Midnight, Elvis, Rain and Insight

It’s a cold, wet midnight in Baton Rouge and all is still. The rhythmic patter of gentle, steady south Louisiana rain on the metal roof is soothing, especially when the sound is further softened by the background hum of the heaters. Even my 5 dogs have drifted off to their beds, warm and dry, no doubt dreaming of adventures yet to come.

I cannot sleep, so some of my favorite old tunes are playing…and they strike chords within me, as old songs often do. And, within the refrain, when it’s late and quiet, you often hear just what you need to hear.

Like tonight, for example:

We're caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Why can't you see
What you're doing to me
When you don't believe a word I say?

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds

So, if an old friend I know
Drops by to say hello
Would I still see suspicion in your eyes?

Here we go again
Asking where I've been
You can't see these tears are real
I'm crying

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds

Oh let our love survive
Or dry the tears from your eyes
Let's don't let a good thing die

When honey, you know
I've never lied to you
Mmm yeah, yeah…

Hmmmm…Elvis.

Elvis?

The King doesn’t make my late night play-list very often, because I can often only see the caricature into which he later evolved. But, he wasn’t always that way. There’s the young gun Elvis --- the slim, leather clad rebel from 1969, takin’ a chance on a song that had already failed for Mark James, the fella who originally wrote it.

Elvis recorded that which appeared failed and it took life anew.

It is with us yet. And so is Elvis, for that matter.

We can’t build our dreams upon foundations of suspicion, young, hot Elvis is singing to me now, amid swells of background vocals and rich orchestration from 40 years ago.

Give it a listen.....cut & paste this into your browser....see if YOU hear anything in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcmmI3MgJqA

Elvis.

Who knew?

---J.R.

Anonymous Comment Policy Revised --- No More Free Lunch

When I started this Blog, I opted for a policy of allowing anyone to leave any sort of comment they might desire to any of my posts. This policy worked well for many months.

Lately, however, I have been inundated with a series of incomprehensible “comments” from a single individual. This person has posted numerous comments which---to the extent they could be understood at all--- were nothing more than irrelevant and unfair personal invective directed toward another person.

Of course, this venomous “lurker” only posts his attacks anonymously because he is a coward.

He has taken to making up names with which to “sign” his comments. He has also falsely indicated he is part of certain Trial Lawyers College (TLC) Classes, using fictitious names not part of the verifiable rolls for the years cited. He uses proxy I.D.'s and revolving proxy email addresses. Thus, he is a rather pathetic liar to boot.

Given the actions of this person, comments to this Blog will be henceforward subject to my review prior to posting. Posts from this person will not be published. Instead, they will be deleted. I will not facilitate spiteful personal attacks against others. There has been ENOUGH of THAT.

I will continue to post all comments relevant to the subject matter, even if they are critical of me. I do not require that folks identify themselves in their comments but ---frankly--- it is preferred. I can live with criticism of Clary. I can live with critical disagreement upon issues. I guess I can even live with anonymous on-point criticism posted by people who do not have the courage to publicly own their opinions. In truth, though, such anonymous commentary has no real value. If people seek to be part of positive change or candid discourse or hope to be involved in honest solutions, then they should step out like the rest of us and join the discussion.

Anything supposedly substantive but posted anonymously just causes people to roll their eyes.

Perhaps this decision will impel the anonymous comment-posters to either stop hiding like timid mice or start their own Blogs, where they can fulminate until the cows come home. Instead, I’m betting they will continue to practice what appears to be their forte’: Cowardly bitching and name-calling from behind their anonymous security blanket.

Well, to those folks: Please crawl elsewhere to hang. You’re all done here.

--- J.R.

Katie's Wedding....and Change.

I am Katie’s parrain, which, in Cajun French, means “godfather.” Her Dad and I attended the police academy together a lifetime ago, when the world was new. There we commenced a friendship that has never flagged or faltered, even after 32 years. I was there when Katie was born and I stood at her christening. During the ensuing years, I watched her grow from a rambunctious toddler into a beautiful, singular, soulful woman.

Tonight, in the small, quaint Louisiana town of Washington (astride LA 71 between Opelousas and LeBeau), I went to Katie’s wedding. As I watched her dance with her husband, Gabe, I marveled at the changes occurring over the years in this small slice of my life, changes which seemingly passed in a twinkling. Seeing me in the crowd after her dance, Katie angled over to me, beaming that marvelous smile and gave me her special hug.

“I’m so glad you came,” she whispered.

“Wouldn’t have missed it, kiddo.” I answered, feeling barely contained emotion vibrating just beneath my skin.

In the quiet of the late evening, I am home alone now. The temperature has dropped into the upper 40’s, a perfect excuse for starting the first fire since last winter.

There’s nothing like an evening wedding and a late night fire to get one thinking about life and change.

The one immutable rule of life, never subject to change, appears to be this: Things change. Robert Frost articulated the corollary to this rule: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”

Tonight was about change. So was yesterday. I’m betting tomorrow will not be much different in that department either. Most of us do not care much for change, inexplicably preferring to dance with the devil we know. When change comes nonetheless, as it inevitably will, it is often jarring and unexpected. Other times, it happens so slowly that---when you finally notice that something is different—you are captured for a time within a bubble of reminiscent wonderment.

The fire chuffs within my big brick hearth. I stare into the sparkling heat with my laptop on my knees and chew on these random thoughts. There was a time when a tumbler of good Irish Whiskey would have been in my hand, but my life changed in that regard on April 19, 1993. That was a life-change that seemed so radical when it occurred. I recall wondering if my world could survive a life without alcohol. (The low odds of my surviving WITH alcohol in my life did not seem to even enter my mind at the time. Funny.....)

Of course, I did survive it, although viewing that transformative miracle in "survival" terms seems silly now almost 17 years down the road. I did not merely "survive" the change. Instead, the change saved me and ---at 37 years of age---I was lifted into a more evolved place where honest personal exploration could finally commence. And then the hits just kept on coming, as they used to say on AM Radio. The subsequent changes marching into my life ---even the ones seeming tragic or frightening at the time---look quite different now as I gaze at them in the rear-view mirror.

Significant changes are present again in my life –-- unexpected changes involving friends for whom I feel abiding warmth, affection and respect. It also involves an institution which has touched my heart so deeply that the experience is totally unparalleled and I will search ever in vain for words to explain what it means to me.

It was not change I sought. The truth is I did not even idly wish for it. (Those who speculate otherwise have no idea what they're talking about.) Instead, the change came briskly on the wind, like the down of a thistle. But, here it is and I find myself uncharacteristically serene about what has come on the wind. I have no fear or anxiety. I feel no weight of pessimism. Tonight, reflecting on the changes in my own life, the strident pessimism of others seems counter-productive and dramatically contrived. Plus, having more facts at my fingertips now, I know that their sturm und drang is either misplaced or parochial. Thus, "issues" identified by misplaced critics are entitled to no priority of thought or action. They are entitled only to an honest audience.

I will do my very best with this most recently arrived change...something I'm better at as I've gotten older. I marvel that Darwin was more on-the-mark than even he could ever know when he wrote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Sinatra is on the CD player, singing Dream……the young Sinatra, the wildly popular bow-tied crooner who recorded for Columbia Records, before the Decca years and before HIS life changed. No one can sing a Johnny Mercer chart like Frank:

Get in touch with that sundown fellow
As he tiptoes across the sand.
He's got a million kinds of stardust
Pick your fav'rite brand, and

Dream, when you're feeling blue.
Dream, that's the thing to do.
Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air.
You'll find your share of memories there.

So, dream when the day is through.
Dream, and they might come true;
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream…

Katie, I’m thinking about your wedding tonight. I’m also thinking about the arc of my life – that portion behind me and the part yet ahead. I say, as change has come in the past, let it come again. Let us change and evolve. The changes before have made me a better person and delivered a life more wondrous than any I could have ordered up on the front end. I am confident the changes yet to come will be no different.

Let us all change in positive, loving ways. Let us do it honestly and with true hearts. Let us make amends where they're needed and be quicker to forgive than to joust.

And, let us dream.

J.R.

