Sorry

28 January 2020

Do not despair.  Just because there is nothing posted on A Space True and North from recent days doesn’t mean my creativity has stalled.  I am working on a longer piece that may, or may not get, published here. Of course it is set in the 1970s, the greatest decade of my life so far.  Woo Hoo. Might have a piece at the end of March set in Portugal, we will see.  I am thinking about whether I will have any inclination to write as we are poking around.

Just because I am writing a longer piece doesn’t mean I couldn’t be posting, but why should I?  What I see now is not the America I had hoped for when I was in my 20s in the 1970s.  With the deregulation of media, the concentration of station ownership into just a few hands, and the abolition of the fairness doctrine, mass media has been concentrated into two warring camps.  The richer people own more of the media and they spew out things, that to my mind, are just atrocious.  As a result I will read about five articles from the paper I am subscribed to. Then I just avoid the news button on my phone for the rest of the day.

So don’t worry I will be back soon.  Hopefully I will have a longer piece for you. No philosophy in this one, just bug lust, and a tale of what happens after bug lust.

With Dark Star playing in the Background

23 January 2020 (One half)

The old man sat at the table.  A glance would easily reveal to anyone casually passing that he was quiet and focused. A book sat off to the side of the table where his bag and coat were arranged somewhat deliberately to discourage others from sitting with him.  

Clearly the man was not engaged in the book. fAt this moment his gaze was aimed out the large window near where he sat.  If the observer could peer inside the grey matter beneath the man’s uncombed hair, that busybody would see the man was drawn to the image of the winter wood just outside the window. The contrast of the brown-almost black wood, combined with the white snow covered ground, reminded him of the cover artwork of a musical album of his youth.  The old gent hummed a bit of one of its tunes, very softly.  Circumspect in remembering the tune the seated man kept his voice so very low; he would never, ever dare disturb any other library patron.

Sitting on the table top, the closed volume was one of those he could only consume in small bites.  Sometimes when you are reading something other than a pulp fiction novel, when the author of what you are reading is trying to say something substantive, you have to read and reread a page or a paragraph or a chapter.  When you are trying to digest such information you just have to stop and let what you read percolate through the labyrinth layers of the brain. The man had found this volume and clearly it was one like that.  As he worked through each subpart he stopped and thought about the assumptions the author was making but not stating.  Kind of a game really, he had taken just enough philosophy to be a danger to reading for pleasure.

In the man’s greying hair sate his glasses. The glasses often rested like this atop his head. Sometimes, the man simply found it easier to read with them resting on his thinning pate,  the was true despite the claims from his optician that his blended lens would do the trick.

One of the joys of retirement had been a return to reading.  The work he had done required a review of reams of paper per day.  Most of what he had to wade through while engaged in making an income, was written in pencil on stained paper with misspellings aplenty. Each sheet was a plea for aid, for relief.  Think of the children, think of the hardship, think of what has changed, each sheet touched on points such as these. When he was done his day of work, he did not want to read any more.  When he got home he simply wanted to be entertained,

He snapped out of his winter reverie.  He pulled to book back over.  The text was a collection of speeches from Nobel laureates.  Dense and intense were the speeches. A friend had urged him to pick it up and read a couple in particular.  Both were from winners of the prize for literature. He kept coming back to the concluding line from William Faulkner’s speech.

The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail - William Faulkner.

The man rose from the table.  He was off in search of poetry.  Somewhere here they must have a copy of Burnt Norton. Eliot must be close at hand.

The Last Walk Home

21 January 2020

Tuesday (Bagel Day)

Didn’t write yesterday. Most of the day was spent doing things related to getting my new computer up to speed.  From watching my wife with her computer I realized I needed a clean external drive to use with my computer.  This computer is a little thing. All told it has only 128 GB of storage.  To get more storage I spent hours moving files from one old external hard drive to another.  Some stuff would not move.  Thus I ended up with a 1 TB hard drive with 600 G clean and a big folder called Old Immovable Stuff.  I have another external drive now marked backup, in felt tip pen maxed out at 730 GB wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in a drawer. Given I am not working with graphics my current situation should be sufficent.

