A little kindness goes a long way.

Over dinner last night, my family was discussing ways to be better conversationalists. None in that group are wallflowers or conversation hogs, but there were areas of improvement for all of us.


Sometimes one of us goes too long on details when the conversational story should be maybe ten seconds.


Another has a penchant for topping their conversational partner's story, any story, instead of appreciating it for what it is: the other person's story.


I tend to be blunt, gruff and impatient. My entire family gustily agreed with that self-criticism. In my usual fashion I explained I was often that way because it seems everyone who talks to me, family included, wants something.


And in the best advice I have received all year, my daughter said: "Maybe if you were kinder many people would want to give to you."


Yes. Best advice all year. Thanks Carrie. I will be kinder. I can and I will.


Smile first and the good stuff will follow. I know. I know.

Thinking AND feeling.

Maya Angelou said a lot of quotable things. One of my favorites is “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” At first this seems all squishy and poetic, but in practice it seems true. You won't recall exactly what your doctor gave you or what the treatment was, but you will recall feeling secure or relieved. If your plumber fixes your leaks quickly and at a fair price, you feel satisfied. You won't remember what he said or exactly what he did.

The Angelou doctrine applies to all interpersonal relationships and even to business relationships, which are, at their core, interpersonal.

Help your customers and your clients feel good about working with you by giving a little more than they bought. Help your employees to feel good about working for you, by giving them your support, respect and approval, and they will convey that to your customers.  When a customer feels valued and respected, then they will keep that sensation far longer than they will a memory of the hourly rate you charged for your services.

And I can't stress this enough, if a relationship or deal "feels" wrong to you, then it probably needs work. Our sub-conscious minds see and know more than we can articulate. That subconscious sometimes communicates with us through our emotions and our "guts". Let that feeling inform your thinking. It's there for a reason.

Amendments, Independence and Change

Proposed Constitutional Amendments

As I pondered Independence Day and saw that American approval of Congress and the Supreme Court had fallen to all time lows, I thought of some changes that may make the institutions less intolerable.  In no particular order:

Any two adults may marry as they choose and no legal benefit or privilege of that 

Marriage can be denied by any state, the federal government, or any agency.

Congress shall pass no law limiting the natural right of the People to procure, grow, cultivate manufacture or physically ingest any substance derived primarily from vegetation.

Congress may pass no law in respect of religion, and no court, judge, justice of the Supreme Court, agency, administrator, President, or Congressional body may accept any non-secular or religious belief, faith, opinion, teaching, rule or dogma as fact or evidence for any purpose whatsoever.

A person may serve as a member of congress, meaning either the House of Representatives or the senate, for no more than eight cumulative years in the member's lifetime.

Justices of the US Supreme Court may serve on the court for no more than eight cumulative years in a lifetime. 

From the effective date of this Amendment, Justices of the Supreme Court, Senators and Representatives alike shall receive from the US treasury an annual salary equal to the per capita income in the United States as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the year that member of Congress is elected to office, or the Justice is appointed.  Adjustments to the calculated pay up or down shall be made every two years during the member's or Justice's 's service. The human constituents of a representative's district, or in the case of a Senator or Justice, his or her resident state's human residents, may pay the member additional compensation, but only upon full, unlimited, contemporaneous public disclosure of the payor, the dates of payment and the amount of payment. No other payment or consideration of any kind can be made to any member of congress by any other person or corporation, and the District of Columbia shall not be considered a state. 

In response to the decisions by the US Supreme Court in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, the People say that those decisions were wrong, are wholly rejected, and retroactively to the date of the Citizens United decision corporations are neither people nor human, and shall not be considered as such under any law, Constitutional provision or judicial decision.

No Federal or state government may expend any cash or credit of the United States or any of the several states to directly or indirectly fund any military force or the procurement of any materials that are not required to actually defend any part of the United States or any Territory thereof from an attack or invasion by foreign forces. If there is no actual attack or invasion, or imminent threat of attack or invasion of US borders by foreign forces, with imminent to mean more likely than not within twelve months, by physical, electronic or cyber forces, then no expenditure shall be made. No US citizen or assembly of US citizens, no matter where they are located, shall be considered a foreign force.

Terrorism is a tactic and not a sovereign nation or territory. From the effective date of this amendment Congress shall pass no law nor fund any action to conduct a war on terror, terrorists or terrorism.

No American citizen shall be deprived of any Constitutionally protected right. There are no exceptions to this clause. Violations of this clause by any government or police agent shall be considered acts of treason punishable by imprisonment and fines.

No person may be executed as a penalty for the commission of any crime. 

