Tales from the Shark Tank

A couple of days ago, an old friend e-mailed me asking if I still maintained my law license, and if so if I would help him and the grandfather of another friend with a contract house purchase.  The only complication is that the seller is living in the Philippines, and I figured that was resolvable by a Power of Attorney to the granddaughter.  Half an hour later I had e-mail from the seller saying he liked my attitude, and we were off.

Except this guy doesn’t live in Manila, where the American Embassy is.  So now I’m researching how to get an acceptable verification of signature without an American notary, because he’d have to fly to get to Manila, and there isn’t a branch consular office.  That’s led to researching the Hague Conventions, which regulate the details of business agreements among signatory countries sort of like the Uniform Commercial Code works (mostly) between states.  I’m also juggling property tax issues and a couple of things related to the condition of the house, which has turned out to be a fixer-upper in spades.  (It’s been vacant for a couple of years.)

It was supposed to be quick and simple.  It isn’t.  It is interesting, though, which is good.  And the guy who gets the bill is one who has never caviled at paying me, which is also good.  I’ll see where it goes, but meantime, this is kind of fun.

As the election gets closer, the landscape has been sprouting campaign signs more thickly than goldenrod.  For the most part, I pay them little heed.  I know that their purpose is to increase name recognition, but I prefer to know more of the candidates than simply their names.  A couple of them did catch my eye, though.  One was for a judge, the other for county prosecutor.  The judge, whose name is a long Eastern European tangle of letters beginning “Vj”, has a sign which reads “Tough Name; Tough Judge.”  The one for prosecutor was similar, promising to be “Tough on Crime.”  Pretty typical slogans, for those offices, and clearly what the candidates think the voting public wants to hear.  Maybe so, but it is not what I want to hear.  I’d be happier if the judge, on the same theme, had used something like “Difficult Name: Dedicated to Justice.”  I don’t want a judge to be “tough”; I want them to be fair to all concerned.  I don’t want a prosecutor who seeks convictions at any cost, by any tactics; I want one who believes in justice, understands what “presumed innocent” actually means, and is actually interested in finding out what the truth really is, somewhere between all the various versions. I drove into town last week and took advantage of early voting, so those signs won’t affect my vote now.  But if they had any effect at all, it would be negative.  If popular opinion is to be believed, most people wouldn’t agree with me, but that’s all right.  I have never been “most people”.

There was a plethora of signs in Indianapolis when I was down there as well.  I’m kind of out of that loop already, though I recognized some of the names.  What I found noteworthy there were the lack of signs for the current governor – I haven’t seen any up in this corner of the state either – and the presence of Obama/ Biden signs thickly strewn in neighborhoods where I know that Democrats have been an endangered species in prior years.  I remember voting once and hearing a precinct judge comment that all three of the registered Democrats for the precinct had voted.  I laughed a little at the time, knowing that all three were in one household.  But in that same area, it seems like Obama signs are in every other yard.  It wasn’t like McCain signs were in evidence, either.  I think I saw two in a couple of miles.  Indiana really is split between the candidates this time.  I can’t remember when it wasn’t so solidly Republican that the candidates felt no need to spend more than a minimal amount of money here.  Change indeed.

Today is our son’s 11th birthday.  I got an e-mail recently asking if I could meet with the rabbi in early November, as it’s time for him to begin bar mitzvah training.  This seems incredible to me.  When he was smaller, I figured he’d become a bar mitzvah, but that it would happen a year or two later than is usual.  Most kids start Hebrew School in pre-school, but at that time he was still in therapeutic pre-school, and there was no way he could have handled Hebrew School.  He was still having enough difficulty learning to speak English.  He really wasn’t ready to add an additional stimulus until he was in second grade and nearly eight.  Here the congregation was several orders of maginitude smaller, the teacher worked with autistic kids as her day job, and he did so well that she thought I’d home-schooled him.  (I hadn’t.)  Everyone involved is taking it for granted that of course he will become a bar mitzvah on Shabbat after his thirteenth birthday.  I can’t take it for granted.  I remember when it seemed impossible too clearly, and I am in awe of what he’s accomplshed.  When we first got a diagnosis of autism, a psychologist told me that the only limitations on what he would be able to do would be those we put on him because of our own expectations.  I have worked hard never to say “you can’t”….and he is proving, in ways both small and great, that he can.

