blind insight

Reason # 7,463 Why I Love My Husband

I left work on the late side tonight, exhausted after a long day of fielding client calls, ruminating about the Alito nomination (short version: I dunno), and being trained in the new electronic case filing procedures, all of which diverted my time and attention from the essential task of fine-tuning a legally complicated and factually bizarre brief. Sweet Steve picked me up at the bus stop, saving me from having to brave the dark and frustrating home stretch and greeting me with a kiss and a mischievous grin. When I walked into the house, delicious cooking smells greeted me, along with a beautifully set table*, a lovely bottle of wine, and two little white pumpkins resting alongside a carving kit.

I handed out candy to the neighborhood trick-or-treaters while Steve finalized dinner. Then we sat down to grilled salmon marinated in my homemade pesto, accompanied by Steve's signature basil-lemon orzo. We washed it all down with a glass (or two) of nicely chilled French white, served in the gimongous Riedel glasses that were reason enough for which to wed.

After this romantic and relaxing interlude, we spread newsprint over the dining room table and set to work on our pumpkin creations. Steve's efforts initially took a political bent, as he plopped his gourd on a photo of Dubya and proceeded to defile it with mushy strands and slippery seeds. He seemed to have a clear carving vision, slicing and sawing and chiseling with a determined set to his jaw.

Meanwhile, my pumpkin seemed to be sprouting new layers of mush even as I scooped, so that it seemed I would never have a smooth enough interior to begin to carve.

I was still scraping and scooping when Steve revealed his masterpiece:

I am intimidated enough by artistic endeavors without having to follow such an impressive lead. I hemmed and hawed (and whined), trying desperately to come up with something, ANYTHING that might match the creative cheekiness and masterful execution of my partner's pumpkin. Eventually, I yanked a pattern from the carving kit, tried half-heartedly to recreate it on my tiny pumpkin, and made a pathetic attempt at clever customization. I wound up with this:

Alas, my oeuvre bore a closer resemblance to a spider than a cat, its aesthetics further compromised by a mess of pumpkin-zits and crayon. Its namesake hovered in the living room wanting nothing to do with the gooey mess on the table.

Finally, I conceded defeat and plopped my cat-o-lantern outside (where Steve graciously allowed it to share porch space with his superior effort). Both pumpkins looked quite lovely once they were glowing with candlelight in the darkness, and even my pathetic spider-cat seemed (almost) worthy of gracing the Halloween night.

To top off his romantic efforts for the evening (at least so far), Steve dove back into the pile of pumpkin and spent nearly an hour separating the seeds from the strings.

I will roast the former tomorrow, and turn the latter into bread or pie later in the week.

'twas a very happy Halloween, indeed.

*This is actually a photo of LAST night's beautifully set table, when we had my parents over for dinner and inaugurated our new china, my grandmother's silver, and assorted other shiny pretty new things. I had intended to chronicle the dinner in photographs from start to finish, particularly because it included my first (and highly successful! so not last!) homemade pasta effort, but somehow all I remembered to take was the table shot.

My Tax Dollars At Work?

A couple of weeks before our wedding, work crews set up shop in front of our house and on the corner down the block. Their insane racket started early and continued late, and to add insult to the injuries of noise, smell, and huge holes in the street, they plunked one of their orange signs right in the middle of one of my flower beds.

They didn't finish until the day before the wedding, roughly 2 hours before 100-some-odd people were schedule to arrive at our house for a barbecue. The end result was a colossal waste of taxpayer money that has become a daily irritation to us: a heeeeyoooooge speed bump right in front of our house and a traffic "island" at the corner. Each of these appears to have been located so as to serve the least possible traffic-control utility while creating the maximum possible annoyance.

We have no idea why these obstacles were installed. Our street gets pretty minimal traffic, certainly not enough to warrant such an enormous, bone-jarring speed bump. While the corner now marred by the island can be a little confusing, its now-removed stop sign seemed more than adequate to prevent problems. Plus, the island has the effect of reducing visibility for cars coming around the curve without requiring them to stop, making the turn more dangerous for other motorists and (especially) pedestrians than it was pre-island. And so we began to bitch about these new features of our street and joke about the Speed Bump Allocation Officer whose job it must be to build a certain number of speed bumps and traffic islands around the city each year.

