The Red Velvet Lawyer

Praise from my  Risk-Taking  Role-Model I shared Dottie's farewell email  earlier.  Dad's farewell email follows.  Some of the references require some explanation. Many relate to his pioneering work in dentistry.  As background, I am the eldest child and only daughter in a family of four kids. My Dad and Mom married when my Mom was 18 years old and my Dad was 20 years old.   As newlyweds, they moved from a small farming town in central Illinois to St. Louis while my dad completed dental school at Washington University.  They lived in a new public housing project, Pruitt-Igo , that gained the reputation as a failure in urban planning. In 1972, the Department of Housing demolished it in a fabulous implosion . When we lived there, in the late-1950s, we were one of three or four white families.  During the 1960s, St. Louis experienced a period of "white flight" from the ring of suburbs,  including University City, located...

I've talked about letting go of family in an earlier post.  After the visit in July from my Dad, Jerry, and my Stepmom, Dottie, I got a couple of emails that I'd like to share.  If you want to know how I have the "courage" to make this move as a 61-year old woman, these emails provide some insight.  I am reproducing them with permission.   My Dad married Dottie several years after my Mom, Jo Ann, died of colon cancer at the age of 61.  Dottie, with a Ph.D. in education, brought along a large extended family that placed its large and loving reach securely around Dad.  She has been a generous, supportive, and loving spirit in my life.   Hi Paula, tutoring [for at-risk grade school readers] ended yesterday.  Just saw your posting of old cabinet and assume you sold it.  How is the rest of moving moving along?   So happy we had a chance to visit.  And love the posting you made on/lauding your friendship with Kenn An...

Pitching Part  of my  Professional Identity I don't know what it says about me, but I am a very organized pack rat.  My ADR books are alphabetized by author.  They are now neatly packed in boxes with labels showing the alphabetical run included in each box.  For years, I have created elaborate filing systems for research materials.  At two former law firms, I created "Brief Banks" that allowed our lawyers, especially newer ones, to easily access different forms, sample pleadings, and research. After joining ASL, I created a filing system for the expanding materials I was collecting on negotiation, mediation, arbitration, group facilitation, client counseling, collaborative law, restorative justice, conflict theory, ADR system design, communication skills, teaching tools, student well-being, and leadership, just to name a few of the included topics.  The collection filled 12 file drawers and about five boxes.  My re...

Saying "See You Later" to Kenn Ann I am actually very good at maintaining links to old friends.  Facebook has certainly made that easier.  I always seem to have one good friend during each stage of my life or for each locale.  One of my oldest friends, Kenn Ann, visited this past week-end.  She was my best friend during my years in high school and college.  We've been friends ever since.  We spent several hours talking about that period of our lives, as we have in the past, and still discovered new things about our relationship. I have always said, and she agrees, that I made her be my friend.  In high school, as an immigrant from Indiana, she was not a part of the cliques with whom I moved comfortably -- whether smart kids, female jocks, or artists.   (I'd been in the school system since second grade.  I'm on the first row, far left, sitting cross-legged in the light colored top.   My best friend, Gwe...

Going Further from Home and Family This holiday week-end, my Dad, Jerry, my step-mom, Dottie, and my grand-niece, Paige, drove the long trip from Illinois to see me before I depart in another five weeks.  We spent a rainy Friday at The Breaks Interstate Park so Paige could see the dramatic landscape so very different from the flat lands of her home state. This morning, I sent them home with a smile on my face, but I teared up on the way back into the house.  One more act of letting go. In fact, after I move, I will probably see them as much, perhaps even more, than I do now.  But there is something about putting an 8-10 hour plane ride (rather than an 8-10 hour car ride) between us that suggests a deeper, more lasting separation. My new employer, the Qatar University College of Law , will pay for an annual trip home.  It will also give me $5,000/year to spend on conference attendance -- some of which I will spend in the U.S.  But...

My Farewell  to a Staple Food I recently described myself as a bacon-eating Buddhist.  I know.  The contradiction is not lost on me. I grew up in the Midwest, the granddaughter of Illinois farmers on both sides of the family.  As kids, we would often visit the Drinkwater family farm located outside Virginia, Illinois.  The pig sty was not too far from Grandma Drinkwater's back stoop. Perhaps that made it easier to "slop" the pigs. Their sharp hooves dug up the mud, creating a squishy mud wallow .  (You would like the definition of wallow.) They would  . . . well, wallow in it, much to our delight. Sometimes, the pigs would lie up next to the wire fence.  We could reach our little fingers through the wire to rub their mud-caked hide that was covered in bristles. We watched their snouts probe the air and then the mud. We laughed at their squeals and snuffles.  Pigs! Later, out under the huge trees over in the side yard, sit...

So long ASL.   It's Been Very Good  to Know You! Letting go of place also involves letting go of the law school I have called home for 13 years. It involves letting go of my faculty colleagues at the Appalachian School of Law, many of whom are also in the midst of a transition to a new job and locale.  It means letting go of students with whom I've built relationships.  It means saying good-bye to a certain type of teaching to a certain population of students -  mostly first generation college or grad school students from the central Appalachian region.  It involves giving up a large office I've loved on the "library side" of the award-winning building that houses the law school. It means saying best wishes to staff members who have always been helpful, hopeful, effective, dedicated, and cheerful. It means leaving a community where service was at the core of operations for many ...