Bar Exams I'm Glad I Didn't Take

Despite the accompanying agony, I am glad to have taken two bar exams. It was a challenge, an opportunity to prove myself, a validation of my strength and fortitude--sort of like childbirth, only with longer gestation.

But there are a few I'm glad I missed out on. Like the February 2001 Washington Bar Exam, which I had applied for, but my application was delayed while the Board of Governors considered whether I was qualified to take it. That was the year of the 6.8 earthquake in the middle of the exam. And I understand the earthquake was even more exciting in Seattle than it was in Olympia, where I was trying to stay awake at my desk that day and needed a little excitement.

Then there's this year's California Bar Exam at Pasadena (where I took it back in 2000). Apparently the room where they laptop users were taking the test flooded Thursday morning, preventing them from starting the last essay session until 11:30 a.m.; this meant they had to cancel the afternoon performance test. What this will do to their scores no one knows yet. Poor souls. I had many scary hypotheticals as to what could happen to prevent the bar exam from going on, but somehow floods in Southern CA did not occur to me.

Aaaaarrrgggghhhh!

Finally we have the radio hooked up--finally I can listen to the 11 o'clock classic radio hour while doing my classic household tasks.

And today it's a two hour special. Why? BECAUSE IT'S FUNDRAISING WEEK, OF COURSE!!!!

I hate fundraising drives. I hate public radio. Yes, I'm an unrepentant freeloader. Get some commercials, people! At least they are occasionally witty and entertaining, not a half-hour guilt trip.

Shocking Error

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. When I was serving DOB his dinner he looked in horror at one of my purchases. "You brought Heinz ketchup?" he said, "Don't you know that's like giving a donation to John Kerry?"

Alas, I don't usually think about politics in the seasonings aisle. (Difficult though that is to believe.)

But this makes me ponder how unpleasant it must be to be a tycoon. It doesn't matter what one's name was before, or how intrinsically dignified it is, ever afterwards it is associated with ketchup or tires or chocolate bars or whatever it was you got filthy rich selling. Of course, if one's name was something like "Burpee" in the first place, one might as well get rich selling cucumber seeds as not.

Speaking of people who have a lot of kids (but not too many), congratulations are in order to our good friends the Hastings, who welcomed home their ninth this week. And the older children cleaned the house and prepared a festive dinner of (since it was a girl) pink things.

I'm jealous--I wish I had eight people to clean the house and fix dinner while I go have a baby. But one must start without such advantages.

We have radio working!! Now I can listen to the classical station all day--except of course, over noon, when the old time radio dramas come on. Hurrah! (We never got it working at the old place, so this is a first-time-ever occurrence.)

I no longer begrudge my brother-in-law his poached eggs and toast, even though I'm wondering if I'll be able to make the eggs last until Friday.

Going crazy

Reader's Digest this month had an article on the Andrea Yates case; shed some interesting light on the "homeschool mom who goes crazy from being stuck at home with too many kids" cast that it seemed to have when it was playing in the media. Mrs. Yates had apparently suffered from bipolar disorder since she had been a teenager; it had worsened after her fourth child and she had become suicidal. (Plus the family seemed to have a certain lack of common sense--say deciding after having three children that it would be better to live in a trailer than in a house.)

So no, normal people do not just go off and kill their kids, even if they have a lot of them and stay with them all the time.

Weird dream pertaining to maternity clothes:

Last week, before going shopping, I dreamed about going shopping for maternity clothes. In my dream I found a very good sale on some attractive denim jackets. This was an excellent deal. It was such a good deal that DOB got excited and started calling all his law school buddies to ask them if we wanted them to pick up jackets for them. Somehow I was unable to explain to him that they probably were not in the market for maternity-sized jackets.

No doubt this reveals some deep psychological attempt to come to terms with my new identity or something.

And I didn't even remember to buy a jacket when I went shopping!

