rethink

Does the law need to be rewritten? Yes, "the law". That's what I meant. THE law. U.S. law, International law, common law....Law. The human concept(s) of law. Does it need to be rewritten? OK, re-considered?

Give me a break on the practical side. I am asking this initial question without regard to HOW. I just want to consider that perhaps the concepts of law are way outdated.

Law seems to have three major purposes. It deals with identity or "self" and property, alone or the interchange between them. Law has contracts and other instruments for legal entities (legal selves) to distribute property: contracts for sale, wills, etc. Law provides punishment for anyone who threatens or harms other person's or properties. I could go on.

However, our concepts of personhood or self and our uses for property have dramatically changed with the Internet and global warming.

"I" can be several different entities. I can be a corporation. I can be a celebrity with a stage name. I can be an unincorporated organization. I can be an anonymous (and unidentifiable) Internet presence. While we have maneuvered around these problems, it may be time to treat identity as usufructory or alternatively, as a collection.

And, speaking of usufructory, property, though by title perhaps "belonging" to a specific owner, actually belongs to a complex body of interdependent land and natural resources. Rather than taking property "to the exclusion of the rest of the world," perhaps we should give executory control of land only to those who would serve and lead the community in its use.

So where to start? How does one reform a system?

Thunder on the Mountain

After two weeks of all of us having the flu and one week of getting back to normal, Kuruna came home with the "throw-ups" and Satya came home with a shiner after a big sledding accident. We spent the remainder of last week nursing bruises, cuts, fevers, and nausea.

This morning, I returned to law school work in earnest for the first time since the beginning of February. I took the long back road over the hill to school. (No need to get there too soon!) I chose Bob Dylan's Modern Times as my rambling music. As Dylan's "Spirit on the Water" colored my mood, I watched the snowy world pass by outside my window and noted how well our local plowers take care of the back roads. I also noted who has posted their property against hunters and x-country skiers and who has not. I cruised around curvy bends and across high country farms. Dylan is great on the road.

This album, in particular, evokes environments and people in motion. It transports me to seedy bars, open campfires, and church basements. Sometimes it just evokes an intimate Dylan concert. I was somewhere in one of these reveries when an enormous black object blocking the otherwise pure snowfield shocked me into braking.

About 20 mph further down the speedometer, head turned sharply to the left, I deciphered the vacuous presence. A large, black woolly cow stood, somewhat aloof, eying me from her fence post.

photo credit jdj150

I swear she winked at me before turning her head down into the snow. I have not yet determined what passed between me and the cow or me and the world, but it had something to do with Dylan and that enormous black cow and the week I have had.

In a bubble and in trouble

It was 20 years ago that Paul Simon crooned, "the Planet groans every time it registers another birth." (Graceland, 1986) That year we were a mere 4.9 billion-people planet. The latest figures (2005-2006) estimate the global population at 6.4 billion.

Now, reluctantly scientists involved in the global warming discourse have added population growth to the list of contributors. Al Gore, Bill McKibben, The Washington Post and others in the environmental community list population growth among the top ten issues we must tackle.

I have yet to see or hear, however, any approach that can reconcile a couple's profoundly personal decision to procreate with the impersonal bureaucratic approaches to population control. Nor have I seen, outside of China's long standing policies, any government advocate control of its own population. Rather the trend seems to be that industrialized countries focus on stemming growth in developing countries, reflecting paternalistic and nationalistic sentiment about curbing new births.

We are in such a bubble of denial. I wonder what event will precipitate a paradigm shift in the Nations' approach to population growth. It will not be reaching 7 billion or 8 or 9. It won't be a great famine or weather-related disaster. It won't be a flu pandemic. I wonder what will burst our bubble.

I wonder if it will be a photograph.


In 1969, we first saw the Earth. No longer did we depend on imagined artist's conceptions. We saw the real thing through a lens. As many have recounted, the real image of the earth brought out truths no mathematical or literary descriptions could.

Today, we depend on huge numbers, statistics, and analogies to envision our population. It would be impossible, in fact, to actually count the people on the Earth or to see them all at once. Perhaps some smart person can overcome these challenges and illustrate in a meaningful way --perhaps using the wonders of digital photography and video, peer networking and the (Semantic?) Web--how our Planet groans. If we can indeed all come to understand the same truth (just how big is 6.4 billion?), then we might have a starting point for this conversation.

