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A chronicle of an American life
Archive for Solely personal
9 November 2007 at 4.24 pm · Filed under Culture, Solely personal
Lately I’ve found the time to read a ton of books in the sort of earthy/environmental vein. That and the impending Florida move have made me just feel a lot "greener." Let me explain.
When I was growing up, we had all kinds of things in the backyard: apple trees, a cherry tree, a peach tree, grapevines, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries (disgusting), asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, carrots, beans, sunflowers, corn, and God knows what else. We had a shed, which my dad built from the ground up to hold all the tools, and a compost pile (a mysterious shaggy creature). We also had some kind of mini-greenhouse on legs, which I think was used to grow herbs. In the front yard we had a huge lilac bush and a ton of flowers.
It’s kind like I’m going through repressed memory therapy here, but I’m just realizing that damn, I grew up with a ton of gardening going on. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I’m sure I assumed everybody kept a grape arbor in the backyard, if I had even decided to think about it, which I’m sure I hadn’t.
Now I’m thinking that reviving this life would be a great thing to do on my own, but living downtown in a condo isn’t exactly conducive to having a garden and a compost pile. The next best thing is to read about it, so I did.
I went down to the library and picked up Compost, a deceptively small book about composting. The British author says you should actually compost food waste and paper waste in equal quantities — great, because I generate huge amounts of paper waste. I also read The Square-Foot Garden, a classic that eschews the traditional row method of planting in favor of little squares that you never walk on, so as not to compact the soil. (I now am realizing our garden looked like that — another thing I just assumed everybody else did.) For a human perspective, I tried to sift through The 3,000 Mile Garden, a book of sort of gardeny love letters between an Englishman and a Maine cat lady, but it got too creepy. (I tried!) Because it was there (in the gardening section! what a scam the Dewey decimal system was!), I also picked up and devoured Silent Spring, the 1962 classic that helped launch the environmental revolution and crusaded against broad-spectrum synthetic pesticides like heptachlor, dieldrin, and DDT, all of which are now off the market. I read all this stuff in the span of about three days last week, when I should have been studying, then I slept on it. I heartily recommend all these books except the one.
After all this ecological ferment, I’ve decided: I can’t wait to move to Florida so I can grow a garden. Apparently the soil is crummy (either sandy or clayey, and full of nematodes), but you can fix that, and you can grow up to five crops a year because of the wonderful sun, temperatures, and humidity. I also decided I would like to try to never throw anything away, again, ever. According to Compost, you can even compost things like old clothes (they’re cotton, a natural fiber) and cardboard. I already recycle all kinds of stuff, including my cans, paper, electronics, and so on. The only things you really can’t recycle are certain plastics — what else is there to throw out? So, once the move comes, everything’s going on the compost pile or in the recycling. I even researched how to compost meat, which everybody says is a bad idea (rats and flies), and I came across "bokashi," a Japanese invention involving a sealed bucket, wheat bran, and bacteria, which is a process that anaerobically "pickles" your meat, permitting it to then be composted. Sounds gross, though, to leave a bucket of rotting meat outside, but if it works, why not.
Amusingly, these decisions have led me to realize I’m going to have to live on a lot with some sun and some amount of land, i.e., I might actually have to move to the suburbs or the country (!). Cityboy might go on hiatus for a while. But I think it will be enjoyable to come home, change from the suit into the play clothes, go muck about in the garden for an hour or so, then get a shower and have a refreshing drink while admiring the garden, and have a dinner including vegetables I grew myself. That kind of life should give plenty of time for contemplation. Shouldn’t life be relaxing and innately rewarding?
Well, ask me again when I’m sweating through 90-degree, 90% humidity days next summer.
3 August 2007 at 2.38 am · Filed under Solely personal
Gentle reader, my summer of relaxation has come to an end. From August ‘04 to May ‘07, I was in school and working full time continually. Over this summer, I’ve been lucky enough to just have to work, and that felt like a vacation. But all things come to an end, and school starts up again this month.
I’m taking one last trip before the final push. I’ve decided to drive out to Denver to visit my friend Amy, then come back via Chicago visiting my friend Dave. Along the way I’ll get to add a few new states to my list and see just how big this big country really is.
God willing, you’ll hear from me a little bit each day, as I post my adventures here. People tell me the drive across Kansas is a killer, and I guess we’ll find out. Since I’ve gotta stay overnight there and in Nebraska, there should be plenty of time to read and write. I’m looking forward to it.
