The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Every day on my way to work I pass a red brick building. It's been empty, which sort of seemed odd for such a prime location. But I'd noticed other empty buildings around the neighborhood so I didn't think much about it.

On Wednesday morning, though, I noticed a camera crew setting up in front of it, with their microwave truck in the street. More interestingly, there was a FOX News truck around the corner. But other than that everything looked just as it had every day for the past month and a half.

While at work, my friend IM'd me that Tears for Fears, his favorite band (he nicely ranks Huey Lewis and the News as number 2), would be having a free lunchtime show at a nearby club. Apparently Tears for Fears had broken up for a while, but they now have reformed and have an album coming out in September, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. Since my friend has let me share HLN concerts with him, I decided to come along to check out his favorites.

It was a good show. They played a lot of the new songs, and closed with some of their famous hits from the 1980s like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

For me it was interesting being at a concert where OTHER people were the big fans. At HLN shows I'm always the one who knows all the words, all the history, who all the people are. I'm so involved with it that I have no idea what it's like to be at a HLN show for someone new to them. So it was a nice change to be at this Tears for Fears concert where all the other people were the hardcore fans and I got to experience them for the first time.

And there I was, right in the front row at a show by people who've filled stadiums. All one day at lunchtime in DC.

On the way back to work I walked past the red brick buiding, which now had crowds of people in front of it (and several more microwave trucks) and by now it was clear what was going on. It was the Iraqi Embassy that had now been reopened. The flag had gone up just minutes before.

It was a moment of historical significance at an otherwise nondescript building in a nondescript neighborhood. A couple of city busses passed by, dropping off their commuters while hemming in the diplomats' vehicles on the narrow city block. The ordinary juxtaposed with the extraordinary.

All in all, just a typical day in DC.

FYI: for any friends and relatives reading, do not panic. I'm fine. I will continue to be fine. And maybe, because of my phone call, so will other people.

Late, late on Thursday evening I eventually realized that the person outside screaming was seriously screaming for help. It took a while to notice because one of my roommates frequently is absurdly loud at late hours so I've learned to ignore her. But eventually it seemed like some investigation was warranted.

It turns out that as she was coming home, right in front of the house, she was accosted. A shiny black car had pulled up and a short hispanic-looking man wearing a long white t-shirt had gotten out and brandished a knife. He took her purse and touched her inappropriately, but then ran off. We found her in the aftermath when she was giving the description to the police.

It was concerning because from time to time I walk home after dark. Not too often because it gets dark so late these days and I get sleepy so early... but sometimes. I'm not stupid or reckless about it, but it's my world and I refuse to cower from it. Still, all weekend I felt sort of squeemish about asserting my independence so overtly (ironic, I thought, given the Independence Day celebrations.) For instance, when I came home late on Friday I took a cab from the metro. What a stupid waste of money: $6 to go 4 short blocks. Otherwise I feel completely safe in my neighborhood. I might worry about petty crime, of things being taken if they aren't nailed down, but I have no reason to fear violent people lurking in the shadows.

Today I happened to have been watching the local news - something I rarely do - and I caught a mention of an assault on Friday on a woman in Alexandria. I didn't pay much attention until they included a description: two hispanic-looking men... long white t-shirt... shiny black car.

The similarities were too striking to be coincidence. But who was going to make the connection? This assault was in Virginia. On Thursday it was in DC, and the 911 call would be recorded on Maryland's tapes.

I used to work in a newsroom and I knew that there were certain kinds of calls from viewers that would actually be helpful. (So many weren't: every 5 minutes people would call objecting to something I had no power to do anything about.) So I tracked down the number for the station's newsroom (which took quite a bit of research since they don't publicize it) and let them know about the other assault. The woman who took the information was interested and will go call the DC police to confirm the connection, if there is one.

I think this was the right way to handle it. I could have called the police, but which police? And since I wasn't a party to it they might not take me seriously in the same way that they would a news desk (something I else I learned from my former job). Plus the news would have an incentive to break a story about a serial predator, whereas I got the distinct sense, judging from the lackadaisical comportment of the cops when they came on the scene, that they might be unmotivated to do the same. The different jurisdictions, plus being busy with ordinary holiday mischief, would also make it harder to put these pieces together on their own accord.

I actually feel much better about the situation now though, having made this connection. I didn't feel comfortable before when I was worried my neighborhood was being targetted. Knowing that the entire metropolitan area is being targetted is almost a strange relief.

After I wrote the last post I got to thinking that maybe it was irresponsible of me to only call the news station and not a police department. I started to feel that way when I watched the 5:30 news and didn't catch a mention. My plan only worked if the news station really tried to get to the bottom of the story. But of course it had no obligation to do anything.

It turns out that the news station did pick up the story and contacted the relevant police departments. Oddly, apparently one of the police departments doesn't think there's a connection. I say its odd because except for a small discrepancy in the height descriptions I think the similarities are uncanny.

