Category Archives: Ahimsa
Vacation
I am on vacation, I finally decided the other day, and I am glad to be at rest. Unpaid vacation, true, but my work is also largely unpaid, so that’s no big deal. And though I had an offer today from a spamming stranger to visit a site where I can have ‘content’ generated for this blahg automatically, I will continue to do it the old-fashioned way, tapping letter by letter until the words come out on their spindly legs to go through their opinionated paces. We don’t often stop to think of the miracle of this — 26 symbols, spelling out words that convey enough, properly arranged, to give us information, insight, make us laugh, cry, get mad. “Mad”, there’s a good bit of meaning in three letters.
I try to avoid getting mad, though, of course, it can be a challenge sometimes. I think of that famous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, snapped just as hulking, tortoise backed Jack Ruby lunges forward and pumps a few bullets into Oswald’s guts. Oswald, face and body language, is the picture of physical agony, as the larger of the two cops escorting him is up on his toes, face a mask of shock, completely taken aback. I mention Oswald’s face in the context of explaining why it is so important that I take a vacation right now. Even writing this out may be considered counter-vactionary, and make me eligible for a trip to the gulag of self-flagellation, but I’ve started, and it won’t take long to finish.
I am embarked on a ridiculously difficult mission. It turns out that creating an innovative educational workshop that functions pretty much as designed, and delights and engages the participants everywhere it operates, was the easy part. The hard part is learning to be a salesman, manager, marketing expert, CEO, successful social entrepreneur. The first year was a heady upwards climb, I was constantly thrilled seeing how well the flying machine operated. During that year I was a cheerful and enthusiastic salesman whenever I had the chance, which admittedly, was not often. I found myself at the end of that first year amazed that it had only been a year, it seemed like the fullest, most satisfying year of my life had played out slowly and tastily. One workshop had become three, kindergarten kids proved themselves capable of participating creatively, it was working and everything would work out. Woken from a sound sleep I could have chirped cheerfully about the prospects, as I did to the millionaire media mogul who could have been so helpful at the promised second meeting that was never arranged.
The second year was a downward spiral of hard luck and trouble, although the workshop worked as well as ever and I even refined it a good deal. We went from three sites to zero, got ripped off for ten weeks of work, and found ourselves increasingly frustrated and discouraged. Eventually my resting face took on the look of Oswald’s in that famous photograph whenever I contemplated my chances, which was often. It was just as I finally became Oswald, another famous loner, that a couple of old friends leaped into action, arranging interviews, in the dead of summer, with people at two possible sites for the workshop.
The first interview was a very long shot, on a hot and humid day that turned into a monsoon, talking to an entrepreneurial genius who, although doing great things for the poor community where she grew up (and now owns several houses in) is widely disliked there for her brash, brusque, superior style and for, because of her great success and her drive since her ambitious girlhood, being something of an overbearing know-it-all. She tried to convince me to remake my workshop as something that could be done in a street fair, in an outdoor booth, complete with professionally made banners and a rented tent, to enhance her grand opening (for which she’d received a $100,000 grant)– and to do it for free. I considered it a successful meeting, though I wound up understanding why this pretty, fit, supremely focused social entrepreneur is widely disliked in her neighborhood. It was a success because at the end of the ten rounds of nodding and listening to her I was standing and my face wasn’t a bloody mess. I didn’t look in a mirror, but surely my expression was similar to Oswald’s as I made my way from the meeting, though I remember feeling relief.
The second interview, a month later, was at a much more promising place, a nonprofit that brings Healing Arts into the lives of people who need it, the aged, the mentally disabled, children. Most of their funding, it turns out, is for old people in nursing homes and the mentally ill, but they have a school component and currently operate in a number of schools. I was introduced to one of the directors of this 43 year-old nonprofit by an old friend, a member of the board of my nonprofit startup. She described me in the email as “totally mission driven” and “magical” and she predicted to both of us that our meeting and instant connection would be “magical” too. My old friend and board member instructed me to call her for details, and I did, but she wasn’t interested in the answer to her question about how things are going. She cut me off and told me I’d love her friend and that it was a great opportunity. I remember thinking, after she rang off, that it was too bad she hadn’t thought of this magical connection in the two and a half years we’ve been talking about the difficulty of finding such opportunities. Timing is, as they sometimes say, everything.