11 July 2007 at 1.23 am · Filed under Political, Solely personal
While a voter may be of any stripe, a political career in this country isn’t really open to those who refuse to belong to a party. All my life I’ve been a Republican, and I am the most conservative one of all my friends. But lately, I’ve been reexamining my beliefs.
Certainly, being a Republican hasn’t actually meant voting Republican every time. While I have almost always voted in the Republican primary, I’ve had real trouble swallowing certain nominees – sometimes because of the anti-gay thing, sometimes just because the candidates are terrible. I’m thinking particularly of President Bush in 2004 and of Kenneth Blackwell last year. So often, the party lets me down by nominating the unacceptable.
Because I’m pragmatic, however, I never waste my vote. And because making a practical electoral difference in this country means voting for one of the two parties’ candidates, if I find a Republican repugnant, then I will vote for the Democratic dolt. (I hope that was fair and balanced.) Since I wouldn’t want to think of myself as hewing slavishly to any single party’s line anyway, political cross-dressing doesn’t really bother me once in a while.
But lately, I’ve been afflicted with certain strange thoughts. I voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Strickland. All of my pals are liberals or at least moderates. Even my family has drifted leftward. One day it hit me: am I a Democrat???
It sounds like a tragic mid-life coming out story, doesn’t it? I took the issue up with a centrist-thinking friend who told me, “The Democratic Party is the party of the future.” And he didn’t even laugh ironically afterward! He was thoughtful enough to arrange a lunch meeting for himself and me with a prominent local Republican leader. I came away grateful but generally unswayed in either direction.
To my mind, the Democratic Party is the party of unions, welfare largesse, isolationism through trade barriers, greedy Detroit autoworkers, and escalating the war in Vietnam. It is the party that benefits from and exploits the continuing racial divide in this country. It is the party of the past.
Of course, the Republican Party is the party of union-busters, giant deficits, isolationism through treaty withdrawals, greedy Detroit automakers, and escalating the war in Iraq. It is the party that benefits from and exploits the continuing racial divide in this country. It is also the party of the past.
Neither party has it quite right. The Democrats are an unruly coalition of minority groups and special interests, but so are the Republicans. Neither party has consistent principles – Republicans say they’re for free trade, but I still remember Bush’s illegal protectionist steel tariffs in 2002, which just happened to benefit industry in the swing states of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Democrats say they stand for the little guy but their loudest demagogues oppose free trade even though the flood of cheaper goods into this country helps those with the least money the most. Republicans stand for personal freedom and liberty, but not in the bedroom and not within earshot of a wiretapping federal agent. Democrats support certain famous health-related “choices” and the legalization of marijuana, but then ban the smoking of tobacco. Both parties profess a belief in the market but perenially pass a farm bill that pays people to farm and not to farm. Who are all these people? Both parties are stuck with layer upon sedimentary layer of past compromise and always have to weigh each proposal’s effect on their precariously assembled electoral blocs. Ideological leadership is missing on both sides.
Enter Michael Bloomberg. Revisit: a vote for anyone other than a Republican or Democrat is a wasted vote. Exit Michael Bloomberg.
My problem is that I’d be a little uneasy swallowing whole-heartedly the platform of either party. (Both generally and specifically: if you look at the platforms that each party puts out in a presidential election year, nobody completely buys them or remembers them.) This would all be academic if I thought I wanted to remain on the sidelines of the process as a mere voter. Some day, though, I would like to be a candidate, and parties like candidates with a long track record. Remember, I’m a pragmatist, so I’d rather find myself on the inside of a party that needs changing, than to be standing outside both parties, proudly independent from both but powerless to influence neither.
Neither party has ever had a lock on our country’s future or direction. California elected Schwarzenegger and Massachusetts elected Weld. The funny thing about 20th century America is that the pendulum always swung fully in both directions, and in Ohio in 2006 that pattern certainly continued. (As pollster Charlie Cook told me during a presentation at Nationwide, “Sometimes people lose just because they’re wearing the wrong color jersey. This year, you don’t want to be wearing a red jersey.”) So the good news for the truly crass, which excludes me, is that it doesn’t really matter which party you choose in the long run – they come out about the same. But that doesn’t help when it comes to actually choosing.
What’s a considerate citizen to do? So far there are no good answers, and I’m still thinking.