On Horseshit and Transitory Relevance

I’ve been “in irons” lately – my bow so close upon the wind that all headway ceases. As even the novice sailor knows, “irons” await when sailing into the wind without tacking. The illusion of motion remains, of course. One can feel the wind. There may be waves roundabout and the motion of the living sea surges beneath your hull. But, in truth, you are not moving at all. You are dead in the water – your boom loose, your sail listless and unfilled.

Until very recently, my irons went unnoticed, I imagine because the mere illusion of motion was inexplicably enough for me. However, recent postings about Trial Lawyers College (TLC) in a variety of venues have caused me to consult my internal GPS. Confirming a troubling lack of headway, I’ve reached for my boom and tiller – pushed them away from me – a counter-intuitive sailing move designed to reverse and turn your bow. Once the bow moves along the compass slightly, the sailor can pull in the mainsheet sharply, confidently draw in the tiller and off he will go.

I think I just heard my sail pop as it filled with wind.

The search for a word perfect for the situation at hand prompted my personal GPS consult. I needed a word to properly assess and describe a variety of recent postings about Trial Lawyers College – postings which mimic what used to be called “investigative journalism” but which are really just shallow imitations of Westbrook Pegler – a gentleman of the press once properly characterized as “the shrill, stuck whistle of American Journalism.”

Anyway, I found the word.

The word is: “Horseshit.”

There is a shrill, stuck whistle reverberating through the TLC firmament. The whistle poses as an investigative alarm and directs its focus toward people and personalities and TLC Boards and tax returns and leases and other such matters. These points are "investigated" with such erudition that one could be forgiven for assuming there was some palpable substance to the sound. That is the very nature of sound and fury, of course. This faux alarm whips up the ambient wind and leads people to conclude that SOMETHING must be up in light of all the hubbub. Amid such sound and fury, people bemoan the status quo, resign from Boards, decry materialism or the corrosive nature of “ TLC politics” – all while wringing their hands about thongs and such.

As a civil plaintiff trial lawyer, I have no trouble with alarms as a concept. How many products liability cases have I won wearing the fragrant garland of DESIGN – GUARD – WARN? Alarms are critical when a manufacturer can neither “design out” an identifiable danger nor adequately guard a consumer against that danger. In those situations, an “alarm” of some type is imperative. So, I get that.

Moreover, I have nothing but admiration in my heart for a free and unfettered press. America needs persistent watchdogs in the press asking the hard questions and irritating the power structure. Such overview, scrutiny and revelation keeps folks responsible for the Public Fisc honest…..or, in Louisiana, close enough to what might reasonably pass for honest. I secured a Journalism degree at LSU long before I somehow crowbarred my way into law school. Thus, the press has no greater champion than me – even when they sometimes get it wrong. If motives are pure, I’ll opt for revelation every time. Honest mistakes keep those in power with their hands on the Pepto-Bismol.

What’s true for alarms and journalism in general is probably also true for TLC, specifically. I get that too.

Of course, as Glenn Beck has so sagely taught us, there’s a difference between purely motivated revelation and old-fashioned horseshit.

So, how does one counter persistent, shrill horseshit anyway – particularly when presented eloquently? You cannot simply squelch it, for that tramples the right of every citizen to insert his two cents of horseshit into the American marketplace of ideas, even when it’s worth considerably less than that sum. You cannot intellectually counter it without descending into an abyss pre-defined by horseshit-spreader. This is why celebrities rarely sue The Globe or The Examiner or The National Enquirer. I mean….is there really any point to Brad Pitt suing over a story about how he is in cahoots with alien Scientologists seeking to impregnate teenage orphans?

Instead, I guess we simply have to think for ourselves and tune in to our own intuitive feelings on the points raised – feelings based upon our own experience. That might be a start.

Insofar as TLC is concerned, I am blessed to have had personal interaction with all of the folks named recently in blog-postings finding wide dissemination these days -- including Gerry. Some are dear friends. Some were TLC ’02 classmates. Some are on the TLC Board. I have been close to these TLC people over a considerable period of time. Thus, I have seen them at their best and I have seen them coast occasionally and I have seen them make the occasional misstep – just as I sometimes coast and just as I make my own daily missteps.

However, I will tell you what I have never seen. I have never seen ANY of them engage in wantonly selfish conduct with the goal of “using” TLC to secure personal enrichment. To anyone who says otherwise, I say: SHOW ME. The stuff I have seen written recently doesn’t demonstrate a damn thing, except that some people yearn to become transitorily relevant by shitting in their hands and throwing it, like chimps at the zoo.

Anyone who thinks that Gerry Spence is “using” TLC as a personal profit center is an imbecile. Any inference of this type is simply foolish. This is my considered opinion based upon personal observations cataloged over an extended period of time and in situations not open to all. Gerry Spence is human and has made mistakes -- just like you and me. His words and his record over the long haul, though, reveal an honest devotion to TLC's mission --- a life path in which much more has been GIVEN to The College and its Alumni over 15 years than has ever been TAKEN. So, please......save the "Spence-self-interest" conspiracy theories for the nuts with tin foil on their heads (to prevent the satellites from invading their thoughts) who love to "explain" how the CIA blew up the Twin Towers in New York on 9-11-01.

Anyone who concludes that the owners of the Thunderhead should just give The Ranch to TLC “and be done with it” are as selfish as toddlers and about as deep. When was the last time THEY gave anything possessing such immense value to anyone or anything? Here’s the answer: Never. But, it’s so easy to suggest that others do what they have never accomplished or considered. Too bad Huey Long isn’t still around as he could have recruited them to join his Share Our Wealth Party. Then, they could sit around and divide up the patrimony of others -- a delightful pastime if you have the stomach for such as that. (Do they like reeling in fish that others have hooked too?)

Anyone who thinks that TLC could secure another facility like Thunderhead for anything remotely approaching the lease terms currently in place is so ignorant of the market in this area that further discourse on the point would be wasted on such a rube. Look around and see what 250 acre (+ or -) Wyoming ranches with abundant water surrounded by non-developable Wildlife Preserve acreage are leasing for – IF you can find one. Then, take a gander at what they SELL for – remembering that, after you purchase the place, you STILL have to maintain the whole shebang. Assuming you did not have the do-re-mi to BUY such a joint – which the College does not – what would you have to borrow to make the purchase (assuming you could find a lender) and what would the attendant debt service costs be? Does any thinking person truly believe -- but for the provisions made for TLC by The Spence Foundation – our College would have access to anything like the facilities currently enjoyed? Please. We'd be in a Strip Mall in Lander.

Anyone who thinks ---just because Gerry’s attaches his name to TLC—that Spence should therefore be obligated to reach for his wallet and un-ass the full sum required to run the College is as stupid as he is short-sighted. Gerry’s contributions to TLC are immense. Nonetheless, some are apparently able to keep a straight face and state that---in addition to all that’s been done thus far—Spence should now part with millions he sweated to earn to either support or endow TLC. Such a vapid assessment ignores the manifest truth, which is this: Trial Lawyers College must learn to support itself. And, we will either embrace our responsibilities in that regard or we will perish. I am betting we will “cowboy up” and do what needs to be done, although we will do it carrying the horseshit-spreaders on our muscled backs.

Anyone who thinks that a foundation owning a Wyoming Ranch worth many millions of dollars should lease that facility to some entity (ANY entity) without a mechanism of prompt lease revocation is a piteous simpleton. It would be completely irresponsible to effect a lease on a property such as Thunderhead without a codicil of that type. Including language of that character is good lawyering, which fairly protects the owner of an immensely valuable property. The shrill skeptics say that such a clause allows the owning coalition to give TLC the boot once Gerry dies and is no longer the moving force behind that Foundation. Uhhhh....OK. So? Quit whining. When you've been given a lease-venue like Thunderhead in which to operate for the artificially depressed price assessed to TLC, this is a chance you take. Is it a realistic, looming possibility -- one that will pull the rug from beneath the College at any moment? The record of those involved in the ownership of Thunderhead shows it is NOT. But, it does give those who wish to become transitorily TLC-relevant a platform to sew cynicism and discord for their own purposes.