Happy Valentines Day

photo credit gadjoboy


It's a very white one at our house. 18 inches of powder at 4pm. Outside the window a sheet of white gauze hides the rest of the natural world. No trees. No mountains. No sky. No sun. Just snow, snow, snow.
Inside sniffy noses and occasional fits of "boredom" give way to masterfully designed forts, illuminated Valentine's cards, and smells of fresh bread in the oven.
We are all recovering from flu and regretting not having had the energy for the last week to make and send cards to all we love. Hugs (and hearts) and kisses!

photo credit Butterflysha

Serendipity

I read on 3Quarks about Al Gore's foot soldiers and link by link got to New American Dream. Just looking at the home page makes me smile. Like a Valentine's card for every Buddhist heart I know.

Happy surfing!

Serendipity

I read on 3Quarks about Al Gore's foot soldiers and link by link got to New American Dream. Just looking at the home page makes me smile. Like a Valentine's card for every Buddhist heart I know.

Happy surfing!

Busy-Backson

I can't remember what part of Winnie the Pooh this comes from. There is a Mr. Busy-Backson who is always running to the next thing. That was me today:

• I was up at 5...
• studying for a half hour,
• making lunches,
• making coffee for the magnificent spouse (He loves my coffee; therefore he is manificent.),
  
• breakfast - more studying (usually time for a run, but it is -1 F outside)
• off to Kuruna's neurologist (studying while we waited) Done at 12:30
  
• off to an interview (mine - far away, studying just before) there by 2:30; home by 5,
  
• back to cook dinner,
  
• kids to bed,
• folding laundry with Satya (no really, she loves this),
• violin practice with Satya (don't ask me how my piece is coming...),
  
• studying, and
  
• thank yous to prospective employers.

Now I am off to get 4 hours and 4 minutes of sleep and do it again when the sun comes up. This time there will be more studying involved. I'm busy -- back soon.

"His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!" - Emily Dickinson

photo credit Iwona Kellie

We'll miss you Molly!

From the Star Telegram - Austin
"Molly Ivins, whose biting columns mixed liberal populism with an irreverent Texas wit, died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at her home in Austin after an up-and-down battle with breast cancer she had waged for seven years. She was 62. "

Molly was a courageous and outstanding columnist who always kept this disaster (of leadership since 2000) in perspective for me.
I had hoped if anyone would be the first commander-in-panty-hose that it would be Ms. Ivins. . .though I am not sure that she actually ever wore panty-hose.

I am sorry she's gone.

Hold your seat

Pema Chodron shares in her Lojong / Tonglen teaching, the many mindfulness slogans brought to America by Chögyam Trungpa. Each day I think of another favorite. Today: Which ever one happens, hold your seat. This saying means, if you have a "good" day, just wait, things will change! While this probably sounds pessimistic to Western senses, it is actually quite wonderful. It admonishes us not to hold on too tightly to the good or to hold on too tightly to the bad. That kind of "holding" is the ego seeking solid ground. And, how true! I hear myself (or Satya) pronouncing what kind of "day" it was.
To hold your seat in the Buddhist sense is to be patient, to remain unattached, un-reliant on certain things happening or maintaining. To hold your seat is to be just as open to bad things happening as to good things.

I chuckle over this tonight, as I look back on a "good" day. I hope I have the courage tomorrow morning when I wake to welcome the day and all the good and bad it will bring.

More reform notes - high speed rail and compact flourescents

Not too many things more at opposite ends of the efficiency spectrum than creating a national rail system and adopting regulations that demand use of compact flourescent lights. The similarity appears to me, though, in terms of political will. Whether we aspire to change the major mode of transportation in this country or just to change the lightbulbs, regulation depends on leadership in congress, which actually depends (more than we'd probably like) on leadership in business. We don't appear to have either of these at the moment (can you say "major defense contractors and Big Oil"?).

Or maybe I've gotten it all wrong. Perhaps, as some suggest, it is possible for us to create this change (as quickly as the ice caps are melting) simply by using the trains and lightbulbs available to us now. photo credit Bruno Rodrigues

Mom: the Anti-adventure

I have heard mothers more than once inveigh against fairy ( faerie?) tales because, inter alia, there are no mothers in them.

Satya's watching Finding Nemo this afternoon and (guess what?) Nemo's mother is killed in the first minute of the film. Is it time to join "mothers-against-mother-less-faerie-tales" (MAMLeFT).

I realized while drafting the MAMLeFT charter, that there is a very, very good reason Moms are out of the picture in stories like Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Nemo and even Star Wars. If Hansel and Gretel's mom were around, their little jaunts into the woods everyday while Dad was away would have been HISTORY! They would have been sitting at home learning their lessons and getting some discipline (as well as a well rounded lunch!). The same goes for Snow White, Nemo and Luke!