The picture above is the street where I live.  Winter has come to Michigan.  The picture below is me on the street where I live.  Like the Ray Bans?  

Spent yesterday morning with a married couple that like us wants to move to Portugal.  They have been to Portugal more often than us and they speak Spanish.  However, they have not gone through the bureaucratic process yet. It was a lovely morning get together.  I hope we can have more interactions with these folks.  Perhaps we will meet in Lisboa.  I am thinking I need to call some folks and get dinners set up.  Time now, when there are no work constraints, to rekindle contacts.

I subscribe to the Washington Post.  In the mornings I pick one article about what is going on politically.  Then, I read articles on the environment, writers and musicians, and stuff that just catches my interest.  To me it seems that the voices all across the spectrum have lost sight of what is important.  Every one elected to public office or holding a public position owes a duty of trust to the people to do what is right for the common good. Let the political passion play wind itself to conclusion.  But no matter what way it goes, let us fight for our survival on this planet   Global warming is real.  Overpopulation is real.  Poverty is real. Let us fight to make these issues better.

On a day like this 10 days ago I would be writing something that started like this:  

The Petitioner is a forty-two year old man.  In the course of a 10 year span 2000-2010 he incurred three alcohol-driving convictions.  He states all three involved his being stopped after drinking at the neighborhood pub.  

Mr. Doe was a drinker of hard liquor.  On average he would drink four nights a week consuming a pint of Wild Turkey.  He claims no history with drugs except one night in high school.  The testimony was that he smoked part of a joint at a party and fell promptly asleep.

The Petitioner states he has not used alcohol since his last arrest in 2000…

I would then go on and detail why the Petitioner claimed he would not fall back into alcohol use.  Often it was a twelve step program.  Perhaps it would be Alcoholics Anonymous or maybe it would be one of the similar programs run through a church.   I would mention whether the individual was familiar with the program or not, discerned by asked questions about what is the 10th step and the like.

But I don’t have to do that anymore.  I don’t have to judge people and decided just how much of what they are telling me are falsehoods. Today I have to unpack boxes of stuff that hasn’t been used in years and make trips to the Volunteers of America.  Today I have to think about how I live out the rest of my life. Decent trade off.

Why is today bagel day? Good question.  On Tuesdays here two of the three bagel places in town offer bagels at about a third off.  Everybody goes and buys bagels, eats some and freezes them or they take bagels and cream cheese into the office as a treat. I think right now that is what I miss most about work, taking a treat in and hanging out in the break room. I am missing talking with people about their lives. 

Oh well, I am just prattling on.  I do want to mention as I close this note my Apple Watch and I are on the outs.  Since retiring my wife and I have been walking the mall each day for 1.4 miles in about a half an hour.   When my wife sets her watch to indoor walk she gets credit for the trek, getting both her move minutes and her exercise minutes.  My watch, while it gives me the move minutes, does not give me the exercise minutes.  Instead I have to come home and walk the neighborhood to get those exercise points. WTH.  My only guess is that given the time I have been walking into work each day up until the weather turned, the same level of exercise does not raise my heart rate as much as it raises my wife’s. 

Wow, that just triggered a thought.  I think it was the last week of December when we last had a pretty warm day.  I mean it was about 40 degrees out.  The sky was kind of overcast but there was no precipitation.  My wife was tied up at day’s end with one thing or another and I decided I would simply walk home.  I looked at where the road construction/sewer work stood that had been going on for six solid months.  I looked at the houses that mostly had seen better days, but all still retained some unique charms.  I looked at the oak trees that still held their leaves.

I looked at all sort of things, and I remember most of it.  Funny, at no point in that walk did I think, “This will be the last time I am walking home from work”.  It was a day turning to dusk that was a final moment, but I didn’t realize it until now.