Anyone who bemoans the raising of funds from our own ranks to support TLC—even though it calls upon Warrior-volunteers to perennially pinch their own pocketbooks—does not understand what it takes for TLC to remain independent. Instead, they want “Daddy” to simply buy them the shiny new convertible. Similarly, anyone who spends time gazing upon lists of TLC donors so as to pronounce judgment on their true level of commitment to the College is engaging in a form of ignorant stone-throwing usually reserved to the sole province of 9th grade girls.

And, now that I mention it…..what are the horseshit-spreaders doing to suggest pragmatic mechanisms through which money might be raised to support the College?

Not a thing.

They actuate nothing.

They innovate nothing.

They plan nothing.

They brainstorm nothing.

They solve nothing.

Instead, they do the only thing people can do when they are bereft of true ideas: They embrace their transitory relevance through the ancient art of unremitting criticism. So, hooray for the criticizing horseshit-spreaders! They are as valuable as parasitic deer ticks.

But, I digress.

Anyone who succumbs to the vapors because TLC merchandise includes a thong carrying the College logo needs to have a sense-of-humor transplant, for cryin’ out loud. Anyone who thinks that such an item of merchandise somehow denigrates women is just spoiling for an argument over nothing.

Anyone who would pound their soap box because the TLC Board of Directors is not “elected” by the Alumni so misunderstands the basic methodology through which Non-Profits staff their Boards that illuminating the reality for them would begin much as Vince Lombardi commenced each one of his Packer Training Camps: “Gentlemen,” Lombardi would say, holding up a pigskin before his rookies. “THIS is a football.” TLC is not a traditional for-profit corporation, with a Board selected by shareholders, who are thus pledged to act in a manner designed to increase corporate stock prices and spur dividends. Non-Profit Board Members are routinely recruited and INVITED to join – usually by other members of the Board or the Executive Director or by other corporate officers. Anyone having rudimentary experience with non-profits knows this. That being so, any person who would intimate there is something dark and malignant in what is—in truth—wholly routine is….well…he’s Glenn Beck is who he is.

One could go on, of course. But, what is the point of arguing with The National Enquirer and the claim that a photo of Elvis cured the cancer in Jack Kennedy’s brain, which is alive in a jar somewhere?

My ongoing experience at Trial Lawyers College has evolved into one of the most important phases of my life. I know that any experience so thoroughly touching my heart cannot be run by pretenders and charlatans. My personal observations and friendships with the folks who run the joint bear that out. Where horseshit-spreaders see hypocrisy, I see human beings---with all their faults and failings---doing their level best to make an astonishing place better and more accessible to other trial lawyers. Where the horseshit-spreader sews cynicism and opts for criticism or the spinning of base conspiracy theories, I choose to roll up my sleeves and work to help a special place survive and prosper.

Of course, this will mean to the horseshit spreaders that I am brainwashed -- that I am adrift in cultish TLC Kool-Aid and thus incapable of objective assessments. Such an assertion just makes me chuckle. It cannot be countered and I will instead rely on those who know me to judge who and what I am......although the potential charge DOES remind me of one of the greatest exchanges in American politics. The exchange took place in 1968, when candidates were coming out of the woodwork to oppose Lyndon Johnson's anticipated re-election bid. Eugene McCarthy was mounting a stinging challenge within the Democratic Party to his sitting President and George Romney, previously the governor of Michigan, was one of the Republican hopefuls. Romney had been a POW in Korea and the issue of whether or not he had been "brainwashed" while in the hands of his Korean captors came to the forefront of political debate. Romney denied being "brainwashed", of course -- engendering predictable skepticism. McCarthy, on the other hand, skewered Romney's campaign forever when asked if he believed Governor Romney had been "brainwashed" in Korea. In response, McCarthy paused briefly and then replied with great solemnity: "Well....a light rinse would have been sufficient."

Instead of trying to defend against a lack of objectivity --an unwinnable battle because I am obviously NOT objective -- maybe what’s best to say to the horseshit-spreaders is what Nicholson’s character, Melvin Udall, says in the 1997 movie As Good As It Gets: “Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.”

Now….enough is enough. Let’s move our bow along the compass, draw in our mainsail, pull the tiller firmly toward our chest and get this damn boat out of irons and movin’.


----J.R.

Paul

“Life’s mostly handshakes and divorces….true blue friends who bend and sway….” --Jerry Jeff Walker



A pair of black Allen Edmonds oxfords sits on the rear floor of my car. Size 7 ½. I wear a 10 ½ so—even if I was inclined to wear them, which I’m not—they would never fit. But there they are, sitting on the driver side rear floor. I see them every time I open my door.

They were placed there on July 10, 2009 and I haven’t been able to move them.

I know this is odd but that’s the way it is.

Have you ever had a friend in your life to whom you revealed everything? A friend who knew everything about you – the good bits and the swirls of “not-so-good” stuff and the downright defective parts? A friend who knew the mistakes you’d made and the challenges you’d faced and who had been there in your life every step of the way and—knowing the whole enchilada of your being— made a conscious and loyal decision to love you anyway?

I had a buddy like that.

I met Paul Jennings when we were both in the 8th grade at Sherwood Forest Junior High. It was the early autumn of 1968. He arrived at Sherwood later in the fall, after the initial semester was already underway and –-because he started the term a little late--- he didn’t really know anyone. He would stand alone by the flagpole in front of the school in the mornings and during the recesses. I noticed him there, but thought little of it until Debbie in Home Room remarked that she thought Paul was “cute.” Thus, I was shortly thereafter dispatched to approach him and secure such intelligence about “the cute new boy” as was important to 8th grade girls in 1968.

So, I did.

He was very approachable—even then—and he was a handsome devil – even then. We hit it off quickly, as lads in the 8th grade often do. Our coincidental intermediary, Debbie, was soon dismissed from Paul’s area of interest, but he and I never looked back. We were close friends from that day until he died of metastasized lung cancer at 10:29 a.m. on Friday, July 10, 2009. He was 54 when he left us, same as me.

Some of the closest pals I have today are they guys I met in the 8th grade. Paul was one of those dear friends and we remained close through high school and college. We stayed close as we all wandered into the years after college when we built families, businesses, professions and lives. Packed into a handsome frame, the only thing more appealing about “PJ’s” outside was his inside. Bashful and unpretentious, he knew better than almost anyone I ever met how to live the old saying: “If you want a good friend, then BE one.”

It was a shock when he received his cancer diagnosis in January of 2008 especially since there was really no rhyme or reason for it. I was initially angry about this staggering turn of events, but Paul was not. A few months before he died he told me he only had room in his heart for love or anger. And he chose love. That's what he said to me.

He fought hard, but—in the end—he left us. I was with him until the very end, just as he was there for me throughout over 40 years of abiding friendship.

On the day he died, I met his beautiful wife, Linda, at their home and we selected the clothes in which he would be laid to rest. I brought them to the funeral home and they took everything but said they didn’t need the shoes. So, I placed them carefully in my car, thinking I would do something with them later. They are there even yet.

They go everywhere with me and I cannot move them from where they were lovingly placed. I know it’s peculiar but the presence of those oxfords lead to me to feel Paul is with me still, as –of course—he certainly is.

I know PJ won’t mind riding with me for awhile. He knows I’m not yet able to say a final farewell.

He would smile and understand. He was a fella who always understood. He was my dear friend and I knew him well.

And he knew me.

--J.R.

Behold a Pale Horse....

And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. ---Matthew 24:6

TLC terrain is mountainous. Level landscapes along valley floors are transitory and lead nowhere, sheltered as they are by scarred and foreboding peaks.

Upon the serrated TLC horizon, visible to us from the valley, there now appears a rider well situated on a pale horse, silhouetted against advancing thunderheads. There is an electric apprehension in the wind as the rider places himself between the Warrior and new worlds, cantering to and fro on his glistening mount. From somewhere deep within our ancient genetic code, there comes a warning to flee from the sight of this rider, as if he brings to us the end of days.

He is not a member of our tribe. He is not anyone we know. If we yet live, we have never met him.

Strangely, though, tremors of elemental danger and rumors of war come to us from him on the wind.

Leaving the comfort of a valley floor requires courage, effort and sweat coupled with no small amount of determination. Determined, any member of the TLC tribe can scale the adjacent heights and discern new worlds. Absent such determination, one shall be condemned to live always in the valley.

