Hamlet, the lawyer

I drive through the country from Griffin to Senoia to LaGrange and back again. I try to do my job as best I possibly can and be of service to people so they will want to make use of my services and pay me for them. I want to use my knowledge and experience in a constructive way. I want to provide people with a service in such a manner that they will want to continue to make use of my services, that they will trust me and will want to tell others that I am a good provider of services, and that my reputation will be such that the desire to make use of my services will grow. I want them to come to me and send people to me and grow my business.

People tend to expect something close to perfection from me. They expect a level of competency which is beyond what they expect from themselves.

Consider this. An attorney has two functions. The first function is to attain a level of expertise concerning the laws which affect people in the community. This level of expertise is trusted by others so that they come to me and request my opinion on the law when they attempt to act in society, so that they do not fall prey to the laws through their actions.

The second function of an attorney is to act for another. This is the part of an attorney's function which comes from the concept of an attorney in fact. People place their ability to act in society in the hands of the attorney so that the actions will be handled in such a manner to ensure that these actions are lawful. Or perceived by those whose responsibility is to enforce the law as lawful

There are problems with these functions. First of all, everyone is expected to act lawfully. Everyone is expected to know the laws as well as any other in society. In these expections, no one has an advantage over others. As a matter of fact, a layman's knowledge of the laws may even be clearer than an attorney, particularly in an area in which the layman has special expertise.

Secondly, the lawyer may not have any greater expertise than the layman in knowledge of the law. Surely, when one graduates from a law school and passes the bar and is sworn in as an attorney, they probably have a greater expertise than your average layman. However, this is no guarantee. It is probable that a legal secretary acquires a working knowledge of the law that becomes equivalent to the lawyer for which she or he is employed. Sometimes the layman may actually go to the secretary to seek advise in deference to the lawyer she works for. This has happened many times.

Often, a layman will ignore the expertise or knowledge of the lawyer. This may arise because of the personality of the layman. It may arise from the ego of the layman. It may arise from a desire to save money. All of these create problems for the lawyer and the layman. Ultimately, they create a situation in which the layman suffers and then blames the lawyer for his ills.

This often creates a situation in which the skills and knowledge of the lawyer are discounted by the layman or even denied. It also creates a situation in which the lawyer's place and position in society are denigrated.

When this happens, the actions of the lawyer are placed under a microscope and examined more closely than almost any other person in society. Any shortcoming or failure is perceived more harshly than others. The irony of this is that the lawyer is the only professional whose actions are held in this way and whose actions are held under the scrutiny of the agency which sanctions their actions but also by the professionals who are their brothers and sisters in the profession. Is there any other profession which polices itself like lawyers?

I am reminded of Hamlet's famous solliquy. Who indeed would suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, when one might make his peace with a bare bodkin (knife)? This does make calamity of such a short life. Perhaps it is only the possibility of capital and wealth which in fact does make the livelihood worth the risk and perception in the culture.

I became a lawyer to provide a livelihood, respect in the community and an opportunity to serve others. At least I have the opportunity to serve others. For now.

A weekend full of fun

What a sad combination:
The end of the week,
No plans
And little money dribbling in.
Can I find something to do that is fun
For Kate and me
And doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
Or am I doomed to sit inside
And watch the clock hands whirl round and round
The clock face
And wish I was somewhere else
Or someone else?
I guess I could go into the office tomorrow
And push paper around my desk and try to clean off the floor
And send posts throught the post office.
Of course, I need to fertilize the tomatoes and basil
And fix the deadbolt on the carport door at home.
Well, there is always something to do at home
Or at the office.
I would like to recreate though,
But that always takes time and money,
Things that are not necessarily in large supply around here.
What fun!

Thursday before the end of the week and the end of the month

Well, Cindy has to go to Knoxville early because her mother is sick and in the hospital. That means Kate and I stay home and wait until after Tuesday to go to Knoxville. That is truly the way we should have gone in the first place. Cindy needs a car in Knoxville and there is no real reason why we need to drive her up to Knoxville on Saturday only to return on Sunday to go back to Knoxville on Tuesday afternoon. This is the way it should go.

My day tomorrow has disentegrated and I need my morning to work on things in the office. My day has been extended to Saturday and Monday. I should have a little time to have fun with Kate on Saturday and Sunday.

Things have been going pretty well all things considered. The money appears to be lean but the truth is that it has been spread over debts. I am a little short of meeting my obligations on a steady basis but am meeting them in the long run. There is little sympathy but everyone seems to be allowing a little room to make it work. I am a little tired of asking for more time from my creditors. It is true that when you owe someone you work for them.

I am tired of working for my creditors. That is why I am living on a cash basis and trying to retire my debts. It took a long time to get to this place, but I just need a little more time and a little more cash flow.

Is this what being an adult is all about? Probably.

Drifting westward

I love to drive westward. The concept of chasing the sunset is enormously attractive.Is there a better sunset than one experienced on the horizon, over water? I think not.

In contrast, can there be anything more ridiculous than seeing the old men in Miami, turning their lawn chairs to the west to attempt to experience the sunset as it sets over the pink and turqouise buildings of Miami Beach. Don't they know the darkness of evening is catching them by the shoulders and dropping them back on their pillows, while the young ones play the night away?

It is true sometimes that a sunset over a grassy nothingness can be alluring. I remember watching the sun drift down below the horizon over the grassy fields outside Crescent Beach, near Cowboy's Seafood Restaurant. It gave the illusion of watching the sun over the savannah in Africa.

But that is just illusion. It demands creativity to appreciate. But the sunset over the sea is a different animal. One can feel the tug on one's heart as one looks out over the ocean. There is a race memory, feeling your being pushed out and away from land to some new place. Is this a predominately American feeling? Do we all feel the push across the sea toward the foreign sunsets? Do we follow our ancestors as we yearn for the calling toward the west?

The gold of the sunset over the gulf or ocean or any body of water is magic. It calls to us. It draws us out of ourselves to a place we do not know. It promises new lives for each of us. It is golden.

Summer torpor

The combination of a large fat-encrusted luncheon
Plated on the cool green linoleum
And a warm Summer afternoon
Is too complete of a creation
To survive this lack of napping
As my arms are heavy-laden
And yearning for a short sleep.

Sometimes the things we could have, should have done
Haunt us deeper than we recognize.
Must I eat again?

I am drifting, drifting, waiting for release.

Mercury morning

The air drifts like sweet pine-resin molasses
The birds are softly atwitter
And the squirrels are now appearing on the curtelage of my vision
I sit and sip my morning tea
As the thick musk of the lake rises up on vapors from the water's surface
Singing, "Peace, peace, peace."

Suddenly, the sound of pickups bump across the cracked pavement
Barrelling clumsily down the road behind me
They are pulling fiberglass bass boats on trailers, wizzing down the roadway,
Around the turn and on down to the boatramp
Where droopy-eyed men immerse their crafts sensuously
Into the green-grey water of the lake,
Smelling sweetly of diesel, algae and detrius,
To undertake their pursuit of those silver piscine phantoms
Which slyly hide among the crisp, green grasses and leggy cattails;
Their hopes springing eternal.

The fat engines broiling through the churn of the prop in the water,
Those fat, old boys are sitting precariously on spindly limbs in chairs
Tossing their hopeful lures along the shoreline,
Out and back, out and back, out and back, in ponderous rythmn,
Disturbing the sleep of the alligator watchmen slipping cautiously below the waters
As they pull a second cold one out of the box behind them
In an effort to silence the echoes of those beers
Consumed during the previous evening's meanderings
Which left the dark shadows below their heavy eyelids
And moved them to hit the throttle on the outboard engine
A little harder this time

And so they permanently cracked the crystal silence I had blissfully enjoyed
Before they broke the sweet rapture
With their rude motoring on this formerly quiet, early Summer morning.

Nightmares Reconsidered

As the day wore on, what little time I gave to the nightmare of the night before began to shred in to a different take on the thoughts of late night trauma. The concept of NASCAR legends serving as elders at Presbytery meetings began to take a comical take. By the time I left work and went to church the importance of the dream began to unravel. Finally, I took this dream to my spiritual advisor, Father Timothy. His response? Get a life!

Now I worry about taking this stuff too seriously. Or should our pastor be replaced?

Listening to the message

Who was it who said that we live in the God-haunted South? This morning, a dream woke me up from a sound sleep at 1:30 o'clock a.m. I dreamed that the church was disciplining me for failure to abide by my pledges. The dream was very vivid. All of these famous Presbyterians were involved. Even people who are probably not Presbyterians but who have Scottish names were involved in the dream. Bill Elliott as an elder in the church? How bizarre. The dream made me consider my shortcomings concerning living up to my obligations.

I know I have a tendency to internalize these things and churn them around in my stomach with all the acid. Its just a part of my nature. A lot of people would probably think that I am thinking this out too much.

But I sit here and wonder what God is trying to tell me. I feel like it is all out of control. I feel like I am running out of time. I feel like I have so little control over the situation. Do I need to release it all to God?

I believe that God is always trying to educate me in little ways, even in ways that seem insubstantial. Some might consider it a little paranoid. But I am trying to keep my eyes and ears open.

I understand that my failure to tithe is partially a lack of faith on my part. I know that turning it all over to God is in the message. If I took the effort to set aside ten per cent it might be a small way to take control. The problem is is that it is counter-intuitive. Giving away control to take control.

