Goodbye To All That

The new courthouse (photo by Delaware County) 

Our county is getting a new county courthouse for the first time since 1874. It opens officially this coming Monday, with a brief flag raising ceremony at 7:45; public open house to follow in December. (Our county Juvenile/Probate Court, which is where I work, is not moving into the new building. We are housed next door in the newish County Building.)

For the last several weeks, but especially this week, office and court staffs have been busy moving from the old to the new. Earlier in the week this was the scene behind the old courthouse:

Moving Day (photo by Delaware County) 

Stair detail in the old courthouse. Trust me, not in the new! 

I toured the new building, or much of it, earlier this week. It is all sleek lines and neutral colors: buff, sand, gray. The courtrooms feel amazingly large compared to the old ones. The view to the east and north from the corner where the glass north wall meets the glass portion of the east wall on the fifth floor is stupendous and one that I will return to, camera in hand, from time to time. But aside from taking an occasional photo, I doubt I will spend much time in the new courthouse. I don't practice anymore and I am no longer involved in Common Pleas projects, such as the felony mental health docket.

I knew that after this Friday just past, the old courthouse would be locked until it was rehabbed and repurposed. Early Friday afternoon I went over to the old courthouse, wanting one last look. The deputy at the security point told me that everything was closed. "I know," I said. I told him I was an attorney and wanted just one last look. He waved me through: "Be my guest."

I have a lot of hours and a lot of memories in that building. Before I became a lawyer, if I was in town for Election Night, I would join hundreds of others on the first floor watching the returns. The Board of Elections staff would count the ballots by hand as each precinct box came in and then post handwritten tallies on the walls. I met the attorney who would become my mentor at Election Night when he ran for City Council. My son Ben and I stayed long and late one Election Night making sure the school levy to build the new middle school, a building he would not even attend as it would open when he was in high school, passed.

Compared to colleagues of mine who practiced criminal law, I spent relatively few hours in the

THE courtroom (photo by David Hejmanowski)

courtrooms. The courtroom where I did my first (and about only) major civil trial, the old, old Probate and Juvenile courtroom, was rebuilt into a larger courtroom years ago. But the main courtroom on second floor still looks relatively the same as it did when I first came to town. My friend Judy Maxwell commented on this photo: "This is THE Courtroom that I practiced in when we first moved to Delaware in 1988. Back in those days, Henry E. Shaw, Jr. was the General Division Judge, and Thomas E. Louden was the Probate/Juvenile Division Judge."

Yes, they were. Judge Shaw was infamous for his tirades from the bench. I once saw him tell an attorney for Conrail who was lax about responding to our motion for discovery to comply immediately lest the Court shut down the entire track through Delaware County. The attorney, new to our county, made the mistake of opening his mouth to reply to Judge Shaw, which merely inflamed the matter. Used to Judge Shaw's ways by then, I made sure to keep my eyes down and on the papers in front of me. And Tom Louden, who was one of the gentlest of judges (and the worst mumbler ever when he was on the bench) is the only judge who ever had to reprimand me and opposing counsel for arguing with one another before him in a hearing. That all happened in this courthouse.

I went into the main courtroom for a few minutes. The lights were off. The pictures of previous

The view from Main Courtroom to hallway on the last day

judges were still on the walls. I did not disturb the dark nor the memories.

As I came downstairs one last time to leave the building, I ran into a good friend and colleague, David Laughlin, a DR magistrate who earlier that day had held what was probably the last evidentiary hearing ever in the old courthouse. We talked for several minutes, much of it about the courthouse, and then said goodbye with the kind of hug you give someone after a memorial service. David commented later on Facebook: "That's what I will take as memories...the great conversations with terrific attorneys such as you...that place facilitated practicing law the way it should be...with the collegiality and great relationships while helping people...the contacts and talks and stories that make such good memories."


Indeed.

As I walked back out past checkpoint, I thanked the deputy who'd waved me in an hour earlier. "No problem" he called as I walked through to the double doors to the outside, out of the past and into the now.

The old courthouse (photo by Delaware County)

Small Moment

Still in black and white mode.

Even the ironing looks dreamy.

Black and White

My first camera was a simple box camera, plastic, with a silvery cavity for a flash bulb.  I think my mom sent away for it: 50 cents and a box top back in the very late 1960s. My best friend Cindy got the very same camera, if memory serves me. That summer, our moms were 4-H leaders in a pilot photography project, and Cindy and I started down the path of learning the basics of photography.

Everything was black and white back in those days. I don't know if Kodak (because it was all Kodak back then) even made color film for that camera. If Kodak did, black and white film would have been infinitely cheaper both to buy and to process. Besides, as a 4-Her, we were not allowed to use color film in Photography 1. Oh no: only black and white. (Color film was not allowed until Photography 3 or 4 back then.)

