Dewey & LeBoeuf: why I'm mourning the death of a law firm, part 3.

This is the conclusion of a story that begins here and was continued here.

For a time, I occupied an office next door to that of Charles P. Sifton (photo at left by Tyrone Dukes for The NY Times), later to become a Federal District Judge. He was known to all as "Tony".*

Tony had a strong sense of decorum that I sometimes tested. In the mid 1970s Cameron F. MacRae, III, son of the then senior active partner, was brought into the firm laterally. This started some mutterings about nepotism. "Young Cam" had previously been the chief lawyer in the New York State Banking Department. His immediate predecessor in that job, Mike Iovenko, had also come to the firm as a partner. At the time, I was the host of the "Associates' Lunches," periodic gatherings of the firm's lawyers at which one partner would be called on to talk about a case or deal he or she had worked on, or an area of practice generally. Before announcing the speaker, I would introduce any new lawyers who had come to the firm since the last lunch. At Cam's first, I said this:

I know that all of us associates have our pet theories about how to become a partner in this firm, but perhaps many of you, like me, have now come to the conclusion that there is only one absolutely certain route to partnership...and that is, of course, to first become deputy superintendent and general counsel of the New York State Banking Department, which is by way of introducing Cam MacRae.

Cam stood up, chuckled, and said, "Wait'll you see my successor!" After the lunch, a junior partner (the same one who had, in the previous instalment, abandoned me to the fleshpots of Baltimore) said to me, "You handled that beautifully; it really de-fused the situation."  But the next day, I heard a rapping and, looking up, saw Tony Sifton at my office door. "Uh, Claude, how long have you been host of the Associates' Lunches?" "About a year and a half, " I answered. "Well, uh," Tony said, "don't you think it's about time to let someone else do it?" I readily assented. ("Young Cam" proved to be a valuable addition to the firm; some time after his father's death he became chair of its corporate and finance department and later the firm's Vice Chairman.)

LeBoeuf produced my first marriage. Joanna was a paralegal in trusts and estates. When I first met her, I was puzzled by this tall Midwestern woman with a gentile Dutch surname who wore a gold Star of David on a chain. I learned that she had converted to Judaism after the breakup of her marriage, while a student at Vanderbilt, to a graduate student who she said proved to be a physically abusive beast. She was now living with a boyfriend named Leon who was studying to be a cantor. One night, I threw a party to which she came. As others left, she hung around, offering to help clean up. She stayed the night. She and Leon had parted; "Not Jewish enough" was his verdict on her. Within a month, Joanna and her two cats had moved in. When I asked her why someone who had gone to the trouble to convert to Judaism wanted to marry a goy, she said, "You may raise the children however you want."

Our engagement raised a few eyebrows at the firm, but it was agreed that it was technically OK since I didn't do T&E work and therefore wasn't her supervisor. The morning after we returned from our honeymoon she said, "By the way, we're never having children." It later became apparent that, for reasons seeming to have little if anything to do with me, she had come to regret her decision to marry. On my thirtieth birthday we had a big party, and I got thoroughly drunk. When all the guests had left, I told her I wanted a divorce. She agreed.

After we separated, Joanna moved to Chicago to be closer to her family. We remained friends and stayed in touch by phone. She even gave the ultimate compliment of naming a cat for me. After a few years, when I tried to reach her at her office several times and was repeatedly told she was out sick, I called her at home, and she said she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Several years later, after she had gone through a third brief, unhappy marriage, she called, told me she had decided to move back to New York, and asked if she could sleep on my couch while she looked for an apartment. I said I'd be delighted. She found a place to live, and a job. One day, as I was walking across Sheridan Square in the Village with Martha, then my girlfriend and now my wife, we ran into Joanna, and I introduced them. The next day Joanna called me and said she thought Martha and I "looked good together." A couple of years later I got a call from Joanna's sister; Joanna had died the day before, evidently of congestive heart failure.

After the divorce I moved from what had been our floor-through on Bank Street in the far West Village to a one bedroom pad in the newly renovated Van Rensselaer, formerly a notorious hot pillow hotel, on Eleventh Street just east of Fifth Avenue. It has since been renamed The Alabama and is used as a residence for Cardozo Law School students (photo at right), though Mr. Van Rensselaer continues to glower down through rectangular spectacles from under his broad-brimmed hat at the apex of the arch over the front door

In the process of moving, I had occasion to walk the block of Thirteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, and there discovered the Bells of Hell, which was to become my home away from home during non-working hours.  These non-working hours began to expand, though on occasion I tried to combine them with work. I wrote a section of a brief in a proceeding before the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities while sitting at the bar of the Bells. It was on a tricky economic question, one on which I thought our client had a reasonable argument but would probably lose given some language in earlier decisions. We did lose, but the DPU's decision on this point included the words "Counsel for the Company ably argued..."  I could only wonder what they would have thought had they known where I was when I so argued.

Now it's time for a musical interlude. The house band at the Bells for much of the time I spent there was Turner and Kirwan of Wexford. You can read more about them, and see a video of Pierce Turner as a solo artist, here. Larry Kirwan went on to front Black 47; here's a video of them doing "Funky Céilí":


The video ends abruptly, like Larry's career at the Bank of Ireland, but unlike mine at LeBoeuf.

During 1975 and '76 I had experienced two of what psychologists consider among the most wrenching life changes: marriage and divorce. My divorce, as such things go, hadn't been traumatic, but I entered the final stretch of the seventies feeling itchy and introspective. My life since high school had been a rapid progression through college, which I completed in three years by dint of taking overloads and summer courses, then law school, then to the firm, with a break for military service, then back. I was wondering if I might have been happier had I followed a different path. Like Charlie McCrann (see the previous installment) I had artistic pretensions, though mine were of the Great American Novel instead of the Academy Award kind.

Unfortunately, my turn toward introspection and the Village demimonde came as LeBoeuf was getting substantial amounts of new business and associates were facing greater demands. One night I was working in the library during the wee hours, not because I was overburdened but because I had procrastinated, when the phone rang. I picked it up, and a woman said "Who is this?"

"This is Claude Scales."

"Claude, oh my God! This is terrible. Why are you working at this hour?"

"I just have to get something done. Who are you?"

She identified herself as a third year associate I knew, though not very well. She continued to bewail my late night labors, then giggled and said "Michael, cut it out!" Finally, I said I had to get back to work. She said "OK" and hung up. Later that morning I went to the office of Susan, an associate I knew was a friend of my late night caller. I told her what had happened; she sighed and said, "She's been working on a deal that kept her in the office for several days and nights straight." I told Susan about the giggling and "Michael." She rolled her eyes, and said Michael was a senior litigation associate I knew fairly well who had been through a bitter divorce and a breakdown. "The blind leading the blind," I said. Susan smiled wryly.

