Somewhere, Tim Russert Smiles

What now seems like a million years ago, I read Tim Russert's simply beautiful tribute to his dad and to growing up in his beloved Buffalo, New York in the 1950's. If you have not read Big Russ & Me: Father & Son: Lessons of Life, then might I suggest you do so. I enjoyed the hell out of it. If you read it, then I hope you do too.   

I smiled on Monday because I came across a story on SI.com that made me think of the late great Mr. Russert, his beloved Bills, and the die-hard Bills fans known as the Bills Mafia. On Saturday night, the Bills hosted the Baltimore Ravens in an AFC Divisional Playoff Game. The Bills defeated the Ravens 17-3 and earned the right to play the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend in the AFC Championship Game.  The Bills last played for the AFC Championship in 1993. 

Lamar Jackson, Baltimore's quarterback, was knocked out of Saturday night's game with an injury. He left the field at the end of the third quarter. He did not return.  One of his favorite charities is the Louisville, Kentucky chapter of Blessings in a Backpack, whose mission is to "mobilize communities, individuals, and resources to provide food on the weekends for elementary school children across America who might otherwise go hungry."   While his departure from the game favored the Bills, Bills' fans showed their appreciation not simply for the type of player Lamar Jackson is but, more importantly, the type of man he is by stepping up and donating to Blessings in a Backpack in his honor. 

In less than twenty-four hours, often in amounts of $8.00 (in honor of Jackson's #8) or $17.00 (in honor of Bills' quarterback Josh Allen's #17), Bills' fans donated almost $300,000 to the Louisville chapter of Blessings in a Backpack. An extraordinary gesture fueled by men and women who did it simply because it struck them as the right thing to do.  

Bravo, Bills Mafia, bravo.  

-AK 

To Whom It May Concern

"We are not enemies, but friends.

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained

it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,

stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart

and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union,

when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

-President Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address  

1861

"This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear

is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed

efforts to convert retreat into advance." 

-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address

1933

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, 

unity of purpose over conflict and discord. 

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances 

and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that 

for far too long have strangled our politics." 

-President Barack Obama's First Inaugural Address

2009

-AK 

The Simple Things

Saturday morning, after I spent a few hours working on a brief, I did one of my favorite things.  I went for a run.  

It is the simple things in life that keep me balanced.  One such thing for me is going for a run.  It clears my head.  It is good for the soles.  It is, also, good for the soul. 

I did not take my faithful canine running companion with me.  It mattered not.  Not actually going for a run does nothing to quell Sam's enthusiasm for the post-run recap. 

For that I was, as I always am, very happy.  Quality time with my hound is, also, a simple thing.

In my experience, it is the simple things that are the best things. 

-AK

The Need to Leave the Stream of Warm Impermanence

Time may change me

But I can't trace time.

I said that time may change me

But I can't trace time. 

- "Changes" 

David Bowie

Consider this a programming note if you will, of a personal and professional nature. 

At month's end I am leaving the Firm where I have spent the better part of the past quarter century practicing law.  The decision to leave is mine.  

While leaving the safety of a place that is familiar and filled with faces of long-time colleagues, including many who were already at the Firm when I walked through its doors as an employee for the first time on January 5, 1998, is a somewhat sad occasion, the sadness I feel is pales in comparison to the excitement I feel regarding my next adventure.  After all, life is a forward-moving exercise. 

Effective February 1, 2021, I shall practice law at Kennedys in its Basking Ridge, New Jersey office.  Over the course of the several months, I have gotten to meet and to know the men and women with whom I shall work.  They are an exceptionally talented group of lawyers. I look forward to the challenge of proving my worth among them. 

-AK 

We'll Marry Our Fortunes Together

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies... 

In these United States, if we are truly as lost as we have appeared to be for the first two decades of this century, engaging in an ever-escalating, unabating tit-for-tat exchange of insults and invective that fueled the historically unprecedented attempted insurrection of the Congress by the President less than two weeks ago, then there is no point in continuing with the Founders' experiment. A Republic requires some tending to, which is never easy.  It is ours, as the great Benjamin Franklin reportedly observed, for only as long as we may keep it.  