So everything was shot in black and white. Paul Simon to the contrary, everything looked good in black and white. Eventually, I started using my dad's 35mm camera (he had brought it home from Japan in 1954) and I remember the thrill of using Tri-X film: still black and white, but faster, for action shots. Tri-X was grainier when you shot landscapes; I loved that aspect of it too. In those long past days, by my last years in 4-H and high school, I learned to develop my own film (black and white). I bought an old used enlarger and took over my grandmother's bathroom every few Saturdays to develop and print my own work.

That was real magic. There was the tang of chemicals in the air, there was the magic of sliding a piece of exposed photographic paper into the developer tray and watching the images form out of nothing under the water. It was like watching dreams develop.

Eventually, of course, color came. Fuji film came, 4-H let us shoot and exhibit in color, and black and white faded away in my albums. It was all color all the time.

Fast forward to the digital era, in which I have been participating for not quite a decade now. Everything is color. Bigger, brighter, my god, look at the detail (and I just have a simple point and shoot).

Until this week. This week is when my brother Mark tagged me on Facebook: seven days of black and white photos, ordinary items, no titles, no explanations. Go.

It took me a half hour of fooling with the camera to find how to do black and white. But I figured it out and I have been posting black and white photos.

My friend Cindy—the very same Cindy—and I have been emailing back and forth about the experience for the last few days:

          April: LOTS of memories. LOTS AND LOTS of memories--remember early 4-H when we only did black and white? I forgot (until I was changing the colors on my camera) how beautiful it can be. How dreamy.  I MISS FILM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

         Cindy: I have been seeing the black & whites!  Love them!!!  I remember you developing black & white pictures in the bathroom on Flax street!!!  Remember that?!!!!

         April: Oh yeah! I couldn't sleep last night and so started thinking about film and I thought all about Flax Street. It was magic to watch those photos form out of the air.  Am really, really intrigued with dropping back into black and white world. 

         Cindy: YES, Black & White World!!! 

So here I am, back in black and white world for a few days. Maybe for longer. It has been so long since I have shot just for the heck of it. Most of my shots these days are "occasions:" the kids home, a Symphony rehearsal. Maybe a few garden shots here and there, but a lot of time the camera stays in its pouch, up in my study.

But black and white? Just ordinary everyday things? I can do that. I may keep doing that.

And it is still dreamy.

Money Money Money

It is Friday night as I write this out by longhand. Warren is an hour away in a rehearsal with the other orchestra in which he plays. He won't be home until after 11:00 p.m. Tonight is the peak of the Orionid meteor showers; with Warren coming home so late we are planning on going out into the country in the hopes of seeing a few.

Money has been on my mind more than usual as of late. We have family members facing some hardships: a serious medical crisis that will not resolve soon in one branch, the loss of the primary job in the other. There is and will be financial fallout in both. My phone hums all day long with news from the medical front and news from the unemployment front.

These times remind me of my own life over a decade ago, when I was in the middle of a protracted separation (and eventual divorce) that killed me financially, followed immediately by the diagnosis of cancer, which finished destroying any financial stability I hoped to regain post-divorce. Those were  long, hard times, and ended up with my credit destroyed and a bankruptcy under my belt.

I survived it all, with a lot of help from friends and family. Joining my life with Warren was another boost (we do not share accounts; we do share expenses). Acquiring a stable job (I had been an independent contractor) with benefits was also a huge step forward.  Bit by bit, penny by penny, I got back to solid ground.

Looking back from the stability of now, I am grateful for all the help, be it dollars or encouragement. I also learned a valuable lesson: live below my means, however minimal those means may be.

Even today, I look for ways to cut our household spending. Warren and I are not big time consumers as it is, but I can still find adjustments. We have cut our use of the dryer to about one hour every other week. Most of our laundry hangs for 24+ hours on inside clotheslines strung across the basement. We are resisting turning on the furnace until the weather gets markedly colder. Extra blankets at night, an afghan over my lap while I write, corn bags for our toes in bed, passive heat on warmer afternoons: I hope to make it well into November before that furnace goes on.

I've been tracking our grocery spending all year. Through September, we are averaging about $208.00 a month on food and common household items (toilet paper, detergent, that kind of thing). I'm hoping to get it under $200.00/month for the year, but with only three months to go, we'd have to cut a little bit deeper to make that happen. That figure does not include eating out, but we in most months spend less than $20.00 total on eating out.

I did splurge today when shopping at Aldi. [For the uninitiated, Aldi is a German grocery chain that offers limited selections and great prices.] In the meat section were fresh salmon fillets, all set to expire the next day, and all $12.00 off the sticker price (which ran from $18.00 to $22.00). I bought two large ones, each originally $18.00 and change, about 4.7 pounds of fish. My final cost was a little over $13.00 for both, coming in at about $2.60 a pound, a price I have not paid for salmon since I lived in Portland, Oregon almost 40 years ago. The fillets are already cut, wrapped, and in the freezer, except for the slab I am cooking for dinner tomorrow.

Don't think we live a parsimonious lifestyle. I think we live frugally, but with our hands open. (Thank you, Amanda Rigo, for introducing me to the wit and words (and music!) of Amanda Palmer.) I just watch where the dollars go, and make sure they flow to the resources most important to me (Sunday night yoga, Halloween candy to ship to Ramona, a used copy of Carl Sandburg's complete poems).