It was all sort of funny. Until tonight, when, for the first time since the arrival of That Damn Speed Bump and That Stupid Island On The Corner (as they are known in our house), it was well after dark by the time I was walking home from the bus stop. After we moved into our house last October (happy housaversary, sweetie!), it took me several months to get used to the dark part of my walk home, and I'd finally achieved total comfort with it before the days grew long again.

For the most part, my way is well-lit, but the final two-hundred meters or so are very, very dark. In the past, I was able to walk in the street, near the sidewalk, which offered me a little more wiggle room to navigate and afforded a slightly more visible angle on the curve that represents the darkest part of my route. But now, the Stupid Island both blocks the bit of lamplight that used to illuminate the curve and creates a narrow path between itself and the sidewalk that makes both sidewalk and street extremely challenging to navigate blind. Tonight, I had to walk very, very slowly and sort of shimmy my left foot against the curb to make it around the curve without crashing into my neighbor's bushes or tripping over either the island or the sidewalk.

Once I'd survived that obstacle, I could see ahead the lovely lights Steve installed along our front walkway, and I made it home safely. Still, I was rattled and frustrated and pissed off. I know I have to call the City and try to push them to change something. Perhaps they will add a light on or over the island, or additional streetlamps - surely Ms. Speed Bump Allocator will forbid the outright removal of the offending island. Given that Boulder has strict restricitions against "light pollution," however, I'm not optimistic that my request will be quickly or easily addressed. So in the meantime, I have to relearn my walk home all over again.

Training Day.

As of this past weekend, Steve and I are officially In Training. For the Birkie, mostly, but also because we both feel woefully un-fit these days, and need goals, focus, and commitment to get ourselves back into jock mode. Working out together is fun, too, even when Steve forces me to run 8 hard hill repeats in a row, or to squeeze out another 10 triceps dips (ouch). He's a tough-ass coach, and a tremendous athlete, even at his current asthma-impeded fitness level.

I was looking forward to our run tonight, and raced out of the office at the earliest possible moment. We'd agreed this morning to run hill repeats in the rain, but by the time we were both home and changed, the night had turned crisp and clean-smelling, just the right temperature for a short, hard run. My throat and lungs were burning and my eyes had barely enough useful light left when we finished, but I felt more physical and energized than I have for ages.

It's going to get harder to train in another week or so, when night falls early and I can only run outside on the weekends. But around the same time, we'll be able to start the "real" training - on snow. Steve is already threatening me with 5-hour XC days. I suppose that if I'm actually going to ski 53 kilometers at the end of February, I'll have to let him bully me a bit. At least he doesn't have a whistle (yet).

Response #3: How does my vision loss affect my life as a lawyer?

How does my vision loss affect my life as a lawyer? asks Stacy. My immediate response to the question is this: it doesn’t. I can read and write and see the computer with little difficulty (save for some glare and type-size issues that don’t seem to warrant any special equipment or other accommodation, at least not yet). I can go to court unassisted and see what must be seen in the courtrooms, too.

And yet, this question made me stop and reflect on the impact of my fading sight on my workaday life. In meetings and other interactions with lawyers, judges, and in contact visits with clients, my inability to see a proffered hand when looking for lip-reading purposes at its associated face is awkward and often embarrassing. Around the office, I crash headlong into a coworker (or narrowly avoid a collision), trip over a stack of banker boxes full of case records, or spill coffee on something or someone at least once a week. As a result, at least one office-mate cringes in fear whenever she sees me approaching.

Because I don’t drive, I can't visit my clients (all of whom are in prison, because of the nature of my case-load) without riding along with an investigator. Were I independently mobile, I might bring the investigator along anyway to take notes and provide an independent take on the interview, but I might also make more frequent solo visits to some of my clients, particularly those serving life sentences and those who don’t have local family. Also, client visits usually include long walks up and down stairs, through sometimes-narrow corridors and a series of checkpoints, before reaching dim meeting rooms crowded with chairs and tables. Each stage of this process carries its own visual challenges and opportunities for me to feel foolish and ungainly. Often, too, I am separated from my client by glass or wire mesh, making it significantly more difficult for me to see him, to read his lips and thus to understand him. Because I always have an investigator with me for such visits, the concern is not so much that I will miss important information, but rather that my ability to communicate smoothly and effectively with my client is hindered.

For the most part, though, these are minor and passing annoyances. My hearing, on the other hand, comes into play constantly: in office meetings and casual interactions, in court, in discussions and negotiations with opposing counsel, and especially on the phone.

