For this ramble I’m going to tell a couple of stories and dip in to the news. Nothing about the virus directly, but maybe a bit about how if certain politicians continue to play fast and loose with the truth they may end up having planted the seeds for their own demise.
Let’s start with the most improbable of the tales to be related in this post – my history as a religious instructor.
All right you people – go ahead and laugh. You know who you are. Go on - get it out of your system.
We can wait.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Are ya finished? Oh – just need a second to catch your breath.
Fine.
Seriously – during the period of time that my sons were preparing for their confirmations in the Catholic Church (sort of like our bar mitzvah but with less language skill involved), I was drafted in to act as one of the “parental assistants”. We were given a series of lesson plans and were supposed to walk the kids through some of the basic concepts of the Church, like how to run an inquisition and perform an exorcism.
Just kidding Father, just kidding. Those things were way above our pay grade.
Honestly the program was very well run, and was relatively free of dogma, the thing that tends to bother me most about the Church. Instead there was a focus on some of the things that make me most able to accept that the practice of religion has value (so long as you guard vigorously against those things that do not, like the aforementioned dogmatism, intolerance and the woman in the pew in front of me who seems to have had a curry that disagreed with her as her last meal). I really think I remain a Catholic for essentially three reasons:
1. I think that there is great value in fostering an early belief in the concept that there is something greater than the self at large in the universe.
2. I think that the human mind is just great enough to organise itself into a structure of beliefs based upon truths revealed through myths, legends, parables and history; and just puny enough to need to.
3. I think lots of people who know me assume that I would not be a religious person, so I retain my faith just to fuck with ‘em.
OK – that last bit is just a crude way of saying that I find a lot of value in certain of the tenets of the Church and feel that in the modern world it is worth swimming against the tide to hold on to those.
I’m just a bit of a contrarian, I guess.
Not so much of one to ever risk doing harm to a kid by making them overdose on my cynicism or any tendency to proselytize. So, I tried to be careful when teaching the class. I just tried to stick to the things I find in points 1 and 2 above.
One of the first things we were asked to do with the kids was have them bring an everyday object in to the group and explain why it had some meaning or importance to them. They did great. Some brought books, others pictures of their family, one kid brought a basketball – all were able to give good reasons for why they valued the objects.
The tricky part is that the parent/instructors were supposed to bring something as well – a mundane, everyday object that could be used as a teaching tool.
I brought a rock.
Now, I don’t consider it just any rock. I found it one day when I was walking around Wicklow and spotted a glint in the bushes. Picking it up I noticed that the rock was covered in little nuggets of gold colored metal. That was what caused the sparkle.
Now, I know what that is – and I’m pretty sure that you do as well. Still, as I passed the rock around the circle I could tell there were a few kids who still weren’t sure what they were holding.
“What you have there,” I said “is a rock containing iron pyrite, or what is commonly known as “fool’s gold”. People looking for the real thing who didn’t know their stuff were often taken in by rocks like that. I keep it on my desk as a paperweight and to remind me of something”.
“What it reminds me of is the difference between knowledge and wisdom”.
“Knowledge is being able to identify this as iron pyrite and knowing that it has no monetary value”.
I paused here to let that sink in.
“Wisdom is knowing that it still a really cool rock”.
That, weak as it is, was one of my better teaching moments. Another one occurred during the lesson a couple of weeks later when we were supposed to cover off the history of the early church and the people who founded it. I wouldn’t be the best at this kind of stuff – but I did know of one figure of note. He’d always been a favorite of mine.
“Do you know” I asked “who has the world record for being the most travelled person in the bible?”
There were some kids who always answered “Jesus” (actually “Jayzus” – there were a good few Dubs in the class) no matter what the question was. I suppose they thought that given the setting the odds favoured them eventually being right.
“Who fought the battle of Jericho?”
“Jayzus?”
“Uh, no”.
“Who slew Goliath?”
“Jayzus?”
“Nope”.
“Who led the Knicks in scoring during the 1970 finals?”
“Jayzus?”