I found all this out today when I bumped into a news crew filming b-roll in my neighborhood. I introduced myself to the reporter and said I was the one who'd called their station. She appreciated it, and confirmed that they wouldn't have known about the possible connection without it. I talked with her for a bit and then she asked if she could put me on camera. I reluctantly agreed, mostly out of empathy for her doing her job. It's much better if she can get a soundbyte then to have to put it all together with b-roll and her voice-over. I just saw the bit they used on the newscast and I'm pleased to note I didn't look or sound completely asinine. I also appeared without a caption, which means I can retain some anonymity.

That anonymity, despite what the Supreme Court thinks, is important. I realized my reluctance to call the police to discuss the matter was rooted in the strong desire to not have them know who I was. (Eventually I did call the Alexandria police anyway because I decided that if this information could possibly be helpful I had no business withholding it.) The problem is that more and more I've come to distrust the abstract notion of police power.

I'm actually startled by the extent of my distrust. I think some of it stems from becoming increasingly aware of situations where police power has been used to railroad the innocent. I think society wants to believe the police are some sort of panacea and only capture bad guys, but all too often good guys get treated as bad guys and serious miscarriages of justice result. This fate can be somewhat avoided, I reason, if the police don't know who you are.

The other thing I've been reflecting on is the moral authority of the law. I hate using the word "moral" for anything because it's so abused as a provocative rhetorical device, but I mean here the reasonableness of the law. Is it fair and just, a balance between benefit and burden that reasonably achieves a reasonable goal? Or does it instead serve simply to lull the populace into a false sense of security while it silently erodes their liberties and divides society into a false dichotomy of good guys and bad?

More and more I fear the latter is happening. In a moment of heavy irony, on the Fourth of July I was queued up near the Mall, listening to Clay Aiken belting out how proud to be an American he was "where at least [he knows] he's free," while gazing up at the dome of the Capitol, and waiting to have my belongings searched before I, with all the other citizens, could peaceably assemble in a public place. On a day when we celebrate our freedom it baffled me how we can so carelessly allow it to be compromised with no protest.

Certainly some laws make sense. Maybe even some intrusions on unbridled liberty do as well. But I fear that more and more we are accepting laws that have less and less justification, less and less benefit in contrast to their incursions on our privacy, our anonymity, or our other civil liberties. It's not just these laws themselves I fear but this tendency to accept them so unquestioningly.

So I'm trying to fight back with my own form of civil disobedience, to assert myself in the face of governmental power. Some laws are good, certainly, especially the ones that deter damage to our neighbors (like violent assaults and theft). I don't have any intention or desire to violate those! But I think there's several more petty ones, or ones which though may have a potential purpose also don't have a tremendous consequence if violated. Some of these laws in fact simply provide authority figures with the ability to label more people as troublemakers than to actually protect society constructively.

These are the laws I've decided to resist. So towards this end a few days ago I consciously resolved to jaywalk at every reasonable opportunity, on principle. It's not about getting where I want to more quickly, it's about standing up to power and refusing to blindly accept it. True, I could envision a justification for jaywalking laws, and to be sure I won't do it if I'll put myself or others at risk. But in the other, more benign circumstances, when jaywalking would harm no one but the law's punitive power still persists, I'll violate it. It's about wanting to stop feeling like a sheep, to start being empowered in the face of authority. I wish more people would. I wish more people would recognize their power, to insist that police and governmental authority demonstrate its legitimacy and not simply blindly defer to it. And I wish that resistance would collectively be demonstrated against laws far more destructive than traffic scofflaws.

The truth is that we need laws, and we need police to be protectors. But all the good these institutions can do is lost when they wield their power over citizenry unchecked. For no good results when the innocent are punished and the actual miscreants face no consequences. Justice doesn't happen on its own. It results only with the constant vigilance of the people.

I'm still really angry/terrified about the state of civil liberties. Today hasn't helped. There was the announcement that the Patriot Act would continue to spy on citizens and their reading habits. And yet we were also put on notice that the terrorists are planning to strike again.

The first thing that came to my mind on hearing the latter was that the Republicans in charge must be really hoping something happens, something that terrifies the American public more than they already are and has them fearing any electoral change. The scariest thought - which I don't want to believe but I find disgustingly plausible nonetheless - is that if something happens, it might somehow be enabled by the powers that be as a means of consolidating political power. Meanwhile others have noticed that the timing of these announcements and vague warnings seem to be all about terrifying people so that they stop noticing the huge flaws in the Bush presidency rather than having anything to do with productive leadership. If the fear is that the terrorists will try to disrupt our elections, we can take steps now to ensure that they won't be disrupted. Including reminding people about how the process works, and how no attack can railroad the Constitutional mandate and the relevant powers manifest in the States. We hope we never have to face such a crisis, but if the threat is truly as imminent as Our Leaders want us to believe, then we should expect them to make sure we are actually prepared. Scared shitless is not a sufficient state of readiness. Confident that our Constitutional processes and principles can survive no matter what, which they can with the right preparation, is what the situation actually calls for. If only we could be.