Charlie and I were moved from our shared office on the firm's main floor to adjoining small offices in a portion of the floor below that the firm had leased as expansion space. In Lions in the Street, his book about the great Wall Street law firms, Paul Hoffman wrote about how, when Simpson Thacher & Bartlett had its offices in the old Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, an associate getting his (they were all male at the time) first individual office could tell if he was on partnership track by whether his window faced the street or an air shaft. Of those who suffered the latter fate it was said, "He got the shaft." I soon concluded that being assigned to one of the small associate offices in this isolated section, not connected to the rest of the firm by a stairway, was the equivalent of getting the shaft. This was confirmed at my next annual review when Don Greene told me I was not destined to be one of the elect. Nevertheless, he said, I should not "rush away" from the firm. He would try to find something for me.

Shortly after that, a younger partner who was regarded as a rising star invited me to dinner at what was then one of Manhattan's most trendy restaurants, followed by drinks at a members only** night spot. The purpose of this sybaritic night on the town was for him to let me know that a client of the firm, a utility company headquartered in the suburbs, was looking for an in-house lawyer. I was diffident; I didn't want to leave my Village digs for a place in the 'burbs, and reverse commuting seemed like a chore. Over the next few weeks, this partner and several others, including a senior partner for whom I had great respect, kept  pressing me to consider the job. I met Ken, vice president and secretary of the client (the firm held the title of "general counsel"), who would be my supervisor, and we both had favorable first impressions. I was offered a deal: I would work for the client at its offices full time for a trial period while remaining on LeBoeuf's payroll. If either the client or I was dissatisfied, I would return to work at LeBoeuf.

At first, it worked out well. I found that I could make the run up the FDR Drive, over the George Washington Bridge, and up the Palisades Parkway to the company's office in about 45 minutes. The return trip was usually a bit slower, as there was some traffic going into the city for the evening. I had to leave the Bells earlier on week nights to be able to get up at 6:30 the following morning, but I was seldom required to work late or on weekends. After about a month, Ken called me into his office, said he and his colleagues were pleased with my work, and offered me the job. I accepted.

After a while, though, I felt the sense of restlessness returning. I didn't want to spend the remainder of my career working in the suburbs. Ken hired another lawyer, Steve, to share our growing workload. Unlike me at the time, Steve was focused and ambitious. He found that the officer in charge of purchasing had made a hash of hedging against fluctuations in the cost of oil and, with Ken's support, took this to top management. This made Steve unpopular with some people, but feared and respected by others. Meanwhile, I was taking long weekends to work on Charlie's movie (see previous installment) and finding it hard to concentrate on my work. When a project I was assigned, in which the company's president took an interest, became overdue, Ken's limited supply of patience was exhausted. He called me into his office. Steve was there. Ken said that henceforth I would report to Steve. I felt like quitting on the spot, but I couldn't take the immediate financial hit.

I considered my options. Jobs were not widely available; these were the "stagflation" years. My work on regulatory matters had kindled an interest in economics. I had taken one undergraduate course in that subject, which I liked and aced. The New York University Graduate School of Business Administration (now called the Stern School) offered an M.B.A. degree with a major in economics. I had G.I. Bill educational benefits available. Going back to school was an attractive prospect. I could look for part-time work, and my parents agreed to help as necessary. My application to N.Y.U. was accepted, and I left my in-house job in June of 1979.

In the fall of that year, I was invited to a black tie dinner dance to celebrate LeBoeuf's fiftieth anniversary.  Everyone was cordial, and after dessert had been eaten and the band struck up, Sheila, the firm's first woman partner, came over to where I was sitting and said, "Ask me to dance." I managed not to step on her toes, and my date was impressed. It was a delightful evening.

One afternoon around that time, I was sitting at the bar of the Lion's Head, which had again become my principal watering spot since the Bells closed a few months before, and got into a conversation with a Weil, Gotshal partner who frequented the place. When he found out I had been doing public utility work, he said, "I could use you. We have this strange antitrust case where our client is a public utility holding company suing other public utilities under the Sherman Act, and we don't have anybody who knows the industry." He said I should mail him my resume with a cover letter claiming I had been given his name by a common acquaintance of ours, and swear in blood that I would never disclose to anyone at the firm how we met, or even mention the Lion's Head. I got the job, working on an hourly basis, and this led to further projects that sustained me through the time I was taking classes at N.Y.U.

By 1982, I was ready to re-join the full time work force, and got an in-house job with an insurance company. Being in that business meant that I was able to keep up my contacts with LeBoeuf, at NAIC meetings and also, from time to time, as a client. I was proud to see my old mentor Taylor, who had become the firm's chairman, profiled in The American Lawyer as "LeBoeuf's Gentle Expansionist". Later, after Don Greene had succeeded Taylor at the firm's helm, I was surprised to see an associate, anonymously quoted, describing Don as "like the great flaming head in The Wizard of Oz." This didn't seem like the Don I remembered, and still saw on occasion. I was deeply saddened to see Peter Demmerle, a very smart and personable lawyer and former Notre Dame football star who seemed to be Don's heir apparent, fall victim to, and eventually die from, Lou Gehrig's disease.  At the same time, I was glad to see Jim Woods, who had been one of my associate friends in the early '70s, and who had become the head of LeBoeuf's San Francisco office, rise to a position of prominence in the firm by developing a thriving insurance practice on the West Coast and in East Asia.***

My friendship with Charlie, and several other former LeBoeuf associates, had continued from the time we left the firm. Charlie and I both got married and became fathers, which somewhat dampened our Bohemian inclinations (although we made it a tradition to meet once a year with the sound man from his movie at a Bohemian beer garden in Queens). He became a senior executive with Marsh & McLennan, the world's largest insurance brokerage, and had an office on the 100th floor of One World Trade Center.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had just dropped off my daughter at P.S. 150 in lower Manhattan, about a quarter mile north of the World Trade Center, and had turned off of Greenwich Street, where I had a clear view of the WTC towers, onto Reade Street, when I heard the sound of a plane overhead, seeming much closer than it should be. A few seconds later, the noise abruptly stopped. There was a brief silence, followed by a very loud explosion. People behind me on Greenwich Street started screaming. I ran back, looked up, and saw a gash in the side of One WTC right about where I knew Charlie's office was.  A moment later, a fireball emerged from the gash. In 2003, I posted this on Charlie's page in Marsh's memorial website for those lost in the September 11 attack:

Two years ago today, on a crisp, clear morning just like this, I lost someone very dear to me. Charlie's and my friendship took root in the early 1970's in a shared office at LeBoeuf's, was watered during bachelor hours at the Lion's Head and the Spring Street Bar, flowered in exotic locales at NAIC meetings, endured and strengthened through his and my marriages and the births and growth of our children. He was responsible for my brief, less than glorious but delightfiul movie career. I miss him very much.