He’s had a fabulous birthday.  He asked for and got his very own MP3 player, which he has been listening to much of the day.  He had a cake at Hebrew School, and another in the afternoon for a small birthday party at McDonald’s.  He got toy, books and clothes, and was delighted by all three.  He got to run and play with his friends, and has spent a fair amount of time during the pauses in the day reading interesting statistics to me from some of his new books, and handing me one of the ear-buds for his MP3 player so I could hear a super special song.  We heard him at 3:00 a.m., cheering quietly from his room.  “It’s today!  It’s my birthday!”  That pretty well sums it up.  It’s your birthday, boychick, and you’re the best gift I’ve ever been given.

The delighted expectations for my journey have crashed and burned. Natural mother came down with a case of lower extremity hypothermia, and took the baby – already with the adoptive couple these three weeks past – back. There aren’t any villains in this piece, not really, just a lot of broken hearts.

In just about an hour, I am going to be mounting Dragon Firewing and flying off to points south. This afternoon and tomorrow I have a guardianship/ adoption to get started, and then on the morrow I shall see my folks before I come home.

I’m very much looking forward to making a couple I’ve known and liked for years very, very happy. And the baby? It’s a little girl. She’s 6 months old. But I can’t tell you her name. It’s a secret confidential.

My beloved husband was reading over medical records in preparation for a deposition. In them he found records of an occasion when the individual in question had gone to the emergency room because his hand hurt. The reason given was that he had punched a glass window.

His discharge instructions read “take Tylenol for pain as needed, and refrain from punching glass windows in the future.”

And yes. Some people really are that stupid.

I have been reminded that this is, in fact, Indiana, the last place to give in and join the rest of the country in observing daylight savings time. It has been my home since 1974, and I still wonder, sometimes, how I ended up staying here.

The judge who ruled that Wiccan parents could not expose their son to their religion is no longer on the bench in Marion County Superior Court.

He’s been appointed to the recent vacancy on the Indiana Court of Appeals.

As of this morning, the chosen family now boasts another attorney. Including spouses and S.O.s, I believe this brings the count up to six.

We have our very own school of sharks!

My favorite brand new attorney has an interview for a job in the field he wants on Tuesday. They’d have had him in on Monday, but he has a previous commitment. He’s being sworn into the Indiana Bar.

Pleased for him and proud of him? Oh, just so you’d notice.

This morning I got up and looked at my kitchen cabinets. I had thought, last night, that they looked like they were pulling away from the wall and slanting toward the floor, but I don’t trust my perceptions when I’m that sleepy. So Wick and I put a stack of large books under the unsupported corner and went to bed.

Well, I was right. They are pulling away from the wall. Ugh. I got J. off to school and called the landlord, who said he’d be over in an hour or so. I was being grouchy, just because I know I’m going to have to completely unload those cabinets, and quite possibly the one perpendicular to them as well given the way they’re mounted.

And then my cell phone rang. It was Li, telling me that our friend Michael had passed the Indiana Bar Exam on his first try. The results were posted this morning. I’m so proud of him, and so happy for him, that I’d be shedding buttons if I had any on.

And y’know what? I’m not grouchy anymore!

A couple of years back, there was a case in Indiana where Wiccan parents were forbidden by a judge from exposing their son to their religion. I was attorney on the appeal of that case, with the ACLU taking it up at the second stage of appeal. We won. I found out not long ago that there people are still talking about it, both pleased that the Court of Appeals “got it right” and horrified that such a ruling would have been made in the 21st century in the first place.

For those who don’t follow the freedom of religion cases, there’s been another going on for awhile. The U.S. Military Chaplain’s handbook recognized Wicca as a valid religion some time ago, but the V.A. has been “studying” the appropriateness of the Wiccan pentacle as a symbol on the gravestones of veterans for eleven years now. Hollywood satanists aside (and they don’t use the same symbol; like the cross, they turn it upside down), the points stand for earth, air, water, fire and spirit. Not terribly offensive, or if it is, then the offensiveness is in the eye of ignorance.

Finally a couple of groups filed suit, and the Wiccans have won. Wiccan veterans’ graves can now have a pentacle carved on the gravestone. I am ashamed that it took our government this many years and several law suits to come to this point. That is the pattern in this country; the same thing has been necessary for progress in civil rights in this country for years. Brown v. Board of Education barred school segregation in 1954, saying schools should desegregate with “all deliberate speed”, but it took another ruling from them in 1971 to make it stick. Put another way, Brown was decided when my mother was still in high school. I was in high school when the Supreme Court said “Do. It. Now. We don’t care if you have to move kids around on buses to make it work.” In this case as in those, litigation should not have been necessary, but at least the V.A. settled instead of forcing it all the way up. It’s a tiny step in the right direction, but one I’m very glad to see. Especially now, when I’ve been watching our civil rights eroded steadily, and wondered how and when it would stop.