No US military force may be directly or indirectly funded, equipped, located or stationed, temporarily or otherwise, outside the United States or its territories and within the borders of any sovereign nation or territory unless it is during the conduct of a war on a sovereign nation that was declared by the President and approved by a 2/3 majority of both the House of Representatives and the senate. There are no exceptions to this clause.

A fella can dream of a Constitutional convention...

Freedom is free, but you have to take it.

Happy Fourth of July! That's what we say to each other in the US today. We cheerfully mouth the words without thinking too much of another holiday. We think more about fireworks and barbeques than we do about the Revolutionaries that recaptured their lives from an oppressive British monarchy 270 years ago. This morning I was mowing my lawn, thinking of how I was not free from yard work. It struck me then that we are not free unless we forcibly take our freedom from whomever or whatever holds it. Our liberty cannot be bought on any level. It has no price. Freedom is what we are born to. No matter where we are, in which country, under which regime. A person cannot purchase it. If it has to be bought, then someone other than the buyer controls it. It isn't really freedom. That is because if one pays for liberty then the seller can always change the terms, or cancel the transaction. In the US many workers grind away for fifty weeks a year for two weeks of vacation time. For many that vacation is paid. But even then they are not free. Many work on those vacations, working during the supposed "paid time off." Even if they don't work a lick over their vacation, they are bound to return to their labor and their bills. When a person is free they are not bound to return to any state of being, good or bad. There is no elasticity in the conditions of a free person's life. That free man may turn to any direction and go without being limited by the anchors of unwanted commitment. Being committed to what you want is not the opposite of being free, it is the epitome of freedom. Freedom to chose and to direct your own life. Again, this freedom cannot be bought. It has to be taken and jealously guarded. It is a state of mind that allows one to say no to any limit or preconception. I did not want to say that someone who works for another cannot be free, but I think I must. True, a worker can be happy at their job, and love their coworkers, but they are always a servant in a master-servant relationship. It matters not how much they are paid, they are still at the beck, call and demand of another. Their lives can be turned upside down by a downsizing or new and less favorable supervisor. Is that free? Happiness and freedom go hand in hand. In bondage can anyone ever be happy? If freedom and happiness are equal, and money can't buy happiness, then it must be true that freedom can not be bought with money either. Take control of your comings and goings. Don't be at the mercy of another. Don't be a slave to debt for things that you do not need. Don't fear what your boss might say. Shed your bonds and do what makes you happy, because being happy is the same as being free.

Sparking a Choice

Sitting here in my office on a beautiful Friday afternoon, prepping a presentation for a Paycor webinar I am reminded that 1) writing is difficult and 2) I don't like sitting in my office on beautiful Friday afternoons. James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself, says that to be good at something you should put in 1,000 hours doing it. I've been a lawyer for fifteen years. I've got my 1000 hours in, times 15. To write well he advises that you write every day. Got it. To be more creative he says exercise your creativity and come up with five ideas a day. Is it that easy? No. Try coming up with five ideas in a day. I find that comfortable, familiar habits are now well worn, smooth ruts that leave little room for novelty and are hostile to efforts to climb out. We know what we should do to get better, but it's easier to keep doing what we've been doing. The book Spark by Lyn Heward, former creative director at Cirque du Soleil recognizes the ruts and the need to get out. It is so very easy. So so very easy to just do what you did the day before, and the day before that. Pretty soon we are left with nothing but bland memories of the days before as the ends of our futures come rushing into view. No more tomorrows. Time's up. If there is something interesting you dream of doing with your life, then you should start now. I read a great quote on Twitter within the past few days: "In a year you will be wondering why you didn't start today." So true. My partly written presentation is up and waiting for me on my other monitor. I should work on it. An opposing counsel just called and asked for two more weeks to respond to a motion and some interrogatories that also marked a settlement deadline. He needed an answer. He got it. The pool and my children on summer break are beckoning by text message. How many tomorrows do I get? What do I do? What would you do?

Bouncing

Renewed a trampoline today.  I put on a new safety net and a new spring protector. I didn't have the instructions from the first installation,  I had to make up the process from scratch. I'm not that smart so it took a couple of run throughs. There are more than a hundred springs and I had to take them off, one at a time, twice.

I'm dumb and now my hands hurt.  

Sure was a nice afternoon and I'm grateful for it.