I later learned that Cameron F. MacRae, III lost a daughter, who worked for Fred Alger Management, Inc., a few floors away from Charlie's office.

After I moved to Brooklyn Heights, Tony Sifton and I were neighbors, and would occasionally see each other on the street or in the bank or a shop. He would sometimes stop to chat, and was keen to hear how my life was progressing. The last time I saw him, we were both in line to buy bread at Almondine. He looked frail and was wearing a ventilator. Not long after, I saw his obituary. This past February I had the pleasure of meeting his son Sam, who had recently been appointed National Editor of The New York Times, when he spoke at a Brooklyn Heights Association meeting.

I had mixed feelings about the Dewey-LeBoeuf merger. I was sorry to see the LeBoeuf name lose precedence to the more prestigious Dewey, but hoped this would enable the firm to thrive in the increasingly competitive, globalized market of the megafirms. Every once in a while I would see an announcement that a highly regarded lawyer in some lucrative area of practice had left another firm to join Dewey LeBoeuf. While I assumed they were doing so because they thought they could make more money, I knew nothing of the lavish guarantees they were given. Perhaps Steve Davis, the firm's chairman, was hearing the words of Brutus:

We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or else lose our ventures.****

Maybe these same words echoed in the head of the "London Whale". For some, no doubt, they have inspired great deeds; for others, including Brutus and Cassius, they have pointed the way to disaster.

Erratum: I erroneously wrote that Cameron MacRae's daughter worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. LeBoeuf alum Peter Smedresman, whom I saw yesterday evening for the first time in about thirty years, told me she worked for Fred Alger Management. I've made the necessary correction to the text.

___________

* It is evidently an haut WASP tic for a man to have a nickname commonly associated with a given name other than his own. I never asked Tony how he came by his nickname, but I did later find the origin of a similar one. After leaving LeBoeuf, I worked for a time for Whitney North Seymour, Jr., former U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, and learned that he was known as "Mike." After one of my friends asked how "a guy with three last names" could be so called, I made a discreet inquiry and was told that when Whitney Jr. was in utero his mother called him "Microcosm." Update: I've since learned that "Tony" had a similar origin. When he was a baby, his older brother called him "Bunny", which later got changed to Tony.

**Note: no apostrophe. I get lots of hits off web searches by people wondering if "members only" takes an apostrophe.

***At the outset of this series I mentioned how my infatuation with a law school classmate who had been a summer associate at LeBoeuf led to my interviewing for a job there. This woman also indirectly and unwittingly caused Jim to go to work at the firm. For a time she dated Larry, a classmate of ours, and told him she had enjoyed her time at LeBoeuf. Larry later met Jim when they both had summer jobs at the United Nations. Jim, a native Californian, was impressed by New York City, and asked Larry what law firms he would recommend as prospective employers. Larry, remembering his former girlfriend's praise, told Jim he should check out LeBoeuf. The rest, as they say, is history.

****Julius Caesar, 4.2.269-276.

Real baseball wins: NL 8, AL 0.

"The National League Gets Serious" is the headline on Lynn Zinser's New York Times piece about yesterday's All Star Game. As one whose NL loyalty extends back to 1955 when, as a fourth grader living in the loblolly pine clad Florida Panhandle, I cemented my allegiance to the Brooklyn Dodgers as they proceeded to beat the big bad bully Yanks in that year's Series, all I could think was, "Get serious? We've now won the thing three years straight, and we've done it all three times playing the AL's debased version of the game."

It turns out, though, that Ms. Zinser was bemoaning the overall level of seriousness afforded to this "exhibition game" exemplified by "Tony La Russa['s] scowl." She allowed that it has been afforded  seriousness because of MLB's decision, a few years back, to make its outcome determine home field advantage in the World Series. Fun, she said, is what we need. She saw her fellow pundits saying things like: "How dare anyone suggest it would have been more fun to watch Buster Posey try to catch R.A. Dickey's knuckleball at the start of the game?", or criticizing AL starter Justin Verlander for having a little fun by trying to throw the hottest stuff ever and getting "hit like a pinata". Like many Mets fans, I would have liked to see Dickey honored as the starter. Still, I think 8-0 was fun.

So, what's all this fuss about the Higgs boson?

Why is it called the Higgs? It was named for Peter Higgs (see video above), a theoretical physicist now retired from the faculty of the University of Edinburgh, who predicted its existence. Around the same time, two other physicists, François Englert of the Free University of Brussels and Tom Kibble of Imperial College London, independently came to a similar conclusion. Had the last of these published first, we might now be celebrating the discovery of the Kibble boson.

So, what is a theoretical physicist? A theoretical physicist is someone who, using mathematics, tries to find solutions to as yet unexplained issues in physics. An experimental physicist tests these solutions in experiments using equipment such as the enormous CERN Large Hadron Collider in which the Higgs Boson has evidently now been found. Richard Feynman, one of the great theoretical physicists of the last century, who played an important role in defining what physicists call the "Standard Model" in which the Higgs plays a vital role, once described the difference by recalling a talk he gave to some experimental physicists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. Referring to a recently discovered particle, he said, "Let's suppose its spin [a quality all particles have, which can always be expressed as an integer or an integer plus one half] is two and a half." A voice with a heavy Brooklyn accent called out from the audience, "Hey! It ain't two and a half, it's tree. Dey measured it."

This isn't to say that experimental physicists are all down-to-earth types; far from it. The Guardian's Sample describes Fabiola Gianotti, a leader of the CERN team that may have discovered the Higgs, as having "an education steeped in ancient Greek, philosophy and the history of art--she had also trained as a pianist at the Milan conservatory."  Sample also quotes her as saying: "physics is art, aesthetics, beauty and symmetry." 

The Green Mountain Boys

Vermont, despite its place on the map, was not one of the original thirteen colonies. It was a sliver of territory lying west of New Hampshire (from which it was separated by the Connecticut River), north of Massachusetts, and east of Lake Champlain, to the west of which lay northern New York. It had been claimed by France, though never extensively settled apart from a few forts, and was surrendered to the British, along with Quebec, in the Treaty of Paris (1763) which concluded the Seven Years' War (better known here as the French and Indian War).

Shortly after the cession of Vermont by the French, Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire began giving land grants there to settlers. King George III had a different plan. He decided to place the boundary between New Hampshire and New York at the Connecticut River, thereby giving Vermont (or, as the beneficiaries of Wentworth's munificence called it, the "New Hampshire Grants") to New York. Some of the Wentworth grantees, led by the brothers Ethan, Ira and Levi Allen, along with Seth Warner and Remember Baker, formed a militia called the Green Mountain Boys that prevented New York grantees from settling in the territory.

