After a wet and tumultuous July, I have gathered my wits again and have begun posting to this blog site on legal matters. However, on occasion I have written about other subjects when anomalies of life have struck me as– well, anomalous. Below, my current confusions are catalogued.
My son is off to college and has been in touch with his two future room-mates. How is it possible that an expensive private college that does not give scholarships can attract three students whose politics would suggest that the People’s Revolution is imminent?
People are beating up people requesting the wearing of masks, claiming infringement on constitutional rights. Whatever the arguments for imperiling everyone else with illness and death, the Constitution is not one of them. There is a philosophical continuum between the volitional acts of saying “good morning” and shooting a stranger for no reason. Each is a personal act. One is protected as a freedom. One is a felony. So somewhere in between there is a line that limits freedom, as it is not true that the Constitution does (or should) protect every behavior.
So how close is infecting someone who dies to: saying “good morning”; and, how close to shooting a stranger for no reason?
COVID fatigue will cause offices to open more rapidly this Fall even though statistics in some areas will show, as today, greater infections than at the alleged original height of the pandemic.
I tried to commute into Boston the other day for a rare, masked visit to my office. Although the commuter rail schedule has been slashed, that did not stop the scheduled 8:15 from Wellesley Farms to post on the screen as up to 45 minutes late due to late equipment arrival. Can’t they get the few trains still running to run reliably, avoiding human error or sloth?
They are building a fifty story building across the street from my office in town, split between residences and offices. Someone just bought a two-bedroom apartment on the Boston waterfront for $13M. You cannot afford a home in a Boston suburb because everyone is moving out of the City due to a permanent change of lifestyle and work habits. Uh, wait– let’s think about this paragraph again….
My beloved Red Sox have fallen out of first place and refused to add real strength at the just-concluded trading deadline. I do not understand John Henry and Chiam Bloom.
I bought an on-line ticket to a Sox-Yankee game the other day, at Fenway (having deferred my season seats due to COVID for a second year). Beautiful day. Sox blew the game in the 8th, to the delight of the Yankee fan family sitting next to me, on tour of various big league parks as a summer vacation for their seven year old; that night they flew to Chicago. When I was seven, my parents for summer celebration gave me a dixie cup with a wooden spoon….
Changes at Fenway. Just about all beer is of limited choice and canned, at over $11 each; no dark. Food choices greatly curtailed. El Tiante Cuban treat stand reduced to selling Italian sausage. No chowdah! Still a sell-out with almost no masks (in fairness, was before CDC recent advice to mask up).
When the “Yankees Suck” chant arose from the bleachers near the end of the game, the seven year old did not seem to notice. At least there were no street vendors selling anti-Yankee Ts with obscene comments.
Oh, yes. As a local sport writer sometimes is wont to say, this is the time for a shameless personal plug. In the last two months I have published two new non-lawyer books, each available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A book of short stories entitled Noir Ain’t the Half of It. A book of new poetry entitled Laertes in America. Please order; I need the ego boost of a royalty check. If Grisham can sell books, so can I.
Further deponent sayeth not.