That's not to say we moms don't have adventure in our blood. But we know that trekking off on pirate ships, hunting down witches and playing games of Truth or Dare must wait until after homework and chores.

In fact, nearly all of my childhood adventures occurred away from the maternal lair. The one exception: a spontaneous trip I took with my mom to Graceland when I was a teenager. But that's different. Elvis loved his momma and my mom loved Elvis. It was her adventure. Her mom wasn't there, and I had just come along for the ride . . . and the pink Cadillac key chain. Elvis bought that pink Cadillac for his Momma, so I guess even she needed an escape.


Turn the idea of motherless faerie tales on its head and I like it even more. Mothers have to be out of the picture because we are ultimately stabilizing, safe and reliable. We are ever the calm and nurturing harbor, the nightmare conquerors, perhaps even the wizards with the age-old answers. We are not companions forging the wilds. We are the soft embrace of home. Wow, it all sounds so conservative and old fashioned! How about primordial?

How about it's 1 in the morning and stable, safe and cozy sounds much more appealing than pirate adventures in a pink Caddy.

photo credit William Eckerslike

The Wish Game

I was going to write about how I can't sleep at night now that my friends and my friend's children are at risk of going back to fight in Iraq. But I won't do that here. I will write about that to the Boston Globe (if they don't publish it, I'll let you know what I said)

Instead, I am going to write about the wish game. It is much more productive of world peace, I think. Here's how it goes: Each person takes turns in a circle offering what they wish. But here's the trick. Your wish has to be for something you already have, or even better, are already experiencing.

What's the good of that?, you ask. Instant wish fulfillment. Instant happiness!

Isn't that what we Americans are always after anyway? It is the perfect combination of Buddhist practice and American culture. By wishing for what you have, you appreciate where you are and you make it brand spanking new again.

(Come to think of it, it's kind of like Bush's new strategy for Iraq. OK not really. And, I promised I wouldn't go there.)

So here's how it goes at our house--or actually in our car, 'cause that's the only place we play it:
Satya: I wish I were in the car on the way home
Me: You got your wish
Everyone: Yea!
Me: I wish I were going to law school...
Satya: You got your wish
Kuruna: I wish, I wish...stinkies!
(Laughter)
(Ok, we don't really know what he is saying or what he means. I consider it the babel of a wise man)
Satya: I wish I were feeling udgy in my car seat and hungry
Me: You got your wish
Me: I wish I had two really silly kids...

You get the idea. I know it seems pointless and not all that funny. The path to enlightenment is quite unexpected...just start walking, you'll find it.

photo credit Mayu P

What gives us the courage of our convictions?

Martin Luther King in his Letter from a Birningham Jail laments the "moderate whites" and "do-nothing Negros." There position on segregation is "bewildering." Better, he says to be against him than apathetic.
From the safety of a more integrated society, I can comfortably agree with King on the principle: say what you believe and believe what you say; don't avoid taking a position merely to ensure you are secure or don't offend. In easy times, your inaction is cowardice. In hard times, your inaction is a danger to society and civilization.
I have heard stories about "the Greatest Generation" - how they stood for something, spoke up about it, acted on it. The Boomers also marched and stood and sat-in. What does my generation do? We post to Move on. I am not even sure I know what standing on principle looks like.
OK, that's not entirely fair. There are some amazing individuals. But I don't see the mass movement. Can effective protests and social movement really be made in the bloggosphere? All I ever here is "watch what you post; your future employer may be watching."
I want to show my children how to speak and act with conviction. They do it so well, already. So what is it exactly that I am standing for? The Dalai Lama stands for altruism, compassion and non-violence in its many relevant forms. OK. I am there. I am a Buddhist, anyway, so that makes sense. But how this translates to daily life, this question still frustrates me.

Lessons I learned on the last Friday in December

It's easy to get five fruits and vegetables per day, if you start with two fruits at breakfast. Satya: banana, cranberries, chicken vegetable soup, french fried sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, fresh orange juice...I think there is a growth spurt in her immediate future.

It's easy to love yourself, if you spend some quality time at a mirror. Kuruna: yesterday, ten minutes at the science museum two-way mirror, giving his three best sides lots of flirty loving kisses, smiles, and making the best possible effort to hold hands.

You can skate on a frozen "vernal pool" even if it cracks under your skates. Satya and I skated for an hour on two inches of ice cube in our "back yard." Perfect. No one else to worry about, no fees, no risk of falling in!