In this terrain, even a slight relocation of your position from within the valley changes your view entirely. No matter how many times that happens---and it always does---such an altered scene quickens the pulse. Having just seen a vista in one light, a few determined steps will reveal it shimmering from a new perspective, as if the world is new.

Neither the rider nor his pale horse bears down upon us. It is not our time for that encounter. Instead, they are simply in our view, seen on the far horizon, in advance of streaming thunderheads which miss as often as they hit. They are but a vision, there for us to make of them what we will from our initial vantage point. Determined, we can stride from the valley, into the craggy heights, where our view of the panorama will inevitably change.

And then, from that evolved, heightened place, the world before us is new.

--J.R.

Wyoming ... and The World

I’ve just returned from TLC Staff Training at Thunderhead Ranch– a period of time devoted to “working on the horse.” Wyoming’s gorgeous terrain fosters an initial wide-eyed wonderment. Shortly, however, the wide and jagged spaces prod me toward an ever more inward trek, where I wander among shadowed soul canyons. Although it takes 2 or 3 days sometimes, the nation’s news cycles fade from consciousness and the political cacophony is stilled.

For days this inward reverie shepherds me to the most intimate inner spaces and I find myself becoming oddly tender in the most surprising ways. I am changing and—resistant at first—I inevitably succumb, reveling in the change.

And, then, just as others experienced long ago in The Nam, I start to get “short.” My tour is over and the time grows nigh for my return to The World.

They ought to pipe in some Buffalo Springfield as the keys to the rental are surrendered. I can hear it as background for the shuffle through airport security in Jackson Hole and the march out onto the tarmac leading to the jetway:

“…What a field-day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singin' songs and carryin' signs

Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down…”

Plucked out of Thunderhead’s cocoon, carted down the mountain and zippered up in an aluminum tube – I submit unto my delivery system back into The World. Squeezing into my seat on an MD Super80 or some such, I often wonder if I ought not stand, ask for quiet and then say a few words to my fellow travelers who are leaving God’s Country to be deposited back into “civilization.”

However, I always demur so as not to get the police involved.

Anyway, like I was sayin’, I’ve returned from Trial Lawyers College just in time to have my brain saturated by the hubbub surrounding Obama’s nomination of Ms. Sotomayor as the next Associate Justice of our Supreme Court. The opinions crack along the airwaves like the report from my Ruger 30.06 – painfully sharp at first, followed by a reverberating echo. Then, your ears ring for awhile as you acclimate to your new level of permanent hearing loss.

In order to lend a hand, I usually find myself wading into the Talk Soup to venture my own opinion, which is usually ill informed, partisan and loudly heartfelt.

On this occasion, I have refrained.

Instead, quietly wishing Ms. Sotomayor well, I tug at drifting memories of Wyoming landscapes and the recollected sound of my own breath as I climb alone up rocky ridges, soaking up an evolving understanding of my place in the world. Like dreams, though, these misty, tugging memories swirl and dissipate even as I long to neatly fold them into my pocket like ready cash.

Again amid the worldly clamor and nearly a week removed from Thunderhead, I reach for my pockets and that ready Wyoming cash. However, as in dreams, my reach never finds its mark. The pocket into which I have tucked this precious treasure eludes me.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

--- J.R.

May 27th, 1863

This morning I fired up my 30 year old Ford tractor so I could knock back another maze of lingering Labor Day debris from Hurricane Gustav. “Old Jubilee’s” diesel grumbled into life just after 8 a.m., belching a signature plume skyward and stuttered briefly before settling down into his trademark clatter. The smooth black hydraulic lines stiffened and sniffed at the load when I raised the front-end bucket and then the bush-hog. Goosin’ the throttle a little, I slid out the clutch and trundled off toward the target tangle.

I was working along a prong of Foster Creek known as Little Sandy when, clearing away fallen trees, brambles and honeysuckle, I stumbled across an old rifle pit. Little Sandy meanders beneath a 30 foot escarpment which overlooks the usually docile creek and faces west, toward the Port Hudson siege lines and the Mississippi River. 146 years ago, some Union sentry stood in the shallow depression behind that U-shaped lunette, rested his rifle on the earthworks and watched for Confederate pickets probing east away from the Mississippi to recon the Federal lines.

I live on an old battlefield and, amid the worldly clamor in my life, it’s easy to forget that sometimes.

I shut down General Early and lowered the bucket, leaned across the smooth, worn steering wheel and stared at the irregularly worn, now barely discernable rifleman’s position. The silenced Cummins ticked as it cooled.

It’s May, I thought to myself.

Springtime.

Blue-jays squawked from the water oaks along the creek. Carpenter bees hovered stationary, surveying where they might place their next perfect 7/16” hole. Crickets strummed. It wasn’t yet 9 a.m. and I could already feel the sun forcing sweat out of my skin. Make no mistake about it, summer was heading south. It was on a sultry, clear, hot Spring day just like this in 1863 that Captain Andre’ Cailloux (KAH-you) and Color Sgt. Anselmus Planciancois (Plonge-WAH) died, very nearly within sight of where I sat on the worn seat of the old Ford.

And, therein lies a story.

By May of 1863, the Federal Army under Gen. Nathaniel Banks had backed a vastly outnumbered Confederate brigade, commanded by Gen. Franklin Gardner, into intricate siege works at Port Hudson along the bluffs towering over the east bank of the Mississippi River. The Rebel lines described a large, jagged semi-circle with the "open end" pressed against the Mississippi. The Johnnys had placed numerous cannon along the river bluffs, denying the Union navy use of that segment of the majestic waterway. This well fortified position also secured the critical artery at that point for supplies crossing from the western part of the Confederacy –Texas, mostly—and into the heart of the states in rebellion.

The rebel guns on the river outlined one side of the position and their semi-circular works --which bowed out to the east away from the river and toward the property I now own--- bristled with artillery, dismounted troopers and entrenched infantry. All of the high points were well fortified. Ravines and practically impenetrable brambles and hardwoods protected the approaches, making any sort of sudden charge impossible. Rebel positions along the lines were ably stationed to provide enfilading (flanking) and other supporting fire to oppose any approaching Union force. Although fielding a much smaller army in the face of the Union encirclement, the Confederates had the benefit of interior lines and could shift forces nimbly within their works to meet the constant threat of assault. Over time, therefore, the sharp initial clashes had degenerated into a brutal contest of wills, marked by constant Federal thrusts which were repulsed at the works, often hand-to-hand.

A family named Slaughter owned a large segment of the property around the Confederate lines, including one parcel named Slaughter’s Field. Watching the Union Army through a glass as they assembled for such an attack, one Rebel officer noted: “This field will be well named before our day’s work is done.”

Outnumbering almost 5-to-1 the 6,000 Confederates commanded by Gardner, Banks had been acting on orders to sweep his 28,000-man army group north through Baton Rouge, quickly overwhelm Port Hudson, and then travel smartly upriver to Vicksburg, where he would reinforce Grant. Here’s an interesting “what-if” thought: Banks was senior to Grant in the United States Army and—had he been able to comply with those orders—upon his arrival at Vicksburg, he would have assumed command of the combined army group at that site. If that had happened, the ultimate honor of that victory would have gone to Banks and not Grant. That being so, and following the surrender of Vicksburg in July, Lincoln would not have called Grant to assume command of the eastern theater and, thus, he would have never faced Lee and perhaps never assumed the Presidency after the War and the course of history would have somehow unfolded differently.

But, Banks' line of march became tangled in vicious, unremitting trench warfare with the Port Hudson Rebels --- cruel, deadly work that would not end until several days after Grant had stolidly forced Pemberton’s surrender at Vicksburg. So, things turned out as we know they did.

On such a small point does history sometimes turn.

But, I digress upon such speculation, for that—as they say—is another story.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the very first time African-American soldiers were used by the U.S. Army in offensive operations occurred at Port Hudson – notwithstanding Denzel Washington and the story told in the movie Glory.

It happened here.

Not in South Carolina the next year, which is the 1864 story told in Glory, but here. Here where I sat, looking into the thick, living spring woods over an old Union rifle pit, an important and tragic part of our African-American brothers’ history unspooled on another May day in 1863.

May 27, 1863 to be exact.

