A Little of This. A Little of That.

I am saddened a bit by the fact that last night NBC aired the series finale of what I believe is the funniest show on TV and one of the smartest, The Good Place. If it is a show that somehow escaped your eye for these past four seasons, then do yourself the favor of finding out where it is now streaming (because every show streams someplace, right) and get familiar with it.  I shall miss it.

Speaking of things that I am preparing to miss, today is January's final act. If you need incontrovertible proof of the fact that there is no God, then consider that when January yields the stage to February this year, instead of twenty-eight days of February we shall have to endure twenty-nine.  If an extra day on the calendar was needed once every four years (and I appreciate why it is needed), then could we not have added it to July?  At least in the Northern Hemisphere.  Who the f*ck ever uttered aloud, "I need more February"?  My birthday is in February and I cannot stand the month - even in its abridged version.  The only thing more useless than more February is more cowbell...but that is a rant for another day. 

Today may bring the end to the trial of DJT in the Senate.  Spoiler alert:  An acquittal is coming.  It sickens me that American politics has become the most off-the-rails reality television show ever.  As a lawyer, I was reminded again this week that every time I resign myself to thinking that Rudolph Giuliani is the poster boy for the "Why People Hate Lawyers" campaign, Alan Dershowitz shows up and demands that tells America's Mayor hold his beer.  Both of these two soulless frauds would be well-served to follow the teachings of the great American philosopher Carl Fox...

...although I suspect that, much like Bud Fox, they will choose to ignore Carl's wisdom pearls at their peril - and ours. 

It is, after all, a sign of our times.

-AK 

A Birthday Wish

Today is my daughter Suzanne's birthday.  She is a rare soul in that she possesses both the ability and the drive to do whatever it is she chooses to do. She is a spectacular wife, mother, and entrepreneur.  

Therefore, I hope today she chooses to make her birthday a happy one.  And I hope the fates work with her to make it so.   

She deserves nothing less. 

-AK  

A Beautiful Tribute, in Words and in Deeds

Full disclosure demands my admission that prior to Sunday's news regarding the helicopter crash in or about Los Angeles that killed nine people, including Kobe Bryant and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Gianna, I neither knew how many children Kobe Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, had nor any of their names.  

Everything I have learned about "Gigi" I have learned in the days since her death.  My own daughter, Suzanne, celebrates a birthday tomorrow.  She will be thirty-five.  When she was Gianna Bryant's age (or thereabouts), she played basketball.  The little, now-shuttered Catholic elementary school in Middlesex from which Suzanne and Rob both graduated, Our Lady of Mount Virgin, had a very good girl's basketball program.  Suzanne started playing in either 4th or 5th grade and played on OLMV's school teams through 8th grade.  When she was in 8th grade, I sat on the bench as an assistant coach. I did what all the kids and the other adults on that team did - listened to Jim Baglin and did whatever he told me to do.  

Suzanne enjoyed basketball enough that while she was playing the game we used to make a couple of trips a season over to the RAC to watch C. Vivian Stringer's Scarlet Knights.  Back in the day, Rutgers was a member of the Big East Conference and while RU was clearly the second-best team in that conference (as well as one of the Top Ten programs in the nation), the gap between RU and the Big East's big dog, Geno Auriemma's University of Connecticut Huskies, was fairly sizable. 

Regular-season trips to the RAC way back when used to typically include Suz's small cadre of best friends and teammates, Leigh Ann, Katie, and Kristen.  We would sit on the baseline, under the basket on RU's end of the floor, so that the girls could watch the action as if they were on the floor playing in the game.  If memory serves, the only time I ever took Suz to the RAC to watch women's hoops when we did not sit in our customary seats was the 1998 Big East Championship Game between Rutgers and Connecticut.  

I did not know of the long-time, deep connection between Kobe Bryant and Geno Auriemma. Nor did I know that Gigi, who apparently was one hell of a player, was such an avid U. Conn. fan that she and her dad had made multiple trips across country to attend Huskies home games at Gampel Pavilion and to cheer them on at road games.  Her plan was to attend the University of Connecticut and to play basketball there. 

Whether a thirteen-year-old girl's dreams should all come true may be a subject of debate.  What is not open for debate, however, is how grossly unfair it is for a thirteen-year-old girl to be killed before she has a chance to follow her dreams and to put her life plan into action.  

Monday night, Geno Auriemma's Huskies hosted Team USA in a friendly exhibition.  Team USA's roster is dotted with a Who's Who of Coach Auriemma's All-Americans including Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Tina Charles, and Breanna Stewart.  Before the game, the Huskies reserved a seat in the middle of their bench for Gigi Bryant.  Flowers and a jersey were placed on the seat in her honor.  

I cannot commend to your reading enough this simply beautiful piece of writing by Laken Litman, which I read yesterday morning on the Sports Illustrated web site.  If reading it does not make your heart hurt at least a little, then you might want to ask the Wizard for a new one the next time you travel to the Emerald City.  

-AK 

May We Never Have To Walk A Step In Their Shoes

Yesterday afternoon, in an appropriately somber, emotional press conference held at his office in Freehold, New Jersey, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Grammiccioni confirmed that the badly decomposed body that had been discovered, on Sunday, in the woods off of Route 9 in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey was the body of Stephanie Parze.  Stephanie, who was just twenty-five years young, was last seen alive on October 30, 2019.  