I'm posting online tests; how cheesy. But I was highly amused by the "Which Rule of Federal Procedure are you?" question. (I'm Rule 11, requiring proper investigation of claims before filing; DOB is the easy-going Rule 8(a), whose rule can be summed up, as in the poem I composed while studying these:

"In most states, or in federal court,
A statement that is plain and short
Of claim to ease the plaintiff's grief
Must show that he can get relief."

And then there is the one my weird aunt posted on Multiple Intelligences.

The Seven Intelligence Areas

Linguistic: 9
Logical-Mathematical: 9
Spatial: 3
Bodily-Kinesthetic: 6
Musical: 6
Interpersonal: 6
Intrapersonal: 3

A Short Definition of your Highest Score

Linguistic - the ability to use language to describe events, to build trust and rapport, to develop logical arguments and use rhetoric, or to be expressive and metaphoric. Possible vocations that use linguistic intelligence include journalism, administrator, contractor, salesperson, clergy, counselors, lawyers, professor, philosopher, playwright, poet, advertising copywriter and novelist.

Logical-Mathematical - the ability to use numbers to compute and describe, to use mathematical concepts to make conjectures, to apply mathematics in personal daily life, to apply mathematics to data and construct arguments, to be sensitive to the patterns, symmetry, logic, and aesthetics of mathematics, and to solve problems in design and modeling. Possible vocations that use the logical-mathematics intelligence include accountant, bookkeeper, statistician, tradesperson, homemaker, computer programmer, scientist, composer, engineer, inventor, or designer.

Observations:

1. I'm still not as smart, over all, as my weird aunt. However, I slightly outscore her on logic, which is probably what helps me survive when we debate.

2. The low spatial reasoning score can be testified to by anyone who has watched me park, which was a favorite form of office amusement at my former place of employment. Now it just causes DOB to despair as I can't seem to find the curb without running over it.

3. So homemaker is a prime career choice for us logical/mathematical people. I feel my self-worth growing already. Now I'll go use my logical and mathematical skills to figure out how to make one week's worth of groceries last two extra days and what portions of a wardrobe can be reconfigured to use on someone with ten inches more padding around the waist.

All right, time to post random thoughts that have been lurking about. Maybe I should resolve to post one thing during breakfast every weekday. (Saturday breakfast is for leisurely conversation; Sunday breakfast is for getting food down ASAP without dumping it on church clothes.)

Clothing
Finally went shopping for maternity clothes on Friday. Not as painful as I thought--found several things that might look kind of good even when I do look like I did with that "three-month pillow" on. Ugh. And did not spend too much.

I was exhibiting my purchases to DOB and he admired a denim jumper I had selected. "Wow, you even found some second-hand stuff," he said in the tone of one commending a frugal wife. Alas, I had to explain that people deliberately try to make new denim look old in these decadent times. I did get it on clearance, though.

Acting
Why should it even be an issue, when people are selecting their "favorites" with actors whether they attractive or not? It seems rather like selecting one's auto mechanic or doctor for that reason. Shouldn't the issue be whether they can act? Sure it may be nicer to look at a pretty actor than an ugly one, but it's nicer to look at a good-looking auto mechanic, too. (For the record, the only mechanics I've ever dealt with have been family members or old.) That's one advantage of the stage--it requires acting to a much greater degree than film, so you get to watch people selected based on their ability to act.

Random Cool Chesterton Quote
And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our name in print.

So I was trying to rest a few days ago and reading the small-town newspaper from cover to cover because it was handy. There was an insert with an article interviewing various minor celebrities and asking them what their favorite romantic book was. One woman said "Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems." Fine selection, and better than the drivel everyone else had selected, except then she went on to say, "I don't know whether she ever met the guy or what, but they're just so romantic blah blah blah."

OK, I realize some people slept through that part of English Lit and don't know that Elizabeth Barrett wrote those poems to Robert Browning and they eloped and lived happily ever after. But really, I would think someone with a modicum of interest in the writing might, say, read the flyleaf and find out the back story. Do people have no curiosity anymore? What good is the information age if people have no interest in the information?