When hostilities between the colonists and Great Britain began in 1775, the Green Mountain Boys joined the rebel side and, along with Colonel Benedict Arnold from Connecticut, captured the British forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point on the New York side of Lake Champlain. Later, there was a schism between Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, which led to Warner's heading the Vermont Militia and Allen leading a rump group of Green Mountain Boys in an unsuccessful attempt to take Montreal.* Allen and his contingent were captured and held prisoner by the British.**

In January of 1777, Vermont declared itself an independent republic, though allied with the colonies in the fight against the Crown. In August of that year, Warner's militia played an important role in the Battle of Bennington, in which the British General Burgoyne's forces, marching south from Quebec in an effort to split the northern from the southern colonies, suffered heavy losses that contributed to their later defeat at Saratoga, considered to be the turning point of the war. Vermont gave up its independence and became the fourteenth state in 1791.

While the song in the video above is billed as a "Revolutionary War song", in my opinion it is of much more recent provenance. Still, I like it.

__________

*This was the first attempt by forces from what is now the U.S. (actually, the Green Mountain Boys had earlier briefly held St. John, Quebec, but quickly retreated when British troops approached) to invade what is now Canada; another happened during the War of 1812. Both times, we got whupped. I was amused to read, some years ago, that in the 1920s a group of Canadian military officers took what was billed as a good will tour of U.S. military installations, during which they drew up secret plans for an invasion. The initial thrust was to capture and hold what they called the "Albany salient." Little did they realize that any army compelled to occupy and defend Albany is an army liable to mutiny en masse.

**One of those who accompanied Allen, but who either evaded capture, escaped, or was released, was one of the more colorful minor characters in early U.S. history, Matthew Lyon. A native of County Wicklow, Ireland, he was an early settler in the New Hampshire Grants, and formed a unit of what became the Green Mountain Boys. During the course of the war, he was court martialed by General Horatio Gates for cowardice and, as punishment, made to carry a wooden sword. Despite this, he later had the distinction of serving in Congress from two states, Vermont (1797-1801) and Kentucky (1803-1811), and after that unsuccessfully tried to become a delegate from the Arkansas Territory. In 1798 he became the first person to be convicted under the alien and sedition laws, for publishing letters opposing President Adams' policies with respect to France, and was re-elected to Congress while in jail. He was also the first member of Congress to be charged with an ethics violation, accused of "indecency" for expectorating in the face of a fellow Congressman (this earned him the nickname "The Spitting Lyon"), but was exonerated. Lyon's one great contribution to history was casting the deciding vote for Jefferson when the presidential election of 1800 went to the House.

iPod Log 8: a long morning walk.

Kayaks in the East River off Brooklyn Bridge Park.

My work schedule and other duties have kept me from doing the long version of my morning walk for some time. I was able to do it again a couple of weeks ago; below is the list of songs I heard (with links to videos, where available), and some photos I took along the way.

Neil Young, "Like a Hurricane". One of my favorite rock songs of all time. Hear it here.

Scott Joplin, "The Cascades", (New England  Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble, Gunther Schuller, cond.) Video, by the h2 Quartet, here

Flowerpots, Columbia Heights, Brooklyn.

Lightnin' Hopkins, "I'm Wit' It". Hear it here.

James Brown, "Chonnie-On-Chon". From Roots of a Revolution, Polydor's great collection of his early stuff recorded at King Studios in Cincinnati. Listen here.

Crossing Brooklyn Bridge.

Ruth Brown, "5-10-15 Hours". Hear it here.

Tee shirts for sale, Brooklyn Bridge.

Sibelius, Karelia Suite, Op. 11, 3rd movement, alla marcia (Helsinki Radio Orchestra, Okku Kamu cond.) Listen to the same piece by the London Philharmonic, Sir Charles Mackerras conducting, here.

Civic Fame, the Adolph A. Weinman statue atop McKim Mead & White's 1914 Municipal Building. Her backside faces the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fleetwood Mac, "Rhiannon". In 1978 I adopted a young street cat and named her for this song. Original recording, with still photo montage, here.

I was distressed to find the Brooklyn Bridge cactus bisected. Still, the surviving parts seem healthy. This is one tough succulent.

Marshall Tucker Band, "Heard it in a Love Song". Hear it here.

The Drifters, "This Magic Moment". One of my favorite R&B songs of all time. Listen here.

Entering City Hall Park.

Rod Stewart, "Reason to Believe". From Every Picture Tells a Story, in my opinion one of the top five or so greatest rock albums ever. Video of live performance here.

Dave & Ansel Collins, "Double Barrel". Sizzling reggae from the expanded version of the great The Harder They Come CD. Live performance video here.

The Cary Building, one of my favorites of the surviving old commercial buildings of lower Manhattan.

Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line". Live performance video, with history lesson, here.

Stevie Wonder, "Living for the City". Live performance video here.

The new One World Trade Center (David Childs, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) rises in the background.

The Byrds, "Bugler".  One of my favorite rock groups ever, here with a mellow country sound. Hear it here.

Teardrop Park, in Battery Park City, designed by Michael Van Valkenberg, who also designed Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Tom Russell Band, "Gallo del Cielo". Thrilling, and like many Mexican and Mexican-inspired songs, tragic. Video with photo montage and live performance audio here.

Sailboats on the Hudson, seen from Battery Park City. Jersey City is in the background.

Grateful Dead, "Ripple". This song perhaps best exemplifies what one critic called the Dead's "patchouli oil philosophy", but I still like it. Live performance video here.

Washingtonia palm trees inside the Winter Garden, World Financial Center.

Sue Foley, "Bad Luck Woman". A Canadian blues singer. Yes. Unfortunately, there's no video of this song, but here she is doing "Truckin' Little Woman".

Coming down off the bridge over West Street, approaching the World Trade Center site.

Rusty & Doug, "Louisiana Man". Sounds just like crawfish étouffée tastes. Hear it here.

As I head back to Brooklyn, a tug approaches the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Band, "Long Black Veil". Live performance video here.

Bruce Springsteen, "Open All Night". Live performance audio with photo montage here.

A Honeymooners line welcomes me back to the Borough of Cherce.

Fleetwood Mac, "Station Man". From Kiln House, a post Peter Green and pre Buckingham-Nicks album that critics drubbed but I love. Hear it here.

Fleetwood Mac, "Buddy's Song". From the same album; the best Buddy Holly song he didn't write (and never heard). You can hear it here.

The Manhattan Bridge, seen from Washington Street in DUMBO, a Brooklyn neighborhood the name of which is an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass."

Carole King, "Smackwater Jack" (live version). a bonus track from the Tapestry CD. Video of a different live performance (BBC) here.

A phone call to my wife resulted in a stop at Almondine for croissants.

The Byrds, "Renaissance Fair". Audio of live performance at 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with still photo here.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Jacksonville Kid" (aka "Honky Tonk Night Time Man"). A live bonus track from the Street Survivors CD. Audio of studio version here.