“Not even close”.
I eventually threw one in there just to make them feel better.
“There were three Alou brothers who played for the Giants at one time. Two were Felipe and Matty – who was the third?”
Silence.
“C’mon – give it a shot”.
Very tentatively a voice gave the answer --- “Jayzus?”
“Yes! – Exactly Jesus or “Hay-zus” Alou was the third brother – well done”.
High fives all around.
For this particular question about travel Jesus was not the correct response, and after dispensing with the usual guesses I fielded a couple more answers.
“Moses?”
“Nope”.
“Jonah?”
“Even if the whale swam a long way – Jonah wouldn’t be tops”.
Eventually I gave them the answer, which is the Apostle Paul. I explained the extent of Paul’s journeys by asking them how far they thought it was from Dublin to Galway. No one knew exactly but I told them it’s about 125 miles.
“How long do you think it would take to get there?”
This they knew – about 2 hours. Then I explained they couldn’t use a car. They’d have to walk. They figured they could get there in about 4 days.
I then let them know that Paul was estimated to have travelled about 10,000 miles during his journeys – which would have qualified him for the Guinness Book of World Records, except for the fact there were very few books back then and absolutely no Guinness. That caught their attention.
A few other items about Paul duly impressed the crowd – his conversion on the road to Damascus, his death by beheading (allegedly, where his head bounced post decapitation, gave rise to three fountains in Rome). But I’m not sure if the accomplishment I found most impressive fully hit the mark.
“All the time Paul was travelling, by foot or sailing ship, without much money, across bandit country, with wolves, bears, tigers and who knows what else out there, probably breaking the law in most places he went – he was also writing letters. These are known as the “Epistles” and even after 2000 years they remain some of the most important writings ever done”.
I don’t know if this really sank in so I tried quoting from one of the most famous.
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
“I know that” said one of the quieter kids. “I had to read it at my auntie’s wedding”. That was enough for them to catch on – though I’m not sure the epistles impressed them quite as much as the Guinness Book of World Records entry for having walked 10,000 miles.
It impresses me though. The fact that Paul was able to keep writing while under threat of possible beheading for much of his travels is even more impressive when I consider how hard it is to keep churning these posts out when locked in my house for days at a time. Plus – if you look in to it much of what Paul gets in to trouble for writing about (the place of women in society or homosexuality) turn out likely to have not been written by him at all, while the quotes like the one above usually come from the seven letters definitely linked to Paul himself. It seems pretty clear that Paul had a few insights to impart as the result of his travels.
It is one of those insights that ends up being the subject of this ramble (you know it always takes me a while to get there). First, however, I want to tell another story based on another one of my experiences.
This one stems from the time that I had a law practice in Boston.
Most of the time I dealt with businesses or insolvencies – but if a client had something come up in another field and I thought I could help, I’d get involved. This usually meant I’d draft a will or do a closing on a house – but in this one case I had a more complicated request.
I received a call from a guy who I had done a bank workout for – he hemmed and hawed a bit but finally came to the point.
“Do you do any family law”?
I hadn’t really done much, and told him so.
He then explained that he was in the middle of a divorce and that his wife had become addicted to “a drug” and that he was trying to get custody of his three year old daughter. The story, as I got more detail from him, was pretty tragic. His wife had never seemed the kind to be drawn to drugs but had suffered from pain following childbirth. The painkillers that had been prescribed had led to an addiction which had spiralled out of control. I didn’t know it at the time, indeed no one knew what was really at play, but this woman was one of the first indications of the opioid crisis that would soon spread through the country. The drug she had been over prescribed was OxyContin.
All my client knew was that this addiction had destroyed his life and marriage. Following the split he had found his wife passed out in a car with their baby left in the car seat. The most recent incident involved him dropping by the house for his regular visitation only to find the door open, his wife unconscious, the baby wandering aimlessly around and all of the belongings gone. He knew he had to get the child out of that environment and he had gone to a family lawyer to get that done.
Unfortunately, that experience had not gone well.