While I shall never be mistaken for an optimist, pie-eyed or any other variety, I choose to believe that a basis exists for continuing to press forward with the Founders' experiment. I have five grandchildren, the oldest of whom will not be four until May.  I have skin in the game. Whether you have grandchildren, you too have skin in the game. Each of us does. 

It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw...

America is found in Frank Miller, his wife Alice, and the boys and girls of all ages from the Millers' Dallas, Texas neighborhood who responded to Alice's invitation to join Frank for a catch.  

America is found in Ted Lumpkin, Jr. and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, who during WW II simultaneously fought against fascism in Europe and racism in the United States Armed Forces and kicked the hell of out of both foes. On December 26, 2020, less than one week shy of his 101st birthday, Mr. Lumpkin died in a Los Angeles hospital. His reported cause of death was COVID-19 complications. 

America is found in Landon Hacker. Nine years ago, he was a drug addict living on the streets of Camden, New Jersey.  On January 13, 2021, Chief Justice Rabner of the New Jersey Supreme Court swore him in as a member of the Bar of the State of New Jersey. 

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike...

Less than twenty years ago, on October 20, 2001, a boisterous crowd gathered in Madison Square Garden for The Concert for New York City, a benefit to honor the City's first responders, their families, and those killed on September 11.  Among the highlights of the show was the set David Bowie performed. At the time of the September 11 attacks, he lived with his wife, Iman, on Central Park South. Neither of them was an American by birth but both became New Yorkers, engrained into the fabric of the City as it was into them.  His performance of "Heroes" during his set brought the house down.  

His set also included a stirring rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's "America", sung by an Englishman who had not been born here but who sang every line as if he had experienced each firsthand.  He sang it as a love song to a country that may not have been the land of his birth but was most assuredly a land that he loved.  

If it is true that America has been lost, then let us make it our job, yours and mine, to find it.  

All come to look for America...

-AK 

That Sure Is A Lot Of Candles!

From the September morning on which I entered kindergarten through the May morning on which (still too drunk to have yet commenced being hung over) I graduated college, I had the great good fortune and pleasure to follow my sister, Jill, through school.   

Wilma is the penultimate member of Mom and WPK, Sr.'s sextet, and the one who Dad presciently affixed with the sobriquet "Tiger" when she was but a child. She is two years older than I am and was always two grades ahead of me in school.  But for 11th and 12th grades at Wardlaw-Hartridge, when she was off at college, she and I had always attended school together. It was an experience I found so jarring that as a high school senior I opted to continue my education at the University of Colorado, Boulder - where she and Joe were beginning their junior years. 

I have proven to be the gum that my sister cannot scrape off her shoe.  Thirty-plus years after college and five-and-one-half decades after I commenced "Operation Annoying Brother", I smile at the knowledge that we are still as thick as thieves. 

She was with me way back when I was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore who wanted to experience what it felt like to drive so she pulled over into a parking lot, swapped places with me, and let me drive Mom's little red Chevette on the deserted byways of Neshanic Station...and right up into a railroad tie while attempting my first left turn.  Irony of all ironies is the son of a man whose secret goal on every trip appeared to be reaching his destination by making nothing but left turns completely screwing the pooch attempting his very first one.  

We were together again, with Joe and Margaret, on a Saturday morning in late September on the beach in Bay Head when Sam I Am came perilously close to having Bruce Springsteen ask me my name for the sole purpose of ensuring its proper spelling in the caption of his personal injury lawsuit.  We four were running and playing on the beach with Sam and Rita when Bruce and Patti emerged from the water and began making the short walk up the beach to the oceanfront home they had rented. Sam damn near ran Bruce over trying to get by him to say hello to Patti, who helped break any fast-developing tension by immediately bending down and petting Sam.  

My relationship with Wilma is one that - to borrow a phrase from Mr. Springsteen - neither time nor memory shall fade away. For that I shall be forever grateful.  Today, on her birthday, I am grateful for the fact that Margaret, Giuseppe, Sam, and I shall be able to spend a portion of it with her.  

Happy Birthday, Wilma.  You are now, as you have always been, my favorite Bad Ass.  

Much love always, 

Chuck

-AK 

Flourish or Perish

Words as true now as they were then...

Happy Birthday, Dr. King.  

-AK