Lawyer ejected from courthouse for standing up for his Constitutional rights

In the lead up to World War II, the Nazis ran a youth group known as the Brown Shirts. They wore brown uniforms, went to fire up meetings and said "Heil Hitler" a lot. One of their more noxious duties was to reveal to their handlers their own parents and relatives for speaking ill of Hitler and his craziness. They turned into the soldiers who, at the end of the war, when on trial for their crimes against humans and humanity said, "We were just following orders." Warren County Ohio's sheriff department wears brown uniforms and they seem as blind to the evils of their adherence to foolish policies (orders) as the kids in 1930s Germany. I make this comparison because I was recently blocked from entering a courthouse in Warren County, Ohio. Why? Because I would not remove my shoes. The security circus is in full swing in Warren County. It's a fact of life that entering a courthouse these days is much like entering an airport, i.e., put your coins, phones, keys, laptops, etc., into bins and put them through the X ray machine, then step through a doorway scanner. Federal Courts in Dayton and Cincinnati, and most civilized county courts, employ sheriff deputies or security personnel to watch the X-ray device and pass wands over the people who cause the doorway scanner to sound an alarm. Lawyers work in courthouses. They usually show up in a sort of uniform. They wear suits, ties, hard soled shoes, and carry briefcases and roller bags. They look like lawyers. And they almost never pose a physical threat to anyone in the building. Lawyers in Ohio have ID cards issued by the Ohio Supreme Court. Not just anyone gets these cards. The cards show the lawyer's name and signature. Matched with a driver's license, they advise conscientious security people of their holder's bona fides. Not good enough in Warren County. That may be because the Sheriff, Larry Sims, who is probably a fine, fearful politician, has declined to enter the 21st Century by equipping his security detail with either the discretion or the authority to use their heads, or hand held wand detectors. Worse, he allows them to bully their civilian court supervisors. Even worse than that, he apparently condones a daily violation of the Constitutional rights of Americans entering the courthouse. Now, back to my blocked entrance. I entered the Courthouse. I know the drill, so my keys were in my briefcase. My phone went into the scanner bowl container. I was carrying nothing else. As my gear went through the x-ray, I walked through the doorway scanner and set it off. I guessed why. My hard soled black dress shoes have a steel shank in their sole. They have set off detectors in the past. A deputy with a wand in evolved courthouses will ask me to lift my pant leg while he runs the wand over my shoes. That's always enough. Not in Warren County. No way. Instead, when the doorway scanner sounded, I was told to walk through it again. Then again, and yet again. I think the deputy was enjoying his power. I told him that it was my shoes. He made no effort to employ a detecting wand. Instead this deputy, who was probably just learning to ride a bike when I began practicing law in this courthouse, and was likely being bullied in grade school for his inability to ride a bike, told me to remove my shoes. I said no. I was not going to remove my shoes. He was shocked, but again he told me to remove my shoes. Again I declined. I pointed out to him that I was not a terrorist or a shoe bomber, but that I was a lawyer scheduled to attend a hearing. He told me I could not go in without removing my shoes. I told him to get the judge. He said no. I asked him again. Judge Kirby and I had a conversation about me being told to remove my shoes on a previous occasion. He said that should not happen, and that the deputies should use some common sense. Based on that conversation I asked this deputy to look at me to see I was no threat. He told me to go outside. I did and he came with me. When outside he said I was causing a disturbance and could not do that. I told him I was not going to remove my shoes, that I was no threat. He told me I could not go in. I said fine, I'll call the judge from my mobile, which I did. I was then told by the court administrator, over the phone, to come back in and be escorted through. The court administrator came from the courtroom and told the deputies that I could come through. Oh! The juvenile wailing and gnashing of teeth by the deputies was immediate and pathetic. "No, no, we can't let him in now. We just made another attorney take her shoes off. It wouldn't be right." It was not my fault that she let you force her to remove her very dangerous slingback open top heels, I thought to myself. I argued my case to Mr. B, the court administrator, a little further. I asked him to use reason to temper a foolish policy. One of the big brown shirts told me all would be fine if I just removed my shoes. I said "What next? Cavity searches? No. It stops here. I did not do anything, I am not a threat and I am not taking off my shoes to come into the courthouse." Poor Mr. B, a smallish, bespectacled man, was dwarfed by the two large, armed and intimidating cops. They were at each of his elbows, glowering down between him and me, telling him how wrong it would be to let me, a harmless, unarmed lawyer, into the courthouse to which I had been summoned, without removing my black cap toed oxfords. Mr. B, like most people faced with intimidating uniforms, simply relented. He would try to speak directly to the judge and come back. In the meantime I was to wait inside the door. Now you must understand how foolish this scene is, how much of a farce is the "security" of any building, airport, or whatever. If I were actually at the courthouse to cause a problem, I sure as heck could have done so by then. I could have shot both deputies with a handgun pulled from my pocket and proceeded to cause pure mayhem. I could have used as a weapon a small bomb, a grenade, a pop bottle of poison gas material, a slingshot, a cup of hot coffee, a sharp pencil, a ballpoint pen, a knife, whatever. But I didn't. I was clearly there to do the business of a lawyer, in a court, where I had been many times in the past fifteen years. So, instead of causing a disturbance, I just stood there, in limbo between the outside and the doorway scanner. At least I was still wearing my shoes. I was even able to speak with my client and another attorney with whom I was to be working. I just motioned them over to me. They were in, true, but I was not quite out. Mr. B came back out from the courtroom and with some relief told me that the judge was on the bench so he could not confirm with the judge what I had heard. So, in light of the judge's unavailability and the intimidation by the two brown shirts at the door, he had to refuse my entry unless I removed my shoes. I have to laugh out loud that this whole event hinged on my shoes. Even despite the obvious fact that neither I nor my shoes were a threat. Isn't this stupid? My shoes. At that very moment, a bailiff called my case. My duty to my client superseded my effort to protect my Constitutional rights. I removed my shoes but did all that I could by telling the gate keepers that I was not waiving my 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches but was instead serving my fiduciary duty to my client. It hurts me to reveal my weakness here now. I should have gone through with my shoes on, been manhandled, probably tasered (it is Warren County) and escorted out in cuffs. While it would have made for entertaining news, it would have done nothing for my client. If we do not stand up for our rights, then they will be weakened and taken by our apparent waiver. Lawyers, of all people, should be relentlessly unwilling to cede to overreaching government authority. The police no longer feel like our friends. Many times their willingness to exercise force and to be blind to the Constitutional rights of the people they are supposed to be serving is frightening. But we must be courageous. We have to say no to authority when it makes no sense. We have to say no when the orders are wrong. Sometimes, for the greater good and for our own good, we have to just say no.