“He doesn’t answer calls, the one time I went to court he agreed to a continuance I didn’t want, and now I have a date in two days and he called me last night to say he was recommending another continuance. I fired him. You were my lawyer before – I know it was in a different type of case but you answered all my questions honestly and that’s really what I’m looking for now”.
I thought I might be getting in over my head and told him so. He said he didn’t care – he just needed some support on the day.
I told him I’d check in to it – and asked him to fax over the details of the hearing – time, place, any paperwork he had. Once I got it I gave a call to someone who I knew had a background in this sort of stuff. I asked her to take the case – unfortunately she was vacationing on the Cape when I tracked her down.
“Will he take a continuance until I’m back?”
“I don’t think he feels he can risk another continuance – he thinks that if he keeps agreeing to continue the case the judge will assume it’s not that serious a situation”.
She agreed that that could happen – then she asked the question that is the most important for any lawyer who practices in Probate and Family Court.
“Do you know who the judge is?”
I’d checked this out before and gave a name. There was a long pause.
“Listen, you have to get him ready for the fact that he is not going to get the kid”.
“But he has pictures, he has a tape recording of the wife begging her mother for money to get drugs”.
“Doesn’t matter – not with that judge. You will never get a child taken from a mother without a state agency by your side in that court room. Even then it’s about 70/30 against”.
“Even with all that corroboration?”
“It’ll be treated as hearsay”.
I didn’t know what to do – I explained the situation to my client, told him of the difficulties he would face, and then said that if he wanted to go forward I’d do my best, but the odds were heavily stacked against him. He wanted to go ahead, and he asked me to go with him. He only had one thing to say.
“But judges aren’t supposed to be biased like that”.
No.
No they are not.
On the day we all showed up in the courtroom. Myself, my client, his estranged wife and about 40 other people on the docket for the day were there. We were about a third of the way down the list of cases to be heard.
The wife actually seemed like a decent enough person when she got there – everything was quite civil. However, after the first hour my client turned to me.
“She’s starting to need a fix.”
I looked at the wife, she was sweating a bit and biting her nails. I went up to look at the docket. There were a couple of cases being run by lawyers I knew that were listed after us.
“You guys can move ahead of me if you want”.
That would drag things out until after lunch. I kept an eye on the wife – she was not having a good time of it, fidgeting and getting up to walk around the crowded courtroom. I could see the judge had noticed her. When the lunch break was called – she headed for the door.
“She won’t be back” was all my client said.
It turns out she wasn’t – when court re-convened she was a no show, but it didn’t seem it was going to make any difference. When our case was called I started out really strong – but didn’t get much chance to make an argument.
“Good afternoon your honor, we are here today in relation to a motion on custody brought by my client, Mr. X. He is the father of Daughter X, currently in joint custody with the mother who is the primary caregiver...”
“Is the mother here today?”
“She was your honor, you may have noticed her, she was in the blue dress and has not returned since lunch”.
“I saw her – bailiff check the hall – please proceed”.
So, I laid out the whole story, explained the recent incidents, my entry into the case, and then brought the photo’s out and presented them as an exhibit.
She took a quick glance at the photos - “I can’t accept those”.
“Your honor my client can corroborate the circumstances under which they were taken, and you will recognize the woman as being the same one that appeared in court this morning”.
“I still won’t accept them”.
I could see my client tensing up.
“Do you have any representative from the State child protection services present?”
“Your honor my client and prior counsel has contacted them but they were unable to complete a report and this is an emergency situation”.
“I see that the last time your client was here he agreed a continuance – how much of an emergency could this be”.
My guy couldn’t contain himself any longer – “I didn’t agree – my lawyer back then did”.
A shrug from the bench – and my guy was fuming.
“Calm down” I quietly said to him and turned back to the judge, “Your honor – we have a tape recording of my client’s wife calling her mother demanding money for drugs which we would offer into evidence as well”.
“I’m sure that is hearsay”.
I was desperate now – “Your honor should not rule on the nature of the evidence without hearing it first, if you find there is no exception to hearsay that applies you can then exclude it”.