On the home stretch: the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, "Everybody's Boppin'". Annie Ross was a regular at the Lion's Head. Audio of the original recording, with a still of the album cover here. A fitting finish.

A small victory in the apostrophe wars.

Here's the original version, along with my rant (which made me, in Stephen Fry's eyes, a loser).

Yes, I think the old sign was prettier than the new one, except for that egregious grammatical error.

I missed Bloomsday, but it's never too late for Finnegan's Wake.

So, the sixteenth of June passed, and unlike last year I did not go to the Ulysses' Folk House and do a reading; I didn't even have a glass of Burgundy and a gorgonzola cheese sandwich.

By way of penance I'm here paying tribute to James Joyce's other massive novel, Finnegan's Wake, which I will let the Clancy Brothers explain in their delightful way in the video above, for which I thank Vlikavec, who has a superb collection of Clancys videos on his channel.

Dewey & LeBoeuf: why I'm mourning the death of a law firm, part 2.

This is a continuation of the story that begins here.

When I returned to LeBoeuf in 1973 from my Army stint, the firm had grown modestly, to about 45 lawyers. While I had spent most of my first year working on public utility matters, I now found myself called on to work in different areas of practice. The firm was not departmentalized, so an associate like me could be assigned tasks in various fields. One of these, to my delight as a ship buff, was maritime law. I had to learn the intricacies of charter parties, which is what contracts to charter ships are called, including such concepts as demurrage and laytime, and, when the client decided to build its own fleet of tankers, I worked on drafting and negotiating the shipyard construction contract and the operating contract with an experienced ship owner that would supply officers and crews.

I also began to get assignments in what had become the firm's second major practice area: insurance. Our clients were London based insurers whose operations in the U.S. were mostly in what's called the excess or surplus lines market, in which unlicensed insurers could write business--typically large or unusual risks--that couldn't be placed with licensed carriers, and in reinsurance. My mentor in this area was Donald J. Greene, then a rising younger partner but later to become the firm's chairman and a "name" partner. Early on, I got an assignment from Don and wrote a memo, which I gave to his secretary. The next day she called: "Mr. Greene wants to see you in his office." "Close the door," he said as I entered. My memo was prominently centered on his desktop, which typically looked like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier after all the planes had gone on a mission. The memo had prominent red marks. "Sit down." He then told me how, in the course of his Jesuit education, he had asked whether a Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist or such who lived an exemplary life was still condemned to hell for not being Christian. The answer he was given was "No," provided that person was completely unaware of Christian teaching. This, he said, was called the Doctrine of Invincible Ignorance, and my memo demonstrated it.

Despite this, Don evidently saw some redeeming virtue in my work, as I became a recipient of his "fun, travel, and adventure" talk.

Claude, I'd like for you to do more work for our [insurance clients]. This work will be challenging, and will involve a great deal of travel, some of it on short notice. You're a bachelor, right?...Good. Please make sure your passport is up-to-date and keep it handy.

Over the next several years I did a fair amount of traveling, none of which required a passport. I was assigned to keep track of legislative and regulatory developments in the Southwest Zone of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which involved trips to Austin, Cheyenne, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, and Omaha.  On one occasion, the associate assigned to the Northeast Zone had a schedule conflict and I was sent to an NAIC meeting in Baltimore. After one day, the junior partner who accompanied me said, "I can't take this any longer; give me a report when you come back Wednesday." That evening, sitting at the Hilton's bar, I got into conversation with Fred, the CEO of a Miami based insurance company. A man about my age came up to him and said, "Fred, the desk won't let the girls in without escorts." Fred looked at me and, in his best CEO voice, said "Come!" I went. Outside the door were three women with teased hair, wearing scanty tops, tight fitting pants, and stiletto heels, shivering slightly in the evening chill. We each took one by the arm, and walked them through the lobby, past the glowering desk clerk and concierge, to the elevators. We rode up to the top floor, where Fred had a deluxe suite. Inside were two state insurance commissioners, one accompanied by his wife, several other state insurance department officials, and some of Fred's junior execs. One of the commissioners asked me who I was. "I'm Claude Smith; I'm with Allstate," I answered. He said, "I have a real problem with that." Fred paid one of the women fifty dollars to remove her top and bra. He later paid another one hundred to undress completely; this prompted the commissioner with wife to bid goodnight. The naked woman then went around the room, perching on each man's lap in turn. Afterward, she gave her opinion of each of us. My diagnosis: "This one's scared of pussy." I finished my drink, thanked Fred for his hospitality, and went to my room, alone.

The partner in charge of the insurance practice was Keith Brown, a portly man with carefully coiffed silver hair, who cultivated something of an air of mystery. He occasionally drove his secretary, Mildred, to tears. When this happened, he would excuse himself, then return a few minutes later with a small bottle of perfume which he would put on her desk with a curt "Here!" One day in the spring of 1975, I was walking past Keith's office and heard "Claude, please come in." As I entered, "Close the door." ("Oh, shit," I thought.) "What are you doing tomorrow?" "Nothing, " I said. I had work to do, but no meetings or deadlines. "Good," he said.  He told me to take the noon shuttle to Washington, get a cab to the river entrance to the Pentagon, go to the reception desk, identify myself and who I represented, and say I had an appointment with a certain lawyer in the Department of the Air Force. A guard would be assigned to escort me to this lawyer's office. Once there, I was to ask the lawyer to tell me everything he could about the contingency plans for the evacuation of Saigon and, in particular, whether the Civil Reserve Air Fleet would be mobilized, which meant that many civilian airliners would be commandeered by the military and taken into a war zone. This was of great concern to some of our insurance clients, who had written war risk coverage on these airliners. I figured I had just been sent on the biggest wild goose chase in the history of the firm. (Pentagon photo: en.wikipedia.org)

The following day everything went as planned until I got to the Pentagon reception desk. After I had identified myself, my firm, and our clients, no guard was summoned. I was told, "Go down the corridor with the entrance to your right until you get to the third ring, then turn left, and it's the fourth door on your right." Once I got there, I was greeted cordially by the Air Force lawyer. "Any plans to use the CRAF?"  I asked. "No, it's going to be all military." I thanked him, flew back to New York, and drafted a Telex (how we sent instantaneous written communications in those days, though fax was beginning to catch on) to London. The Telex, no doubt, was intercepted and read by both the CIA and the KGB.

Around that time the firm moved from One Chase across Nassau Street to 140 Broadway (photo LoopNet), now the Brown Brothers Harriman Building. (Shortly after we moved, a senior executive of our biggest client asked a receptionist for directions to the men's room. Her answer: "I don't know; I never use it." Her redemption was marriage to an associate who later became a partner.)  My office mate in our new quarters was Charlie McCrann. Charlie and I had been friends for two years. We were bachelor neighbors in Greenwich Village and often met in the evening for beers at neighborhood bars. We had different backgrounds. I had been a military brat who moved around a lot during my childhood, and went to a public high school and a state university before Harvard Law. Charlie grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, the son of a stockbroker, prepped at Lawrenceville, then went to Princeton and Yale Law. He looked like Warren Beatty. I didn't. I yearned for WASP princesses. Charlie could have, and had had, his fill of such, so he longed for secretaries with outer borough accents. (He would later marry a beautiful Haitian woman.)