Stephanie's killer, according to Mr. Grammiccioni, was her ex-boyfriend, against whom she had apparently filed an assault complaint less than forty-five days prior to the date of her disappearance. The ex-boyfriend, identified by authorities fairly early on in their investigation as a person of interest in Stephanie's disappearance, was arrested and jailed in early November, 2019 on an unrelated charge. Less than a week following his release on bail, he committed suicide in his family's home. 

Mr. Grammiccioni said during his Monday press conference that the ex-boyfriend had admitted to killing her in a note he wrote to - and left for - his parents shortly before he killed himself.  The note apparently did not provide any information regarding what he had done with Stephanie's body once he killed her.  

Stephanie's parents, Ed Parze and Sharleen Parze, organized searches in New Jersey and in Staten Island (the ex-boyfriend lived there at one point), on a regular basis over the past three months in a desperate attempt to find their little girl.  The discovery of her remains on Sunday at least permits those she loved the most and those who loved her most of all the opportunity to say goodbye to her, which is of little solace I know to parents who will never see her, perhaps, marry and one day start her own family. 

Ed Parze and Sharleen Parze announced yesterday that they are creating a foundation, the Stephanie Parze Foundation, the mission of which shall be to bring awareness to battered women and missing people.  Ed Parze described the problem as "an epidemic".  

It is the innate fear of a parent that we shall have to bury our child.  Doing so is nothing less than a disturbance in the natural order of the Universe.  Ed Parze and Sharleen Parze now are tasked with that horribly sad job, the sadness of which is exacerbated by how Stephanie was killed and taken from them.  

Their strength to date has been nothing short of remarkable.  Were I ever compelled to be in their place, I know not whether I could even approximate their courage and their valor. I hope like hell I never have to find out.  I wish like hell they did not have to either.

-AK     

Fragility

I was only a five-year-old boy when Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash on December 31, 1972.  Therefore, I have no firsthand recollection of the public reaction to the sudden death of a man who earned his living as a professional baseball player but whose imprimatur transcended not just the sport he played but sports itself. 

A person who has enjoyed playing and watching sports my entire life, I am constrained to confess that NBA basketball is something to which I have never paid very much attention.  Nevertheless, I was very familiar with the accomplishments of Kobe Bryant.  His play as the leader of the United States Olympic Basketball Team in 2008 and 2012 was instrumental to the U.S. winning back-to-back gold medals.  

On the morning of Sunday, January 26, 2020, forty-one-year-old Bryant, his thirteen-year-old daughter Gianna (the second oldest of his four girls), and seven other people died when the helicopter they were on crashed in Calabasas, California.  

It is a tragedy whenever a family member dies.  It is more than doubly so when a family suffers the death of two of its own simultaneously.  Condolences to the Bryant family and to the families of the other seven victims of this terrible accident...

...a sad reminder of life's fragility. 

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
Like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are...

-"Fragile"

Sting

-AK

A Saturday in January

While the Missus and Suzanne spent the day in New York City doing the Broadway thing, I took a much shorter trip north on 287.  I attended one of my favorite CLE seminars, the annual review of Civil Case Law featuring an all-star panel of judges among its speakers.  I did not know that one of my favorite humans - and my fellow Weiner Lesniak Class of '98 member - Jeff Swanson was going to be there too.  

Come for the quality education and stay for the quality company!  

Hell of a fine way to spend January's final Saturday.  

-AK 

Where Angels Fear To Tread...

Presumably, by now you have seen at least a minute or two of the news coverage of the incredible, devastating brush fires in Australia that have routed families from their homes, decimated forests and wild lands, and killed more than one billion animals.  Earlier this month, approximately two hundred firefighters from across the United States headed Down Under to help their Australia brethren fight these fires.  

As a civilian who is fortunate enough to participate annually in the Siller Foundation Tunnel to Towers 5K Run in New York City, I was not terribly surprised to learn of American firefighters lining up en masse to help their fellow firefighters more than half a world away.  The corrals at the Tunnel to Towers 5K each September contain firefighters from all the world who travel to New York City - and who run in full gear - to honor the memory of those killed on September 11, 2001 and to assist in the charitable works of the Siller Foundation.  It takes a special type of person to run into the gaping mouth of Hell when safety lies in exactly the opposite direction.  We are truly blessed, each and every one of us, that such men and women live among us.

Earlier this week, three American firefighters, each of whom worked for an Oregon-based aerial firefighting company, Coulson Aviation, and each of whom had volunteered to go to Australia, died when the C-130 transport plane that forty-four-year-old Captain Ian McBeth was piloting crashed while on a firebombing mission in the state of New South Wales, Australia.  In addition to Captain McBeth, First Officer Paul Clyde Hudson, 42, and forty-three-year-old Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan, Jr., died in the crash.  

Ian McBeth, a resident of Great Falls, Montana, was a Wray, Colorado native son.   He is survived by his wife, Bowdie, his three children, Abigail, Calvin, and Ella, his parents, William and Anneliese, and his three siblings, Rick, Eleanor, and Aislinn. Captain McBeth had served as a member of the Wyoming National Guard and, at the time of his death, was serving as a member of the Montana National Guard. 

Paul Clyde Hudson, a resident of Buckeye, Arizona, is survived by his wife, Noreen.  First Officer Hudson graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1999.  He served this nation as a member of the United States Marine Corps for twenty years from which he retired having attained the rank of Lt. Colonel.  

Rick A. DeMorgan, Jr., lived in Navarre, Florida.  His two children Lucas and Logan, his sister Virginia, and his parents, Rick, Sr. and Linda, survive him.  Flight Engineer DeMorgan was an eighteen-year veteran of the United States Air Force.  

-AK 

Bon Voyage, Eli

The early days of this week brought the news that a New York sports icon had attained immortality through enshrinement into his sport's Hall of Fame.   

