9/17/23

 Sunday, September 17, 2023

In bed at 11, up at 7:30, let Lilly out at 3:40 and now again, 60°, high of 67°, cloudy, AQI=41, wind NNE at 10, 3-14/21, 0.2" of rain in overnight, little more expected today.  The sun rose at 6:33 and will set at 6:58, 12+25.

Dinner with Caela was great, solid conversation all evening.  She reminded me of my losing argument in 1985 before the Wisconsin supreme court in Emery v. Emery, a case she had handled pro bono at the trial court before Leander Foley, where she lost, and the court of appeals, where she won.  Emery had been charged with capital murder in Texas, found guilty, and sentenced to death.  The only witness against him was his former wife who had divorced him before the trial so she could testify against him despite the marital testimonial privilege in Texas evidence law.  She served him by publication in Milwaukee though she knew he lived in Minneapolis and the issue was whether the divorce court ever acquired personal jurisdiction over the husband so as to make the divorce valid.  The supreme court majority said it had, with C.J. Shirley Abrahamson writing a stinging dissent to Roland Day's majority opinion: "We should have never accepted review of this case. It does not fit within our criteria. The case involves the application of settled law to an unsettling case.  This case is better understood if the reader is aware of the following information in the court file:  "Jeffery Emery is facing a murder charge in the State of Texas punishable by death. Deborah Emery is the State's key witness against Jeffery Emery with regard to the pending murder charge. If the Judgment of Divorce is declared void, then, under an exclusionary rule of evidence under Texas law Deborah Emery could not testify. Society as a whole would be jeopardized if the State of Texas is not allowed to present its best evidence, the testimony of Deborah Emery, against Jeffery Emery." Deborah Emery's petition to this court to review the decision of the court of appeals, p. 6."  Abrahamson's dissent was a public rebuke of Leander Foley and her colleagues in the supreme court majority, one of the reasons so many of her judicial colleagues feared and disliked her.  On the other hand, this was just one more case in which a duly constituted court of law simply ignored the 'controlling law' to reach a result the majority desired notwithstanding the law.  So much for "the rule of law."  It was 38 years ago that I handled the case on a handoff from Caela.  I had forgotten all about it till last night.  Caela's reminding me of the case also reminded me of how far back our friendship goes.

Caela is my longterm birding-buddy and it hurts to see her sad, as she described herself last night.

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime 

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before, but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirty-five years

I lived with my husband.

The plum tree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red,

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they,

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

Kitty.  I read a couple of articles on sibling relationships in The Atlantic yesterday, including one in the November 2018 issue entitled "Are Siblings More Important Than Parents?  How brothers and sisters shape who we are" by Ben Healy.  It concludes:

"One way or another, sibling influence is lasting. A study of more than 1 million Swedes found that one’s risk of dying of a heart attack spikes after a sibling dies of one, due not only to shared DNA but also to the stress of losing such a key figure.  Which makes sense: Most of us are different people than we’d have been if our brothers or sisters were never born. Siblings seem like they’re just there only until they aren’t."

During her long, debilitating struggle with lung disease, Kitty never seemed like she was 'just there' ; we both knew that the day was coming when she wouldn't be there and so it was.  As to his statement that "Most of us are different people than we’d have been if our brothers or sisters were never born," I can't even imagine what my life would have been like without her, from our childhood days in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald to our old age, so far apart physically and so close emotionally.  Life without her is so much poorer.

CPP is pretty nasty today.  I'm struggling with the question whether I should try to reschedule my appointment with the VA PT specialist on Wednesday.  I'm feeling some embarasment about seeing her again.   I know what the stretching exercise is so the only purpose for the visit would be "internal work."  I suppose I can ask her about chronicity, or recurrence, but going back to her seems a bit pervy.

New painting not going well.

The reference, fabulous face and look, from Modigliani movie