The Incredible RBG

 If Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was just another female lawyer, I would still have an affinity for her, but she was so much more. RBG WAS A BRILLIANT PIONEER WHO PROMOTED GENDER EQUALITY BEFORE HER TIME.   She was amazing person, an amazing jurist, and had a brilliant legal mind. 

I identify with her in some ways. She went to law school after she had married. So did I. However, she went to Harvard coming from Cornell while I came     from UMKC Law after studying for my undergraduate degree at UMKC.  RBG WAS NUMBER ONE IN HER CLASS, WHILE I CLEARLY WAS SOMEWHERE IN MY CLASS, but certainly not in the top ten. 

She and I were married with a child when entering law school. She graduated and had a four-year old daughter, while I had a four year old son when I graduated. We both ended up fighting for civil rights, but me on a much smaller scale than Justice Ginsburg.  We both had second children while new to the practice of law.  THAT IS WHERE THE COMPARISON ENDS.

That’s where our paths differed.  The brilliant Justice, after 6 arguments for women’s rights before the Supreme Court representing litigants, earned a district court judgeship in New York, followed in 1993 by an appointment to the grandest of all Courts,  the U.S. Supreme Court, where she excelled for 17 years.  RBG is a legend. She worked at court while she went through illness and ultimately was dying and suffering from cancer.  She worked the day after her beloved husband died. She wrote dissents to save for posterity, in case a future court would adopt her opinion as someday as a majority opinion.  SHE WAS FREAKING AMAZING AND AN INCREDIBLE ROLE MODEL. WE WILL MISS HER SO. 

The Beauty of the Sandhill Cranes

I’m watching Sandhill Cranes land and roost in the Platte River outside of Kearney, Nebraska. As I write this I am in my family room, I have open the cranetrust.org website on my iPad and it’s sunset over the Platte, with cooing birds gliding onto the shallow waters. There are hundreds of thousands of birds on screen. The beauty of this annual migration is overwhelming. As the sun sets over the river, the Cranes huddle together as if their ultimate position on the water is pre-ordained. The birds are large, with long grey legs and red atop their beaks. They stand 3 or 4 feet high. They call to each other and seem excited to be together.

This is an annual migration. The birds winter in the south, Mexico and other lands in the south of North America. In 2016, while sitting outside a polling place in November in central coastal Florida, I saw four of the cranes walking in a parking lot. At the time, I had no idea what these weird-looking tall birds were. It wasn’t until I first witnessed the migration 2019 in Nebraska that I realized I had spied them before in Florida. The cranes are currently traveling north, to northern Canada and Siberia where they summer to breed.  They mate for life. Their annual travel is the great North American migration on this side of the world. In Africa, the wildebeest travel the expanse of Southern Africa for that continent’s great migration. In North America, it’s the Sandhill Cranes.

It’s getting dark now on the Platte and the birds almost reach from the north bank to the south of the great wide and shallow river. Cooped up at home, with the human globe obsessed by COVID19, I wish I could be viewing these birds from the banks of the Platte as planned, instead of over a website. The birds and the natural world surrounding them is almost overwhelming.  And every year these great birds fly across the continent in this ritual while humans fret about a pandemic and the dearth of effective leadership overseeing humankind. Oh, what life these cranes lead.  It’s almost dark in Nebraska now. The cranes will soon be silent, as they rest on the river before awakening at dawn to comb the corn fields for fallen kernels. They fatten up here in Nebraska, before they resume their northern trek to breed.  Oh, what an inspiring spectacle watching these magnificent birds.  Maybe next year, post coronavirus, I will see them again, in live form and not on an iPad screen. One can only hope. https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/sandhill-crane. Crane Trust

Coronavirus and The Financially Vulnerable - A Call to Action

With this COVID19 pandemic, there are consequences outside of physical danger. Already, restaurants have closed, some permanently, theaters are dark, hair salons are shuttered.  I read an estimate that unemployment could reach 20%.  I am worried. Most people need their jobs to survive financially and they need to be healthy to survive physically.  We have a dilemma that is unsolvable, when we socially isolate we may forestall the pandemic, but cause financial harm to others.   We need to help those people put out of work as a result of this pandemic.

There are organizations geared to help.  I have started a fundraiser for those servers and bartenders out of work, https://www.facebook.com/594946663/posts/10157865477746664/. There is Harvesters,  USBG National Charity Foundation, and others.  For those who would rather contribute sweat equity, Harvesters has time slots for people to contribute work in their warehouses assembling food packages.

We need to pull together during this crisis.  This is unlike anything in the lifetimes of most people who were born post-depression.  We need those who are able to contribute.