Inch Eleven and a Half: Another Piece of the Past

Work by Brian Blum ©1980 

In my last post, I reached back to law school days after finding a copy of One L in one of our local Little Free Libraries. (And yes, it is bringing back memories of that whole first year experience.) At about the same time, I received an email from the law school announcing upcoming faculty retirements. One of the names, quite possibly the last professor I had decades ago who is still teaching, was on the list.

It has been 45 years, after all.

And, it turns out I have an unexpected tie back to my law school past beyond just recognizing that name.The retiring professor, Brian Blum, was (and perhaps still is) an artist. I am not talking about his ability to teach law (although it looks as if he had a long and distinguished career); I mean he was an artist in the traditional meaning of the word. And I have had one of his works in my possession for the last 45 or 46 years.

Not unlike my first copy of One L, the art piece came to me courtesy of my late father-in-law, Sid Lezak. I believe he and his wife Muriel had me and my then husband (their son) over for a meal with Brian Blum. Don't ask me why; there was some connection, possibly South Africa, that resulted in this meal. Sid knew Blum was also an artist and, if shaky memory serves me, asked him to bring some of his works to the house. My birthday was in the vicinity of that evening, and Sid told me to "choose one," gifting it to me on the spot.

I did choose and my Blum original has traveled many, many miles and many, many years with me ever since. That's it at the start of this post.

In recent years, as I begin to sort through possessions and think about what I want to pass on to my friends and family, I have thought of reaching out to Professor Blum and asking him if he would like his work back. Seeing the notice about his retirement spurred me to write him an email, telling him of how it is that I have one of his pieces, and asking him if he would like to have it back for his family or have me donate it to the law school in his honor. 

I then took a deep breath and hit "send."

It is a holiday weekend and I hope that NO professors are reading their email (the year is over), especially a retiring one. But I admit I hope that I do get a response. And if he says he would love it back, I look forward to packaging it carefully and shipping it back, carrying more long ago law school memories with it as it goes.

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.