The threat itself further points out the fallacy of the liberty-encroaching laws we've had to endure. We have all these new rules, all these new laws. And yet we are not any safer apparently. Our reading habits, our thoughts, our behaviors and the things most personal to us can be scrutinized and criminalized. And yet the terrorists are still out there, plotting away.

IF there was no other way to know what they were plotting, maybe then the sacrifices on liberty would be reasonable. But the authorities can't seem to manage processing what they know from more legitimate sources. Putting the entire populace under suspicion does not seem helpful in the slightest, and in fact it seems harmful, wasting resources now needed to parse all the newly available information about innocent citizens rather than chasing down the actual threats.

Meanwhile, today I learned that my favorite Washington museum, the Air and Space, now requires you to go through security to enter it. You used to be able to walk in and out of there whenever you wanted. Discovery and learning in a public institution could happen at will. Now it can't. Yet more invasive gauntlets need to be run first. Gauntlets which inhibit personal freedom yet provide no substantive increases in safety.

I remember when I used to be free. I miss it a lot.

Last Friday I went to the Museum of Natural History on the National Mall. That museum with dinosaur bones and nature dioramas. (And, oddly enough, a temporary exhibition on baseball.) And metal detectors with guards who opened your bags.

I renew my objections to these new "security" measures.

To begin with, there is the inconvenience factor. This was palpable on Friday when I was trying to meet my friend, and I couldn't very easily pop inside to look to see if he was already there because of the line to enter through security. I will grant that if inconvenience itself were the only objection it might not weigh heavily against the possible benefit.

But the inconvenience factor is only the tip of the iceberg. There's also the loss of civil liberties, the expenditure of resources on ineffective measures that create only the APPEARANCE of security, the resulting lack of resources available to provide any ACTUAL security, and the fact that the inconvenience of convening freely in a public place has a wider destructive effect on society than one individual may appear to absorb on his own.

When I went to the museum it was after work, to which I normally carry a backpack with my laptop, papers, and whatever else I feel like lugging around with me all day. To enter the museum I had to permit my bag to be searched.

Here I can hear people argue, "So? How is that a problem if you have nothing to hide?"

This argument is always fallacious. Personal liberty entitles you to hide whatever you want from the State that you want, however capriciously. If I've written an essay that I think later is really bad, and I'd be so mortified if anyone read it, though there would be no criminal repercussions should it fall into the hands of the State, I still would have reason to want no one to see it. Not my friends, not my neighbors, and certainly not my government.

And what about items that aren’t illicit but the prying eyes of the State's agents wouldn't be able to ascertain as such? Like, say, material that might be deemed obscene, or worse. If I wrote an essay on how much I dislike President Bush – or even an essay like this – if an agent of the State should see it, how could I be sure that I wouldn't get arrested as a terrorist? A treasonist? Someone who by not being "with us" must be against us? True my First Amendment right of free expression could provide a defense, but having to endure a trial to be exonerated on that point is a tremendous cost (and risk) that should not and would not have to be born if I actually had a Fourth Amendment right "to be secure in [my] person[], houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

The Fourth Amendment goes on to describe a legitimate search as one which "upon probable cause ... particularly describ[es] the persons or things to be seized." The mere desire to enter a museum, a park, or any other public space cannot on its own be sufficient probable cause to justify a search. Nor can searching EVERYONE with such a desire be sufficiently particular. Plus, once the State gets to look at my belongings, it can now "see" whatever it wants. Including all the things that for whatever reason I wouldn't want it to see and might ordinarily have been able to prevent from being searched.

The loss of Fourth Amendment protection in order to enter these locales, which used to be freely available to be freely exploited by all citizens, having already been paid for by them, is a very high additional cost indeed and one which is expensive for society as a whole. If people need to subject themselves to State scrutiny to partake in public events, more and more people will have to forgo them. So, you might say, these would be the "bad guys" and we wouldn't want them around anyway. It's a matter for a separate discussion how society denotes its "good guys from bad guys," but it can be noted here that it's not the rare psychopath that gets weeded out by these searches but mere scofflaws and dissidents that will be caught up in this net. These are the people who perhaps have something naughty but innocuous in their possession – or perhaps they don't even – but who, even on the fringes of society still have something to contribute to it, to say nothing of a right to partake in it. Ridding ourselves of their participation deprives the fabric of our society of their color and further marginalizes them.