14 May 2006 at 11.34 am · Filed under Funny stories, Random, Solely personal
Los Angeles was everything I thought it would be. Big, rich, poor, Spanish, white, Asian, etc. Today I’m coming home.
This city has a surprisingly good rail and bus system, given the area it has to cover, and provides really good value for money (at least to the farepayer). Thumbs up, L.A.! The only problem with it is the extremely annoying sound they play on the green line. Whenever the train pulls into or leaves a station, they actually use a truncated version of a cloying noise from Windows 95 (can’t remember the name). The ticket machines also use the “ding.wav” sound from Windows. This was just chilling.
I’m getting ready to head back to the airport, obviously, and I get to play one of my favorite games. I love to see the look on the faces of the snippy ticket counter people when they realize that my giant yellow suitcase has, in fact, no top handle. (There’s a handle on the side, though.) They grope for it, their look of disdain changes to one of blankness, and then they realize: nothing in ticket-counter school has prepared me for this! That’s when I say, evenly, “Oh yes — the handle. You took it off.” It is one of the few ways of getting even with these people.
The handle was, in fact, removed by American Airlines on a flight from Denver to San Diego in 2002. It is a testament either to my cheapness, sluggishness, or sentimentality, that I have not yet replaced the entire suitcase, which now has huge ungainly gashes in the sides. But it was a gift, and such things are hard to throw away.
9 May 2006 at 3.26 pm · Filed under Law school, Solely personal
Here I am, sitting at the airport, ready for a flight to Los Angeles. Spring finals have been decimated, bag has been haphazardly packed, and I’m ready to unwind for five or six days. Yeah, my clothes were just jammed in there — what do I care, I can’t dress right for California anyway, so I’m just buying new ones when I get there — and I have no clue about this city’s geography other than 1) it’s big, 2) there’s a pool at the hotel, and 3) I don’t get to drive the rental car. So who cares? It’s time to relax. Check you later.
11 March 2006 at 12.46 pm · Filed under Law school, Solely personal
OK, so I’ve been away for a while… but I have good reasons not for writing! I was preoccupied last month with the ABA’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition, which was a competition Jarrod and I started dealing with back on December 2nd and ended (for us) last weekend with absolutely fine results on March 4th, last Saturday. As part of the problem, we had to write a brief for the governor and elections commissioner of the fictional state of Calisota, and then in March we went to Washington to argue both sides of this state against other law schools.
I have to say we both hated writing the brief and we put its completion off until the last hours. I printed all the important cases and put them into a 4-inch binder, then lugged them around with me on my New York City trip before Christmas… you know, just in time for the transit strike. I didn’t read many then. Our brief had to be filed in the middle of January, and these awful cases weighed heavily on my mind. They had to be read before the writing could start, but who wants to plod full of hundreds of contradictory pages. (Of course, looking back on it, I like it. This always happens.)
So as I say, last month we went to Washington to compete. If we won all the rounds in D.C., we would have made it to Chicago to compete in April.
Our first round was against two students I dubbed John Edwards and Tape Recorder Girl. John Edwards looked and spoke exactly like the failed vice-presidential candidate (except this one confessed to being from Tennessee). He was impassioned but a little over-eager for my money. Tape Recorder Girl had perfectly scripted responses to judges’ questions, which drove me crazy. They beat us by only 1.777 points out of a possible 100. We were crushed and spent the entire next day moping around and blaming ourselves, wondering why we had gotten into this and considering throwing the rest of the competition. (Everyone was guaranteed to participate in three rounds, but your performance in those rounds qualified you for more.)
So the next day, as I say, we practiced and practiced for the second round, which was not until 6.15pm. I have never beaten myself up so much in my life, and for what? All day, my stomach was flooded with angst and a pervasive sense of foreboding. (Yes, I’m being a drama queen, but that’s how I felt.) Either we would fail again and be further humiliated, or we would succeed, and have to go on further in the competition and be humiliated there. Either way, it was a nice day in D.C. and I’d rather be doing something else!
(At this stage I should make laudatory comments about how my partner Jarrod was strong, driven to win, and just a tinge irritable at my melancholy nature.)
The second round featured opponents we eventually decided reminded us of characters from Doogie Howser, M.D., particularly Vinnie. This guy could not keep his hands still, but he was so short the judges could not see them gyrating behind the podium. We were confident that we had him beat. Both of us felt very good about our performance. So you can imagine our shock to hear we had lost again, but this time by only 0.444 point out of 100.
