A week to remember.

Love this.

Please see the explanation here about the copyright issues.  Proper credit for the original three panels should be given to Bob Englehart at the Hartford Courant.  It is unknown at this time who modified the original three panels and added the last two, but I love it.

Coolest. Trees. Ever.

At the University of Virginia, LegalMist's alma mater, stand the coolest trees in the world.  They are called "Pratt Ginkgo Trees," and they are lovely.  They are found elsewhere, too, of course.  But I remember, very clearly, exactly one day at the end of autumn, just as winter was beginning at the University, watching these beautiful trees shed their leaves.

They do not lose leaves gradually, like other trees.  Instead, they drop them all at once, in about one day.  I sat for about three hours one afternoon near the Lawn at U.Va., watching one gorgeous tree drop leaves.  It looked like snow.

I found a video for you on YouTube of a ginkgo tree at someone's house, that looks about like that tree at U.Va. looked, on that gorgeous fall day, dropping leaves so fast that it almost looked like a snowstorm.  Here it is:




I hope you enjoy it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Navajo Code Talker Monument - Arizona Trivia (Just Barely Still) Tuesday

Another hectic week and hectic day. On the bright side, my daughter's basketball team won their game today against a tough team, despite the fact that a couple of teammates were out sick, and several of the ones who were at the game were also sick. She even scored a basket - unusual for her, because although she handles the ball very well and plays great defense, she is the smallest kid on the team and usually can't get a shot off over all the tall kids on the other team. This time, she dribbled quickly around and past all of them and made the lay-up!

So here it is Tuesday, almost midnight, and I've written nothing so far today... quick, what can I write about that's interesting and informative...?

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On the corner of Thomas Road and Central Avenue in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, is a statute of a seated Native American. Here is a photo of it, which I got from a collection of photos by "tceng" on panoramio.com.



The statue is a monument to the Navajo Code Talkers who served in the marines and helped win World War II. Here's the scoop, from a website devoted to Naval history and heritage:

During World War II, the Navy was seeking an undecipherable code for use in the Pacific. A fellow named Philip Johnston, who was the son of a missionary to the Navajo, had been raised on the Navajo reservation, and was one of only a few non-Navajos who could speak the language fluently, believed he had a solution.

Navajo is an unwritten language -- it has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands. It is also extremely complex. The syntax, tonal qualities, and various dialects make it unintelligible to anyone who has not had extensive exposure and/or training.

So, in May 1942, the military recruited 29 native Navajos, who attended boot camp, just like any other recruits. Then, this special group was tasked with developing numerous words for military terms, and a dictionary. The dictionary and code words had to be memorized during training.

Once a Navajo code talker was trained, he was deployed to the Pacific, where he could talk with other Navajo code talkers to transmit information regarding tactics, troop movements, orders, or any other secret information.

Although the Japanese were very skilled code breakers, they were unable to decipher the code based upon the Navajo language.

Approximately 375 to 420 Navajos served as code talkers during World War II. Because their code remained valuable even after the war, they went unrecognized for decades, until September 17, 1992, when they were acknowledged and honored for their contributions, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

The Honorable Lorna E. Lockwood - A Trailblazing Western Woman -- Arizona Trivia

Lorna Elizabeth Lockwood was born on March 24, 1903 in Douglas, Arizona -- which at the time was a Territory, not a State (as explained last week, Arizona was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1912).

Her family moved to Tombstone, Arizona in 1913 (yes, that Tombstone - adopted home of the Earp brothers, site of the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral, subject of several movies), and she graduated from high school there in 1920.

She was an amazing woman. As you read this brief summary of her life, remember that during most of her formative years, women did not even have the right to vote in most of this country. Did she let that stop her from dreaming big? No, she did not!

According to the Women's Legal History Biography Project at Stanford University, Lorna E. Lockwood chalked up a number of "firsts" during her long career as an Arizona attorney and judge.

Ms. Lockwood was the first woman to receive a Juris Doctor (law) degree from the University of Arizona College of Law, in 1925. According to the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame, she was the only woman in her class of 13, and was elected president of the Student Bar Association.

She was the first woman in Arizona appointed as an Assistant Attorney General, in 1948.