Sunday Morning with a Fire Going

19 January 2020

As I sit down to write this it is 9:05.  Already been out to the tarp covered pile to pick up some dry wood.  Since Friday six inches of snow has fallen here in Michigan.  If the NWS is to be trusted we should get 1 to 2 inches more of powdery snow today.  As the day goes on the temperature will drop precipitously.  Thus, keeping a fire in the wood stove makes sense. Part of the getting a fire thing going involved putting water in the cast iron bear on top of the cook surface to humidify the room. No task comes without an antecedent or a corollary task.  You don’t wash clothing without sorting and adding detergent.  You don’t build a fire without kindling and filling the bear with water.

The boys had the nerd squad over last night.  There was a major role playing game using Star Wars manuals that went on for several hours.  Six young adults crowed themselves in (and me out) of the living room. My wife offered up chicken chili and chips. The nerds brought numerous two liter bottles of pop to the event.  At the end of the gathering’s role playing game, my wife went down and joined them. At that point they played some game that combines smart phones and the interactive function of the TV.  Most of the answers are obscene but hilarious. Me, I stayed upstairs watching a Netflix series involving a Yakuza in London, which had I kid you not an incredible dance sequence.  

When I had finished watching the series, and while the hilarity ensued downstairs, I pulled up an e-book and continued to read up on moral philosophy. At this moment I am in the section where the author is detailing the failings of a zeitgeist focused on the individual.  He argues that isolation, lack of personal context, lack of guidance and hollow achievement are some of the issues that confront a person in a world where the motto is “Do what feels good to you, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else”.

His seems to be doubling down on his assertions that we need a more communal focus.  An individual in a totally rule free environment is lost.  The example he gives is that when someone graduates from college they are told go out and achieve, don’t be afraid to fail and be self reliant.  What we do’t tell them is there is power in building a network of friends and colleagues, think of the consequences of your actions and consider what you are doing as it impacts others.

He hasn’t gotten there yet but I am sure there will be a section that addresses the issue of rights and responsibilities. (Took a break here to tend to the fire.  Getting things going in the morning sometimes takes a little more energy and effort than others).  What I mean is I expect that there will be a section that says for every right we have there is an equally important responsibility.  For every freedom we hold dear, we have an obligation.  Personally I have been on board with these statements for a long time.  No freedom is absolute, the whole you can’t scream fire in a crowded theatre without consequences to yourself thing. No right or privilege comes without the obligation that you should use it wisely and responsibly.  I will let you know if the writer goes there or not.

Saturday Snow

18 January 2020 (Saturday)

Awoke today. The folks at the NWS weren’t wrong this time.  Out across this suburban landscape is a covering of six inches of dense heavy snow.  Looks as if winter has actually set in.  All the grime is gone hidden beneath winter’s blanket.  Of course, the Subaru Outback is buried under that same white blanket.

Breakfast was, as it will be for the next several days, oatmeal and fruit; apples, bananas, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries.  A little cream and a couple of pecans, a glass of orange juice and some hot decaf and the meal was complete. I like a soundtrack to my life indoors so I put on some Willie Nelson.  God’s Problem Child, yeah I feel some empathy toward the character singing that tale.

When my belly was full, I headed out to the garage and the snowblower.  My poor little battery powered snow blower was not really up to this task.  The SnoJoe could have gotten the job done, but it would have taken a couple of attempts over maybe an hour and a half.  

My neighbor, a clean and courteous Canadian from Edmonton, Alberta came over and did what clean and courteous Canadians always do, he pitched in to help with his snowblower.  In twenty five minutes the front of the house was functional pathway wise. The clean and courteous thing, that is a riff from an old National Lampoon.  The gent seems to be a very nice guy.

Before I went outside I got a fire going in the wood stove.  The weirdo cat is now lying in front of the fireplace. She is gazing into the glass door of stove. My cat is probably really Angelique from Dark Shadows.

Yesterday I bought a new computer.  My old laptop was five or six years old.  It still works but it was sooooo slow.  Got the new one and ran into a weird problem.  The new machine right out of the box told me I had updates to run but it wouldn’t let me run them.  1/2 hour on the phone with Apple support last night got me nowhere.  Ten minutes with Apple support this morning and the problem was completely resolved.  