The convenience issue is even more relevant in this context. If it stops being efficient to attend public events or to enter public institutions, people won't. Or at least not as often. Even the most conforming people will be reluctant to endure the hassle. If we think it's valuable to have free public educational institutions and assemblage areas, we should ensure that people can take advantage of them. The investment won't pay off if, practically, people are unable to use them. Particularly for educational institutions, when the betterment and stability of society depends so heavily on having an informed populace, this outcome is particularly untenable.

Meanwhile, many people who find these types of security measures unobjectionable tend to justify them with two arguments, one being that "any little bit helps," and the other being that because public places are easy targets they justify these impositions.

First of all, every little bit DOESN'T help. Swatting mosquitoes when Godzilla is on the loose may keep people from succumbing from West Nile, but it's not going to keep them from getting crushed. It's counterproductive and wasteful to spend so many resources countering small hazards are not dealing with the larger ones. Plus, as I keep reiterating, the cure is worse than the disease. Worse, it's not even a real cure, it's just an illusion of safety that the security measures bring, not anything substantive. Like a traveler in the desert who drinks from a mirage only to ingest a mouthful of sand, so are we when we think that these types of measures do us any good at all.

Secondly, the "easy target" argument doesn't scale very well. BECAUSE people meet in aggregate they are a target. The only solution is to not have people meet in aggregate (which, given the inhibiting nature of these measures, may actually be the goal). Since (we by policy seem to presume) terrorists aren't interested in picking people off one by one, any crowd of people provides a presumptively tempting target.

There might be some argument that the National Mall on Independence Day might be a more poetic target than some other public events, but if so, merely keeping people from bringing in pointy objects did not make anyone any safer. As for museums, perhaps we fear that a terrorist might desecrate a museum exhibit and destroy a piece of our heritage, but though sad and devastating that would be in its own way, the mentality behind 9/11 is not likely to be satisfied with destroying a space capsule or dinosaur skeleton. But if we can make the choice to either risk having an artifact destroyed or our freedom, isn't it better for the former to absorb the damage?

Meanwhile these feeble attempts to make us "safe" seem to only be remotely effective against the run of the mill social outcasts, the "troublemakers." Had there not been any security on the Mall on the Fourth of July I think my greatest vulnerability might have been to stupid people with pointy objects or pistols. That risk might have been ameliorated somewhat – but only somewhat – with the security procedures.

But this raises another issue, which echoes the repeated concern for society's cohesiveness: that we just don't seem to trust each other. When we mingle with strangers, we fear they have it in for us. The security measures are really just a prophylactic attempt to mitigate that fear. All the obstacles and barriers are supposed to parse out the "bad" people, the people whose behavior we don't think we can trust, without us having to learn how we can. Instead we search for a guarantee that no one will hurt us, making ourselves vulnerable to leaders who really can't make that promise anyway.

There is more to say about our alienation from our neighbors and the harmful effects our fear and suspicion have on society as a whole. But for purposes here I want to close by refocusing on general principles, to emphasize how freedom is only attainable when it applies to everyone, even people you don't like (the "bad" people). People who don't look quite the same. People who have negative opinions. People just like you. As bad as it is to parse out dissidents, the worst thing about such an exercise is that there is no defense against having yourself parsed out as well. Maybe someone doesn't like the way you look. Or your opinions. Maintaining civil liberties for all doesn't just protect the freedom of the people on the fringes, it also protects your own.

Actually completed and posted on 7/18. But I'd been drafting it in my head all the previous week.

I flew up to New York today to see my grandma for her birthday. She mentioned that I seem to be full of complaints lately, which I've noticed too. I've become pretty grumpy lately, and I think it's part of the Great Change. Some of it stems from personal stress – there's a lot of stuff I need to do right now as part of this process – but some of it stems from the experiences I've been having lately, working for an NGO to try to stem the tide of horrific legislation, confronting far greater challenges to the civil liberties I treasure than I ever thought possible in the United States, and worrying about how I'll be able to fix all this (and be a happy healthy person in the process) .

But I can still appreciate and report on nice things, a tale of which I shall report here. Unfortunately, a complaint is going to need to precede it, but then again if something hadn't gone wrong there wouldn't have been the occasion for someone else to have gone above and beyond to fix it.

I flew into LaGuardia and met my mom at the gate, who had arrived from somewhere else. It was pleasant to have her there waiting: one of my favorite feelings is the happy rush you get from being met at an airport by someone who's glad to see you. It happens for me less and less these days because I fly so often on my own to all sorts of farflung places. And when it does happen, because of the new security measures, you never get met at the gate. But because she had arrived on the same airline she was able to be right there. It was a nice change. (And there you go – I just said something nice.)