Oh, the dreaded phone. I spend a measurable portion of my day having phone conversations with clients, with opposing (and collaborating) attorneys, with judges’ chambers, and with lawyers, law students, and prisoners’ family members who call me for habeas advice. Client calls are the most challenging, because prison phone systems uniformly suck (I suspect the poor sound quality has something to do with the number of people listening in to my supposedly privileged conversations), and many of my clients don’t speak English well or clearly, so it is frustrating for all of us when I must ask them to repeat themselves over and over. I regularly instruct my clients to put important information in a letter to me instead of discussing it on the phone, and I sometimes call in an investigator or another lawyer to "translate," but often the subject of the call is fairly minor, and my client simply needs to speak and be heard. I hate not being able to fill that role for them effectively, particularly when so many of their cases are unwinnable, and all I have to offer them is acknowledgment and validation.

In non-client calls, sometimes I hear just fine on the phone, sometimes I don’t, and since the sound quality is almost entirely dependent on the other person’s phone or voice, I have little control over the problem. I can tell when someone is on a headset or speaker-phone, both of which pose problems for my hearing and comprehension, and I usually ask the person instead to use a regular phone handset. I have a couple of cases with opposing counsel who talk reeeeaaaally fast, and I have to constantly ask them to slow down and repeat themselves. One of them is very nice about doing so, the other, I think, deliberately "forgets" just to be obnoxious and to keep a strategic upper hand.

I used to dread court appearances, but the new federal district courthouse here includes excellent infrared systems (and real-time captioning equipment) in every courtroom. The judges also have been uniformly helpful and good-natured about making sure I can hear the courtroom proceedings. The Tenth Circuit recently installed a similar (but, alas, not always functional) infrared system, and previously used a borrowed portable system for my oral arguments. So now, going to court is fun, exciting, and something I eagerly anticipate.

Trying to answer this question made me wonder if I’m ignoring ways in which my vision affects my lawyering life. For the next few months, unless it drives me crazy and makes me even more frustrated about losing my eyesight than I already am, I’m going to try to focus on this issue. I’ll let you know if I identify any impacts of which I was previously unaware.

Oh, what the hell.

Prompted by Sherry's request, here is one big link to our entire, four-album honeymoon odyssey, no sign-in required. Happy viewing! (I've also fixed the link the wedding pictures so that they may be viewed without signing in.) 

Mad & Steve's Honeymoon, The Photos

Response #2: Why I do what I do (and how I got here in the first place)

Womanofthelaw asks, why do I do what I do? What I do, in case you didn't know, is  represent indigent prisoners in habeas corpus cases.

Because few lawyers and even fewer non-lawyers understand the first thing about habeas corpus, I offer you a bit of background. I have three general categories of clients:  (1) state prisoners raising federal constitutional challenges to their convictions; (2) federal prisoners raising constitutional (and, occasionally, other) "collateral" challenges to their convictions and sentences; and (3) federal detainees challenging the fact and duration of their detention (this last category includes federal inmates' challenges to prison disciplinary sanctions).

Habeas corpus is the end of the line for most prisoners' efforts to challenge their conviction or detention. Over the years, Congress has made it more and more difficult for prisoners to file federal habeas corpus petitions and to obtain relief on the merits of their claims. The procedural rules are rigid, complicated, and confusing, and the standard for granting relief seems often impossible to satisfy. For state prisoners, for example, the federal courts will grant habeas relief only if the state court's decision on the constitutional issue was "unreasonably" erroneous. Whatever that means.

Except in death penalty cases, indigent habeas corpus petitioners also have no right to court-appointed counsel. (The Sixth Amendment has been interpreted to require court-appointed counsel only through the direct-appeal stage.) Thus, although habeas corpus practice is one of the most complicated, confusing, and procedurally rigid areas of the law, most prisoners must represent themselves in preparing their petitions and responding to the government's arguments. Only if an indigent petitioner gets lucky, and a law clerk or judge or screening attorney decides that "something" in his case warrants it, will I or another habeas lawyer be appointed. Sometimes I get appointed because the case includes serious, and fairly obvious, constitutional problems, sometimes I get appointed because the court is tired of dealing with my client's pro se rantings, and sometimes, I can't quite figure out why I've been appointed.

So, now that you have some sense of what I do, I can try to explain why I represent convicted murderers, rapists, robbers, and drug dealers in mostly hopeless cases. I do it because I love it, and I love it because it feels, in some small way, that I am keeping the "justice" in the criminal justice system. By holding the cops, prosecutors, and judges to the law, I feel like I’m doing my part to protect the balance of power from shifting even more sharply against poor people and people of color than it already has.