Today is more sorting of things not needed for life going on post retirement kind of day.  I have a great number of things that need to be put in the VOA pile, or into boxes for much longer term storage.

Have a great Saturday all.

Just for a Moment

16 January 2020

Just for a Moment

Thought I was going to focus today on how things that I used to have to try and work into my schedule are now more what you might call events of the day.  Had to meet with the TIAA financial gent this morning.  When I was working I would have to move a couple of cases to the lunch hour to get some contiguous free time in the morning to sit down and look at pie charts and rates of return. (Right now I am feeling comfortable with the plan for moving forward economically.  Good talk, good numbers.). Today I just had to remember to show up on time and at the place where the meeting was  scheduled.  It was an event, not a burden.

But suddenly my plan to talk about this shift in the meaning of meetings and events pre and post retirement got shifted.  A moment occurred that transported me almost viscerally in time. 

After meeting with the finance guy I returned home to the task I have been working on this week, purging the unnecessary.  Today have been purging old papers.  Mostly I have been separating envelopes into a standard recycling pile and documents with any kind of linkage to an account or an ID into another.  These confidential documents will be going to a Rapid Shred kind of place.  By the time this is done there will be several feet of documents to be shredded.  I am not doing that with my little 10 page at a time shredder.

My wife has been bugging me for years to get rid of some really old papers.  I note that when my mother died I ended up with a number of her and my father’s papers.  This stuff has been sitting in basement storage since my mother’s estate was concluded such a long time ago.  One packet was a bunch of old tax returns from 1982.

Opening the blue plastic folder (the rage back in the day of bank giveaways) the files were in I was hit with the smells of my youth.  It was a combination of my mother’s powder and my father’s hair oil.  Clearly, they both must have handled and reviewed the documents. My guess is that some of the scent they carried upon their persons every day of my youth was captured when they touched those papers. The slightest of transference having occurred after they had run a hand through their hair or something to that effect and flipped a page.

Someone looking in from the street would have thought I was crazy.  There I stood in the kitchen of my house by a table in the bay window.  I had a packet of old 1040 forms and attachments.  Holding them up to my nose I must have looked like I was in a trance.  In reality  I was in a house on Mill Street in Pedricktown a year before 1983.  I was in a car taking the ride down by Head of the River Church on the way to the shore.  I was in the living room of our home with Mom asleep in her chair and Dad in his chaired dozing off with the newspaper in his hands with Jim Gardner blabbering on the evening news on Channel Six..

For a solid minute I stood their holding those papers knowing the scent would not last long.  I felt a little like the main character in Spielberg’s A.I., who gets to spend just one day with his mother after a true millennia of separation.  The papers need to go and I can never return to that time.  But for a minute my whole body was lost in an era that will never come again.  I am thankful for that unexpected minute.

Looking at the Genesis of Moral Philosophy

15 January 2020

Looking at the Genesis of Moral Philosophy.

Okay, while I am enjoying the pop book on moral philosophy I had to go for something just a little more academic.  Hoopla, a delightful tool for e-books at no cost, offered me up a plethora of choices.  I picked Moral Philosophy and the Modern World by Verene.  As opposed to commencing with a tale of his personal epiphany from being worldly directed to community directed as was the case in the pop volume, Mr. Verene commenced with a statement that current moral philosophy is really neither.  This author is not a fan of political correctness or other modern concepts of justice focused behavior.  

Defining the origin of morality, the Verene states it comes from mortality and shame.  He then distinguishes humans from the Gods and from animals.  Verene states the immortality of the Gods make them unconstrained as to the meaning of their behavior.  On the other hand while animals live a finite life like humans,  they don’t live with the intellect that makes them contemplate the meaning of their existence.  Thus it humans and their relation to mortality, i.e., all life ends in death and the valuation given by themselves and others at the end a individual’s life to that life, which is important.  What humans don’t want is to feel shame at the end of theirs lives so they are motivated to live in a way consistent with the perceived good of the community, that is they want to live a moral life.