Back in April, I wrote a post (about money, of course) in which I quoted Thoreau: "keep your accounts on your thumb nail." I still do.

Postscript: We went out last night after Warren came home and sat for some 25 minutes on an empty country road, watching the sky. No meteors (the commentary said they would be best seen "just before dawn"—thanks, but no thanks). But we did see a glorious night sky, we watched Orion rise, and although we are in a populated area and not out west in a remote location, we even saw the Milky Way, a sight that never fails to fill my heart.

Small Moment

We have entered that time of the baseball season that I love the best: playoffs and World Series time. Realize that even this time of year, we don't haul out the television, or stream the game online, or even (for the most part) listen on the radio. Sometimes I'll check the score of a game while it is happening, then turn to other things. It is the idea of the series, that they are happening now, that fuels my passion.

My beloved Chicago Cubs are in the League Championship Series once again after a 5th game win against the Washington Nationals last Thursday. Warren was livestreaming the game part of the evening and I happened to be listening during the 5th inning, which had to qualify as one of the wildest innings in playoff history. I was yelling incoherently—I think some variation of "YES! YES! YES!"—and said to Warren after the side was retired, "I can't listen anymore." So I did not know until the next morning that the Cubs held on and won, propelling them into the LCS.

Last year close to this time the Cubs were bearing down on returning to the World Series for the first time since 1945. Warren and I were out somewhere in Columbus that evening when a text came in from my son Ben:

       Not sure if you are still up but the cubs are 3 outs from                 going [to] the world series

I don't remember whether we were listening to the game when Ben texted but we quickly found it on the radio. That may have been the evening we got back home before the game ended and I told Warren to drive a few blocks more so I could hear them finish. The Cubs won and my phone lit up again:

       They did it! We love you

Indeed the Cubs did it.

I have saved those texts, locking them on my phone and in my heart. They were quick hugs from Benjamin—baseball, love, World Series, the Cubs—across the miles. October once again, I pull them up and reread them:

       They did it! We love you

I love you too, Ben. Here's to this baseball time of year.

Don't Read This Book. Read This Book.

I just read The Best of Us, the new memoir by Joyce Maynard. I first found Maynard when I was 16 and she was 19, when she wrote Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties. I have followed her ever since. The Best of Us is Maynard's account of her life with her husband Jim Barringer: their courtship and marriage in their late 50s, his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, 19 months of treatment, and his death.

Don't read this book. It will break your heart.

Read this book. It will break your heart.

Maynard is, even at her best, a high maintenance individual. She makes it clear in The Best of Us that she can be (and often was) self-centered, demanding, impatient, and a whole host of other less than wonderful characteristics. In the end, she concluded, her husband's cancer and their experiences burned away the dross—the need for constant attention, the need to always have the last word, the needs to be the center of attention, the need to always be right—and brought out the very best in her.

Don't read this book. It will drain you with the ups and downs of their lives as the cancer raged ahead.

Read this book. It will move you by the love and devotion that rose like cream above the nightmare of living with an aggressive cancer.

Two-thirds of the way through The Best of Us, I closed it, looked at Warren, and said, "You cannot read this book. Ever." I was quiet a minute, then said, "Mel [a close friend whose husband has cancer] can't read this book ever either." When Warren asked why, still blinking in surprise at my pronouncement, I added "because it will kill you both."

This book pierced my heart. After finishing it, I threw myself on the bed to think about it. Warren lay down beside me. I thought about what is ahead for both of us. Then I told him I was thinking of the book.

"I'm not surprised."

Then I voiced what has long been in my heart but I have rarely said out loud. "I don't want to leave you."

With that, I started crying. Warren's eyes welled up and tears ran down his face.

"I know you don't."

As I said recently, in the start of an eulogy, all of us are going to die. I know that. But I'm not thinking big universal concepts here. I'm thinking small picture. Personal picture. Our picture.

And that is where The Best of Us triumphs. Maynard's focus is on the small picture, her and her husband's small picture. Because in the end, that's what mattered.

Don't read this book.

Read this book.

Yes, read this book.

Small Moment

The other night, running into my longtime friend Donna at a gala event, she asked me how my basil did this year.

Pretty lousy is how my basil did this year. Even the bees were irked at me.

"I think I still have some left," she replied. She said she would check and if she did...

"Pesto in exchange for basil?"

"Absolutely."

Midday Sunday she texted me that she indeed had basil. "It's on a bag on the porch near the caladium pot."

Well, I didn't know what caladium was (I do now), but I found the bag easily. Pesto making is in my immediate future.

I don't can anymore; I gave my canner to Goodwill and my jars to our Court's Girls Group. I don't do a lot of labor intensive cooking anymore. I do have a lot of containers of bean soup, different kinds, in my freezer, because bean soup is the world's easiest food to make in bulk and then freeze in portions. But I will gladly spend an hour or so tonight making pesto, some to freeze, some to give back to Donna.

Just a small moment. A little friendship. A little community.