their last visit to Hillcrest. She said she just might do it.

And when she comes we will sit right here on this swing together. And I bet she won't ask me any more questions about cameras.

Radio Silence

2011-02-28T18:56:00.002-06:00

My friend Hugh Tedder passed away yesterday. Words do not adequately convey the deep sense of loss that I feel for both myself and for Laura and the girls. And if I were a better writer, I wouldn't start the sentence with "words do not adequately convey etc." Best I can do. The batteries are low.

I will head back to Jackson sometime and I will be back sometime. And that's about all that I know. Thank you for all the messages and e-mails. I really appreciate them.

I will post the arrangements for any of the Tulane types that peruse Facebook just as soon as I get them.

Please keep Laura, Camille, Susannah and Hugh's Mother and brothers in your thoughts and prayers during this exceedingly difficult time.

Thank you.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-02-27T08:00:00.002-06:00

One doesn't readily think of exotic dancers when one considers the intended class of workers protected by the labor laws of our great land. But those who toil in in titty bars got rights too, pal! At least that's what Gretchen Bertram thinks. That's why she filed a federal class action lawsuit against a local "gentleman's club" called Visions for allegedly violating her rights under the Federal Labor Standards Act.

In her suit Bertram alleges that Visions, owned and operated by a man named-no lie-Ricky Edge, wrongfully considered Bertram and others similarly situated to be independent contractors who were paid only by a portion of the tips they earned from the "gentlemen" patrons for whom they performed instead of an hourly wage in violation of the FLSA. The lawsuit also alleges that Bertram and others similarly situated "dance in the club without very many clothes on." Which must have been a fun sentence for her lawyer to write.

I have never been to Visions or any other "gentleman's club." It's not that I am a prude or that I do not have an appreciation for women in scant attire. I just see no need to pay a cover charge and drink alcohol at stick-up prices to talk to women or to watch them dance.

Oh. Speaking of which, here's another amusing allegation from the Complaint. "The dance skills utilized (by the gals at Visions) are commensurate with those exercised by ordinary people who choose to dance at a disco or wedding." See Complaint at para. 46, as we lawyers say.

Maybe I am missing Gretchen's larger point but try as I might I do not recall seeing any lap dances during the reception after Meghann Crow's wedding over at Pleasant Valley Country Club last summer.

Anyway, what little I know about such matters came from an unlikely source: A reader of this blog. 4 or 5 years ago I started noticing comments to the blog posted by a woman named Sean. Her comments were typically funny and insightful. One day she sent me an e-mail in which she confessed to being a dancer at another "gentleman's club" in town. She asked me if she could give me a call.

"Absolutely," I wrote back.

"Sean"-which is not her real name-told me that she was going through a divorce and that she had recently lost her job as an office assistant. She and some girlfriends had gone to this particular joint on a lark one night. Sean told me she thought she could dance as well as the local talent up on the stage and decided to give it a whirl just to make some money to make ends meet until she could figure out her next step.

She would write me from time to time to tell me about life as an exotic dancer. She described her co-workers variously as a bunch of dumbasses or desperate girls with money or drug problems. Sean was in her thirties when she took up the pole which she said is pretty late in life as far as that line of work goes. Accordingly, she became a sort of mother figure to the other girls. And the older patrons of the joint tended to like to talk to her instead of the younger girls. Mostly it was depressing talk about their marriages. But hey! They were buying the drinks. And they didn't tend to be complete jerks like the younger guys. Speaking of which I always had a standing invitation to come out to the club to visit her. Just to provide a respite from the boredom. She said I wouldn't even have to buy her a drink.

I never took her up on it. I figured with my luck the place would get raided while I was there drinking my watery whiskey or I would get shot in the parking lot. Sean didn't dance for much longer anyway. She had been considering another line of work for no other reason than she was tired of listening to guys bitch about their wives. That and she had come to the realization that she was no longer sufficiently ingenue to wear 10 inch stiletto heels.

Last I heard of her she had moved back to a state out West where she was from originally. She had gotten a job with-no lie- the Department of Social Services. She was also thinking about selling cars. She thought her past relevant work experience gave her transferrable skills that would come in handy on the car lot.

One of the things Sean didn't complain about was the money. She thought dancing in a club was a silly kind of job to have. But she knew it was not her calling in life and besides she thought she was getting paid pretty good for doing something that kept her in shape. But she was lucky. She didn't have to do it for a living.

Now I don't know the first damn thing about the Fair Labor Standards Act so I am not in a position to assess whether Gretchen Bertram and other similarly situated hoofers have a case. But I am all for folks getting paid what they are entitled to under the law. And the discovery in this case should be interesting if not completely hilarious.