I am only a few pages in and the the text is dense with syllogisms, and assumptions, and so it is going to take me a while to process this volume.  I will probably read the totality of the pop ethics book long before I am finished with Mr. Verene’s work.  Still, I don’t think I agree with him on the subject of the origin of morality.  The conscience I feel is something I have had since my memories commenced, and that was back in the day when in current parlance, the world around me was only an extension of me.  I am pretty sure that by 3 or 4, I had concepts of good and bad beyond what I had been taught by punishment and reward.

The more pop book talks about the problem of a constructing a concept of a real morality in culture that swings back and forth between highly structured rolls, rules and norms and another one with self focused rule conducted by an aggregation of individuals. This author hangs much on the distinction between the mid-1950s in American and the 1970s. The writer sees America as often vacillating between the “we are all in this together” mindset and the mantra of “As long as I am hurting nobody, save perhaps myself, leave me alone”. Again, I will need to read more to see where this text is leading.

Onto the mundane.  Had a physician’s visit this morning.  Despite the agitation that my bladder feels there appears to be nothing wrong with it.  I got to view the inside of my bladder as the doctor was checking it out.  Getting the camera there was not really pleasant but it was not really painful.  Seeing inside my skin will never feel comfortable to be.  When I had a heart catheterization I watched them snake through that magic muscle. So weird, so very weird.

I also picked up my new sunglasses.  I think I look kind of scary in them. They render me an image somewhere between the sheriff in O Brother Where Art Thou and Harvey Keitel in any number of films.  I will see if I get used to them.

What Do We Owe Each Other

14 January 2020

Today’s post will be a little be on the short side.  Mid afternoon I decided that I would go to the library and write before things grew dark.  Today’s thought has been one of moral philosophy.  Assuming we exist and that the material world is real, what do we owe to each other?  What are we morally obligated to do for others in this shared sphere of existence, that is what I want to know.

To get a handle on this I began searching for books on moral philosophy.  I ended up with one that was a library download.  This of course meant I had to download an application onto my iPad.  To do this I had to get a PIN from the librarian.  All of this ate up part of the hour I was going to put into writing.  

The book downloaded was a popular one.  It has a feeling of pop self help, but there are kernels in it that are catching my attention.  Trust me I will let you know what I think the more I get into it.

I will leave you with a music recommendation. I heard a band called The Dales yesterday.  I went searching for longer recordings than the single I heard.  I came up with an EP that was pretty wonderful.  It has the feel of Fleetwood Mac, together with some of the vibe of Austin alt country singers.  I am putting a link here to the EP.  Give it a listen.  Nice find. PS.  The photo is of my writing space.

https://youtu.be/v3z5lpwjObI

Retired Day One

13 January 2020

Today was the first day of my retirement.  In my mind I had an idealized version of the day.  Sleep in, read the Washington Post on my iPad, get some coffee and move some boxes about.  Woke up at the same time I always wake up, even without the phone’s alarms.  The crème colored four footed alarm went off relentlessly.  

One food was in the cat’s dish, and water in her  bowl for the day, I ended making the coffee and having some cereal.  Today, this was it, the first day of retirement.  The party was Friday night.  I had more alcohol than I have had in many months.  Saturday was kind of a waste.  No hangover, but no motivation was present all day that day. Sunday we were prisoners to the “ice” storm.  There had been predications of a terrible storm, but it was an average storm.  Made travel pretty sketchy and so we stayed in all day.

Probably the high point of today was opening the cards and the gift bags.  There were some people who really liked us.  I get the sense my wife was more necessary to her department than I was to mine.  So it goes.  But the party was a success.  There were a goodly number of people, I would estimate 60-70 who showed up in total.  They were good folks to a person. They bought me drinks and they said kind things.  Nobody stood there and glared appearing simply out of obligation.  

I did get one task done today.  I went over and got one of my two new pairs of glasses.  A photo is above.  Let me know what you think. The one thing I was not going to let slip by was the commitment to writing.  Given that I now have “time to write” I was not going to let the day go without creating something.  