Why is it so hard?

A weekend in Mississippi

Well, this past weekend we spent three nights in the extreme southwestern corner of the state of Mississippi. I didn't really know what to expect when we left early on Friday morning. I have been to a lot of state parks in Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee over the years, but never one in Mississippi. I didn't have much experience with Mississippi. Cindy, on the other hand, had many happy memories of childhood weekends spent at Percy Quin State Park outside of McComb, Mississippi. Back in the 60's, the Sicards often went swimming and sailed little sailboats on the lake during the Summer months. All of her family and her aunts and uncles and cousins were present and it was a very pleasant memory for her.

Now let us zip forward to 2007. Mississippi is a very poor state and still suffers from the problems created by the hurricanes of 2005. Apparently Percy Quin was used as a place of refuge from the devastation of the storms of 2005.

But the real problem is the relative poverty of the state of Mississippi and the amount of money the state can afford to give to keeping up its state parks. When we arrived at our cabin, we found it unbelievably dirty, filled with vermin, and very limited in its amenities. The park literature talked about two beaches, but no beaches were to be found and the places where the beaches had been located originally had big signs warning of alligators in the water.

Don't get me wrong. It appears that the park is very well used. The cabins were mostly in use all the time we were there. The lodge rooms seemed to be well used as well. And that is nothing compared to the spaces where rvs and other campers were using space. Truly, the place was seeng significant use while we were there.

And there were many fishermen out over the weekend. We saw men in bass boats and pregnant mothers with their daughters creeping around the lake trying to find the fish below the surface. It appeared that a lot of campers and day users were out using the lake. Then you have to add all the golfers on the golf course. From this it appears that the park was very well used, both overnight and day use.

And yet the cabins were filthy. Ours particularly. As I said earlier, our cabin was very dirty and filled with mice and roaches. I was so happy to get home so I could take a shower in our own shower.

Having said that, the reunion itself was a lot of fun, if somewhat disorganized. Despite the lack of planning, it appeared that every part of the family took time to contribute to the suppers and the fun. We hosted a party on Saturday night at our cabin. That may seem strange considering what I said previously; however, we held the party outdoors and no one had to go inside. I certainly hope no one had to go inside our cabin with out their shoes.

The physical beauty of the state park itself was great. We all enjoyed the sunsets over the lake in the evenings. It just seemed that it could be better managed.

Now having said all that, let me relate something we encountered this morning. Because of the length of our trip from Georgia to Mississippi, we decided to go home a different way than the way we had travelled to get to Mississippi. When we travelled to Mississippi, we drove up to Atlanta, then west on I-20 to Jackson and south on I-55 to McComb and on to the park. When we came back home, we went south on I-55 to Hammond, then east on I-12 and I-10 towards Mobile, then north on I-65 and I-85 to GA 18 back to Zebulon and north on US 19 home to Griffin.

That being our chosen route, when we were travelling east on I-10 past Gulfport, Mississippi, we decided to travel into town onto to US 90 (the old Spanish trail) east toward Biloxi. We were looking for a seafood restaurant for lunch. The problem was that there was still so much devastation left on the gulfcoast from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. So little has been completed to replace the beautiful houses and other commercial buildings that were destroyed on the coast. We saw the remains of Beauvior, Jefferson Davis's final home. They were working to fix it up but so much had to be done to get it back to what it had been when Cindy and I went there back in the 80's.

You couldn't even really find anything to speak of on the coast. We drove onto Biloxi and finally found a downtown area which looked like it might hold a restaurant. As we drove around and around looking for anything that might be open, we finally found a little seafood restaurant down a little street in the downtown area. There was even a parking space right in front. It was perfect. We went back to a booth in the back and sat down and looked in the menu. Shrimp and oyster poboys and Barq's rootbeer on the menu. It was really perfect. We ordered and the waitress brought us poboys and hushpuppies. Delightful! Cindy ate predominately in silence. She was sad because of all the continuing devastation, but everything else was great. Beyond the food, the little restaurant in downtown Biloxi became a symbol of the resiliancy of the area. The place was packed with new employees of the Hard Rock Cafe Resort on the beachfront several blocks to the south. They seemed to be a smile amongst the frowns of the downtown area. I hope they do well and the whole area revives stronger than before.

We all know they are still at risk. Another hurricane could come back and take them out again. But the fact that they were in business, serving the workers of the new local businesses, really gave a sense of hope to an otherwise depressing drive down the Old Spanish Trail.

Between my inlaws, the red beans and rice, the cajun casserole and the shrimp poboys at the Biloxi Schooner Seafood restaurant, it was a great time. Taking a shower when I got home from Mississippi was a small price to pay.

The end of the work week this week

I received a message this morning. God will tear down, even the chosen ones. The sinful will receive chastisement for their trangressions. The message always ends with a promise of salvation for a few. The problem is not so much that there is punishment and release. The problem is where we stand in the process. I lay in my bed in the semi-darkness and prayed repentance. I prayed for relief from the punishment. I prayed for salvation. Is there more correction to come?

Tomorrow we leave for Mississippi. When you deal with your inlaws, they don't necessarily expect correctness, success. The cousins are suspect. The son-in-laws are even further in the murk.

Humility and good humor are on the menu.

This weekend in anticipation

This weekend. Mississippi in June. High of 96 with 95% humidity. How many of these former denizens of the petri dish known as New Orleans are going to be melting on the pavement? How many complaints will we hear over the weekend?

I've got to listen to the North Mississippi All Stars a bit. Drink a little cold beer in the sweat of the Summer. Tomorrow will be the first day of Summer. Saturday afternoon will be the beginning of the ordeal. Maybe we'll drink beer and play dominoes under a bare lightbulb. That would be poetic.

I want to listen to the rythm of the weekend and hear the zing of the insects and the cry of the mourning doves. A little juke joint magic and a little restless sleep in the heat of the night.

Would Rod Steiger approve? Where is Mr. Tibbs? Check the early cotton, Virgil. When they fade into the past, the pictures get bigger and broader. Paint the picture in the colors of Rembrandt and the other masters. Cut the stone from the marble of Michelangelo and Davinci. The simplicity of the place should make it easier to understand, to see the themes and patterns.

Tell a story. Hear the gators gutteral cry in the night. Feel the lightning in the summer sky. Drops of sweat trickle down your arm and face.

Laying it out for the night

I am trying. Do I need to edit myself in these writings? Do I need to put on a good face for the benefit of my readers? I think Cindy is concerned about people reading these blogs and reacting negatively. Both she and Kate have been reading these things for quite awhile. I have tailored them, to a certain extent, to my audience. But do I write truthfully and lay it all out on the table, or do I write to my audience?

What does a writer do? Does he write what is in his heart and mind or does he write to please his audience? This may be the ultimate question for anyone writing something. I know. I know. This is not some amazing novel which will capture the imagination of the public. This is not some great work of art which will grasp the heart of the world.

There have been some moments. I know I have made some of my family feel things. And I have done some good poems and short prose pieces. But most of the times what comes to my mind is the feeling of inadequacy and loss and failure.

Do I need to express these negative things? Perhaps so. Perhaps it helps in the long run. Is this an opportunity to lay my feelings out and feel better as a result? Or is it just purple emotions bleeding on the bed?

I don't know. I think I need to keep on so that I can grow into something better and more important.

Tuesday comes

Well, it was family day at the office. First we had Kate, of course, working in the office with me. She completed most of her tasks in her own office area and then came into my office to continue throwing things away and stacking things away from me.

Next came Cindy and her wait for the insurance salesman. In the middle of that came my doctor's examination. I suppose the biggest news was the diagnosis of my little episodes as migraines. Its good to have a reason for these headaches and the numbness and double vision. When I got back Cindy had got to a point where she needed me and my checkbook.

After that we all went home to change clothes to get ready to go to Atlanta to go to a movie for Kate. By the time we got everything ready it was getting pretty late. We went on to Cheshire Bridge and ate a light supper at the Mexican restaurant Kate found for us. We ate quickly and went on to Loew's Tara. As it turned out, the movie was at Loew's Midtown. I tried to get us there but the traffic was against us and by the time we got in the area, it was too late. So we headed down to Mt Zion with a small detour to the Varsity. It was the first time Kate had been to the Varsity since she came back from Prague. It was good.

Anyway, we went to Old Navy to get Kate some Summer gear. Then we went to Barnes and Nobles at which Cindy said she was not going to bring her purse in to prevent her from buying anything. Fat Chance! Instead she gave me a book to buy for her.

We finally went home and stopped at the grocery to buy grapefruit juice for the morning. Now I am home and getting ready to call it a day. It is time to go upstairs and seek solace in the front face of a pillow. Apparently you need regular sleep to combat migraines.

Measures

How do we measure the value of an endeavor? This afternoon around 3:00 o'clock p.m. I received a call from First American Signature Services in Santa Ana, California. They wanted me to travel to Worth County, Georgia to conduct a closing for Countrywide Home Loans. They had no idea how far away Worth County was from Griffin. They probably didn't care. They tried to send me to Decatur County one time, which lies on the Florida border in extreme southwest Georgia, about four hours away.