So I say: Pole dancers of Pulaski County, and other similarly situated Plaintiffs, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Jackson

2011-02-18T16:34:00.003-06:00

Many folks have wondered what I am doing in the Magnolia State. Here's the deal. My law school buddy Hugh Tedder is in the Critical Care Unit at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson. About 2 weeks ago he came down with the flu. This turned into pneumonia which disinigrated into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome(ARDS). He has been on a ventilator for over 10 days.

Hugh is slowly getting better. They removed the tube from his throat and inserted a trache into his throat. This will make him more comfortable. He is still sedated and sleeping as I type this. They will move him to a long term Critical Care facility next week and will attempt to begin to wean him off the vent sometime then.

While Hugh is improving he remains acutely ill. He will require much in the way of rehabilitation services and it may take him up to a year to fully recover. Still, he is stable and in the safest place in the universe he can possibly be.

Laura and the girls are doing as well as can be expected. Laura will return to work next week as Hugh will be here for a very long time and in the immortal words of St. Vincent Millay "Life must go on. I forget just why."

Thank you for all of the kind messages. I will come home sometime Sunday. See you then.

AWOL

2011-02-16T21:04:00.002-06:00

The literary world will, once again, be in a state of grief but the blog is shut down at least until next week. I am off to Jackson to see my buddy in the hospital and be of some slight use to his family.

Talk to you upon my return.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-02-13T08:00:00.002-06:00

I don't really have much to write about this weekend. But seeing as how that has never deterred me in the past I will soldier on. The regular readers of this space, all 6 of you, may recall, that I had planned to be in Jackson this weekend to help Laura while her husband Hugh recovers from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in the CCU at St. Dominic over there. Well, that got cancelled when Laura sent me a text saying that she had a stomach bug. She said "Don't come." "Don't worry," I swiftly texted back.

Keeping a vigil will make you crazy. I sat with Mother pretty much every day that she was in her coma preceding her death. We humans like to feel helpful and useful at times like these. It is natural to feel that you have to be there at all times. To do otherwise is tantamount to abandonment. At least that's how it feels. But the longer certain situations drag on the more you tend to realize your irrelevance to the process.

There is a golf course across the street from the nursing home whether Mother spent her last years. About every 2-3 hours or so during my particular vigil I would go over there just to walk around and get some fresh air. Maybe watch guys tee off. I am a pretty active guy who likes being outside. I had to feel the cold wind in my face, the sun on my back. Just 15 or 20 minutes every 3 hours or so. Just to remove myself from the environment.

I once read a book called "Storms Can't Hurt The Sky-a Buddhist Approach To Divorce." While I was not in the process of getting a divorce, the book had received good reviews and it seemed interesting. Buddhism is a lot less "touchyfeely"than I had thought previously. And so the book had a lot of surprisingly useful and practical approaches to conflict and grief. My favorite observation in the book was that of the Zen approach to worry that came back to me during my final week with Mom.

It is this: "If a problem has a solution there is no need to worry. If a problem has no solution there is no USE to worry."

Mother was receiving the most competent and compassionate end-of-life care imaginable. She was in a coma. My being there at her side was not going to change the fact that she was going to die. My taking a break now and again was not going to hasten her demise. There was nothing I could do. There was no use to worry.

And life has a nasty tendency to go on regardless of how much the loved one would wish otherwise. The longer I was away from work, the more frequent came the calls from other lawyers. All of which were premised with, "God, I hate to talk about business at a time like this but..." But.

Indeed, my brother Bob who is the mama's boy in the mind of God told Mother one night "Mom, you know I love you. But I have to go see my boys."

But.

My buddy Hugh is in the safest place he can be. He is attended to by two highly trained nurses at all times. He has stabilized. He is making incremental improvements on a daily basis. The plan now is to begin the slow process of weaning him off the respirator. This is a good thing.

I hope to get down there next Thursday and stay until Sunday. He is receiving the best care imaginable and he is getting better. There is no need to worry. Since there is absolutely nothing I can contribute to his care there is no use to worry.

But it is hard. It is hard.

A Summons To Jackson

2011-02-09T15:40:00.003-06:00

Like everyone else in Arkansas, I am socked in by one of the biggest snowstorms in pretty much anybodies memory. And for once, I really don't have time for this. Sure, it's pretty to look at and it's nice to get a couple of free days off from work. But I have other concerns.

My friend Hugh is in the ICU at a hospital in Jackson. He's on a ventilator. Seems he caught the flu, which turned into double pneumonia. Which turned into something called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. It is every bit as scary as it sounds and is the reason for his current predicament.

I graduated from law school with Hugh where we went to ball games and hung out in bars together. We also studied occasionally. I sang at he and Laura's wedding. He called me when they adopted Camille and Susannah. We've gone to ball games, played golf and done the stuff guys in the South like to do. Except hunt and get arrested. Anyway, he is as good a friend as I have in this life. And here I am stuck on top of this hill at Ice Station Zebra.