Over the last week that I was at work I did a countdown.  For each day I offered up quotes.  Spinoza, Hesse, Patel, Sendak and Hilton found their way onto the door leading to the break room. What I tried to do was offer some of the best quotes I could find on the concluding of one’s affairs and moving on. Grabbing quotes that really caught my eye was a bit tough.  So many things that I remember reading that handled goodbyes well were relatively dark.  What I wanted was something real, i.e., there would be a clear separation, a sense of absence but there would be no edge of dread that infuses so many quotes.

I think I got the right quotes for me. 

There came a moment at about 4:10 pm on last Friday when my heart ached.  My office was empty. My cases were done.  My connection to the computer system of the state had been severed.  All that remained was for someone to pick me up. 19 1/3 years had flown by so quickly.  Looking at the neutral colored walls and the faux wood bench and tables, I felt lost, I felt empty. I mean it was not like I didn’t have a plan to retire, I did.  But still, the emptiness of the space left me with just a feeling of melancholy.  

I know I was not the first person to have this feeling.  I also know I am not the last person that will experience this feeling.  But the shift from my role as someone judging others to that of just me, a man without portfolio, was very visceral.  

Luckily the party was good.  Given the window of 120 minutes for the party I was left with less than two minutes per person to talk and offer t hem thanks for being there.  I know I did not speak to some people and I do feel some guilt.  But, I will make sure I spend some time going forward catching up. 

I know this is more of a journal entry that a blog post.  I promise I will try and do better.

The midwinter day was grey and all traces of light were fleeing.  The earth would be cold when he left the building. Packing out for weeks, he had taken all that was his.  The light crème colored walls had a few screws and nails sticking out breaking the smooth here and there. Still, the space was in the term of a commercial lease, “broom clean”. All that remained was the inside of a vanilla box. No art remained on the walls.  No papers with Post-its demanding action were to be found. No paper clips or pens remained. There were not strings or chains of paper and obligation holding him anymore.. 

As he stood there he remembered the intense moments he had experienced sitting behind his bench, judging the desperate, the unlucky and the evil.  There were times when people did get under his skin.  But the last time that happened was over five years ago. There were times when the personal tragedies he viewed moved him to tears.  The people he had talked to in thirty thousand 20-30 minute meetings had laid open there lives to him. He was tasked with making the right choice.  He knew he made the wrong choice more than once, but he hoped he made the right choice somewhere in the 75% range. 

After today there would be no more tales of Jesus leading the wayward souls home.  After today there would be nobody who was smoking marijuana for anxiety relief.  (There was that one gent whose blood level cannabis, was beyond the charts of the high outliers on several studies he had pulled up.)  After today there would be no sojourns into the back room to listen to people talk about every detail of their lives. 

He wondered how his mind would survive.

My St.Crispin's Day Speech

9 January 2020

Yesterday the people in my office gave me a set of luggage as a parting gift.  Beats the heck out of a watch.  This was my Thank You not.

 

Dear All,

 

As I prepare to leave this job, I have to say I am very deeply moved by the gifts provided me on my departure.  They are wonderful and they are thoughtful.  I appreciate your generosity and caring. Thank you so very much.

 

Truth be told I did not want this job when I applied for it, interviewed for it and eventually got it.  But as these 19+ years have rolled by I have come to truly appreciate the work we do.  What we do is honorable work. We are right to be proud of it.  While our existence may be an irritant to those we see as Petitioners, to judges who think we are too intransigent, and to others who are just not sure how we should fit in to the State of Michigan’s governance, what we do really matters. We help keep people safe, both the general motoring public and the people we evaluate.

 

Our jobs make us in part mirror and in part parent to people whose lives, by choice, genetics or behavioral patterning, have been overwhelmed by alcohol and drugs.  When a person denied and revoked a license comes before us, our questioning and our orders reflect to them exactly where they really stand in life.  In our words oral and written, we show them so many things, not the least of which is their level of personal control over their relationship with intoxicants.  If they meet the legal standards for relief, we are the parent who grants them a privilege in many cases long denied.  Making that call whether to grant relief or not, is rarely easy. The decision requires patience, thoughtfulness and understanding-very parental traits.