Too cold to go to school? Enough already.

Here in Middletown, Ohio, nestled in the Great Miami River valley, between Dayton, Ohio to the north and Cincinnati to the south, the school systems and the media are ruining our children. 


The schools are closed again today because it was cold this morning.  Not fifty below zero.  Not thirty below.  Not twenty below with gusts of wind at twenty miles an hour.  It was five below for a few minutes around four a.m.  By eight a.m. it was maybe three below.  No wind. No snow coming down.  Just a bit cold.  Schools?  Closed.  Local TV was ranting about the wind chills, non existent as they were, and how bitter it was outside.   So.  Schools hold classes I N S I D E. 


Were the area's school furnaces all broken?  Of course not.  Were all the area's water pipes broken or frozen?  No way.  Do kids have to walk for miles to get to school?  Hell no.  Buses stop at every driveway for God's sake.  This is at least the second and perhaps the third day in January the schools have been closed because it's cold O U T S I D E.


My roots are in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.  It's on the border of  Canada in Michigan's upper peninsula.  The weather there over the past week was like this:

	Hi	Low	Mean
01/20/14	5	-8	-1
21-Jan-14	0	-18	-9
22-Jan-14	5	-5	0
23-Jan-14	5	-13	-4
24-Jan-14	17	-13	2
25-Jan-14	19	-4	8
26-Jan-14	5	-14	-4
27-Jan-14	4	-11	-3
28-Jan-14	1	-11	-6

Were schools closed there?  Heck no.  If you ride a bus to a Soo school, then you get out of bed, put on your boots, hat, gloves and jacket and go to your bus stop.  You huddle like penguins with your bus mates, shifting the windward person every once in while, but all generally standing in a little group until the bus arrives.  From a distance it probably looks a lot like a flock of mismatched penguins. 


If you are an adult living in the Soo, and you drive, then you get out of bed, put on your boots, hat, gloves and jacket, and then go outside to start your vehicle to let it warm while you take a shower and have some coffee.  Then you go about your day.  Cold is not a detriment to a clothed and dry human being.


Nothing stops in the Soo or really anywhere else because it's cold.  This Ohio and Kentucky bred willingness to do nothing because it's uncomfortable or anything other than sunny, warm and clear outside breaks my heart.  Kids aren't going to freeze walking from their bus to the school.  Our smog filled summer days are far more dangerous to all people than a little cold is to our children. 


My children and most others in this area either get dropped at the door of their school or are walking less than a mile.  Even if a kid was bare footed and jacketless running through the snow and cold, they would be able to get from car or bus to school without injury.  They may even experience exhilaration and joy at overcoming what the school system says is a "calamity." 


This forced societal softening of fortitude, this new rule of comfort at all costs, is ruining our children and their parents.  This year school is closed because it's just  a few degrees below zero.  Next year is it closed because it's below ten degrees?  Or because it's raining? 


Our school officials are forcing students and families to take an unacceptable path to weakness and fear.  A path that only is open when there is no risk or discomfort or hint of effort.  Kids want the risk.  They like the challenge.  It's time to reflect on the error of this new trend, and return to some grit, some self sufficiency and some effort.  No more calamity days because it's cold.  If the furnace is working, then to school they go.