Inch Eleven: A Reread

 Because of things going on this week, I knew last week that I needed a book that was lightweight and that I could throw in a bag without worrying about it getting rumpled or crumpled. A few weeks before, stopping at one of the several Little Free Libraries that are between our house and my dad's apartment in Assisted Living, I saw One L and pulled it out. It is a paperback, already worn around the edges, and fits what I need. 

Oh my. Talk about memories flooding through me.

I first read One L, Scott Turow's account of his first year at Harvard Law School (1975-1976) in 1978. Given that the book came out in 1977, my copy may have been a first edition. I did not buy the book. Rather, my then father-in-law, the late, great (I mean that) Sidney I. Lezak, gave it to me, writing on the inside, "The best is yet to come, Sid." (Yes, Sid was a lawyer, to say the least.) I was beginning law school in the fall of that year, and he wanted me to know he was supportive.

I read One L when I got it. I read it several times over the following years. Years later, I  may have sold it, or donated it, or neither. It no longer had its dust jacket; a later spouse abhorred dust jackets and proceeded to denude any and all books in our home wearing one. (He also resented that I still had a book signed by my former father-in-law, but no need to rehash that issue.) 

This month, probably right around now, marks 45 years since I graduated from law school. I remember our commencement speaker—the renowned civil procedure specialist and legal ethicist Geoffrey Hazard—not because of what he spoke about, but because he was a close friend of Sid's and his son Jim and I were friends. (I have no idea what Geoff spoke about.) I remember being relieved that law school was done, done, done. 

This copy was also bought as a gift for a to-be law student. The front page is dated 12/05 and is to "Mary." It reads "May you study hard so you may achieve your dreams. This law primer is in my opinion, one of the finest works that encapsulates the first year of law school. Remember that you may achieve anything that you desire. God bless you!" I don't know if Mary has been the sole owner of the book for the last 21 years, but on flipping through it, I see sections underlined and occasional marginal notes in both pencil and ink, including one, undoubtedly Mary's, where she wrote "I wonder what it is like in 2006?" (reacting to Turow's commentary towards the end that law schools were changing in their approaches, especially with younger and more diverse faculties). 

On the verge of rereading One L again, I am wondering what my response to it will be 48 years later after that first read, and 45 years after graduating. Almost every professor I had back then, some of whom would have fit right into Turow's account, has retired; I just got an email that one of the youngest professors of my era is now retiring. (Most of my former professors have also since died.) To the extent any of us in my class respond to calls for Class Notes, most of my classmates have, like me, also retired. 

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." (And yes, it was 1977 when we first read those lines.)

Let's see what galaxies, if any, One L transports me to. 

Inch Ten: The 2026 Garden Season Begins

How about a pot of tomatoes? 

And what a beginning it was!

Between all the "stuff" going on around here (which I have described from time to time) and concerts and visitors and anything else we had going on, I didn't have a whole lot of bandwidth for gardening. Yes, I'd bought some seeds, yes, we'd gone out to our very favorite locally owned farm center (Miller's Country Gardens) and bought pepper, tomato, and red cabbage starts several days back, but...yeah. That was about all the farther we had gotten, with the exception of Warren tilling the kitchen garden, the 10 x 16 plot that will be THE garden this year. 

The plants from Miller's waiting for their time

Last weekend Warren gently nudged me. "Maybe this is a good weekend to get the garden going."

Yeah, it probably was. And so we did, first going to our local Meijer for potting soil (more for flower pots, but needed all the same) and compost. 

And marigolds, of course, for bordering the garden.

In keeping with discoveries (and lessons learned) of years past, I did NOT indulge in tomatoes. Three Early Girl and two Husky Cherries, one of which is in a pot. In they went, nice and quiet.

Tomatoes in (except for the pot; you can see it above)

The peppers and cabbages followed suit. Three cabbages, all in a row; 13 peppers, all sweet. Warren then raked off a bed for lettuce on the far side, and one for basil. These are on the left side as you look at the photo below.

Saturday's efforts

The very back of the garden, with a metal pole temporarily marking the area, we (I) reserved for flowers: zinnias and bee/pollinator mixes. But after Saturday's efforts, I looked at Warren and said, "I can't do anything more today."

And I couldn't. I was exhausted. I was feeling every minute of 70 years old and then some. I was sad a bit about that, but also realistic. Yeah, I'm 70 chronologically, but closer to my early 80s physiologically thanks to 22 years of cancer. And yes, that makes me disabled to boot! 