We then set off to figure out how to navigate local transit to get to Brooklyn. The subway unfortunately doesn't get all the way to the airport, but there are buses that go to subway stops. But even more unfortunately, these buses don't take dollar bills even though a ride costs $2. And still more unfortunately, despite this rather stubborn insistence on taking only (a rather heavy handful of) change, we weren't advised that we needed it when the information desk told us what bus to take. On the plus side, the buses do take Metro Cards, but again, misfortune frowned upon us when we were unable to find a newsstand that could sell us a card good for just one ride (in fact, we had to walk to another whole terminal to find one that could even sell us any cards at all – what a huge waste of time.)

After we gave up the fruitless pursuit for the correct Metro Card, we went to the bus stop, clutching our two singles each, and saw the right bus pull up. Then we discovered we needed change. So we ran into the terminal and luckily found a change machine (that thankfully was not out of change), and when we came out, the bus was still there. At least mostly. It had pulled away from the curb but was stuck in traffic. I knocked on the window but the driver refused to open the doors. MAYBE this is MTA policy, but in most of the places I've been drivers have been willing to pick up passengers as long as it was reasonably safe to do so, especially when service is less frequent than every five minutes or so.

Meanwhile, the Avis shuttle bus driver, seeing this take place, jumped out of his bus. "Get on, and I'll try to catch up with him at the next stop." We did, and so did he. It was tough, what with traffic and an extra stop he had to make that the MTA bus didn't and a Hertz shuttle bus inexplicably stopping in the middle of the road, but there by the Marine Terminal we managed to cut off the MTA bus with a shortcut and he got us to a stop just in time.

It was an interesting mini-adventure, shlepping and racing around LaGuardia (which itself is an interesting airport with its conflux of modern and old airport architecture). It was very nice of the Avis driver to go to the effort for us, but that said, it would also be nice if New York made things a little easier for people coming to visit (or even people who live there, for that matter).

Toward that end, buses should take dollar bills. That technology has been in existence for a long time, and most other bus systems use it. I'm struggling to imagine a compelling enough reason for the MTA not to use them. People are less and less frequently carrying a lot of change, and the amount they need to carry for a ride is becoming absurd. I think the logic is that there's little point since the locals use Metro Cards, but the tourists who've just arrived have no opportunity to acquire them before needing to ride the bus.

So toward fixing that problem, and this would be even easier to do, the Metro Card machines (which I happen to think are very nicely designed – extremely usable particularly in light of the complexity of their offerings and methods of payment) (and see, I said something else nice) should be placed in the terminal where all the mass transit information is. Otherwise there's a good chance tourists could get stuck (what if the single change machine broke?) and most certainly will end up wasting a lot of time. New York City has a very nice and otherwise reasonably usable public transit system. Why make it hard for visitors to use it? Why force them to pay extra for cab fare?

Meanwhile New Yorkers privately are willing to go all out to make things better for their city's guests, but I think it would behoove the city to make certain efforts on its own behalf, especially since it desires to have more visitors (Olympics, RNC). It's hard for them to see what a nice place New York is if they can't easily get into it.

Technically finished and posted 7/18. Mostly written though on the plane back down to Washington on 7/17.

Previously I posted about the futility of not having Metro Card dispensers at LaGuardia Airport. I'm starting to wonder if that has less to do with any decision on the part of the MTA (who runs the buses and subway) or if it's a Port Authority decision.

The Port Authority runs LaGuardia Airport. It also runs bridges and tunnels that connect New York and New Jersey, including the George Washington Bridge (the original "GWB"). The George Washington Bridge has two levels, and unlike the Bay Bridge in California, each level has traffic in both directions. I remember when I was a kid always nagging my dad to take the upper level, where the view would be better, and how most of the time we'd end up on the lower level anyway. Sometimes it was because the traffic was better, sometimes it was because we missed the turn-off, and sometimes it was because the exit routing for where we were going was easier to follow on the lower level than the upper.

It seems, however, that recently the Port Authority got the brilliant idea to make the tolls for the lower level EZ Pass-only at night. A huge mess has naturally ensued, as people have ended up in the wrong place with only cash, which apparently the Port Authority doesn't want to trouble themselves to take (the toll is expensive, so it's quite a bit of money to be turning down.) People who end up in the wrong place are stuck with either having to make moronic driving maneuvers, or to drive through the tolls without paying (which then gets them a bill for the toll and a $25 fee.) It's a dangerous situation, and a loud one as well that's been waking the people who live nearby with all the honking and police loudspeaker announcements and such.

Sounds like an idea that should be revisited, right? Apparently not.

"If we start making exceptions," said Ciavolella, the Port Authority spokesman, "then it would defeat the purpose of what we're trying to do."

Exactly what is it that the Port Authority trying to do? Is it something more than collecting money and keeping traffic flowing smoothly, things you'd expect the Port Authority to do? Because it's clearly not doing those things well. What is it that it thinks is more worthwhile?

