Are you what you are, or what?

I have noticed, unscientifically of course, a general malaise drifting listlessly around my colleagues. I think some of it has to do with news-weariness from the multi-punch disasters we’ve had lately. Perhaps some has to do with shortening daylight hours, the early symptoms of seasonal affect disorder. And, at least with my fellow Cumberlanders, the realization that the reading load won’t be going away any time soon has firmly descended in our midst, executed a three point landing on our souls, and pitched tent stakes deep into the nether regions of our frontal lobes. September blahs, I’ll call it. I actually look forward to this each year. A mild depressive episode can actually be quite therapeutic. I remember a tree in Princeton that I always passed on my way to school. Each fall for a few days, that maple would turn flame red/orange/yellow and (I’m probably going to engage in some hyperbole here, but you knew that about me) glow. No, seriously, the thing reflected more light than actually hit it. It was as if it inconspicuously absorbed energy all summer long for the sole purpose of spending a few brilliant days in the fall inspiring awe before the harsh New Jersey winters engulfed the populace of the Northeast in interminable gray. I distinctly remember my last Autumn spent at Princeton. I distinctly remember making a conscious effort to take it in, to notice the trees, to smell the fall air, to walk more slowly across campus, to be “where I was” while I was there. And I did all this because I knew I would miss it. And I know that now. Sooner than it seems, my days at Cumberland will be the stuff of boring stories I share over bar luncheons and with which I will torture young attorneys-to-be who are smiling at me hoping I’ll give them a job at the wonderful firm where I will have just made partner.

But we aren’t there yet. So when I drive to school, I chose the soundtrack carefully. I drive slow over the speed bumps, not just becuase of my low ground clearance, but because I’m taking it in. I try not to turn down many lunch outings. And a few weeks from now, I’ll notice the trees. As it turns out, both Lennon and Solomon were right. Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans, so remember, there is nothing better a man may do than to eat, drink, and find satisfaction in his work.

Confirmation Consternation

So, I was watching some of the Judge Roberts hearings this week, because I’m a law student, I’m taking constitutional law this semester, and the peer pressure was phenomenal. It reminds me of when I was a vocal Baptist at a Presbyterian seminary and I would have to spend every June after the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention explaining why Baptists love Jesus but hate gays, Disney, women, science, and fashion men’s apparel. You’re just expected to have some answers. And as I watched the Roberts confirmation hearings, I was appalled at the idea that people would bring stuff up to a 50 year old man that he wrote as a law clerk when he was 26 and say, in present tense, that those thoughts ARE his ideas. I mean, it totally made me think, what if some fruit cake is out there printing off my blogs and cataloguing them to bring up against me should I ever run for office or be nominated for the Supreme Court or some inferior bench. Perhaps I should be more careful what I write. Perhaps I should use more decorum, be more reserved in my personal ranting and revelations. Or perhaps Americans should get a friggin’ grip, stop deifying their leaders, and give guys like Judge Roberts a break. I mean, the guy is getting confirmed for the US Supreme Court, not the fourth person of the Trinity. And if YOU are printing these blogs of mine for the ignoble purpose of future blackmail, character assassination, or negative campaign fodder, I hope you print the following sentences and insert your own name in the appropriate blanks: “Mike is running for the Alabama Supreme Court. But Mike once told blog-reader ______ to get a friggin’ grip and stop deifying America’s leaders. Is that the sort of level headed, free thinking, politically incorrect, legally competent, socially aware, Hawaiian shirt wearing hero you want on the bench of the Alabama Supreme Court? Really? Good. Me too. Elect Mike, Alabama Supreme Court Justice. Paid for by the Committee Who Got a Friggin’ Grip, Stopped Deifying Leaders, and Supported People for Important Positions Without Acting Like a Self-Serving Little Brat Like Joe Biden did back in 2005.”
Mike in 2020!

Conflict of Disinterest

So, when you go to the doctor, do you ever ask where they went to med school? Or what their grade was in gross human anatomy? No? Hmm. So, by the same token, when you choose an attorney, and let’s hope you haven’t had to, do you ask how they did in their ethics course? See, I only ask because I’m writing this particular blog post while sitting in my legal ethics course. Before you get sanctimonious or shocked, let me share what I see going on in the room around me. From my vantage point, I can see three games of solitaire. (NOTE: I took a break there to take a brief note. Just to provide a sense of the multitasking going on here, I’ll indicate further note breaks with a capital “N.”) I just heard two classmates remember to switch their cell phones to vibrate. OH! A fourth solitaire player just joined the fray! N. I count at least five classmates who are actively, visibly “disengaged” from the lecture. That doesn’t include me! N, complete with class comment. I count three colleagues using the “canned” notes available for purchase from the Cumberland Law Review for the reasonable price of $20.
And the discussion at hand? What constitutes a conflict of interest in representing a client. Dryer things have been discussed at law schools, but not without involving the federal income tax codes. N. OH! I believe I see a computer with the Nintendo classic “Mike Tyson Boxing!”

So, life is largely back to normal in Mobile. Gas prices, oddly enough, are pretty close to pre-Katrina levels in Mobile, while Birmingham continues to siphon dollars out of its petroleum customers at rates equal to their highpoint in the post disaster fuel scare. And I meant to say scare, not shortage. Great piles of desiccated yard debris still line the streets of Midtown Mobile, inviting a stray cigarette butt to convert the substantially recovered neighborhoods into well mapped out conflagrations of latent Katrina wreckage. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Back in Birmingham, I’m back to my semi-daily pilgrimages to my personal library, i.e., Starbucks. My ‘bucks in Trussville now has open wireless internet access, greatly improving the utility of that location. I say they understand me there. My wife says they are only faking it to get my money. I say that is a valuable illusion. Then again, so is most of life.

Who is this who darkens my counsel?

Thanks to all who inquired about me and Kim in the aftermath of Katrina’s ruthless visitation to the Gulf Coast. All things considered, we came out quite well. A tree leaned on our house, but did no structural damage and was recently removed with the assistance of a tree surgeon and the payment of a few hundred bucks. We recovered power at the house yesterday after a week of the generator howling on the back porch as a part of the symphony of personal power plants in our ‘hood.
I’m back and school and a bit behind as a result of taking care of things around the house. I’m sure I’ll catch up in time. Life Lesson 32: You can’t schedule a hurricane.
Other than that, life is beautifully back to normal. I “feel” like a second year law student. Classes are in full swing, law review is demanding a bit of time here and there, and next summer’s job hunt is well underway. There exists a good possibility that I’ll just clerk again for the same firms I worked for this summer. I’d happily take a job at either of them.

Oh, and for the record, as an actual resident of the Gulf Coast (rather than an armchair critic), with property that was, if only minimally, impacted by Katrina, to all of those who are criticizing Bush as being the SOLE agent responsible for any real or (more likely) imagined delay in the relief effort, I say, “Shut the f%&# up and get to work.” It’s easy to point the finger. But I haven’t seen a single critic, including the New Orleans mayor who seems to be suffering from a glutial-cranial inversion disorder, who has been able to pull 100,000 helicopters and provisions out of their orifices at the snap of a finger. It’s easy to criticize, difficult to drag order out of chaos, and impossible to make the world equitable simply by bitching that it isn’t. I feel better now.
Oh, and to Kanye West, "I don't profess to have the ability to read other people's minds to know if they care about black people. But I know this: I don't care in the least about you. You should consider going back to college before you say anything else so blatantly racist, useless, and disunifying. It wasn't Bush that didn't care about black people. It was Katrina. Get your facts straight. Amatuer."
Wow. Now that was cathartic.