How disabled? I got those plants in using a gardening stool to sit on, because kneeling or bending over 20 times was 20 times too many.

That being said, I finished it off in fine style on Sunday. 40 marigolds planted along the border, and the flower seeds hand-sown with joy. Again, I had to sit on the gardening stool to get those marigolds in, but it was with great pleasure I tamped No. 40 down and announced "Done!" 

Warren and I did some more yard-related work on Sunday, which resulted in a new holly bush being planted in the front of the house (a sentimental favorite for Warren; the one that died over the winter had been planted by his mother, Ellen, decades ago). Both of us hit Sunday early evening worn out but satisfied. 

There are still seeds, including a hefty amount of cosmos seeds I collected last fall. We will get the cosmos broadcast; Warren wants to move them to a backyard flower bed where we can see their brilliant colors easily from the house. As for the other seeds...well, they may wait until next year's garden.

But the vegetable garden is in. The plants look happy and are standing up straight. Yes, there is more work to be done in the other flower/plant beds, but the vegetable garden is in.

And that is enough for now! 

Waiting to grow

Inch Nine: Music To My Ears

"Jupiter" at the Hannover Proms 2014

As I have written about a lot over the last several weeks (months?), I have a lot on my plate. A lot? At times, it is as if food is dropping off my plate onto the floor, while a smiling server ladles on more food. That being stated, I think I am doing better at taking time—not as much as I need and never as much as I want—for me me me.

One way I am doing this is that I have added a short (and very simple) yoga routine to my mornings and have added a longer (and still very simple) tai chi routine to my evenings. The morning yoga helps me pull myself together before diving into my day, and the evening tai chi (which I absolutely love and will never be able to thank my friend Tani enough for suggesting it) helps me put the day behind me. 

Another way I let go? I listen to "Jupiter" from Gustav Holst's work, The Planets. But I just don't listen to the piece; I watch it on YouTube. And, to be more precise, I watch/listen to one specific performance of it: the 2014 (yes, a lifetime ago) performance by the NDR Radiophilharmonie, conducted by Andrew Manze. 

Yes, I know, I know. There are lots of recordings of "Jupiter" out there, including by some Big Names. But this is the one I return to daily at least once, sometimes more. I love watching the musicians lean into the music; I love seeing Manze's sheer joy on the podium. 

Listening to this helps center me. I play it in my head when I walk. I play it in my head when I go to bed. It is playing in my head right now as I type these words.

For a household where one of us has made and continues to make a living in music for 50 years, we don't have a lot of music playing. If Warren is preparing for a concert, he will listen to the works while studying his score, and when he was preparing his classes, he would listen to short excerpts of this or that, but otherwise, he does not listen to music. And I never listened to a lot of music myself. So for me to listen to "Jupiter" repeatedly has been a seismic shift in the home. 

Maybe because of my listening to Jupiter, maybe because of the weight of some of the days, I have let a little bit more music into my ears and into my life. What, you ask? About anything that David Byrne just performed at Coachella (excellent music for peeling and dicing a boatload of apples last week) and "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Why those selections? Byrne is because I always liked Talking Heads and, after seeing a brief reference to Byrne's Coachella performance, I had to try one song. And then another. And then another. And Queen? Queen is because way back in my past, another lifetime ago, I used to write a monthly article for our then local paper on downtown architecture. I was in private practice, I was supporting two households, I was (no surprise) overextended on too many fronts, and often the only time I had to write (my articles ran 2200+ words) was after 11:00 p.m. Never (NEVER) a night owl, but with too much on my plate (hmmn, that sounds familiar) to get up early to write, I would put on headphones, pop in and turn up Queen's Greatest Hits (recommended by my son Ben), and crank out the article. Those songs, while probably doing significant damage to my hearing, were the stimulant I needed. Those tunes are undoubtedly hardwired into my memory and something last week triggered "Don't Stop Me Now." I found it, I listened to it, and I am now pulling it up every now and then.

"Jupiter," Byrne, and Queen. Music to my ears, indeed. 

Inch Eight: Poetry Month and a G.O.A.T.

One of my Sandburg books; yes, I own others

Warren has been teaching Music Appreciation for Non-Music Majors at Ohio Wesleyan this past year; the last class was yesterday. He has enjoyed it immensely and has already been asked back to teach again next year. And, as a true teacher who understands that students may teach the teacher, Warren has learned much from his young students. One of the things he learned this semester was G.O.A.T. when one student called Mozart a G.O.A.T. 