Port Authority insists that people will learn. OK, maybe regular commuters will figure out this arrangement, but what about the people who aren't? The people who are most likely not to have EZ Pass transponders? These people won't learn the system, and the system is going to make them scofflaws with large penalties to pay for an innocent mistake made due to no fault of their own.

When I was a webmaster I had to learn all about usability. It wasn't enough to make my web site the way I thought it should be designed. I had to make it in a way that the USERS thought it should be designed to suit their needs. It was amazing how many web sites ignore that very basic principle and stubbornly cling to their own myopic way of trying to "reach" people. There has to be a compromise between the provider of a system and its users. If the system's design prevents some users from using it, it's a complete failure that requires a redesign and not merely the obstinate hope that the users might somehow change.

When the system in question is a public utility (roads) such a failure is particularly inexcusable. All people, as they are, have the right to use the roads. Locals, one-time visitors, everyone. It's enough of a burden that any toll needs to be paid at all (poor people should be able to cross the river too) but if the arrangement essentially obstructs people from legitimately using a public system in a legitimate way, it must be changed.

Since the lower level of the George Washington Bridge is sometimes the only effective way to travel to one's destination, it needs to accommodate people without EZ Pass.* And the Port Authority should adjust its attitude. It's raison d'etre is not make the system it thinks it wants to make. It's purpose is to make a system that all people can use.

* People like me. Don't even get me started on how the police can find you wherever you are on the roads by tracking your EZ Pass signal. You think it's just to pay a toll conveniently? Think again.

Edit 7/21: Well, the Port Authority has made an improvement. Sort of. Now two lanes are "escape valves." If you end up there they tell you they will bill you for the toll and waive the fee, as long as it's the first offense. Lovely. So this presumes that occasional travellers won't make the same mistake twice. Or that more confusion won't be caused with more jockey-ing through confusing lanes and signs. Plus the admin costs of doing the billing. WHY DON'T THEY JUST TAKE THE DAMN MONEY!!!! I can't imagine it take more than a handful of cars per hour to pay for the manpower required to accept the cash. This is a major thoroughfare across a major river to a major city. I'm inclined to think that even in the middle of the night there are still likely to be more than a handful of cars looking to cross.

When this year's Tour de France began I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. Not only was Lance going to go for his historic 6th consecutive win, but American Bobby Julich had escaped relegation to history to compete again as a serious Tour contender; American Levi Leipheimer was back from a devastating injury that took him out of the Tour and the season last year to try to best his earlier 8th place finish; and Tyler Hamilton, who had stunned the world by placing a fantastic 4th and winning a stage last year, all with a broken collarbone, was looking in great form to shoot for a podium finish this year and maybe even put some pressure on Lance. I think I was most excited about the prospects of that last bit. Tyler won my heart and my support last year with his amazing performance.

But right away things went horribly wrong. The Tour route packed the first week with long, fast, narrow stages full of jittery riders. Crashes were inevitable and devastating, although their full impact wasn't necessarily realized right away.

And then poor Tyler - his dog Tugboat died. Tugboat was the Golden Retreiver who faithfully rode around in the car on his training rides, was there for him at the end of stages, and who shared Tyler's glossy magazine spreads in biking magazines. He'd been sick right before the Tour, but he seemed to have gotten better. It was after the Tour started that it turned out he'd had to be put down. Hearing the news I felt so sad. And I don't even like dogs. But Tyler did what he needed to do and kept going.

Until a few days later when the extent of his injury ended his race. He'd been caught up in one of the terrible crashes and had landed on his back. He'd kept going, finishing that stage and doing a few others, but landing on one's back at high speeds is not a healthy thing to do. The damage it caused affected his ability to ride competitively and so a few days later he had to withdraw.

I was so crushed, I couldn't even watch the Tour for days or read anything about it. In the list of interesting things going on in this year's Tour I suddenly realized I was most excited to watch Tyler. Without him in the race, I didn't seem to care.

But worse, if I was so crushed, I couldn't imagine how he must have felt. He came into the Tour with such high hopes and expectations. And then to lose his dog and his race... Tyler keeps an online journal that I'd been reading but I had to avoid all mention of it. I felt sure when I saw his next post I'd see someone wallowing in disappointment and self-pity, and reasonable as they'd both be, that's hard to read.

But this is why I feel motivated to post, because when I did finally get the courage to see what he wrote, instead I found a post full of maturity, dignity, classiness, and optimism. No shrinking violet, he explained he withdrew because serious damage had been done to his back. Not only did it affect his ability to ride fast, but it required immediate healing in order that he could ride future races, like the Olympics. Instead of being devastated, he was making future plans.

Including to be up in Paris to greet the rest of his team when they arrived. That was maybe the best thing to read, because it gave me the permission I felt I needed to be able to keep watching the rest of the Tour.

Edit: Date changed. Was posted on 7/21.
Edit 7/23/04: And yet another reason. I dare you to read this without tearing up...