I also love what I do because it allows me to provide high-quality, caring, compassionate advocacy for people who’ve never before had someone fight hard for them. Many of my clients have been long since abandoned by their families and their communities. For many of them, too, their original trial lawyers were overworked, underpaid, burned out, and detached, just trying to clear the case from their dockets as quickly and painlessly as possible. And while many of my clients have committed horrible crimes, just as many have been horribly victimized themselves. I like to believe (perhaps naively) that by working hard to protect their constitutional rights - and when I can't do that, by listening to and caring about them - I might in some small way restore their faith in justice.

Rereading the above, it sounds pithy and contrived, the words of a privileged college sophomore railing against the world’s injustices. But in truth, public defending requires a great deal of idealism (along with a high tolerance for losing). It’s not for everyone, but after four years, it remains my dream job.

So how did I get into law in the first place, WotL also asks. During college and while doing human rights work with my father the year after I graduated, I developed a strong interest in both environmental issues and international human rights. From what I could tell, a law degree would enable me to have a professional involvement in such issues at a fairly high level. So, off to law school I traipsed, sure that I would soon be working for the UNDP someplace exotic.

From the beginning of my law school career, I was involved in things both international and environmental (and international-environmental). I took classes in those areas, worked on relevant journals and projects, and published papers in the field. I even co-founded a student organization that eventually became known as the Global Challenges Network, through which we held an annual conference bringing together fascinating speakers to discuss various multidisciplinary topics. Even my summer jobs tracked my interests: my first summer I worked for a law firm whose managing partner was heavily involved in an international-environmental NGO; my second I split between the environmental torts section of the Department of Justice and the human rights bureau of the State Department Legal Adviser’s Office; my third, I worked for a gimungous D.C. law firm, primarily in the environmental and international practice groups.

And so, when I began my 9^th Circuit clerkship in Seattle, in the fall of ‘96, I felt pretty confident that I would soon be heading back to D.C. to begin work at the State Department or at the big international law firm, both of which had offered me jobs. Then two things happened: one, my D.C.-based boyfriend and I split, and two, I started working on death-penalty cases. Thus began a series of geographic and career moves that eventually led me to where I am today.

Of course, the shortest, and equally accurate answer to both questions is this: my parents are both die-hard liberal activist lawyers.

Sprucing things up.

I'm hard at work drafting responses to your requests, but decided it was time to play around a little with my "look." I realized that many of the blogs I read daily weren't listed over on the right-hand side, while many of those that were have lost my interest or vanished into the ether. I may add a new list of blogs I read, or provide a link to my bloglines subscription, but for now, I've simply streamlined my sidebar.  I also tweaked the colors and fonts a bit, added a new photo (almost as silly as the rafter-riding one,  but more recent), and futzed with a few other details.

I might fiddle with this a bit more as time permits, so do let me know if you hate the changes.

A woman of my word.

I promised you photos once five readers answered my plea. I've received at least five suggested post topics, so here they are. We spent our first eight days in Sardinia, which is about as close to heaven as two rock-climbing, beach-happy, wine-loving, honeymooners can get. The island is considerably less developed (and somewhat less expensive) than mainland Italy, full of tiny towns surrounded by cliffs and mountains that drop precipitously down into the crystal clear Mediterranean waters.

Except for an unfortunate evening at an ill-chosen pizza joint called "Snoopy" (which should have been enough to steer us elsewhere), we dined daily on wonderful seafood, pasta, cheese, and flatbread. The wine was inexpensive and delicious, and we drank copious quantities of it.

We spent five nights in the charming little harbor town of Santa Maria Navarrese, then realized that the best climbing was on the other side of the Silana Pass and the Su Gorroppu Gorge at Cala Gonone. So we decamped and found alternative lodgings there (as it turned out, our new digs were cheaper, nicer, and right by the water).

We ended up having only about 4 days of climbing (United misrouted Steve's backpack with everything but the rope, so we were gearless for our first few days), just enough to give us a taste of all Sardinia has to offer. We weren't sure how much of the climbing would be accessible to us, and so we were ecstatic to find thousands of vertical feet of moderate, well-bolted routes. As hiking has gotten progressively more challenging for me (due to my vision, not my conditioning), I've gotten frustrated by the long and arduous approaches necessary to reach many Colorado climbing spots. In Sardinia? Not so much. There, our longest approach was perhaps a ten minute scramble, and many of the routes were just a few steps away from the beach. It just doesn't get much better than being able to take a cool dip in the sea after a full day of climbing under the hot Sardinian sun. Needless to say, we're already contemplating a first-anniversary return trip.