Or maybe it's the overload of information itself that destroys all curiosity. I certainly feel more curious about life when I'm cut off from the internet than after an hour of surfing. So time to go develop my curiosity. Maybe with a nice nap.

We have moved. The computers are working again. The house is nice.

More entertaining comments once we've gotten rid of more visible boxes and I've caught up on sleep.

According to a prominent financial planner, it is useless to tell people to plan carefully for their children. The reason? They hate their children. However, tell them to plan for the grandchildren, and the toughest customer becomes a soft sell. After all, grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies--they have a common enemy.

As a soon-to-be parent, I don't find this encouraging.

All right, I admit, I have a problem. I scored about 11 out of a possible 14, which probably means I should check myself in somewhere immediately. DOB scored only 8, which still indicates a serious problem. And no doubt we will become parents of FFS sufferers, and perpetuate the problem to another generation. Tragic.

Useful Statistic

According to Reader's Digest, 78% of households with an overweight family member experience stress.

This raises two questions:

1. What is wrong with the other 22%?

2. Would someone fat please move in with us to lower our chances of experiencing stress? I don't know any all-thin households that never experience it.

Favorite smart remarks to responses to pregnancy announcement:

"Are you going to find out what it is?"

"No, we plan to change the diapers blindfolded and allow it to define its own gender."

"Was it planned?"

"Yeah, I had 'get pregnant' down in my daytimer right next to my dinner menus for the next nine months."

"Don't you know what causes that?"

"Oh yes, we know, but we're kind of wondering about you."
(Actually we haven't reached the stage where people ask this yet, but I heard that one from a usually demure mother of soon-to-be 9 who likes to use it on the purposefully childless.)

With Democratic presidential candidates working to top each other on who can propose the highest minimum raise and the biggest soak-the-rich tax increase, how long will it be before the two meet in the middle and minimum-wage workers qualify as rich?

It’s cookie baking weekend. And I am not there.

I could begin by reiterating that the Cookie Bake, in its current form, is not my fault. But that would contradict my general policy of accepting blame when possible, since I am less troubled by guilt than the other females in my family. If it makes them feel better to blame me, I will let them and go on my merry way.

So here is their story: Once upon a time, when Karen was a little girl, her mother wanted to trick her (that is, the mother’s) sister, who was not particularly fond of children, into babysitting. So she asked Karen’s aunt, whose skills at baking were well known, to come and bake cookies with the children. Then she and Karen’s dad sneaked out and went Christmas shopping.

And the next year Karen brightly asked, “When are we having our traditional cookie bake?” Thus it was canonized.

Well, yes, maybe so. I have a fatal habit of getting a single simple and romantic ideal, like feeding a stray cat, and only discovering later that I have opened a restaurant for cats and all other mammals of moderate size. Because in my family ideas never live alone. Other ideas flock after them, spawned by their interaction in the network of our all-too-fertile brains. It’s synergy at its most dangerous.

Somehow that simple afternoon that produced, say, 24 dozen cookies, grew to The Annual Cookies To The Death Marathon Weekend.

It grew gradually, of course. One year we tried one new variety, and it became somebody’s favorite. The next year somebody else saw a cool idea and tried something else. And again it stuck. Naturally if you have a semi-immediate family of fifteen to twenty people, you have fifteen to twenty favorites. And then there are the cookies whose position is so sacred that nobody even bothers to claim them as favorites. Like krumkaka, a traditional Norwegian cookie, which actually gets its own special day separate from The Cookie Bake.

Malinda and Becky both like to Organize Things. So they begin plotting weeks, nay months in advance, as to what we will have this year. Some time ago they began aspiring for a single cookie variety in every potential flavor. Not that flavor alone is sufficient. It also must be artistically decorated, with a reasonable variety of shapes.

To save time during the weekend itself, dough and even some of the cookies are made in advance. Does this simplify the work and get everyone in bed sooner? Of course not—it frees up time for more, and more elaborate, varieties. (I should note here that we have almost never done those flat sugar cookies decorated with frosting. Too simple and too much like what normal people do.)