 

Truth be told I thought I would be at my desk doing this until I died.  I didn’t think my circumstances would ever allow me to go.  However, when you get hit with cancer twice in just over a decade you really start to think about what you want and need out of life. What I want and what I need have changed having now considered the fragility of my existence.  My time to go and enjoy the world outside of work is here now.

 

When I hired on my boss and mentor was the late Tom Kronk. Tom was a wonderful man with a dedication to his job, a compassion for his employees and with a wicked sense of humor.  One of the first things he told me was that I would have stories to tell from the hearings I held.  Oh Lord was he right.  From white nationalists, to allegedly inebriated members of the legislature, to out of control attorneys, to admissions I wouldn’t make to my pastoral confessor about bizarre sexual peccadillos, I have heard things and seen things that are truly unique. Really, there is a book to be written from this stuff.

 

I have had great managers, Tom, Kay, Mark and Colleen.  All of them have fought for us and have made this job better in so many ways better compared to when I started.  Each of them has repeatedly had our backs. There are too few jobs in this world where that is true.  I thank them all.

 

Preparing to go, I have been thinking about my fellow HOs current and past.  All are, and all have been good, decent and caring people.  We have shared opinions and strategies.  We have worked together.  This has been a great place to be for these 19+ years.

 

As I thought about what to say in a goodbye note my mind wandered Shakespearean. I remembered the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V, Act IV Scene iii.  We Hearing Officers are a band of sisters and brothers.  And when we leave this job we will all roll up our sleeves and as we share a cup of grog, say clearly, “This is what I did, and this is what I saw, and this is what I heard”, and we will be proud of what we accomplished here.

 

Hope to see you Friday.

 

Jay

Sunday Morning Coffee….5 Days

5 January 2020

Sunday Morning Coffee….5 Days

Yesterday morning I went into my office to prepare the six cases I have to hear over the next five days.  No big deal there.  Since I entered private practice in the mid 1980s as an attorney, weekend work was to be expected.  Almost always somebody needed a pocket brief for a Monday hearing, or I was working on an important brief that required research time and quiet writing time. To help my clients accomplish what they wanted to do in my 15 or so years of private practice, required extra bits of effort like Saturday drafting.  Grunt and bang attorneys like me worked 55+ hours a week to bill 38-40 hours. 

As I sat there yesterday morning I realized that it was the last Saturday I would “have” to do legal weekend work.  In my job as an Adminstrative Law Examiner what I did on Saturdays was to number the exhibits in a file,  read the three to five letters contained in each file and to jot down some notes about what seemed important, or irregular, or very positive in the file.  I have a little template that I have worked from for years and it has a space called Additional Questions.  This would often be filled with things to be asked about what happened when someone lived out of state.  Michiganders are notorious for having hidden criminal records in Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. Luckily all three of those states have very robust governmentally run public criminal history search tools. Thus, I frequently had additional questions.  Saturday was a good day to find this stuff.

I digress.  After doing some of my prep work yesterday, I went and got a cup of hot brown water, it is otherwise known as decaf coffee.  I picked up my iPhone and opened my Facebook application.  On my status I noted that this was the last Saturday I would be doing this.  As I puttered around yesterday I just thought of how many Saturdays I had surrender at least part of the day to work.  But it was not with anger, longing,  remorse or any other really emotional state that I noted it.  When you become a lawyer, unless you are totally ill advised going into and through law school, you realize that you will work yourself hard most all of your days in the profession.  You will work yourself so hard that I can list you dozen’s of names of people from my graduating class who let stress, bad eating and anger cut short their lives. 

What I posted was meant to be a neutral observation.  The response was anything but neutral. I was surprised at how many people told me I would find ways to fill my Saturday morning time, or that I was going to enjoy what was coming next,  The number of comments I received and the genuine warmth in those comments was pretty amazing.  I have been deeply touched.

Over the past week to 10 days a number of attorneys who have appeared in front of me have taken a few minutes at the end of their cases to talk with me.  These barristers have wished me the best and said good kind words about working with me. Trust me, some of these people have cursed my name as they walked out of my office. Understand the microphone was sometimes still on as they left the video conference room where their part of the hearing had been held, and I heard them state their challenges to my lineage and sexual predilections. But 99% of the people who have wished me well have done it with real warmth.  

