Ten Plus One

 

It was ten years ago yesterday that twenty-six innocents were murdered by a feckless coward at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  Twenty of the twenty-six were children.  The remaining six were adults who died trying to protect their young charges.  

In the decade since Sandy Hook, there have been 189 shootings at American schools that have resulted in at least one fatality; seventeen of which were categorized as "active shooter situations", which are defined as "when the shooter killed and /or wounded victims, either targeted or random, within the school campus during a continuous episode of violence."  

Last month, the Sandy Hook Memorial opened. 

Ten years.  A lifetime and a blink. 

  

-AK 

Fair Winds and Following Seas, Pirate

 

Mike Leach died Monday night.  He was just sixty-one years old.  If you are not a college football fan, then you might not be familiar with him.  For that, I feel badly - for you. 

Coach Leach never coached my beloved Alma mater.  He did, though, coach against the Buffaloes.  First, when he was the head coach at Texas Tech, Colorado still played in the Big XII Conference, and he led the Red Raiders to then-unreached and presumptively unreachable heights.  Thereafter, he coached Washington State in the PAC-12 and under his guidance, the Cougars became consistent winners.  At the time of his death, he had completed his third season coaching the Mississippi State Bulldogs and was preparing his team for its January 2, 2023 bowl matchup against Illinois, a game his Bulldogs will play in honor of their coach.  

Way back when, before he became a football coach, Mike Leach grew up a forester's son in Cody, Wyoming.  He went to and graduated from BYU but did not play football for the Cougars.  He played rugby.  After college, he earned his J.D. at Pepperdine University College School of Law, which shortly thereafter he parlayed...into a gig as the Head Coach of the Pori Bears in the American Football Association of Finland.    

Mike Leach was a unique, exquisitely interesting man.  His press conferences were not to be missed as he was capable of holding court on a variety of subjects, whether related to football or not.  In 2018, while he was the Head Coach at Wazzu, a reporter asked him for his opinion as to how the various mascots in the PAC-12 would fare against one another if they tussled.  His answer elevated him to perpetual favorite son status at CU.

He shall long be remembered.  He shall forever be missed.   

Farewell and Godspeed, Coach.  

-AK 

The Guardian of All Things

 

Saturday night the Missus and I spent some time with Suzanne, Ryan, and the kids at a winter festival in Warren Township, New Jersey.  As we were strolling around, I took my four-year-old grandson Cal with me to visit the September 11, 2001 Memorial that is located at the front of the Township's Municipal Complex.  As I was holding him, and the two of us looked at the Memorial, he asked me what it was and what it represented.  I told him.  

Given that he is just four years old, I provided him with what admittedly was an abbreviated recitation of that day's events.  Given that he is just four years old, he may or may not have understood much of what I told him.  It matters not.   What matters is that he asked the question and listened to the answer.  I have every confidence it is not the final conversation he and I shall have on this subject.  

Warren Township, New Jersey 

September 11, 2001 Memorial

On December 7, 2022, which was of course the 81st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the September 11, 2001 terror attack claimed yet another victim.  Lt. Maureen Gill-Donohue of the NYPD, a twenty-year veteran who retired in 2012, succumbed to the 9/11-related cancer she contracted from months she spent working the pile at Ground Zero and, thereafter, at the Fresh Kills Landfill.  She is survived by her parents, Patricia and James Gill, her husband, NYPD Detective Thomas Donohue, her three children, and five grandchildren.  

Events echo and reverberate across time like ripples across the surface of a   Neither their impact nor their import can be permitted by those who bore witness to them to become attenuated.  Not simply for nostalgia's sake but because their effect on the day-to-day lives of far too many has not become attenuated.  As it continues to affect any one of us, it continues to affect all of us.  

-AK 

Questions, Rhetorical and Otherwise

Food for thought as I head to Passaic County this morning for the trial call on this mid-December Monday...

Photo Credit:  

Barred and Bearded @RilezTweetsEsq

He is not wrong.  This is the dream that I have lived for almost thirty years practicing law.  It is the dream lived by any lawyer whose practice is litigation-focused and one in which unresolvable cases are tried.  

A man much wiser (not to mention substantially wealthier and most likely healthier) than I asked the question forty-plus years ago: 

Your response, much like your car's actual gas mileage as opposed to what is written on its window sticker, shall vary.  

Be careful out there. 

-AK 

   

Plenteous In Mercy

A nickel's worth of wisdom for a mid-December Sunday, courtesy of the 30th President of these United States...

...with Christmas closing in.

Be careful out there.

-AK 

A Season of Hope

Two weeks out.  Time to get serious.  Time to stand in front of the mirror, look yourself squarely in the eye, and ask yourself to answer honestly the question of whether you have been naughty or nice this past year.  For me at least, it appears that this year Santa has graded on a generous curve.  

It was this time last week that my beloved Alma mater, hopelessly irrelevant in the world of big-time college football for the past twenty years, moved from Mountain Time to Prime Time.    Deion Sanders agreed to a five-year contract to become the Head Coach.   Candidly, I do not expect him to remain in Boulder for the length of his contract.  

If he resuscitates the Buffs, then better-heeled, more prestigious, and higher-paying coaching opportunities will rain down upon him and he will leave the Buffs for one of them.  If he is a disaster, then the CU Athletic Department will play a movie that Buff alums have seen multiple times in the past twenty years, fire him, and pay him copious amounts of money to go away.   

If history is any guide, then the Deion Sanders' era in CU football shall visit upon me more than a small amount of agita, anger, and heartbreak.   But right now, at this moment, it gives me hope.     

Folsom Field - December 3, 2022

A wise man once observed that hope is a good thing.  In fact, he said, it may just be the best of things...  

...may it never die.  

-AK 

 

Sixty-Six and Chilly

 Mothers never really die, 

They just keep the house up in the sky.

They polish the sun by day

And light the stars that shine at night,

Keep the moonbeams silvery bright

And in the heavenly home above

They wait to welcome home those they love. 

-Unknown

Today marks sixty-six months to the day since Mom died.  Sixty-six months.   I will spend a portion of it in New Brunswick.  Today is the 20th Annual Big Chill 5K, which does good for children in our area who otherwise would not know any semblance of “merry” at Christmas.   It is among my favorite events annually.  

The Big Chill 5K is also the race that started it all for me way back when in December 2008.  Wilma talked me into running with her.  Had she not been there I would have curled up in the fetal position while climbing up George Street and never would have finished.  I think she still laughs at the memory of me that morning.   I know I do.  

-AK