No doubt they have a new division of labor this year. When I was still there, Malinda organized the program of the day, printed recipes and did the more complex icing. Becky did the most labor-intensive shaping and baking, while I concentrated on the mass produced varieties. Sarah specialized in no-bake or no mix kinds. We switched off mixing dough according to whose specialty in other realms was currently up.

Cookie Bake has its own attendant traditions besides aching backs and feet, of course. There is the curious assortment of eccentric Christmas music Malinda puts on the CD player. (A Goth Noel, anyone?) There are the hasty but very welcome snacks of meat and vegetables provided as a respite from endless gobs of sugar. There are the towering plates of cookies, wrapped in cellophane, to bedazzle the favored friends and relations. And there is the end result, which is a Christmas dinner which is only an excuse to provide enough protein to balance the sugar high.

And sometimes, Christmas cookies lingering until Valentine’s Day. But we try to dump them before that. After all, we’ve got a great idea for a new Valentine’s dessert . . . .

Now, thoughts on SSM, all the better for having been honed by a lively debate a few weeks back.

I don't think civil government can do much to help marriage along, any more than I believe it can do much to help the free market along. I do believe it can do a great deal to hurt it. It's already done this by no-fault divorce, which has lowered the standard for dissolving a marriage to below that of dissolving an ordinary contract. It can do it again by defining marriage as any group of people who happen to love each other and feel like signing a paper on it. We would undoubtedly be better off if government got out of the marriage business altogether than for it to take this next step.

But I don't think that would be workable. Somehow the state has to have a way to figure out who is responsible for these children that keep popping up inconveniently. It has to have a way to allocate inheritances, charge someone with children's debts, hold someone responsible for their support. This has nothing to do with the state interfering with the business of the family, it's just part of the state doing its job to protect individual rights. I can think of three ways for the state to handle the problem:

a. Charge only the person who's handy and obviously to blame: the mother. This is simple and avoids prying into details, but it seems distinctly unjust. It took two to tango, after all. Surely there should be some way to hold the other party involved responsible for the direct consequences of his actions.

b. Leave it all to individual contract and agreement and just have people come and try to prove them in court. This would be the pure libertarian approach, I believe. It sounds nice, but I don't think it would work. If we need a public registry to make sure people don't cheat and lie about land transactions, how much more is it needed to limit people's ability to cheat and lie about something we all know they cheat and lie about all the time? What's a court to do if a woman comes seeking child support against a man she was married to in one church, and the man brings up evidence that she was married to someone else in another church three months earlier? Who is responsible? (It reminds me of a scene in a hilarious old movie where a guy is honestly trying to prove he did not father a girl's child, but then so is the girl--who isn't actually the mother--and somebody else and they wind up with three guys claiming paternity, much to the incredulity of the interested party.) Paternity tests just aren't definite enough to settle these things.

c. As in the case of land, create a written registry whereby a woman can go and get advance certification that a man will be held responsible as her children's father. Then there's something definite the courts can look to for proof of responsibility. (As a corollary, make it fairly difficult to get those benefits outside the registry, or people won't use it. Again, we do the same thing with land.)

Now, it’s clear that if you look at marriage in this light, there is absolutely no logical reason for extending it to same-sex couples. They have no grounds for concern that babies might incidentally result from their union. If they want to go out and hunt babies up, they can make their own legal arrangements before anything happens. And if we do extend marriage to same-sex couples, we effectively divorce it from any connection with children and property succession. It becomes something the state does to provide people with validation for their personal relationships. Not only is this none of the state’s business, it will actively work against marriage as an institution that protects children’s rights because the personal validation of adults is definitely not necessarily in the best interests of children.

This marriage registry is obviously a long, long ways from the high and holy state of matrimony. That it is indeed up to the church to reinvigorate and restore. (Once it gets the egg off its own face over divorce.) It's going to provide the vast array of social benefits of marriage only in a strong society with character to support it--just as the free market can't exist in a society that doesn't have initiative and honesty. But I think there is a place for the state to keep track of who's who, so that it can charge the right people when something goes wrong.