She was the first woman to sit on the bench of the Arizona Superior Court, appointed in 1951.

And, most amazingly, she was the first woman to become Chief Justice of any State Supreme Court in the U.S., in 1965. (However, according to Wikipedia, we must give credit to Ohio for being the first to elect a woman to serve as Associate Justice on its Supreme Court - a position held by the Honorable Florence Ellinwood Allen from 1922 until her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in 1934.)

The Honorable Lorna Lockwood served on the Arizona Supreme Court from 1961 to 1975, and was Chief Justice twice, from 1965-66 and from 1970-71. (Interestingly, Lorna's father, the Honorable Alfred C. Lockwood, served on the Arizona Supreme Court from 1925 to 1943; she used the same office and desk he had used.)

In the 1960's, the Honorable Lorna Lockwood was a candidate and was almost nominated to be the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court. However, President Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, instead.

Sadly, the Honorable Lorna Lockwood died in 1977 at the age of 74 due to complications of pneumonia (an awful disease, as I know from personal experience).


* * * * *

As a law student, I can remember reading Arizona cases authored by Ms. Lockwood and being impressed that Arizona was progressive enough to have a woman supreme court justice sooner than many other states. Our State may come across as reactionary and ultra-conservative on a lot of issues (see generally Arizona politics), but women's participation in public life isn't one of them (see Wikipedia's biography of the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor, another famous jurist from Arizona).

Eleven

If you are reading this just as it is posted, it is now 11:11, 11/11/11 -- also known as 5-11. If you missed this in the morning, no worries. Just check your watch again tonight at 11:11 p.m. It'll be 5-11 again!

If you like to count seconds, or if you are "into" symmetry, then at eleven seconds past 11:11 a.m. or p.m., you can make it a very symmetrical 11:11:11, 11/11/11. I guess that would be 6-11.

And if you want to be even more neurotic, then at 11:11 and 11 seconds on 11/11/1111, we could have called it 7-11, except that back then they probably didn't measure seconds quite so much... and besides, there's already a convenience store by that name and there might be trademark infringement issues if we go that route.

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I'm sure you've all read similar stories already today. I could have posted this in January or last week, but I wanted to post it at the magical 5-11 time. So, sorry if it's old news by now!

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All nonsense aside, please remember to thank a veteran for his or her service on this extra-special Veterans' Day!

"Dust Storm 2011"

Here is a video that shows what yesterday evening's dust storm looked like here in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area.



These dust storms are so cool. They literally look like a wall of dust moving across the city. One minute, you can see buildings and roads and people and cars; a couple of minutes later, it's all just obliterated, hidden by the great moving wall. They are huge -- I heard this one stretched 30 to 50 miles long (depending on who was reporting), and was approximately a mile tall. They move fast. This one moved across the Phoenix metropolitan area in about an hour.

There were some very cool videos taken from news station-owned airplanes and helicopters, and shown on CNN and other networks -- if you saw them, I'm sure you were impressed, but I didn't want to violate copyright laws to post them. This was a really good "amateur" video I found, and available on YouTube to be embedded here. It really captures how quickly day turns to night, how fast it goes from "beautiful evening" to "holy cow, I can't see more than 10 feet in front of me!"

They grounded flights and refused to allow planes to land at the airport for a while last night, because you couldn't even see the control tower and there was no way to fly planes through the dust soup.

I went to the post office yesterday evening - the one on Van Buren street that is open until 9:30, God bless the USPS - left my house around 7 p.m. I got lucky and found a parking spot within 20 feet of the door (never happens!). When I came out of the post office, I couldn't even see my car; there was a thick blanket of dust blocking the view of just about everything. It looks a lot like fog, actually. You can see fuzzy parking lot lights and car headlamps in the distance, and vague outlines and shapes through the "mist." It would be beautiful, really, if only you could stop feeling and hearing that "crunch" whenever you touch your teeth together.... mmm-mm, nothing else quite like eating dust while trying to breathe.

When I found my car, after walking in its general direction for a few seconds while trying not to trip over unseen objects in the parking lot, it was completely covered in dust, mixed with a little water from the rain that was just starting to fall. It looked as if someone had stolen it while I was at the post office, and had gone joy-riding off-road in the desert!