I could see this was annoying the bench more than anything else, but I kind of had them trapped. Still – they would only have the obligation to listen if I was able to come up with grounds to find an exception to hearsay, and now I was going to have to come up with something…fast.
“What exception are you claiming, counsel?”
There are lots of exceptions to hearsay, but for the life of me I couldn’t come up with anything that was evenly remotely relevant…, until I was struck by a moment of inspiration.
“Dying declaration, your honor”.
The judge looked a bit shocked.
“But the woman is alive counsel”.
“It doesn’t matter your honor – the declarant only need be under the impression that they are about to die. On this tape you will clearly hear the respondent state that “I’m dying – if I don’t get these I’ll die””.
A long pause. “I’ll listen to the tape and then rule”.
My client was suddenly showing some signs of hope. I had to pour a little cold water on it.
“She’s only going to listen” I said – “we’re not there yet”.
“If she can listen to that call, see those pictures, actually watch my wife walk around the courtroom sweating like a pig and then skip out of court to go buy drugs rather than fight for her kid – and still rule against me – then I have no chance – I’ll have to take things in to my own hands”.
“Don’t be crazy”.
“Listen - you’re doing great – but it’s not your kid”.
He had me there - I could only imagine what it would be like to have to send my child back in to that house.
After about five minutes the judge came back.
“The tape is distressing – but I can’t even rule on hearsay until the provenance of the recording is clarified – where did it come from”.
The fact was – the tape had actually come from the answering machine of my client’s mother-in-law. She had given it to him to support his claim but didn’t want her daughter to know about it. We were hoping not to have to present it. Now that it was being offered as evidence the judge was going to insist that we prove it was genuine, and she wasn’t likely to take my client’s word for it.
I stalled for a bit trying to make an argument that the tape as presented was worthy of being accepted as admissible, but I could tell I was getting nowhere.
In Greek drama there is a concept known as “deus ex machina”. It means, literally, “machine of the gods”. In some plays, just when things look like they are going to collapse and the heroes are doomed, one of these machines will descend from the heavens and resolve the entire dilemma for everyone. It is a bit of a cheat – imagine you are about to be eaten by a tiger, are backed in to a corner, and suddenly Zeus drops a boulder on the cat’s head – problem solved.
I was looking that tiger in the eye. Then, out of nowhere, Zeus dropped a boulder. The door of the courtroom opened and an older woman with a little girl walked in. My client pulled my arm –
“That’s my mother-in-law” he said.
She had been left to watch the little girl and had been told to expect to get a call when the hearing ended. Of course, she hadn’t heard from her daughter, and she had come down to see what the delay was about.
“Your honor, a brief moment to confer with my client please?”
We spoke with the grandmother of the little girl, explained her daughter wasn’t there because she’d gone to get drugs – and that we needed her to say it was her on the tape.
She knew she was taking the child away from her daughter, but after about two seconds she agreed.
“This has to stop”.
I put the woman on the stand, and she tearfully explained the circumstances of the call. The judge looked over at me and shrugged.
“Counsel, I don’t ordinarily do this but I’ll grant you temporary custody and want everyone back here in two weeks with someone from protective services – next case”.
Here’s the thing – absent an intervention straight out of Euripides I was going to lose that case. The judge only made the decision they did when faced with essentially no other alternative, and came in to their courtroom shackled by bias. My client was going to be faced with breaking the law or watching his child walk back in to a house where the number one priority was where the next fix was coming from. I’m sure he would have broken the law. The example being set by the authority figure made the decision easy.
I am not saying that is right – I am saying it is predictable.
There are a number of circumstances where this arises – imagine for instance that you live in the U.S. in an area where deer hunting is prevalent (basically about 47 out of 50 States). If the Fish and Game wardens make a habit out of taking deer out of season for themselves (“jacking”) then it’s likely that the rest of the population will follow suit. The authority figure sets the tone, the people follow.
I am not saying that is right – I am saying it is predictable.