My search for the right career took a bit of time.  I was not a good fit for most of the legal jobs I have held in this life.  I was not a rainmaker.  I was not the most keenly aware intellect arguing a Motion.  I have never been a sharp dresser.  But, when I found this job talking to people about addressing their issues with alcohol and drugs, it fit like a right sized leather glove.

No yesterday’s note was just a chronicle of what the day meant, the end of something, the end of a pattern of behavior.  But, it was meant to be emotionless.  This week will bring the emotions to top.  There are people I know I will miss.  Just as an example there are a cadre of folks in the program who come in and talk about how the person in front of me seeking the return of a license, is doing in recovery.  There are three gents from Charlotte, another couple from Lansing and one from St. John’s whose genial nature and commitment to recovery have always struck a chord with me.  I will miss them.  

There are attorneys I will miss.  To every attorney who tried to suck up to me by wearing a Jerry Garcia tie (it was once reported on a website describing my and other Hearing Officer’s styles and predilections that I was a big Jerry Garcia/Grateful Dead fan, I enjoyed seeing all your ties.  This point was correct as posted-thank you SADO for sharing.  It was also reported that I was a big Beatles fan, this was totally incorrect.  The latter misconception came from the fact there was a large book on my office bookshelf about the Beatles.  It, in 2003 dollars cost $40 new, but at the used bookstore where I bought it one year after it was published, the volume was $4.  I knew a big Beatles fan and it took me several holiday seasons before I got around to giving it to them. So attorneys coming in my office would see it and think, “Ah, I can riff with him about the Fab Four”.

What I will miss most are the people and the stories of their lives.  This includes the 20,000 + people I have seen hoping to get their licenses back.  This includes the dozens of clerical technical people I have gotten to know when I needed assistance in running video hearing equipment or when I needed answers to esoteric questions.  This includes  each of the many, many people from the branch office who I shared lunch and coffee breaks with.  I like people.  I like talking to people.  I will miss that part of my job incredibly.

If you want to ask me how I got here, just look up the word serendipity.  I never wanted to go to MSU.  I never wanted to be a lawyer.  (I wanted to be a librarian). I never wanted to work for a state government.  But here I am and each step of the trip has occurred mostly by accident.

Flying into the Unkown.

 

2 January 2020

A New Year has Begun

Yesterday I debated writing a piece talking about the start of the year.  However, having read notes online and articles in the major news sources of these days, it seemed anything I could offer would be redundant. Ergo, no January 1, 2020 post from gmanitou/Rufus Butterworth/me.

So today I have decided just to create another in the log pages of my life. Let me say this unequivocally,  I have no guidance for anyone traveling through this new year.  All I can say is that today is a gift given us without regard to justice or merit.  What we do with it is up to us.  

Bob Dylan is singing in my ears, “….come in she says I will give you shelter from the storm.” As I listen to bard of Hibbing  I am thinking of a variety of things.  It is Michigan.  It is January 2,  The ground is clear and the temperature is in the 40s.  This is odd.  If it stays this way it will be freakish.  The sun is flooding into my writing spot.  Warm golden rays of light, oh they feel so good.

Today I printed off a number 7 in an interesting font.  I have taped it to my door.  I will be doing this each day until next Friday.  Each day as I whack off another day on the time remaining for servitude calendar, I am going to let others know what is going on.

Right now as I sit here I am thinking about the trip out to Michigan in 1974 that started this particular adventure for me.  The sun was shinning on most of that trip.  We stayed a little bit away from where I would be going to university.  As I lay in bed that night before I arrived at Butterfield Hall, Michigan State University, I shook with anxiety and fear. By the end of the next day the fear I felt was gone and I was engaged in the adventure.

Emotionally I am doing the same thing right now as I did that night in late September 1974.  I am just not sure what happens Monday January 13, 2020.  Hopefully, just like in September 1974 I will move forward with a sense of adventure.  We will see.