Several years ago I had a boyfriend who was a law student. Who started driving me up the wall because he seemed to be too negative about all sorts of things. At the time I chalked it up to a character flaw, but in facing my own recent grumpiness I wonder now if it's instead a typical by-product of the experience.

In some ways, the suspicion towards police stems from this period. He did a lot of work in criminal defense clinics and personally made a big difference on keeping people out of jail. We're not talking hardened criminals - we're talking people a bit on the fringes of society who stood no chance against the zeal of law-and-order cops, whose zeal clearly got in the way of actual justice. I'd always been interested in civil rights, but hearing about these situations made my concern less theoretical and much more immediate. It's not a hypothetical fear that innocent people may be railroaded unjustly: it actually happens all the time, with almost no outcry at all.

With regard to the ambient grumpiness, there's also the general effect on one's mood that the toll of the entire experience takes. It's a very busy time for me, what with my 2L job search and all, so my rope is a little frayed. But it's not really a question of stress as much as the existential doubt and ennui that sprouts from having no idea how your future is going to turn out, and relatively little guidance in trying to navigate it.

I'm not someone who generally needs a lot of handholding. Normally I figure out how a situation works, what the rules and expectations are, and act accordingly. But with law school there is a lot of complexity but not a sufficient amount of guidance. Now, I say this with respect and gratitude for the people at my school who have been helpful. But it's still not really sufficient. The job hunt for instance, is a nuanced process repleat with its own vernacular, timelines, and lack of guarantees. Also there are different types of job searches, which all happen simultaneously: large firms, small firms, non-profit, government... and out of all of those possibilities I have to find someone who wants me and will give me work to do that's fulfilling. I suppose it will all work out, but it's very difficult at this moment to have any idea how, and that's a very emotionally taxing state to be in.

Also on the list of things wearing me down is the process of course selection for next year. I don't even know where to begin in explaining where I am with that. I got into a bunch of courses that are hard to get into, but I'm locked out of courses that I need for prerequisites. My flexibility in dealing with these problems is meanwhile hampered by unit count maximums, scheduling conflicts, and a tremendous amount of unknowns regarding future course offerings and opportunities. I know what I want to do, but I only have a limited time to do it. It's really difficult to figure out how to work it all in even before all the hurdles and obstacles get added.

(I'm sure I'll be kvetching about course selection as the semester gets closer. Hopefully I'll know what I'm actually taking before October...)

Edit: Date changed. Was posted on 7/21.

Some light in the darkness: I got onto the journal I wanted. The writing competition was not all for naught, it seems...

In addition to the bugs, we have a mouse in the house. There might be more than one, but it could just be one who gets around since that's all I've seen at any one time.

I didn't have a problem seeing it scurry around the baseboards of the dining room, but I wasn't thrilled when it sauntered into my room. I really don't want a mouse crawling on me in the middle of the night or eating my stuff. But I saw him come in and managed to corner him by the door. He got scared and hid behind something, but not very well since his tail stuck out. I felt sort of bad: I didn't want him in the room, but I also didn't want to terrify him since he was very cute. Eventually he ran out of the room, and I plugged the gap under the door with a towel so all was well on my end. Perhaps not so much for my roommate, though, whose room he ended up running around all night. She was not amused.

Meanwhile, I decided to name him. I named him Sonny Bono, because I can't very well name him Mickey, now, can I? </IP law joke>

IP law joke explained: Mickey Mouse was about to fall into the public domain were it not for a bill to extend the terms of US Copyright protection passed by Congress. The bill was named for Sonny Bono. Maybe this really isn't such a joke: the whole thing really isn't very funny at all.

Written 7/23/04 but not posted until 8/03 due to travel.

Huge amounts of time last week were swallowed up by the 2L job search. And that's just for one part of one phase of it.

There are many firms that will be at various regional job fairs, and there are many firms that will be interviewing on-campus at various points. So last week I logged onto the website facilitating these programs to see what firms would be at which. Then I went to each firm's website to evaluate whether I'd even want to think about working there.

There were quite a few to check out, even when I only looked at firms that had offices in locations where I'd be willing to work. I'm concentrating my search in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC - if you can call that "concentrating." At least I've managed to eliminate a few places, like Boston. Several months ago I decided that although I like living in Boston now (er, well, during the school year) I don't feel inspired to stay. Instead I feel ready to return either to my roots in the New York area, or my later roots in the Bay Area. Washington is a possibility because it's a cosmopolitan environment vaguely in the Northeast where important things get done. I suppose of the three places it is my last choice because it's the place where I have the least attachment, but there are some firms with offices in all the aforementioned places whose DC office looks the most interesting, either given its size or practice areas. I find myself flipflopping on the NY-SF choice though. I'm very comfortable in the Bay Area, and there are certain firms based primarily out there I'd like to explore working for, but given an equivalent office in NY I find myself unexpectedly preferring the idea of staying back east. I'll have to give it some time to see how transient this sentiment may turn out to be. In the meantime I'm looking into jobs in both locales with a certain "que sera sera" attitude. Most important is the right opportunity, so I'll have to see where that turns out to be.