Worth County is located in South Georgia, west of Tifton. I had been there before. I anticipated it would take me about two hours to travel there, half an hour to conduct the closing and two hours back, with a stop for gas and supper. At my usual hourly rate, about $675 worth of my time.

Because it was so late in the afternoon, First American was willing to pay me a premium for closing it after hours. A premium, but not enough to cover my time.

But my situation today was different. I had just reduced my fee for closing the loan from last Friday in order to ensure that it would close. We had discovered a problem with the general account balance. Things were looking grim around the ranch.

Of course, I didn't really have anything to do this afternoon other than a meeting with a criminal client to discuss the plea deal offered her. Of course, First American was willing to pay $385 for the closing.

So at around 5:33, I headed my car east down Georgia 16 toward I-75 South and South Georgia. As I continued south on I-75, I watched as the terrain whizzing past me got progressively flatter and greener. It seemed as if the fields along the interstate were more wet with humidity and greener and full of life than up near home in Central Georgia.

Finally, I found the sign I was looking for and got off at the second Ashburn exit and turned into and through the little town and on west towards the setting sun. I drove and I drove and I drove. The fields rolled along beside me and the irrigation gear passed gently above and across the fields, in a pattern of metal and corduroy furrows across the land.

I finally found the little community of Shingler, where the borrower lived, and took a left and drove down the county road through the cluster of homes which constituted Shingler. Finally, I found the white clapboard Methodist church which was the landmark I was looking for to find her house. I drove past her house at first because there was no convenient place to park the car. I noticed a large tractor and a slew of cars and trucks of the parents of the children who were to ride on a wagon pulled behind the tractor for VBS.

I parked my car and stepped out and around the tractor. Several people standing around for the ride smiled pleasantly at me and asked me who I was looking for. Clearly I was a stranger in Shingler, but they were all willing to make me as comfortable as possible in a strange place. I was directed toward the red brick house next door. I walked over to the carport to find the borrower and her family sitting around in the carport, watching baseball from a tv hung under the roof of the carport.

After a hasty introduction, she ushered me into her kitchen, where I was seated at the kitchen table. A solid white English bulldog licked me profusely on the hand as I removed the closing documents from my file.

I looked out the French doors at the back and looked over the fields stretching away from the backyard. The green of the green fields was magnificent. A miniature Ireland in Southwest Georgia.

As we talked I was captivated by the slow rythms of the South Georgia dialect of my borrower. She was a little younger than my parents. Her skin had suffered from a life spent outdoors. But she was cordial and hospitable.

When we were over, I walked back out to my car, examining the papers to make sure I hadn't omitted anything for her signature. I reentered my car and drove off, waiving at the church parents sitting on the front steps of the church, waiting for their children to return from the wagon ride.

I left Shingler as the sun slowly disappeared into the clouds to the west, promising rain that evening. Everything unravelled before me slowly and caught me in a space and time somewhat familiar but so far away from the world I live in.

Sure it was only $385, but the trip through the fields and the people I met and the ending of another day was definitely worth the ride. I couldn't eat it, but the feeling of the evening was definitely pleasant and worthwhile.

Monday, Monday

Today Kate and I don't feel really good. Cindy is at home and she is oblivious other than the fact that she wants us to go to the doctor. I have discussed these things with Kate today and we are trying to figure out what is causing our gastric problems. Kate is convinced it is dietary. Could be. However, I haven't felt this way for awhile and Kate has this problem when she eats food (some food, not others). Kate was fine until she drank soy milk. Over and over again. Kate thinks that graham crackers are the key to her health and sanity.

I, on the other hand, need exercise and the ability to have people lay off for awhile. A real vacation would be nice. I think if I could get in a different environment and get some regular exercise, I would bounce back pretty well.

This has been, "My Diagnosis", a new npr radio show with your host, Tom Baynham and his able assistant, Kate, the Shelley, Baynham. Come back next week, when we tackle the problem with Cindy and other extraneous Sicards.

A Father's Day of middling fun

Today was Father's Day. I began by getting up before everyone else and taking the dog out as usual. After church, we travelled to Dunwoody to celebrate Father's Day with mom and dad. It was a nice visit until we left and had to go to Target. Then Cindy got in shopping mode and I picked up a sinus headache. Everything was down hill from there. It is truly amazing how something little like a sinus headache can ruin the rest of the day. It didn't help that Cindy had to go into shopping mode when I was suffering from double vision and a killer headache.

Now I have had to come downstairs twice to handle Tex's needs while everyone else acted like they couldn't hear him. Now I am sitting in front of the computer wishing I could go to bed and go to sleep. I guess I'll go back up to bed. I feel terrible.

Faerie Ring

Float now, a dry, dead leaf cast away
And find the thermal:
The imperative rise and movement
Which sweeps us along
Carrying us above on dusky wings
To chain us to the rocks, our place
In the gears of this timepiece,
Caught by the tiny teeth
To be part of the machine
Or torn by the movement,
Lost either way,
For we are not our own
But the child or changeling
Of the moment
Caught by the blackened faeries and sprites
Of this time and place

In the beckoning light of the sunrise
There is ultimately magic or sorcery
In the early dew of morning;
We are lost in the grey haze
That masks the clarity of our vision.

Bloomsday, 2007

Today is Bloomsday, the day on which the action depicted in James Joyce's Ullysses takes place. As you know, the book describes the complete of Leopold Bloom, a resident of Dublin, as he goes around Dublin on June 16th, from beginning to end of day. I am not sure that the identity and development of the main character is as important as the description of the action of the day and the thoughts of the main character.

It makes me wonder how I could describe a character's one day, like Joyce. Who would I choose? What would he do? It is definitely an interesting idea.I suppose I should shove that one away for future thought and execution.

The distaff side

I know you were happy when the news got out;
I don't know if it was because it meant
You got a son, after all,
Or because you were losing a daughter.
Perhaps you were glad for Cindy
And saw the future, with a grandchild
And mortgages and refrigerators
And I still don't see the point
Or the joy in buying appliances
But I do appreciate your willingness
To share your experience with boats and California
And the semi-tropical streets of New Orleans
And red beans and rice
And the ever evolving lakehouse
And all the gadgets and perks
Of being your son-in-law
Which surely flows from
The fact that I married my favorite Sicard
But that doesn't mean I didn't get a package deal
That compounded the interest.

It was a good deal.

Father's Day, 2007

North of the stateline I look like momma
Fair skin and ruddy cheeks
All reddish blonde hair and eyes of Kentucky blue
But down here in Tennessee I resemble the pater familias
And truthfully its something I aimed for
When I dug around in closets at the farm
To find high school football jerseys
And purple and gold letter jackets
Or weathered red suede sportcoats
And the sleek silver blades
Of hunting knives or the boxes
Of shotgun shells, sitting ready
For when their necessity might manifest itself
For these were the things he left when he left the land
Upon which he was raised
And took on the position of fatherhood
To Frank and Susan and me
And what a good one:
The Founder of the feast,
The voice in my ear as I tucked the ball
And sprinted down the field,
The driver who brought us all back home
From conquests and failures
Joyful times and pain
Which came in equal measure
But showing us that love is eternal
And necessary and flowing through us
Through his example.

Imitation of lives

I am sitting in front of my computer screen
With dark reading glasses hanging from my nose
My daughter thinks I look like Annie Sullivan
So I will attempt to guide her in her darkness and soundlessness.
No, she is quite noisy
And she is pretty in her light green and cream
Flowered dress,
Dancing around the office like a breeze that's flowing
The flowers waving in the selfsame breeze.

Now I know some little girl who used to attempt her learning
In the educational system of Griffin-Spalding County
Apparently thought my signature looked chinese:
How oddly inscrutable.

Why can't I just be myself?

Diamonds are forever

Beat me! Beat me! Beat me!
Reduce the excess water right out of me!
Wring it out of me like a dishrag cat;
Knock me down to my essential elements:
Base minerals for my sinful nature
Salt for my own preservation
Carbon for the graphite in my pencil
Carbon (because we are all carbon deep down)
Carbon to be pounded by the days, molded by those who came before,
Carbonera for that amore de vita, holy masochism
Carbon to be beaten into a crystal diamond toughness
Hope springs eternal, with my tongue in my cheek!

Father's Day Weekend, 2007

This is a Friday and should be happy and light and carefree (relatively speaking), but today has not followed the script thus far. I went to bed late last night due to the movie we watched in Piedmont Park (Atlanta). The movie was fun, although some of the people around us were obnoxious in their inability to remain quiet and still through the movie. Fortunately, a lot of them left in the last few moments of the movie, probably to go off and goof on each other or to find a quiet place to project their ardor for each other. But the movie was good and is a good example of what you find when you look at a movie a number of years after you see it for the first time, back when you were a young teenager.

Anyway, I woke up around 7:00 and got up and took Tex out and drank some cherry limeade for breakfsst. Not the most nutritious meal for morning, but what I wanted and what I had at hand. Nevertheless, I woke Kate up and took a shower and dressed and went to work. Two hours later, Kate arrive at work. I got her moving on documents. Meanwhile, Patti didn't show up until around 11:30.

Meanwhile, I received calls and emails from people who had problems with things I had done or was doing for them. I tried to resolve these issues as fast as I could; however, it all tended to bring me down.