I understand the need to be alert, positive, interactive, to listen well, to say less rather than more, at a pitch meeting. I understand that without confidence, optimism and great belief in the value of the product or service you are selling, it is impossible to close the deal. This must also be reflected in your poised body language and intelligently listening facial expression– a cheerful interest, but not laid on so thick as to look fake. I was alert, listened well, was interactive, had the sense the discussion had gone fine, though nothing concrete is so far in the works, it is on me to close some kind of deal, if there is to be one. The door was definitely left open, I’m fairly sure.
Woken from a fitful sleep, urged to a hurry up meeting, on an August afternoon at the program’s desperate low tide, with a woman my friend has known, it turns out, for 11 years or more, just as I am kicked in the balls and wearing the Oswald face much of the time, well, it is not hard to understand why I may have resembled that last photo of Lee Harvey Oswald alive more than I liked as I tried to sell my stalled program to this bright, brusque woman. I read nothing into the abrupt ending of the meeting, she simply stood up, or the turning away, with perfect comic timing, just as I extended my hand to shake her’s.
Once I send off the pitch I promised her, which is virtually ready to go, it’s vacation time for Bonzo. And not a moment too soon.
Seven Miles from home, New York City Style
We spent a lovely day yesterday visiting friends 41 miles (according to the trip odometer) north of here. The ride back was quick and uneventful, until, 7 or 8 miles from home, the hungry cat waiting for his hours’ overdue dinner, the snappy 82 mile roundtrip turned into an exercise in something else.
Brake lights, as far as the eye could see, with the lights of the bridge tolls in sight. Construction on the bridge, why not do it at 10:00 on a Saturday night? This is NY, the attitude is “fuck ’em,” and so they did.
We might have known about it in time to take another route (although a sign on the highway had warned us of construction and delays on the alternate Whitestone), but the device that runs the app that warns us of traffic nightmares was out of power, no car charger with us. As we sat in the mass of idling cars the other navigational device kept cheerfully chirping out its instructions, in an Australian accent. “Continue straight, to toll, then enter Throgs Neck Bridge,” he said again, as Sekhnet struggled to figure out how to mute him. At 10:17, when we stopped, we were 0.4 miles from the toll. The traffic report on the radio was spectacularly short on specifics as we sat among the gas breathing cars.
By 10:30 we’d inched about 0.1 a mile. Announcing this annoyed Sekhnet, who said nothing at first, but snarled when I made the same announcement at 10:40– ten minutes, another 0.1 of a mile. A quick calculation revealed that we were not actually stopped, but traveling at a peppy one mile an hour. We’d be through the toll by 11:00 at that rate, I thought conservatively. But the estimate turned out to have been optimistic, as the several right lanes unaccountably continued moving and merging in front of our stalled lane (the two right lanes on the bridge were closed, we were in the lane that was open– go figure). We didn’t pass through the tolls until 11:30. It took about ninety minutes, with five or six lanes merging to two, and then one, before we reached the point on the bridge where the lanes reopened and traffic spread out and resumed at 55 mph.
Less than ten minutes later we were home, the cat eating with great gusto as each of us hurried off to a bathroom.
Encouragement
Notice how the word “courage” is the center of that word. To encourage is to give courage. Courage is the most important tool we need to forge through difficulty. Being discouraged is the end, temporarily or permanently, of one’s ability to soldier on.
Usually, weighed down with our own troubles, distracted by many distractions, we don’t notice how easy and essential encouragement is. We may think that nobody encourages us, and we do fine, so what the hell?
I get a call from an old friend whenever his wife, an active volcano, erupts. She broke the stained glass window of the room he rents to escape from her wrath. I hear the story, try to be sympathetic, but do I really encourage him? I give him advice about his strategy, tell him why answering her rage with his own anger may not be the best approach. He gets slightly defensive, and it’s hard to blame him. He called for encouragement, he got a bit of possibly helpful, definitely unwanted, advice.
“You are in a war, unfortunately, and every war is different. I think you’re doing a great job finding ways to hold your enemy at bay. I commend you, and strength to your arm,” would have been a more encouraging response.
When I told a friend recently that I, with an idealistic and so far unpaid program to save doomed children, am like the man on the falling plane exhorting others to put their oxygen masks on before helping others– while not wearing my own, I secretly hoped he would disagree. He nodded sadly, thought the image was very apt. It had the opposite of an encouraging effect, no matter how realistic the image might have been.
When a friend is engaged in a difficult or even impossible quest, do we encourage them or do them more of a favor by gently trying to bring them back into the real world, unacceptable as that real world might be? Silence, of course the most obvious option, generally does little to advance either of these mercies.