I tried to game this. I checked on getting a flight down there. Unless I get to Memphis by 7 AM, which ain't gonna happen due to the jack-knifed 18 wheelers on I-40, my options aren't very good. Fly to Houston for 4 hour layover? No good way to fly from here to Jackson. Might as well drive. Sure, I could have stole a march on the storm and headed down Monday or Tuesday. But I had stuff at work that I had to catch up on after the office closing last Friday on account of snow. And it ain't a good idea to leave an 80-something year old house when they are calling for lows in the teens.

Laura and I talked about it at length Sunday and Monday. She understands. What are the odds of hale and hearty Hugh Tedder coming down with something like this while Little Rock is getting socked with the biggest "snow event" in memory? Just bad luck all the way around.

I also know there's nothing I can do except be with Laura. Hugh's sedated. It's not like I could really visit him. But I could drive Susannah around or let Laura go get some rest. It's not much but I could do that. I could do something.

I feel completely useless right now. But there's not a damn thing I can do about it until the roads clear. There's no point in me getting stuck on US 65 around White Hall or someplace. There's no point in risking wrapping my car around a lightpole. One member of the family in the ICU at a time please.

They came up for a visit about this time 2 years ago. We had a great time. We went to the Presidential Library and hung around in the River Market. We had a nice dinner at Ferneau.

Laura told Hugh that she wanted to move up here to Hillcrest. Hugh seemed amenable to the idea maybe someday. It was nice thing to think about at least.

Laura's cool. She knows I will be there as soon as I can.

I'm shooting for Friday. I hope to be in Jackson by Friday.

And I hope that both of them can come back to Hillcrest soon. Really soon. I don't think anything would make me happier to see them come through my front door agaun.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-02-06T08:00:00.001-06:00

I suppose that it is safe to say that I have more than a casual interest in sports. I played a lot of ball as a kid. I ran in races, played competitive tennis and am a passable golfer admittedly only on my best day.

While I follow professional football, especially the Saints, I have to admit that I am fairly agnostic about the Super Bowl. If there is a more relentlessly overhyped, over-reported and just over anything in professional sports I don't know what it is.

And so, it is perfect that the Super Bowl contest between the Steelers and the Packers will be played this year in Jerry Jones' over the top (there's that word over again) Cowboys Stadium. Where one of the teams playing will most definitely not be the underachieving Dallas Cowboys.

Which, of course, I think is great. But I digress.

The Super Bowl is the NFL's tribute to itself and to the culture of big business as much as it is about football. It is about as subtle as Ben Roethlisberger's barroom pick-up technique. Which makes big, rich, football and Republican crazy Dallas the perfect place for such a spectacle.

Except for one thing. The weather in Dallas is just awful this time of year. I mean, I get the fact that the damn thing will be played in a dome the size of Kansas. But that's not the problem. The problem is that Texas and Oklahoma are yet again socked in by the usual late January-early February ice storm. Planes aren't flying in or out. The freeway system is one big luge. Hell, five people were injured Friday, once critically, when ice slid off of Cowboy Stadium and struck them below.

And this crappy weather happens every year down there. You would think that all the corporate types that spend a gazillion dollars for all the events surrounding the game itself would have thought to consult the National Weather Service for a 5 year average for early February in the Dallas Metroplex.

But no. They didn't worry about the elements because Jerry's Stadium is domed. Which is pretty short sighted for a tight-assed quasi-military outfit like the NFL.

Turning to the game itself, I think it will be a close one. I give the slight edge to Green Bay just because they play well in domes to which their annhilating an excellent Atlanta Falcons team in the Georgia Dome attests. But I also like the Steelers. Indeed, both teams seem to be populated with pretty good guys now that Big Ben has been chastened and James Harrison is no longer running around trying to decapitate people.

And so while I am agnostic on the subject, I will watch the damn thing, just like everyone else in America and all her ships at sea. And hope for a good game so that the highlight of the broadcast is the game itself and not the commercials, many of which last year were simply downright strange.

And if you think playing the Super Bowl, hell, much less planning any large scale event in Dallas this time of year is idiotic, wait until they play the Super Bowl in New York. Yes, the same New York, fixated upon by terrorists for decades. The same New York where there are, as we speak, 10 foot snow drifts.

Hey! I got an idea!

How about Port au Prince as a future site? At least it's warm.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-01-30T08:00:00.001-06:00

One of the local meteorologists calls it a "false Spring." As I type this, I am sitting in the swing on my porch. Which is pretty much my favorite spot on this planet. I am wearing shorts and a golf shirt. Speaking of which, the first tee time of the new year is a couple of hours away. It will be interesting to see how my newly diagnosed creaky back holds up.