I took Kate home for lunch and we ate lunch, not sufficiently according to the family nutritionist; however, things got goofy but not enough to resolve the feeling of impending doom. Mail came and no money in any envelopes. I still feel like I am losing this weekend already. There are Griffin Tech parties tonight and tomorrow. I need to shop for my Dad for Father's Day and I know what I want but don't know if I will be able to find it for him. I don't know how much time I have to find it. Sunday is heading for disaster. Monday will be here sooner than expected. Less time for the month and less time for things I would like to do. I need to get some money in here quickly.

I would like to get some exercise this weekend and eat some lemon icebox pie and drink some sweet iced tea. I would like to hike and swim. I really want more barbecue. More barbecue! More barbecue! I feel like I am losing it. My schedule is not my own. Agghhh!

Might as well buy myself a tie.

Shaving again

I did it again. I obeyed the provision which requires me to remove a part of my body in the morning to present a view of myself which I consider to be presentable to others. There is a lot of thinking which went into this. For instance:

1) My wife likes my face to be smooth. I love my wife. I want my wife to love me in return. I want to be loved. My wife is the most accepted person to provide this love.

2) It is a common thing for men of my age and place in this culture to shave in the morning. I wish to fit in to my culture to a certain extent. My place in this culture provides the potential for survival. The culture in which I find myself provides sustenance and self-image. I want to survive. I want to have a self-image which satisfies me. I shave in order to survive.

3) When I became twelve years old or so, my beard grew to an extent that it became adviseable for me to begin shaving my beard on a regular basis. Shaving was something which my father did. The accoutraments of shaving were all over my father's bathroom. I wanted my father's love. I wanted to emulate my father. I shaved in order to emulate my father. I shave because my father shaved. I shave in pursuit of my father's love.

4) As a male human grows, hair begins to grow on his body. Some of this hair is left to grow in a wild disorder of hirsute growth. Other hair is shaved or cut. I am not sure why some hair is allowed to grow and other hair is shaved. Different cultures and different times in the growth of society have dictated which and how much hair needs to be removed. How much hair is allowed to grow dictates your place and time in culture. I shave my beard hair to place myself in position in my culture. I am a clean-shaven man. Many people like me because I am clean-shaven. I seek their love.

5) When I was in college I grew my beard twice. I had a good beard which was reddish brown. I looked like many of my heroes in history: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, JEB Stuart, Jesus. However, growing a beard in college was a sign of rebellion and self-promotion. In some sense, it was a way to say: Look at me; fear me. However, my desire for love required me to shave my face and seek love from others who did not like bearded faces and rebellion. This probably says more about what I appreciate and what I desire. What would have happened if I had found someone who loved me with a beard? What kind of person would that have been? Would I be happier now?

6) When I was younger, the City of Griffin celebrated its 150th birthday. As part of this celebration, men in Griffin were asked to grow beards and mustaches. Many did. I grew a mustache. It was a nice mustache and looked good on my face. As soon as the celebration was over, I shaved it off. Some did not. My wife did not like the mustache. I shaved it for her. I shaved it for her love.

7)When I began shaving at or around the age of twelve, on my birthday that year, my parents gave me a razor and two bottles of aftershave. We celebrated my birthday at a motel on the beach in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. At the end of that weekend, we flew back to Atlanta on an Eastern jet. When we departed the jet I bumped into Michelle Chatham, a young girl about a year younger than myself. As we bumped into each other she apparently caught a sent of my after shave. The pheromones were apparently working because she stopped and stared at me. This was perhaps the first moment of sexual tension I had ever experienced. Just another good reason for shaving and a hell of a reason for after shave.

Here I am, clean shaven, married, loved by my parents, wife and daughter. What would my life be with facial hair? Without shaving?

Thanks Sam

Floating around in salted water
Waiting for the beginning
And the beginning has already begun
The salted water bursts and life presents

Filling a pail with salted water
Running through the innumerable sands
Trying to escape experience's burning
With baptism in the salted water

Exchanging salty fluids
In the backseat of a car
With someone half forgotten
Through loss of salted tears

We are mainly salted water
The science teachers say
And as the sands do dribble
The salt replaces water

Until like Lot's wayward woman
Our actions turn salty tower.

Mothers are the necessity of invention

One might find oneself drifting off into the darkness and wonder what happened. What happened to the promise of youth? What happened to the hope of the parents and the excitement of the extended family when they came to visit the newborn? There are pictures of the baby in the arms of antiquity, arms which lost their motion soon thereafter and never touched us again, except in amber pictures. What kind of thoughts were going through the minds of the old ones when they came and held the newborn in their arms? Did they think of the extension of their own selves or simply celebrate the love and happiness of new life extended to another generation?

We go on in an effort to make it all work for us, for our families, for our children. We hold those little ones in our arms and know that we must struggle to keep the ball bouncing in the air for another day, another week, another month, another year, until those gifts of progeny are self-supporting and struggling themselves to make it work. And we do drift off into the darkness, knowing that we have struggled with the tasks to continue. There is satisfaction in the struggle, because we struggle for the ones we love.

Billatory

Billatory (bil a tor e) n. [archaic] restless bull

Interesting;

Is that figurative or literal?

I know this: the billatory moves here;

I guess everyone knows that.

What do you expect from a lawyer's office?

Sorting out the necessary from the possible

Where are we?
I am lost inside the movement
Which constitutes an attempt
To handle the necessities
That getting and spending presents us
While trying to make wife and daughter happy
Against the law of diminishing returns
Knowing that my time is limited
And realizing that my abilities
Are limited too,
But struggling against the tide
Upon which I throw myself
In order to survive.

Everyone has an opinion.

A Remberance of Trips to Dallas Past

Kate showed me a video of a Dallas concert for the band, Beck, in which the band has a group of puppets representing the band members doing things around Dallas. The first place the puppets visit is Texas Stadium in Irving Texas. This brought back memories of a trip that John Boswell and I made to Dallas to attend a wedding of Graham Gardner and his former wife (sad).

The wedding occurred on Saturday afternoon at the Methodist Church on the campus of SMU. It was a very pretty church and the service was nice. After the wedding, John and I showed ourselves by arranging to play a song about marriage and the travails of a husband and wife over the loud speaker at the reception in the large room that they had rented in the mega-hotel for the reception. Graham and his father in law and most of the folks thought the song was great. Graham's wife and mother-in-law thought otherwise (sad).

Anyway, after the wedding was over, John and I changed clothes and drove over on I-40 to Fort Worth, and spent a number of hours in the Stockyard District of the old part of town. It was fun. Very old fashioned and western. I loved it. We drank a lot of beer and ended up in a room in the hotel where we were playing guitars and entertaining rodeo cowboys, rodeo groupies and air line pilots from New Zealand. We ended up with kiwi key chains from the pilots. They loved us. John and I are convinced that we have legendary status in parts of New Zealand now.

Anyway, at the end of a long night that stretched into early morning, we drove back to the La Quinta in eastern Dallas. As I drove down I-40 through Irving, John pointed out Texas Stadium to me. I turned my head to the left and tried to focus on the stadium. As I did this, I experienced a sensation in which the stadium appeared to turn over on its side and I was looking down into the stadium from above. As I realized the precariousness of this position, I jerked my head back forward in front of the car and continued on our journey back to Dallas. My sole vision was a small box of clarity in front of me, heading eastward toward Dallas.

Later that morning, we slept for about two hours at the La Quinta, until Cindy called and asked if we were on our way back to Atlanta. Saying yes, I tried to get John up and moving. In an hour or so, we were back on the road to Georgia. Later, we made a side trip to Tyler (for some reason necessary to John) and an even better side trip to the battlefield park at Vicksburg. That was amazing.

The one thing I remember about Vicksburg other than the battlefield, which stretches from one end of Vicksburg to the other, was the fact that apparently all the women in Vicksburg were ravishingly beautiful and all the men were ugly and deformed. I guess the combination of the two keeps them at a moderate position which prevents them from creating a population of trolls or fairy princesses.

There is a fairy tale aspect to Vicksburg, which, oddly, I discovered in a convenience store attached to a gas station. It is truly amazing what you will discover in such places.

We got back to Atlanta and I recovered the lost sleep from the night before. A long journey but a lot of fun.

Shaving and clarity of vision

Last night was perfect in its execution: Cindy made a Mexican dish from chicken and avacados and black beans and yellow rice. Kate acted as target for the backyard mosquitoes and left Cindy and I to discuss the varities of our life, until I got Kate to change into walking clothes and we walked all the way from home to Wesley to South Sixth Street Extension to Maddox (the longest part of the journey)to Dauset and back home. It was quite a walk on foot but didn't take as long as I expected. However, as I said to Kate, we always seem to walk at a faster pace than we expect. Nevertheless, we came home and watched television for awhile until a Summer thunderstorm came through and dumped a goodly bit of rain and a lot of electricity on our heads all through the night (no reference to Welsh folk music intended). And they expect another round of storms this afternoon.

When I woke up this morning, I had slept fairly soundly due to the exercise and the rain. I took Tex out and the air was cool and wet. Tex didn't want to go out in the grass but he did. He acted a little confused as he seemed to look for a dry place to do his business. He was more than ready to go back in the house.