Click around on the web and find some more cool videos of the storm (and others from years past). It really is quite interesting, and yes, fun, to watch.

Sometimes Attorneys Aren't So Bad

I've written here (and here) before about how much I hate attorneys, generally. (And yes, it does lead to a fair amount of self-loathing and depression sometimes).

But this week something happened that reminded me that not all attorneys are awful.

First, some background.

Before I started law school, I was warned that it would be a hyper-competitive environment, in which no one collaborated with others, everyone was out to stab you in the back, and it was "sink or swim" all the way.

So when I was ill during one of the first few weeks of law school, I was terrified to skip class, lest I miss something important. After all, I had no friends yet, no one I could ask for a recap or to share notes with me. But I was too sick to get out of bed, so I skipped my classes one day.

Imagine my surprise the next day, when I dragged my still-ill-but-at-least-marginally-functional-self to school, and a fellow student (I'll call him "Jay" since his first initial was "J," but that's not his real name**) approached me with some photocopied notes he had taken, and said, "Hey, I noticed you were absent yesterday from the contracts class so I copied my notes for you. I hope they're helpful."

I was amazed at this display of thoughtfulness.

And Jay wasn't even "hitting" on me, just being kind. Really. (Hard to believe, I know, but true).

Jay and I didn't become best friends in law school, but he was always polite and kind and friendly - collegial in the best sense of the word - and thoughtful.

After graduation, we did not keep in touch much. I'd run into him at random seminars or state bar events and we'd chat a few minutes. One time, he was presenting material at a seminar and saw me in the audience, and mentioned my name as an attorney who had worked on one of the important cases he was discussing. Very kind of him.

Recently one of my former clients (an excellent paralegal / legal assistant) called me for assistance with an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court. She had represented herself in the trial court and had won, but the other side had appealed. It was a fairly straightforward case - she probably could have handled it herself, but she was intimidated by the appellate process, and so I agreed to help her. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the decision in her favor.

I received an email at about 10:00 a.m. one day from the Supreme Court, with a copy of the decision.

At approximately noon that same day, I received an email from Jay stating, "congratulations on your win - impressive!" (or words to that effect).

I haven't talked to Jay in at least two years. I am quite sure he is not stalking me and so I don't want any of you thinking this is creepy in any way. It's just not. Most likely, he subscribes to the Court's email service, in which they email you copies of all decisions. He read it, saw my name on a decision in my client's favor, and took the time to email me with kind words.

How very cool.

** I wish I could tell you Jay's real name and give him full credit for his thoughtfulness, but since I'm trying to remain anonymous here, I simply can't.

I find this fascinating...

You know that bats use echolocation to navigate at night, in extreme darkness, right? They emit a sound and use the echoes from the sound to locate and avoid objects, or to locate and catch and eat bugs or other prey.

But did you know that humans can develop this ability, too?

A recent article in Psychology Today magazine tells of some blind mountain bikers who use echolocation to navigate the trails. Amazing.

The article describes the basic process of echolocation:

To get a sense of how echolocation works, try this. Hold your hand up about one foot in front of your face with your palm facing your mouth. Put your front teeth together, open your lips, and make a continuous shhhhhh sound. As you make this sound, slowly bring your hand toward your mouth. You will hear the shhhh sound change. What you’re hearing is the sound reflecting from your hand colliding with the sound leaving your mouth. This interference turns out to be one of the most important types of sound dimensions we use to echolocate objects at close distances.

But this demonstration is exaggerated. The interference patterns used for echolocation are usually too subtle to be consciously heard. This highlights one of the most amazing aspects of echolocation: It’s rarely experienced as sound. Try using your shhhh sounds to walk slowly toward a wall with your eyes closed. As you come close to the wall, you’ll experience its presence as more of a feeling than a change in sound. It may feel as if there are air pressure changes on your face, an experience also reported by the blind (echolocation was once called “facial vision”). Echolocation is truly one of your implicit perceptual skills: It allows you to detect aspects of your environment without even knowing which sensory system you’re using. And it could very well be that you’re constantly using the skill to recognize properties of the rooms you occupy.

Fascinating.