And that brings us back to Capt. Cailloux and Color Sgt. Planciancois and THIS story.

Andre Cailloux, a former slave, was widely known as an excellent horseman and a skilled boxer before he volunteered for service in the Union Army. Possessed of pure African heritage, he referred to himself proudly as the “blackest man in America.” Those who wrote of him in the years after the Port Hudson siege remembered him as a magnificent man. Both he and Anselmus Planciancois served in the 1st Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards, Company E. Cailloux was the Company Captain and, by all accounts, intensely devoted to the men of this all-black unit. His Color Sergeant, who had the honor of carrying Company E’s pennant in battle, was Planciancois, another volunteer.

Reports survive of Planciancois’ receipt of the Company’s colors from the brigade colonel ---a white officer named Stafford--- who presented them before the assault on the 27th of May. During the ceremony, Colonel Stafford exhorted Anselmus to NEVER surrender his colors to the enemy. Planciancois replied: “Colonel, I will bring back these colors in honor or report to God the reason why.”

The 1st Louisiana Native Guards were attached to a Federal division brigade in Banks’ army group commanded by Brigadier General William Dwight, Jr., a man whose reputation primarily swirled around a fondness for drink and shady financial dealings. During prior action around Port Hudson, he was seen to be intoxicated by eyewitnesses. Filling a primary role as part of the attack on May 27th, this division was ordered to assault the Rebel works on the extreme right or upriver side of the Confederate position, near a densely wooded salient that would earn the name “Fort Desperate” because of the savage fighting occurring there. The two other division brigades were comprised of white New Englanders. The third brigade consisted of the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards – all black units.

Dwight had specifically asked that the Negro units be assigned to him. In a surviving letter to his mother, written the evening before the May 27th attack, Dwight wrote: “I have had the Negro regts. longest in the service assigned to me, and I am going to storm a detached work with them. You may look for hard fighting, or for a complete run away…The Negro will have the fate of his race on his conduct. I shall compromise nothing in making this attack, for I regard it as an experiment.”

The Union assault on this day was poorly coordinated and abysmally led. Proper recon of the Rebel lines sheltered behind the thick woods and treacherous ravines had been criminally ignored. The rising Mississippi River –running near its ultimate crest-- had flooded the low areas, forcing assaulting Federal troops to cross deep backwaters, stunting the speed of any attack. Moreover, one Union officer – Col. Edward Bacon of the 6th Michigan—would report that General Dwight was drunk “before breakfast” on the 27th of May.

The initial morning assault was spearheaded by the white brigades and ran into frightening difficulty quickly. The deadly, massed Rebel infantry fire, along with shattering canister from the hidden artillery, absolutely dissolved the Union advance with great loss of life. By 9:30 a.m. any realistic chance of a successful advance on the Confederate lines was a military impossibility, let alone any penetration of the works.

Having received word that his major attack had faltered within moments, Dwight ordered his black units from their support positions and into the “hole” left by the disintegrating spearhead brigades. Anxious to have the opportunity to fight for their country and against their oppressors, the African-American units filed into line of battle. Cailloux moved among his men and soothed them, speaking both French and English fluently. Shortly before 10 a.m., and upon the order, the black units leapt from their positions and charged toward the Rebels, covering the first 200 yards at a quick trot, Planciancois holding the colors aloft in lieu of a weapon.

Still well away from their ultimate objective, the black troops were smothered by an overwhelming leaden rain, fueled by no less than 6 Confederate field pieces which operated in good order and pumped grape and canister into the massed regiments. The attack staggered and slowed and, those who had not been wounded or killed, ducked for cover in the direct face of the Rebels. Shielded by their earthen works, the Confederates continued to pour a murderous fire into the area of the trapped Federals, preventing either advance or retreat.

A aide reported the stalled advance to Dwight at brigade headquarters in the rear, stating that the initial loss of life among the Negro regiments was so frightful as to prevent any orderly reformation. General Dwight thundered to the startled aide: “Charge again and let the impetuosity of the charge counterbalance the paucity of numbers.”

The order went forward to the scene of the carnage. One of the stunned battle commanders, a white colonel named Finnegass, returned from the front to report the impossibility of the current order to Dwight’s adjutant, a Col. Nelson. A screaming confrontation ensued between the two officers amid the smoke on the battlefield, ultimately resulting in Finnegass’ angry refusal to accept the order. In the midst of this escalating argument, additional written orders from Dwight for the African-American units were brought up on the run by a messenger. They said: “Tell Col. Nelson to keep charging as long as there is a corporal’s guard left. When there is only one man left, let him come to me and report.”

Staring in disbelief at the bizarre order, Nelson wilted. After a pause, he quietly told Finnegass to return to the front and have the negroes continue firing, but remain hidden in place. As long as Dwight heard firing, he would think that the suicidal attack he had demanded was still underway. When darkness came, they would withdraw as safely as they could. For the remainder of that long day, though, the trapped remnants of the regiments held in place upon that stifling, deadly field -- wounded, thirsty, dying and under fire.

Tragically, the decision to halt the advance came too late for Andre’ and Anselmus. Their volunteer service for the United States ended on 27May.

Cailloux, at the head of the advance, was struck in the left arm by an artillery round, destroying the limb. Survivors would recollect that he continued forward at the head of the slowing blue surge of men, until they were almost 200 yards from the Rebel lines. At that moment he was struck by a round and killed.

Color Sergeant Planciancois, following Cailloux’s lead with the company’s ensign, took an artillery round to the head, spattering with his own blood, brain matter and gore the colors Anselmus had vowed to defend. His death was instant and one can only assume that he surely did report to God that morning, as he’d promised.

A white lieutenant in one of the New England brigades would later write of the black troops he observed making that fearful assault -- men like Cailloux and Planciancois. Before the advance on May 27th, 1863 he had "entertained some fears as to their pluck..." but added that he "had none now."

"Valiantly did the heroic descendants of Africa move forward," he wrote, "cool as if marshaled for dress parade."

But, it was hardly a dress parade. And it happened here.

Honey bees work the clover blossoms steadily around my tractor. It is quiet and I note it’s getting on to 10, just about the same time Company E of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards stepped off with a shout and in good order on that May morning so many years ago. Staring at the thick woods along my creek next to a long abandoned Union rifle pit, I sit for a time in the sun and listen to the wind.

---J.R.

How To Secure A Release From Jury Duty?

As trial lawyers, we have all received calls from a client or a friend or a family member who has received a Summons for Jury Duty and needs our help to “get out of it.” In seeking our help, they explain how busy they are or they recite a litany of other commitments which preclude their participation.

Dutifully, we explain to them the constitutional obligation we all have to serve on juries. Usually, we extract some vague promise that they will gladly serve at some point in the future….just not THIS time. Thereafter, we “make a call” and secure an excused absence for the citizen.

Rarely do our family, friends or clients tell us what they really feel, which is: Serving on a jury is for other people. I’m busy. I’m important. I have better things to do. Besides, it’s all a bunch of orchestrated baloney anyway. Let someone else do it. Not me.

Mr. Erik Anthony Slye of Belgrade, Montana apparently has a different approach to securing an excused absence from jury duty. I have on my desk the REQUEST FOR EXCUSE FROM JURY SERVICE Affidavit he completed in his own hand and then filed with the Gallatin County Clerk of Court on January 26, 2009. A copy of it is reproduced within this post. Apparently, Mr. Slye was summoned once in the past and excused. Then—because he was excused earlier—was summoned again for a later jury term. This subsequent summons led to his filing the following Affidavit with the Montana District Court who had requested the assimilation of a venire:

AFFIDAVIT
(Request for Excuse from Jury Service for Case at Issue)

STATE OF MONTANA
County of Gallatin

I, ERIK ANTHONY SLYE, being first duly sworn upon oath, depose and say that jury service would entail undue hardship on me and that I request to be excused from jury service for the following reasons:

Apparently you morons didn’t understand me the first time. I cannot take time off from work. I am not putting my family’s well being at stake to participate in this crap. I don’t believe in our “justice” system and I don’t want to have a goddam thing to do with it. Jury duty is a complete waste of time. I would rather count the wrinkles on my dog’s balls than sit on a jury. Get it through your thick skulls. Leave me the Fuck alone.