When I woke up this morning the first thing I did was shave two days growth off my face. Unlike a lot of men, I do like to shave. It seems like a semi-artistic endeavor, making something rough smooth. I particularly like to shave it so close that you can't feel a hint of stubble on your face. Usually that requires a new razor blade and a good dollop of shaving cream. I have heard a lot of men say that they don't like to shave. But you just don't see that many beards out there. Either we are not honest with ourselves or the workings of our minds require more activity than we let on.

When we say that we like something or don't like something, what does that mean? For instance, let's say that a man comes up to you and says he doesn't like to shave. Now add to that statement that this man is cleanly shaven at the time he says this to you. How do you interpret that? Just for the sake of argument, lets assume that this person is someone who doesn't have a fast growing beard so that he really doesn't need to shave very often.

Does this person tell you this because he really means that he doesn't like to shave? If so, why does he shave in the first place? Any man who really doesn't like to shave doesn't really have to shave. He could wear a beard if he wanted to. Would he dislike the beard more than the act of regular shaving? What would cause him to dislike wearing a beard?

Some people wouldn't want to wear a beard because it might have a connotation in modern culture which wouldn't appeal to them. They might be perceived as a radical or a mountain man, both images being rather different, but perhaps unappealing in their own ways. Wearing a beard requires a decision on the part of the wearer: do you trim it or not? You might look like some old-fashioned hillbilly if you didn't trim your beard, but the act of keeping a beard in trim might require more work on your part than shaving would.

The next thing to consider would be whether or not the person who says he doesn't like to shave was not speaking the truth to you. Some people might say that they don't like to shave because they have a foggy view of what they really like or dislike. They might actually like to shave; they just don't really acknowledge the pleasure they derive from it. They also might say this because it is a common comment to make in conversation. Do the majority of men dislike shaving to the extent that some men might say they don't like to shave to fit in or go along with the majority? If we performed an actual poll of men would we find that the majority truthfully don't like to shave? Or would we find that men just like to say they don't like to shave to show comaradery as a group?

Clarity in our understandings of ourselves is important. Clarity in our understandings of the likes and dislikes of others is nearly impossible. This is what makes communication so difficult. Shaving is just a small part of the whole.

My wife commented that this was quite a lot of writing about something banal. However, significance is quite often in the eye of the beholder and we tend to impart significance on things which we care about, no matter how insignificant they are to others. Indeed, how we feel about the insignificant matters in our life quite often reveals much about how we feel about the more important parts of our lives.

What we say and how we feel about shaving may seem very unimportant in the great scheme of things. However, six days ago my daughter tried to remove the hair on her legs before going to bed. In the resultant hour or two following this enterprise, you would have thought the world was coming to an end, as she had burned the skin on her legs in long red stripes with the depilatory. This accident caused her to stay home and miss a day of work at my office and required quite a bit of conversation about the necessity of shaving in general.

The key to this, of course, is not what happened or what actually was said between us that night and the following morning. And that is true even though the topic of shaving came up for several days afterward. No, perhaps the significance lies in how we can allow the most insignificant things to monopolize our thoughts for days because of the effect they have on us. Perhaps the significance lies in how much of our time is taken up with the insignificant. Our lives become the endless repetition of mindless tasks, which we learn as children and copy until the need for such tasks end with our ending. Oh,Happy Day!

Beer in America

It began simply enough as
Mesapotamian vegetables in a jar;
Perfect complement to a sausage
Of any size, shape or consistency,
Which, of course, came later;
The beverage of choice
For our founding fathers
Who argued and fought
And drank ale in taverns
That served as obstetric ward
To the good old USA.

Sipping from a six on the bench seat
Of a blue Ford F-150
With a slack-jawed hound dog
Flying his ears in the August wind
Driving down a red dirt road into Alabama
Following the ruts of ancient wagons through Kansas prairie
Or across a dusty trail through eastern Colorado
Toward the white aspens of a Rocky Mountain Spring
And on to the golden beaches of an Orange County Summer.

Welcome.
This is America
And this is the beverage of choice.

Summer's approach

Today, I would have loved to get some exercise, but everything I did seemed to lead me to a nap. I think I took two or maybe three naps today. I feel a little better now, but still wish I had got some exercise.

Today was definitely a day of rest. The weather was warm and hazy and despite having gone to church and having brought a good bit of my clothing downstairs from the study, the day was kind of lazy anyway.

There is nothing like a day in summer like this. It would have been a good day to pitch horseshoes or swim in a lake. Drink lemonade and iced tea and eat picnic food. How American! Hamburgers and hot dogs and potato salad and pies. Yum, yum. Kate said she wanted some grilled meat and vegetables and that would have been good. Instead we ate Mexican food. Well, maybe next week.

I do need to start exercising regularly.

Saturday in Central Georgia

Yesterday was an interesting day. It began in utter seriousness. I sat at the computer and wrote on my blog. I was describing the selfishness of the denizens of this house and how they struggle for control. In the midst of that, Cindy came out of the bedroom and demanded my attention. I finally ended up out in the back yard, working in the garden. Sullenly, I worked a hoe and the garden carrier and we put out mulch on the back garden until we ran out of mulch and newspaper. By the time we finished it was around 10:00 and we were already physically tired.

Cindy and I drank iced tea and lemonade, an Arnold Palmer, and I finally got Kate out of bed. After running a few errands and completing a few tasks around the house, we started taking showers in preparation for travelling to Columbus. After about an hour and a half, we were all ready.

We left in Cindy's car. Kate drove. As we pulled out of Griffin, heading down toward Zebulon, we had the same usual struggle with the radio/cd player in the car. If this weren't so ponderously repetitive, it might be funny. What ends up getting played on the stereo in the car ends up being the ultimate struggle between the generations, the sexes, the spouses, etc. We argue the points as we drive toward our goal. No one ever wins. Ultimately, the issue becomes moot when someone gives up or Kate goes to her ipod or the stereo is turned off for awhile.

The journey to Columbus went fast as Kate blitzed down the country roads, the sound of The Phantom of the Opera jarring my brain. The only crack in the seamlessness of the journey occurred as we passed through Zebulon and Cindy saw an old yard chair in the yard of a garden store and wanted Kate to stop. The size and design of the city of Zebulon is such that if you pass something by you might as well go on because there is no place to easily turn around and return to the place you began. But Kate found a road off the square where she could alter the route back to the garden store and we made our way back to the yard chair. Kate parked in a tiny parking space off a former tennis court behind an abandoned building and Cindy got her to leave the car and check out the yard chair.

Kate exited the Ford Explorer and walked over to the outdoor exhibit of yard goodies. A few minutes later, she returned to tell us that there was no sign of life at the store and that there didn't seem to be any price tag on the chair. So she started the car up and began backing out of the parking space into the narrow alley upon which she had travelled to the parking space. As she backed up, seemingly oblivious to her surrounding, I glanced back and notice a huge ditch right behind the rear wheels of the Explorer. I yelled at Kate, who immediately took offense that her daddy would call into question her awareness of the hole behind us.

But we finally returned to our journey. As the Phantom and Christine blared out of the stereo, Cindy and Kate sang along or argued about whether or not this particular song or that one was actually part of the original score or who was the best Phantom or who played Christine and where she was from. Meanwhile, I sat in the back with tinted reading glasses on and read a book about the settling of the American West. All this occuring while we hurtled through the countryside of Pike County, Georgia. As the Grateful Dead might sing,"What a long, strange trip its been."

As we drove, Cindy bemoaned the fact that she had no mascara and wondered if we would be able to find an Eckards or CVS pharmacy somewhere in Columbus. She had previously asked me to find out whether there was a Macy's in Columbus, which there was. As we drove past convenience stores and gas stations and video rental stores and nothingness, we finally made it into Columbus/Muscogee County. I actually did notice an Eckard's off to the left of the as we blitzed down the freeway into Columbus proper, but I noticed too late to take advantage of the sighting. We finally came to the Mall and made our way around to the end where Macy's is situated.

Parking the Explorer in the back of the mall, on the side which slams into the Columbus Airport, we walked across the hot pavement into Macy's. Cindy had noticed when we got into Columbus that the outside temperature as shown on our car thermometer was registering 99 degrees. Cindy wondered if we could handle a baseball game in such heat. As we walked across the lot into the store, I took note of a growing set of black clouds on the western horizon over toward Phenix City, Alabama and beyond.

We entered the store through the children's section of the store. As we walked into and through the lady's department, looking for cosmetics, Cindy groused about the size of the store. And I admit it was tiny compared to the stores at Perimeter or Lennox in Atlanta. But we found the cosmetics department and they didn't have what Cindy wanted, or at least, they didn't have what she wanted, packaged in the manner in which she wanted it to be sold. Nevertheless, as we walked back toward the kid's shop to leave the building, Cindy left Kate and me among the women's bathing suits to go wandering through the Ladie's Department. After realizing that she wasn't coming back anytime soon, Kate and I went exploring through the Ladies' Department to find her. As it turned out, she was trying on several articles of clothing, three or four of which she ended up buying.

That having been accomplished, and I am skipping parts, we let Kate try on several dresses and then headed back toward the shoe department and the restrooms in the corner of the store with gift wrapping to let Cindy use the facilities before we left. As Kate and I waited for Cindy to emerge from the lounge area in the corner of the store, Kate looked at shoes. Cindy then returned and the two of them started trying on shoes and discussing the various merits of the shoes they found.