One particular in which we were very different was this: Charlie was determined to keep his work life and his social life separate. I was, along with a few other associates, a rare exception he allowed to this rule. Several times when Charlie and I were out drinking together, I spotted someone else from the firm entering the bar. His reaction was always, "We've got to get out of here, now!"  I was the opposite. I loved to mix people from different parts of my life together. I threw parties in my Village apartment to which I'd invite friends from the firm, law school classmates, and various characters I'd met at the Bells of Hell or the Lion's Head. At one of these, I looked across the room and saw a LeBoeuf partner sharing a joint with the members of a punk rock band.

Charlie was a movie buff. He had been president of the Yale Law School Film Society. While we worked at LeBoeuf, he took evening film classes at New York University (I was sworn to secrecy about this). We both left the firm at about the same time (late 1977), I to a utility company client in the suburbs (I reverse commuted from the Village) and Charlie to be legislative counsel to the chairman of the New York State Assembly's Insurance Committee. His job allowed him about six months off each year when the legislature wasn't in session, during which time in 1978 he took a feature length horror film script he had written as an NYU class project, in which almost all of the characters have the names of LeBoeuf lawyers, and turned it into a real movie. The plot was based on the paraquat scare of a few years previous. A group of hippies growing marijuana in a remote clearing in a national forest kill two federal agents who try to bust them. The feds then hire a cropduster to dump an as yet untested, highly toxic herbicide, Dromax, on their crop. The plane arrives just as the hippies are frantically harvesting, they get covered with Dromax, and are transformed into blood craving zombies who go on a murderous rampage.

Most of the cast and crew were recruited through ads in the Village Voice, though a few parts were given to Bells of Hell denizens, including me. Charlie pulled off a coup in getting John Amplas, who had played the title role in Pittsburgh goremeister George Romero's 1978 hemophagic thriller Martin, to play a federal agent (not one of those who get offed at the beginning). Aided by a New York State arts grant (the application described the project as a film about the dangers of herbicides), Charlie was able to hire top notch camera, sound, and special effects people, and to commission appropriately eerie music by Ted Shapiro. Most of the film was shot at locations close to the country house of a couple who were Bells regulars. It was in the wilds of north central Pennsylvania; to get there, you passed a sign that read "Welcome to Potter County, God's Country".

Charlie's working title was Forest of Fear. The distributor he convinced to handle the movie in the domestic market thought that sounded too much like an arty Japanese film, and changed it to Bloodeaters--Butchers of the Damned. Under that title, it played drive-ins and movie houses across the nation. Another distributor later acquired the rights to make it into a VHS tape (and later DVD) with the title Toxic Zombies; in the 1980s it played under that title on the USA Cable network. Charlie and I, and several other cast members (Charlie played the lead role, a forest ranger, as well as producing and directing) went to the East Coast premiere of Bloodeaters at the Twin Pine Drive-In on the outskirts of Waterbury, Connecticut. After the movie we went to the concession stand and were mobbed by local teens asking for our autographs (I can say this has happened once in my life). We were then feted at a party at what may have been Waterbury's classiest discotheque.

Here is the trailer for Bloodeaters:



Here's a favorable (!) review of the movie. Charlie's photo is next to the first paragraph; the photo on the wall is of Beverly Shapiro, who played his wife, Polly. During the scene from which this still was taken, Charlie opens a pressboard binder enclosing a thick sheaf of paper, supposedly weather statistics. It's actually the LeBoeuf fifty state excess and surplus lines law survey. The photo next to the third paragraph shows an especially clever bit of special effects gore involving a barbecue glove, a pig's foot, a wristwatch, a turkey baster, and stage blood (clear Karo syrup with red food coloring).

There will be a part three to the LeBoeuf saga. Can you stand it?

Update: It's here.

Second update: A few years ago Toxic Zombies was revived in Italy as Il ritorno degli zombi. You can see it here. I sound good dubbed in Italian.

Count Basie and Jackie Wilson cover Jerry Butler's "For Your Precious Love".

A little over a year ago, I posted a clip of Count Basie and Jackie Wilson, great jazz and R&B artists, respectively, doing the Stevie Wonder Motown classic "Uptight". Unfortunately, that video clip is no longer available, but I was glad to find the clip above, evidently from the same recording series, of Jackie and the Count covering what, in my opinion, is one of the best R&B ballads ever, "For Your Precious Love".
  Here's the original, by Jerry "The Ice Man" Butler. Much as I'm a fan of both Basie and Wilson, I still prefer Butler's understated yet emotionally intense delivery of this song, with its subtle accompaniment:  guitar, bass, very quiet snare, and soft harmony vocals. Still it's good to have both. What do you think?

About the annoying pop-up ads on this blog; or, how to get rid of Text-Enhance/DealPly

You may have noticed, as I just did, that certain words in my posts are being highlighted--not the ones I've highlighted as links--and that, when you mouse over these words, ads pop up. I didn't, at least not knowingly, authorize this, and I'm trying to find out how to get rid of it. Sorry for the distraction.

Update: It seems the problem was an extension, which I never knowingly added, to my Chrome browser, called Text-Enhance. Unless you had this on your browser, you wouldn't have seen the highlighted and underlined words (links that I put in are highlighted but not underlined) in my blog posts, and wouldn't get the pop-up ads. If you are seeing these things on my blog or on any website you visit, follow these directions to get rid of the malware that has attached itself to your browser. When you see the list of extensions on your browser, it may not include Text-Enhance, but it may show as DealPly. I hasten to add: there is no malware in this blog, and visiting it is perfectly safe.

Santana sits 'em down for the Mets.

It only took them fifty seasons, but the Mets finally got a no-hitter. They got it off the arm of their ace, Johan Santana, who has had a rocky start this season coming off shoulder surgery. The eight runs scored by Santana's teammates called into question the notion that he doesn't get run support. That he and the team got it against the Cardinals, a strong contender in the NL Central, makes it doubly impressive.

Typically for the Mets, it wasn't without drama. Santana came within inches of losing it in the sixth, when a long drive down the left field line was, in what I'm sure in the eyes of most Cards fans was an example of "home cooking", called foul. That the drive came off the bat of Carlos Beltran, who subsequently grounded out, casts doubt on the "curse of the ex-Met" theory. Photo: Wikipedia.

Goodbye, Doc Watson

I had the pleasure of taking in a performance by Doc Watson some years ago in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. Doc died today at 89, not long after another titan of the traditional country scene, Earl Scruggs, with whom Doc sometimes performed. In the clip above, thanks to Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, he does "Tennessee Stud", a song I first heard him perform on Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Dewey & LeBoeuf: the inevitable happens.