The high today is supposed to be around 70. It is hard to believe that a couple of weeks ago the highs were in the twenties. The streets here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest are full of activity. Folks are running and walking with their dogs. Young people are pushing carriages. I think I hear more birds than usual although for all I know there are just as many out singing today as there were when there was snow on the ground. Even better, Girls are Riding Bikes in Shorts.

Things are looking up.

I always look forward to the Spring. I find that the older I get, the less I tolerate the cold. I find the shorter days and Central Standard Time to be unbearable at first. I get over it pretty quickly but I can understand why some folks don't. I felt that winter induced depression come creeping back in a week or so ago when I stood on the first green at War Memorial taking pictures of the winter scene to the North of me. It seemed to me that I had never seen a sky so gray or felt a wind so cold.

Which, of course, is silly. But Winter can make a person think like that.

It's not as if this Winter has been any harder than the ones in the past. Sure, it's either been too cold or too wet to play golf for well over a month. At least too cold for me. But you will some hardy fools out there in frigid conditions, their round undoubtedly warmed by ingesting much Tennessee manufactured anti-freeze.

I just don't think that I cope as well as I once did. Perhaps that is a sign of my advancing age. Goethe supposedly uttered "More light. More light" as his last words. I'm with Goethe. The longer I live the more I am appreciative of the light. Which is why I love the Spring. The light returns every Spring.

I know that Winter is going to slap us upside the head at least a couple more times before returning North where it fricking belongs. I've seen snow in April. I know we are experiencing a false Spring.

But a day such as today gives me hope that the flowers and the birds will return. That the golf course will be full of drunks yet again and not just with the ones trying to keep warm.

And, best of all, Girls will be riding Bikes in Shorts again on a regular basis.

More Light. More Light.

Injury Report

2011-01-24T19:11:00.000-06:00

OK. So he's not a complete pussy. Today's MRI revealed that Jay Cutler sustained a Grade 2 sprain of his Medial Collateral Ligament sometime in the 2nd quarter of last night's NFL Championship game with the Bears' most hated rival, the Green Bay Packers.

Been there. Hurts like hell for about a week.

And I'm sure that he didn't need to be trying to play quarterback behind a leaky offensive line that was at least partially responsible for the league record 53 sacks Cutler took this season with his mobility compromised. I get that.

What I don't get is this: Every time I have sustained an injury to my lower extremities, I have been put on crutches. And I don't have near as much invested in me as the Chicago Bears have in Jay Cutler. Why didn't they have him on crutches? Why didn't they put a brace on him?

Could it be that, contrary to the story that the coaches and the medical staff made the decision to jerk him, that they really didn't much believe that he was hurt that bad?

It would be the easiest thing in the world to make an invidious comparison at this point in the narrative. So by all means let's do it. Cutler, for his wondrous talent, is somewhere in the high middle of the Jeff George-Ryan Leaf continuum. Ryan Leaf is still widely considered the biggest bust in the history of professional sports although JaMarcus Russell's sensational flameout with the Raiders makes him a close second. Jeff George, mercurial headcase that he was, could still get feelers from clubs if he were 10 years younger. Hell, he may still be for all we know.

I know that the camera wasn't on Cutler the whole night. But when it was, his impassive face gave the impression that he didn't much give a shit. We have all seen injured players cheer on their teammates from the bench. Cutler looked for all the world that he had checked out emotionally. Can you imagine an injured Drew Brees standing off to himself after being injured? Of course you can't.

Which again makes you wonder what happened in the locker room at halftime. Or it makes me wonder.

Professional athletes are like politicians in a certain respect. They all have a certain amount of political capital available to them and images count for a lot. In the world of sports, especially in the hyper-macho world of professional football, once it appears that you don't have heart, it's hard to overcome that.

The imagery that was transmitted from Fox yesterday rightly or wrongly painted the picture of everything about certain of our professional athletes that infuriates sports fans.

This is what I can't get out of my head. The Bears say the MRI revealed a knee injury. Why wasn't Jay Cutler on crutches if that's what they suspected Sunday afternoon?

They put me on crutches. And I am nobody.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-01-23T08:32:00.001-06:00

My father died when I was a senior in college. Accordingly, my law school education was financed by the Student Loan Guarantee Foundation and the United Methodist Church. When I left law school, I was in debt to the tune of about $35,000. That seemed like a lot of money to me at that time. I was able to defer it for awhile when I worked for the Legal Services Corporation. But those days ended when I got laid off by the Reagan administration and was forced to obtain a real job.

I lived in apartments for most of my young adulthood as I was determined to pay those loans off before buying a house. Besides, I didn't want my nascent credit rating to suffer by getting a judgment on me. That, and I figured I would be subject to a Higher Judgment if I stiffed the Methodists. Eventually, pay them off I did and then I bought the little house where I still live here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest.