The second time getting glasses is no sweat. Kuruna: breezes in to the optometrist, tries on the glasses, (flirts a little with himself in the mirror), decides, "I like new glasses," and we're off.

Turning lights on and off (and on and off and on) really is amazingly funny, if you look at it from three feet off the floor.

More on Star Mints

I know them as Star Mints. Apparently this is an error. They are Star Brites Mints. However, since the manufacturer feels it necessary to spell its middle name phonetically instead of in English, I feel under no obligation to include it here. In fact, I guess the brand name doesn't matter except that Star - Mints are ubiquitous. To my knowledge, every after dinner mint I have had has been a Star Mint. And, to their credit, the experience has been consistently satisfying.

Need I describe them? Sweet, tasty, small, ever so piquant, and never sticky. After bar-b-que, or smoked salmon, Pad Thai, or garlic chicken, it's just the thing to finish off a meal when every one else is going for the chocolate sin cake.

When I have been virtuous, turning down the abundant opportunities for gluttony-bordering-on-obscenity so prevalent at American restaurants, I console myself that there will be a friendly Star Mint at the door bidding me farewell. As I watch cake, ice cream, mousse, flan, whiskey, and dessert wine arrive at the table for my compatriots while I sip tea or coffee, I am lighthearted, knowing my sweet lifeline will be there. When we have donned our coats, when we head to the car, when most of us are stuffed to the gills. . . I will dip my hand into the courtesy bowl for a mint. And, it will be there. It must be there.

I can't go on a this particular moment about how I feel when there are no mints, no bowl. There might as well, at such a moment, be no restaurant, no meal. . . I'll come back to this when I have the strength.

Explaining the list...starmints

Every restaurant should have after-dinner mints for their guests. These should be peppermint flavored (not spearmint, not cinnamon, not orange!). This is not complicated, though you'd think so by the state of things. I have even offered to set up a foundation in my will to help restaurants overcome the daunting logistics of complying with this most basic of dining needs.

Oak Leaf Daisies

Channelling my New Orleans past. That's what surely explains why Satya burst out with the above name for her "girl band" today. She will be the fiddle-playing lead singer of the Oak Leaf Daisies someday, building on her Louisiana heritage of zydeco, Mardi Gras Indian, jazz, blues, Maple Leaf music. She doesn't know this yet.

She's still learning "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" on the violin and belting out Indigo Girls angry chick tunes.

She's still fixated on princesses and Barbie. She's five. Give her some time.

Second day back...

...and already a new look.

I promised myself I would get some sleep. I also promised myself I would read ahead in my case books. Alas, adding new features and new color schemes to my blog seemed too important to pass up tonight.

In case the above comment paints me as a total airhead, I will add that my other activities today included reading the New York Times and discussing global climate change survival strategies with one of the few space architects on this planet and the world's best photo curator and photo historian.

O.K., but the real takeaway from today was that Satya loves Daddy more than me (at least she felt it important to let me know that). It was not the first time I had heard it, and I took pleasure in assuring her that her feelings were perfectly fine with me and that it did not change how much I love and am connected to her (though I find it amazing that it doesn't).

As we spoke, I remembered when I felt exactly the same way -- loving my father more than my mom and feeling so badly about it-- when I was exactly her age.

Over the years, the strong and certain bonds I had with my parents are so much changed and attenuated like spider webs stretched thin by perpetual breezes. But in the last few days conversations I have had with each of them have reassured me that my connections to them remain as lifelines. Attenuated as they may be, they are well-travelled, strong and reliable.

A week ago, as I prepared for and sat for exams, my parents did the proverbial circling of the waggons. Mom came to "help out" for two weeks. (Help out means, "take over care of the kids, cooking, shopping, cleaning and still have time and energy to listen to your whiny law school student-daughter cry about how hard life is"). Papa, the lawyer, called every day, sometimes several times, to tutor me on civil procedure and contract law or to ask how study for torts and con-law was going. As dark and lonely as those two weeks got, I knew I had the strongest web of support around me.

Satya won't know about webs and unconditional love for some years. I hope she will feel it, though, well before she can describe it.

a christmas story

When I was younger, Santa used to leave me the most fantastic notes about adventures in the North Pole and the mischievous dark elves. How delighted I was to see, upon reading his letter to my daughter this morning, that the tradition continues!

December 24, 2006...I could have used a smart girl like you at the North Pole this year! We had quite a lick of trouble! Have I told you about the dark elves? Well, they are super mischievous and always trying to ruin Christmas. And to add to the difficulty, they give Polar Bear such a hard time, I wind up having to take care of him, too, on top of saving Christmas. Well, I am getting ahead of myself. LetÂ’s see, where to begin?