Gratefulness out of the blue
On the way downtown, to do the animation workshop with a small group of women fighting chronic diseases:
Bellowing, barking, enraged
man paces short track on empty
uptown A platform
screaming and kicking
on the way down
I had to squeeze past
an oblivious young couple
blocking the stairs
with ten feet clear on either side
“excuse me,” I mumbled
not pausing as I passed
“YOU SHOULD SAY ‘EXCUSE ME”!”
the bellicose voice shouted after me
“I did,” I said
a moment before arriving
on the platform to see my train’s
tail lights
disappear into the tunnel
sat and struck up a tune
on the ukulele
man next to me, as soon as I paused,
went into a lusty falsetto improvisation
in another key entirely,
if any.
Zipped the uke back into its bag,
watched the screaming man
across the tracks
bark and dance to the duet
he was performing
with the falsetto singer.
Mercifully,
this super cool train
arrived within a moment
and I am grateful
for that
impersonal mercy.
Then, downtown, moments after my volunteer assistant cancelled at the last possible minute, and it seemed there would be only four of us (two more of the original 8 showed up late), to my great surprise, the five women made like a bunch of kids, working together and coming up with some very cool animation. You can see it here (you might need dropbox to see it. I’ll post it elsewhere soon):
Better Way to Think About A Situation
A situation is what it is, good and bad and also, seen dispassionately, just what it is, with no inclination either way sometimes. Wise people teach us that the way we look at things makes them appear good or bad. As we look, so shall we see. When we look with fear, we see reasons to be afraid. When we look with compassion, it is easier to play nice.
I have a meeting tomorrow that could result in some good things at a time when the signs, laid out like the entrails of animals read by soothsayers at the time of Caesar, would appear to foretell mostly doom. I can tell this, in part, because my friends are at a loss when I myself am at a loss to enthuse about this unusual plan I am pursuing, with modest practical skills, that seems so at odds with the times we live in.
I realize there is no reason to see this meeting in a few hours as a high stakes poker game, though there will be some negotiation. If it is such a game, I could say, I am playing with house money. But that is only a way to rationalize, make myself feel more comfortable at a time when I feel challenged.
Here is a more important thing and a much better frame to look at it through: the energetic assistant of a very successful economic and ecological entrepreneur, based again in the impoverished neighborhood where she grew up, visited wehearyou.net and was excited about what she saw. A meeting was arranged. Tomorrow is the meeting.
I can think about my program, and present it, like this: I have been programming and refining the simplified animation workshop for almost two years now, have worked with around 80 public school kids, in seven or eight workshops, for a total of maybe 140 hours on a once a week basis. It is not a gigantic sample size, but it’s enough to know that every place we do it kids respond enthusiastically and creatively. This is not surprising, it is designed to let them play and learn in a fun, interactive, collaborative setting.
The workshop is non-hierarchic, everybody there is a participant, treated with the same respect, including the adults who are on hand to facilitate. The adults are not teachers, they’re time keepers, organizers, assistants, enthusiastic supporters of the animation the children make. That learning takes place without teachers systematically presenting material is a radical but also very natural notion, play leads to discovery, wanting to do something leads to invention and mastery of the skills needed. Young animals of all kinds play, it is how they master many things they need to know how to do. Human kids are no different, if given the chance to, they love to play. Give children musical instruments, they will begin to play a kind of music.
In the typical American school play, invention, improvisation, dreaming up ideas, is secondary, if it is encouraged anywhere but at recess — the main work is learning to master the materials tested on standardized exams. Exams designed by large educational corporations in a way that ensures many young humans are destined to fail.
I have the animation made by a relatively small sample of kids done in a short once a week time format, so far, and you can find many inventive and enchanting moments in that highly original animation. But what I’ve assembled until now is merely a glimpse at the potential of the program. I am looking for a few places where my philosophy and methods can be worked week after week, over time, where kids can make real progress in animation, teach each other, work on more sustained stories, if they like, really master the technical aspects to the extent that they extend the boundaries of what kids can do. I want people to be amazed, the more cynical among them shocked, at what children can create on their own, with their creativity as motivation and just a little guidance.
People are doing this work here and there. A brilliant and charismatic educational theorist, Sugata Mitra, embedded a computer and track pad in an outside wall of slums in remote Indian villages and illiterate children organized themselves to learn a functional English vocabulary and were soon surfing the internet and playing games. Mitra calls many of the things that happen when a group self-organizes to learn “emergent”. Emergence is the appearance of things not previously thought to be part of the system.