People have different ideas about debt. When I was young, I carried a balance on my credit card because that was the only way that I could finance my then riotous lifestyle centered around women and bars which were, and are, both expensive endeavors. Suffice it say that I have calmed down considerably since those halcyon days back when I was young and had potential. I don't have any unsecured debt to speak of, I have equity in my house and I am heavily invested in a 401k and a pension. While I am by no means a wealthy man, I am comfortable and I am secure. I am extremely fortunate and I do not take my good fortune for granted which is why I donate a considerable amount of money to various charities. I have been very lucky and I believe it is my duty to try to help others who are down on theirs.

End of sermon.

Like a lot of young people, I went to law school because I didn't have anything else to do. I had thought about seminary but my ardor cooled after meeting the English rationalist David Hume while obtaining an utterly useless degree in Philosophy at Hendrix. Conversely, Vic Nixon, my retired pastor started to go to law school and wound up at Perkins. He has said on more than one occasion that he and I both wound up where we needed to be. I still don't know what Vic really means by that.

Times are different now. Law school was always kind of a scam. They let folks in fully expecting to get rid of 1/3 of the first year class after taking their tuition. But a person could take a gamble on getting a law degree back then, even if you had no idea what you were going to do. The economy, though improving, is still basically in the dumper. The New York Times recently published an article in which it questioned whether incurring a bunch of debt is worth the gamble given the fact that jobs in the legal profession are scarce. You can read it at the jump:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=law%20school&st=cse

Strictly as a matter of economics, it can make sense to choose not to repay a debt. Indeed, a young man featured in the Times article, can't repay his loan because he doesn't have a full time job. It doesn't worry him. Until he finds employment, he can't pay. He doesn't worry because there is no use to worry. And we have all heard of folks who have just walked away from their homes because it simply did not make sense to make payments on a home that due to market conditions was worth far less than the mortgage encumbering it.

Are such people deadbeats? I don't think so. Sure, there is a moral implication at work here in that when you sign a contract you are giving your word that you will repay. But lots of companies make business decisions to default on contracts all the time. Now, if I had quit paying on my student loans when I had a perfectly good job to sustain me then I would have been a deadbeat. That's because my decision would have been based on my personal considerations and not because of economic necessity. Similarly, are folks that file bankruptcies deadbeats? A few. But 75% of them are the result of medical bills, divorce or poor business decisions. And that's the honest to God truth.

Which brings me at this point in this tedious lecture to a fairly recent phenomenon around here in these parts. Which is folks you wouldn't ordinarily consider capable of criminal acts, committing crimes solely to get them out of financial hot water with their creditors. Not to buy food or crack even. Just to get out from under debt.

There is an old saying amongst us bankruptcy lawyer types. There is always a solution to a money problem. Some are worse than others however. I get a person who steals because he is hungry. Or because that's just what he does. Some people are just crooks and know nothing else. I do not get committing a crime when you ought to save face. Or for a one shot score to come up with money for debt service. There are better solutions.

Consider the case of a lawyer named Jones. Jones was a real estate developer and title lawyer. He and his family had a big assed house out in Chenal Valley. The house was subject to two mortgages. A balloon payment of about $300,000 was coming due on one of them and Jones was having trouble coming up with the money. Now Jones was worth a lot of money on paper. But while he was asset rich, he was cash poor. And he couldn't borrow any more money on his big assed house because it wasn't worth what was owed against it.

Did Jones swallow his pride and try to reorganize his debts with a Chapter 11? No. He torched his house for the insurance, made up a cock and bull story about how intruders broke in and set the fire which nobody believed. Least of all the jury that found him guilty and for which he caught 10 years.

Or take the case of another lawyer named Lewis. While not much is known about the state of his finances, he is alleged to have sold bogus water and sewer bonds on improvement districts that did not exist to three or four banks, thereby skinning them for millions in the process. A banker friend of mine says she heard that he just printed them up himself. Which took some stones if you think about it. In any event, the whereabouts of Mr. Lewis is known only to his lawyer, although you can bet that there are numerous State and Federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies that would like to have a word with him. Don't look for him at his 7,000 square foot house in Chenal. It's abandoned.

Finally, we turn to the absolutely bizarre tale of a man named Fueget who robbed a bank in January of 2009. Fueget worked in insurance and in financial planning. The irony of the latter job description will soon become readily apparent. Anyway, you will note that I didn't leaven Feuget's offense with the word "allegedly." This is because he is claiming that he is not guilty by reason of diminished capacity (the so-called "insanity defense") due to being on the anti-depressant Zoloft and the A.D.D. drug Adderal at the time he committed the offense. According to his expert, these meds gave him delusions of being a John Dillenger type figure and compelled him to commit the offense.

