Osler's Razor

On Thursday of this week, I gave a talk at a Minneapolis bar, the 331 Club. The topic was clemency, and the crowd was a little rowdy.  I like that.

So... yesterday Sharon Grigsby of the Dallas Morning News (whom I have worked with before) wrote a fascinating piece in that paper about the problems Baylor is facing with sexual assaults by football players.  Sharon is a Baylor grad, and often a proud one, but is this piece she makes an important point:

What began as a small cesspool has spread into a full-blown swamp. Does the administration not see that Baylor’s reputation — not to mention its fundraising and its enrollment — are drowning in this unseemly episode? And, more important, what does this kind of non-response do for the safety of its students?

For what it is worth, I worried about Baylor football in a more general way on the pages of the Waco Trib back in the summer of 2015, but the fuller story started to come out later that year.  Here is a timeline of some key events leading up to this challenging moment.

I saw this on an episode of "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," and now it is completely stuck in my head. It. Will. Not. Leave.

Which is kind of embarrassing when I am trying to be a law professor and stuff.

There were some great haiku last Friday on a subject never covered before: Prince.

Fan fave the Medievalist offered this one:

Now doves are crying,
The great purple one is gone,
In his red Corvette.

Rene had a good story:

When I met him,me
In flight goddess guise,Hulk Hogan
His body guard,mouthpiece,

He wore violet
Knickers,& lavender poet
Shirt. "PRINCE would like a

Coke," Hulk said. Prince had
Eyelashes coated with gunk.
He was petite. This vignette

Rubbed me the wrong way.
So I did not make myself
Vulnerable to his music.

So did David Best:

Jehova's Witness,
few knew he was. But one day
he knocked on their door.

They were orthodox Jews,
it was Yom Kippur, but they
were fans, pleased to talk.

Love as faith and love
as sex, the metaphors mixed
freely for this man.

But my favorite was this, from "Anonymous:"

Heartbreak Hill mantra
April, nineteen eighty five
I would die 4 you.

Five years ago, I first wrote about this song.  Here is what I wrote then:

Most of all, though, the song critiques a soul-killing social dialogue that still enrages me. Someone, a child perhaps, asks someone about a social injustice-- endemic racism, intolerance of religion, hatred of others, poverty amongst riches-- and the elder shrugs and says, "that's just the way it is. Some things will never change." Thus ends the conversation.

How many times was I that child, that teenager, that college student, that law student, that prosecutor, that teacher? More than I can count, and every time something in the soul God gave me, the heart of the gospels, the promise of Christ, the rolling thunder of God's own self-renewing world, told me this answer was wrong. It is wrong. 

At that time, I was about to enter the fray in favor of same-sex marriage. We won (though I had little to do with it)-- but if you read some of the 15,000+ comments to the the piece linked in the last sentence, you will see that many were saying "That's just the way it is." And then, it wasn't.

A few weeks ago, in response to what I wrote in the New York Times, a new wave of people have been telling me that the desuetude of the the pardon power is "just the way it is." I think they are wrong this time, too.    

Last night, they had a free all-night dance party at First Avenue to celebrate Prince's life.  It's not quite that, but let's have a haiku tribute here.

I can go first:

There were some glimpses
In Minneapolis, yeah,
But now, just music.

Now it is your turn. Use the 5/7/5 syllable scheme, and tell us what you remember best...

A few years ago, one might think that the biggest political issue in America was the terrifying specter of a Christian baker having to make a cake for a gay couple. While we are still a little obsessed with gays and cakes, we seem to have largely moved on to the latest horror: the chance that we might share a bathroom with a transgendered person.

Really?

What, exactly, do you think will happen? The fear, I suppose, is that the transgendered person has transitioned into the gender they are attracted to-- that is, that they change sex to become gay, and then for some reason will foist homosexual assaults on other bathroom patrons. I suppose that might happen, but it seems like a pretty rare thing. Also, there is a fear that men will cross-dress just to gain entrance to the women's bathroom, which also seems like a very remote chance. After all, that tactic isn't going to work unless the offender and the victim are in the bathroom alone, and if that is true, why cross-dress?