After last year's’ catastrophe, Mrs. Claus and I thought we would take Polar Bear down to Antarctica for some respite. You know it'’s summer down there when we are having winter? Not that you would know it from the cold, but hey, it's not the North Pole and there are no dark elves there!! So, we thought it would be a good trip. And, it was.

While we were down there, though, the dark elves got into Polar Bear's home and wrecked his lego set. They also painted the walls with finger-paints. The worst was that they used his favorite collection of herbal tea in an all-night game of mushy cushy! We were gone for a month. When we returned home in February ready to begin preparing for this year'’s Christmas, we found a huge mess, instead. Polar Bear, besides being devastated, was also quite mad, as you can imagine. He began to plot revenge.

Well, this was quite a mess for us at the North Pole because, as you probably know, we depend on Polar Bear to do all of the heavy lifting in the Workshop. He is also useful in getting things off of the high shelves. Without Polar Bear, much of the elves'’ work comes to a stop.

Of course the other job of great importance is that Polar Bear stands guard at the Workshop to keep the dark elves from stealing everyone'’s toys! With Polar Bear indisposed, putting his house back in order, the dark elves could raid Santa'’s workshop as often as the wanted. Each night when the last elf left his toy work, the dark elves would sneak in. They would steal toys or paint them off colors or mix up parts. Each morning when my Santa elves returned, they would have to start all over again. We were getting nowhere!

I decided to pay Polar Bear a call at his house. I asked as politely as I could for Polar Bear to come back and do his duty as guard of the workshop. But he refused. He wanted all of his time to plan his attack on the dark elves. I begged and pleaded with him to come. Finally I demanded he stop his nonsense and SHOW UP! A few hours later a very pouty Polar Bear was back at the door of the workshop, and the visits from the dark elves stopped for a while.

Things were calm for all of us at the North Pole until one day in June when one of our elves, the chief elf, in fact, came to me to tell me that the Northern lights were missing! If you know that the Northern Lights are, you know that it is no small matter for them to be missing. Sure enough that night when I went to inspect, there was nothing but darkness where they used to be. The Northern Lights serve a particularly important function for us at the North Pole. For, they are the outlet of children'’s energy from all over the world. Children'’s laughter, their restlessness and even their frustration and anger all filter through the earth'’s crust to the vast ice fields of the North Pole where we all see them as beautiful rays of green purple and blue shimmering over the top of the world. The workshop is fed by this energy. So, too are the elves and even my sleigh fueled by the energy from the Northern Lights. Without the Lights, we can make it for a few days, but not much longer. We looked every where for them. Soon we were sure that we were doomed!

In the meantime, Polar Bear also came to me with problems of his own. I had little patience for his personal complaints, but listened anyway as Polar Bear read to me a list of all the items missing from his house since the dark elves'’ raid last January. Among the stolen items were 1200 barrels of finger paint (Polar bear likes to finger paint a lot) The interesting thing about this was the color. That is, the finger paint the dark elves had absconded with was all black and blue.

Polar bear was very sulky without his paint. One night, feeling especially sulky, he went out for a walk on the ice cap. He looked into the sky and there noticed what seemed to be a crack in the sky. It was an unusual thing, but it did seem to be a crack and growing wider and wider. Polar Bear had nothing better to do, so he walked to the horizon to check it out. There on the edge of the world, he reached out to the sky and scratched at it with his paw. At first his scratch removed only a chip, but second and third scratches revealed the truth of the matter. The Northern Lights weren'’t missing; they had been covered with tons of blue and black finger paint. Oh, those dastardly dark elves!

Polar Bear came trotting home with his good news. I congratulated him and sent him right back out, of course, with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge! It must have taken him a few days of scrubbing--made more tedious because he often had to return home to thaw out frozen buckets--to finally clean up the dark elves’ mess. By this time it was early August and we had only a few short months before we would have to start packing the sleigh!

Thanks to Polar Bear, though, we got the Workshop up and running and free from dark elf mischief. Once again this year, we have toys and clothes and food for boys and girlsrls everywhere. I'’ll have to think of somewhere nice to take Polar Bear this year. Quechee seems like a nice place. Perhaps we could stay at the Woodstock Inn. Do you think they take Polar Bears?

Gift from Finland

Go to YouTube to see the Helsinki Complaints choir. I found out about it from Marko Ahtisaari's blog (where else)?