The problems with this defense are obvious. In the first place, the defendant invoking the defense neccesarily concedes that he committed the act that he was charged with. Which puts the Prosecution about 2/3 of the way there. This is why, contrary to popular fiction, the "insanity defense" is rarely invoked. Really.

Mr. and Mrs. Feuget, who incidentally used to be neighbors with a friend of mine, are in a bankruptcy themselves. Which the prosecution hammered away at on cross in order to establish motive for the crime. However, according to the paper, Feuget testified that he could have stolen more money at his day job if he had been so inclined. Which is not the sort of thing that I would share with a jury. And the missus testified that, despite the bankruptcy, money was not a real problem as they were living off of her income as an R.N. Be that as it may, a review of the bankruptcy docket for their case reveals that the Chapter 13 they were in has been converted to a "no-asset" Chapter 7 case. Which certainly implies something different.

All I know about this case is what I read in the paper while the jury is weighing the actual evidence. And their opinion is the only one that matters in the case. The defense seems far fetched to me. But then again I know of a woman who evidently became a compulsive gambler while on medication for restless leg syndrome. So who knows? I just know a lot more people being treated with Zoloft than I do people that stick up banks.

But let's assume the jury doesn't buy it. Then you have 3 instances of people from basically the same upscale part of town committing criminal acts (I characterize Lewis's behavior thusly as I feel certain that he will be indicted for something ) for their personal gain during roughly the same period of time. Which I find remarkable for a little jerkwater town like Little Rock.

There is always a solution to a money problem. The young lawyer in the piece in the Times made the decision that it didn't make economic sense to try to pay back his law school loan when he didn't have a job. That ain't insurance fraud or bank fraud. It requires a special sense of entitlement to attempt to game the system just to come up with some money.

But then again some people are just deadbeats.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-01-16T08:52:00.001-06:00

Where to begin? Jared Loughner's deadly rampage last week in which he wounded a Member of Congress and 12 others, killed a Federal Judge and a little girl among others has sparked a debate across the country about a couple of subjects.

By all accounts, Loughner appears to be smooth running crazy. His mental condition, which seemed tenuous at best, deteriorated in the period of time before he showed up at that Tucson shopping mall where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was making herself available for her constituents. Indeed, the New York Times reports that the night before the incident, Loughner took pictures of himself in a g-string variously pointing the Glock he had recently purchased at his buttocks and his crotch.

I'm no psychiatrist but it would seem to me that there's a lot going on there.

Obviously, this idiot had no business with a handgun, even given the fairly non-existent standards for carrying a concealed weapon in gun happy Arizona. But the better question to me is: Who, apart from law enforcement, has an absolute right to carry a 9mm with a 31 bullet magazine? Does one really need that much ordinance for personal protection? Loughner had 2 other clips on him. Thank God a couple of brave souls jumped on him before he could reload and wreak more carnage.

The Supreme Court recently held that the District of Columbia's blanket ban on handguns in the District violated the 2nd Amendment. OK. Fine. But many if not all of our constitutional rights are subject to reasonable regulation by the government. I may fervently believe that my religion allows me to have sex with teenage girls. But that's not a defense to a Mann Act charge. Ask Tony Alamo.

Why are guns sacrosanct and exempt from more stringent regulation? Again, is it absolutely necessary to possess exotic weaponry to be secure in your home and on your person? Do we really like the idea of the Jared Loughners of this world being able to outgun your average cop? Or your average Arizonian even? Handguns are good for one thing and one thing only: Killing people. Do you NRA types really believe that the occasional Virginia Tech type massacre or a Jared Loughner going off on innocent people exercising THEIR constitutional right to peaceably assemble is the price we pay for freedom?

I sure as hell don't. And I don't think that any of responsible gun owners that I know do either.

The second topic of conversation kick started by this tragedy is a discussion about the language used in our political discourse in recent years. Specifically, some folks blamed Sarah Palin's PAC whose website had cross hairs on certain congressional districts targeted for defeat by it. Congresswoman Giffords' District was under those cross hairs. Which she complained about.

Predictably, Palin issued a statement in which she said blaming her for this tragedy was "reprehensible" and a "blood libel." Leave it to a narcissist like Palin to equate criticism with an ancient and despicable lie about Jews. Gabby Giffords damn near gets her head blown off and Palin's the victim here? Please.

But I agree with her in that from what we seem to know about Jared Loughner, he was more motivated by the "silicone switch inside his head" than politics of any conventional sort. For instance, Loughner seemed to be enamored with the theory that the government imposes rules of grammar to enslave the populace. Which makes Glenn Beck's ravings seem positively Lockean by comparison.