Women get into this groove when they try on shoes. Their eyes glaze over and they shrewdly stare at their feet through the tiny mirrors placed conveniently near the floor and look at their feet in the particular shoe they are contemplating. It is quite comical to an outsider; it looks so serious. And there are so many styles and colors and designs of women's shoes. And as far as I can tell, there hasn't been a pair of women's shoes that was worth the price of the shoes. They all look cheap and insignificantly made. There is no rhyme or reason! Only the mania created by want. This may be the most significant difference between men and women in modern American life.

After much negotiating between mother and daughter and an extracted time in which the clerk couldn't manipulate the cash register/computer at the checkout area, we finally left with four pairs of women's shoes and $175 less in Cindy's checking account.

Finally, we made our way back to the car and left the mall. There was a lot less time to drive around Columbus on our way to Country's barbecue at this point, and we still had to find Cindy some tums and mascara. We drove around downtown Columbus and never found an Eckards or CVS pharmacy anywhere. We passed several hospitals, a lot of commercial area, both new and old. Still no Eckards or CVS. We finally took one of the downtown bridges over to Phenix City, Alabama on the off chance that they might have a national chain pharmacy. Hopes springs eternal! The closest we found was a small strip shopping center with a Piggly Wiggly and a Dollar General Store. Kate parked the car in a space which looked like it was designed for miniature cars and Kate and I walked across the busy parking lot and into the Piggly Wiggly.

I love Piggly Wigglys. They are always a throwback to at least the 1960's, and sometimes seem to transport you back to pre-World War II 1940. We walked through the store, being watched by everyone in the store, as we were definitely strangers to this Piggly Wiggly, until Kate found a roll of Tums and I found a package of toilet paper, something I knew we needed at home. I bought the items from a cashier who seemed to be ignoring us at the beginning, and then went back to Cindy in the car.

No mascara, but Cindy decided that we should look in the Dollar General Store, so we drove down to that end of the strip shopping center and Cindy and Kate went in the store. Several minutes later, they came out of the store with a little plastic bag and Cindy handing a dollar to a young girl at the entrance to the store. Strange, but apparently the girl was selling doughnuts for some youth organization or group, and Cindy paid her for some doughnuts without actually buying the doughnuts. The things travelling through Alabama cause you to do.

By the time we got to the barbecue restaurant it looked as if the place was almost closed. But they were, in fact, open and the waitress seated us at a booth which appeared as if a table full of toddlers had eaten there before us, the table itself being covered up with refuse, and the seats in the booth and the floor underneath being covered with bits and pieces of trash and discarded food.

I gingerly slid over the seat to the inside of same, careful not to touch much of the floor with my feet, as if I could get the dirty floor onto my feet through my shoes. Nevertheless, we looked over the menu and ordered iced teas. They finally brought us our food and Cindy, Kate and I ate heartily while the restaurant filled up with odd groups of people. Truly amazing. Do these people look at us and think we are as strange as they do to us? I wonder.

After finishing all of my meal and the last of Kate's meal and Cindy's meal, Cindy and Kate shared a mason jar of banana pudding for dessert, while I sipped on a straw in a sweet tea to go. I finally paid and we left the restaurant. Getting back in the car, we drove through downtown Columbus and around the river walk along the Chattahoochee River toward the ball park near the end of the riverwalk. We drove through the historic district, full of restored old homes and brick streets and made our way to the back of Golden Park, the home of the Columbus Catfish, a single A minor league baseball team.

As we parked the car and walked generally toward the park, Cindy wanted to take a look at the river behind the ballpark, so we took a detour over toward the riverwalk. This accomplished, we walked back toward the park to find that this was Support Our Troops Night at the baseball park and a good-sized contingent of the 82nd Airborne was congregating around the front of the ballpark to enter the park as a group. As we watched them march up to the back of the baseball park, we found we had to walk back past them all to the entrance of the ballpark and get back to the end of the line to get tickets. Fortunately, as we walked in the grass past the soldiers, the national anthem began blaring from the loud speakers at the park and the soldiers had to stop everything and stand at attention. After waiting for the anthem to end, we had a break in the line and could maneuver our way to the ticket sellers at the right field corner of the ballpark.

That having been accomplished, we made our way to our seats on the third base side of the ballpark, to find, not only that our seats were on the first row of the box seats along the third base line of the ballpark but were being taken up by some free loaders. So we scooted them out of the seats and sat down to find ourselves in the comedian section of the ballpark, right next to the visitor's dugout. For the rest of the evening, we sat and watched the game from a premium spot in the ballpark and listened to our seatmates razz the visiting team from our nearby perch. The steady flow of comments coming from our section only became more and more interesting as the night wore on and the amount of beer consumed by our seatmates began to mount up and breeze through their creative minds.

Unfortunately, the home team lost, but it was basically a fun night. We exited the park and made our way back to the car. As we left the riverfront and drove down toward the center of the old section of the city, we got thoroughly turned around several times and seemed to find our way up and down the waterfront several times until we finally worked our way out of the downtown womb in progress, there being construction and construction warning signs everywhere downtown.

After making our way out of the City of Columbus and Muscogee County and through Harris and Meriwether and Pike Counties and having had to change drivers because of the occurence of a bird slamming unexpectedly into our windshield and a racoon darting and running unexpectedly across the road in front of us, we finally made it home. Having cleaned up the mess the dog made during ten hours of confinement, we finally went to bed.

All in all a good day.

Control

I am getting static now from Kate and Cindy. I am not trying to do something to avoid them or avoid anything I should be doing. I am just trying to continue doing this so that I can get better and do something that I enjoy. I am trying to rediscover something that was important to me in the past and could be in the future. The problem is two-fold. With Kate, if I get online in order to write something, I keep her from her time online. So if I am online, she can't get online. Her time online involves her entertainment and downtime where she interchanges with her friends and sees and does things that are important to her. With Cindy, when I go online, it separates me from her so she can't gather me around her. Then, if I am online I am not doing the things she wants me to do. So Cindy's problem is control; Kate's problem is that if I am online it prevents her from doing what she wants to do.

Three adult children: two first children and one only child. This is an old saw, but an accurate one. We usually get along well and we enjoy each other a lot of the time. However, when we are together there becomes a limit beyond which we are trying to jockey for control. Music is the foremost battleground. Yesterday I had been driving in my car and listening to a jazz cd. When I came home, we came out to get in the car to drive to Dunwoody. Kate wanted to drive, so I got in the back. When the cartrip started my music came on. Kate immediately changed the music and started to put her ipod in so she could listen to her music. Cindy intervened and requested that we listen to Dave-FM. I wondered aloud if we could listen to the cd in my cd player. That is ignored. So we drove up to Dunwoody and I sat in the back.

When we started back home, I was driving and Kate was in the back. I put the cd back on the system. Cindy requested that we listen to Dave FM again. Kate requested that the sound be turned off in the back. So the battlefield was marked off. I wonder what it would look like if we had a monitor on this to determine how much of the time is monopolized by whom. Interesting idea.

Morality and God

It is often difficult for me to remember to disconnect morality and God. That may sound strange but the truth is that we have a tendency to equate God and morality, when in fact the connection between God and morality is tangential. I know that sounds strange also. Some might even read that sentence and completely disagree with me. But I need to explain. Let me explain. I have to explain.

The connection between God and his disciple is the relationship between Creator and created. The connection is not a relationship between Judge and accused or between a prisoner and his jailor. The connection is the relationship between a Father and his child.

The first part of this connection is the relationship. There is an inevitable kinship between the Creator and the created. Because we are his created, there is a relationship. Now the relationship may be a bad one. As there are family relationships which are troubled, so the relationship between God and man may be strained or even lost. The history of man and God as presented in the Bible is troubled and strained. But that doesn't mean that the relationship doesn't exist. In fact, as Kirkegaard posited this connection, the relationship between the Creator and the created is the most important facet of this connection.

The second part of this connection is the fact that we are His created. As we are His created, this position requires actions on our part based on that connection. Just as we have an obligation to our father and mother based on their position as our parents, so we have obligations to God as the one who gave us life and sustains that life.

Now I will admit that often our relationships with our parents become strained, or even broken, due to actions on the part of those same parents, and not neccessarily because of our own actions. Sometimes these relationships break apart because of other factors outside our parents' responsibility.

When the relationship between God and man breaks it is due to our failure to keep the relationship. When that relationship breaks, God's response is different. God doesn't respond like even the best parents. The response of God to this brokenness involves the sacrifice of His son to effectuate a reunion between Creator and created.

Even when you can remember that the whole point of the relationship between God and man is to keep that relationship strong and forge our dependence on God, you still have a tendency to equate that connection with morality.

We have a tendency to look at our faith as something that brings us to obedience.
When we think about being a Christian, we think it means that we work toward obeying God and his commandments. But the pure truth of being a Christian means acknowledging our relationship with God and God's place in that relationship.

God is the Creator of us all and all our world. He sustains us throughout our lives and provides for us in every way. Even in our weakness, brokenness and complete inability to sustain that relationship with Him, nevertheless, God forges a relationship between us through the sacrifice of His son.

Morality is an offshoot of that relationship. I would even say an essential result of that relationship. But the truth of the matter is that we are not Christians to bring us to obediance. We are Christians because He is our Father, because he deserves our worship, and because he has caused us to return to Him as His children.