Today, another New York sports icon announces his retirement.  I do not pretend to know whether at some point down the road he shall attain immortality in his sport through enshrinement into its Hall of Fame.  No shortage exists, apparently, of those who possess an opinion on that particular topic.  

Whether the final movement of his NFL life is from the football field in East Rutherford, New Jersey to the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio or not, Eli Manning has always struck me from afar as a man who went about his business in a way that shall allow him to look at his career through the sometimes harsh light of self-examination and say, truthfully, he never gave less than his best effort, even when the game's outcome was unfavorable.  Does that make him a Hall of Fame player?  Maybe, maybe not.  

It makes him a person who showed up for work every day and, whether he felt 100% or something decidedly less so, earned the money he was being paid by working hard and by doing his job as well as he could.  If at day's end that is "all" he is, then so be it.  We live in a world pockmarked by frauds and dilettantes, who go about their day-to-day scheming their way into getting more than they deserve.  

There shall hopefully always be a place in this world for a person like Eli Manning.  Whether there is a place for him in the Hall-of-Fame is at best a secondary consideration.     

-AK 

She Gave Him The Brooklyn Bridge

About ten days ago, I imposed upon a very good woman who I knew a very long time ago.  My imposition?  A favor.  

In early December, she shared on Instagram a simply stunning photograph she had taken of the Brooklyn Bridge.  In the interest of full disclosure, she takes stunning photographs regularly.  I cannot recommend heartily enough following her Instagram feed (apeaseye), which is public.  Her bio is "NYC literature professor looking for the things language can't capture."

Anyway, if you follow my advice and begin following her on IG, you might not want to ever give up the fact that I am the one who sent you her direction.  After all, I am the asshole who took advantage of her good nature to track her down almost thirty-five years after we were friends and neighbors on Farrand Hall's 4th floor at the University of Colorado, Boulder to ask her for a favor.  

That simply stunning photograph of which I spoke above (and which I have furnished a copy of here - it is a photo of the photo and it still is stunning) spoke to my favorite Brooklyn boy.  My father-in-law Joe was born and raised in Brooklyn.  He has lived in New Jersey for decades but at least a small part of his heart has always remained in the borough where he was born. 

At Joe's request, I wrote Allison a short letter asking her if she would sign her photograph for Joe.  She did.  Of course, given both her gift for the written word and the size of her heart she did not merely write her name:

To Mr. Joe Bozzomo, 

Here is to the Brooklyn of our past,

our present, our future, and our DREAMS.

Best, Allison Pease

He is as taken with her inscription on the back of his photograph as he is with the photograph itself, which is framed on the wall in his man cave near his television.  Its placement is by deliberate design. It is not close enough to the television that its placement on the wall is a distraction. Yet it is close enough to the television that when he sits in his favorite chair watching TV, he can see it and take a journey far beyond the dimensions of his television's screen... 

...a journey from his present and into his past, his future, and any dream he wants to dream.  

-AK 

  

  

Captain Clutch The Automatic

"The box score is the catechism of baseball, 

ready to surrender its truth to the knowing eye." 

- Stanley Cohen 

The Man in the Crowd (1981)

September, 1996 was the first time I ever saw Derek Jeter play baseball live and in person.  On a Saturday afternoon in late September, I accompanied Rob on his maiden voyage to Yankee Stadium. Rob was ten years old.  He had just really started watching a lot of baseball that season, especially over the summer.  So much so in fact that he knew the stats of most of the Yankees, including their rookie shortstop, much better than the old man.  True statement:  a quarter-century later, he still does. 

His maiden voyage to the Stadium included an actual voyage.  OK, it was a ride on the ferry from Weehawken up the East River.  It was Fan Appreciation Day.  September 21, 1996.  We went with Dave Rubino, Diego Navas, and an all-star cast of characters.  The Yankees played the Boston Red Sox.  The game went extra innings.  In the bottom of the twelfth, the Yankees won it on a "walk-off" single (although if memory serves correctly that inane phrase had not yet seeped into the American lexicon).  Who drove in the game-winning run?  Derek Jeter, of course.   

Yesterday, the Baseball Writers Association of America announced its 2020 Hall of Fame Class.  To the surprise of absolutely no one, this summer Mr. Jeter shall join the company of the immortals in Cooperstown.  

As a father, whenever you find a "thing" that enables you to connect with your child - particularly your son - you cherish it. It is priceless.  I know that my own father and I struggled mightily, and with nothing more than middling success I would say, to find any such thing.  To his credit, whether he meant to or not, my dad taught me a lot about fatherhood - even those lessons that fell under the "do as I say, not as I do" umbrella.  I consider myself fortunate that while Rob was still a young boy, we found a connection through a number of interests, including Springsteen and, of course, the New York Yankees.  

I rarely if ever think of Derek Jeter without thinking of Rob.  The seemingly inextricable link I have created between them is one that neither they, nor history, would create.  Its origin story has its foundation in an otherwise forgettable game played on a long-ago Saturday afternoon, the outcome of which had no impact whatsoever on the fortunes on either team.  

Derek Jeter shall soon call Cooperstown, New York home.  Rob and his branch of the family tree call Colorado home.  Geography being what it is, I see significantly less of him than I might like.  Yet, this past year we did something we had not done in ten years.  We went to Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees play the Oakland A's on a steamy Friday night at the end of August.  It was Gleyber Torres Bobblehead Night.  We have indeed come a long way, baby.  

