As I was thinking about how I’d start this post, I thought about the great poets, philosophers, and writers who would better capture my thoughts at this truly momentous day in my life - the first day in decades that I couldn’t refer to myself as an attorney. After much consideration and contemplation, I settled on one of many poet laureates of my youth - The Chambers Brothers,
“Now the time has come
There's no place to run
I might get burned up by the sun
But I had my fun
I've been loved and put aside
I've been crushed by the tumbling tide
And my soul has been psychedelicized”
To clarify, to whatever extent that my soul has been “psychedelicized” it has been the product of my life experiences rather than better living through chemistry. And no, that last bit was not a reference to a movie, the Queens of The Stone Age, nor Fat Boy Slim.
To better order my thoughts, I’d like to riff on the above lyrics:
Now the time has come
Everything ends. Ball games end (some not soon enough), movies end, books come to conclusion, and careers end. Nothing new here. Endings represent change and, often, change is good. So it is here. August 1, 2022 will be the beginning of a new chapter in life, a time to engage with the world, advocating and working for issues that I care about. It’ll be a time when I can write, post on this blog, and maybe - just maybe - I’ll get better at it. And an opportunity to learn.
In short, I’m not done. I’m just getting started.
There's no place to run
As Joe Lewis said about Billy Conn, “[you] run but [you] can’t hide.” That’s as true in life as it was in Lewis’ boxing ring. We live in interesting and challenging times, and while we might run, there really is no place to hide.
There are epic battles occurring right now, the outcomes of which will shape the futures of our kids and grandkids. We know that the world is a dangerous place, and so is the United States, especially if you are a member of a vulnerable group.
I have said it before and will repeat: if you and/or your family suffer from income insecurity, you are vulnerable; if you’re a woman who’s been relegated to second-class status, you‘re especially vulnerable; if you’re a person of color and you feel the daily stings of direct or subtle discrimination, you are vulnerable; if you have little access to necessary legal, medical, educational, and government resources you’re vulnerable.
And no matter how old you are, or where you live, you are subject to being victims of indiscriminate, random, and senseless violence at the hands of those with easy access to powerful deadly weapons.
Each of us is a member of our community, whether it be a state or nation, or as family and neighbors. Each of us has a responsibility to participate in the affairs of our community. As people who walk this earth, we have a duty to at least try to make our world a little better than we found it. That was what was done for us by our ancestors, as was done for them by their ancestors. We owe it to those who come after us to inherit a little better world.
I might get burned up by the sun
As Robert Kennedy once said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” In other words, you don’t know what you can do if you try, but you do know what happens if you don’t. You might fail, epically and publicly fail, but so what? In 1910, at the Sorbonne in Paris, Theodore Roosevelt delivered remarks on citizenship, of which the following was a part:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Don’t be a timid soul, there’s too much at stake.
But I had my fun
And boy, did I have fun! I have been extremely fortunate. I have a supportive family who stood by me while I did a number of - nutty? - things. I made a couple of runs for public office. I’ve effected two career changes, first into teaching and then to the law. I wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for a local newspaper. I was fortunate to participate with others in pursuit of serving vulnerable people and hopefully make live a little more gentle.
I’ve had friends who’ve put up with my bull…er,… idiosyncrasies. In spite of that, non-familial people have helped and supported me, even when it was outside of their comfort zones.
To all, my great thanks for letting me have my fun. Even greater thanks to those who will standby me in whatever future mischief I might get into.
I've been loved and put aside
Everybody has had their heat broken. For me it was elementary school. Her name was Carol and from the 3rd through the 4th grades, we were an “item,“ or as much an item when you’re eight or nine years old. Came the first day of grade five and …no Carol. It seems that her father got a job in someplace called North Carolina and she was moving a couple of days after the start of school. So no Carol.
Our school was one story and our classroom overlooked the school’s driveway. Late that morning of the first day of the school year, walking up the driveway was Carol. Through windows, we peered at each other, trying to communicate our good byes (the teacher, Mrs. Brady, was none too thrilled!), and then she walked back down the driveway and out of my life.
Rick and Ilsa in “Casablanca“ had nothing on us! As most everyone, I’ve been loved and put aside, but then I found “the one” and for fifty years we’ve been side by side, supporting each other while meeting life’s challenges and glories as they came.
As I said, I’ve been extremely fortunate.
I've been crushed by the tumbling tide
In 1966, during a speech he delivered in South Africa, Robert Kennedy said,
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
I’ll leave it to others to determine whether I sent forth a tiny ripple of hope. But one thing I have learned over the years is that change is both hard and incremental. To those who would quote Jim Morrison and the Doors when he sang “we want the world and we want it now,” I’d have to respond that you’re not going to get it. And in the impossible event that you got the world, there’d still be lots to do.
Everything is incremental and it’s easy to get frustrated with the pace of change, or worse overlooking the progress made. The status quo dies hard. Hegel was right in his dialectic concerning progress of history. There will always be a struggle between thesis and antithesis which results in the new synthesis, which in time becomes the new thesis and the process begins anew.
To Hegel, the end game was the end of all history, but if he’s correct about the dialectic, there will always be a conflict over ideas, resulting in some synthesis, generating a new conflict. In short, no end.
This process demands that each of us stand for the ideals we have and share with others, and work tirelessly in our own way, to sweep down the walls of resistance and oppression. That’s part of what I tried to do in bringing legal services to underserved people, and continue to agitate for in my writings.
Democracy is served by all of us being treated equally - be it the privileged few or the struggling masses - by the law.
No matter what you believe, no matter your issue, stand and send out your tiny ripple of hope. You might be amazed to find others who will join and support you.
And my soul has been psychedelicized
Once more, in full clarity, other than listening to the Dead, Hendrix, JeffAir, and the like, I have never gotten into the magic mushrooms. But I do recommend The Moody Blues’ song about Timothy Leary. Oh, and I have read several Hunter S. Thompson articles over the years, so there’s that…
I’d like to quote Bill Clinton’s biggest applause line in his 1988 Democratic Convention keynote address, “In conclusion,” and thank you for reading my scribbles; if you’ve bought my book or subscribed to my blog, thank you; and to all my friends and colleagues thank you for your friendship over the years. I regret that I have only been able to return in some small measure all that you’ve given me.
Now let’s send out more tiny ripples of hope!
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