Erik Slye
56 Tulip Ave.
Belgrade, MT 69714

SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN to before me this 15th day of January, 2009.

Susan M. Hedrick
Notary Public for the State of Montana
Residing at Belgrade
My Commission Expires 09-22-2009

Erik, if you have something you’d like to share, please do not hold back your feelings.

Say what is on your mind.

Don’t be so reticent.

As it turns out, however, Mr. Slye's Affidavit did not have EXACTLY the effect he had no doubt hoped for, because it resulted in the following Order from the Court:

CITATION FOR CONTEMPT

THE FREEDON AND LIBERTY THAT MR SLYE ENJOYS DEPENDS UPON THE VOLUNTARY SERVICE OF JURY DUTY, THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT ERIC SLYE BE AND REMAIN IN THE COUNTY JAIL FOR 20 DAYS OR UNTIL HE RECANTS HIS CONTEMPTUOUS CONDUCT IN OPEN COURT. MR. SLYE'S FAMILY MAY VISIT HIM ON WEEKENDS BUT HIS DOG SHALL STAY AT HOME UNMOLESTED BY THE DEFENDANT.

Notwithstanding his rather direct (albeit foolhardy) approach, I am left to wonder: How many potential jurors in the box are truly on Mr. Slye's wavelength, but never express it?

--- J.R.

THE GOP: Divorced From Reality, by Bill Maher; LA Times, 4-24-09

Sometimes you just CANNOT say things better than they've already been said. Looking for a method to sum up the Republican Party's position in the present political climate? Here's HBO "Real Time With Bill Maher" Host, comedian and political commentator on the current state of The Grand Ole Party in these United States:

The GOP: divorced from reality

The Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife.

By Bill Maher April 24, 2009 Los Angeles Times

If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.

It's been a week now, and I still don't know what those "tea bag" protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who's going to win "American Idol." But it wasn't tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that's when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Even though they're not quite sure what "it" is. But they know they're fed up with "it," and that "it" has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law. And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

It's sad what's happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they're the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid.

The GOP base is convinced that Obama is going to raise their taxes, which he just lowered. But, you say, "Bill, that's just the fringe of the Republican Party."

No, it's not.

The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned Parenthood. And I would have to totally rethink my position on a border fence.

I know. It's not about what Obama's done. It's what he's planning. But you can't be sick and tired of something someone might do.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota recently said she fears that Obama will build "reeducation" camps to indoctrinate young people. But Obama hasn't made any moves toward taking anyone's guns, and with money as tight as it is, the last thing the president wants to do is run a camp where he has to shelter and feed a bunch of fat, angry white people.

Look, I get it, "real America." After an eight-year run of controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election has you feeling like a rejected husband. You've come home to find your things out on the front lawn -- or at least more things than you usually keep out on the front lawn. You're not ready to let go, but the country you love is moving on. And now you want to call it a whore and key its car.

That's what you are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him -- obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will.

But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy. The healthy thing to do is to just get past it and learn to cherish the memories. You'll always have New Orleans and Abu Ghraib. And if today's conservatives are insulted by this, because they feel they're better than the people who have the microphone in their party, then I say to them what I would say to moderate Muslims: Denounce your radicals. To paraphrase George W. Bush, either you're with them or you're embarrassed by them.

The thing that you people out of power have to remember is that the people in power are not secretly plotting against you. They don't need to. They already beat you in public.

Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."

Voir Dire: The Sword in the Stone

I am just returned from staffing a 4-day Trial Lawyers College Regional Seminar on voir dire in Chappaqua, New York and ---as with all such forays into the TLC method--- I return knowing precious things.

There is a secret to the mystical growth process through which a jury is assimilated. Hiding always in plain sight, the secret is like a mighty sword impaled in a dense stone -- available to all but only the bravest can extract the righteous, ringing blade. I again discovered the secret this past weekend and, as I march away from the memory of that Regional, I wonder if the secret will stay with me this time. Or, will it retreat quietly from my consciousness just as the detail of a vivid dream disappears when day replaces night?

Voir Dire dances amid such dangerous dagger points as race and prejudice, money and greed, judgment and punishment – all coupled with elemental, societal fears of “The Other.” The simple, precious truth is that the entire process begins long before the venire files into the box. Curiously, it starts even before a trial date is selected and even before the event occurs which triggers the need for the jury’s presence. Even before the basest crime, even before a party’s negligence and well before any accident or injury….voir dire is beginning. The mystical process starts before one has received a law degree – before college even.

Who can say when it actually commences?

But, even if the “when” is hard to pinpoint, the “what” and “who” are not. We always know the scary issue in our cases – the thing that wakes us up at 3 in the morning, our hearts hammering. And, if we can be honest, we know the “who” is US. Voir dire begins within each of US first. It coalesced within us the first time we became aware that we were “better” than some and could therefore refers to others by a variety of handy racial epithets which became so much a part of us that they could be trotted out in anger or as a perverse joke. On the other hand, a part of our own voir dire undoubtedly bloomed like lake algae in a smothering "dead zone" the first time we became a derided target of hurtful, ignorant prejudice or jaded bigotry. Or, surely some of it started the first time we became aware that we could lie to obtain advantage or that it was OK to do almost anything ---surrender any aspect of ethics or character--- for money. Having been physically or emotionally hit while still children, we learned to strike back in camouflaged and visceral ways. We learned somewhere early on that there were parts of us which society could not accept and so we repressed that vital part of our soul and denigrated all others who exhibited any sign of what we hid within our own weeping heart.

We acted out and breathed truth into the words of Carl Jung: Fanaticism is the brother of doubt.

During our travels through time we also learned:

Men Don’t Cry.

Women Are Weak.

What Those Goddam People Need To Do Is Quit Livin’ On Welfare And Get A Goddam Job.

We learned many such “truths” that effortlessly immersed themselves within us like parasitic worms.

As I flew home to Baton Rouge, I reflected on all we had experienced in Chappaqua and what would evermore be required of me in order to conduct a Voir Dire. I must first be honest about all that is within me ---assuming I can develop the discernment to sense or see it--- and be thereafter willing to "own it." Before I engage my potential jurors, I first must be willing to stand before them and share what I truly "own," speaking forthrightly about what is deep within me and mirroring the fear I have about the dagger points in my case.

Then and only then can I ask them to share their own heart secrets. Through such exchanges of elemental truth, our tribe is formed.

This is what we spent 4 days learning in Chappaqua. The learning is simple but the task is incredibly hard to do. And, since we have been taught to tightly hold our secrets deep within us, the open sharing of those secrets with others is counterintuitive – especially in an open courtroom before a jury box filled with people who will shortly judge every utterance and nuance of our case.

And yet……we must.

This is why only the bravest warriors can pull the sword from the stone.

--- J.R.

Clear Margins Confirmed

I received 2 calls today, which --as calls from doctors go-- were pretty sweet.

First, my surgeon called. All margins on the tissue he excised were microscopically confirmed as clear. So, THAT'S done.

Second, my oncologist called and cancelled my appointment for Friday, saying: Mr. Clary, I reviewed all of your records and you're clear. You could come in and I can tell you that and charge you for it I guess, but I also can make that report to you over the phone for free, which I'm pleased to do. There's no need for you to come in. After you heal up from Dr. Dupont's surgery, you're good to go.

Thus, I had the pleasure of canceling an appointment with an oncologist....and for the GOOD reasons.

--- J.R.

All Is Well

I am at home after yesterday’s surgery, which went off without a hitch. No complications of any type. The General may be the city’s oldest hospital and a little “Old School” around the edges, but they still know how to throw a good cancer operation.

All is well, although I’m a little banged up. Thus, this entry will be short.

Dr. Dupont did his re-excision of the melanoma site and grafted it. As a result of this carpentry, I have the surgery area on my back, right shoulder blade and a HELL of a brush-burn on my thigh, where they harvested the skin for the graft. While I was asleep, he sent the excised tissue to the pathologist and there is every early indication that clear margins were obtained this time around. Of course, they still must confirm all that through some additional analysis, but the initial signs and portents are all good. Consequently, I am hoping that this unexpected high, inside health fastball is the last brush-back pitch I get for awhile because –believe me--- I’m ready to put a sharply hit ball in play.