If you don't want to go to the bathroom with people who are sexually attracted to your sex, well... you are already out of luck. Gay men use the men's room and lesbians use the women's room. That's just the way it is, and it won't change. We all seem to be doing just fine.

I travel quite a bit, and since my home airport is MSP I often travel past the spot where the "Larry Craig Bathroom" used to be (it has since been removed).  For those who have forgotten, Idaho Senator Larry Craig was caught there cruising for sex in 2007.  It's a weird story,  and always makes me feel a little uncomfortable using MSP's bathrooms. However, what I'm scared of (I guess) is  Senators, and there is a factual basis for my fear-- unlike the strange bathroom fears regarding transgendered people.

Meanwhile, here are some things that are probably more worth worrying about, none of which have been effectively addressed yet by our governments:

-- Climate change
-- ISIS
-- Domestic terrorism
-- A mortgage crisis relapse
-- Actual sexual assaults on children (of which there are hundreds per week in this country)
-- The rise in violent crime in many cities
-- The epidemic of opioid abuse, which kills more people in one year (16,000+) than 5 World Trade   Center attacks and a Titanic sinking.

If you are on an academic calendar, this is a special time of year, a bittersweet time.  It is the end of the year, the turning of the cycle. The students you have taught for the last four years or three years or five years are graduating.

This year (because I was voted "Outstanding Professor" by the graduates), I get to play a role in graduation. Specifically, I get to hood them as they walk the stage and get their degrees.

I've done this before, and it is a remarkable experience, an emotional one. One of those emotions is joy, of course, but also loss.

The years go by quickly.

Yeah, it is the Donald Trump kids' song! I find this oddly mesmerizing.

David Best captured their futility in haiku:

The Twins suck eggs.
That is all. // Not a haiku?
Guess we're 0 for 10.

Sigh. It is not looking good in Twin Town.  Meanwhile, St. Paul resident Susan Stabile chose to look to the past:

Cleon Jones in left,
Tommy Agee in center,
Swoboda in right.

The Amazing Mets!
They were the team of my youth.
What more can I say?

Earlier this week, I went to hear a trio of string quartets  perform at Carnegie Hall. They had spent the week being mentored by the Kronos Quartet, and were thrilled to have the chance to perform what they had learned.

The cello is a remarkable instrument, capable of many voices. It does not seem easy to play; it is an ungainly size and shape, so no one looks particularly elegant holding it. That is, at least until they start to play. Then it goes (in the right hands) from awkward to mesmerizing, in an instant.

The last group, the Friction Quartet from San Francisco, was fronted by two violinists who switched off playing first violin-- they literally switched seats periodically. Both are emotional, talented players. Meanwhile, the cellist seemed impassive, like the John Entwhistle of the group. But not for long. There was a passage that spoke to him, and in a spare silence you could hear him catch his breath before launching in. 

In a way, it was that negative space-- that silence before the passion-- that made it powerful. Good music, like good painting, is conscious of that negative space, the blank spot.  

It is something I wish that preachers used more often. They (we?) seem generally afraid of silence, at least when they are in the pulpit with everyone looking up.  It seems like a perfect space, though, to bring in that moment of art. Jesus did that, after all.  He will ponder a situation, then write in the dirt. We don't find out what he writes, though, and maybe that is as it should be. It is that negative space, the breath of cellist.

I like them. But I'm not sure why their genre is called "math rock."

Yeah, it started when I wasn't looking. That seems to happen every year! Of course, part of that is from living in Minnesota, where we are still using the sled dogs this time of year.

To people like IPLawGuy, of course, it is a big deal. So let's haiku about that this week. Here, I will go first:

I still here his voice:
Ernie Harwell calling it
I sit on a swing.

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable formula and have some fun!

