All connected yet all alone

If you don't know who he is, (a) put down the bong, (b) crawl out from under your rock and (c) turn on a television.

First, he "landed" a plane in the middle of the Hudson River safely. Second, he walked the length of the plane not once but twice to make sure all of the passengers on this plane were out of harms way. Then he gave a drenched, shivering passenger his shirt in an effort to stave off hypothermia for the passenger. The man is a god.

On Friday morning when I got to work, listening to NPR, I heard there were eight Facebook groups dedicated to our man Sully. I logged on to FB as soon as I got to work and joined one of the groups, which at that point had 6,200 members. Mere moments ago, I went back and that group has swelled to 72,000 members. And reading the wall, I got to thinking about the way we share our experiences in the techno age.

In my grandparents' day, it was talk at the coffee shop or beauty parlor and you knew what you knew from the radio or the newspaper or the local gossip. News moved at a snail's pace, as we would see it now, but then the wireless mean a radio, not a phone, and to that generation, the news came at breakneck speed.

In my parents' generation, it was Walter Cronkite on the evening news and your choice of newspapers. The advent of television and the evening news changed how people saw the world but again, the delivery system would seem slow and bleak to us who are now use to color pictures, banners, scroll bars and catchy themes to our news coverage.

Now, in our generation, we have a community not only in the locality in which we live but in the cyber town halls. People are posting messages up on a Facebook wall to a man who will most likely never read them. Yet, post we must. In our technological world, this is the town square, the water cooler, the place we go to feel a part of something. We're all connected and yet, we're all alone. People reach out to and on FB to feel a connection. Even with friends and family, we still want to be part of something else.

I hope Sully gets his kids to sign him on and let him read the wall posts. As much as we all wrote on the wall to him, we were writing for each other and sending out our thoughts and prayers and energies to betterment of all.

Admit it. You couldn't help but feel the world is a better place today because of the actions of two pilots you'll never meet.

If it seems I am over you

Yes, i know, it's been awhile since I've been here. And it's not that I am over you, dearest blog. It's the life has been crazy for a good long time. So for those of you looking for an update:

Since my last post, the followings have happened:

1. A good friend has moved forward with an adoption despite the credit crunch in this country. Now, just how does the credit problem impinge on an adoption? Visit http://www.5forhope.com/ to get the full story and while you're there, don't be afraid to let your heart do your thinking.

2. Another dear, old friend and I reunited via Facebook. The love story that is his still makes me well up and you that know me know how hard that is to do. The joys of rekindling old friendships is one of life's little wonders.

3. Lots and lots of baby news for my friends: my law school roomie (whose cat serves as my profile pic) is blessed with her first, another girlfriend is blessed with her fourth and first girl and my daughter dearest (from law school) has a bouncing baby boy on the way - he, however, is a great dane.

4. Israel invaded Gaza. I have an opinion but really it boils down to this: Forget the past and forge a future together. Neither side is going any where so figure it out.

5. Law life involves 15 criminal cases, three divorces, several civil cases and in the next month, oral arguments before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, two briefs to the state appeallate court and a trial. Who said this wasn't fun?

6. Hillary Clinton is still annoying.

7. So is Richard Lugar.

8. Bush did his last press conference...and provided several new facial expressions which can be compared to all members of the simian family.

9. The NFL regular season proved that (a) Ted Thompson is an idiot, (b) Aaron Rogers is a pretty decent little QB despite Mike McCarthy's inability to call the last 2 minutes of the game and (c) Brett Favre, while not the godsend all hoped for, brought the Jets to a respectable level and (d) he was dropped on his head too many time because he started the retirement shit with two weeks left in the season.

10. The BCS proved once again that it sucks, totally.

My new years blog resolution - at least one post a week until I run out of Buffett songs to use as headings.

Living and dying in 3/4 time

I should have written this a long time ago. But this whole working thing gets in the way.

Barack won. Let's see if we all get the importance therein:

1. He is black by virture of his father's race.
2. He is white be virture of this mother's race.
3. He lived in Hawaii, Indonesia and Chicago.
4. He married an African-American who knew no other way then the way the world treated here.
5. He is the first successful politician that has lived both the black man and the white man's view of the world.

Now that the transition is underway, it is clear that he lives the message he sold us as the Audacity of Hope.