When we weren't on the rocks, we were on the beach or in the water. Our first full day, we took an excursion boat with several other people to a series of secluded, boat-accessible-only beaches. Later in the trip, we rented a little motorized rubber-dinghy and cruised up and down the coastline between Cala Gonone and Cala Goloritze, stopping several times to drop anchor and dive into the water for a swim. Even with just my swim goggles, we could see spectacular sea life below us. Next time, we're bringing snorkeling gear!

Supposedly, Sardinia also has fascinating archaeological sites, considerable "agrotourism" opportunities, and wonderful old towns and cities to explore. We managed to miss all of this - one more reason to return!

Here are the photos. Next up (perhaps once I get five more post requests): Cinque Terre!

Response #1: My impressions of London.

Thanks to all of you who have commented or e-mailed so far. I'm enjoying getting to "know" my little audience! I think I'm going to have some fun answering the requests; at the very least, I think they'll get me back into a regular blogging rhythm again.

First up, Alison asks for my impressions of London. As some of you know, traveling is one of my great passions, and my past journeys have taken me reasonably far and wide. Yet somehow, I'd never made it to London. It had become something of a private joke that, despite my world-savvy ways, I'd never quite gotten there. Sort of like the way it took me fifteen years and countless visits to Paris to finally go up inside the Eiffel Tower. But in 2001, I finally did take the elevator to the top of Le Tour Eiffel (and loved it), and now I can finally check off London on my endless destinations list.

Truly, I loved London. We ate fabulously well (neuveau continental, Moroccan, Thai, gastropub, dim sum, Indian, and (of course) High Tea). Though English food continues to get a bad rap (and the gastropub wasn't our best meal), we're in full agreement with those who claim London is the world's latest foodie mecca. We zipped all over the city, and as far afield as Kew Gardens, using the clean, fast, efficient, and easy-to-navigate Tube. We saw spectacular architecture, both ancient and modern. We slipped ourselves into the flowing crowds that seemed to fill the streets at all hours of the day and night. We encountered almost exclusively friendliness, helpfulness, warmth, and good humor in our interactions with the native population. And we drank a lot of really, really good beer.

I was blown away by the beauty of London's public spaces (St. James's Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and Kew were all spectacular). I was also floored by how staggeringly expensive everything is there, although this may be more a function of the pathetic dollar than of an actually astronomic cost-of-living. High Tea alone, which we took in the beautiful, airy atrium at the very welcoming Lanesborough Hotel, set us back more than $75.00.

Throughout our three days in London, I was struck by how much more diverse the city seemed than New York, LA, or San Francisco. Our wonderful hotel (the very affordable, clean, comfortable, and congenial Rhodes Hotel, which I wholeheartedly recommend) was run by a Greek/Korean/British married couple. Women in saris or headscarves, Men in tunics or turbans or dashikis, black, white, asian, arab - It was fascinating and exciting to see such a mosaic of humanity. And, also, sometimes disconcerting. The first day, I saw two women in full burkas, peering out at the world from a tiny eye-slit in their robes. The sight startled and upset me, and though I saw many more burka-ed women during our stay, I never got used to it. Even writing about it now, the rush of conflicting reactions comes back to me, and I wonder again what those women must feel and experience as they move through London's modern metropolis thusly garbed.

We hope to return to London in the not-too-distant future, because we barely scratched the surface of all it has to offer. I'll post our photos from that segment of the honeymoon soon, once Steve approves their release to the internets.

A request for assistance in regaining my blogger's stride.

I think I’m really "back" now. Though work is incredibly busy and I’ll be cranking out one brief after another for months to come, the conclusion of The Wedding Season has freed vast amounts of time and brain space, some of which may now be devoted to blogging.

But I’m out of practice, and unsure whether anyone’s still reading after my long hiatus.

May I be a lazy blogger, then, and ask you to tell me what you’d like me to write about? Here’s an incentive: Once I get five requests, I’ll post the first installment of the honeymoon photos for your viewing pleasure!

P.S.: I'm also curious to know who's out there now, so if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself by comment or e-mail, and perhaps letting me know how you got here, I'd be very appreciative.