At this point, we were ready to drown our sorrows in the comforting embrace of alcohol and fitful sleep. What could be done? We clearly were going home humiliated. Then I learned the other team from Capital lost their second round by 13 points, and the clouds parted a bit. 
(Just kidding, Mark and Chip. We were all so bruised.)
The preparations for the third round were even more farcical. The rules of the competition provided only 16 slots for the fourth round, and your performance in rounds 1, 2, and 3 qualified you for round 4. Since our record was 0-2, we didn’t think we would qualify for round 4 and would therefore be permitted to escape our suits and ties and go outside to play. Unfortunately… Since we had lost rounds 1 and 2 by the tiniest of margins, we were ranked as the very best 0-2 team. And that meant we had to play the very worst 0-2 team in round 3. As I put it, the best of the worst had to play the worst of the worst (North Carolina State, and they actually were the nicest people at the competition!), which was the team that had lost by a cumulative 32 points. This was going to be a painful round, I thought. People who don’t like arcane math things can skip the rest of this paragraph. The problem with this whole setup was that if we beat our hapless opponents in round 3, our record would then be 1-2. So if some other 1-1 team lost its third round, it would also be ranked 1-2. And if our margin of victory was higher than theirs — and it would have to be, since we were going into this thing with a -2.222 score — we were going to leapfrog some other teams, qualify for the fourth round, and we would then face the strongest team at the competition. And of course, we were to face certain defeat, agony, and have to sit around in our suits for another four hours! Why wouldn’t the ABA just let us go have a nice lunch and forget about all this madness?!
And that’s exactly what happened. Round 3 was a real drubbing for the other side, even though I tried to help them as much as possible by stuttering, flubbing, and even waving my arms and saying (about the avoidance canon of statutory construction), “But that’s what we fought an entire Civil War over!” We won by some 13 points anyway and had to play Southern Methodist University in round 4, a team that was comprised of two judicial cyborgs whose smooth-tongued orations had been programmed by Daniel Webster himself. We lost (but only by four and a half points!) and were finally permitted to go home.
All in all, it was a fun experience, even though I probably spent two hundred hours reading cases, writing stuff, and practicing three times at week at the law school. Moot court is hard work. I wound up wondering why I was doing it, though… unless we were the absolute #1 team in the country, the road to victory was certain to end before I wanted it to. Of course, it’s fabulous experience to read, think, write, and talk, and I did get to sit on the bench of the Federal Circuit during a break, but my God, the strain it can put on a person is a lot to bear. I’m glad to have it over with, at least until the fall when we do it again!
In other news… My mother sold her Green Light Insurance agency a couple of weeks ago, and we have been both working on last-minute preparations for the computer-network transition. I think the agency sale was the happiest day of my life so far: I got to assemble all the documents and run the closing, but far more significantly, the millstone of having to manage five servers and ten PC’s was lifted from my neck forever! I’m finally freed from having to worry about major computer crises at the office. This was another one where, it was fun while it lasted, but I’m damn glad it’s over.
The real reason I’m glad about this, of course, is that I think my mom will get her life back. She only has one business to run now, and it’s much less intense. I hope she will have more time to relax and not work any more hundred-hour weeks. And she will be able to pursue all the creative endeavors she always wanted to but didn’t have time. I’m really happy for her, and she’s living evidence for me that hard work really does pay off. Good luck with the next phase of your life, Mom!
8 February 2006 at 12.03 am · Filed under Culture, Recipes, Solely personal
Nothing says “I’m very classy” like tonight’s midnight snack: a big hunk of Kroger flatbread that would otherwise go stale, three sticks of imitation crab meat, a goodish slice of real English Stilton, and of course, six Carr’s Table Water Crackers. Good night, fair readers everywhere, from my bed.
By the way, I am also happy to report that I have won my battle against Amazon.com. The Pet Shop Boys album I ordered on November 27th of last year arrived today. Against all odds, I should add. The Amazon people put what I ordered (Battleship Potemkin) at $12.99 on interminable hold, while they then offered the same album under a different price of $28.49 to be shipped within a few days. Not only did I receive what I ordered at the price I wanted, I also got 2-day shipping, and a $5 credit for my moderate patience.