As anyone following the story knows by now, Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP filed for bankruptcy early today. The New York Times story notes that the merger of the former Dewey Ballantine with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP happened just before the financial collapse of 2008. Before the merger, LeBoeuf, under Steve Davis's leadership, had been aggressive in recruiting partners laterally from other firms, and Dewey had taken on debt. According to the Times:

Even as [post-merger] Dewey’s performance flagged, the firm doled out lavish multiyear, multimillion-dollar guarantees to its top partners and star recruits. The guarantees — there were about 100, with several over $5 million a year — created compensation obligations that the firm could not meet.

That what should have been evidently risky behavior continued after financial market turmoil, along with other, more gradual changes in the market for legal services, such as the tendency of corporations to take more legal work in-house to save costs, reduced the firm's revenue, points to a parallel between Dewey and J.P Morgan Chase. In both instances, there seems to have been a tendency to "double down" rather than to accept what may have been a manageable loss. I'll be writing more about the J.P. Morgan debacle soon.

This is not the promised second installment of my reminiscences about the LeBoeuf that was. That we be along soon; I hope by this coming weekend. Please stay tuned.

Prison blues: Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons

On my way home this evening, my iPod, on random shuffle, played "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash, then followed it with...


...a heart-tugging cover of Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home" by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Donna Summer, 1948-2012

I hated disco when it dominated the party scene and the airwaves in the mid to late 1970s. Now that it's wrapped in the warm blanket of nostalgia, my feelings have mellowed. And I always made an exception for this lady with the powerful voice. Thanks to Rael1964 for this live performance clip.

Dewey & LeBoeuf: why I'm mourning the death of a law firm, part 1.

"You're part of the legend." That's what another lawyer I had just met, who had formerly been a partner in the firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP, arriving there long after I'd left, said. I didn't ask what the legend was. From the perspective of a 21st century megafirm, the firm with which I started my career in 1970, then called LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, must have seemed a legend, though perhaps more like Fiddler's Green than Camelot.

My first contact with LeBoeuf was an interview in Cambridge during the fall of 1969. After I introduced myself to the partner and associate conducting the interview, the partner's first question was if I knew a woman in my class who had done a summer clerkship at the firm that year.

"Know her? I've only been hopelessly infatuated with her for the past two years. Why else would I have signed up to interview with a little known firm in a city I haven't seriously considered as a destination?", I thought.

"Yes," I said. As I gave my flat affirmation, my eyes and the partner's made meaningful contact. Knowing we shared an affection, we became simpatico. The rest of the interview was pro forma. By such ephemera are the course of a life shaped. A few days later, I got a letter inviting me to further interviews in New York.

(The woman in question later spurned LeBoeuf's offer of a permanent position, choosing instead the charms of San Francisco.)

The New York interview went well, by my estimation, until lunch. The two partners who accompanied me to the Broad Street Club were: Peter, tall, of patrician manner, and bearing the name of one of New York's grand old Dutch families; and Joe, short, balding, bespectacled, and Jewish. For most of the lunch I felt like a spectator at an intellectual ping pong match, as Joe and Peter engaged in what to them seemed most enjoyable repartee. Then I made what I later learned was a classic mistake: "If they take you to lunch, don't order dessert." I ordered a creme de menthe parfait. When it arrived, Joe said, "That's instant alcohol!", and Peter said, "Oh, no. We'll have to carry him back." On our return to One Chase Manhattan Plaza (see photo, courtesy of en.wikipedia.org) where the firm had its offices, I managed to get into the same revolving door compartment as Joe, and trod on his heels. When we arrived at the firm's reception area and I thanked them for the lunch, I got Joe's surname wrong. "Oh, well," I thought, "so much for that."

When I got the letter offering me a job as an associate, at the then stratospheric starting salary of $15,000, I celebrated by buying Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers, a bottle of vodka, and a bottle of Kahlua, then went home, fixed a Black Russian, turned up the volume, and grooved to Grace Slick singing

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America,
In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide, and deal,
We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, VIOLENT,
And young.... 

When I started work at LeBoeuf in June of 1970, I was given a desk in an office next door to Joe's that I shared with two other associates, Judy (the firm was ahead of its time in having two women lawyers; the other, Sheila, had started as a secretary, went to law school at night, was made an associate, then became the firm's first female partner after twelve years, as contrasted with the usual six or seven) and another Pete. Working on my first assignment, I came to a citation I didn't understand. I asked Judy if she could explain it, and she said, "Why don't you ask Joe?"  With trepidation, I knocked on his office door.  He looked up, blinked, and said, "Oh, so we did make an offer." 

I later discovered, because of my occasional urge to push the sartorial envelope, that Joe was a self-appointed dress code enforcer (he personified the saying, "Think Yiddish, dress British"). One day I showed up in a perfectly acceptable Brooks Brothers tan poplin summer suit, but under it wore a fire engine red dress shirt and a dark blue tie with a diagonal chain link figure that matched the red of the shirt. As I passed Joe's office, I heard, "Hey, Claude, ya gonna shoot 'em up?" I looked at him quizzically, and he said, "You look like you're dressed for the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre."

The desk I was given in the three-associate office had belonged to a lawyer who left the firm shortly before I arrived. In what has now proved to be a bit of historical irony, that lawyer was John Martin Dewey, the younger of Thomas E. Dewey's two sons. Dewey père was the former Governor of New York and Republican candidate for President in 1948, famously and erroneously declared the victor over Harry Truman by the Chicago Tribune. After that he became the lead partner in a large, prestigious firm then called Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood.

Past Joe's office was Jim's, and a few doors down from Jim was Jack. Both were listed on the letterhead as partners. Jim had closely cropped white hair, a round, florid face, and glinty Irish eyes. Jack had sharp features, slightly protuberant eyes, and slate grey hair brushed back and pomaded into place. Both would arrive every morning ten-ish, and close their office doors.  Both took long lunches from which they would return with more color in their faces than before. They would close their office doors again, and soon the odor of cigar smoke would waft from under them.  No associates were ever called to their offices for assignments. From bits and pieces of lore I could glean from older associates, Jack and Jim had been very productive partners for many years. They had done financing work for public utilities, the traditional centerpiece of the firm's practice. Someone told me that Jack billed forty hours a week to a large upstate electric and gas utility, which was glad to pay the bill, knowing he would occasionally look over a bond indenture with his keen eye and institutional memory.