The Yankees lost.  It mattered not.  Rob and I spent the evening with Dan Byrnes and Joe Byrnes, enjoying the company if not the result on the field.  

Fathers and sons, bonding over baseball.  

Priceless. 

-AK

  

Of Commercials and Caucuses

We are less than two weeks away from Super Bowl LIV (that's fifty-four for those of you absent the day that Roman numerals were taught at your grammar school), in which the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFC will battle the San Francisco 49ers of the NFC.  Kansas City last played in the Super Bowl a half-century ago. Coached by Hank Stram and led by quarterback Len Dawson, the Chiefs atoned for their horrible performance in Super Bowl I, where the Packers trounced them, by dominating the Minnesota Vikings, 23-7, in Super Bowl IV.  The Chiefs became the second - and last - AFL team to win the Super Bowl.  Super Bowl IV being the final game played between AFL and NFL teams prior to the merger of the two leagues. 

Fun fact:  Since 1984, the NFL awards the Lamar Hunt Trophy to the AFC Champion in honor of the Chiefs' long-time owner and a founder of the AFL.  Sunday was the first time that his franchise won the trophy bearing his name.   

Coincidentally, we are also less than two weeks away from the Iowa Caucuses, in which Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, Michael Bloomberg, and Pete Buttigieg will do battle among one another.  If I was a betting man, and I am not, I would wager that regardless of how the Battle for the Hawkeye State plays out, the seven Democrats will all stay in the race for their party's Presidential nomination at least through the New Hampshire primary eight days later. It will be interesting to see how many of the seven are still standing by Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020, when more than one dozen states (including the delegate-rich states of California and Texas) hold their primaries.  

Speaking only for myself, I have as little sense who shall win Super Bowl LIV as I do who shall win the Iowa Caucuses.  I hope that I am wrong in thinking that the average American can name more members of either the Chiefs or the Niners than can name the seven candidates to be the Democratic Party's 2020 nominee to run for President of the United States...

...none of whom shall receive the Vince Lombardi Trophy for winning in Iowa on February 3rd.  

-AK   

Parsippany, Arizona

Hoping for a fairly quiet start to the work week today.  Today is Dr. King Day, the Federal holiday established to commemorate the incredible life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  At the Firm, we honor it in the breach, by which I mean we honor it by not observing it.  

The decision regarding which holidays to observe is one made high above my pay grade. I have little doubt that at life's end, if there is indeed an afterlife, mine shall be spent in the company of Sean and his minions in the bad place. I have equally little doubt that poking a finger into the eye of the only Federal holiday that honors the life of an individual African-American will not be an offense for which I am held to account. 

Every January, a small group of people in Parsippany, New Jersey get to experience what it felt like to live in late 1980's Arizona, minus the 90+ degree heat and the obnoxious number of turquoise-wearing, transplanted Northeasterners.  Instead of honoring the legacy of Dr. King, we honor that of Governor Mecham.  If you Google "landing on the wrong side of history", you will find us on the very first page of search results. 

To be clear, lest anyone who reads this believes this to be me grinding on not getting a paid day off, as a rule, in the twenty-two-years-plus I have worked at the Firm I have worked on practically every day of the week the ends in "y".  It is why I have never failed - not once - in twenty-two years to generate less than 3,000 billable hours.  Were we closed today I would nevertheless spend this Monday as I spend every other Monday - working.  

For me, it is a matter of respect.  Better stated, it is an absence of respect.  An absence of respect for the African-American employees of the Firm, including attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries. More so, a galling absence of respect for a singularly great man, for the live he lived, and for the price he paid for living that life.  

-AK 

The Pop Pop Clause

Sometimes you confuse me with Santa Claus
It's the big white beard I suppose...

-Elvis Costello

Pop Pop is the greatest gig I have ever had.  Almost every day it reveals a new delight.  

Earlier this week, when Margaret was at Suzanne's watching Maggie and Cal, Maggie came out of her bedroom carrying a toy guitar and two sing-along books that Santa had brought her for Christmas.  All of them had stopped working.  The guitar and one of the books, apparently, were broken.  Spoiler alert:  the other "broken" sing-along book simply needed a new battery.  

Maggie handed all three of her treasures to Nana.  When Margaret asked Maggie why she had given them to her, Maggie told her that she wanted Nana to give them to me so that I could get them fixed.  Maggie's rationale was that since Santa Claus and I are friends, I could ask him to put his #1 elf, Hermey, on the job.   At this point, it bears reminding the reader that Maggie is not yet three years old.  

Pop Pop Claus

On Friday morning, when Nana went to Suzanne's to watch Maggie and Cal, she brought the repaired guitar and the one sing-along book that Hermey has thus far been able to fix with her.  Spoiler alert:  the one that Hermey "fixed" is the one that arrived at his workshop with a dead battery.  Maggie was thrilled.  

Me too. 

-AK 

A Coke and A Smile

A lot of good folks are testing their mettle this afternoon for a simply terrific cause.  Today is the annual Ladacin Plunge into the oh-so-brisk waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  These hardy souls, including a number of whom the Missus and I know and love, shall voluntarily run off the sand on Manasquan's Main Beach and into the water.  In case you are wondering, the forecast today for 'Squan calls for snow and wind gusting up to twenty-five miles per hour.  Hell of a nice day for a dip in the ocean, right? 

The Ladacin Network does incredible work for people with disabilities and their families.  The Plunge is one of its major fundraisers.  Margaret and I this year shall be where we are every year that we attend the Plunge - sitting in the warmth and comfort of Leggett's contemplating just how crazy Sue, Jeff, Brooke, Mike, Super Dave, and the rest of their rag-tag band of lunatics must be to hurl themselves in the Atlantic Ocean in mid-January...