Collaboration, invention, increased attention span, peer-teaching and group problem-solving, are not usually thought of as express goals of a school day or even of an art workshop. Our society stresses individualism and competition and children don’t often get a chance to work together collaboratively over time. Teamwork is needed in team sports and encouraged in that context. It is also necessary for animation.
Children in the animation workshop begin working in small groups very quickly. We encourage it and like it when the teams shift players regularly. Animation is made by a small community of interrelated teams working together. It calls for the integration of many talents and skills, and requires a good deal of learning and peer-teaching to accomplish.
Deceptively simple, what I have tapped into. Now what it needs is fertile ground to plant the seeds and demonstrate the things it can grow into. Tomorrow I may find one such plot in this remote community in the South Bronx. Someone is interested in listening, and I will be interested in listening too.
Enraged customer at the car wash
The weather service had been calling for severe thunderstorms the other day, but as the sky was clear when I set out, and my errand not long, I didn’t go back for rain gear, which in retrospect was a mistake.
The walk home from the store was about 3/4 of a mile and as I hit the bridge on Broadway I saw that I was walking into a dark vault. The sky ahead was dark grey as far as I could see downtown. The entire sky, in every direction ahead of me, looked threatening as a tumor. There were virtually no places to seek shelter between where I was and my apartment, about fifteen minutes away by foot. When I got across the bridge, the first large drops fell. Within a block it began coming down with intent to drench. I made a dash and took refuge in the store attached to the car wash, the only place within several blocks to duck into. I found shelter a moment before the deluge began.
The rain came down like it was looking to flood the earth. Within minutes there was a deep lake in the street in front of the car wash. Cars passing through it sent plumes of water up over the sidewalk. I moved further into the store eventually taking a stool in the back, and I watched the rain, figuring it probably couldn’t rain that hard for much longer. It did, though.
Eventually another guy who’d taken refuge there took the stool next to mine. A moment later we exchanged pleasantries about the weather. He was a sympathetic looking man, slight and brown, looking something like Gandhi, but from the Dominican Republic, he said, his English almost completely unaccented. I’d have guessed his background was Indian, actually.
I told him this kind of summer shower usually doesn’t last very long. I recounted how I’d once been soaked in a very quick summer downpour in NYC making a sprint to beat the rain. I’d been on a bike and when I reached 8th Avenue and 47th Street the skies opened up. Instead of finding cover, I rode like mad and arrived at 47th and 9th Avenue, one block away, drenched, socks and shoes and everything in my pockets soaked, dripping wet. When I entered the place I was going, water running off me, people looked at me in disbelief. I looked behind me to discover the sun was shining brightly, the street hardly even looked wet. I’d learned from that summer shower to duck under something and wait out these flash rains.
But this one continued full-bore for over an hour, and my neighbor and I passed the time in a most pleasant and far-ranging chat while the thunder thundered and the buckets of dirty water fell. At one point an irate customer barged into the store where we were sitting and began screaming at the girl behind the counter. “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!” he screamed several times, snarling and glaring angrily between screams. He was at a loss to make the unfairness of it clear. He turned to scream at one of the African car wash attendants “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!”. As he stormed out to where he car was he shouted it to everyone a couple of times.
Evidently some terribly aggravating thing was being done to him, it was unjust, they’d lied to him and then screwed him and it wasn’t fair. That much seemed clear. But the ferocity of his screaming really was kind of amazing. It was also, I realized, the self-lacerating bellow of helplessness– they are screwing me and there’s nothing I can fucking DO ABOUT IT!
My neighbor and I paused, exchanged philosophical looks, and I said they’d probably promised to do something like change his oil, but had run out of oil filters, and they’d kept him waiting over an hour to give him the disappointing news. He agreed it must have been something like that. As the enraged man passed us on the way to his car, still screaming, I said quietly I hoped he wasn’t going to get a gun. It was the kind of blind rage that, silly as the immediate cause for it might have seemed, if he’d been holding a gun he probably would have used it to try to discharge some rage.
My neighbor opened his eyes a little wider, and said he doubted the guy was going for a gun. I agreed that he was probably right. As it turns out, he was correct and nobody was hurt, except for the man who had been screaming. We chatted for another twenty minutes or so, as the storm continued to rage all around, until one of the workers told us apologetically that it was time to go, they were closing the store. We thanked them for their hospitality, shook hands, introduced ourselves by name for the first time, and headed off in opposite directions to get soaked.