Warren was baffled. "Mozart is a goat?," he asked, thinking of the barnyard animal. "No!" the student replied, and then explained the acronym. (Warren loved it and then incorporated it into his slides: "Beethoven: Another G.O.A.T." and (my favorite): "Rite of Spring: A G.R.O.A.T.") (The R stands for "Riot.")

With a nod to Warren's experience, I am paying homage to a poet I consider a G.O.A.T. as we close out National Poetry Month. (In looking back, I realize I used to give much more writing time and depth to National Poetry Month; I have unintentionally left it by the wayside.)

My G.O.A.T. in poetry? Carl Sandburg. Sandburg was a contemporary of Robert Frost (no small poet there either) and the two of them, more on Frost's side than Sandburg's, had a running competition throughout their careers. Frost achieved four Pulitzers, all for poetry, and remains the only poet to do so, but Sandburg irked him by, in addition to winning two for poetry, by winning one for his four-volume history, Lincoln: The War Years. 

Me? I love Sandburg for his voice. I love him for seeing and capturing this country in his words. The Lincoln work is monumental. His poetry is monumental. I even own (newly acquired from a Little Free Library in our community) Rootabaga Stories, his creation and telling of American fairy tales instead of retelling European ones.

An amazing LFL find! 

We have been to Sandburg's grave in 2020; his ashes are under a rock at his childhood home in Galesburg, Illinois. And, as I noted in a long ago blog, even though I knew Sandburg had died in 1967, I burst into tears when I finished the Penelope Niven biography of him back in 2014. 

Sandburg and Frost are part of the deep past. Given changes in curriculum nationwide, I would be stunned if either is still read in high school. (I wrote in 2014 about the 2007 vandalization of Frost's home by teens and none of them knowing who Frost was.) And I understand that: poetry does not stand still and there have been decades of great poets since their era. But I also understand that when poetry is cut to the bare bone in curricula, we all are poorer. 

But I am old enough that I know who those poets are and what they gave us. And so here's to Carl Sandburg—okay, and Robert Frost too—for giving us the poetry that stirred them to stir us. 

And that is a good thing to remember—the power of poetry to stir us—as we close out National Poetry Month. 

Inch Seven: Commonplace Books

My commonplace books, 1986 to present

I read a lot. A. Lot. I typically read 200 or more books a year, as well as various magazines, newspapers clippings sent by my dear friend Katrina, writers on Substack, and other blogs. 

I love to read. 

And, as I have written about before, I have been filling commonplace books with quotes collected from all that reading since 1986. (I had earlier commonplace books from the 1970s, but those went away.) I just started Volume 6 this year.

A commonplace book is a longstanding and highly entrenched way for a person to keep information of all kinds, often quotes, sometimes but not always in a notebook. In my case, I capture quotes. (Okay, there's an occasional cartoon or photo, but otherwise just quotes.) 

Commonplace books date back two centuries. Who kept them? Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau. Mark Twain. Thomas Hardy. Ronald Reagan. Virginia Woolf. Sherlock Holmes (although I do not know if his creator did). The list is endless.

Last week, I wrote about soldiering on. There's been a lot of it. I have had lots of days where EVERYONE'S needs crowd in front of mine.

But, in the mist of all this soldiering on, I came across a gem of a quote to hang my hat, or my heart, on. It from Sara Conklin's weekly email for her site "Frozen Pennies." Sara wrote:

You don't need a full reset to feel better in your life. You just need to stop abandoning yourself in the middle of it. 

"You just need to stop abandoning yourself in the middle of it." 

Did I save that quote in Volume 6?

You betcha.

 As is becoming more of a habit (once again), I am penning these words out (truly penning, not typing) Tuesday evening. The rest of the evening (it is 8:00 p.m.)? Starting to plan this year's garden by reviewing my notes about last year, and then turning to my current read: Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.

I'm not abandoning myself tonight. 

Inch Six: Soldiering On

Why the oval pan? Because an 8x13 oval will do for a recipe calling for a 9" square pan, and I see no reason to go out and get a pan size that I have seen called for only TWICE in the last 25 years! 

"Soldier on." Many (most? some?) of us know that phrase. It means to keep on keep on keeping on, no matter what the obstacles, no matter what the weather (figuratively or literally), no matter what.

In looking for the origin of that phrase, I expected to find something dating back to WWII or maybe even WWI. Nope. The phrase came into usage in this country in the early 1950s, possibly (probably) in response to the Korean War. That was a war that had no clear goal; that was the war where our country's soldiers were stuck in mud and brutal winter; that was a war that Chaim Potok captured the trudgery so clearly in his novel The Book of Lights (and Potok served as an Army chaplain in South Korea after the war).  