And I don't think this involves civil government deciding what is good for children, particularly, just dealing with the realities of life in the most logical fashion. As it turns out, marriage is good for children, but that's not why it's important to the state--it is important to the state to order the disorder that children create. (In the end, too, the state is going to have to interfere between parents and children in some degree--when their life is threatened, or liberty is unreasonably trammeled. And the state is going to have to set up rules on what becomes of orphans. There will always be a gray line where the state has to decide what is good for children, which parents must watch vigorously.)

In summary, I don't think you can get the state out of the marriage business entirely without messing up its ability to properly enforce rights and responsibilities. I don't expect the state to make marriage better, but I would like it to stop making things worse by disconnecting it from its one obvious civil purpose. And I also think it's high time the church started preaching by example instead of just by political action.

Every once in a while I need to post just to make sure I still remember my username and password.

Yep.

Right now I'm eating and napping for two, and that takes up pretty much all the time there is in the day. But I'm still busy thinking brilliant thoughts when I can. Read Whittaker Chambers last week and am now reading a third person's account of the Hiss case. Fascinating stuff, although I don't think I have the head for details needed for espionage.

OK, brief note on the drama we went to: Click here if you want to read its own promotion.

Basically it provided a version of the gospel that was too thin, and therefore ultimately inadequate. “You might die at any time, so accept Jesus or you’ll go to hell.” It portrayed this particular message effectively in an emotional sense, and I suppose might be effective in getting conversions of a sort among people who enjoy being emotionally moved. Personally I resent it (even when I think the emotion justified), so in that sense perhaps I’m not a competent judge of its effect on such people, but even among them I doubt how long they would stay true to such a “conversion.”

But intellectually the drama left me almost ready to ask the classic anti-God question: “How can a loving God do this to people?” The impression was of ordinary Joes, doing their thing, suddenly discovering that because of an oversight they are condemned to eternal torment. There was little impression that these people deserved what they got. Which, if God is just, must be the case—and if we truly knew our own hearts, we’d know we deserved it ourselves. The real problem was that the law was left out. Punishment without judgment can only be capricious cruelty. There was some attribution of various “sins” that had kept people from accepting Christ (alcohol and partying, mainly), but none that truly reflected God’s law.

Hell was also depicted in a manner that is contrary to the Bible, but commonly presented in cartoons—a sort of concentration camp run by Satan.

What I would like to see now is a drama that really showed the ultimate issues, in a way that made heaven and hell the natural outgrowths of human choices, not the arbitrary imposition of a divine dictator. I can think of two forms. One would be an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, in which souls must choose between clinging to whatever “good” or evil thing is to them more important than accepting the rule of God, or surrendering it and being able to enter into the ultimate reality of heaven. But the landscape of Lewis’ heaven might be too much to stage—it might work as a radio type drama. Although it is not explicit in the Bible, I tend to agree with Lewis’ interpretation that ultimately those souls who go to hell go there because they want to—because in hell they can continue in some sense running their own lives rather than reaching the ultimate joy through submission.

The other would be a courtroom drama in which the accuser of the brethren would be pleading as to why certain souls deserved eternal damnation. (I don’t think Satan runs hell, but he apparently keeps tabs on who deserves to go there.) People could serve as their own counsel, pledging their absence of various overt crimes, or various good deeds. Then the prosecutor could—perhaps via video footage (my siblings and I for some reason believed when small that our entire lives would be replayed verbatim at the gates of heaven—not true as far as I know, but useful for a play)—break apart their pretensions. Show the smoldering hatred that was kept back from murder only by an even more damning pride. Uncover the self-righteousness that poisoned their best deeds. Expose the lust, the covetousness, the bitterness, that poisons the souls of ordinary nice guys (and gals). Except for some defendants, who would have willingly accepted the court appointment of an Advocate, and who would find that all their tapes had been erased.