...and afterwards saluting them for their effort. 

-AK

Four Blissful Days In Nirdvana

Whoever it was who came up with the idea for the Jeopardy Greatest of All-Time Tournament deserves a big "Thank You" from me.  Margaret and I watched all four nights of the competition. Although we were rooting hard for Jeopardy James, we applauded Ken Jennings and his dominant performance.

I have no idea for how much longer Alex Trebek will feel well enough to continue to serve as Jeopardy's host.  After watching Ken in action during the GOAT Tournament, more so the ease with which he traded barbs and jokes with James than even the way in which he blitzed James and the third competitor, Brad, I wonder if Ken might not be the perfect choice to take over for Alex when he retires.  

-AK 

I and the Tiger

Every day - no matter who we are,

where we live or what we do –

we leave something valuable behind us forever.

If we get hung up on that part of the day-to-day,

then we will bargain away the strength

 to keep moving forward.

However, if we remember - even for a moment –

that life is an eternally repeating transaction,

which shall go on for as long as we do,

always adding something valuable to our balance sheet

while deducting something that had occupied

the new item's place the day before,

then we will be just fine.

- Samuel O'Herlihy



Wilma and Me
2017 NYC Marathon

Today is my sister Jill's birthday.  Without doubt she is pound-for-pound the toughest and bravest person who I have ever known.  While I am not really a gambler, I can say with the utmost confidence that even if I live to be a very old man, which no one other than the company through which I have purchased life insurance is rooting for to happen, I shall never meet a braver, more resolute soul.  

She is every inch our mother's daughter...it just so happens that she is not a particularly large number of inches when measured vertically.  When the great American philosopher Robert Lilly spoke of the size of the fight in the dog being a better measuring stick than the size of the dog in the fight, it was Jill of whom he spoke.  Wilma has never run away from a fight worth fighting in her life.  Not once.

"Tiger" is the nickname that WPK, Sr. gave her a lifetime or two ago.  Truthfully, until the three of us (Kara, Jill, and I) made the move to Wardlaw-Hartridge for the 1978-79 school year as members of the ninth, seventh, and fifth grade classes, respectively, I had no understanding as to why Dad called her "Tiger".  However, once at W-H and participating as a member of the school's interscholastic teams in field hockey and in lacrosse, the sobriquet the old man gave her proved prescient.  Wilma was a force of nature on the field hockey field and on the lacrosse field.  So much so that when she was a senior at W-H, she earned first team All-State honors in field hockey.  Her friend and teammate, Maria Wilson, did also.  These two, teammates from one of the school's smallest prep schools in terms of enrollment, were recognized by the sport's coaches and the writers who covered it as being among the top two dozen field hockey players in the entire state.  Badassery personified.

Not quite thirty autumns following her enrollment at W-H as a member of its 7th grade, Wilma ran the 2007 New York City Marathon. She was forty-two.  She finished in 3:35:37, a time that qualified her to run in the 2008 Boston Marathon.  On Patriots' Day 2008, she blazed through the streets of Boston as if Anthony's mom had just one dish of Prince spaghetti left and Wilma had zero intentions of letting that short-pants, patent-leather-shoe-wearing little bastard getting to eat it. She crossed the finish line in 3:15:18.    She was forty-three.

Between that November morning in New York City and that April afternoon in Boston, she was forced to take up a battle against a particularly insidious foe.  It is a battle she still fights today.  A lesser person might have used that as an excuse to not subject herself to the torture that is marathon training.  She of course did not.  Not only did she run Boston that April, as she had qualified to do five months earlier, she ran it at a sub-eight-minute-per-mile pace.  Once again, badassery personified. 

It has been forever - her wedding perhaps - since I have seen her dance so I know not just how effortlessly she trips the light fantastic.  I do know, though, regardless of how many dances she can do, none of them contains a single backwards step.  Not even one. It is not in her repertoire. Sadly, neither is the Dougie. On second thought, maybe that is not a reason to be sad.

Today, at least, let us declare a moratorium on sadness and put the kibosh on a reason to be sad.  It is Wilma's birthday.  A reason for celebration if ever one existed although my recollection of the long day's journey into night that was the 2017 New York City Marathon is that the completion of that task also likely qualified as one.  

About fourteen months ago I wrote a little book.  In light of the dozens of copies sold, and the long odds that one of the few people who read it shall also read this, I probably need not mention that what follows here is something that originally appeared there in the "Acknowledgements":

To my sister Jill.  Wilma has been one of my principal sounding boards for

the entirety of my life.  Simply put, had she not transferred to CU-Boulder

following her freshman year at Notre Dame, I would not have applied to CU,

let alone attended it. 

Once upon a lifetime ago, before the great gift of being Pop Pop was bestowed 

upon me, my most fervent wish was that in my next life I would come back as

a soul who is at least half as brave in that life as Wilma is in this one. 

Now?  Having realized the folly and the selfishness of that wish, I have traded it in

for a new and better one.  I wish that each of my grandchildren lives her or his life 

with at least half of the courage with which their Great Aunt Wilma lives hers. 

For if they do, their time here shall not have been wasted.  Not even a little bit. 

Happy Birthday, Wilma.  I love you more than I can ever properly express...

...and I always will. 

-AK 

May Your Conscience Be Your Guide

Dr. King was still such a young man on the day he was murdered that were he alive today, his birthday, he would be ninety-one. He has been dead, of course, for more than a half century already.  He certainly made the most out of a life that was cut short less than ninety days past his thirty-ninth birthday. 