Gays, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, they're all there. I've even spotted a good Dago name (and yes, I'm allowed to use that word - I'm one.) Every view, even Republican, is represented in the transition and will be represented in the Administration. Here's pulling for Chuck Hagel and the Senator from New York for Secretary of State.

Everybody's on the Phone

Who knew a finding a phone number would be an archelogical dig involving generations of cell phones.

I was trying to get in touch with someone I hadn't talked to in several years. The person called me but the signal faded when she was leaving her number. So I thought well i can random dial until I get there or I can hope I still have her number someplace.

My current phone is a Blackberry Curve.
The phone before that was a Motorola Rzr-3.
Before that was the Motorola Razor.
Before that was a Sanyo something or another.
And before that was another Sanyo something which I ran over with my car.
The one before that was red, might have been a Kyocera.
At the same time the work phone was a Nokia.
Before that, it was a Motorola flip phone that weighed six hundred pounds.

So anyway, I have all but two of those phones still: the one I ran over and the one that belonged to my former employer. I don't know why have the others. I even have a Nokia I picked up in Ireland so that I could call my friends when I was there. In any event, I fired up each one of the phones, scrolling literally back through time. Upon m first cell phone - circa 1996 - I found my friend's old home number. And her cell. Neither of which worked. Then I found her mom's number on the oldest phone.

Success at last. Thank god in a day and age when many have forsaken land lines that the old folks still like a dial tone.

Sorry for the delay

For those who read this rag, sorry for the long delay between posts. Since July, I've taken the bar, taken a job, started work, bought a new car which is the twin of an old car of mine, picked some fights, passed the bar, retained my job and written more briefs and memos then strictly necessary.

Today, I am still thinking about 9/11 and all the things we've seen since then. A tsunami in Indonesia that claimed more than 250,000 lives. A hurricane that drowned New Orleans. Wars in two theaters of operation that has claimed thousands and thousands of American lives and even more civilian deaths. Westboro Baptist Church. The capture of Saddam. The continuing freedom of Osama. The rise of Obama, the rise of McCain and the cult of Palin. Civil rights abolished. The ever-present Geraldo.

But still, time marches on and so does our human race. Despite the color, the faith, the language that may attempt to devide, still we march on, more or less together, looking for peace and holding fast to hope.

Remember

Do you remember this photo?

His name is Fr. Mychel Judge.

His death certificate carries the No. 1 for the first identifiable fatality of the World Trade Center attack.

Fr. Mychel had just finished giving last rites to a fallen firefighter when he himself and his charge were killed by falling debris.

Remember Fr. Mychel. Remember all the fallen. Remember the heros.

Random

It is six days to the bar exam, I am now officially employed and I can honestly say that I still don't care about Federal Income Tax. Isn't that what H&R Block is for or did I miss a memo?

When I was a kid, you couldn't step outside after the end of May without seeing lightening bugs. This is the first year in recent memory that there have been as many as my childhood memories seem to recall. But I will say that they make me laugh and giggle when I see them again because when I was kid I knew they were twinkling and blinking just for me.

Recently I got bit by a dog. My father has waged a lenghty battle against dogs for many years because of the dogs that roam and howl and generally disrupt the quiet place he lives. And I've told him for years that there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. And I stand by that with this one coda: There are also bad consumers of dogs. After being bitten, I tried to figure out where I got it in my head that all animals were safe, understood what I was thinking and saying and just generally could be trusted. Here's your answer: http://youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U.

Now the truth is, I knew about Christian and had forgotten. When I was young and apparently impressionable, I read Born Free, a moving memoir of Joy and George Adamson's committment to saving the big cats of Kenya. That story taught me it was okay to love and to believe you were being loved in return. George Adamson, by the way, is the old guy in green shorts near the end of the video. But I forgot one of George's other lessons. As much as George did this

He also carried this

George had a healthy respect for what these animals were physically capable of and still held, too, a deep and abiding love for them. I missed that part of the book and have 16 stiches to prove it. But I don't blame the dog that bit me: I leaned over him putting him by instinct into a subservient and scary position. Which is why George carried a gun when he was with his big cats and people who were strangers to them: He knew an animal will attack if provoked, no matter how well intentioned the human.