Now we come to the point of this post. I’ll do something I don’t normally do – I’m going to post a warning. The two video links I’m about to post are disturbing, one incredibly so. It shows a man being crushed to death. Don’t watch if you think that is likely to be too much for you – but if you’re not sure I urge you to look, because the fact that this happened SHOULD be distressing.
The other video, the first I’ll show, is not quite as graphic – but I believe it should also be disturbing.
A bit of background.
When you fly over New York (specifically Manhattan) and look down you see something that I have likened to a “city that looks like a piggie bank”. This is because, in the midst of the most expensive real estate in the world the people of New York have admirably fought for centuries to preserve the “coin slot” – Central Park.
If you think the park shows up as a landmark for you when you fly over – think what it looks like to birds on their migration. Given a choice between northern New Jersey, the South Bronx, Brooklyn or dodging planes heading towards JFK in Queens, Central Park is an absolute oasis. This makes the area within the Park an unlikely birders paradise, particularly an area called “The Ramble”. Over 200 species of birds have been identified in the Park (including a celebrity Mandarin Duck last year) and many are spotted in the Ramble.
There are only two things that tend to interfere with bird watching in the Ramble. Stupid people and dogs off their leash. Last week we were treated to a two for one sale.
https://www.nytimes.com/…/amy-cooper-dog-central-park-polic…
That idiot’s name is Amy Cooper and she has decided to treat the police force of New York as her own personal security service in the same way that one of the Kardashian’s might employ a private company. You know, to ward off the paparazzi. In this instance the offending party was named Christian Cooper, who is no relation, and, though you’d only know it as a result of Ms. Cooper’s histrionics, is “African-American”.
Or, you know, “American”.
Christian Cooper was recording Amy because she was letting her dog run off the leash in an area where doing that is clearly posted to be a no-no. Mr. Cooper has particular reason to object to this because he is a member (actually a board member) of the New York City Audubon Society. Amy was “scared” of him because she was alone (with her dog) in the Ramble. And, of course, because in the hierarchy of the “Gangs of New York” you have the Bloods, the Crips, that gang led by Daniel Day Lewis in “Gangs of New York”, and the New York City Audubon Society.
First rule of dog-walking “Watch out for the NYCAS”.
Now a couple of weeks ago I posted a video of another couple of idiots (Irish based and not dog owners, so far as I know) and said what made me angriest about the way they were mistreating the police was how obviously scripted and “acted” the video was. I would point out that in that case it was “bad acting” I was referring to.
What worries me about the Amy Cooper video is that she is actually a pretty good actor – at least a voice actor. It’s quite scary the way she turns on the “victimhood” when she needs to – if you weren’t watching the video to see how she is able to do that while actually not under threat at all you would probably think she was on the verge of being attacked.
Here’s the thing – if a cop had only that voice to go by and responded to find those people there – if it wasn’t someone able to record the interchange (like Christian Cooper did), they might very well end up arrested. I also think there is a good chance they might object to that arrest (since they had done nothing wrong) and the situation might escalate. I know if I was to be asked to lie down on the ground and put my hands behind my back because some self-important asshole made up a story and called the police I might not take too kindly to it. I might very well “resist” that arrest.
I’m not saying that is right, but I am saying it’s predictable.
Okay, here’s the next one. You have been warned.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7u4x5t
I have no words.
I have no words.
At least about that arrest. But I will say, to those, including the President, that when you say you are “OK with protest but not OK with violence and looting”, or, "When the looting starts the shooting starts" - could you please use a little common sense? Those protests are no different than what my client faced, what the deer poachers reflect, than what someone truly victimized by a fake victim like Amy Cooper deals with. They create situations that will, inevitably, lead to violence and law breaking. You want to stop it? Don’t concentrate on ending the tendency of people faced with the unreasonable to act unreasonably – go to the source. Otherwise you are just laughing in the face of the way our creator, who or whatever you may think that to be, made us.
Which leads us back to Paul, and another one of his letters.
Galatians 6:7 –
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Like I said – the man was no fool.