The lesson regarding the importance of taking a position that is decidedly unsafe and most assuredly unpopular is one brought to the fore in Bryan Stevenson's extraordinary work, "Just Mercy".  I have practiced law for more than a quarter-century and I stand by the opinion I formed when I finished reading it several years ago, which is that it should be required reading for every lawyer.  It should be required reading whether you ply your craft - as Mr. Stevenson does - taking up the causes of death row inmates or you ply your craft - as I do - defending tort actions.  Its lessons are timeless and are readily translatable and transferable from one specialized area of the law to another.  In fact, its lessons are translatable and transferable from the law to any other profession of which I can think.  

I am admittedly a "the book is better than the movie" fella.  That being said, I cannot recommend the movie adaptation of Mr. Stevenson's book strongly enough.  Margaret and I saw it on Saturday night. It is a beautiful, stirring, and jarring film populated by strong performances by Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Rob Morgan, whose portrayal of the piece's most tragic character, Walter Middleton, might just break your heart at least a little.  

Doing what is right, regardless of whether it is fashionable to do so, popular to do so, or safe to do so, is not always an easy thing to do.  Its reward, however, is immeasurable.

-AK  

Sunday Just The Way It Ought To Be

While Mother Nature's back was turned, someone adjusted the thermostat settings in these parts to make Sunday feel like a late April/early May day.  I am jaded enough to know that "Springtime in January" will not last but smart enough to take full advantage of it while it was here. 

Not every January Sunday affords me the chance to go for a run - at 7:30 am - in a short sleeve t-shirt and shorts while luxuriating in 60+ degree temperatures.  

Not every January Sunday affords Sam and me the chance to have not one, not two, but three extended sessions of matinee Dingo in the back yard.  

This past Sunday afforded me both of those chances. And neither was close to being the best part of the day. 

Sunday evening brought Suzanne, Ryan, Maggie, and Cal to our house for dinner - as thankfully it does many more Sundays than not.  Leo accompanied them, which was appropriate as we celebrated Sam I Am's 2nd birthday.  It was nice for her to have a friend at the party.  Maggie led us in two rounds of "Happy Birthday" to Sam and then helped Fats blow out the candle on her birthday cupcake.  

As much fun as Sam's birthday party was - and it was a great time, I kid you not - the best part of my Sunday was what it is any Sunday I spend with Maggie and Cal:  the time spent playing with the two of them.  At one point, the three of us were playing a game that involves the two of them climbing all over Pop Pop (spoiler alert:  most of the games I play with them are built around this central theme) and the two of them were laughing so hard that all I wanted to do was hug them as tightly as I could... as if holding the three of us together at that point in time would freeze it forever.

Spoiler alert:  time did not freeze.  Not too terribly long thereafter, I kissed them goodbye and watched them head home.  

The moment, of course, did not last.  

But the memory? It did.  It shall.  And I hope that it shall also serve as the foundation upon which countless others shall be built.  For all three of us. 

-AK 

A Tale of Two Tigers

Tonight, in the Louisiana Superdome, a college football season that kicked off in late August 2019 (Florida Gators vs. Miami Hurricanes played the first FBS (f/k/a Division I) game of the season on August 24th), finally comes to an end.  

The Bayou Bengals of Louisiana State University, the top-ranked team in the country, the undefeated SEC champions, led by their charismatic coach, Ed Orgeron, and their Heisman-Trophy-winning quarterback, Joe Burrow, will attempt to put a bow on a 15-0 season by winning the National Championship in what amounts to a home game.  

Squarely in the path of Destiny's Darlings stands the Clemson University Tigers, the disrespected-as-per-Dabo, defending national champions.  Their 14-0 record this season matches their feline counterparts from LSU. However, this year's undefeated record is the second consecutive one that their coach, Dabo Swinney, and their dazzling quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, have posted.

Clemson has not lost a game since Alabama defeated the Tigers in the National Playoff Semi-Final on January 1, 2018, which game was also played at the Superdome in New Orleans.  Between that night's game and tonight's game, Clemson has played twenty-nine games and has won each of them.  Lawrence? He has not lost a game since November, 2017, his senior year in high school,  when his unbeaten Cartersville, Georgia Purple Hurricanes had their 41-game unbeaten streak snapped in the second round of the state playoffs. 

I have no rooting interest in tonight's game.  Truthfully, I do not know how much of it I will watch. I have not watched a college football national championship game in its entirety in twenty-nine years.  No matter how tonight's game end and no matter which team wins there is no way that I will enjoy this game's ending as much as I enjoyed that one...

-AK 

The Gospel According To Shawshank

I am proof of the fact that it can be difficult to follow your own advice.  I had not realized just how well I proved that fact until I stopped for a moment earlier this week and viewed recent goings on at the Firm through the prism of a conversation Rob and I had, regarding recent goings on at his job, when the Missus and I were in Colorado in mid-December.  

It was not until this recent moment of self-reflection that I appreciated the irony (or hypocrisy if you are a particularly tough grader) of my own reaction to my situation.  'Tis true I reckon that "regret is an especially bitter pill to swallow when in self-pity you choose to wallow." 

No more.  The things that have been done shall not be undone.  There is but one thing for me to do, which is to continue to go about my day-to-day aspiring to perform at the highest possible level.  It is an action plan that offers zero minutes during the day to wallow, to feel sorry for oneself, or to act upon one's anger.  It is an action plan that forces me to remember that in the forward-moving exercise that Life is, one moves forward on more than one plane.   