In a further related incident to be filed in the “small consumer victories” category, The New Yorker finally caved and offered to renew my subscription for two years for only $45. This was after months of insisting $82 was the best they could do. If you’d like them to make you a similar offer, all you have to do is let your subscription lapse, then throw away the next twelve letters in a row. Plaudits to both megacorporations, for coming around.
27 December 2005 at 12.06 am · Filed under Culture, Solely personal
Hi everyone. I just got back from a week-long trip to New York and Philadelphia. I’ve put some fun photos of the underground Ben Franklin museum in Philadelphia on my site here. It was dark, it was ancient, it was very much worth the visit. But it’s good to be home, where I don’t have too much law school stuff going on, other than the national moot court brief that needs writing in three weeks. Jarrod, are you reading this? I hope you’re working hard on that brief!
2 December 2005 at 8.38 pm · Filed under Law school, Solely personal
It’s Friday night. I’ve been in bed for two days, except for a terrifying couple of trips to pee. I’m sicker than I’ve been in a year or so, with what appears to be an “avian cold.” I am consuming drugs of indeterminate age and origin that I found under the sink. Despite my need for sleep and rest, I am feverishly outlining my way through the old Constitutional Law book while lying under disgusting sweat-drenched sheets.
I am a law student heading into finals.
Reading this stuff — all of it, from the last sixteen weeks of school — is like a pie-eating contest. Pie tastes good. We like pie. Hell, some times we eat a lot of pie! (On my trip to Mississippi, I read almost a hundred pages of this book in a single sitting, and really liked it.) But after 589 pages of pie, we start to hate it. “Oh no. More? I’m full, I couldn’t.” But I must. The exam is Monday.
7 June 2005 at 9.50 pm · Filed under Connextions Lofts, Culture, Random, Solely personal, Technology, The law
Hello, dear reader!
It has been many weeks since the last Before. I am pleased to bring you more thrilling news and insights from me! This entry discusses a minor victory of mine as well as several other random news items.
Tonight, I was elected to the board of the erratically-named ConneXtions Lofts, and, have also been elected to the post of Treasurer! (It’s not as glorious as it sounds; nobody wanted Treasurer, and I made the twin mistakes of 1) being the impressionable new guy and 2) having the last name Cash.)
Now when I am in the elevator and it unexpectedly stops on the third or second floors, I will have the pleasure and power of barking, “Out! Out! I’m an executive officer of the Board!” (Note to fellow neighbors: It is my honor to serve you as a member of your Board for the next three years. I am looking forward to dedicating myself to the betterment of our community for everyone’s benefit. Now stop taking the elevators if you live on 3 or 2.)
No, seriously, if any of my neighbors do read this, thank you very much for choosing me and I do hope to work with all of you to make it a better place. Send me an e-mail or call me any time.
At least tonight didn’t go like the last election I was in, eleven years ago, which was for President of the Class of 1995. I stupidly ran a short but extremely negative campaign, consisting of a single speech bashing the current class president. I don’t even remember what I said (actually this is a lie), but it was pretty embarrassing and I think I lost 440-10. Also, he later refused to go to the prom with me. Eddie Harris, if you are out there, that day will be with me for the rest of my life.
Now for the grab bag of items.
- A reader asks, “Does a cyclist’s failure to wear a helmet constitute contributory negligence that would bar the cyclist from successfully suing a car driver who hits the cyclist?” The answer, gentle reader, is no (unless helmets are required by law in your jurisdiction). So, ride on and feel the wind in your hair.
- I have just discovered the Urban Dictionary. I think I am a couple years behind the times on this, but at least I now know what holla back girl actually means. This is the resource I was looking for to stay “fresh” and “hip” as the popular culture evolves during the next decade. I won’t be able to enjoy it due to law school.
- I visited the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati a couple weeks ago. This was the building the New York Times called something like, “perhaps the most important building since the end of the Cold War.” Well… ehhh. It was just OK. It was done by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who of course is most famous for her stage design of the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife tour (actually, this is also a lie, although she did design the stage). The building is vertically-oriented, and the floors are connected by shallow, suspended stairways. Unfortunately, the stairways seemed really cheap. Arnie and I panned the exhibits and I think we would have to say the best part was the gigantic elevator, the biggest one I have ever seen. Still, if you’re in Cincinnati and you have an hour and eight bucks, you might want to do it.
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