Again, I am no psychiatrist, but it seems to me Gabby Giffords got herself shot because she is an attractive and powerful woman. Which made her an apt target for a punk like Loughner, who did not enjoy much of a track record with the ladies. And then there's that g-string and gun thing. No, this wasn't an attempt at political assassination. 2 of the victims just happened to be government officials. This could have just as easily happened to an attractive movie star making a public appearance. Hell, this could have happened to Sarah Palin.

But I do have a suggestion.

After 9/11, the sportswriters and sportscasters pretty much made the collective decision to quit using metaphors of war to describe sports. So you don't hear much about players being "heroes" or references to "bravery" or "courage" on the field of play. This is because such references are inappropriate when the United States has troops in harms way.

If the sportswriters can tone it down, why can't the politicians? References to "taking an opponent out" or resorting to a "2nd Amendment solution" to political issues are inappropriate and may serve to inflame the less stable amongst us. And even scarier, the less stable amongst the Tea Party.

Indeed, condoning such intemperate talk is unAmerican if not downright treasonous. There. I said it.

So shoot me.

Today's Wally: The BCS Title Game

2011-01-10T10:50:00.000-06:00

In today's column, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Wally Hall shares his thoughts on tonight's BCS Championship game between the Oregon Ducks and the Auburn Recidivists. First, let's set the scene.

Grantland Rice Wally is not: "A blistering, white sunrise is scaling the mountains and there's a desert chill in the air..."

Really? Compared to who?: "Auburn, truly an outstanding university..."

No. They really are. Unless you count UAB: " [i]s almost always the other school in the state of Alabama."

That and they somehow wound up with Cam Newton: "Which may account for some of the success the Tigers have had this season."

The Ducks are standing in the way of stepping out of the Crimson shadow? Huh?: "It is about stepping out of the Crimson shadow, but standing in the way is a good, very good Oregon football team."

Or Cecil Newton's if you want to make the metaphor actually somewhat apt : "Oregon will play like someone is trying to steal its money."

I prefer to think of them as milers with a kick at the end: " The Ducks are sprinters who can go the distance."

Change the word "to" to "about" and it will at least resemble English: " (Oregon)Coach Chip Kelly's mentality to playing on college football's stage is different than (Auburn's Coach) Chizik's"

Oregon State, truly an outstanding university..."[O]regon is the Alabama of that state."

I'm thinking France maybe: "Nike co-founder Phil Knight has made sure has made sure of that (Oregon being the Alabama of that state and all) with updated facilities and enough uniforms to to outfit a medium sized country."

The same one that was another color in the first sentence: "When the searing orange sun sets here today..."

Making stuff up: "[A]merica will be treated to a track meet in shoulder pads and a game that most likely will be decided on the final possession."

And just think. Tomorrow we'll be treated to another column full of such penetrating insights.

My Sunday Feeling

2011-01-09T08:30:00.001-06:00

"Patrick...was found dead on the morning of January 6, 2010, at the apartment of a young man in downtown Little Rock. He was the victim of a likely heroin overdose."

Thus began a lengthy obituary concerning the brief life of a 2o year old kid in yesterday's Democrat-Gazette. Patrick's life was a contradiction. He was a wrestling champion in high school. He was an Eagle Scout. He was an accomplished artist. He was a National Merit Scholar but did not graduate from high school. Still, he was offered a scholarship to UALR on the basis of his ACT scores. Alas, he dropped out. And the young man couldn't stay clean.

" It is hard to imagine how a person finds drugs despite all the time we invest to protect them from drugs and push them in the right direction."

Obituaries are hard to write. I know. I've written 4 or 5 in my day. They are hard to write even when you have a degree of emotional detachment about the subject. You have to accurately depict the life of the departed while at the same time give the reader some idea of what made that person who he or she was. That is why when I wrote my mother's obituary, I circulated the first among my brothers and a couple of trusted friends. It was my brothers' job to look for factual errors. It fell to Phil and Don to tell me if I had laid it on too thick.

Grief makes us do crazy things. You need a second set of eyes at such times. You need someone you trust to take you aside and tell you to maybe rethink decisions that you thought were made with a clear head. Because you do not have a clear head when you are grieving. You just don't. And some things are said at such times that cannot be taken back. Similarly speaking, once the obit runs, it can't be taken back.

I did not know the young man in yesterday's obituary. I don't think that I know the family although Little Rock being the one horse kind of place it essentially still is it is entirely possible that I've met some of them. I cannot imagine the pain and frustration attendant to watching a life so full of promise snuff itself out through the abuse of drugs. And from what I can see, good parents constantly second guess themselves. It comes with the territory. I would have to imagine that Patrick's family is doing plenty of that right now. And my heart goes out to them.