The loss of art in odd places

Basketball seasons are ending with the final championship series. When I was young, back in the late sixties and early seventies, I loved pro basketball. My first favorite team, the Boston Celtics, ended their championship run from the fifties on into the late sixties when I was on the verge of becoming a teenager. Their teams included Cousey and Sharman and Russell and K C.Jones and Don Nelson. Their series with the Lakers were like the battles of the Titans in Greek mythology. The names on those teams were filled with Hall of Famers. At the end of the sixties they were replaced by the Knicks of Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave Debuscherre, and Willis Reed. I loved the cool larceny of Walt Frazier. I loved the discipline of Bradley and Debuscherre. I loved the heart of Willis Reed.

The Hawks drafted Pete Maravich when I was a young teenager, a truly amazing basketball talent. Someone whose abilities were clearly a mix of genetics, diligent practice and his love for the game which took on a sort of religous frenzy. I remember watching him play for LSU on the SEC game of the week on Saturday afternoons, scoring at will from anywhere, making passed which seemed to be blindly tied to the players he passed to, his handling the ball like it was a part of his person, willing LSU to victories. His only real weakness was that he was virtually alone. When LSU played against teams with a balance of talent, like Kentucky or Tennessee or Georgia Tech, they fell short.

Unfortunately, his talent didn't translate all the time to the pro game. He was amazing quite often for the Hawks or the Jazz or even the Celtics,late in his career, but not enough to move those teams into the upper echelons of talent.

Living in the Atlanta area during the late sixties through the seventies, the Hawks were a good team, but always lacking something that could push them past the championship teams like the Celtics, Lakers, Knicks, Bucks and even the old Bullets. There were moments when it looked like the Hawks were going to push on to championship teams they had in the late fifties and early sixties, when they were in St. Louis. I remember when they drafted Tom Payne, a seven foot center from Kentucky, the first great black player to go to Kentucky. But he couldn't handle the pressure and ended up in jail for a rape charge in Fulton County. Then the Hawks drafted Julius Erving, who just happened to have been drafted by the New York Nets of the ABA. When the Nets joined the NBA, Erving was given to the Nets and the Hawks lost a Hall of Famer. There were other examples.

Nobody remembers the Hawks from back in those days. No one remembers Lou Hudson and Bill Bridges and Jo Caldwell. They were so close. No one remembers the Hawk teams with John Drew and Tree Rollins and Armand Hill. I remember one year when the Hawks took the Baltimore Bullets to seven games in the semi-finals and could have, should have won. Baltimore went on to win it all instead. Then there were the teams with Dominique Wilkins and Kevin Willis, who came close to beating the Celtics of Larry Byrd and Kevin McHale in the early eighties. As much as I loved the Celtics, I would have loved to have seen the Hawks in the championship series.

Now I must say I enjoyed the Celtics of the Dave Cowens era. The big red head from Kentucky was one of my favorites,even though he jumped ship to play college ball at Florida State. I guess he did have a coach from Kentucky there. I remember when Cowens and Alvin Adams of the Phoenix Suns squared off in the championship series. Their battles were titanic. Maybe not in the sense of Russell and Chamberlain or Chamberlain and Jabbar. But they were working hard and playing tough against each other and doing things that other centers didn't do.

But what really killed it for me were the teams that came later. I hated the Pistons with Lambeer, the Sixers with Barkley and Malone. Those teams were allowed to beat on the opposition unmercilessly. It seemed like the referees were taught to let them play to the point where there didn't seem to be a limit to the physicality. And then the average teams lost the ability to shoot jump shots. Their statistics were terrible. It just became an effort to get the ball the nearest guy above the rim, who would slam it home, without finesse or style.

I know that basketball is difficult to master. The level of dexterity required to be good is unbelievably high. At its best, basketball becomes an art like ballet or dance. The players move around in concert, working against space, movement and gravity. The movement is not orchestrated like dance,but it becomes sort of freelance version, in which the grace is held in time and becomes a crack in time and space where the body becomes an art work and the ball and the basket become tied together as if they were magically connected.

The last play that I can remember having that feel about was the move Michael Jordan made against Craig Ehlo at the end of the championship game back in the 90's. As he moved across and away from the basketball, Jordan drove his body up into the air and stopped, releasing the ball towards the basket, and time was halted as the ball moved in its trajectory toward the basket, Ehlo's body moving away from the basket as he attempted futiley to block or deflect the ball's path. But Jordan stood frozen in air, as if his body would not dare to distract the ball from its mission to find the orange circle. And finally, the ball entering the basket, without touching the rim, releasing Jordan from his frozen state to allow him to celebrate the moment.

Its what I enjoy about it. But the way they are allowed to play these days drives me crazy. No art, no magic. No rules. Thank God for March Madness.

Morning

In the morning the earliest light arrives from nowhere.
It is only later that the source of that light
Arrives in the eastern sky;
The suggestion of life
Is a soft roar in the distance,
Hinting of trucks travelling down highways
And packed suv's heading toward Florida.
The canvas is washed in black,
Defining the colors of morning with the shadow of night.
We are too early for the birds yet,
As Tex and I step carefully
Across the dewy lawn for his morning ritual.
The house is asleep, but I am here,
Marking time and taking note of the sudden appearance of others.

My position as a barometer

I was taken by the numbers of foreclosures I had to cry out yesterday. It seems as if the number of foreclosures that I have to perform in any month serves as a barometer of how bad the economy is doing at that time. In addition, when real estate closings are coming hot and heavy it seems as if that serves as an indication that the economy is going well. Cindy said that my practice seems to serve as a barometer for the economy. I suppose there is some truth to that.

Since I have been practicing law, I have noticed that a lot of what I do gives me an indication of how the economy is going. They say that an attorney's practice is recession proof, in that there is work to do no matter how good or bad the economy is going. I can say that there is a superficial truth to that; however, the truth is that we suffer just like everybody else when the times are hard. I guess the difference is that no one has sympathy for us when we suffer.

Our position in the community is such that everyone tries to avoid having to deal with us, wants to pay us as little as possible, tries to get as much free legal advice as possible, and would just prefer that we were an unnecessary part of the community. It seems like banks want to eliminate a large portion of what we do as concerns banking and real estate practice. Once upon a time, anytime someone wanted to get a loan from the bank in which the bank was taking title to real estate as collateral, the bank would hire a local attorney to search title and conduct the closing. Now the banks have taken that away from the attorneys with the exception of when there is a purchase involved in the process. Most banks would prefer to eliminate the attorneys from the process altogether.

I don't really understand this. Several years ago, the Georgia Supreme Court issued a ruling in which they stated that anytime a deed goes of record, whether it is a warranty deed or security deed, an attorney should be involved for the benefit of the parties. This ruling might as well have been an attempt to stop the wind, because most banks seem to be conducting their own closings when there is no sale involved. At one time, I provided a copy of the Court's ruling to a local bank and was met with utter silence. I wonder if the bank's attorneys even saw the ruling.

So the matters for which people come to see us continually get smaller and smaller. Then on top of that the big firms seem to grasp for a larger share of the pie. At one time law firms in Atlanta didn't venture too far outside the perimeter of Atlanta to represent clients or perform closings. Now they are a big presence everywhere in the state.

The ultimate question is whether or not people in towns like Griffin or otherwise are served better by having resort to the big law firms in Atlanta. The truth of the matter is that someone outside the beltway gets service by paralegals and other paraprofessionals for the same amount of money they would have paid the lawyers in their home towns and then have to travel to offices in North Atlanta to get the job done.

This forces us outside the perimeter to work harder and be more convenient for the people we serve. So I travel to people's houses or communities and meet with them at inconvenient times and places and spend more money to get less.

When I first contemplated becoming an attorney, I wanted to be an attorney because it seemed that they merited respect in the community. But now we are perceived as shysters and charletons who prey on the unwary. Is it fun to be an attorney? Truthfully a lot of times it is. I do enjoy my colleagues; lawyers are usually the most interesting, collegial people I know. However, the day to day stresses of this profession can weigh you down. It often makes me wonder if I would have been better off doing something else. Cultural barometer notwithstanding.

Ethics in the community

In today's entry from The Writer's Almanac, the playwright David Hare is quoted in one of his plays as follows: "[In England,] people lead shallow lives because they don't believe in anything anymore. [In Israel,] in a single day I experience events and emotions that would keep a Swede going for a year."

Is the depth of our living brokered away by our failure to believe in things beyond ourselves and our desire to be entertained or enriched? The surviving part of Rene Descartes' writing is "I think, therefore I am." However, the end of Descartes' equation was his proof that God exists. How many of us end our search for understanding with the simple acknowledgement that we exist and go no further?

I read a piece that my wife Cindy had saved for me out of Business Week magazine. The piece was a letter to the editor from a Journalism Professor at Washington and Lee University. The piece was written in response to an article about a cheating scandal in the business school at Duke University. The article apparently had attempted to justify or explain the cheating scandal by claiming that today's business students are taught to work with each other, even to the extent of cheating off of each other on tests, through the lessons they are taught in class about how business works in the real world. The letter to the editor mirrored the honor code at W&L and stated that lying to the professor by stating that no cheating was done in taking the tests, when, in fact, there was cheating taking place, was simply that: lying and cheating. No amount of justification or rationalization would change that.

