My Fair City

Traditional

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and
yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)

The Voice of the Rain
By Walt Whitman
1819-1892

Contemporary

"I'm as used to Oregon as a duck can get. But I still wish the rain here wasn't quite so wet!"

© copyright 2002 by Steven Robert Heine

I feel the earth move under my feet...

Whoa! Saturday at 6:01 pm we had an earthquake! (little blue square in Oregon is us)

The conversation at the house went something like this:

Me: What is that?! (as I look out the window for the mysteriously noiseless truck rolling by)

J: I don't know!

A couple seconds later...

J: I think that was an earthquake!

Me: Are we supposed to do anything? Should we check the gas and water pipes?

J: I don't know.

Me: Turn on the tv and see what's going on. I'm going to the basement to check those pipes.

So, KGW, the local station, reports 30 minutes later that we had a 2.1 on the Richter scale, with the epicenter in the West Hills (5 miles north). Fortunately, nothing rattled or fell because I sat there with my mouth open the entire time. In elementary school we did tornado drills but when it comes to earthquakes we mid-westerners sure are ignorant!

So, I found some advice...Household Seismic Activity - no, not what happens when we argue

Yes, Little Grasshopper, There is a Boogey Man...

A recent conversation at work the other day concluded with something like this: "So, the government is wiretapping phone calls without a warrant, what do I care? Only guilty people are scared, anyway."

I can't believe that people actually don't care! Being the type-A, overanalyzer I am, I sat down and thought about why I DO care. There are several serious issues the recently exposed warrant-less wiretapping phenom presents:

1) Even if the Feds have admitted to only wiretapping foreign calls without a warrant (and here, I think it's a safe assumption that most of us are not regularly making international calls), have they wiretapped domestic calls without a warrant and just haven't admitted it?

2) There are procedural safeguards in place that take very little time, e.g., procuring a warrant for wiretapping, thereby halting or deterring abuses. One of these is the Constitution to the United States (presumedly a patriotic document) that guarantees
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,shall NOT be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." U.S. Constitution, Amendment IV

This Amendment was placed in the Constitution in the first place because of the American experience under British rule.

For those playing at home, it is above all a very American trait to be skeptical of government power. Oh, but the government is just trying to "PROTECT" us you say, Orwellian style. Indeed, and a government bears the responsibility under its social contract to protect its citizens but not only from outside harm. The founders of our country knew something America forgets in times of crises, that those who hold power in the government are human and will abuse authority. Hence, the marvelous, completely novel idea of "Checks and Balances."

The Check here, is the executive branch taking requests to violate the people's right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures to the Court--specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, located on the sixth floor of the Justice Department ABC - Going around the FISA Court, Jan. 24, 2006 (FISA is a federal law requiring NSA wiretapping to go through its court to procure a warrant; the 4th Amendment is a constitutional law requiring warrants for searches and seizures by the government; constitutional law ALWAYS trumps federal law.)

Most NSA/CSS employees, both civilian and military, are headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, centrally located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. NSA - About the NSA, accessed Jan. 25, 2006

So, how long does it take to get a valid warrant from FISA, aside from the little car trip? Per the above cited ABC newstory, it takes from a few hours to as much as *gasp* weeks. Wait a minute, so with a little planning (since NSA knows what and where it wants to listen) the federal government can accomplish its task while protecting my civil rights???

The real problem is that we don't even know if the Feds are violating FISA or the 4th Amendment; because of the current bypass of the court, there is absolutely NO oversight--NO CHECK to balance the power. possible impeachment?

Here, I propose a smells bad test, i.e., if randomly eavesdropping on citizens' phone conversations without even the semblance of a warrant smells bad, then don't friggin' do it!

3) I expect my phone calls to be private. PERIOD. I'm married, my husband and I are apart sometimes and frankly, it's no one's business what we talk about (even if it is only sweet nothings). I also talk to my sister, who lives out-of-state (just 1 step removed from international) and when I gripe about friends/family/life, I don't want anyone hearing about it. IF I ever run for political office, I don't want a taped call to be used in a smear ad.