The thoughtful, loving expressions of good will and support from so many have humbled me. There is no way to explain how it feels to receive kindness from friends JUST when you need it most. I appreciate it so much.

I will write more later, but here’s something interesting: When I awoke from the general anesthesia in the Recovery Room, I awoke singing. I have no memory of this but Aletha, my Recovery Room nurse, reported as follows:

Child, you was singin’ to beat the band.

Drugged up and slurring badly, she had some difficulty understanding what was on my playlist, however….and I have NO idea where this came from….it seems it was Dean Martin’s theme song, Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.

Ain’t that a kick in the head?

---J.R.

A Walk in the Woods

Lately I been thinkin’ too much lately…. ---David Allan Coe

Late last Saturday afternoon, just before dark on a cool, cloudless afternoon, I took one of my yellow labs and walked across Little Sandy Creek into the 30 acres of woods behind my house. I wanted to see the dogwoods, I told myself. As Spring elbows its way into the East Feliciana countryside, the dogwoods awake from their slumber like first responders called to a place of need and bloom amid the dormant thickets, their solitary colors intermittently visible through the thick brown woods. The sight is striking, as if Someone shook a paint brush here and there, smattering dots of white and pink to catch and hold the eye.

You can see a blooming dogwood hundreds of feet back into the latent woods. Lord, they are pretty…which, I feel the need to observe, is a sentiment coming from a guy who’s never been a “Hey, let’s stop and look at the flowers….” sorta fella. With these dogwoods, though, it’s as if Someone is saying: Excuse me, son…..I need your attention a sec. Just look at me. I am dawning life amid the winter’s toll. Feel me? I’m not a “hearing voices” sorta fella either, so any routine thought of wandering off into the woods to look at stuff that I usually ignore and listen to things I never hear is as foreign to me as Sanskrit. Lately, though, I haven’t really been myself and I’ve decided that some type of internal evolution might not be an entirely negative development.

So, I took whatever it is percolating under my skin into my woods for a test drive.

Liberated from her electric fence collar, Abigail bounded with delight through the scrub and into the hard woods, circling back every few minutes to see what was taking me so long to match her canter. When I never altered my pace, she seemed to understand that I wasn’t in a hurry … that I just needed to be out of sight of the world for a bit. Settling into a ranging series of circles that more or less matched my forward progress, Abby gave me some space.

We crossed my bridge over Little Sandy and walked up the old logging road that was once a winding approach to Neville Plantation, formerly situated 200 yards over my north property line on a knoll surrounded then and now by sweeping pecan trees. It burned to the ground in 1927 and presently only the pecan trees and the knoll are left, dotted ‘round with dozens of now-wild gladiolas and lilies of various types and colors.

As I walk past a deer feeder I see hidden on one of the bluffs overlooking my creek, I reflect on the history beneath my feet. Angling toward dogwoods, I meander in my mind.

The older, unmarried daughter of Neville’s owner had caused a scandal back in the days after Reconstruction by takin’ up with the Hired Man at adjacent Wildwood Plantation. Even now when the subject came up, as it still does in these parts, they say she married “beneath” herself. Apparently spurning convention (as the old story is now somewhat misty), she maybe married the Hired Man for love or maybe married him because he was her last chance. Anyway, what everyone remembers is that it was in opposition to her father’s wishes. There seemed to have been some vibrant but short-lived “family trouble” over the evolving relationship -- tension ended only by a timely passing. When the master of Neville Plantation died, she and the Hired Man moved in. The newly minted husband went from being hired help at Wildwood to the Master of Neville and the Lady of the House apparently took to planting a multitude of bulbed flowers. Untended since before Coolidge was in the White House, her plants still explode into life every spring even some 100 years later.

I always take her side in the discussions that roam around the issue down at the Port Hudson Mobil Station where I trade. She sounds like my kind of dame.

And, you can still feel her presence. Around Easter, a short hike to the old home-site is a treat. Scarlett gladiolas or white lilies and something-or-other bright yellow carpet what used to be the Neville Plantation yard. Some years before she died in 2004, I took my 81 year-old-grandmother on my 4-wheeler out to the site one Easter, just to show her. As we rode into the proliferation of color, “Babee” rattled off the names of the plants without hesitation. I regret that I’ve forgotten them now.

Of course, all of this drama took place decades after the area was decimated by the sharp fighting between General Banks’ Union Army and General Gardner’s Confederate detachment. A series of violent collisions between the armies resulted in the backing of Gardner’s vastly outnumbered rebel forces into their works at Port Hudson. In the end they were cornered along a broad semi-circle facing east, with the Mississippi River at their backs. Americans in 2 different armies fought desperately amid the stretches of these now placid woods. On the nearby Mississippi River, the Union Navy tried to run past the rebel guns on the Port Hudson bluffs and received a shellacking for their trouble. The United States battleship USS Mississippi, the vessel Commodore Mathew Perry used as his flagship when he had opened up trade with Japan, was forced aground by cannon fire and destroyed by the deadly accurate Confederate gunners.

And, I know the movie Glory proclaimed that African-American troops were first used in offensive U.S. Army operations at Fort Wagner up in the Carolinas.

Not true.

The 1st and 2nd Louisiana Native Guards were employed during the desperate assaults on the rebel fortifications here at Port Hudson a full year before the Fort Wagner attack. They were brutally and callously squandered here at Port Hudson at a place the men came to know as The Devil's Elbow…but….that, as they say, is another story.

It’s odd how all of this happened throughout my woods and over to the nearby river. Abby skitters around, chasing whatever she scares out of the undergrowth as I adjust my battered LSU hat for warmth and zip up my windbreaker. Spring isn’t fully here yet I perceive as we continue our trek up the logging road.

If you haul out my metal detector, you can quickly find civil war era bullets and mortar fragments still peppered within the soil. I have a box full of them. One of the Union soldiers shot down during the killing and left to die in these woods was buried on the plantation until after the war, when his family came and got him. John St. Paul Lanius, the 83-year-old gentleman from whom I bought my home and acreage (and who I called “Mr. John,” in the southern way), took me for a walk one day and showed me where he thought the grave had been, based upon what he'd been told as a boy, speaking about the episode as if it had all happened last summer. But, sadly, the details of this poigniant event are all lost now. I wonder idly if the plantation rebels said any words over Billy Yank as they lowered him into his initial grave in a cool, shaded hollow adjacent to Little Sandy and behind the main house. I wonder if they bowed their heads and asked God to bless his enemy, Yankee soul. Surely they must have. How peculiar that must have been, as was the rebels' marking and tending of Billy Yank's grave in the subsequent months and years, until a still-grieving family came to fetch him sometime after Appomattox.

The siege of Port Hudson lasted for months, culminating with the surrender of the beleaguered, starving Confederate position. Banks was never able to force it, but--- after Vicksburg fell--- the last fortified Confederate bastion on the river was no longer defensible. So, on the 9th of July, 1863, Gardner spiked his guns, hauled down his colors and stacked arms. The entire legth of the Mississippi River was thereafter in Federal hands. I always thought it was odd that this defender of the last Confederate position on the Mississippi –-a rebel general officer wholly devoted to The Cause--- was a New Yorker and a West Point graduate, Class of 1843. Gardner finished at The Point 4 places ahead of U.S. Grant. I have rambled for years about how I would like to do a biography of this obviously conflicted man…however…who has time for that?

As Abby and I reach my north fence line we slide out of the woods and into open pasture. The grass needs bush-hogging and the fence needs work. Between the hard winter and Hurricane Gustav last fall, there is plenty crying for attention. If I didn’t have to practice law, I could spend all my days just tending to this 30 acre patch of ground. I whistle for Abigail and we turn west along the fence and again into the woods. In the late afternoon sunlight, we find dogwoods adjacent to a small, hidden pond where the wood ducks trying to finish the day shift whistle in through the Spanish moss-laden branches, surprised to find a trespasser and his mutt mucking around their roosts. Miffed, they chatter to themselves and zip on through without stopping.