It rained hard for my entire walk home. Luckily I’d thought to take a plastic bag to wrap my electronics in, because I and my groceries got drenched. My phone, wallet and iPod did not get wet. It poured and thundered for a couple of hours, and it was a cold rain. Actually felt a little good to be wet and shivering on a brutally humid day that had recently been about 85 degrees. Once I showered and wrung out my clothes I felt refreshed.
I don’t think anything felt very good that day to the man who’d been treated so unfairly by those otherwise decent folks at the car wash.
A little more love for Florence
I wrote to thank Florence’s children and grandchildren for a wonderful and inspiring celebration of a remarkable and brilliant old friend. I’d been moved and distracted yesterday, when I spoke briefly at the memorial, during one of the breaks in the string ensemble’s performance of some of Florence’s favorite pieces, and wanted to make sure to add these thoughts:
Florence was an inspiration to many people, and to me in particular. Her embrace of every aspect of creativity, and her nurturing of creativity in others, had a deep influence on me. Her gentleness, her wide-ranging intellect, her humor, her love of life and her art work exerted a subtle but strong transformational force. I attribute much of the best of who I am today to her generous, kind, whimsical influence, and her love.
Her beloved little brother told me, under a gentle interrogation, that she took some piano lessons for a while but never got that far on the instrument. Still, this most musical painter’s love of music, and understanding of the underlying geometry of Bach’s music, was so profound that she could effortlessly put a counterpoint melody in exactly the right place against and among the beats and notes in a two part rock guitar jam. It delights me as much now, remembering it, as it did when she sang that invention in real time late one night in the living room on Aberdeen Road, not long before her 90th birthday.
It could be said that her art deserved to be more widely known, and that she should have had some measure of fame and financial security from her brilliant, deep and masterfully executed paintings and other works. Though she would have no doubt liked those things, I don’t think it bothered her very much as she went about her life and work. She had more substantial things on her mind. As Russ pointed out (and as she described in that wonderful piece about the creative benefits she derived from smoking), all of her many interests and loves seemed to focus themselves more and more into that hard to describe source of light and life energy that emanated from and flowed into the center of many of her paintings and her octamandalagons. I watched happily as the mysterious force that Russ described shone out of the images in the slide show, as her favorite music was beautifully played and she was present, smiling, in that room.
I wrote this shortly after she died, and I meant to share it as well:
and two links to Florence’s work and words
A Deadpan Judge
I had a certain reputation, I suppose, that persists to this day, as a man with a conscience who would occasionally work for free. This judge, who had seen me in action working in this capacity, had his friendly court attorney call and pitch me an easy pro bono case. Would I mind if she sent me the file? It would be a one appearance case, and the judge would consider it a great favor if I would consider it, and he would accommodate my schedule. This judge was better than most. We put the case on for a day when I was going to be in Brooklyn anyway and I appeared and met the tenant.
The tenant, who the law did not consider a tenant, was distraught, a man about my age, a combat veteran and a shell of the self he once imagined he might become. He was about to be evicted from his home, the law on the case was open and shut. It was not that he was behind in the rent, he’d been paying it all along, since he’d given up his apartment and moved in to take care of his aging mother almost two years earlier. The judge’s hands were tied. The story was rather simple and unfortunate for him, under the New York City Rent Stabilization Law.
If the tenant had been living with his mother for at least two years prior to her death, or probably also prior to a disability that necessitated admission to a nursing home, he would have had a clear legal right to succeed to the lease his mother had with the landlord, under the same terms. This is called the Right of Succession. He had given up his place and moved into his mother’s apartment to take care of her as her health deteriorated. As her dementia increased he was forced to bathe her, feed her, carry her to and from the toilet, change her diapers and calm her when she got upset. After about a year and a half he could no longer provide all the care she needed and had her admitted to the dementia ward in a public hospital not far from her apartment. The poor person’s version of a nursing home.
“I need you to visit the tenant, his mother, and come back and report to the Court if there is any chance of her moving back into the apartment to live with her son again,” I think is the mission I was given by the judge. The judge was grasping at the last straw to keep this unemployed veteran from becoming homeless because he’d done the right thing for his mother, even if for a few months less than the law required him to do it in situ in the subject premises, her rent stabilized apartment.
The hospital was a fifteen minute walk from the court house. It was spring time, I remember pastel buds on the trees and a carpet of green buds on the shady Brooklyn sidewalks. Birds and squirrels probably went about their business on this mild and sunny day, but I didn’t notice. The man and I spoke as we walked the tree lined streets to the hospital. The conversation was somber as I explained the legal situation and he told me more about his life and limited options.