One of my first big assignments was to assist Taylor, a senior litigation partner, with a matter for a client in Jamestown, a small city located near the far western end of New York State. Our first trip out to visit the client was in October, and it was a clear, crisp fall day as we boarded an Allegheny Airlines (a predecessor of USAir, often called "Agony Air") twin turboprop Convair at Newark Airport. Our flight was a puddle jumper that went from Newark to Bradford, Pennsylvania, then to Jamestown, then on to its final destination, Pittsburgh. As we flew westward, we were soon over a thick cloud bank. On our descent into Bradford, I casually mentioned to Taylor that this was where Allegheny had put two planes into the trees the previous winter. We made it into and out of Bradford without incident. Descending into Jamestown, which was still under heavy clouds, we had just broken through so that I could see brilliant autumn foliage below when the pilot gunned the engines and we began climbing. He got on the intercom and said we'd missed our approach, that he would circle and try again, but that if we missed a second time we would have to skip Jamestown and go on to Pittsburgh. We made it on the second try. (Photo:AirlinersGallery.com)


I can't resist mentioning here that Jamestown later became the birthplace of one of my favorite rock groups, 10,000 Maniacs, which, in turn, became famous for launching the solo career of Natalie Merchant. The clip above is of their song "Maddox Table", named for one of Jamestown's biggest employers (the city was a furniture manufacturing center) and a customer of our client. The music is accompanied by video scenes of Jamestown life in 1948; "Maddox Table" is a paean to the band's parents' generation.

After a day conferring with the client's managers, we were taken to dinner at Jamestown's club for local V.I.P.s. Taylor and I had tickets to return to Newark on an Allegheny flight that took the same route as the one we took out in reverse, leaving at 7:30. As it got to be 6:30 and we were finishing dessert, I glanced nervously at my watch. Taylor asked if Cognac was available. It was. Cigars? To be sure. Our cab got us to the airport just as the plane was taking off. "Darn!", Taylor said. "We'll just have to rent a car, drive to Buffalo, and see if we can get a flight from there. If there's nothing tonight, my sainted parents will put us up." At the Buffalo airport, we were able to get on an American Airlines 707 nonstop to Newark--no flirting with the treetops in Bradford.

Taylor later became the messenger delivering some very welcome news. I was cavalier in my preparation for the New York bar exam; as a consequence, I failed on my first attempt. The day after the results came out, three partners (not including Taylor) came to my desk at different times, each to confide that they, too, had flunked the exam on the first go-round, and not to worry. After that, I had to leave the firm temporarily to fulfill my Army Reserve active duty commitment, and found that Fort Polk, Louisiana was an ideal study environment. I took leave to go back and take the exam, and a month or so later got a phone call from my parents, who had received a telegram: "You passed bar exam. Congratulations, Taylor."

To be continued.

Update: Part 2 is here, and part 3 is here.

Moon Hooch: two saxes, a drummer, hot music and great views of New York City.

Thanks to my daughter for showing me this great clip by eDsanca.

Break up the Mets, Part II

Ike Davis, who's had his (as sportswriters love to put it) struggles at the plate, hit a three run homer at Citizens Bank Park tonight to help the Mets complete a three game sweep of their division rivals and often nemeses the Phillies on their home ground. Having taken two of three from the Phils at Citi Field in April, the season record is now 5-1 Mets. The Amazins are now in third place in the Real Baseball League East, but a mere half game behind the division leading Nats and Braves. Third is as well as I'd hoped they would finish the season, even in my wildest dreams, but they're flirting with better.

I can't help but wonder if I'm sharing the fate of Tantalus.

An almost-super moon over Brooklyn Heights

Tonight's supermoon, or, as we here in Brooklyn Heights call it, Cosmo's moon, was obscured by clouds. Last night, walking home from Jack the Horse Tavern, I did get this fuzzy photo (using my BlackBerry) of a 99% supermoon looming over Hicks Street.

The San Patricios

On this Cinco de Mayo, the day that Mexico celebrates its independence, I'm thinking about an incident in the long and fraught relationship between that country and ours, back when that relationship was at its most fraught, 1846-48, when we were at war with each other. It also involves Ireland, a country for which, through some ancestry, many friendships and now through marriage, I hold great affection.

The San Patricios, or St. Patrick's Batallion, were mostly Irish immigrants who defected from the U.S. Army either, like their leader Jon Riley, shortly before war was declared, or during the course of the war, to join and fight with the Mexican army. Along with Irish, the battalion also included immigrants from other European countries, almost all of them Catholics, a few native Mexicans who had enlisted in the U.S. Army, and some escaped African slaves. Few were U.S. citizens.

The song in the clip above, by David Rovics, of necessity gives a simplified account of the San Patricio story. The original 200 or so who defected with Riley are said to have been motivated by the discrimination they felt from officers and fellow soldiers because of their being Irish and Catholic (Irish immigrants were objects of considerable prejudice at the time) and by being denied the ability to practice their religion (no Catholic chaplains or masses) which the Mexicans, as co-religionists, could offer them. However, the Mexicans also offered higher pay to soldiers who would defect and serve in their army, and made promises of land to those who fought and survived. Immigrants to the U.S. may also have been offered land upon completion of army service.

They are said to have fought bravely and effectively. Many were killed in action. Those who were forced to surrender near the conclusion of the war were dealt with harshly. The ones who defected before hostilities were declared, including Riley, were given fifty lashes and had their faces branded with the letter "D" for deserter. Those who deserted after the war started were executed; a few by firing squad but most by hanging.

The Chieftains, in collaboration with Ry Cooder and many Mexican musicians, recorded an album, San Patricio, based on the battalion's history.

A train of thought leads me to a Jimmy Buffet song, and to waterbeds.

I was thinking about now obscure early 1970s bands with silly names, and that led to thinking about songs with funny titles, and that led me to the Jimmy Buffet song shown in a live performance in Honolulu (thanks to elenapopper for the clip) above.

Listening to Jimmy's song made me think about waterbeds. I've never owned one, and never hope to. I'm sure that, in my cooperative apartment proprietary lease, somewhere in the fine print I read years ago and mostly forgot, there's a clause prohibiting them. The weight can put strain on structural elements, and a leak on a higher floor could send water cascading down. Maybe this is why I haven't heard of waterbeds in years: I live in a city of apartment dwellers. Perhaps I have suburban acquaintances who are frolicking on waterbeds but somehow failing to mention this to me. Out of curiosity, I did a web search for "waterbeds New York" and found one dealer in suburban Farmingdale.

Do any of you have a waterbed?

Goodbye, Levon Helm

An Arkansas boy, Levon Helm joined up with fellow Razorback Ronnie Hawkins and followed him to Canada where, with the addition of some Canadian musicians, they became Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, and spread the gospel of rock 'n' roll in the Great Frozen North. Later, sans Hawkins, they became Dylan's backup band. Then they became The Band, makers of so much sublime music. The clip above, thanks to PBS, shows Levon drumming and singing with a group called the Midnight Ramblers on the classic Band song "The Weight" sometime not too long ago. Levon died today at 71, from "complications of cancer."