Dogwoods are small trees in general, fighting for survival here among much larger brothers. The legend is that the dainty dogwood once grew as large as the biggest oaks and that the Romans fashioned Christ’s cross of that dogwood. After that unpleasantness, however, it never grew large enough ever again to serve as crucifixion material. Thereafter, they say, its flowers appeared over time in a cross-shaped fashion, with bloodstains on the petals and nail holes on the petal ends and a crown of thorns in its center. I really don’t know about all that stuff but that’s what they claim. Legends aside, the flowers are lovely and I stare at them a long time while Abby laps water from the duck pond. I don’t really see blood and nail holes and what not, but I guess you could if you wanted to.

Which is sort of the point, I reckon.

Sometimes you can see whatever you need to see, depending upon your point of view.

I lose track of the time a little and failing light prods me to slap my leg for Abby, She hustles back from the far side of the water, gratified for some attention. In an instant she is by my side.

Come on, ole girl, I tell her, running a hand along the side of her neck. Let’s head back.

Casting a last look at the small but lovely dogwood and its pond, I wonder idly if exhausted cavalry mounts once watered here and if those troopers had been struck by the ancestors of the blooms now absorbing may attention. Did they find them incongruous amid the fighting? And, what about the lady of Neville Plantation? She obviously loved plants. What did she make of them? The battles around Port Hudson took place in the Spring. Did she collect and lay dogwoods on Billy Yank's grave? I wonder if those who come after me will stop and enjoy these first responders by this pond. How long will they grow and bloom here?

The wood ducks make another pass around the forested point, confirming my departure from their pond area so that they can finally angle at speed into their woodland and call it a day. Abby and I head again for the logging road and home, striding steadily into the glimmering last light of the retreating afternoon.

--- J.R.

Jared

Ever had one of those unexpected moments where you enter the heartbeat of another human being?

I had one of those today.

I was at "The General" this afternoon for pre-surgical admit. My nurse was Kathy and it took me about 3 minutes to size her up as an Old School pro -- a demeanor which is totally sympatico with this grand dame joint, a hospital built in the days when we knew how to show a little marble on the walls and on the stairs. Not sheetrock or fake wood, mind you, but beautiful, burnished, dark marble lined with silvers and blacks and dark greens and worn in a majestic sort of way by decades of service.

And yes.....STAIRS. You gotta love a hospital where you can still find some marble stairs. I felt like I was at The Biltmore.

I reported to Kathy in Same Day Surgery after checking in with the bright, smiling African-American ladies in Admissions, who I think got me warmed up to receive the little moment that would arrive a bit later. One laughed at my jokes during the intricate administrative preliminaries while her occupied co-worker at the next station quietly hummed an old spiritual. "Oh, what a blessedness, oh what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms.... "

Before they sent me on my way to the 3rd floor, and as I signed the last of the insurance paperwork, one of them cocked her head and secured my attention.

Oooo....you got Dr. Dupont, honey.

Yes, ma'am. I do.

He's gooood, she reported.

Sho' is, yes indeed, said her friend, interrupting her humming and looking at me with pert eyes over her glasses. EVERYbody say THAT.

Well, that's a good thing, I guess.

Oh, yes, honey, the first lady agrees, pounding a loud staple through my documents. You don't have a THING to worry 'bout. Now, you take these with you to the 3rd floor and have a blessed day.

I leave....and, forsaking the stairs for the elevator, I can hardly help but wander off into a hum myself: "What have I to dread? What have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms?.....leeeeaning.....leeeeaning......leaning on the everlasting arms....."

Kathy meets me just outside the elevators. She's younger than me, has taken good care of herself and is pretty -- like your best friend's Momma was pretty back when you were a kid. It's the sort of pretty you're not sure what to do with. She was squared away in dark blue scrubs with a stethoscope hanging around her neck---covered in part by a colorful "scrunchy." Her ID tag was simple and heralded her only as: KATHY, RN As I approach her, she looks up from her clipboard and says:

Mr. Clary, is it?

What's left of him.

Oh, now it can't be THAT bad. Come with me and we'll get you all ready for Monday. This thing's gonna be a snap. Don't worry. Dr. Dupont is great.

That's what I hear.

Once we get into the surgical area, she goes through all of the checklists and forms like a pro. No allergies. No current medical problems. (Well, except for the cancer. There's that. Beyond that little blip on the radar, everything is peachy.) No tobacco use. No booze. We relive some of my prior medical adventures and she's unimpressed. She tells me confidentially that she will need urine, as if I might need some time to prepare for such a daunting, extemporaneous task. I tell her I'm pushin' 54 and, consequently, I can pee at the drop of a hat -- no sweat. As a matter of fact, the only time I don't have to pee is while I'm actually peeing. Just to show her she's not dealin' with some piker, I immediately take the cup and report to the bathroom. I'm back in less than 2 minutes with all the pee one could reasonably use --- safely and warmly ensconced in my little screw-top vial.

She doesn't say anything, but I can tell she's impressed.

Then, she says she needs to take blood, so I present an arm. Kathy unwraps all the sterile stuff a RN needs to find a vein and remove some of that magic mix. I am steeling myself not to flinch when she inserts the needle because I want her to know she's dealing with a tough guy. She fiddles with her kit and ---after a moment or 2--- I sort of get the odd impression that she's dithering about a bit.

You live on Highway 68. Kathy says. It's a declarative statement, but seems unfinished somehow.

Sure do, 68.

Then your house is near the National Cemetery at Port Hudson, isn't it?

Yes, ma'am....that's right. I answer, wondering why we're returning to the preliminaries. We'd already covered all this, even before I had passed my urine test. But, I continue the conversation, sensing somehow that we're not really talking about my address. I'm about a half mile from the cemetery....a little closer to the battlefield park.

Your date of birth is the 6th of October, I see.

Yup. That's right.

That was my son's birthday, she says, taking my arm in one hand and swabbing the targeted vein with the other. The past tense within her sentence hangs in the air along with the smell of rubbing alcohol.

It was? I finally reply quietly.

Yes. He was killed in Iraq almost 2 years ago.

Awwww, kiddo....is all I can think to say. Bless his heart.

I take my other hand and bring it to cover hers, resting both on my exposed forearm. The alcohol is cool on my skin. Her fingers feel warm to me, even within her latex glove. We stay like that for a bit.

He's buried over in the Port Hudson National Cemetery right near your house.

I know it well, I say. I've been there many times.

My mind's eye conjures the rows and rows of graves at Port Hudson, studded with identical white marble markers. Hundreds of them are Civil War casualties. Many come from The War to End All Wars, and then plenty hail from the wars that came after that.

Her eyes meet mine and there are no tears.

I sure am proud to meet you, Kathy. And I would've been honored to meet your son. Could you tell me his name?

Jared......Jared Crouch. He was a corporal in a Stryker Brigade and he was doing what he always wanted to do.

Jared Crouch, I repeat, patting her hand softly. I'm going to remember that name, Kathy. I promise you that. I thank you for sharing Jared with me today.

It was just seeing your birth date....she says, trailing off. She starts to busy herself with the alcohol swab again and I move my hand away.

Of course, kiddo. I understand.

You'll feel a little stick, Kathy tells me, all business again and moving the needle in for the strike.

But, I never felt it.

--J.R.


Zachary Native Killed in Iraq

By The Associated Press -- June 4, 2007


ZACHARY, La. — A Zachary native who joined the Army his senior year in high school was killed Saturday in Hadid, Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle, the Army said.

Cpl. William Jared Crouch, 21, had only been stationed in Iraq for a little more than a month, his mother, Kathy Rushing, said in a newspaper interview. She was informed of his death Saturday night by casualty assistance soldiers from Fort Polk.

The Defense Department said Crouch was a cavalry scout assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.

Rushing said her younger son, John Crouch, a reservist with a maintenance company stationed in Iraq, would try to join his brother’s body on the flight back to the U.S.

“We’re hoping he’ll be able to bring his brother home,” said Rushing.

She said both sons had always felt the need to serve. Jared Crouch, who graduated from Starkey Academy in Central in 2004, wanted to be “in the thick of things ... on the front lines,” his mother said.

She said he got his desire to serve from his father, James Crouch, a Baton Rouge policeman who died of natural causes when Crouch was 13. James Crouch, had wanted to serve in the military but never got the opportunity, Rushing said.