In Seattle the motorist is lost in a vast uncaring world and only finds meaning when he reaches the city limits on his way out. Street parking is dangerous. One can be easily trapped by those who park around your car when you have left it believing escape will be available at a moment’s notice. … More Parking in Seattle is an Existentialist Crisis
In the Second World War, young Russian women, often just girls, would volunteer to fight at the front against the Germans. If assigned to a tank medical corps, their position was to ride on the back of a tank into battle while the male soldiers rode inside driving the tank and firing the weapons. Russian … More Baby Boomers: Born at the Right Time and Place.
Frank Borman, Commander of Apollo 8, died this November aged 95. He had a tremendous career in the military and aerospace, but nothing he left behind is quite as compelling as his greetings on Christmas Eve 1968 from orbit around the Moon. Earthrise, taken by Apollo 8 crew member William Anders, Christmas, 1968 At the … More A Christmas Greeting from Outer Space
Board game from the 1960’s reflects on the conduct of men today. … More Mystery Date
I picked up the guitar and started singing all those old folk songs American’s love, like The Hammer Song etc. I realized they were all all labor songs from an era that has passed. They do not seem relevant. So I wrote a song about modern life. The Costco Song is more about how we … More The Costco Song
My parents wed in 1956 and they went the distance; 62 years, until Mom died this spring. This is the story of the wedding. It is 1955. My parents announce their engagement and party is held in the house my grandparents built during the war. They set the date for July 14th, 1956, which is … More My Parents Big Fat Catholic Wedding
Most of the time we go through life, day in day out, not thinking at all about the Big Questions or whether there is an end to all of this. Then one day the question is called. And you have to ask yourself; what have I achieved? While hospitalized this spring with a serious infection … More The Hero with the 1000 Cases
There are just so may sound bytes from family law that stick with a guy after a few decades of practice. “Mr. Patterson, Control Your Client!” the guy says to me. Couldn’t see who it was but I think it was my clients ex-husband. The hearing had not gone well for us and his former … More Sound Bytes from Family Law
What a dork! Off to the Junior Prom in the mid-1970’s, he has his whole life ahead of him, believing everyone more or less lives by the same template; get an education, find a girl, marry, then settle down raise children. Repeat in the next generation. With this presumption on board I got to college, … More American Pie- Fair Comment
I remember watching Perry Mason literally sitting on my fathers knee in some rented house in Everett as a child. Like everything in the early 1960’s, the show was in black and white, and I do believe we as a country expected the law to be as stark; right and wrong. Dad was in law … More TV Lawyers
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