In ethics, sometimes the simple response is the correct response. I am proud of the fact that a professor from my alma mater would write such a response. I wish the simple understanding of what is fair and equitable and reasonable was more universally understood.

Ethics requires us to look beyond ourselves to see our connections with others. Ethics is a system of rules designed to inform our actions. The basis for ethics lies in our connections to others. If we lived in this world all alone, there would be no need for ethics, because we would only be required to act for our own benefit. Since we live in a world in which we have to interact with others, the connection with others requires us to act towards each other in a certain way, toward a more communal benefit. The alternative is anarchy.

In a community, such as a university, we are drawn to act in concert with each other to enable each member of the community to strive to his or her best ability. In order to ensure that each member of the community is on an equal footing, each member must act in a manner which is fair and equitable as concerns the other members of the community.

At Washington and Lee, Robert E. Lee, as President, instituted the Honor Code, which required that each student act as a gentleman. This code, enacted when all the students were men, required a socially accepted standard of conduct which was considered "gentlemanly." It is my understanding that President Lee defined this standard of conduct as withholding any advantage one might have over others. This standard was created at a time when the social strata of the United States were more clearly defined than in modern times. Lee came from an upper class family in Virginia which had many cultural and social advantages over other less privleged citizens of Virginia. Lee recognized these differences and defined a gentleman as one who does not take use of those advantages to the detriment of his social inferiors.

Beyond the socially restricted laboratory of planter culture Virginia, we must broaden this concept to require that when one acts inside community one should not make use of advantages we might have to better ourselves over others. Now this doesn't mean that we don't take advantage of the talents and birth advantages we are given. Rather it means that we acknowledge our place in the community and treat the other members of the community fairly and equitably. This requires us to refrain from behavior which would unfairly gain us an advantage over our fellow citizens. In the university context this means we don't lie, cheat or steal. Expanding this concept outside the university means that we, as members of society, don't lie, cheat or steal from our fellow citizens.

Perhaps the most difficult part of this concept of community ethics involves the concept of "fairness" and "equity." In determining the requirements of ethics, we ultimately have to decide what actions are fair and equitable and which are not. In the community in which we live are found people with differing talents and levels of
wealth and position, based on what is given to them at birth or through accomplishment. There is little we can do to make that inequity of natural or family gift equal. It is questionable as to whether anything should be done to make that playing field equal. However, as concerns the way in which the members of the community interact, there is a lot that should be done in the way of ethics.

We acknowledge that members of the community are born with differing talents and gifts. Perhaps Marxists would argue that everyone should be treated equally and talent and social strata should not enter into the equation. However, Marxism is not strictly an ethical system. It doesn't really inform individual action, rather it works within the culture or community as a whole.

Ethics may be potentially applied to a culture or community as a whole; however, the basic application of an ethical system devolves down to the individual. In a libertarian community where each individual in the community acts as a free agent within the context of the community, the ethical system is the main determiner of conduct other than bare self-interest.

Some might argue that self-interest is the only determiner of conduct in society. However, the history of culture does not bear this out. In fact, the history of culture shows that whenever people are drawn into community, they create codes of conduct, to some degree, which proscribe conduct outside what is considered "legal". At its bare essence, what is considered "legal" is considered the "moral" thing to do, as well. In fact, it is arguable that conduct which is legal is based on conduct which is considered ethical.

For instance, most early codes of conduct proscribe murder and theft. Whether you call this unethical or illegal, the proscription is the same. From the basic proscriptions of conduct fall any number of exceptions. In the case of murder, the first exception probably involves a killing outside of the community. The next exception might involve a killing which the culture considers excusable for some reason. Different factual situations create any number of value judgments on the part of the society as to whether or not the killing should be proscribed or allowed, given the facts involved in the situation. There may be different determinations depending on the findings of the particular society involved in the action. In this way, the concept of ethics may have some fluidity depending on the society involved in the process.

The trouble really arises when we try to extrapolate this to something universal. The first problem arises in trying to determine the source of ethics. A Christian or Jew might argue that the source of our ethics comes from the Hebrew God and the Bible. A Muslim might argue that the source of our ethics comes from Allah and the Koran. A Buddhist or Hindu or other believer in a Universal God would point to their God or Gods and any holy script associated with God as the source of ethics. A secularist, no matter whether he is an Atheist, Agnostic or someone who simply tries to determine ethics outside the realm of theism has three choices: either ethics is universal or confined to a particular group or completely individual.

I acknowledge the problem created when we try to posit ethics on the backs of a theistic system. But I also see the problem created when we leave out a universal basis for our ethics. While theistic ethics is problematic for one who does not accept the theism upon which the ethics is based, it is equally true that an ethics created without resort to an outside source can become too fluid and subjective to be considered an universal system of ethics. Without the source the ethics becomes relativist and subjective.

We need a universal system of ethics to which we all must bow. Our interactions with others require us to submit to a code of conduct which informs our conduct toward others. In order to constitute a code which has universality and relevance, this code must derive from something or someone beyond ourselves.

I would submit that God is the only realistic source of such a system. My acknowledge that my understanding of this concept is based on faith and not on any scientifically demonstratable construct. However, my faith is such that I hope for an ultimate demonstration of such a construct in my experience. My further hope is for an ultimate demonstration of such construct as a universal experience. Until that time, faith and hope will stand as my basis for conduct.

Why people hate us

This morning I spent several hours in a courtroom in the Federal Courthouse (Richard Russell Building) trying to stop a railroad train. My clients were members of a class action suit involving claims against credit reporting companies who were alleged to have defrauded people concerning a credit score program. After the judge had gutted the case for the plaintiffs back in August of last year, the lawyers for the name plaintiffs and the defendants got together and worked a deal in which the defendants agreed to pay the plaintiff's lawyers and give the rest of the plaintiffs three months free credit reports from the company they had sued.

I tried to get the judge to understand how inequitable it was to settle the case and give the plaintiff's attorneys the big payoff. They tried to justify their fees ($4.1 million) by saying how much they had done for the plaintiffs. Even the judge got into it.

I hate the fact that people think of lawyers as shysters and give us so much grief for doing what we do. This whole scenario is just more fuel for the fire. Can't they see that?

Sunday, June 3

Today was a day which saw the end of a week in which we saw the end of a long life and the beginning of a new marriage and then dribbled onto a breezy Summer afternoon in downtown Atlanta in which we looked at art and crafts and listened to a band from Louisiana and wound up late at the grocery store to pick up a few things to help get us through the week.

So I start a new week. I think Sunday is supposed to be the first day of the week. So if that is so, then it began with singing in the choir, listening to George Mixon preach in church and going up to Virginia-Highlands with Cindy to look at art and crafts and listen to Mark Brussard in concert. It was fun, but I am tired and need to go to bed.

George was preaching about rest and a return as found in the person of God. It reminded me of something I read in a book. It was talking about the difficulty Christians have with the concept of forgiveness and salvation. We acknowledge it from a rational standpoint, but can't really come to terms with the idea deep down. We still want to do something to earn our salvation.

Its actually a failure of faith. Our sinfulness doesn't allow us to completely acknowledge that Jesus has paid for our sinfulness with his sacrifice. Even when we make a faith statement, our faith falls short. It is a good thing that our salvation is in the hands of God and not in our own.

This is the problem. I continually take the wheel out of God's hands. I don't feel comfortable releasing my problems to God. Sure, I acknowledge the concept and acknowledge that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is a complete expiation of my sins. But my sinful nature doesn't allow me to accept the concept in my heart. Is my sinful nature blocking the work of the Holy Spirit in my heart? Is my desire to do it myself blocking my salvation ultimately? I think not, but it is still a problem. It creates the doubt which makes my life tenuous in relation to the theology of salvation.

The most tangible way in which this works to block my desire involves stewardship. It is an act of faith to tithe. It acknowledges the source of our gifts and it shows to us that God will provide. But I find it so difficult to tithe. I want to control the means of production. I don't want to place it in God's hands. This is a real quandry. I wish I had a solution which I could live with. Instead I struggle with this concept.

This is a failure of faith. It shows my inability to trust God. Even my prayer life shows a failure of faith. When something happens that I want to resolve or go away, I go to God over and over and over. I lisp my prayers continuously. But faith tells me that God knows my problems before I see them and doesn't need repetitious prayers, asking for the same things over and over again. The trust and the hope and faith which march arm in arm are found lacking.

God gave me a brisk breeze at my back today. Hopefully, he will continue at my back tomorrow. I pray so.

Dr. Skinner at the end

We sat in the quiet and glanced at the family
In brown tones and hushed colors, and thought
And considered and weighed the evidence
And found no room for tears in this room
For he was the gatekeeper for generations
Bringing forth new life into the community
To mewl and whimper and crawl and run
And find the joy of sunshine in Summer;
But also bringing forth an unyielding sadness
When a newborn child didn't thrive
And the parents were left to mourn quietly alone
In the darkness of emotion's Winter
While the family stood outside, mutely pondering
And questioning the ultimate love of their God
Who promised them new life, but didn't deliver this time.
And so he measured the full breadth of life
From birthplace to gravesite, until even he
Found his place at that ultimate leap
And crossed over through that unknown portal
That mutely awaits us all,
A gentle soul who surely saw better than we,
And now does completely.