Today is a big day: It's the release date for Ron Fournier's book Love That Boy: What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me About a Parent's Expectations. This book is going to be important to a lot of people. You can get it here, or at bookstores starting today.

Regular readers of this blog know that Ron and I go way back; when we were 17 we co-edited the school paper and ran near-identical times on the cross-country and track teams.  We took the bus to Iowa City to attend the Iowa Young Writer's Studio, collecting adventures along the way.  We have stayed in touch even as our paths diverged and then converged again, and lately we have even collaborated.  Now, it seems, we are publishing memoirs in the same year.

Though, it might be that his is better. I have read Love That Boy, and was deeply affected by it. It's not a re-telling of Ron's remarkable career as a journalist, but rather focuses on his role as a parent. In particular, it lays out some of the joys and challenges of raising his third child and only son, Tyler, who has Asperger's Syndrome.  I had the pleasure of reading the book a few months ago.

Too often, these stories turn into a celebration of the virtue of the parent and a lament for the troubles he or she faced. There is none of that here, as those who know Ron's writing would well know. He is a rare commentator in that he admits his own mistakes and frailties up front, yet is fearless in confronting the powerful.  The same spirit animates this more personal story arc, in that he describes his stumbles and errors as part of a richer tale that he knows is grander than himself. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are characters in the book-- important ones-- but not as important as Tyler or the towering figure of Ron's father, a Detroit cop who made sense in a time and place (Detroit in the 1970's) that often lacked those figures. I knew Ron's dad, and he made a strong impression on me: when I thought of a police officer, I thought of him, and when I went into law enforcement it was in my mind that I was going to be working in league with people like Mr. Fournier. Sometimes, that was true.

Ron Fournier could sit around and tell war stories about famous people for days, if he was that kind of person. He's not, though, and it is the human scale of this very human story that makes it important and real and moving. It's not about a famous guy and the people he met. It's about a kid with some issues and a dad with some issues, and that's pretty much the deal with us all when the truth is laid bare.

So, go ahead and buy it.  And, of course, you can pre-order my book now, too. I'm not sure if Jerry Stitzel (the guy pictured between Ron and I in the photo below) has written a book, but if he has I'll bet that would be pretty interesting, too.

I blame the Medievalist for getting this song stuck in my head-- he did it with this haiku!

Stairway to heaven,
In Winslow Arizona,
Like a virgin, hey!



Meanwhile, David Best is all about REM (not a bad thing), and IPLawGuy is obsessed with Donald Trump...

... in the New York Times tomorrow-- Frank Bruni talking about Ron Fournier's book, which comes out on Tuesday. Check it out here.

So, what are you listening to?

I'm kind of fascinated with Babymetal... what all is going on there? I found out about them from IPLawGuy, who has been following them around the country, often dressed in a manga costume. He sends me cassette tapes from various places, so I have been listening. 

Let's haiku about that this week!  Here is mine:

IPLawGuy's fav!
That might be him playing drums
He has that outfit.

Now it is your turn! Just make it 5/7/5 for the syllable count, and have some fun!

So, why is it that we refer to the Democratic candidates by their first names, and Republican candidates by their last names? No one ponders the general election and says "I think it will be Hillary versus Ted." They say it will be "Hillary versus Cruz," instead.

I suppose that in part it is self-definition, though Ted Cruz's signs actually say "Trust Ted." But... no one calls him "Ted" when they are talking about the campaign.

What do you think is up with that?

Four years ago, I got a message from Reginald Dwayne Betts. He told me he was writing a poem about crack, and wanted to talk to me. He was working at Harvard, and I was going there in a few weeks, so we arranged to meet.

It was a remarkable meeting, and his story is equally remarkable:

At the age of 16, Reginald Dwayne Betts and a friend carjacked a man who had fallen asleep in his car at a mall. Betts was charged as an adult and spent more than eight years in prison, where he completed high school and began reading and writing poetry. Today, Betts is a student at Yale Law School and is the author of a memoir and two books of poetry.