Written on 7/24/04 but posted on 8/03 due to travel.

A continuation of the previous post because I was unable to post it all at once. In the last one I surmised that I'd end up living where the best opportunity ended up being. More on what that right opportunity might be:

Trying to find that right opportunity though is no easy task. First of all, it's extremely time-consuming to figure out who these firms are, what they do, and whether they have practice areas that sound plausibly interesting to me, as if I really have any good way to assess all that at this juncture. What I've been doing as I do my research is ranking each firm on a scale of 1 to 5. A 1 is a firm whose core practice is something I'm not interested in doing. In theory there are lots of firms that are like this, but I only bother to rank the ones that I've actually heard of so that it's easier to keep track. A 5 is a firm that for some reason exudes a certain something that makes me particularly excited about wanting to get an interview. Maybe it's the practice area, or something else about it's attitude towards its practice or the law. On the flipside of that impression, there are the 2's that might at first SEEM to be up my alley but for some reason turn me off to them and negate any incentive to even try. The IP firms that are clearly – some even say this almost exactly – all about maximizing companies' intellectual property assets, these seem like a depressing place to devote my skills. I'm really concerned, actually, that my idealism on the subject may make it very hard to find a position. First of all, I might appear too opinionated. This might particularly be a problem when the firm has litigated for a client on the "wrong" side of an issue. If I've been rabblerousing that the argument or the client was wrong, I don't think I'd be very attractive to the firm. I'm also concerned that, if hired, I might have to advocate on the "wrong" side for a client. I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile this dilemma and still find a good position where I can develop as a litigator and this is what keeps me up at nights.

But I notice that some firms are so large that they end up having multiple practice areas where I might be able to find work I like. This is particularly true if they work with international law. Although transactions aren't so interesting to me, conflict resolutions are. Some firms even have international IP focuses, so those usually end up ranked a "5". Also, some firms seem to clearly understand that there are two sides to IP: suing everybody, and defending against suits. The tighter and tighter IP laws get, the more of the latter is going to occur. This is why I pass over the firms who only get the former but if the firm acknowledges that defense is also part of the equation, they end up on my list as a 4 or 5. Also tending to be ranked at 5 are firms that do a lot of First Amendment law. Free expression is the most important freedom to me, and why I got into IP in the first place, so that's a kind of work where my passion and the client's interests can perfectly converge.

Then there are other annoyances mucking up the process. For some firms my grades are an obstacle. Some will only interview people with a certain GPA or ranking. For some the cutoff is ridiculously high, but I wouldn't want to work in such a snobby environment anyway. For others for whom I appear to be below the cutoff, it's very hard to take, especially if I've otherwise ranked the firm a 5. For the job fairs there seems to no limit to the amount of firms I can try to get an interview with, so if the firm was a 5, or sometimes a 4, I've applied anyway. To the best I can figure out, if they wouldn't interview me anyway because of my grades then I don't think there's a negative consequence to applying anyway, because even if they were to refuse to interview me because I didn't follow instructions, well, I still wouldn't have had the interview. Anyway, lawyers are supposed to be pushy so maybe it will work in my favor... For the on-campus interviews though there is a bid limit, but since there doesn't seem to be more than 5 firms I'd be interested in for each session, and there are only about 8 sessions, with the bid limit is 75, I'm not sure it hurts to apply then either, especially if I otherwise seem like a good match for the firm's work or am in the ballpark of the cutoff. At least I hope not.

Maybe the hardest thing is to figure out a good attitude to have and to be able to maintain it. Some moments it seems like there are no good firms, or at least none who will interview me, so I despair and start casting a wider net. There end up being more 4's when perhaps they should be 3's. Or I feel more compelled to apply to 3's (I don't apply to 2's though). Other moments I think some firms are perfect and I'm a match, but then maybe something causes me to despair, like the GPA cutoff. Meanwhile, I've never worked in a firm before, it's a bit hard to know what I want in terms of size, location, practice... I have to make my best guess and it tends to vary from moment to moment. I'm still figuring this law thing out and I'm still figuring myself out. I guess the right firm for me is the one who thinks that's ok. All it takes is one.

Written 7/24/04, not posted until 8/9/04 due to travel, then dated for 7/25 to keep the entries spread out.

Edit 8/11/04: There was an interesting article in the NY Times today, about ethics in lawyering. It considered the debate, at times taking place within law firms themselves, about the conflict between zealous advocacy of clients and perhaps promoting a greater social good. It's nice to know I'm not the only one facing this problem. Maybe the firm for me is one who has at least recognized it themselves.

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