Lately that phrase has been coming to my mind regularly. Both Warren and I have a tremendous capacity to soldier on on our various obligations. Warren is involved in at least six (Six!—Count 'em—Six!) major endeavors right now. Mine are not so numerous, but sometimes just as time consuming. 

Sometimes it would be nice just to say "Not now." 

I'm not talking about the inability to limit my commitments. I have no problem saying "no thank you" to most social interactions, any board invitations, and a whole bunch of other things. I'm talking about the commitments that are a part of me: Dad stuff, Legal Clinic stuff, other family stuff. Oh, and my own medical stuff. 

So why am I whining since I truly cut out that extraneous "stuff"?

Because I am tired of soldiering on. I know I don't have a choice (well, a moral choice, that is) when it comes to Dad, for example. I can accept that.

But I want to go away. not forever, just for a bit.

In a recent phone call with my son Ben, when I said we would not be coming out there this summer—too many obligations, with his Grandpa Dale being one of them—Ben immediately responded.

"Oh, I get it, Mom, I get it." (They lead a busy, overpacked life out there, so Ben does get it.)

I do too. All the same, it hit me hard when, paging through past blog posts, I saw one noting that 2020 and the pandemic lockdown made it the first year since 2013, when Ramona was still LITTLE, that we would not see her either here or out there. 

Oh.

We used to travel more, and just not to the Pacific Northwest. Heck, I used to travel more.

Soldier on.

And most days, trust me, we both do in this household without feeling the weight of that concept weighing us down. And how do I know that? Because Warren had a birthday a few days ago and I made the cake pictured above! No soldiering on there: just joy. 

Inch Five: A New Number

That's an exclamation point on the end! 

Last Friday, I turned 70.

70. 

That was a number, given my initial diagnosis of multiple myeloma (an incurable bone marrow cancer) in 2004, that I never expected to reach.

Ever.

And there have been major health issues since that initial diagnosis that made 70 unlikely. The initial stem cell transplants in 2005 that failed within 90 days? I learned years later that failure changed my prognosis to 18 months. Maybe.

70.

As with many cancers and other terminal illnesses, I have had many times, some chronicled in this blog and all in my personal medical notes, where my overall health declined and the myeloma increased.

70.

And let's not forget my spectacular non-cancer hospitalization in 2023, where I coded in front of my dear Warren, and my less spectacular but still splashy one in 2025.

70.

When I was diagnosed, Sam was 14. I hoped to live long enough to see him reach 18, so my ex-spouse would not be his sole custodian. Sam will be 36 this June.

70.

When I was diagnosed, Ben was just wrapping up his first semester of college. He is now 40, married to Alix for the past almost 16 years, and the father of Orlando and Ramona. 

70.

I never expected to live long enough to see (assuming they were in the cards) grandchildren, let alone the three (don't forget Lyrick!) we have and a 4th one (Warren's daughter) on the way.

70.

20 years ago this summer, Warren and I started to explore a relationship. We had a long, heartfelt, serious discussion (while eating homemade carrot cake in the lot at a grain elevator/railroad crossing in nearby Radnor) about my health. I knew I already loved him dearly, but did not want him or us to go any further without him hearing the scope of my health and my medical needs. Warren listened quietly, then said, "I'm already there for you as your friend. Why would that change?" He made it clear that our being a couple would only deepen that commitment. And he has shown that every single day since.

70.

My birthday (and the days leading up to and then the days after) was filled with texts and cards and emails and calls from all over. The April Justice Bus was the day before and I got birthday hugs from my colleagues. The Day itself included a front door chorus of former coworkers from Juvenile/Probate Court that our friend and neighbor (and judge) Dave had gathered and walked over to our house to sing "Happy Birthday." Later that day, our friend (and conductor and internally known trombonist) Jaime called me and serenaded me on trombone ("Happy Birthday," of course) and then was joined by his dear wife and mother-in-law to shower me with love and birthday wishes.

70.

Alice's Clay Contribution

Our neighbors on one side made me a loaf of "70 bread," and their daughter Alice made me a 70 in polymer clay. 

70.

Birthday Peeps! 

Our neighbors on the other side had me over for tea, Peeps, and a candle to blow out. That sash I am wearing? Dear friends from long ago Stockton days sent that, knowing I was not a "tiara girl."

Sparkly sash and all! 

70.

So here I am, at an age I never thought I would see, and savoring the sweet time.

70.