His memior, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery/Penguin, 2009), was awarded the 2010 NAACP Image Award for non-fiction. His books of poetry are Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James, 2010) and Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015). Betts is a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow, 2011 Radcliffe Fellow, and 2012 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. In 2012, Betts was appointed to the Coordinating Council of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention by President Obama. He is a graduate of Prince George’s Community College, the University of Maryland and the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College.

His latest book of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era, is a startling volume. He asked me to blurb it, and this is what I said: "Dwayne Betts describes my field, criminal law, as 'the business of human tragedy.' He's right. In Bastards of the Reagan Era, Betts does a remarkable job of describing the precise shape of that tragedy. It comes at the right moment, too, as many Americans are straining to see something beyond 'guilty' and 'prisoner' when they look at criminal law. Betts is a great poet, and a witness to truths that have for too long been shrouded in media fables and easy politics.”

Tomorrow, he will be reading from the book and talking to us at UST law school-- Room 235 from 12:30 to 1:30. It is free, and all are welcome!

Ah, a fine crop of haiku this week!  I found it easy to visualize David Best's:

All the contents of
the garage were moved to make
way for new shelving.

Father came and built.
With the help of his son and
his grandson he worked.

The closets were freed
for interior storage,
undoing clutter.

Built shelving from scratch.
Measure twice cut once... then build,
great closet, garage.

Christine's made me want to plant things:

Dried stems dangling,
Cages sit in the corner
Soon, fresh tomatoes

And Renee's made me want to not farm:

In the desert in
Southeast Washington State,the wind began
To blow with a lust

For fresh down seed by
A hapless farmer.My father
Reached for Maalox,drank

Coffee,two sugars and cream
And smoked Winston after Winston.
The dust blew like Oklahoma.

And the Medievalist?  Well, we are not there yet in Minnesota...

Into the closet
Go the jackets, scarves, mittens
Summer in Texas.

So, I know it has been a week of political mayhem, basically-- I have thrown myself into a maelstrom. 

But there is a counterpoint, too. I've decided to do something new, something gentler, something that comes from a different part of me.

I have started to write short stories. They are all about one place, a place I have never been: Lamar, Colorado.  I have written four so far, one of which (the first in the series) will be published tomorrow. Below is one of the others. Characters recur in all of them, so far.  I'm wondering what people think.


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So, I spent the end of the week in DC working for more federal clemency. I spoke at the White House, had other great conversations, and then Friday morning I had a piece in the New York Times titled Obama's Clemency Problem. More importantly, President Obama met and had lunch with some people who have received clemency-- and are living now as productive citizens.

Did any of this work? You won't know, really, until January 20, 2017, when this presidency is over. Still... yesterday afternoon Politico reported White House Promises to Speed Up Clemency Program. So, you gotta hope!

There is another stage to all this; the next administration. Towards that end, Nkechi Taifa and I have a piece in this weeks' New York Amsterdam News, the largest black paper in New York, under the headline If Black Lives Matter, Hillary and Bernie Should Commit to Clemency.

So, it has been an interesting week. Today I have a piece in the New York Times, yesterday I was quoted in the Washington Post, and of course I got to speak at the White House.  As the to the last of these, I will unpack that once we are done with important haiku. Suffice it to say that part of what happened was that the White House Counsel insulted "naysaying law professors," and that later-- in response-- I got to respond in a few minutes that began with the statement "I feel a rant coming on." This is not hyperbole. This actually happened. Also, at the end of the session, Valerie Jarrett quoted what I said, which wasn't so much of a rant. (All of this was on a live cast, so it must be out there somewhere).  So there was that.

Anyways, let's get out a good spring haiku topic. How about this: The things we drag out of the closet in the spring. Maybe clothes, sports equipment, gardening stuff, whatever. Here, I will go first:

Linen is fussy
So much care it requires!
Save it for warm days.

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable recipe and have some fun!