Compulsively Aimless

  Reading the Upper Peninsula My summer ended with a trip to Paradise.  Literally a drive through Paradise, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.)  The drive through Paradise lasted only a couple of minutes but it was part of a 10 day trip wandering the UP--one of the most distinctive landscapes in the Midwest. My wife and I started coming up here when we  wanted a more untamed "Great Lakes" experience from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Our most recent drive connected the rugged landscape with some of my favorite authors and their books.  North of Paradise was Whitefish Point and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. It is a suitably dramatic introduction to Lake Superior. The beach was windswept and littered with enormous trees that had been stripped and bleached into driftwood. Far offshore, a single lake freighter was leaving Whitefish Point, a reminder that this seemingly wild landscape is also part of one of the great commercial waterways of North America. The...

  Life imitates Art. From last August, my piece on Tommy Boy Fest    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gAhekfz_FkOu3MH3HhNOV-6unfoCNKuT/view?usp=sharing

As a lead up to the celebration of our America’s 250th birthday, I attended a conference on one of our lesser known but important founding documents the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Related to that, sharing some beautiful artwork that was created to mark its 150th anniversary. Have a look at these first day envelopes issued by the US Postal Service from 1937.

  Jigsaw Memory You’re in someone’s memory  but they’re not in yours  Contrarwise  --someone is in your memory,  but you’re not in theirs  like a stranger’s photo  you may live on forever in the background  without intention.                    The Reasonable Person (for the lawyer-poets) Once upon a time in the 18th century The law invented the reasonable man. He was neither a saint nor a fool  neither genius nor an imbecile neither paranoid nor careless  he was a man of ordinary prudence a man of common sense. He could be blind, disabled,  a doctor, a lawyer, a factory worker,  act in an emergency act in self-defense or in the heat of passion. He is objective, not a statistic. In modern times,  he evolved to be the reasonable person. The reasonable person would never frolic and detour assume the risk suffer a depraved heart aid and abet break and enter The reasonable pers...

  Another in my never ending series of pointless word games. This time it's repurposing legal terminology from Black's Law Dictionary (Abridged 5th Ed.) asking the question: Indy Band name or Microbrew?   Here's a few of this morning's favorites.  Strict Scrutiny Shadow Docket Corpus Delicti Ultra Vires As Is Attractive Nuisance As Is Depraved Heart Sub Rosa Null and Void Sui Generous  Act of God Force Majeure   Stop and Frisk  Surviving Spouse (if this were a band, their big hit would likely be Alienation of Affection)  A few from Schoenbaum's Admiralty Law  Salvage Charterparty Captains Protest Empty Repo Writ of Marque Perils of the Sea   And a couple to reflect the growing cyber law area. Deep Fakes Logic Bomb