We walked for what seemed like miles inside the hospital building. The building was like something out of the Ottoman Empire, could have been hundreds of years old, with ringing corridors and a labyrinth-like structure inside. We came at last to the ward where his mother was housed, a ward he visited every day. The nurses greeted him by name, and he smiled back at them. We entered a tidy room that smelled of urine and disinfectant. He approached an old, smooth-faced woman in a wheelchair, pulled a chair next to her and leaned in to put his arm around her. Her expression barely changed as he stroked her back and called her “mommy” and kissed her. She seemed to like this, even as it was clear she had no idea who he was. He began to cry quietly as he held her, tears running down his face. There was no point asking her any questions, I’d arrived too late for that. I probably spoke to the head nurse to confirm the medical situation that was plain enough for a child to see. I said goodbye to the man, who remained with his mother, and walked back to the courthouse alone.
I got back to the court room shortly before the lunch break. As I walked in the judge nodded, raised his eyebrows and motioned for me to come forward. As I did I said “Judge, if I had a heart that could still be broken, it would be in fifty pieces right now.”
He looked at me with sympathy and said “I have no doubt of that, counselor, but I also have no idea what you’re referring to.” He had about fifty other cases before him that day and the details of the one I was there on were not something he could call to mind instantly. I refreshed his recollection and he sighed. We both knew I’d have to surrender the apartment now, and arrangements were made, either that day or on a day a week or two later, with the landlord, a very sympathetic man who owned a small building, and his attorney, who was also pleasant and respectful. I don’t recall the details now, the son probably got a couple of weeks to move out. It must have been on a subsequent court appearance, because I’m quite sure he thanked me and we shook hands.
The Customer is alw…, well, can sometimes be… uh, can I get back to you?
“How can I help you?”
“Well, first, I’d like to access the remaining 5.5 ethics credits I bought from you two years ago,” I say.
“OK, so how many do you need for this cycle?” he asks, drawing his calculator close to figure his commission.
“Before we get to that, I’d like to access the 5.5 credits I already purchased from you. It says in the email you sent me just now ‘Credits Never Expire!’ and I haven’t been allowed to access the remainder of the 12 ethics credits I bought from you.”
“Well, that actually means per two year cycle, but I can see how you could read it that way.”
“It’s not possible to read ‘Credits Never Expire!’ any other way, it’s kind of unambiguous,” I say to my Dedicated CLE Manager.
“Well, in the future it will be specified more clearly what is meant, they’re going to make that more clear…”
“‘Credits Never Expire!’ with an exclamation point and the word ‘never’ in bold, they’re going to explain what that actually means?” I clarify, bitchily, “if I log on and am informed that the remaining credits I purchased, the ones that never expire, are not available to me, you would have to call that false advertising, wouldn’t you?”
At this point he realizes he’s talking to some disgruntled smart ass lawyer who will insist on the supposed plain meaning of the advertising claim that appears, in this guy’s stilted reading, not to be true. False advertising is such a harsh thing to accuse somebody of. Untruthful, or inartfully drafted advertising is not lying, per se, or if it is, why is that my problem? I don’t write the copy. I only get paid when I sell these credits to these lawyers forced to take these courses every two years. What’s he going to argue about next? Riveting Course Content!? These wildly entertaining lectures on the mechanics of legal work are not riveting enough for him? Give me a fucking break.
“Let me get back to you,” he says. “Give me five minutes to get this straightened out.” I know I should have better things to do, and many larger fish to fry at the moment, as another CLE speaker drones on in another window on this computer I’m pecking at, but I can’t help but notice that promise was made more than twenty-five minutes ago and the clock is creeping toward 5 pm on a Friday. I wonder idly what it is that he is straightening out.
“So strict!” they are thinking, “you are so STRICT!!! You really should get a life and be happier, it’s not possible to be healthy being so strict!”
I call back, am asked my name, when I give my name I’m told my Dedicated CLE Manager is assisting another customer and this friendly fellow walks me through the log-in and assures me that my 5.5 credits have been restored. I can’t see them until I try to use them, he tells me, but my account at least is not showing up the way it did when last I checked. Thanks all around and I get on to other things. A moment later the phone rings. My Dedicated CLE Manager, apparently having asked his colleague “did the asshole sound mad?” He got the all clear, we had a pleasant 20 second chat, told each other to take care and on with the rest of today’s fun already in progress.
“So strict!” they are thinking, “you are so STRICT!!! You really should get a life and be happier, it’s not possible to be healthy being so strict!”
gratuitousblahg 