Grief can make you angry too. I have seen that as well. And I think I detected it in Patrick's obituary. I'm not saying that the author is not entitled. Or that the graphic depiction of his untimely passing might not prove to be a cautionary tale to those that may be tempted to fool around with drugs. Such an obituary can teach as well as inform. And perhaps that was the author's goal.

I'm not being critical. 20 year olds typically don't die unless absent a tragic circumstance. But perhaps I would have let it go by saying that he was a troubled kid whose life was tragically cut short. That's all the public needed to know.

I'm glad I passed Mom's obituary around before sending it. One of my brother's pointed out that I had omitted a deceased cousin. Guys whose opinion I trust assured me that the obituary was fine. They would have told me in no uncertain terms if I had gone overboard. You need a second set of eyes at a time like this.

Because grief makes you crazy. It is merely difficult to take back things you might say. But it is impossible to take things back when you write them down.

Height of Presumption

2011-01-06T18:08:00.000-06:00

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has announced that one of its first orders of business will be to read the Constitution of the United States on the floor of that chamber. I don't have a problem with that. I think the Constitution is one of the grandest documents ever devised by the mind of man. I think it probably should get aired out every now and again. I personally am exceptionally fond of the Section of Article I that prohibits the States from laying Duties on the Import or Export of Tonnage.

But that's just me.

Now one might think that this is just a political stunt to keep the Tea Party loons revved up without really making a serious effort to, say, eliminate the Federal Reserve, but I'm willing to give the Rs the benefit of the doubt. So let us turn our attention to the political stunt.

When they actually get around to filing Bills, the Member introducing his or her Bill will explain under what provision of the Constitution the Bill is authorized under. This is actually pretty clever. It implies that the previous Majority introduced legislation without regard to the Constitution. It also imbues the new legislation with the patina of sanctity. At least for their target audience that has but a Christine O'Donnell level understanding of both the Constitution and the legislative process.

"Let's see those liberal Democrat bastards vote against Ron Paul's Bill to return to the gold standard. It's Constitutional ! "

As I like to say at times like these, here now is a teachable moment. Guess what? The first rule of statutory interpretation by a Court is this: A law passed by Congress is entitled to the presumption that it is Constitutional. This is without regard to which party introduces it, whether it is the product of bi-partisan cooperation or if it is rammed down the throat of the Minority by the Majority. And this is true is without regard to whether the law was sanctified by a citation to the Constitution when introduced. Or the United Methodist Book of Discipline for all that it matters.

Which is a big reason why laws passed by Congress are rarely overturned by the Federal Courts. State laws get overturned on Constitutional grounds with far more frequency than Federal laws. Another reason for this is that once a Bill is introduced in the House it is referred to the appropriate House Committee with its armada of lawyers for hearings and debate. Any initial questions about Constitutionality can get hashed out here. For a better discussion of this process you may click on the jump: http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_law.html

I gotta hand it to the rascals. This is pretty clever as theatre. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution.

And having said that, I think I will turn now to the section in the Constitution on Letters of Marque and Reprisal. I like that part too.

Today's Wally: Thoughts About The Buckeyes And The Sugar Bowl

2010-12-30T16:42:00.003-06:00

In his column today in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, sports editor Wally Hall discusses the impact of the brouhaha concerning Ohio State quarterback Terrell Pryor and the other Buckeye teammates who were punished for violating the NCAA's "extra benefit" rule when they sold sports memorabilia. The 5 players will be suspended for the first 5 games next season but are eligible to play in the Sugar Bowl against the Razorbacks.

No they won't: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/campusrivalry/post/2010/12/jim-tressel-five-suspended-ohio-state-players-will-not-go-to-nfl/1 : "All five are juniors and and could declare for the NFL, so they may go unpunished since the NCAA has said they can play in the Sugar Bowl."

This situation as I have imagined it is completely unfair: "Which on one hand, is a crock of bad butter."

There is probably a reason for this: " No one has said it or written it until now.."

Making stuff up: [b]ut the most powerful entity in athletics (ESPN) probably had a behind-the scenes voice too."

Which of course ignores the fact that North Carolina and Tennessee are playing each other. Instead of the rule makers: " In fact, the story line is now bigger than the Buckeyes being 0-8 against the SEC in bowl games. You have the rule breakers versus the rule makers."

As opposed to another kind of fine: "A monetary fine doesn't scare the Buckeye brass."

Here's the use of subtle humor to explain why one of those monetary fines doesn't scare them: "They could get Pryor to autograph some jerseys and sell them to take care of that."

Except, as explained above, that's not what's going to happen: " It is just wrong to find the kids guilty and then tell them their punishment won't be until next season, when they probably won't be around."

What a crock of bad butter.

And with this post I shut down the blog until sometime next year. Probably won't be back until after the BCS Championship game.

Happy New Year! Have a safe and sane New Year's Eve.