So it goes. And so soon shall I too.  Onward and upward.

-AK 

Paws for Celebration

Now it's over that ridge for one last mile
'Til we're fast asleep by the fire side
Dreamin' these dreams for free
Yeah, it's just my dog and me...

"My Dog and Me"

- John Hiatt

Our beautiful, boisterous "super mutt" Samantha is two years old today.  She has gotten better with age.  She still has energy to play DINGO that most nights borders on the boundless when I come in from the office. She still greets Margaret and me when we return home from the grocery store, or dinner, or a movie with an enthusiasm normally reserved to greeting a soldier upon his or her return home from war.  She still plays with her best human buddy, Joe Joe, with a big motor and an even bigger heart.  

Age has, however, smoothed most of the rough edges off her personality.  Several months ago, we invested in home security cameras, the primary purpose of which was to keep an eye on Sam I Am during her "alone time".  I am pleased to say they have not proven to be a worthwhile investment - except for entertainment purposes.  Margaret and I both receive alerts on our phones whenever something happens that triggers the motion detector on a camera.  Far more often than not, the motion detected is Sam changing her position on the living room couch during her morning nap, her early-afternoon nap, and/or her mid-afternoon nap.  

Sam has done something that I thought impossible.  She has filled the hole in my heart that Rosalita's death almost two years ago had opened. While I am clearly the third favorite human in her three-human household, and fall from Tertiary Tim to Fifth-Place Fred whenever we expand her group to include Uncle Joe and Aunt Jill, I do love her very much...although not nearly as much as Sam loves Margaret, with whom she must make physical contact if all three of us are in the living room together.  My wife has not watched a single minute of television without Sam by her side since I cannot remember when. 

She is a tremendous companion and I have grown to so enjoy running with her that when I do not, I often look down at my left arm a couple of miles into a solo run and discover that I am running with it outstretched and with my left hand closed as if I am holding Sam's leash.  Whether she runs with me or not, she never, ever misses the chance to use me as a post-run celebratory salt lick.  

     

We have not told her yet but we shall have a little birthday celebration tomorrow when Maggie and Cal join us for dinner (with their mom and dad, of course).  My granddaughter never passes up a chance to sing "Happy Birthday" and will happily croon a birthday tune for Sam I Am.  I am sure that Sam will have a grand time.  I am also sure that regardless of how grand a time she has, it shall pale in comparison to the time she shall have the next time she and her cousin Rita are able to romp on the beach together.  Quite simply, beach romp time is the grandest time of all...

...although these two do make hanging around doing nothing on a hot summer afternoon look pretty damn grand. 

-AK 

A Hit Single

I have run in the Tunnel to Towers 5K in New York City every September since 2010.  For me, and I presume for most of - if not all of - the other participants, it is a uniquely moving experience every time I do it.  

Margaret and I spend Tunnel to Towers weekend in Lower Manhattan.  We have quite a nice little tradition, which we share with Gidg and Jeff annually and any other friends who might join us in a particular year.  In 2019, Yvette, Pete, Brooke, and Mike all did. 

We arrive in Lower Manhattan mid-afternoon on Saturday and after picking up our race garb and checking into our hotel, the group plans its rendezvous at the W Hotel Downtown, which has quite a nice little bar on either its 5th or 6th floor.  At some point after cocktails, we all retreat to our respective hotel rooms to rest and recharge before our annual T2T 5K Eve dinner at O'Hara's. 

Between hotel check-in and the W Bar rallying point, Margaret and I spend a bit of time at the National September 11 Memorial, which opened in the footprint of the Twin Towers on the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.  It has been an integral part of our T2T experience since we walked through it for the first time on T2T weekend in 2011.  We were among the thousands of people who were founding donors/sponsors of the National September 11 Museum, which opened in the Spring of 2014, and we took our first visit to it on T2T weekend in 2014.  If you have never visited the Memorial or toured the Museum, I cannot recommend them to you passionately enough.  The experience of visiting each is extraordinary and visceral.  

On our annual pilgrimage to the Memorial, we place small American flags at the names of several individuals, each of whom had a relationship either to one of us or to a family member or a friend.  Several years ago, after reading a story about the ten members of the CU Boulder family who were killed on September 11, 2001, Margaret and I added the fallen Buffs to the roster of those whose memory we honor.  At their names, the little American flag is accompanied by a smaller black flag on which, in gold letters under Ralphie, are the words "KEEP CALM AND GO BUFFS".  We do it for no reason other than to honor the memory of my ten fellow Buff alums along with the other six people we honor.  

Well, truth be told, we do it for one other, critically important reason.  It makes us feel good. 

In October, 2019 I was honored and humbled by the publication of a piece in the on-line magazine that the CU Boulder College of Arts and Sciences produces, which piece Clay Evans authored.  The piece is entitled "Message for 9/11 fallen:  Keep Calm and Go Buffs".   To the extent that Clay Evans portrayed someone who is a decidedly mediocre human being in a significantly more flattering light, it is a remarkable piece of writing. I shall always cherish it. 

Besides, it took me more than a half-century to do a single thing worthy of a single written word.  I am fairly certain that it will take me at least that long to do something worthy of a sequel.

-AK   

It's The Little Things That Count

Fifteen days before Christmas, Detective Joseph Seals of the Jersey City Police Department was killed in the line of duty.  He was thirty-nine years old, a husband, and a father to five children.  

Eight days before Christmas, Laura Seals stood in the rain in Jersey City, surrounded by her children, their family, friends, loved ones, members of the Jersey City Police Department, and at least one member of every police department in New Jersey and said their goodbyes to a husband, a father, a friend, and a hero.