4) Although I don't have family or friends overseas, I do call customer service. Yup, that sweet little, hard-to-understand, barely English-speaking customer service rep. is NOT in the good ole US-of-A. Is NSA listening to me try to figure out why the printer isn't working? Probably not. What if I'm Muslim and my printer isn't working? Still, maybe a no. What if I'm a large business owner, Muslim and my printer isn't working? Not so sure. What if I'm in the field of surveillance, nuclear physics or military contracts, I'm a large business owner, Muslim and my printer isn't working? Yea, right. I wouldn't even order pizza from across town without giving a "God bless America" instead of a "goodbye."

riddle me this

Sudoku Warrior

What is Sudoku?

Yesterday afternoon I had lunch with my mentor from the Multnomah Bar Association. She's an absolutely delightful woman with years of experience. In addition, she's a partner at a prestigious firm in downtown Portland and seems to know nearly all the other attorneys in town. What luck!

As we were sitting in the French restaurant at which her firm treated us, I asked her about her experience as a partner. She explained that in order to get 2 weeks vacation and approximately another week for the usual holidays, she worked 10-12 hour days. Her billable hour requirement was also significantly lower than that of the San Francisco office of the firm. Fortunately, she explained, she was unmarried and didn't have any children because her free time was limited enough.

So, my question is, at what point am I willing to sacrifice a personal life and pursuits to become "successful" in the traditional attorney sense? I've seen more than a handful of people from law school and friends from other fields, especially medicine and business (are those really distinct fields???) willing to lay their humanity upon the sacrificial altar. (Quite frankly, I'm not so certain they seem content, although, granted, I don't get to see them on their absolutely fabulous 2-3 week vacations once a year and it's possible their solitude-preferring spouses are.)

I realized that her schedule had no appeal to me whatsoever, which made me wonder if I was just lazy. I had a professor in law school, a Harvard grad who worked as a federal prosecutor in NY (in fact, he had put away mobsters, so I was convinced he was out in Oregon on the witness protection program), who told the class that work was his first priority. Yes, "W-O-R-K;" not: improving the legal system, representing the underprivileged, defining the ubiquitous term - 'justice,' achieving world peace via international law, etc... Up until that point, I figured the people who actually believed that still lied saying, "family," "country," or "religion," just to avoid having the rest of us think they belonged in the asylum--the same way expecting parents all say "we just want a healthy baby" when we all know what they really long for is a little Einstein-Miss America/Heisman trophy-gold medal superstar.

Like most, I long for meaningful, make-a-difference work (which I haven't yet found) but at the end of the day, I want to go home and I want to get there before I'm utterly exhausted and worn out. How about weekends that are enjoyable, not simply about catching up on sleep or heading back to the office?

In one of my favorite books, Man's Search for Meaning, the author writes, "experiencing can be as valuable as achieving," and, as they say on NPR, 'this I believe.'

Lazy Sunday...

lazy sunday

Yesterday was Sunday and I did absolutely nothing productive until 4:30 pm at which time I pulled myself off the couch and went for a run just prior to dark. After, I did manage to leaf through my favorite paper, The Oregonian, and came across an article about a federal case I had actually worked on. Turns out my former employer got the federal indictment against her client, a former Flir executive, dismissed. For those not in the know, this is a Herculean feat!

The article explained how the dismissal was achieved--basically a 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination claim. To elaborate, the SEC investigated the exec for accounting fraud while the US Attorney's Office gathered the evidence in the background and dodged questions by the defendant as to whether a criminal investigation was pending. There was even a doc from the Assistant US Attorney outlining a strategy to get mixed stories from the defendant in order to file more criminal charges! Regardless, the article helped me to realize how much I enjoy studying law.

As pointless as some of the profession seems at times, one person really can change how the government treats its citizens. I was a (very small) part of that.

Guess what's on my fridge?

Oregonian Article

all mine...

So I now have a blog. Not because I initially wanted a blog but because I wanted to post a nice, sweet comment on a friend's blog but had to register to do so. Obviously, somewhere in registration HAL made me a blog. Will he make me post too? Or will I willingly pour my thoughts and desires, as well as my mundane life details, into the vastness of cyberspace? Frankly, I don't know so neither do you.