Last week, the New Jersey State Police and the New York Jets got together to do a little something for Laura Seals and for her children.  The family traveled to the American Dream mall in East Rutherford.  There, State Troopers and representatives of the Jets presented them with specially-made Jets jerseys personalized with Detective Seals' name and his badge number.    

A simply beautiful thing to do.  Kudos to the person or persons in those two organizations who came up with the idea and to all of those in both organizations who executed the idea so beautifully.  This family, in the past thirty days, has endured more than a family should have to endure.  Furthermore, they have endured it during a time of year people generally associate with happiness, family, and love.  Yet for just a day - or perhaps for just a portion of it - they were free to remember what it feels like to smile.  

That, in and of itself, may be a little thing but it is also indisputably a beautiful thing. 

Same as it ever was. 

-AK   

   

Time's Fleet Feet

Nana, Papa Joe, and Pop Pop are lucky.  In the words of the great American 20th Century poet (and always tasty dinner) Meat Loaf, "two out of three ain't bad."  As we await the Class of 2020, for present purposes, 2/3 of our grandchildren - and by extension 2/3 of Joe's great-grandchildren through Margaret's branch of the family tree, live close enough to us that Margaret spends practically every day with them and Joe and I each see them at least one time a week.  

Children are elixir for the soul.  My three grandchildren certainly are.  I wish that geography did not reduce my interaction with Abigail to something less than a regular, weekly get-together.  It does.  She spends significantly less time in my company than Maggie and Cal do.  She spends no less time in my heart. 

My power trio are growing up so fast that Pop Pop has little doubt that by this time next year each of them shall be smarter than I am - presuming that is not already true.  Since the first of this year, Cal and Abigail each turned 18 months old.  Maggie?  My tip of the spear is rapidly approaching her third birthday, which is now less than four months away.  

I know not how long I shall live, relative to these three, or the new additions arriving this year.  I know though, regardless of how much of each of their lives I live to see, I will have lived long enough to see them do great things.  They already do great things.  They each do the best possible thing.  They make this old curmudgeon's heart happy.  

More than that even, they routinely and effortlessly amaze me.  And I love each of them more than I can ever properly express.  Regardless of how big each grows and how fast each runs, Pop Pop's shoulder will always be there for each to lean on and I shall forever have each one's back.  

Where the hell else would I rather be?  

-AK   

A Good Day

Don Larsen died on New Year's Day.  The last day of his life was 01/01/2020, a date on which zeroes dominated the box score.  Seems to me that it was only right that his life's final day have that in common with his life's most famous day, October 8, 1956, which was another date on which zeroes dominated the box score.

Game Five - 1956 World Series

(October 8, 1956) 

Sixty-four Fall Classics (and counting) since Larsen threw the first perfect game in the history of the World Series, baseball waits for the second one.  Will another ever be thrown?  I would not pretend to know.  I know simply that what I love about baseball is that it is a sport in which it is almost impossible to predict the player who will rise far above the statistics on the back of his baseball card to attain perfection, even if ever so briefly, and with it, immortality.  Don Larsen was such a player. 

Larsen pitched in the major leagues for fourteen seasons, breaking in with the St. Louis Browns of the American League in 1953, for whom he pitched to a 7-12 record, and finishing up with the Chicago Cubs of the National League in 1967, for whom he pitched just four innings scattered over three appearances in which he did not earn a decision.  He led the league in which he pitched in an individual statistic just one time.  In 1954, as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, his twenty-one losses led the American League.  His three wins did not. 

He was traded to the Yankees following the 1954 season and he pitched for the Bombers from 1955 through 1959.  In five seasons in New York, he won twenty-one more games than he lost (45-24) and posted a winning season with a sub 4.00 ERA in each of his first four seasons.  Following the 1959 season, in which he pitched to a 6-7 record with a 4.33 ERA, the Yankees traded him to Kansas City, which trade brought Roger Maris to the Bronx.  

In 1956, Don Larsen won a career-best 11 games in the regular season, which did not translate to immediate success in the Series against the Dodgers.  Having lost with Whitey Ford on the mound in Game 1 on October 3, Casey Stengel tapped Larsen to start Game 2 at Ebbetts Field on October 5.  Although staked to a 6-0 lead through an inning and a half, Larsen could not get out of the second inning.  Brooklyn scored four runs against him, all of which were unearned, in a game the Dodgers won 13-8. 

The Yankees got off the mat when the Series moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx, winning Game 3 behind Ford on October 6 and Game 4 behind Tom Sturdivant's complete-game six-hit performance on October 7.  Casey Stengel had not announced his starting pitcher for the fifth game on October 8. Larsen learned that he was starting Game 5 when he arrived at the Stadium for the game and found the baseball that third-base coach Frank Crosetti had placed inside of one of his shoes. 

The rest, as Vin Scully said, is history...

Vince Lombardi may indeed have been right.  We relentlessly chase and pursue perfection, not because we expect to attain it, but because in the process of our pursuit, we attain excellence.  Yet, every now and again, even if it is just for a single day or a single moment, either we pursue so quickly or perfection slows down just enough to allow us to grab hold of it.  In an eye blink, or in a sun rise, the moment passes and the pursuit resumes anew.  

Our inability to hold tight to it forever does not make us a failure.  It merely makes us human.  Don Larsen never forgot that, remarking on the 45th anniversary of his accomplishment, "My belief is, you work hard enough and something good is bound to happen.  Everyone is entitled to some good days." 

Perfect. 

-AK